The Mothman Prophecies: A True Story

Colin Wilson famously described John Keel as “a natural writer, apparently incapable of writing a dull sentence”, and I would say this assessment is entirely correct. (see Wilson’s book Alien Dawn, p. 151) In this amazingly entertaining book, the Mothman Prophecies, Keel starts off by debunking a mysterious sighting of Beelzebub in West Virginia (“a stranger . . . dressed entirely in black . . . sported a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee . . .”, pp. 13-14). In this way, Keel frames his investigations as a skeptic who understands that “things often are not what they seem”. (p. 17) I don’t want to spoil the fun, but he is not afraid to make bold claims: “Mental telepathy is now a tested and verified phenomenon.” (p. 18) Did David Lynch and Mark Frost read this book I wonder? Tulpas “or thought projections”, used to such great effect in Frost and Lynch’s Twin Peaks series, are cited by Keel as one explanation for UFOs. (p. 19) Overall Keel seems to support a Twin-Peaks-style explanation for the esoteric signals - they are not from space but from the ‘dark wood’ of myth and folklore, and perhaps even the human imagination. The mythos, in this sense, allows for no experts. “One does not hire a parachutist to go spelunking in a cave or a balloonist to go diving for treasure.” (p. 22) Keel admits that some examples are certainly hoaxes, such as the “1897 . . . work of mischievous newspapermen” and other “impressive but elusive hoaxsters who haunt the UFO field.” (pp. 28-29) He almost seems to suggest that the mysterious “Men in Black” or other source of “phantom . . . footprints” may in fact be government agents - “Years later, when the first men walked on the moon, I realized the photos of the prints left by their moon-walking shoes were identical to the footprints I had seen over and over again in my travels. Obviously, the Martians and Venusians buy their equipment from the same companies that supply our space program.” (pp. 118-19) This is a hoot! The abductors and their accomplices pick up contactees in Volkswagens, black Cadillacs or maybe even an immaculately maintained 1949 Buick! (pp. 132-33, p. 119) Eventually Keel says he “can not accuse the CIA of being the source of the weird incidents outlined here”. His real point is that “the phenomenon is imitative”, a kind of “paranormal mimicry”. (emphasis in original, p. 122) One contactee even “concluded the Men in Black were really from the Mafia”! (p. 132) Like that other phantom of American culture, the ever-lurking yet unidentified serial killer, “UFOs often zero in on lovers in parked cars.” (p. 124) “In the spring of 1967, young couples necking on the back roads began to see low-flying UFOs. Others claimed to see a giant hairy monster with gleaming red eyes.” (p. 228) Keel sees all of these manifestations as connected. Unlike many of his ufologist brethren, who search for “things seen in the sky”, Keel is out “examining . . . bloodless carcasses” and “wounds [that] don’t bleed”, which lead him to question whether “energies from the super-spectrum need earthly biological materials to construct temporary entities”. (p. 138, pp. 135-36) Dogs spontaneously combust or else are sacrificed to possibly summon the Mothman! (p. 137) “An interesting side effect of the flying saucer phenomenon is that many of the people attracted to the subject, people with very materialistic and pseudo-scientific outlooks, gradually drift into the study of psychic phenomena, abandoning the extraterrestrial theory along the way.” (Id.) It occurs to me that I might be one of those people. I have been becoming more and more attuned to the spirit (internal or psychological) as opposed to the material world lately. I like how Keel suggests here that materialism is “pseudo-scientific”. True science, suggests Keel, might accept the psychic realm as at least a possibility. Strangely for some of his ‘new age’ style talk, Keel takes a contrarian view on the Sixties, calling the “quasi-religious experiences [and] mind-numbing beat of hard rock music and hallucinogenic drugs . . . brainwashing”. (p. 191) Similarly, Keel does not view the UFO contacts in any kind of benevolent or typical ‘new age’ light. “Victims of UFO contact are often suffering from false illumination”, he argues. Based on his concerns of “a modern faith in extraterrestrials that will enable them to interfere overtly in our affairs,” Keel expresses his support for the CIA’s Robertson Panel plan: “However they arrived at their 1953 decision, the CIA/Air Force plan to debunk, downgrade, and ridicule flying saucers was, in retrospect, the most responsible course the government could take.” (pp. 194-94) I confess I am flabbergasted by this book. It defies all my expectations. How much of it is true is impossible to say but I’m not sure if that is the point of it. Keel himself becomes convinced “that my own investigations could be manipulated. I was being led to people and cases to support whatever theory I was working on at the time. . . . If the phenomenon can produce any effect through hallucination, it can easily support any theory.” (pp. 247-48) After awhile the sheer volume of the collected stories begins to weigh upon one’s natural skepticism or rational faculties. Biblical telegrams are received over the telephone late at night from old ladies claiming to represent Western Union. (p. 251) The telephones (remember this is back when everyone used ‘land lines’) are tapped or else flooded with strange noises and impersonators. Keel complains to the FBI, noting that the “FBI and CIA hate each other, and they both hate the telephone company. The telephone company in turn seems to hate everybody.” (p. 282) Modern bureaucracy in action!! There are some chilling scenes. One contactee describes 2 Men In Black she saw exiting a space craft, only to see them again days later walking down Main Street in broad daylight, “dressed in normal clothes. They looked like anybody.” (p. 159) This is a slow creeping dread of alien or otherworldly invasion which Keel plays to so well. I must admit, scrolling through my LinkedIn feed, I feel like an alien myself. Who are all these people, so sure of themselves? Or as Keel puts it about 1 mysterious visitor to an unsuspecting New Jersey family: “Was Tiny wearing electric socks? Or was he a wired android operated by remote control?” (p. 113)

The Mothman Prophecies is a book by author John A. Keel which claims to tell the true story of mysterious events occurring in the eastern United States during the late 1960s. The tale is told entirely from Keel's vantage point as a first-hand investigator (and experiencer) of the paranormal happenings in question. I must say that I began reading The Mothman Prophecies with certain expectations. I had previously been exposed to the exploits of the infamous mothman by various authors in other cryptozoology texts. There was no question that this book would be the authoritative, original source material from which most other writers have since taken inspiration. I was surprised, however, at the diversity of the matter which awaited me. On the positive side, Keel is an excellent and engaging author. He writes colorfully, and offers a work that will not likely bore any of his audience. It's also nearly impossible to argue that this story isn't a "must read" for those interested in the Mothman, or any of the number of other strange incidents which Keel documents here. Having had the unique privilege of investigating and experiencing these events in person, as they were happening, the author boasts a definite authority and purity in documentation. It's obvious that The Mothman Prophecies has heavily influenced many modern researchers in various fields of the unexplained, making it an entry hard to ignore on any serious paranormalist's reading list. I must also say that, even if one were to discount its potential as a true story, the book does make a fairly good classic sci-fi page turner in its own right. Enjoyment and intrigue aside, I did develop some rather serious criticisms of The Mothman Prophecies which I feel could negatively impact some readers. As with most texts, the degree to which these cons influence your personal experience will vary. First off, Keel blatantly and repeatedly breaks one of the cardinal rules of good scientific documentation; he continuously introduces theories and opinions into his writing. The Mothman Prophecies is laced with personal interpretations of the phenomena being witnessed. In fact, something that really surprised me on several occasions, were the seamless way in which the author would offer what are essentially his beliefs as solid fact, with nary a disclaimer. It's not uncommon for paranormal investigators to attempt to draw conclusions from their works, but this goes well beyond that. Keels repeatedly debunks and downplays certain popular institutions, including UFO groups and alien visitation theories, while simultaneously replacing them with his own views. He ironically disclaims one ideology as being scientifically unsupportable, while concurrently supplanting it with his own, equally unsupported, theories. Keel regularly writes in a very matter-of-fact manner with explanations for curiosities that I do not believe have ever been accounted for scientifically, even to this day. The lack of good scientific method is also not limited to the frequent disclosure of Keel's convictions. I additionally found myself curious how someone as dedicated to investigating the paranormal as the author must have been, could still be so unprepared to gather any data other than witness statements and personal observations. Throughout the book, Keel documents a multitude of occasions where he witnessed anomalous objects and individuals, both by chance and by intent. All this time, he never mentions taking a single photograph or measurement of those in question. In one chapter, we hear how he repeatedly visits a certain hilltop at night to view a recurring colorful orb in the distance, yet he apparently never thought to take photographs, nor to simply go and wait in the location where these lights actually appeared. His lack of ability to take advantage of the seemingly ubiquitous and predictable phenomena makes the sheer legitimacy of some of the accounts suspect. Getting back to expectations, having already learned of the Mothman character from other sources, I had come into The Mothman Prophecies expecting to read an exhaustive, authoritative volume of documentation on one of my personal favorite cryptids. I was rather surprised to discover, then, that the Mothman creature really only plays a limited roll in the proceedings. This book is absolutely not the standard investigators report that one might expect to find on other monsters such as Sasquatch or Nessie. Mothman here is little more than a supporting character in a large cast of humans, weirdos, monsters, and anomalous objects. The majority of the book, particularly the latter half, is actually spent away from the Mothman, and enters into a huge variety of lights in the sky, men-in-black, UFO contactees, phone tapping, and lots of miscellaneous strangeness. In fact, Keel relates such a variety of bizarre happenings from this period in his life, that it may greatly strain ones ability to believe that the story is the least bit sane and true. The author, rather than being the normal independent observer, actually becomes the central character in what would more easily be viewed as an old school sci-fi tale, had the cover of the book not disclaimed it to be "based on a true events." My final gripe, although smaller than the aforementioned bits, is that the writing style here has a tendency to be disjointed. Characters seem to pop up in various chapters, often for only a paragraph or two at a time. It makes remembering exactly who is where and doing what across chapters more confusing than it should be, and occasionally detracts from the ability to follow the overall story. The chapters, likewise, are somewhat hit or miss. They don't seem to follow any specific convention, some based on people, others on a block of time, and still others on a specific phenomena. The chapters themselves are also subdivided into numbered sections, in a way which at times felt arbitrary and pointless. While there are no doubt multiple ways to tell a complex and chronological story of this nature, it would have been nice had the author and editors simply picked one theme and stuck with it. Ultimately, The Mothman Prophecies is an interesting work, to say the least. If you want a good paranormal story, you certainly need to look no further. Additionally, if you're in the market for a first-hand account of the origin of the Mothman or even the other paranormal events around Point Pleasant in the late 1960s, this is really a must read. On the other hand, if you're a scientifically minded individual looking for responsible investigation of the unexplained, you're likely to be disappointed by Keel's very human (and very biased) manner of recounting events, which greatly stains belief and credibility.

lots of facts but poorly put togetherwould have to study the book to make sense of what was happeningso interesting but not an easy read

映画を観て大変興味を持ち、この本を読みました。ルポなのか小説なのか曖昧ですが、読み物として面白く読みました。

Started out quite interesting - then heading towards the end got a little bit unbelievable - more fiction than not.

この本の作者はＵＦＯ現象なんかもある種の超常現象ととらえている超常現象研究家でありましてその彼がＵＦＯ＆怪生物？の実地調査に赴いたところ周囲にオカルトじみた怪現象が頻発する…というストーリーの「ノンフィクション」です。なんか幻想文学っぽい感じもするのですがね。オカルト好きの人は入手しといたほうがいいと思います。怪しくて面白い

くぅうううたまらん！ETHを信奉していない、かつＵＦＯ・奇現象系―それもハイストレンジネス―大好き！という、著しく少ない読者層へ贈る、素晴らしく素晴らしく面白い自称ドキュメント。しかし、本書に関して（というかキールに関していえば）自称度がどの程度かはどうでもいいと思う。そう思えるほどべらぼうに面白いんだ。　6000人が目撃！とか帯に書いてあるが、そんなのはオマケもオマケ。どうでもいい。そもそも主題であるはずのモスマンすらオマケだろう。なんというかキールが語る各事例のシュールさ、意味不明さ、そして一般受けする超常現象の報告と信頼性では変らないのに、無視されてきたようなヘンテコ事例がてんこ盛り。カハー。　それにしても、つくづく思った。これらのケースにおいて、人々が自分の体験について口を閉ざしてしまう理由はあまりに明白だ、と。ハイストレンジネスに馴染みがないと、あまりにバカ過ぎて、信憑性がないように感じるような体験ばかりだからだ。キールはそういったバカ臭い事例も集めるナイスガイで、有能な人間だと私は思うが、なんのかのと、全てを真に受けてしまい、全体としてはちょっとやばい領域に行ってしまったようにも感じる。しかし、いずれにせよ本書は大変に面白いので、奇現象が好きな御仁には超お勧めできる一冊だ。　というかこの面白さが判る人はいっぱいいるはずなのだ！とにかく読んで、奇現象の面白さを知って欲しい！