audio conversation with Andy Colvin (with a focus on John Keel)

The late John Keel speaking in 1992

This interview was recorded over a year ago. I am embarrassed to say that it just sat on my computer until today. Right after we recorded it, some life stuff came up, and I lost track of it.

This conversation was to promote the book Flying Saucer to the Center of Your Mind, a collection of magazine articles and lectures by, John Keel, the man many consider to be not only the 20th Century’s premiere Fortean investigator.

  one-click audio download HERE  

Keel shreds most of the sacred-cow beliefs still held by many in ufological and “cryptozoological” circles today, and presents theories so radical that they are only now becoming accepted, including the interdimensional thesis, the breakaway civilization, the possible role of ancient aliens in human history, the hallucinatory nature of many alien encounters and the role of spy agencies in paranormal research.



Listen to Andy's previous interview from 2010, HERE.

Here is a good article from Andy's LowFi, The Genesis of the 11:11 Meme.

Some music from Andy's band, The Interdimensional Vortex League

And, a vivid dream I had featuring John Keel, HERE.

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chalk art on a quiet street in Brooklyn

simple street art

I borrowed some chalk from Charlotte, the 11 year old daughter of my friends in Brooklyn. I then went down to the street to do something I hadn't done since 1982. I traced the shadow of a fire hydrant with a white outline on the cement of the sidewalk.

I did this same thing on the street right outside my dorm when I was a freshman at NYU, I traced the shadows cast by the streetlights with white chalk. At that time I worked hard and did most of the shadows along the entire north side of the block.  Curiously, Anne, the mother of Charlotte, also lived in that same dormitory on East 10th Street.

To get a really good effect you need a bright light without any other lights interfering. This fire hydrant was perfect, and I spent less than a minute bent over on the sidewalk.

I was a little embarrassed to be doing this, and I was glad there weren't may people around. I saw what I assumed to be a mother and daughter walking towards me just as I was finishing the outline. At that point I crossed the street and started outlining the shadow of a lamp post.

When I looked back, the mother and daughter were standing next to the door of a brownstone, this was close to the hydrant I had used for this little sidewalk adornment. They were both watching me. The street was dark, and they were poorly lit, and it felt a bit eerie. Not knowing what to do, I timidly waved hello. They both waved back with a kind of sweet happy energy.

Later that night, probably close to midnight, I walked back to my friends apartment. I stood on the stoop and before opening the door I looked across the street to the hydrant I had outlined a few hours earlier. There was a young Asian woman standing there staring at the shadow and chalk outline. A moment later she reached into her pocket, pulled out her phone and took a picture.

Comment from Oct 9th 2014

Wonderful! You do realize that this is the perfect visual metaphor for your blog and your research, right? Tracing the outlines of the shadow. In fact in your interview with Mary Rodwell you actually said, "There is a hidden experience that I feel I can only feel the shadowy outlines of..." at 1:13:54. I thought, "aha!" when you said that, thinking about this image.

Anthony

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Dr. Karla Turner and her husband from 1993

The late Dr. Karla Turner

Dr. Karla Turner and her husband Casey Turner talk about their abduction experiences and human surveillance. This presentation is from 1993. Her work is extremely important to know about and is rarely discussed by mainstream ufologists. She thanks Bob at the beginning of her talk, and that would be Bob Brown who hosted the earlier incarnation of the IUFOC. The podium has "Showboat" logo on it, meaning the conference was in Las Vegas. The youtube video is linked HERE.

  one-click audio download HERE  

I have been working to transfer the many youtube presentations by Dr. Karla Turner over to an MP3 audio format. This is a preferable way to listen to her strong voice. The audio quality is somewhat poor, but the content is riveting. Her husband Elton Casey takes the podium at about the 35:00 time count.

For more audio of Dr. Karla Turner, click HERE for a collection of her talks and radio appearances.

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Lorin Cutts on owls and high strangeness

Yesterday, I sent an email to my friend and comrade Lorin Cutts. He responded by saying, “What a lovely sync. Was just finalizing an article about owls and UFOs to be posted this evening.” Both Lorin and I seem to be on similar paths. Both of us are doing on-line radio shows about the stranger aspects of the UFO phenomenon (his show is called High Strangeness), both of us are dealing with powerful synchronicities, both of us are writing about it—and both of us have had odd owl sightings. He even mentions me in the first sentence of his article!

Here is Lorin’s article, and he is describing the very same weirdness that I’ve been struggling to articulate. This essay is also posted HERE. 

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Lorin Cutts
Owls, UFO Abductees, Synchronicities and High Strangeness

Written by Lorin Cutts, 02.25.14 / 04.14.14

It was great to see the video of Mike Clelland’s first talk at the National UFO Congress this year. Not only did Mike make it look like he’d been doing public speaking for years, he also managed to pull off some difficult material (owls, synchronicity and the UFO subject) and, considering the task at hand, made it relatively accessible. I was also delighted to see that someone I had put his way had formed one of the main stories he included as other peoples esoteric owl experiences – and in doing so alluded to something that really resonated with me.

As some of us research strange phenomena, the phenomena we study also sometimes begin to unfold, interact and reveal themselves further in our personal experiences – sometimes as we think and write.

This got me thinking of a few experiences of my own.

Midway through his lecture, Mike had the idea to bring a 4 foot tall, cardboard owl on stage so that the people in the audience could compare this to the size of a more conventional specimen. This bought a brief chill down my spine as I recalled the one occasion when I had the (mis)fortune to experience this giant, improbable, winged beast for myself. And well within keeping to the bizarre nature of such events, it would also turn out that only a few hours after viewing Mike’s lecture online, a synchronicity presented itself that would relate to the fateful day of the owlzilla.

Sometime in mid summer 2012, I was making the journey in the cab of a locomotive in Washington State – as I often did in my role as conductor on the railroad – with a locomotive engineer by the name of Don White. Don is ex-military and the most down to earth, no-nonsense, matter-of-fact guy one could possibly meet.

Sometime around three or four in the afternoon, we rounded a bend in the bright sunlight and there on the adjacent track and staring directly at us stood a giant owl. “What the hell is that?” I asked – already half knowing what it was. “It looks like an owl”, Don said. We passed this thing perched on the rail of the next track, only eight feet from the roar of our locomotives, yet the thing didn’t so much as flinch, fly off or act with any fear towards our train. The one thing that we couldn’t get past was the sheer size of this thing. I recall Don also came out with the classic line: “Is that something to do with your UFO shit?"

 this is a long article, read more below 

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owls and UFO experiencers along a lake in Maine

That small black shape in the tallest tree is an owl

Last weekend I attended a UFO conference in Portland, Maine. Instead of the usual talk of UFOs in the sky and conspiracy theories, the event focused more towards UFO experiencers, the folks who've had the direct contact experience. I was one of the presenters and I gave a one hour long talk on owls, synchronicity and the UFO abductee. This must have resonated with a lot of the attendees because plenty of 'em took me aside and earnestly shared their personal owl experiences. 

After the conference a crew of the speakers and attendees traveled up to a cabin near a lake about an hour's drive north of Portland. The host, Audrey Starborn (a pseudonym), called this a soul family gathering because pretty much everyone in attendance was an experiencer.

A curious thing happened within the first few minutes of my arrival. I was on the grass near an elevated deck off the back of the cabin where a bunch of the guests were standing together. As I stood below them I heard everybody suddenly cry out in a collective exclamation, as if they all said "Wow!" at the exact same time. 

Seconds later, Audrey leaned over the edge of the deck holding a small downy feather. She looked down at me and said, "An owl feather just floated down and landed right between all of us!"

Even though this occurred in full daylight (an odd time for an owl to be in flight) no one saw a bird above them. They described watching the little feather slowly drifting down from high above them coming in from a spot well off to the side of the deck from the direction of the lake, and landing at the feet of a fellow who attended the conference. This was a guy who, the day previously, had sat me down at the conference and rattled off a long list of personal owl experiences, each preceding a set of UFO contact events.

Everyone was buzzing with excitement about this feather landing right at the moment of my arrival, as though the owl spirit announced the entrance of the owl guy. 

 this is a long essay, read more below 
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crop circle with an owl

recent crop circle where an owl makes an appearance

Robbert van den Broeke is a young Dutch man who has had a set of very strange life experiences as well as ongoing psychic phenomenon. His case has been documented by multiple researchers but the utter strangeness of what is taking place around him has left him open to criticism by skeptics.

The following text is from an email posted by Nancy Talbot on Sept. 11th 2014:

Knowing when the new circles are coming is not always as much fun as people might think. Robbert sometimes suffers depression for several days prior to the arrival of new formations and this was the case this time. By happenstance Roy Boschman was with him late on the night of September 10th when Robbert suddenly “knew” they should drive to the Palingstraat in Hoeven (where the September 3rd maize “horseshoe” formation had appeared), this time seeing (in a “vision”) a “field of flowers.” He also felt an energy he describes as “playful and sweet”—a combination of “Angel, ET and animal (in particular a bird) energies”—close around him.

Dutch parapsychologist Richard Krebber, who has recently been working with Robbert, had asked that he be called if or when another formation appeared, and so was with Robbert and Roy as they found the new circle. Krebber had purposefully brought along his fully-charged I-phone and witnessed, first-hand, the regularly-reported cell phone (and other electronic devices) failure in new crop formations. 

There was a nearly-full moon and while the men were inside the mustard-seed field (no tram-lines) Robbert suddenly saw a dark shadow and felt “something mystical” was watching them...  

and then they all saw a large owl which swooped down very low over the formation, circling it three times—counter-clockwise—in the same direction as the flattened plants.  

Robbert had the distinct feeling that this owl’s consciousness included, or also contained, a bigger consciousness which was observing the men and was also “energizing” the new formation.  [it is a fact that Robbert, himself, can cause birds to go to sleep simply by focusing on them, so this idea that the owl may have represented a consciousness capable of affecting its surroundings doesn’t seem so outrageous to him.]

While inside the formation Robbert felt a “rotational” energy and all three men felt a distinct warmth in their legs. Mr. Krebber reported also feeling a tingling in his arms and, especially, his hand—adding that for about 10 seconds he felt an unusual, but pleasant, sensation of “something stretching my body up.”  

(text above edited for brevity and clarity) 

For additional information and photos of this formation, see Robbert’s Crop Circle Archive.  

The Death of Socrates

"All we are is dust in the wind..."

I've been in New York City for over a week, and yesterday I spent a few hours in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I've spent a lot of time there over the decades, and the place feels like being home.

I asked at the front desk where I could find the paintings of Jacques Louis David, I wanted to see the works of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres even more, but his name is so much harder to pronounce, so I said just David. I knew these works would be near each other.

I get instructions from a nice lady with a French accent, and I walk through the maze of galleries on a quest to the one I asked about. 

I see some beautiful stuff along the way, and then I enter a room and see the huge canvas of The Death of Socrates. I walk up to it, and what do I see but an owl!

There is a man on a stone seat with his hand on Socrates thigh. That seat has a owl chiseled into the seat, along side some greek text. (see detail at left) As far as I can tell, the text says something about Athens. This is referred to as an incised owl of Athens. Below this David's signature.

This painting is all about wisdom, as well as death. So the owl (the symbol for Athens) is doubly appropriate.

Plato is also in the painting, hunched over in a mournful pose at his philosopher pal's feet. He is credited with the ideas of the archetype, and this plays out deeply in my ongoing research about owls.

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