Flying saucers are not only defying the laws of gravity and inertia, they are also defying the laws of probability in their uncanny selection of witnesses. If UFOs are genuine ultraterrestrial (interdimensional) or extraterrestrial phenomena, then all this is an indication that they know far more about us as individuals than we can suspect or rationalize. The big question confronting the psychiatrists and psychologists now immersed in UFO studies is: Do the UFOs select their witnesses, or do specific people tend to create UFO experiences from within themselves by some unknown mental process? Why do the Allens, Hills, Reeves, and Heflins see more of these things than the Smiths, Johnsons, and Browns? Ralph Blum, the New York writer who authored Beyond Earth: Man’s Contact With UFOs, told me that he, too, is concerned with the strange coincidences involving names. Many of the place names and surnames in UFO reports, he points out, refer to water in various ways. The name Reeves is similar to a French word meaning “river bank.” In English, “reeve” is a nautical term meaning “to pass a rope through a hole.” The seeming importance of this obscure nautical symbolism can be seen in the following story from the pages of the Houston Daily Post (April 28, 1897): Merkel, Texas, April 26 - Some parties returning from church last night noticed a heavy object dragging along with a rope attached. They followed it until it caught on a rail crossing the railroad. On looking up, they saw what they supposed was the airship. It was not near enough to get an idea of the dimensions. A light could be seen protruding from several windows; one bright light was in front, like the headlight of a locomotive. After some ten minutes, a man was seen descending the rope. He came near enough to be plainly seen. He wore a light-blue sailor suit, small in size. He stopped when he discovered parties at the anchor. He cut the rope below him and sailed off in a northeast direction. The anchor is now on exhibition at the blacksmith shop of Elliot and Miller, and is attracting the attention of hundreds of people. A small man in a blue sailor suit climbing down a rope from the sky... Rather silly, isn’t it? Sillier still, researchers have discovered two identical stories in very obscure historical texts. An ancient Irish manuscript, the Speculum Regali, gives us this account from A.D. 956: A marvel happened in the borough of Cloera, one Sunday while people were at mass. In this town, there is a church to the memory of St. Kinarus. It befell that a metal anchor was dropped from the sky, with a rope attached to it, and one of the sharp flukes caught in the wooden arch above the church door. The people rushed out of the church and saw, in the sky, a ship with men on board, floating at the end of the anchor cable. They saw a man leap overboard and pull himself down the cable to the anchor, as if to unhook it. He appeared as if he were swimming in water. The folk rushed up and tried to seize him, but the bishop forbade the people to hold the man, for fear it might kill him. The man was freed and hurried up the cable to the ship, where the crew cut the rope and the ship rose and sailed away out of sight. The anchor is in the church as a testimony to this singular occurrence. For many years, a church in Bristol, England, is said to have had a very unique grille on its doors: a grille made from another anchor that allegedly came from the sky. Around A.D. 1200, during the observance of a feast day, the anchor came plummeting out of the sky trailing a rope. It got caught in a mound of stones, according to the story. As a mob of churchgoers gathered around to watch, a “sailor” came down the rope, hand over hand, to free it. This crowd succeeded in grabbing him. They pushed him back and forth until, according to the Gervase of Tilbury’s account in the rare manuscript Otia Imperialia, “He suffocated by the mist of our moist atmosphere, and expired.” His unseen comrades overhead wisely cut the rope and took off. The anchor remained behind, as in the other stories, and was installed on the church doors… Reviewing the similarities of these reports, one is almost tempted to speculate that someone merely updated the ancient accounts. Yet, as researcher Lucius Farish recently remarked, “a citizen of Merkel, Texas, possessing a copy of a rare manuscript like the Speculum Regali in 1897 would be fully as fantastic as the reports themselves.” A farmer fifteen miles north of Sioux City, Iowa, Robert Hibbard, claimed a distressing experience with an anchor-dragging UFO early in April of 1897. A dispatch that appeared in the April 5th edition of Michigan’s Saginaw Evening News stated that “Hibbard’s reputation for truth has never been bad, and the general opinion is that either he ‘had them’ or dreamed his remarkable experience.” The article continues: On the night in question, he says he was tramping about his farm in the moonlight when suddenly, a dark body, lighted on each side, with a row of what looked like incandescent lamps, loomed up some distance to the south of him, at a height of perhaps a mile from the ground. He watched it intently until it was directly over his head. At this point, the craft evidently decided to turn around. In accomplishing this maneuver, the machine sank considerably. Hibbard did not notice a drag rope with a grapnel attached, which dangled from the rear of the boat-like object. Suddenly, as the machine rose again from the ground, it hooked itself firmly in his trousers and shot away again to the south. Had it risen to any considerable height, the result, Hibbard thinks, would have been disastrous. Either his weight was sufficient to keep it near terra firma, or the operator did not care to ascend to a higher level. On the bank of the dry run, where the farmer finally made his escape, grows a small sapling. Hibbard passed near this obstruction in his flight and, as a last resort, grabbed it with both hands. Instantly there was a sound of tearing cloth, and the machine went on with a section of Hibbard’s unmentionables. Hibbard himself fell precipitately into the run. He related his experience to neighbors and, despite their grins of incredulity, firmly maintains the truth of the story. We have only two choices: We can either dismiss all four of these stories as being somehow derivative of one another and pure poppycock; or, we can assume that mysterious airships, all dragging anchors, appeared in 956, 1200, and 1897. There are, in fact, a number of other reports in which UFOs were said to be dragging something along the ground. That still doesn’t prove that anchors are standard equipment on some of the objects If they were using anchors, what could the purpose have been? Could some of the early UFOs have been so primitive that the only way they could hover was by being anchored to the ground? Would spaceships from another world require anchors? Would they need to chase after people whose names seem to refer to anchors (like “Reeves”)?
Keel, John A. (2013-09-11). Flying Saucer to the Center of Your Mind: Selected Writings of John A. Keel (Kindle Locations 2513-2540). Metadisc Books. Kindle Edition.
