When Prophecy Fails. Leon Festinger
not very successful in convincing them that she was indeed endowed with special powers of reception.
Such messages, referring to proselyting, were infrequent during the spring. However, since attempts to proselyte followers are one of the main objects of concern in our study, we will do well to follow the thread of promptings to this end which are contained in Mrs. Keech’s early messages, as well as to examine what we know of her behavior during this period.
A few days after the Easter message Mrs. Keech received a communication from one of Sananda’s assistants promising to teach Mrs. Keech “Many truths you do not understand.” The message continued:
“What can you do for us? Well, you can go tell the world that we have at last contacted the Earth planet with the waves of ether that have become tactable by the bombs your scientists have been exploding. This works like an accordion. When the condensation leaves the carceious level of the ether or atmosphere levels that support a large light layer of marine life, it causes a barrier to be set up. Now that the bombs have broken that barrier we can break through. That is what your scientists call the sonic barrier. We have been trying to get through for many of your years, with alcetopes and the earling timer.”
In order to help her learn and “tell the world,” Mrs. Keech was advised in another message later the same day:
“This is a new study for you and we will be lenient with you for the experience will be very shocking to you. You will need real level-thinking people around you. Get a couple of learned friends that can stabilize you. Let them know what you are doing. Let them watch with you to see that you are not misunderstood. Share what you have with each other. Share all — and be enlightened — to those who are ready.”
In another message two weeks later, Sananda reassured Mrs. Keech that her prayers for protection and guidance were being heard and answered, then instructed her: “The connoiter’s work is to spread the news, tell the story, and be fearless in the doing. The world mind is still in lethargy. It does not want to awaken.”
To the extent that these messages reflect Mrs. Keech’s own wishes rather than the will of superior beings on other planets, they tell us clearly enough that she was beginning to feel some urge to communicate the special knowledge she felt she possessed. But what did she do about these promptings?
Unfortunately, knowledge of her first efforts at finding fellow believers is scanty and somewhat confused, for both Mrs. Keech and the people who later surrounded her have been hazy about dates and places, and have sometimes contradicted not only each other but themselves. From our limited evidence, we can infer a few things, however. We know that she discussed her experiences with her husband, who was quite unreceptive. A man of infinite patience, gentleness, and tolerance amounting almost to self-abasement, he never believed that his wife could communicate with other worlds, yet he never actively opposed her activities
or sought to dissuade her from her writing. He simply went about his ordinary duties in the distributing company where he was a traffic manager, and did not allow the unusual events in his home to disturb in the slightest his daily routine.
We can be fairly sure that she acted on the counsel of the Guardians to get a couple of friends and tell them what she was doing, for by June a female acquaintance from nearby Highvale was freely devoting time and energy to typing multiple copies of some of the more important messages Mrs. Keech had received. We know that it was through conversation with this woman that at least two of the most faithful of Mrs. Keech’s followers learned about her. This same woman introduced Mrs. Keech to a small, informal circle of housewives who met in various Highvale homes to discuss dianetics, Scientology, metaphysics, and occult topics. At one or more such meetings, Mrs. Keech read extracts from her “lessons” and described how she received these messages. We have good reason to conclude that she was in intermittent contact with a second group of students of dianetics in downtown Lake City.
Perhaps most important was the occasion when she discussed her writings with the lecturer and expert on the subject of flying saucers mentioned earlier. At one of his talks in Lake City, Mrs. Keech described her experiences and showed him some of the messages. He appears to have been impressed by her, for, some time later, while he was on a lecture tour that brought him to the Steel City Flying Saucer Club, he seems to have given Mrs. Keech a favorable notice. In particular, he talked about her work to Dr. Thomas Armstrong, a frequent attender at meetings of this club. Dr. Armstrong was a physician who lived in Collegeville, a small community about one hundred miles from Steel City. Since he and his wife, Daisy, were to play highly prominent parts in the subsequent development of the group that gathered around Mrs. Keech, we shall say more about them and explain as best we can the route by which they became involved.
Thomas and Daisy Armstrong, Kansas born and raised, had served as medical missionaries in Egypt for one of the liberal Protestant churches. For about five years they spread gospel and health, returning on furlough to the United States just at the outbreak of World War II. The war prevented their return to the mission field until 1946, when they again set out, with high hopes and ideals, and with three children. This time, however, they had an unpleasant sojourn —at least Daisy Armstrong did, for she suffered a “nervous collapse” as she once described it. Bedeviled by nightmares that featured violence and bloody death, she could not rid herself of the obsession that her loved ones were in imminent danger of injury from sharp objects, especially knives, axes, swords, and the like. She had persistent dreams and fantasies of cuttings, stabbings, and beheadings. Even the simple tools on her husband’s workbench had to be put out of sight, since they terrified her.
Mrs. Armstrong’s anxieties did not yield to any of the attempts she and her husband made to overcome them. Although she recognized her feelings as unreasonable, she could not will them away. Nor did her husband’s reassurances, changes in the household regimen, and a short vacation do any good. Even prayer did not help. The Armstrongs were especially distressed by this last disappointment. As Mrs. Armstrong once put it, they could not understand why they had been singled out for persecution by such malignant emotion; after all, they had always led a good life, had tried to do the right thing, and were certainly engaged in good works. Why they then? “We finally decided there must be a reason,” she added, “and we started searching.” This may be why the Armstrongs turned to the study of mysticism and the occult, in which they read widely and eclectically. They studied some of the sacred writings of Hinduism, the Apocrypha, Oahspe, and books and pamphlets on theosophy, Rosicrucianism, New Thought, the I AM movement, and the mystical (though not, apparently, the political) writings of William Dudley Pelley. The ideas they encountered in this literature, and discussed at length, seem to have opened their minds to possibilities that many people regard with incredulity. They believed in the existence of a spirit world, whose masters could communicate with and instruct people of the earth; were convinced that extrasensory communication and spiritual migration (without bodily change or motion) had occurred; and subscribed to many of the more common occult beliefs, including reincarnation.
In 1949 they returned to the United States and Dr. Armstrong took a post as a member of the Student Health Service staff at Eastern Teachers College. His work there was evidently of a routine nature and left his mind and time free to continue exploration of esoteric literature. The Armstrongs continued to participate in orthodox Christian religious activities. They attended a nondenominational Protestant church, where Dr. Armstrong organized “The Seekers,” a group for young people, principally college students, which met once a week to discuss ethical, religious, metaphysical, and personal problems, always seeking truth. A tall man in his early forties, Dr. Armstrong had an air of ease and self-assurance that seemed to inspire confidence in his listeners.
Any topic was grist for the Seekers’ mill, so it may have been no surprise to most of the members when Dr. Armstrong began to show considerable interest in flying saucers. Just why his attention was drawn to this phenomenon is not clear. But one winter he found reason to visit southern California. While there he sought out George Adamski who, in collaboration with another, had recently published The Flying Saucers Have Landed. This book related Adamski’s meeting with a being who is alleged to have landed in a flying saucer near Desert Center, California. Adamski says that he talked with the man and his book contains a drawing of the footprints that the visitor left behind when he climbed