KEYHOE'S BOOKS
AND THAT "OSB"
EPISODE...
by Alfred Lehmberg
For our valued members who have now watched the recently posted "One Step Beyond (OSB)" episode titled "Encounter" from 1960, here is some interesting back-story on that compelling TV show. Fiction can be truth.
The reader is informed that the tales written for the "OSB" episodes were dramatizations of stories believed to have actually occurred. The provenance of these programs was truth, we discover, howsoever dramatized! This is unlike the more famous "Twilight Zone," which was fantasy and science fiction when it was not sane social commentary.
After doing a deep dive into the "Encounter" episode involving a pilot who went missing during a UFO encounter (!), there are discovered many references made throughout this episode which can be traced back, readily, to the books of UFO researcher, Major Donald Keyoe. Keyhoe is not remotely credited. Everything is connected. Nothing happens once.
At the 16:18 to 16:25 point of the dramatization, the title of the book mentioned is, "Visitors From Outer Space." Major Keyhoe's 1953 seminal book is actually titled, "Flying Saucers From Outer Space."
This is a legal distortion so as not to use the actual title of the book in the episode. Chris Carter of X-files would do the same thing later on... not give credit... (For the record, by the way, and we digress, but Major Keyhoe writes about the "Flatwoods Monster" incident in Chapter 7 of "Flying Saucers From Outer Space." This is one of the earliest published accounts of the renowned 1952 Flatwoods incident!)
...Back at the Ranch? The cigar-shaped UFO and the "Angel's Hair" found beneath the area of the encounter on the ground... and festooning the trees in Keyhoe's book? These are primary parts of the storyline for OSB's "Encounter" episode! This information MUST have been taken from Donald Keyhoe's book, "The Flying Saucer Conspiracy"! Chapter 16, titled "Angels Hair," we'd have it, was likely the primary source of many of the segments used in the episode! Uncredited source, as we'd alluded above.
The cigar-shaped UFO discussed between 7:10 & 8:10 in the film appears for that chapter on page 227 of Keyhoe's book. Keyhoe states, "The '52 report had stated that hundreds of citizens in northern France had watched a huge cigar-shaped machine escorted by a squadron of flying discs. As the formation speeded up, a trail of angel's hair was seen to come down from the tail of the mothership." The segment in this episode when the angel's hair is found on the ground can be seen between 14:02 & 15:02. This is during the "helicopter's search and rescue effort."
Also on page 227 in Keyhoe's "Angels Hair" chapter, and only two paragraphs later at the bottom of the page, Keyhoe writes about an angel's hair incident concerning the "April 15, 1953 news report from Auckland, New Zealand." In the cited chapter on page 227 going on to page 228, Keyhoe writes, "On November 16, 1953, a now familiar trail of angel's hair was seen in the San Fernando Valley, just after a saucer passed over the area."
Keyhoe quotes the local newspaper headline "Valley Mystery Craft Spins Web.” Under the byline of Gordon Grant... he writes, "It is reported to have streamed like a lacy ribbon from a mysterious craft that sped over the valley." These two incidents are referenced directly and spoken about in the 15:30 to 16:16 frame of the OSB episode.
Also on page 227, Keyhoe writes about the angel's hair after it is handled and states, "As in the other cases [...] the substance quickly disintegrated when handled." [In bold by the authors, "angel hair" was not a one-off!] The aforementioned is talked about in the episode between 17:12 & 17:36. It is apparent that the OSB writers used Keyhoe's book, and especially liked Chapter 16.
Moreover, in Donald Keyhoe's same book, "The Flying Saucer Conspiracy," he opens up Chapter 1, titled Blackout, with the "Kinross incident" of 1953. Throughout this chapter, Keyhoe talks effusively about this affair involving an F-89C Scorpion fighter jet from Kinross Field, Michigan... vanishing while on a UFO intercept over Lake Superior, near Soo-locks! Ground Control intercept tracked the jet and a UFO as two separate blips on their radar screens until the two blips intermixed! Keyhoe stated, "The two blips suddenly merged into one... For a moment longer the huge, ominous blip remained on the glass. Then it quickly went off the scope." This shiznit happened, reader!
In the final chapter, Chapter 19, which is titled, "The Vanishing Planes," page 288 begins by saying, "Since November of '53, the Kinross mystery had haunted me. I too had felt it might be the key to the flying saucer mystery." Keyhoe reiterates and writes about this merge stating, "Ground Control saw one blip move off the scope." This segment of Keyhoe's writing about the Kinross incident appears in the "OSB" episode between 20:30 & 21:05.
One theory about the missing Kinross jet appears in Keyhoe's same book. Keyhoe talks ephemerally about a contact he has in Washington and with which he frequently spoke in private about UFOs. It is well established that Keyhoe had connections.
Keyhoe writes, "A well-known aeronautical engineer had helped me privately since '49. His technical opinions, under the name of Paul Redell, had appeared in my first book, 'The Flying Saucers Are Real.' As an aircraft representative, Redell had good contacts in the armed services and outside. More than once he'd surprise me with leads I'd later confirm."
Redell
talked to Keyhoe about UFOs kidnapping pilots and their planes. About
that strangely missing Kinross F-89 jet, the haunted, remember, Keyhoe, questioned Redell in exasperation, "How could the
saucer creatures manage it?" Redell answered, "They'd have to cut off
the plane's engine, but they could probably do that with an electromagnetic
beam. And by gradually increasing the G-field they could draw the F-89 to the
saucer." ...Wait... what?
Then, as if he's not making enough of a shocking statement, Mr. Redell makes a sobering yet more shocking statement... still! Sincerely, let this one sink in...
"We know they've been observing us for years. Perhaps they can't see any other way to make us realize the truth. After all, when they come down here our jets chase them. So this might seem to be the best way to solve the problem: by making off with humans and keeping them until they have established communication."
Keyhoe responded, "You mean until they had learned each other's language?" Redell replied, "I suppose so. Maybe they'd use sign language at first. Finally, they'd understand each other. It would be a first step toward the meeting of two worlds." Keyhoe responded, "It's a frightening thought Paul." Paul Redell summed up, "I know it's shocking, but it's better than an attack. And if it's the answer in the Kinross case, then it could explain some of the other cases as well."
One can presume that the desired communication was not established enroute to a meeting of two worlds? None of those pilots ever came back, says the history we must remember, even as we must remember that Harry Truman declared war on them, to start.
Approaching the close, reader, we ask... Is this what happened to F-94 fighter pilot Second Lt. John A. Jones and his radar observer John DelCurto? ...Vanished into thin air (!), craft and pilots (!), on September 12, 1952, shortly before the "Flatwoods Monster" incident occurred!
Just like with the vanishing Kinross F-89 jet, all these airmen and their jets simply disappeared into thin air... with no wreckage ever being found! True story!
The dramatization of this "OSB" episode, "Encounter" was a step in the right direction, it could be said (we admit grudgingly), to make a general public aware of what was actually occurring back then... but that won't forgive its lack of proper citation!
Remains, was the public actually even paying attention to the severity of the subject matter in this episode when it first aired on April 12, 1960? Flatwoods explorer Frank Feschino, Jr. was only 15 months old when the show aired on television... but he doesn't think so!
Consider... when you look at it like that, reader, Feschino has come a long way to make the public aware of this UFO jigsaw puzzle involving UFOs, missing aircraft, and aliens... by virtue of his ground-breaking research into the affair... bringing more of its threads together and into some light! If he had not done this, it would not have been done! Rare bird, he!
Feschino continued to research this topic, we discover, where Donald Keyhoe and others left off, to make us more aware of what occurred to us over the past several decades. Feschino's are some current shoulders on which we can stand in our disclosure efforts, it's offered.
Is anyone paying attention... now? Are film and documentary producers asleep at the wheel and just not seeing the road ahead of us… or the train bearing down the tracks on which we stand? ...Or, are they fully aware and just terrified of the new reality and existential truth of that which Feschino has uncovered... Smart money says?
That said? We all owe a debt to Major Keyhoe.
