Knowing Kal
I was asked about my experience with knowing Kal Korff. I had mentioned him when at a conference talking to someone about Billy Meier. I had had an experience that involved Kal many years ago that proved to be the beginning of a trail of unfortunate and sad stories I would hear over the next almost 30 years. I might have been one of the first to know his tree’s fruit. Bitter as it was and proved to me to be.
Early in my career as an illustrator and graphic designer, I believe I was 23 at the time, a best friend Bill H., who was at that time a writer for Astrology Magazine among other publications, told me of someone he met who was publishing a book and needed illustrations. I had already been published doing illustrations for a magazine article for Bill, but was, as a young artist and graphic designer, looking for as much valid paying work as I could to build my portfolio. I was just a few years from college courses in advertising design and graphic design where I learned how important the portfolio was, if I was to get good clients or good paying assignments, or even a better a full time job as a graphic designer for an agency or a print shop, I needed to show what I could do. My new freelance partnership with a photographer friend, Gravity Graphics was not getting many clients yet. My new wife was working, but I needed to get into the market and I was hungry for work that would show the skills I knew I had.
Bill H., a talented writer himself, introduced me to a younger man, Kal, around 18-19 years old I thought, that told me with a convincing air of authority that he was a UFO investigator and was publishing a book exposing a hoax with then noted author Bill Moore (no relation) who, he said, was also a well known authority on UFOs. He said that they needed several illustrations for this book based on photos that where allegedly taken of an alien craft by a certain Billy Meier in Switzerland. I was shown glossy photographs of photos, and additional images that looked like copies of the photos that were subjected to darkroom effects. Until then I had only seen a few of these images in magazines and articles. He seemed to be pretty clear about this Meier person and convinced he was a charlatan who needed to be exposed.
I was told that the photos had been taken to NASA in the south San Francisco Bay Area, Ames Research Center, and where subjected to photographic study by the NASA photographic study lab. I actually eventually contracted with NASA there in the early 90s as an illustrator for the A.L.S. Division (Advanced Life Support) where I was working with the scientists in different groups, Illustrating for the research on various projects and plans for the new space suits, orbital crop growth and life support technology for Moon and Mars missions. The work I did went to Washington begging for budgets. That all ended when the new director for NASA, Daniel Golden, came in 1991 and stopped many of the organizations projects. The division I was contracting with was not overlooked. That was a sad time for me. I had worked harder than ever as an illustrator for less pay than I should have, but the love of the work kept me completely in orbit, and just having time at the facility for two years to see the projects and work with the scientists was worth the work alone.
So, back to Kal’s pictures, I was, back then, of course intrigued by Kal’s book and wanted to know more as I had already decided to do the work internally for the excitement of the subject alone, if not the perfect portfolio subject matter. I was very motivated in the areas of science subjects then. Always infatuated with space science, astronautics and UFOs since a small boy, I absorbed anything and everything to do with the subjects. I had even done scrap books for every NASA mission since Mercury, Gemini, and even most the Moon missions. I also mailed away and received a copy of the Air Force’s “Blue Book”, so was hedging my bets all the time. I was also always quite interested in UFOs.
The first book I remember actually purchasing by mail, using a gift check from my grandparents, was “Gold of the Gods” by Erich von Däniken. I received and gobbled up the first edition, having read his previous “Chariots of the Gods” earlier. I was completely fascinated by the premise, and in my young mind, found it the most compelling of things to think about, having already read many of the classic Science Fiction writings of H.G. Wells, Arthur C. Clark and others imagining the concepts of a universe potentially inhabited my many different forms of life, good and bad. I had also seen every Science Fiction and Space movie ever made by then. But von Däniken’s works spoke of the possibilities and of evidence for the actual reality of this, and that was much more interesting and compelling than any grand science fiction to me.
So I had already set my mind and decided this project for Kal was going to happen. That this guy, Kal, who was a bit younger than me, and a bit pompous and over certain did not bother me, as these facts where obscured in the blind spot of my enthusiasm for the subject, and the possibility of also being published for the work. It was a life lesson ripe for the picking.
The photos, while he said “they” (I assumed Bill Moore and NASA people) could not find any overt attempts at fakery, did, according to Kal, show signs of suspension, or supporting strings, through the then early “edge enhancement” and “color enhancement” photos. I could not actually see the evidence, and do not remember the reason he gave for the discrepancy, other than he did not have the evidenced images or that the images he had only showed slight indications I was not seeing. Such investigative photographic work was fairly new to me at the time, although through my computer like absorption of such imagery by then, from tens of thousands of science books, magazines and articles I would read wherever I could find them, I knew that Astronomers would commonly use such photographic enhancement methods to determine many things about astronomical objects otherwise invisible in the black and white long exposures that science at the time was mostly limited to. So while not completely uninformed, I had rarely seen such methods applied to UFO investigation. This was then 1979-80, remember.
Kal then gave me the images to copy he said were from this Billy Meier’s original negatives and said that due to copyrights he could not use these in his book, and so came to me, knowing through my friend Bill that I was good with an airbrush. We discussed the need for using the images to demonstrate Kal’s theories and the need also for some concepts of how this was done for the camera, assuming these images where faked.
I remember being very impressed by the pure clarity of the Meier’s photos. Film and photographic print work I was already very familiar with, having taken several college classes in 1974-6, in photography and even photographic darkroom manipulation and effects inspired by photo artist Jerry Uelsmann’s work. Photography and even a bit of film study in college was part of my wide interests in graphics and illustration. I was an enthusiastic student of all things imagery related. I was using airbrush early in my career as I found it the most accurate way to mimic the gradual tonalities of reality in creating images. I had illustrated with the airbrush often by then, and also photo retouched already, finding any application for the methods the tool afforded me. I loved the “tech” of it and had become by then quite good as a beginning professional illustrator and airbrush artist. I later became an accomplished painter on canvas and board for gallery, as well as a published illustrator, so even back then found I could already use the tools well and had mastered them sufficiently to professional levels.
So, Kal wanted direct copies of these photos he loaned me, and in black and white airbrushed illustrations, having thought, in his and my own ignorance, that this was somehow legal. At that time, I was only partially aware of the details of copyright law, having only studied enough to protect my own work. As I was not interested in copying others works, had not yet gone deeper into the law, and doing such was then, before the internet, dependent on a trip to the library or a letter to the Government Copyright Office. And, while I did frequent the library often for research and reading, as well as send away for forms to the Copyright Office in Washington DC, I did not at the time of Kal’s request fully understand or have the legal knowledge to know this. He was at least as ignorant as I was, but knowing his character better now might have believed otherwise. I did become sort of an expert later in such matters, after a few events of being plagiarized myself, unfortunately.
Kal also seemed very interested in my ideas of how such fakery could be done. Having a good mechanical reasoning ability, and being the creative person I was, I entertained a few ideas and told him I would think about this.
I do not remember being told by Kal how I would be paid other than I would get credit and copies. Frankly, it was such an interesting project that I was less concerned about pay, which I knew this “kid” likely could not pay anyway, and was actually more interested in the work itself and the portfolio work it would supplement. My new wife likely felt differently, but allowed my enthusiasm to rule.
I began the process of illustrating the photos. I remember loving the process, having the photos next to me while I worked, thinking all the time on how such images where even possible. At that time, while I believed in such things as aliens and ships that could transit deep space where likely, I was an ethical person, and the idea that faked contact and or photos and such hoaxed accounts I understood even then, could only dissipate and cloud the UFO issue, and this had me concerned. Blinded somewhat by the fun of the project, and somewhat convinced by Kal’s convincing contentions on Meier, I came up with some ideas I thought could work for suspending a large object well away of any tall poll or structure.
As the images showed these pristine star ships isolated in the idyllic landscape of the Swiss countryside, sometimes through out of focus tree branches, in front of the focal point that I thought to close to, or set at infinity. Also shots of craft next to trees, too far it seemed from the camera to be faked. The only way such a suspension could happen was, I thought, a series of balloons. One larger balloon suspending the object, but the anchoring line also suspended far off camera and out of frame by a loose pearl necklace of balloons holding the line well above until many hundreds of yards off, it would then be held by tying it off on a ground object out of frame. How a wind could be managed was not in my mind at the time.
The concepts where just thoughts on paper however, and, never intended to be included in any final conclusions. I thought about it, as I told Kal I would, and it was the first idea I had. I drew them out, but did not do finished illustrations for them, thinking Kal would only consider them.
After a few weeks I had eventually finished several airbrush illustrations based on the actual photos Kal had given me, and with the balloon suspension sketched concepts, gave them all to Kal, thinking the next time I saw him he would be returning the illustrations, and, a couple copies of the book with my credits published beside each illustration. This I found was not to be the case however.
In the following weeks, Kal it seemed had developed into a kind of cad to my friend Bill. Bill and I where close as you could get as friends at that time, sharing the esoteric and scientific subjects of interest in unending talks and philosophic discussions. We spent a lot of time together with my then significant other, Sandra, who also shared such interests. Sandra and I where recently married by Bill, who was an ordained minister, and the story goes, our marriage has survived all the trials young married people endure to exist today with 30 years of memories and, more to go. My Sandra is accomplished in her own right as a classical musician and Oboeist, performing many years for two major wind symphonies in the Bay area and also a talented teacher for young Oboists’, English Horn and Flute students, many of which have become award winning musicians themselves. A testament to her fun life-learning style of instruction. Sandra and I met while I was dating her best friend, who one day, took me to an Easter concert at a church where Sandra was performing with an orchestra. I did not much like the church scene, as I was force fed Catholicism as a boy and had endured the years of torturous boredom of seemingly endless and senseless ritual, ancient unintelligible language, and the up and down on your knees at service that just seem to serve at interrupting the hypnogogic trance I then used to survive the purgatory-like time. But, seeing Sandra for the first time, and from the balcony, hearing her with the orchestra, then talking to her afterwards on the spiritual musical science of India and our seemingly parallel plans to study “new age Ragas”, I immediately felt I had found my very best friend, and I had. Even her best friend, Robin, I was then dating, saw this plainly, and, stepped aside quite verbally to let Sandra and I explore each other’s lives and very soon after, a deep relationship. Sandra was someone I immediately knew was to be a major part of my life. Three years or so later we were married.
Sandra has always been a bit psychic when it came to my friends and business relationships. Even then, she would let me know her impressions of anyone I was working with. This proved to be invaluable later in much larger business dealings as she could see hidden character and somehow know it would turn out bad or good. On some occasions she would find the missing piece of a large project, as, for example, an important time for me, when I was back stage meeting with Jon Anderson, vocalist for the rock group Yes, who was then performing a show with Japanese New Age artist Kitaro. We had become friends after I sent my work back stage as a gift a year or so earlier and it so impressed him for the timing of his boys birthday and the image it seemed to represent, he called me the next day. I worked on several projects for him after that.
Jon and I had talked by phone on several occasions by then, and he told me he had a benefit concert coming up he was performing and needed an animation for projection to 2 Jumbo Trons (very big screens for two sides of a stadium) and many large screens set around the stadium. This was for a conference event at UNLV with the Nevada Symphony Orchestra and a new very cool electronic synthesizer board Jon had, performing his and Vangelis’s “Italian Song” to, as it turned out, 15,000 attendees. It was a massive performance including Circ du Solei, Flow and Eddie, Tower of Power and many other great acts, all to benefit Missing and Abused Children. Three days of rehearsals and three square meals and snacks each day all catered by Hard Rock Café! How could I possibly refuse? I of course did not refuse, and although not knowing how in the world I would pull this off, outside of doing a tedious cell animation of the whole 3 minute piece, (5400 cells) I walked out of the meeting and back to my reserved seat with a mixture of the excitement of such a large profile and very cool project piece and the fear of not having any of the resources for the short month I had to produce this. By then I was a skilled computer artist, but did not fford the more sophisticated software and powerful computer for animation, which I understood in theory, but had not done in anything but smaller projects. The concept, and the vision Jon and I worked out, was already in my head, but the delivery for it was in a fog of unknown potential, largely the thing nightmares are woven from. Yet, in what I had found to be Sandra’s inherent skill for “finding” needed synchronous potentials, when I approached my seat after my time with Jon, as the show about to start, I found her talking to a man, Dennis, who, as a big fan had afforded the better seats next to us and was already talking to her about the work. It turned out that he was the CEO of a 3D software company in Silicon Valley and a huge fan of Jon Anderson and Yes, as Sandra and I were also. When I filled in the details of the discussion with Dennis I had just had with Jon, the deadline of 30 days, and, the subject matter and performances to be working with, all produced by another huge favorite of ours, Alan Parsons, Dennis said he would afford all the needed tools, including the production in 3D and video post production costs. How cool was that? I later was introduced by Dennis to his company’s 3D artist Don, whom I would produce with and direct, and who ironically ended up being a best friend through the experience and to this day. We delivered the animation on time and left for Las Vegas. We all got to hang with the stars for the performance and see our work in its best light. The Nevada Symphony, Jon Anderson and all. Plus, the sax player from the famous Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon album flirted with my wife back stage a couple times. I was at least flattered, if not a bit jealous. I currently still work closely with my friend Don who perfectly animated our work, and was recently best man for him at his wedding. All this due to Sandra striking a conversation with a stranger that happened to be right there when we needed him. This is just one such story of many where Sandra was instrumental in making connections beyond any visible evidence.
On the occasion years earlier where I first met Kal, she let me know she thought Kal was a bit creepy and did not feel he was good to work with. I had not learned to listen yet to my talented wife. My friend Bill had soon after told us that Kal was “sneaking” his girlfriend away from him. Bill was not a dashing guy by any stretch. He was more the taped up horn-rimmed glasses guy, (or nerd), always with pencil in hand or some experimental gear or stack of books, so, not exactly a girl magnet. His then “girl friend” was quite young, but legal, yet more Kal’s age than Bills, who was 22 or so at the time. Bill was finding Kal to now be a foil, as opposed to a colleague. Bill was quite devastated. A sign of things to come for many others I would find.
This was late news for me, as I already had entered into a business relationship with this Kal guy. Yet on a gentleman’s handshake as opposed to the binding detailed contracts I had religiously started using a bit later much to my regret.
As time passed, I did not hear from Kal. Bill kept me as informed as he could through his jealousy-colored glasses, but Kal seemed to set any communication with me aside. I do not remember much from him in the way of communication, but eventually I did meet with him where he gave me one copy of a spiral bound, well,… book, that indeed had Bill Moore’s as well as Kal Korff’s authorship printed on the cover, was largely typewritten copy with my illustrations and credits, but not the “commercial bound book” I had expected. He told me that Omni Magazine had written a review and stated that as far as the Meier case was concerned, this book was like shooting an ant with an elephant gun. In other words, overkill for what the magazine considered nothing at all important in subject or scope.
That was all fine and good, but I wanted another copy, and, my original art back, of which several airbrushed images of considerable hours of work should have all been returned. Also, later upon glancing through the book I saw he had used my simple diagrams for how the photos could be faked with the balloons without him informing me of this, or asking permission. The book was out, already reviewed and he did not have another copy for me. Close to four weeks of work and nothing in return, except what looked to all the world more like a book transcript than an actual book. I think I was stunned, and do not remember the reasons Kal did not have the artwork, as he might have blamed it on the other guy, Bill Moore, or the printer but was assured that he would get the art for me and another copy.
I did not hear from Kal again. I did not have any contact information for him as he had moved, and Bill who was my original contact for him had written Kal off and lost contact himself. I didn’t blame Bill in the least. So, I eventually cut my losses, and wrote Kal off as an ass, a user and a cad, myself.
I did see Kal many years later at a Science Fiction Conference I was a artist guest for in San Jose. I did approach him very nicely, more as an old friend, and asked if he had found the art, or had an additional copy of the book for me, but was told he was in a hurry and I could contact him. He treated me like an unimportant fan, and I sensed more than a bit of concern on his part, seeing me at such an inopportune moment. He handed me his card and was off and out the door to another room where he no doubt was pawning his theories on other unsuspecting conference people. That was it. He now had no credibility as a person for me. His character seemed plain, and when I offered a friendly reconnect, my own business card and very nonconfrontative request for my work for a promised copy of the book, was dismissed with less than a friendly apology. He seemed to be building on what I already knew of him. I did sense it was catching up with him however eventually. I did not follow his works, as I don’t like watching tragedy or negative news much. Just enough to know the weather, so to speak. More recently I found his dark works had done much damage to people I might soon be working with. It seemed the trail of destruction had some more recent history as well. He was gone from the country, in a completely new world in Eastern Europe. I could easily formulate the reasons.
You know a tree by its fruit, it is said. I have over the years caught wind of Kal’s exploits as a writer, UFO debunker and a media personality. Even found some of his books in used book stores I grabbed for the library, but not my book. My only copy was lost when I loaned it to a gallery owner I was showing art with in Carmel California. He claimed to be very interested in UFOS’ and I was to happy to let him read the book. He never returned it and I never saw him again nor could find where he went when his gallery closed.
I know Kal had likely seen UFO’s. I heard from a good friend that knew him that Kal had actually chased several massive ellipsoids in a delta formation seen by thousands in the northern San Jose, Fremont, Palo Alto and Mountain View areas, seen moving south across the bay at a crawl, without lights but lit from below by ambient city lights, one evening in the early 1980s. I know they were real because my wife and I also saw them on the way to a San Jose Movie house while we were traveling from our town, with the objects right above and slightly west of our position, and they where the size of a couple aircraft Carriers if not bigger, and we pulled over off the freeway on the shoulder in amazement and watched them for several minutes while traffic whizzed by. Later I called Fremont Air Traffic Control and got a “we didn’t see anything” line from the guy on the phone who took several moments before he returned to answerer if they had seen anything on their equipment. The news next day was also empty of any account or reports of the sighting, but I found that people over a massive area and several cities saw these objects. Friends of ours miles away back in my town had seen them also. I never saw a report, nor heard Kal’s account of the event. So, I do have some evidence he is probably not without such experiences. So why his angry quest to debunk others on the subject?
I have seen the very real emotional and life damage Kal has done to ruin several good people’s lives by his seemingly destructive and plainly mean tactics with seemingly no empathetic or compassionate sense whatsoever. His sole purpose it seemed was to destroy the lives of people whom he himself judged as wrong. Even if just questionably wrong or just innocently misinformed, no one deserves such caustic and unrelenting poison as Kal continually delivered publically in books, lectures, media and articles. A man without compassion or an empathetic sense to me is not a man. He is a creature that consumes ego-born material to fuel an equally empty life. Ego and self importance being the emptiest things of a truly conscious life are to be avoided if one is to have any true awareness of a living, loving universe. This is why I sense that Kal has nothing of value for anyone. Unfortunately, mostly for himself.
In the many years since the ill fated Korff / Moore / Moore book, I followed Billy Meier’s work, read what I could find of his translated materials and gazed at the incredible images Billy had taken with a used camera. Billy Meier seemed to me the actual anti-Korff. Billy Meier’s beautiful selfless acts and writings, hopeful images of peace and promise of a living and loving universe are, he says, inhabited by those we can learn from for the next step in our inevitable evolution. I personally believe we are, a pre-intelligent species. I feel strongly that we, as a species of sentient beings, have yet to have had the experiences that will show us as a civilization the true nature of this dimension. Many of us as individuals have seen such proof. Too few for a quorum however. My own very deep study of such subjects has brought me to very obvious conclusions, the implications of which I try and use each day and moment to know the path our heart points.
My wife and I and many of my dearest friends have experienced things in our lives and years together that have shown us without all without much question that the universe is much richer than the reductionist sterile sciences and religions have claimed. Sandra and I have seen Massive ships, small probes, had many, many psychic and visionary experiences. The walls have burned away for us, and we know a greater reality inclusive of many things our species has yet to sign off on. We all must though agree, to go through the next door together we need most desperately now to pass through. Individually and together. I am now a MUFON field investigator and are also working on several projects for web and print and in my art and illustration, some of these if not all which I hope will help show the reality of the UFO and alien phenomena.
I have read the dissenting opinions of others regarding Billy’s revelatory materials and images, the many accusations of fakery and hoax, by Kal and others, as well as the just as convincing explanations for these seeming but inaccurate discrepancies. I am, by the way very informed on the subject of UFO and Alien encounters, as well as the general sciences, having read hundreds of books and articles, videos and lectures and talked at length with very informed associates, some deep in the subject and media culture of UFO, Spiritual, Physics and the nature of reality. I even have discussed such matters in chat rooms and UFO discussion sites on not only Billy’s story and items of curiosity, but UFOs and alien realities in general. Some of my friends are well known in the UFO field. Friends that have talked with Billy directly or others familiar with Billy’s projects.
The “fruit” from Billy’s tree has been some of the best I have ever found on the subject. The messages Billy’s contacts bring seem true to the heart and are the stuff of hope we need now so desperately. If only for that, I would excuse any so-called discrepancies and fakery as nothing more than the inconsistencies we find in any phenomena when scrutinized so closely. Anyone who truly studies the nature of reality through science, spirit and philosophic and esoteric study knows you can find good and bad in equal parts of anything. You find that it is what you are looking for that is the determinant factor in what you eventually find. Even particle physics scientists have said that they eventually find anything they are looking for. Whether a particle or a law, Quantum theory allows for the basic creation of the world and it’s components by what we imagine and construct with our imagination, our hearts and our love. It seems clear we where created in God’s image, as creators. Creators of our world, in concert, yet still with people like Kal, whose dissonance maybe keeps us from sounding the pure great chord we all have in our deepest hearts that will call the future to join us.
Those who draw from the darker well of fear, ego and self importance to create their world will find also what they are looking for. Unfortunately, they will have to be satisfied with what they find until they learn to create with better ingredients. Such people need help and cannot be left behind really. Our compassion and creative spirit can know then how to help.
Kal is off in a seemingly distant place in Czechoslovakia now whose people are likely finding out more about him. He no longer seems to display the subjects he is known for here. He left this place in the western culture for all the damage and burned bridges that left him unable to continue his work I suspect. He will find however that he cannot escape himself, no matter where he goes, as is true for any of us. That is his most important investigative subject I believe, himself. Until he debunks his own life, as we all must, he will be living a personal lie that bestows upon him all the things he has damaged others with. My compassion for such a person can do nothing but to help him see himself. I do believe he can see this eventually, but it is up to him, and when his pain forces him to deal with that anger he wields as a weapon to others, he will be given the power to set it down and begin to use his heart, which will be all that is left before he loses everything else. We reap what we sow, it is said. I hope he finds what he is looking for, so he can then see his true enemy, and after knowing this mistake find finally what he truly wants in his heart, the more powerful tool of giving.
Those who prey on others for survival are a dieing species, based on an older solely material model of nature. We are evolving to a more dynamic cooperative and compassionate model with the Earth itself, and with this will come the awareness that we need nothing from outside ourselves to be complete. In fact, we find that we actually have so much we must give it to others. “My cup runneth over” is the phrase that comes to heart.
For Billy Meier, I would apologize for any harm done in my younger ignorance. And, also thank him for his and his celestial friends hopeful and positive materials, while if either true or imagined, is still worthy of deep consideration at the very least. It is also, the material we are given, to imagine as true, so we can make it real, even if we are told it is not. For until those who would attempt to squelch such beauty can show us something more, filled with more hope and such good for this life’s dimension, I will continue to face to the warmth and the light. Following and believing my heart, and never another’s angry words.
Garret Moore 2008
