{"id":2885,"date":"2011-07-10T20:08:07","date_gmt":"2011-07-11T02:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2885"},"modified":"2011-07-10T20:08:07","modified_gmt":"2011-07-11T02:08:07","slug":"mothman-john-keel-and-weirdness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2885","title":{"rendered":"Mothman, John Keel, and Weirdness"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Grabianowski’s article is a level-headed examination <\/a>of the “flap” of 1967, about which I can say little\u2014I 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.<\/p>\n

(The “seven feet tall” part is possible too\u2014I’ve mistaken a jackrabbit for a deer when one suddenly jumped up in front of me at dusk\u2014your eyes can play tricks.)<\/p>\n

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”\u00a0 of inexplicable happenings.<\/p>\n

Grabianowski is leery of its reporting:<\/p>\n

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<\/a>. 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\u2026long 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I did not read Keel’s Mothman Prophecies<\/em> until the early 1980s. (It is still in print<\/a>.) 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.<\/p>\n

So I had to respect the book for that aspect\u2014whatever “Mothman” was, paranormal investigations can leave you with one foot on “the other side,” in a strange psychological space.<\/p>\n

Here is a YouTube video of Keel speaking about Mothman,<\/a> etc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2014I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[22],"class_list":["post-2885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-weirdness"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-Kx","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1173,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1173","url_meta":{"origin":2885,"position":0},"title":"John Keel Has Died","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 7, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Author and Fortean John Keel died Friday in New York.Not long after his signature book, The Mothman Prophecies was published, I saw on the Colorado Springs downtown library's new-books shelf and passed it by--repeatedly--because the title sounded too weird.From the Cryptomundo obituary:After years of writing parts of the story in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"books\"","block_context":{"text":"books","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=books"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=chascli-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0765341972","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4548,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4548","url_meta":{"origin":2885,"position":1},"title":"Mothman: High Strangeness in 1967","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 27, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The Mothman Prophecies, the late John Keel's first-person account of a paranormal investigation in West Virginia, may not answer the question of exactly what the Mothman phenomenon was, but it remains one of the best accounts of the shadowy world of paranormal investigation itself. (Skip the movie, except for laughs.)\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1975,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1975","url_meta":{"origin":2885,"position":2},"title":"The CIA, UFOs, Fairies, etc.","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 14, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I am reading Mirage Men: An Adventure into Paranoia, Espionage, Pyschological Warfare, and UFOs, by Mark Pilkington. (There is a related documentary film.) Small disclaimer: I met Mark Pilkington a few years ago in England. We did not talk about UFOs nor about the fact that he was one of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"fairies\"","block_context":{"text":"fairies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=fairies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4628,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4628","url_meta":{"origin":2885,"position":3},"title":"The Multivalent Mothman","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 28, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Last month I wandered off into Mothman territory, but here is more, from the editorial blog of the Bulletin for the Study of Religion. There is an annual Mothman festival in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and two entries deal with it: \u201cWest Virginia is one big portal!\u201d Reflections on the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13414,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13414","url_meta":{"origin":2885,"position":4},"title":"Bigfoot on the High Wire?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 13, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Everything is paranormal these days. Even Stormy Daniels, the porn actress whom Donald Trump made famous, also bills herself as a paranomal investigator and medium. (\"How to arouse a ghost\"?) Driving past a shopping mall parking lot last week, I saw an assortment of new-looking trailers and motorhomes and circus\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"North America\"","block_context":{"text":"North America","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=north-america"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/paranormal-girl-240x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10448,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10448","url_meta":{"origin":2885,"position":5},"title":"Pixie Problems, or Working Things Out with the \u2018Cousins\u2019 (4)","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 30, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 So what are fairies? How do you research them? Just as important, do you even want to have anything to do with them? Each of those is a book or article-length question, so I will paint with a very broad brush here. Nevertheless, fairies\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"fairies\"","block_context":{"text":"fairies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=fairies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=soutrocknatub-20&l=am2&o=1&a=1401000819","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2885"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2888,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2885\/revisions\/2888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}