A daimonic reality

"The Mothman Prophecies" is a classical (and bizarre) book, first published in 1975. The author, John Keel, was a well known paranormal investigator. "Visitors from space" is the British edition of the same book. These days, there is even a Hollywood film titled "The Mothman Prophecies", starring Richard Gere. A new edition of the original book has been published, spouting the film promotional poster on its cover, including Gere's name, as if *he* had something to do with Keel's oeuvre! He has not - as usual in Hollywood contexts, any connection between book and film feels somewhat coincidental.

Keel's work is ostensibly about Mothman, a strange (and presumably paranormal) creature spotted around the small town of Point Pleasant in West Virginia in the mid-1960's. The town made national headlines in 1967, when its local landmark, the Silver Bridge, collapsed during rush-hour, killing 46 people. However, only a small portion of "The Mothman Prophecies" is about the actual Mothman. Keel claims that Point Pleasant and the surrounding countryside lived in fear of the supernatural for several years before the Silver Bridge tragedy. UFOs were seen in the sky. Men in Black (MIBs) invaded the area, harassing witnesses and investigators, including Keel himself. Various flesh-and-blood ufology kooks also descended on Point Pleasant, and at one point Keel was mistaken for the Devil by a farmer and his wife! It seems that the mysterious Mothman (a winged humanoid or bird-like creature with glowing red eyes) was only a small part of the equation...

Keel also deals with unrelated cases. Woodrow Derenberger, who claimed contact with an alien named Indrid Cold from the planet Lanulos in the Ganymede galaxy, is prominently featured. So are a group of Long Island contactees, including a prankster named Princess Moon Owl (who apparently claimed to be an actual alien). Keel is harassed by one Apol, who also claims to be an alien, and gets his phone in New York City tapped by either government agents or MIBs. Or both? His relationship with the contactees strikes me as somewhat odd, especially since he accuses them of being brain-washed by "ultraterrestrials". Yet, Keel just can't let go of the contactee cases, eventually being turned into a near-paranoid, nervous wreck by various bizarre "messages" from Apol and his friends. Or so he says. Sceptics have accused Keel of making up most of the book's contents, and the primary witnesses were already deceased by the time "The Mothman Prophecies" was published.

Despite this, I admit that I found the book fascinating - on a second reading. The first time I read it, I just found it absurd (see my review of the 2002 edition). True or not, "The Mothman Prophecies" do give a good glimpse into the UFO subculture with its well-meaning but comically absurd contactees, doomsday cults, rampant paranoia, and scores of amateurish investigators roaming "fly-over country" in search of a scoop. Keel claims that poor Derenberger's farm was overrun with trigger-happy crazies who wanted to "bag themselves an alien"! I can only wonder how many of the supposed MIBs harassing UFO witnesses in Point Pleasant were real, flesh-and-blood ufologists with bad bedside manners. Keel himself fits right in, admitting at one point that his unusual looks and somewhat idiosyncratic behaviour might have triggered the rumour that the Devil was on the loose in West Virginia...

Keel became controversial in ufology circles by his denial of the extraterrestrial hypothesis. Instead, he regards the aliens and their MIB muscle as "ultraterrestrials", no different from fairies, demons, Bigfoot and other mysterious creatures which have roamed our planet since time immemorial. At one point in the book, he suggests that paranormal entities are really thought-forms created by humanity, perhaps unconsciously or subconsciously. However, he also has a more sinister hypothesis, according to which paranormal creatures are part of a "control system" reprogramming and brainwashing humanity for its own ulterior purposes. Keel points to the trickster-like character of Apol and other supposed aliens as proof of this hypothesis, especially their failed prophecies. In the book, one such prophecy claimed that all of the United States would suffer a black-out in December 1967, at the exact moment when LBJ was supposed to light the White House Christmas tree! A more sinister prophecy talked about the murder of Pope Paul and the end of the world...

Keel is also astute when pointing to the continuum between "nuts-and-bolts" UFO observations and supposed meetings with bizarre creatures such as flying humans, big birds, hairy monsters, etc. Critics often regard the UFO phenomenon as several different phenomena believed to be a single problem due to cultural conditioning. While there is some truth in this, another aspect of the problematique points in the exact opposite direction: UFOs aren't a separate problem at all, but part of a much wider paranormal spectrum which gets increasingly absurd the more one looks into it. Ufologists would love to think that "space ships" or "aliens" is a special, almost respectable problem distinct from Mothmen, Thunderbirds or evil dwarfs harassing small town tabloid reporters, but the reality might be the exact opposite...

People who find books like "The Mothman Prophecies" believable, might want to see Mothman, Indrid Cold and their friends as manifestations of a daimonic reality intruding on our mundane existence. Sceptics who think Keel made it all up, might want to ponder why myths of this kind have an almost archetypal character. Has Keel been possessed by...well, a daimonic reality, perhaps? The rest of us can simply enjoy the show, or gasp at the events that supposedly rocked the quiet of Point Pleasant almost 50 years ago...

"The Mothman Prophecies" a.k.a. "Visitors from Space" isn't a literary masterpiece by any standard, but due to its status as a controversial cult classic, I nevertheless award it...four stars!