Gideon Reid

Let’s reexamine Margaret’s art during hers and Walter’s busiest period, 1957-1964 because we now know there’s no truth to the ‘war-wracked waifs’ tale. Yet, it remains true that her art contained something that resonated with the American public, who bought her images by the millions. Over this period, the Keanes’ became the biggest selling living […]

As the adobe brick buildings began to return to the dust they were made from, stories about Oahspe and the colony persisted. After the sale of its land in 1907 Oahspe retained support from a small but enthusiastic audience who kept its text alive. Writer Wing Anderson revived the Faithist’s Kosmon organisation in 1932 and incorporated

It is in details like those about Newbrough’s compassion for the poor in America’s cities (seen in part 5) being his motivation to create the Shalam colony that we begin to see an overlap with the rationale for the Keane waifs. After all, the flaws in the war-wracked waifs story were always there to be

Stories about personal contact with alien visitors began to emerge in popular media shortly after 1947 and the first notable UFO sighting from Kenneth Arnold. A forestry worker pilot, he was investigating a downed transport plane when he saw nine objects moving “like a saucer skipping over water” near Mount Rainier, Washington. Misquoted via an

This was the cry from Barney Hill while reliving his supposed abduction experience under hypnosis. The aliens’ large black eyes are their instrument of power over humans. Various abductees tell us how aliens compel them to stare deeply into their eyes causing irresistible hypnotic control, sometimes they feel calmed, sometimes they feel robbed of their

In the decade preceding the 1969 moon landing popular culture was awash with space themes grounded in real scientific endeavour as well as science fiction. Elements of this excitement about humans pushing their boundaries appear in some of Margaret’s paintings, several of which have content and titles that appear to echo the unsettling niche of

Just as it seems likely Margaret Keane found inspiration to paint the waifs through it, Oahspe can also be seen as a catalyst for the development of the alien abduction myth. This is due to its unique blend of spiritualism and science fiction, which intertwines angels and aliens in its ontology. In the 1960’s composer

That the figures in Keane’s artwork look like aliens is not a novel connection. It’s often the one of the first remarks made about Keane’s portraits by a contemporary audience. Just look at any of Margaret’s paintings posted on social media and it’s likely that the first comment about them will be from someone making

The connection to the alien hybrid narrative isn’t restricted to the infant waifs. After her marriage to Walter Keane ended and the waifs became less a part of their business, Margaret painted fictional young women, and they were unusual looking. As we’ll see these paintings could be portraits of hybrid entities captured at some point

A believer in the objective reality of alien abduction might read all this and like to apply the principle of  Occam’s Razor. They might surmise that the simplest explanation for why Margaret’s work resembles the visual descriptions given by hundreds of abductees is not the objectionable notion that they were somehow half-remembering her art or