As the world awaits the release of WikiLeaks UFO files by founder Julian Assange, there’s newly unearthed stories about “extraterrestrial” life in and around Ken Kesey’s summer home at Bray’s Point; with Kesey using “using astral projection” and “watching the lights” over his beachfront property that he compared to the aurora borealis thanks to his “neighbors.”
Kesey said the neighbors were, in fact, an alien gang that lived near his Bray’s Point house and down the beach from the much celebrated UFO haven at Stonefield Beach.
Kesey’s writing describes encounter with these “neighbors.”
The author explains walking along this deserted stretch of beach one day and noticed the neighbor’s homes. After meeting them, he writes the aliens are the “new bulls and this Earth is its grassland.”
Kesey believes the neighbors arrived at Bray’s Point in the late Sixties. He also writes in rare, unpublished notes about alien gangs. The notes are now housed at the University of Oregon’s Special Collections and University Achieves at the Knight Library.
There are records from the “Kesey Readings” at Eugene’s Tsunami Books that relate to the author’s fascination with aliens and “alien gangs” living along the Oregon coast.
The term alien gang was first coined during an X-Files episode, as to indicate aliens living in groups and “gangs.” Kesey also described gangs or groups of “seven to 9, maybe 11 of these beings” living in non-descript coastal homes with no TV antenna on the roof or signs of electrics, and “yet there’s a dim light.”
He noted one group huddled on a sofa that did not speak. Kesey told of knocking on the door of one home and talked to one person who was “sort of gray and distant.” He said the encounter with the person “didn’t involve drugs,” and that ideas were shared.
Kesey described the neighbors as having hawk like features that “are both arresting and elegant.” He said they all seemed to be the same age (60something) with a mix of men and woman that were both dark and white. Kesey also described their house as clean, but also drab and ordinary as its occupants.
Also, Kesey doesn’t discuss a “man with a cigarette in one side of his mouth,” as some fiction but did discuss UFOs throughout his career “as real” in much the same way someone would discuss a hobby.
Kesey’s “Alien” Life At Bray’s Point
The author described Bray’s Point as a “coastal garden cooked by the rainforest” with bubbling waterfalls.
Kesey used his Bray’s Point spread as a holiday haven from his ranch and main headquarters in Pleasant Hill, outside Eugene.
During the early 1970’s, Kesey and friend Ken Babbs, and other “Pranksters,” published “Spit in the Ocean” as an alternative collection of Oregon and New Age stories by Kesey and friends.
Kesey also published “odd-ball” stories about UFOs and aliens that largely went unnoticed in the Sixties and 1970’s when such talk was viewed as pie in the sky.
“We talked wildly in the car about ‘Venusians’-folks without auras, Wilhelm Reich, UFOs, organic energy, and the burning of the library at Alexandria. Just back from Egypt, Ken was excited about the struggle going on for the human soul. Because we humans were compassionate, we would win, he emphasized.
The hair stood up on the back of my neck. Marty and Lorna and I thought the car might pull off the freeway of its own volition. Kesey was absolutely convincing,” explains Oregon writer Walt Curtis who called Kesey “Oregon’s greatest novelist and certainly one of the nation’s finest authors of the second half of the 20th century.
Kesey died in Eugene on Nov. 10, 2001. His famous book “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is based in part on a period in Kesey life in 1959 when at Stanford University he volunteered to take part in a CIA-financed student named “Project MKULTRA.” The project took place at a Menlo Park, California, Veterans Hospital.
Reports indicate that the CIA was experimenting with LSD to see if people could communicate with “alternate universes.”
The project studied the effects of psychoactive drugs, such as LSD and psilocybin or “magic mushrooms,” to see if it could expand people’s ability to think and “make contact” with alien life.
Such secret government information is said to be part of the WikiLeaks UFO files that Assange has discussed while in hiding in England.
In turn, Kesey wrote about such things as UFOs and aliens, and eventually was inspired to write “Cuckoo’s Nest” in 1962.
Kesey’s CIA activities and Project KLULTRA files that are still under lock and key.
Today, “Keysay” is the name on a Kesey family guest house located at this place Kesey called “the faresest out West you can go in the continental United States on dry land yet next to and within spitting distance of the Pacific.”
In turn, it’s said that Kesey was inspired by the beauty of Bray’s Point to produce his alternative publication dubbed “Spit in the Ocean.”
“Kesey’s Spit in the Ocean was folksy and real. Yet, it didn’t really make it outside Eugene and San Francisco alternative book shops. You can find it in Portland and good copies in Eugene will cost you an arm and a leg,” says a local writer from nearby Yachats who also noted that “most people swivel their eyes upward when talk of Kesey and UFOs comes up.
“It’s like overkill,” adds with the writer with a big laugh.
Rare 1974 editions of Spit in the Ocean are difficult to find because Kesey printed them in his Pleasant Hill home by simply writing to: Ken Kesey “Spit in the Ocean,” at his post office box in Pleasant Hill, Oregon.
Spit in the Ocean was a “sort of a combination paperback short story read in magazine format. Different for the time,” says Paul an admirer of Kesey from nearby Yachats that regularly has UFO sightings. “It’s common here to talk of the UFOs,” quips Paul, a young college graduate who’s spending time alone so he can “hear himself.”
Strange, but the din of modern life gets to people, Kesey once said. That’s why he kept a beach house to help get away from crazy Eugene at a time of Sixties LSD that made history and Kesey legend for his “Kool Aid Acid Tests.”
Bray’s Point is located along a central Oregon coast that’s scattered with charming beach and cliff-side homes that are as remote as you can get.
Cell phones and other portable smart devices simply don’t work at Bray’s Point, and Kesey liked that say friends.
From Bray’s Point, Kesey and his neighbors have a panoramic view of the Pacific and the ancient splendor of untouched beaches. A few miles up the coast is Stonefield Beach and other haunts of Kesey and his friends.
