I recently received an article written by Ariel Crawford, who is a free lance journalist and AmeriCorps VISTA with a long-time interest in the paranormal. She writes about our friend and colleague Dr. Raymond A. Keller, who has been a guest on Arcane Radio.
By Ariel Crawford - Recently I shared a ride with Dr. Raymond A. Keller, more commonly known as the “Cosmic Ray” in the extraterrestrial community, to attend an AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteer in Service to America) conference in the Parkersburg area, sponsored by Volunteer West Virginia. Unbeknownst to me, an avid paranormal connoisseur, I am in the presence of Dr. Keller; the author of numerous articles and books about flying saucers and life on Venus. His latest book, “Venus Rising: A Concise History of the Second Planet,” was published this year by Headline Books in Terra Alta, West Virginia. It has already won two prestigious awards in the “wild card” category- at the Southern California Festival of Books in Hollywood and the London Book Festival in the United Kingdom.
On the one and a half hour ride from Morgantown, West Virginia, I discovered that he is a retired professor of literature and history. The Cosmic Ray, who speaks Spanish fluently and is conversant in several other languages, earned both of his advanced degrees from West Virginia University at Morgantown, his M.A. in Latin American Literature with an emphasis on “magic realism” (2004) and his Ph.D. in African History with a dissertation focused on the diaspora of certain Imbangala warriors of Angola, in Africa, to western Venezuela. They were brought there in 1722 by the Basque pirate Captain Juan de Chourio to help protect Spanish settlements from invasion by roving bands of the Motilones Indians (2011).
However, his lifelong passion has been UFO research. During his youth, he experienced a close encounter with a flying saucer in an Ohio state park. The Cosmic Ray has been writing about flying saucers ever since he was a teenager and a reporter for the Bedford Times-Register, in the suburbs of Cleveland.
The professor has since lived and worked in 44 different countries. These were mostly associated with military duties while serving honorably in both the Navy as a yeoman and in the Army as a voice intercept operator in the Spanish language. In 2013, however, he returned from China where he taught at an international high school in Wuxi, a city some 40 kilometers to the west of Shanghai. He had some interesting encounters with UFOs there that he writes about in the Venus book.
But when he is not writing or talking about the Venusians living among us or the flying saucers they pilot, the craft that we erroneously refer to as “UFOs,” Keller is serving people with disabilities, seniors and veterans in Monongalia County as an AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteer in Service to America) with In Touch and Concerned. There he helps individuals in these groups to find free or affordable transportation to dental and medical appointments, or get a ride on Saturdays to a local Wal-Mart.
During the ride to Parkersburg the Cosmic Ray played Katy Perry. He noted that ever since Katy’s 2010 hit, “Extraterrestrial,” he counts himself as one of her biggest fans. He praised Katy’s and Snoop Dogg’s “California” cut in his book “Venus Rising,” and includes a commentary on her “Dark Horse” cut and video in his forthcoming Venus sequel.
“You know that Katy has come out strongly for Hillary,” said Dr. Keller, adding that, “This is important, because Hillary Clinton has advocated complete UFO disclosure on the part of the government.” The Cosmic Ray also noted that when he published a flying saucer magazine in Hilmar, California, the New Millennial Star, with a 7,500 monthly pre-Internet circulation, subscribers received a free t-shirt that proclaimed, “Flying Saucers Are Real! The Government is an Illusion!”
We laughed and then I asked the Cosmic Ray some questions about this election year.
“So the Venusians are for Hillary?”
“They are not allowed to directly interfere in human history. Let’s just say they prefer to build bridges instead of walls.”
“What about current events, like restrooms in North Carolina?”
“Well, the inhabitants of Venus, that live in Dimension X, have bodies of light that are non-specific as far as gender is concerned. It only becomes an issue for them if they have to assume human form to interact with us. Then whatever spacesuit, or body they chose to wear in our atmosphere, becomes a matter they have to concern themselves with.”
During the first day of the Volunteer West Virginia conference, the AmeriCorps VISTA’s took a tour of the Boys’ and Girls’ Club of Parkersburg. Here the Cosmic Ray started to talk to some children outside the Teen Center, an area of the facility that included a library.
Dr. Keller had the receptionist come over and unlock the Teen Center, entered it with the children and picked two books off the shelf, “A Wrinkle in Time” and “Slaughterhouse Five.” “These are great books,” he told the youngsters. “They explain everything you want to know about time and space. You’ll learn more about life on other planets in the pages of these books than by anything NASA will tell you, or most likely ever will tell you.”
“Like what?” asked a little girl.
The Cosmic Ray picked up a piece of paper off a desk and marked a small dot at the bottom of the page and another small dot at the top of the page.
“What are you doing?” the girl quizzically asked.
“You’ll see,” said the Venus author. “I’m going to show you how the writer of this book explains that the shortest route between two points isn’t always a straight line. He then folded the paper in half, matching the bottom and top dots and then pushed a pencil between them.
“That’s very nice,” said the girl.
“This is how we look at time on Venus. It doesn’t go in a straight line, like here on Earth.”
“I had to write a report about the planets,” said the girl, adding that, “Venus was my favorite one!”
“It’s my favorite one, too,” said the Cosmic Ray. “It kind of reminds me of California.”
With that, the other girl wondered out loud, “What about the other book?”
“Sure,” said Cosmic Ray. “This one is about a veteran, like me, that slips in and out of time. His friends are extraterrestrials. They come from a moon of distant world on the fringes of our solar system. It’s in Dimension X and called Tralfamadore.”
“I never heard of such a place,” replied the other girl.
“Well believe me, it’s there. And there are plenty of other inhabited worlds, too. Kurt Vonnegut wrote the book. He was really writing the truth about life in outer space but he didn’t want to alarm anybody. So he called it fiction, or make-believe. The space people are really our friends. I think you would like them, once you got to know them.”
“Cool,” said the other girl.
“It’s all about magic,” said Cosmic Ray, “M.A.G.I.C.”
“What does that spell?” asked the other girl.
“What that stands for is Making A Great Impact Collectively. In other words, anything that you or your friends want to do, you can do if you put your minds together and ask yourselves at the end of every day what you have done to make it happen. That’s how we make magic on Venus. Nothing is impossible because we work together, just like the honeybees in a hive. This is how we do it! ”
“I think I get it. That’s nice to know. Can you do another trick, like you did for her?”
“OK, but stand back a little bit….”
Dr. Keller held up the books and then poof! We heard some kind of buzzing noise and there were blue spots in front of our eyes, as if looking directly at a flash bulb. The buzzing was just coming from a bee that had flown in and out of the room. The Cosmic Ray was out of sight, but not out of our minds.
When I got back to the lodge with the other VISTAs the Cosmic Ray was already there.
On the second day of the conference in the park, Dr. Keller explained a little bit about his Venus book and showed a power point presentation he had previously prepared for the Theosophical Society in Akron, Ohio, about the “Wisdom of the Ages,” important messages from Venusians brought to our planet through “avatars,” or illuminated teachers going back thousands of years. He pointed out that being volunteers in service to humanity was the most important thing we could be doing right now because the best way to affect change is through one person at a time. He taught us that a small act of kindness was more valuable than thousands of prayers. Dr. Keller recalled an old Sunday school poem that went like this: “I’d rather see a sermon than hear one any day. I’d rather one would walk with me than merely point the way.” He laughed and added that, “It was probably a Venusian who came up with that sage adage.”
He shared a full-page article that appeared in the National Enquirer fifty years ago detailing the close encounter with a flying saucer that he and a friend shared on the campout in an Ohio state park. He also colored in with crayons a drawing of a mystical horse and explained how it related to the Katy Perry “Dark Horse” song and video. “We shouldn’t be afraid of the dark,” said the Cosmic Ray, “because after all, without the blackness of the night, how could we ever see the beauty of the stars, or the planet Venus?” He also explained that synchronicities would mount up right before experiencing a supernatural event. He liked to call these extrasensory episodes “Dark Horse Phenomena” in honor of Katy Perry. Like Richard Dreyfus’ character with the pile of mashed potatoes in Steven Spielberg’s “E.T.” movie, the Cosmic Ray twice whispered, “This is important.”
During our ride back to Morgantown, the Cosmic Ray talked about theology. He said that he had received so many questions about angels, God and religion following the publication of the Venus book that he was starting classes at the Community of Christ Seminary at Graceland University in Independence, Missouri, in the Fall Semester. We discussed angels and aliens; and the professor said that he, like the Rev. Billy Graham, thought they were one and the same. When we finally got back to Morgantown and I got out of the Cosmic Ray’s car, he told me to look up Hebrews 13:2. When I got home, I did just that and discovered that it was all about being kind because one never knows when they are “entertaining angels unawares.”
As a student of the supernatural, I thought that Raymond, besides being a senior citizen, must be a very old soul. He told me back in Parkersburg that he was born in the Chinese Year of the Horse. I just wondered in what century. As he drove off, I noticed that he had two bumper stickers on his car, an old but completely paid-for Chevrolet: “I brake for aliens” and “A51.”
AmeriCorps Vista serving Volunteer West Virginia's Veteran Community Outreach Team at Operation Welcome Home in Morgantown, West Virginia. Ariel Crawford has a Masters in Communication from Auburn University.
Venus Rising: A Concise History of the Second Planet
Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community
The Synchronicity Key: The Hidden Intelligence Guiding the Universe and You
Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal
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