Erik Beckjord Has Left The Building
Jon Erik Beckjord, paranormal, UFO and Bigfoot investigator, died two months ago today in San Francisco at age 69 from prostate cancer. Loren Coleman was right on this in a post over at Cryptomundo from July 25th. He was one of the stranger people I have met, and I remember his harmless antics and tireless research with some nostalgia, especially since he just missed all this recent Bigfoot brouhaha.
In the late 1980s, I used to go to meetings at the home of a New World Order-type named Gary Schmitt in Santa Monica. Beckjord would attend occasionally. On one fateful day, he brought a few UFO videos from area 51, and stayed late to show them to Schmitt. Somehow, I weaseled my way into the showing, and watched with a quiet skepticism while Beckjord and Schmitt stopped the tape continuously to go over details which I couldn’t see. One segment of lights flying like a swarm of insects over the southern end of Nellis Air Force Base did impress me however.
After Beckjord left I discovered that I couldn’t find my car keys. A phone call to him revealed that he had taken them for some reason, and I had to go to his Malibu home with a friend to pick them up. He didn’t explain why he took the keys, and he didn’t invite us in, but told me to pick them up from his roadside mailbox.
On another occasion, I met Beckjord by chance in a Malibu supermarket. He opened his ever-present briefcase and pulled out pictures someone had taken in northern California which he said contained images of bug-eyed aliens. I couldn’t see what he was talking about, but Beckjord seemed convinced.
Here is one of the pictures he showed me
For a few years, before he moved up north, he had a Bigfoot and UFO museum at another home in Venice beach. Exhibits consisted of folders full of photographs and papers propped against the walls in a couple of rooms. Apparently he opened a more sophisticated version of this homespun project in San Francisco when he moved there in 1996.
I have no idea where he got the money to live in Malibu or make trips to England to investigate crop circles and the Loch Ness Monster, as well as other places around the U.S. Jim Moseley, in his book Shockingly Close To The Truth, says that Beckjord was at work on a book called Sex and the Supernatural Sasquatch. I’d sure like to see the manuscript for that.
An obituary was published in the San Francisco Gate on July 25th.
Hat tip to Tim Cridland.
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Aug 22 2008 
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:08 am
He takes your keys and instead of bringing them back tells you you can pick them up in his mailbox- LOL!
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:36 am
I think he did that car-key tricks to test if you were a secret agent or something
I don’t know much about Beckjord, but from what I read on Cryptomundo, he leaves very few friends behind. There’s indeed a deep sense of animosity about this person, not much about his wild theories he claimed, but the way in which he defended them. Indeed, he seemed a trouble man, specially when you read in his last statement where he confirmed his cancer “My enemies will rejoice” (!).
Rest In Peace. I have no evidence of it, but I’m a person who hopes that the answers to our deepest questions will be revealed in the other side. So I trust that know Beckjord knows the answers to some of his questions.
August 22nd, 2008 at 1:04 pm
i had sex with a supernatural sasquatch once, and in the morning i couldn’t find my car keys.
August 25th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Ben,
Yeah, I’m lucky I didn’t make it onto his enemies list.
August 25th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
RPJ,
I hope he found them too. Erik did not seem like a vindictive fellow to me, so that puts him up a notch in my estimation. I seem to remember that he also had some sort of “terrorist defense” thing going for awhile where he suggested that airline passengers bring along a bottle of Tabasco sauce to fling in the eyes of hijackers. Try getting that past the TSA people now!
August 25th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
chaos_engineer,
I’m sorry to hear that. Did he or she make you come by his/ her cave to pick them up?
August 27th, 2008 at 6:20 am
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