Bill Kaysing

Never was the counsel ‘To thine own self be true' better applied than by Bill Kaysing. He was a man who truly lived his ideals, and through his writing helped a great many people find their own versions of a balanced and fulfilling lifestyle. In all our dealings with Bill, we experienced a generosity of spirit, an inner peacefulness and a strength of character that made every exchange enriching. When you meet people of Bill's calibre, the memory stays forever.

In a society where people are judged by their visible accumulation of worldly goods, Bill Kaysing was an exception – he was a truly extraordinary man. But his critics sneered at his simpler way of living, especially in the latter days of his life when his home was a trailer in the desert. Their comments attempted to imply that Bill's basic lifestyle was the proof of the stupidity of his ideas.

Of course if Bill had been a hermit monk he would not have been at the receiving end of such aggression. But he was not. And it was Bill's really big project – his Apollo Moon Hoax Theory – that really caused these people to ridicule him, even after his death. Shame on them!

Bill Kaysing perceived anomalies in the Apollo record and questioned them – very loudly. It was the subsequent (and continuing) discomfort of the scientific and political establishment, their lack of coherent answers, together with the virulent verbal attacks on Bill, that sadly confirmed he had touched a nerve. After all, why bother with character assassination if he was really ‘the crackpot conspiracy theorist' his critics set him up to be?

However uncomfortable it might be for his detractors, events in the world today are ample proof that Bill's instinct was right: what we see on our TV screens, what we hear from our authorities and what we read in our newspapers is not always the real deal.

Whether one agrees with his Apollo theory and its conclusions (and many people did wake up and start their own enquiries) in his asking questions about Apollo, Bill Kaysing did us all a service.

He reminded us of the necessity for thinking for ourselves. Not to be told what to believe, but to look with our own eyes, evaluate with our own rationality and our own intuition every single situation that presents itself to us. Without fear, without paranoia.

Because if we do not learn discernment, if we only want to be told what to believe, then we shall become the slaves of those for whom the ends justify the means, and who will do anything to get what they want.

Bill Kaysing knew all of this. He has left the world a better place for having lived in it and fearlessly asking for honesty and kindness in our dealings with each other. Let's honour his memory by being extraordinary too, by having the courage to do the same thing in our own lives.

Mary Bennett & David Percy

Authors of Dark Moon: Apollo and the Whistle-Blowers