The Mothman Prophecies by John A. Keel
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Book Reviews of The Mothman Prophecies
Book Review: 30 Years Later - still not debunked!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
The movie was good but forget about connecting that flick to this book. This book was first written in 1975 - NEARLY 30 YEARS AGO! If you have ever read "true story" UFO books before, then you have probably come across a lot of recent material that seems more plausible like "The Gulf Breeze Sightings by Ed Walters" and "Fire in the Sky: The Walton Experience by Travis Walton" but both of these books have since had their day - they have been pretty much debunked and are widely known as absolute hoaxes, if not downright fabrications at best. After 30 years, The Mothman Prophecies is still a SOLID story because of the amount of witnesses to the events, biological medical evidence and the final catastrophe that ended the phenomena. The only case that debunkers have against this story is that the Mothman could be an owl or a large species of crane, but eyewitnesses deny that it is any such animal.In fact the Mothman is not part of any category of cryptozoology. Much like the chupacabra, it is a zoological impossibility so the only possible realm of existence for this thing is genetic experimentation, an apparition or extraterrestrial. The latter category is what the Mothman falls into and this book is all about just that.
Keel went to Point Pleasant West Virginia in 1966 and 1967 to investigate a series of unexplained happenings that the towns people where experiencing at the time. Most importantly was the sighting of a creature that could only be described as some sort of a flying monster. This creature, dubbed the Mothman, was new to Point Pleasant but not to the history books and so Keel went digging around to see what he could find. While doing this he unearthed an astonishing amount of information on this mythical beast. At the same time there was some UFO activity in the area and Keel was the one who made the connection between the Mothman and the UFOs.
Essentially "The Mothman Prophecies" is a book that documents and reports on a HUGE UFO FLAP in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Coupled with this event where strange lights in the sky, encounters with the unknown, men in black, psychic phenomena, cattle mutilations and an impeding of Keels investigation by possible secret government agencies. Keel is only one of many people that where exposed to these events and although the book must be treated skeptically, it does open your mind because there is simply too much activity taking place to call it a hoax or work of fiction. Various people seemed to be attacked by the Mothman. Even an ambulance used for blood donation was chased and attacked by the thing. In short this is an excellent UFO book that still stands the test of time.
For years we have been waiting for its re-release and the movie has helped spur that along. When you compare this book to other true stories about UFOs you really begin to appreciate its value. I have read a lot of UFO books and books about strange encounters but this is the one that really got me gripped from start to finish. After reading this book it is very hard to see it as anything less than real and truthful. "Occam's Razor" tells us that in explaining a thing no more assumptions should be made than are necessary - but when applied to this book you must explain how everything occurred in this one region to so many people. Keel not only researches the Mothman but documents everything that happened at Point Pleasant during that fateful period of time.
It is a whopping story that is highly intriguing, absolutely baffling, horrific and extremely hard to dismiss as a work of fiction. It is not until you see the Mothman documentary that is on the movie DVD that you actually get to put faces to the people in this book and hear them talk about their experiences. This is first rate investigative reporting and an amazing story to boot that can't simply be dismissed as all in Keel's mind, or a hoax or fabrication. Strange things went on in Point Pleasant, West Virginia and the people where scared. Then it ended with a massive tragedy and the supernatural phenomena stopped. There is no doubt that something completely out-of-this-world occurred at Point Pleasant and you should not miss reading about it.
Exceptionally riveting journalism!
Book Review: These are the 100 proof XXX files
Summary: 5 Stars
You'd have thought it would be a quantum physicist, but it was the great biologist J.B.S. Haldane who said, "I suspect that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose." John Keel's most seminal work is dedicated to the proposition that the universe is even queerer than that. Is he for real? Is the universe for real? Did any of this mishegass, other than the briefly famous bridge collapse, really happen? I don't know; but there is no better guide into the surreal realms of "high strangeness" than Mr. Keel, and if you can suspend disbelief for a couple of hundred pages, you will at the very least have heard the creepiest campfire story ever told.More than any other living writer, Keel has inherited the slippery mantle of the late great Charles Fort. He shares Fort's daring, his sardonic sense of humor, his tender concern that "damned" facts not disappear into oblivion, his naive acceptance of every story that comes down the pike, his generous willingness to entertain any theory, and his delight in watching perverse phenomena blow every theory to smash. But if Keel's really a reincarnation, then Fort must have learned how to write during his last go-round in the Bardo, because Fort was hard slogging and this book is a zippy ride.
What Keel gives us is a set-piece blocking all exits from what might as well be known as Keel's Law: "Ufology is a subdiscipline of demonology." He gives us a community and a year, Point Pleasant West Virginia in 1966, where UFOs are nearly as common as fireflies, where eight-foot birds with glowing eyes engage in VTOLs without moving their wings, where Men In Black patrol the streets and synchronicities run riot, where insectoid voices control the horizontal and the vertical on phone lines AT&T thought belonged to them, where contactees receive eerily precise prophecies that are wrong about everything except their specifics. Keel draws no coherent lesson from all this, except that we are cockeyed optimists if we persist in thinking of reality as coherent.
Personally, I suspect that Keel's Law is right, and further that demonology is also a subdiscipline of psychology, but of a psychology that academia has not yet begun to penetrate, and would be well advised to look into carefully. (Check out Bryan's book "Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind", about an abductee conference that MIT was once tricked into hosting, for some initial clues about the trail such a psychology might follow.) In any case, this book demands a place on any shelf of UFO literature, however short. It represents a nutty, true-unbeliever extreme by dint of which the rest of the shelf, the skeptical and the puzzled and the true believers alike, will be kept honest.
Book Review: A different delight from the movie
Summary: 5 Stars
When I heard a movie was to be made of "The Mothman Prophecies" I was jubilant not only because of the opportunity to see how the Pt. Pleasant phenomena would play out on film but because I knew the movie would bring attention to the mesmerizing, enjoyable, book, which I have owned for decades. The filmmakers wove a fictional story-structure in which to inplant just a few of the bizarre happenings reported in John Keel's book, and I feel they did about about as well as I could have hoped. I was thoroughly engaged by storyline, acting, and the kernels of Keel's theories that were retained and presented. But readers need to understand the difference between a cohesive yarn set in the present and the disjointed happenings that took place decades ago in West Va. A goodly number of reviewers of the book have picked up on Keel's contention that these spooky thingees, whether sporting wings or dressed in funereal black and not quite "passing" as real folks, are mutable in form but consistent in intent: they love to mess with humans. Somewhere in interdimensional space or nonspace they probably get together and cackle with glee over how to torment us next. As an orthodox Christian (an Episcopalian who believes ALL that creed I recite weekly)I happen to believe that the weird beasts and beings one encounters and all the phenomena that surrounds them like Pigpen's dust clouds during a flap such as the one in Pt. Pleasant are, forgive the non-PC term, demonic. As in from Satan--as in hanging out with the fallen angels. I'm sure Mr. Keel, and many others who've enjoyed the basic contention of the book (and movie), would be more comfortable with the less religiously charged terms "psychic beings," "interdimensional creatures," and similar names. But Mr. Keel, the movie, and I are all headed to the same basic idea: you should avoid these things and ignore them as much as possible. Let them in an inch, and there goes YOUR neighborhood. As in the movie, don't answer that phone; as in the immortal words of Ogden Nash, "If called by a panther, don't anther!"Book Review: Ufology at its best!
Summary: 5 Stars
Usually with any book I can just jump on and write up a review as soon as I'm done reading. The Mothman Prophecies was a little more in depth to do such a thing, so it's taken me a little longer. I am one of those who has read the book and not seen the movie, so hopefully I'll give you some better insight than those who saw the movie first, then read the book. I'll give this review my best shot.This is the classic "don't judge a book by it's cover" type book. There's maybe 1 chapter on Mothman himself. There may seem to be no plot, but from what I got from the book, the plot is that Mothman was the base of the largest UFO "outbreak" in modern history. Keel goes on to describe how weird just go weirder. You must read this with an open mind in able to enjoy it. You can't start out with an open mind, and then shut it, because it'll be no good. Wait until you're done with the book before you say its trash. Certain things towards the end will perk you up.
The book isn't very well organized. I am very disappointed with this. Keel has way too many witnesses in able to be doing this, and it will screw you up at times. You may want to take gradual notes while reading just so you can go back and say, "Okay, now who was Jayes again?"
Keel also admits that this book was the first time that he let some information out as to techniques used, similarities in witnesses, etc. All of these things are pretty much known today, being that the book was published in 1975.
As far as "proof" goes... Nobody has proof, as far as I know, that extraterrestrials are really out there. Everyone who writes books on them are using THEIR ideas/theories. To me, John Keel has some better theories than a lot of writers out there.
If you want to hear plenty of accounts with UFO's and Men in Black involved, this is the book that you want. There are more stories in this book than I can even think of right now! Be sure to pick it up. Either you'll like it or you won't.
~Natalie Kilpatrick
Book Review: They're all different pieces of the same puzzle!
Summary: 5 Stars
If you want to read one book about how creepy the truly weird can become, start with this one. This book is probably the most frightening, bizarre book ever written in this field, by a reporter who was actually there when the events happened.Some of the reviewers that gave this book one star probably missed the point. The reason that Mothman, the men in black, and UFO reports are all in the book is that these are all different pieces of the same puzzle; they didn't all show up there together by coincidence. The book seems to jump around from topic to topic because all of these things were happening at the same time, and they are interrelated. Some readers probably don't see that (or don't want to), probably the same ones who saw the movie first and then decided to pick up the book, not realizing that "the rest of the story" is much stranger than the movie ever hinted at.
The movie, which only focused on psychic effects of the Mothman sightings, left out many important aspects of the mystery (mostly so they could add a fictional love story for Richard Gere.) A friend who hadn't read the book called the movie "incomplete", which is the best description I could give it too. But the book weaves all the bizarre elements together gradually as the events unfold, and they all need to be taken together to find some understanding of these phenomena. (Read Keel's classic "Operation Trojan Horse" for even more on solving these deep mysteries.)
Sure, this book isn't "All About Mothman", but that's a weak criticism. The movie wasn't about Mothman at all! At least the book has enough scary moments for a decade of Stephen King TV miniseries. That's more than enough reason to give it 5 stars, whether or not you believe in these types of phenomena. Read it before bedtime at your own risk.