extraordinary%20encounters

142 Keel, John Alva
Twelve years after Three Men’s publication,
Barker expressed the view that the story was
something Bender had conjured up “in a
trance or a dream” (Barker, 1976). Most observers,
however, suspected it to be conscious
fiction. One fantastic theory, proposed in
1980 by British ufologist Brian Burden, held
that an intelligence agency had subjected Bender
to a thought-control experiment and
caused him to hallucinate space people.
See Also: Men in black
Further Reading
Barker, Gray, 1956. They Knew Too Much about Fly -
ing Saucers. New York: University Books.
———, 1976. Interviewed by Jerome Clark.
Barker, Gray, ed., 1962. Bender Mystery Confirmed.
Clarksburg, WV: Saucerian Books.
Beasley, H. P., and A. V. Sampsel, 1963. “The Bender
Mystery—Still a Mystery?” Flying Saucers
(May): 20–27.
Bender, Albert K., 1962. Flying Saucers and the Three
Men. Clarksburg, WV: Saucerian Books.
Burden, Brian, 1980. “MIBs and the Intelligence
Community.” Awareness 9, 1 (Spring): 6–13.
John Alva Keel (August C. Roberts/Fortean Picture Library)
Young, Jerry A., and Gray Barker, 1976. “Letters.”
Gray Barker’s Newsletter 3 (January): 7–12.
Keel, John Alva (1930– )
Born Alva John Kiehl in Hornell, New York,
on March 25, 1930, John Keel would discover
the writings of anomalist Charles Fort
(1874–1932) at an early age. He grew up to
be a Manhattan-based writer who eventually
became internationally known for radical,
neodemonological interpretations of UFO,
anomalous and paranormal phenomena. Keel
would speculate that a wide range of otherworldly
entities, none of which regard the
human race with favor (“ultraterrestrials,” to
use his term), emerge from an alternative reality
he calls the “superspectrum.”
Keel claims to have attended the first flying-saucer
convention ever held, “in the old
Labor Temple on New Yo rk’s 14th St re e t”
( Keel, 1991). After a tour of duty in the mil-