extraordinary%20encounters

xiv Introduction
Though I never for a moment believed in
the literal reality of “those of Landa,” as they
called themselves in their characteristically
stilted syntax, I was struck by a number of
things. One was the almost staggering complexity
of the cosmos Keith had conjured up
in his imagination—the only place that I
could believe such a cosmos existed, with its
many worlds, peoples, religions, politics, enmities,
and alliances. None of it, I should add,
was anything somebody could not have made
up, consciously or unconsciously. But all of it
would have done credit to a gifted writer of
science fiction. Though he possessed a keen
native intelligence, Keith was neither a writer
nor a reader. He did, however, have some previously
existing interest—not profound or
particularly well informed, in my observation—in
UFOs, the paranormal, and the occult.
As I listened to him over many hours, I
began to feel as if somehow in his waking life
Keith had tapped into the creative potential
most of us experience in our dreams. As we
doze off to sleep and dream, images begin to
well up out of the unconscious; in no more
than a moment we may find ourselves inundated
with psychic materials sufficient to fill a
fat Victorian novel. When our eyes open in
the morning, all of that, alas, is gone. Keith
had the capacity, it seemed to me, not only to
live inside his dreams but to keep them stable
and evolving.
Only once, when asked outright, did I acknowledge
my skepticism. The confession was
moot because Keith had inferred as much from
my noncommittal responses to his typically excited
revelations about the latest from the Landanians.
He had no doubt—well, maybe 98
percent of the time he had no doubt—that he
was in the middle of something real in the
most fundamental sense of the word. He also
understood that he had no proof that would
satisfy those who, like me, found the Landanians’
word insufficient. Therefore, he continually
implored the Landanians to provide him
that proof, and in turn they regaled him with a
series of prophecies, often about explosive
world events (bloody uprisings, devastating
earthquakes), none of which came true; then,
as if to add insult to injury, their rationalizations
for the failure of the prophecies to be fulfilled
bordered on, and sometimes surpassed,
the comical. The prophecies and promises continued
in a steady stream until Keith’s premature
death in 1999, and his closest friend told
me that even at the end, Keith’s faith had not
faltered.
Perhaps the most amazing aspect was
Keith’s manifest sanity, which he never lost
through the many ups and downs of his interactions
with the Landanians (not to mention
the literally crippling health problems he suffered
at the same time). He worked—as a
garage mechanic in a Waukegan, Illinois, car
dealership—until he was physically incapable
of doing so any longer. He was a good husband
to his wife, a good father to his two
boys, and a good friend to those who were
lucky enough to claim him as a friend in turn.
His children, in their teens at the initiation of
Keith’s adventures with Landa, and his wife
vividly recalled the original UFO sighting
they too had experienced and Keith’s conviction
that, after they had gone to bed and he
had continued watching the object, something
had happened. Still, they did not believe
much in Landa, and his older son told me
once of his certainty that his father’s communications
were psychological in origin. Yet
they loved him, and only those very close to
him had any idea that at any given moment a
good portion of Keith’s attention was focused
on a world far, far away from the small suburban
town where he spent much of his adult
life.
In 1985, I flew in a private plane with
Keith and two others (both, incidentally, convinced
of the literal truth of Keith’s messages)
to the Rocky Mountain Conference on UFO
Investigation, held every summer on the campus
of the University of Wyoming in Laramie.
The title is something of a misnomer; only a
relative few who attend can be called “investigators.”
The emphasis is on experience not
just with UFOs but with the space people
who fly them. The bulk of the attendees—the