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Morris K. Jessup was born March 2, 1900, in Indiana. His age went with the years, but he always didn’t go with the times. Trained in astronomy in Michigan, he specialized in selenography, or the study of the moon, but he often inquired within the fringe of scientific pursuit. He wasn’t unique. Spiritualism was the rage after World War I. Anywhere USA was Jessup’s upbringing, and spiritualism was rampant over the Bible Belt.
The era was one of combinations. The calamities recorded in the Bible and in other ancient texts seemed real enough, and Darwin’s ideas seemed to have foundations. Put together, mankind was very ancient and great catastrophes had struck the Earth in relatively recent times. Like many others he found it hard to believe that civilized man went back only 5,000 years ago to the age of the Sumerians. Cataclysms could explain it.
Spiritualists like Edgar Cayce were giving trance readings about prehistoric Atlantis and its destruction by abusing forces it had developed, one among them the control of gravity. Call the civilization what name you will, but the whole idea of a prehistoric super-civilization resonated with many. After all, even Duke University’s pursuit of the truth of ESP and psychic powers received wide and often favorable news coverage.
With their arrival, UFOs were cannibalized quickly by the séance crowd. They cast off their contact with passed-over Egyptian priestesses and took up contacting beautiful blonde Venusians or twisted, hideous little Martians. That was the general consensus of the spectrum of alien appearances from those who claimed encounters anyway. Those with scientific training who had been within the fringes of the occult pondered. Could UFOs and visitors from other planets explain Biblical motifs of angels and demons?
M.K. Jessup wasn’t really one of them. He had a different background than most ardently interested in the topic. He had been a youthful explorer of South America in the 1920s, a dull teacher in Iowa in the 1930s, a mediocre entrepreneur in the 1940s, to UFOlogist in the 1950s living around Washington DC. He was spending more and more time collating all he had experienced in his journeys and learned in his former profession to form his own UFO theory.
Jessup loved to travel and he had an insatiable curiosity. After his trek into the Mayan past in Guatemala in 1922, he jumped at the chance to be a part of a 1923 expedition to Brazil. It made sense that he an astronomy graduate should be the photographer. Under the auspices of Henry Ford, U of Michigan Ann Arbor scouted the headwaters of the Amazon looking for a source of rubber. After he returned, he continued an education in astronomy.
Digital Collections holds this picture taken in Para, Brazil, in 1923. A student at U of Michigan Ann Arbor Morris Jessup, left, is next to U of Michigan’s botanist Carl Larue and plant pathologist James Weir. The reader can buy their own copy here.
Over the late ’20s to late ’30s he was an astronomy and math teacher, working with the Detroit Observatory and at Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa. He had only one adventurous respite from this— a trip to Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1930 with his wife Kathryn to operate the southern hemisphere’s largest refracting telescope under the auspices of Detroit Observatory. He also wanted to strike it rich. By 1940, he had cast off the dull, low pay of academia. He reacquainted himself with old rubber contacts to become a tire manufacturer. By 1948, his beloved Brazil had become the center of his export service business. He classified himself an an export executive.
Free of the academic world but with a distant background in science, he had the time to study UFOs and the respectability to insulate him. He was not a true believer in the occult like some of his erudite and affluent friends with scientific training and occult indulgences. Flying saucers, tangible interplanetary craft, could explain much more than the old spiritualists offering transcendental doors to and from other worlds. Contact with ancient aliens, though a term not yet used, could explain the recent advent of civilization rather than divine communion with gods, God, or the universal mind.
The reader need only read Acid Dreams to understand the types of esoteric philosophy current in the 1930s to 1950s and how they were given “theoretic basis” by the use of drugs. One was Henri Bergson’s theory of the brain. In a similar fashion to Lamarck, he believed that use and disuse had altered the human brain. It had once been capable of connecting with a universal collective consciousness. However, the cares of daily life and the sustaining of existence caused it to evolve in a way that shut off its cognitive connection with a higher collective intelligence. Captain Al Hubbard (not L. Ron Hubbard), a former OSS (Office of Strategic Services) officer, had Beatic experiences while dropping acid and even saw his own conception in the womb. He became a promoter of LSD, and essentially many adhered to the theory that the drug allowed the brain to reconnect with the collective universal mind it had once been a natural portal to. In this realm, time and space could be traversed and all knowledge and experience gleaned.
Well, no need to go into the long and complicated history of the philosophy that empowered drug use in the 1960s, but the reader has a taste of what the erudite played with in earlier times. According to this philosophy, time and chance had bred out the ability in the human brain to connect with a higher plane. For some it was latent and could be re-empowered with LSD. A few still naturally retained it. These were the Mediums, the true spiritualists, the “Sensitives.”
Based in Washington DC, Jessup mixed with an influential, globetrotting crowd. J. Manson Valentine was to some extent within the category of “Scientist/psychic sensitive,” and was a believer in Edgar Cayce’s prophecy’s about Atlantis. Long John Nebel, a popular New York City radio host, more than dabbled in esoterica, and famous zoologist and TV guest Ivan Sanderson always kept a cynical but hopeful eye on the whole business. All were friends of M.K. Jessup. Jessup classified himself as in a state of “Critical Receptivity.” Something tangible like UFOs made much more sense. He indulged in the sources of the occult, which found popular venting in the relatively new tabloid Fate Magazine, and set about to make  his case for the longtime existence of flying saucers from other planets, even more cautiously, from other dimensions.
A commonly circulated photo of M.K. Jessup in middle age, portly, cordial. Despite what is claimed, Jessup had no middle name. He only had an initial. He was 5’10” and over 200 pounds now, brown hair, blue eyes, ruddy (reddish) complexion. (The description comes from his WWII draft card, on which he also qualified he only had an initial for a middle name.)
I think it is safe to say Jessup also thought it would make him rich. Keyhoe’s books were selling gobs. Adamski’s were bestsellers, and Adamski was a charlatan. Nobody was proving anything. All the claims, sightings, case recitals were anecdotal. Jessup was going to provide by indisputable cases proof of UFO reality.
The public wasn’t ready for Jessup’s The Case for the UFO in 1955. He was too much theory. He was too much past rather than the sensational present of current sightings and their climactic potential in the near future. This made him unpopular with saucer buffs as well.
However, it is not surprising that he set off the occult world, nor is it surprising that his friend Manson Valentine would consider his approach bold and pioneering. Since 1945 Valentine had speculated UFOs were causing planes and ships to disappear. He even speculated they had caused Flight 19 to vanish. Rumblings of such theories reached even arch conservative Major Keyhoe, who in his 1955 book The Flying Saucer Conspiracy mentions the theory that flying saucers space-napped those Avengers in 1945.
Like any scientist, Jessup considered witness reports of sightings anecdotal. Therefore they had their limit. But tried and true unexplained events in history created a wealth of hard data. In his zeal to prove UFOs through this wealth of oddities, it is not surprising his next book was UFOs and the Bible. His last was The Expanding Case for the UFO.
By 1974, any popular notoriety M.K. Jessup had achieved with his books in the 1950s had long faded and his books collected dust in old book stores. When in 1974 Valentine inadvertently made the “Philadelphia Experiment” popular via his interview with Charles Berlitz contained in Berlitz’s stunning bestseller The Bermuda Triangle, Manson Valentine padded Jessup’s reputation a bit. He had declared him to have been a “famous and respected scientist.” He was actually a fairly obscure astronomer with a career that had lasted a decade or so. His The Case for the UFO had only sold modestly. Regardless of the book’s claim that “an astronomer takes a look at UFOs” most of the material in the book had little to do with Jessup’s formal training in astronomy, and little of it had any basis in scientific examination whatsoever. More than anything, it  revealed a naive reliance on Fate Magazine, which indiscriminately mixed classic occult motifs with the new UFO phenomenon.
The hard bound, published March 1955 by Citadel Press. The dust jacket read in part: “Mr. Jessup carried out independent investigations of the Inca ruins of Peru, the stonework of which he believes to have been erected by the levitating power of spaceships in antediluvian times.”
This is a very Caycean point of view. His life readings in the 1920s-1930s had declared Peru to have been be a colony of Atlantis since 28,000 B.C. And I think Jessup had considered this since the 1930s, long before he met J. Manson Valentine. Having traced some of his travels, I can be fairly certain in the above deduction. It was in 1930 that he traveled back to America from having been in South Africa. He had been part of a team from the Detroit Observatory operating the largest refracting telescope in the southern hemisphere. He and his wife Kathryn stopped off in Peru, at which point he must have potted about old Inca ruins. They then boarded the Ginyo Maru at Callao and returned to Los Angeles in December.
A theorist like Jessup was bound to attract the fringe. Keyhoe with his hardline that flying saucers were from other planets could shoo away the cranks. His approach and books inspired such movies as Earth vs the Flying Saucers which warned of potential space invasion. On the other hand, Jessup was giving a UFO as the explanation to pillars of occult theories like disappearances, sudden appearances, spontaneous human combustion, and even human origins on the Earth.
As I noted in an earlier page, faith does not need to pivot on religion. Adherents to the occult are not necessarily religious (some are), but they believe in that greater invisible universal plane of existence that esoterica tried to enable transit via LSD in the 1960s. Like religious adherents, occultist too have sought verification for pillars of faith. For the religious it is a miraculous healing, a bleeding statue, perhaps even the Shroud of Turn. For the occult, it is proof of doorways to other dimensions and these higher planes of existence. Due, frankly, to his sad addiction to Fate Magazine: true stories of the strange and unknown, Jessup opened himself up to those who wanted and peddled proof of the occult. Carlos Allende was principle among them.
Before we delve further, it is best to confront Fate. It is quite a bit of Americana, and is now even becoming mildly collectible. Around these, it is best to base our view of Morris Jessup’s methods.
Fate Magazines of the 1950s. Jessup would have read all these. They contain a wide variety of topics, many of which he discussed in his books as being caused by UFOs.  Flying Saucers were a prime subject in Fate– LEFT:  the rare first issue in Spring 1948. RIGHT offered “6 saucer stories.” BELOW, RIGHT: Cover-up! Frank Edwards writes “The Plot to Silence me!” He was one of the most prolific UFO writers. He wrote the introduction to Jessup’s Case for the UFO. BELOW, LEFT our 1957 view of the French– she is somewhat fancily but scantily dressed. Disappearing anything was a popular allegorical occult theme, as in “The Disappearing Islands” in this issue. So was spontaneous combustion of human beings, both  contained in the  Allende Letters and Fate.
Prehistory’s mysteries, since “prehistory” is before records, are only approached in guesswork— a favorite topic of occult writers. Jessup based much of his early UFO earth visitation evidence on these pulp stories, deducing in UFOs and the Bible that aliens were God and created mankind. BELOW LEFT, a busty cavewoman and dinosaurs. Another issue: “Religion in 25,000 B.C.” I wonder what they used to deduce this? Jessup felt the Earth was being visited at this precise time  by aliens, and in his books went into some detail. Other articles on prehistory inspired him to believe in spaceships in ancient India.
While Donald Keyhoe and other authors were making a mint on relating UFO incidents, claiming Pentagon vacillation or cover-ups, Jessup was trying to associate anything arcane with UFOs— a paramount reason his books didn’t sell briskly. The public wanted to hear about this new phenomenon, not elastic interpretations of old tales. Jessup used classic sea mysteries. He was sure that derelict vessels like the Seabird in the 19th Century could only be explained by the crew being sucked up into a flying saucer. Then the disappearance of the beached vessel was “almost impossible to explain except as upward.” He introduced this as: “Now comes a tale in which there seems to be little chance of error or hoax.” He lists Fate April 1953 as the source. I tried to find the Seabird in official registers; there is no proof it even existed! Almost all Jessup’s renditions of missing planes and old sea stories came from Fate.  RIGHT, “The Flying Dutchman.” This August 1950 issue probes into “Are the Irish Jews?”; “What number do you vibrate to?”; “How to go to a Medium”; and “I remember other lives.”
LEFT: Falling frogs, snails! fish! Jessup wrote: “Accepting as I do the veracity of the many reports . . . I submit that they are the inhabitants of celestial hydroponic tanks, and that their falls come from one of two things (1) when the tanks are dumped and cleared for refilling . . . (2) that the falls may be the residue from the collection from the earth while the monitors of the tanks are replenishing their supplies.” In other words, UFOs drop them. Of the reports  of the falls of blood and flesh, he observed gruesomely: “. . . it is a more likely assumption that these ‘disgorged’ materials have more to do with experiments and ‘captures’ than anything else . . .It is possible there we may have a clue to the whereabouts of the people who have vanished suddenly under mysterious circumstances . . .” He mocked scientists’ standard explanations, that vultures or whirlwinds were responsible, “. . .that no whirlwinds. . .and that no flights of buzzards have been reported seems to have been of little consequence.” It was of little consequence to him that there were no reports of UFOs either.
Voices coming from nowhere were a popular theme in folklore. Jessup picked up on these, like the Oliver Lerch story. RIGHT: “The Red River Witch,” Fall 1948 issue. Bell’s Witch and other superstitions of voices from the woods Jessup explained as from UFOs hovering out of sight or people calling for help as they were sucked up.
LEFT: as Fate went so went Jessup. Fate published all forms of psychic and supernatural subjects, like here, the Séance– July 1958, the period in which Jessup was becoming increasingly preoccupied with the subject. In his suicide note, he asked that a séance be conducted live on the air by his friend, WOR’s Long John Nebel. He  wanted Nebel to try and contact him so they could prove if there was any validity to séances.
The “Allende Letters” (introduced in the previous page) played to many such themes, making teleportation a primary result of the experiment. The experiment explained disappearance, appearances, time warps, etc, all created by a powerful electromagnetic experiment. All natural, in other words. Nothing spiritual. Jessup needed this. He needed to deflect criticism for relying on such sources.
M.K. Jessup also needed to defend his past academic status. He had made some very bold comments in his book within his own field. Coming from someone trained in astronomy, they were shocking.
I believe that space between the earth and the moon is occupied, however thinly, by large navigable constructions of a rigid nature, whose size may range from one to many miles in diameter, and which have a planetary appearance as seen in telescopes. These sometimes come close to the earth. There are other bodies which seem to be of a cloud like nature, which cast shadows on both earth and moon, and which may range the entire solar system accompanying comets. These also, or their smaller components, sometimes approach the earth. All of these objects evince evidence of control by intelligences, as do the more recently sighted UFO’s.
We may mistake some spaceships for planetoids? Why would they exist at all?
Edgar Cayce’s readings had spoken of Atlantis being a super-civilization of prehistory. It had harnessed natural powers in the earth through what was called a Tuoi Stone. It had craft that flew in the air and under the sea, all powered by something quite phenomenal. Jessup had made an anodyne reference to this, writing “rumored associations of flight with the disappearance of Atlantis.” It was another indication of advance technology that was lost with great cataclysm. The antiquity of mankind’s civilization on Earth he did not doubt, and he believed that much had been destroyed around 12,000 year ago when “Atlantis and Mu” were destroyed. Again, “The traditions agree that ‘Atlantis’ or its equivalent, was destroyed about 9,000 years or so B.C.” He openly stated:
A detailed build-up for this antiquity is beyond the scope and ability of this book. Mainly we are interested in showing that such antiquity did exist, and that it is conceivable that some very early race, 200,000 years ago, or so, may have developed space flight, and after the cataclysm of 12,000 years ago may have chosen to stay in space, thinking it a safer habitat than this uncertain planet.
Not surprisingly, Jessup’s theories were an epiphany for the occult. Jessup’s large artificial planets could be theorized as bases constructed by Atlanteans who still lived around the Earth and came and went. This, in part at least, explained how UFOs could get to Earth. It skirted the concept of evolution on Mars and Venus, which was not considered possible, and it overcame the arguments that intergalactic space was too vast for any spaceship to travel to Earth in a lifetime from another inhabited planet.
Another addict of Fate, Carlos Allende played to this idea in his annotations of Jessup’s paperback edition. Allende spoke repeatedly of the L-Ms, which at times clearly stood for those from the lost continents of Lemuria and Mu.
The L-M’s Live in Water half or More of the
time and it is No Wonder so Much Water fell
from two “Mother-Ships” Lemurian &
Muanian Ships in Battle, no Doubt.
Francis Crick had discovered the double helix of DNA, and had declared it was too complex to have evolved on Earth. He theorized it had been shot here in a rocket from another planet long ago and that it might have then evolved here. Crick escaped excoriating because he maintained some degree of evolution was involved. Panspermia is quite popular, but Jessup used it to build more into a hybrid theory to explain disappearances:
To attempt to postulate a motive for space inhabitants kidnapping crews from ships — not to mention isolated individuals to which we shall come momentarily — is in the realm of pure speculation. On the other hand, bearing our two possibilities in mind as to the origin of space contrivances, in either case our space friends would want to know what has happened to us since they left us since they put us down here. Again, there is the possibility that the open seas provide an easy catching place.
To this, Allende annotated:
Ought to, the Sea is Natural home of the
Little bastards
It is not necessary to critique the whole work. In sum, Jessup was called into the Office of Naval Research and shown the annotated copy of the paperback of his book. He was told they had retyped and printed 25 copies. They gave him 3 copies. They had been made and printed by Varo Manufacturing in Garland, Texas. The Navy claimed they were looking for any clue that might open up the world of gravity. Jessup no doubt took this excuse cautiously. This must have been an excuse to shield their interest in the  references therein to the Navy harnessing Einstein’s Unified Field Theory by making a ship invisible in Philadelphia.
To reiterate the previous page— after a couple of letters Allende seemed to grow disinterested in penpaling with Jessup. He instead had annotated a paperback copy of his book and sent it to the Navy. The claims of a top secret Navy experiment had absorbed Allende in his letters to Jessup, but they are few and far between in the book annotations and clouded by many occult scenarios and an Atlantean past for the Earth.
Jessup moved from Virginia to Florida, still trying to get backing for his pet project to excavate craters in Mexico he believed could have been made by UFOs landing in ancient times, those huge navigable artificial satellites he said populated space “however thinly.” University of Michigan was going to back it a few years before, but when they heard a “UFO investigator” was involved, they withdrew. Jessup said that anyway. U of Michigan knew him by name, and their response would not have been so obscure. I do not know if there was some bad blood from the past when Jessup left academia. He was also injured in a car accident. Amidst increasing failure and other troubles in his life, he committed suicide on April 20, 1959. Supposedly he was still researching the probability of the “Philadelphia Experiment.”
To be frank, I am reminded of a caution from my father while he taught me to drive. “Hit the dog.” Meaning? “Because if you swerve to miss him you end up piled into a telephone pole and the dog walks away wagging its tail.” Such sums up Carlos Allende’s part. He went on. Jessup was dead. He was wrecked into a telephone pole and Allende went on.
However, slow and in the hands of others, a legend began to grow. Somehow a Varo copy got to Riley Crabb quite soon. He wrote M.K. Jessup and the Allende Letters (1962) and then Gray Barker of “Men In Black” infamy published The Strange Case of Dr. M.K. Jessup (1963) through his Saucerian Press. Soon also Vincent Gaddis, the man who coined the term “Bermuda Triangle,” was able to access a copy for research. Jessup’s legend remained within this esoteric world until J. Manson Valentine and Charles Berlitz inadvertently made it world famous in 1974.
It was now in the hands of promoters.
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