Io9,com offers a reflection by Ed Grabianowski on the “Mothman Prophecies,” both the 1975 book by John Keel and the subsequent 2002 movie with Richard Gere, which has little in common except the title and infamous bridge collapse.

Grabianowski’s article is a level-headed examination of the “flap” of 1967, about which I can say little—I wasn’t there. Maybe it did all start with the sudden, startling flight of a barn owl, viewed by people keyed up by the excitement of social transgression and (probably) anticipated sexual activity.

(The “seven feet tall” part is possible too—I’ve mistaken a jackrabbit for a deer when one suddenly jumped up in front of me at dusk—your eyes can play tricks.)

John Keel’s subsequent book went way beyond those particular events, describing how even his act of trying to report on them put him into a sort of “twilight zone”  of inexplicable happenings.

Grabianowski is leery of its reporting:

Somehow, in five years, Keel went from a plain denial of any Mothman-Silver Bridge connection to one of the most elaborate and bizarre cryptid tales ever told, with himself as a central character. The clues to what sparked the change come, again, from the published letters of Keel and [Gray] Barker. To put it bluntly, in much of their paranormal and UFO writing they were “taking the piss.” As Barker put it in a 1970 letter, “the kookie books are about all that I can sell these days. I lost the ‘sensible’ subscribers…long ago, so I get a kick out of letting it reflect the utter mental illness of the field.” Lurid tales sold a hell of a lot better than dry investigations that didn’t find much of anything, and there was always some portion of the public gullible enough to swallow any story whole. So that was how they made their living.

I did not read Keel’s Mothman Prophecies until the early 1980s. (It is still in print.) When I did, I was surprised at the “twilight zone” stuff, because my own youthful adventures in investigating certain phenomena had put me into a similar zone, where, among other things, just being in “the field” caused people to act strangely, to turn on each other, become wildly paranoid, etc. No drugs involved.

So I had to respect the book for that aspect—whatever “Mothman” was, paranormal investigations can leave you with one foot on “the other side,” in a strange psychological space.

Here is a YouTube video of Keel speaking about Mothman, etc.

I have not been keeping up with xkcd, and I missed this.

Les Johnson’s article “The Aliens Are Not Among Us” reflects the way that I have come to think about physical aliens arriving in physical spaceships from other planets: Not very likely.

Let me be blunt: the chance of an alien species evolving, developing intelligence with the physical characteristics that allow them to make fire and use tools, evolving to the point at which they can travel through space (obeying nature’s speed limit), crossing immense distances, and just happening to reach Earth at a time that we, too, are starting to explore space is, within any reasonable rounding error, ZERO.

At this point, some might say, “But Les, you are now underestimating the effect of deep time! Science and technology are advancing at an amazing pace. Who’s to say that ET hasn’t found a way to tap the quantum vacuum energy (or some other breakthrough). Look how much we’ve accomplished in the last 500 years—maybe the extraterrestrials are a thousand years ahead of us technologically.”

My conclusion is unchanged. Look at the odds. It wouldn’t make a difference if they were 50,000 years ahead of us technologically. The odds of them being here, now, and with a technology that we would recognize are too small to worry about. Might such a super civilization have visited the Earth in the past? Perhaps. If so, then it is far more likely that they arrived to find an Earth populated with dinosaurs and not human beings.

“Nature’s speed limit” is the speed of light. Sci-fi writers have long postulated “hyperdrive” and “warp drive,” etc. as plot devices, to keep their spaceship crews from dying of old age in the course of a short story, but we are a long way from moving a physical space ship faster than the speed of light—and other cultures, if they exist, might not have crossed that barrier either. (All movie spaceships have nifty artificial gravity too—how?)

So what about “raw, unmediated ufology“? What is happening with these people who report such experiences?

Rule out hoaxes, misunderstandings (I’ve had those), and deliberate deception.

I favor the Jacques Vallée explanation. Perhaps “they” have always been here. Sometimes they tell us that they came from another planet, but it is more likely that they are inside the walls of our houses—or other spaces that appear larger to them than they do to us.

Imagine reading this article with the names changed.

Let’s see…

The Witches and Wizards Association of America (WITZAA), has deployed 500 witches to Washington and other parts of  the East Coast to prevent any tragic occurrence and ensure peaceful inauguration on January 15.

According to its national co-ordinator, Dr.  Raven Moonstone, the decision was taken after an emergency meeting at Salem, Mass. WITZAA also warned President Tim Pawlenty to take adequate security as bad  people and disgruntled politicians are planning to cause problems.

It would really spice up the writing at blogs like Pagan + Politics, no? (Did you ever notice the typo in their URL?) [UPDATE: At least the URL has been repaired.]

Apparently Dr. Iboi has learned to herd at least some cats.

Count on a librarian to find fascinating stuff on the Web—a list of predictions on how the world was going to end, going back to 4490 BCE.

(TEOTWAWKI: The end of the world as we know it.)

I still have a sentimental fondness for 1973 and Comet Kohoutek.

While eating breakfast, I saw a newspaper ad for Indo-European Sunflower Oil.

All I could think was, shouldn’t that be Sindhuh-Europe Sawel-bhel Elaia?

I think I was warped by playing the mad professor in Ionesco’s The Lesson in high school, with his rants on philology.

. . . that Gerald Gardner did not invent Wicca in the early 1950s.

Or not.

But it is one of a series of “50 Unexplainable Black & White Photos.”

Number 2 looks like some kind of fertility ritual to me.

Pulling pulks* up the trail

Last week was stressful. It felt good on Friday to drive with a friend into the mountains, meet some others, strap on skis, and head up a trail Away From It All.

Then I come  home to learn that actor Charlie Sheen is a “Vatican assassin warlock” and that some media witch in Salem, Mass., is working magic against him.

(Peg Aloi sees a tradition here.)

If today were not the deadline for submitting papers for the American Academy of Religion’s 2011 meeting—meaning that I have to watch what is coming in for Pagan Studies—I would be tempted to just re-wax my skis and climb back up there.

* Pulk: from Finnish pulkka.