For the susceptible, this accumulation of horror stories makes this a frightening book. Dozens of witnesses can’t be mistaken, lying, or paranoid. Even if some are questionable or unbelievable, they all can’t be, or that seems to be his rationale. Keel cleverly builds on anecdote after anecdote. Many, not all, occur in the Ohio valley area centering on Point Pleasant, the focal point of the “Mothman” sightings, Point Pleasant was located on the West Virginia side of the Silver Bridge, which collapsed on December 15, 1967, due to a combination of factors, including heavy, backed-up traffic and a flawed piece of steel, the failure of which triggered the bridge’s collapse. Most of The Mothman Prophecies consists of such anecdotes, some with explanations, many without. This first anecdote shows how easy it is for superstitious people to misinterpret an ordinary event.
As it turns out, it was Keel himself, stranded and looking for assistance. A visit from the devil, one of his minions, or the angel of death? No. The couple who live in the house can’t help him - and three weeks later both are victims of the Silver Bridge collapse. The Mothman Prophecies opens with a mysterious event - an unusual-looking stranger knocks on a door in rural West Virginia during a storm to ask to use a phone. Ufology's decline and fall (OK it was never respectable and highbrow or scientific to begin with) into ET Roswell mania, alien abduction literalism and related is despite of Keel and refusing to heed his nuanced UFO and Fortean output.įor what it's worth, I disagree with the reviewer re MKULTRA and its association with Mothman, although they are tangentially related via a perverse Trickster motif, and the mythology that has built up around both.The Mothman Prophecies by John A Keel. Recommended for fun. Yet harping on about where Keel erred or blundered (as many Magonian pedants do, and to be fair it is necessary to point out Keel's faults) is to miss the bigger picture. Saying Keel is divisive to UFO cognoscenti, is stating the obvious. I feel it holds big clues to the mysterious and confounding Trickster dynamic of all things Magonian, yet paradoxically these clues only confound us further. Keel's book I consider one of the most important Fortean/paranormal/occult books of the late twentieth century. Thanks for the review, of a book that has spawned what is now a growing mythology, for better or worse.
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