Frightfully bad skepticism

 

Emerson Green (the only non-dogmatic, real skeptic on the internet) deconstructs three bad arguments against ghosts. Weirdly, they are Chinese and 2000 years old?! Presumably the internet skeptics who linked to the article about the old Chinese philosopher Wang Chong thought he really nailed it. 

Not so, argues Green. In fact, Wang´s arguments are rather weak and based on implicit assumptions about how ghosts "should" behave. Yet, no ghost-believer actually makes them and the assumptions aren´t even logical to begin with. In other words, the skeptics are attacking a strawman. Or perhaps boogeyman?

Green also points out that there *are* cases in which ghosts supposedly behaved in exactly the way Wang claimed they never do. Finally, he points out that the data-set (behavior of alleged ghosts) is compromised *by the skeptics themselves* (or hostile religious authorities) since they create a climate in which eye-witnesses are mocked and seen as crazy. So how the heck does a skeptic know how ghosts are supposed to behave in the first place?

As far as I know, Green doesn´t actually believe in ghosts, but he loves to explore the fringes of human knowledge. This is probably connected to his rejection of physicalism in favor of dualism or panpsychism. And also to his observation of a werewolf-like creature as a teenager!   

Elite human capital

 

Notorious libertarian gadfly Richard Hanania muses about the contradictions within the American far right.

Don't try this in Europe or the Middle East, Richie me boy.

Defeat racism by heightening the contradictions

 

Snakes in the sky

 

Kind of hard to believe, unless it´s a misidentified natural phenomenon of some sort. A skeptic suggestion at the time was that people in the Wild West were drinking too much moonshine!  

The sky serpents of 1873

Cold case

 

The clip above is an entertaining recap and debunking of the original Indrid Cold story, a 1960´s UFO/contactee case. 

In the public mind, Cold is often conflated with the Mothman, but the two paranormal entities are quite distinct. Or at least used to be! The only connection is that both the alien visitor Cold and the Mothman cryptid/demon appeared in West Virginia and were investigated by the same man, John Keel. 

The man who met Indrid Cold, Woody Derenberger, published a book about his experiences, "Visitors from Lanulos", which I reviewed on this blog five years ago (link below). 

After seeing the YouTube clip above, I can only conclude that this "cold case" is even colder than I expected. Derenberger´s daughter Taunia Derenberger-Bowman even started a rumour on the web that Indrid Cold had passed away?! This after some UFO investigators apparently took her a bit too seriously...

Still, a somewhat interesting yarn if you have nothing else to do on a Friday night (Swedish time).  

Welcome, Indrid Cold

Wild and wonderful

 

I linked to this bizarre news item before. Here is the WV governor caught on camera with his famous bulldog! 

Deliverance Dog

Credit: Office of the Governor/Michael N Todaro/Getty Images

I´m not sure if this makes people less prejudiced towards West Virginia...

Governor of West Virginia tells Bette Midler to kiss his bulldog´s "hiney"

No nostalgia

So I just finished watching "Super 8", a supposed monster thriller directed by J J Abrams and produced by none other than Steven Spielberg. I admit that I found it near-nauseating, but not because of any monster! 

Judging by Wikipedia´s all-knowing entry, "Super 8" is intended for adults. That is, adults are supposed to watch it and nostalgically think back at their childhood and early teen years. Perhaps they are also supposed to remember "E.T.", who can tell? I haven´t watched "E.T." since about the Copper Stone Age, and my understanding of and identification with a certain kind of American geek culture is about zero, so I can´t say I felt any nostalgia factor coming my way. 

Quite the contrary, I´m frankly sick and tired of "US suburbia", "the small town in Ohio", "the brave police officer" and similar Hollywood tropes. The film´s attempt to be "socially conscious" (the working class guy with a drinking problem) is downright cringey, and Joe´s quasi-tragic quasi-relationship to Alice almost bored me to death. The "zombie film" shown during the end credits is actually much better than the real flick!

The only light in the tunnel (pun almost intended) is the monster, which (or is it a who) turns out to be an intelligent alien on the run from evil military operatives, trying to find a way to reassemble its space ship. (I suppose I did see some hidden references to "It" and "Alien" in this part of the story. Thank you.) I also wonder about the cool church (or is it a Mormon temple) in the little West Virginian town where "Super 8" was filmed... 

Cryptids and Mormons, OK, maybe that tells us something about *my* geeky interests, LOL. 

When Mothman comes to town

"The Mothman of Point Pleasant" is a surprisingly pleasant (as in non-sensationalist) documentary about paranormal phenomena in West Virginia, mostly in the small town of Point Pleasant at the Ohio state border. It´s done from a sympathetic perspective, and features interviews with eye witnesses. Other people featured include a guy who operates "the world´s only Mothman museum" and some former newspaper reporters. We also get to see the local Mothman festival, footage of sandhill cranes, and an interview with a descendant of Chief Cornstalk. The only people (or perhaps non-people) left out of this production are the actual Mothmen, but then, it´s difficult to get an appointment with a supernatural entity of the winged-humanoid persuasion...

Mothman is a world celebrity by this stage (I live in Sweden but read about Mothman, Point Pleasant and the Silver Bridge already as a kid in a UFO book), but the documentary nevertheless manages to present facts I never heard before. For instance, the infamous curse of Cornstalk turns out to be a modern legend, first attested in writing during the 1920´s. Even more interesting is the fact that "birdmen" were part of Appalachian folklore. A birdman was described as an enormous bird with a human head, and dark reddish feathers that glistened in the sunlight. From 1914 to the 1940´s, people started to actually see these birdmen in various contexts. The connection to the Mothman sightings of the 1960´s is obvious. By that time, the winged humanoids were sometimes associated with UFOs or seen during UFO flaps - the phenomenon had clearly evolved (make of that what you wish). Soon, MIBs or Men in Black also entered the fray. 

In passing, "The Mothman of Point Pleasant" also mentions the famous UFO contactee case of Woody Derenberger, which took place in Mineral Wells (not Point Pleasant). Many people associate the Derenberger case with Mothman anyway, since the case was mentioned by John Keel in his classical book "The Mothman Prophecies". The UFO occupant called himself Indrid Cold, a name immortalized by the 2002 film also called "The Mothman Prophecies", where Cold and the Mothman have been conflated into one character. 

Some of the Mothman encounters detailed in this documentary are extremely difficult to debunk as meetings with cranes or owls, so unless you think the witnesses were lying through their teeth or completely hysterical (always a possibility, I guess) *something* strange is going on in the Ohio River valley! After the disastrous collapse of the Silver Bridge in December 1967, Mothman and UFO sightings became rare to non-existent. Today, the elusive winged humanoid seems to linger mostly as a pop culture phenomenon. Or at obscure Swedish blogs like this one!

Recommended. 

Encounter with the fey

"The Mothman Prophecies" is a 2002 film featuring Richard Gere as the involuntarily roving reporter John Klein, who gets entangled in a series of paranormal events. The film is freely based on John Keel´s 1975 book, also titled "The Mothman Prophecies". So freely, in fact, that almost nothing remains of the original story (such as it was), except the paranoia and the idea that the supernatural is fundamentally incomprehensible to mere mortals. In the film, the character "Alexander Leek" is closer to the real life John Keel than the reporter "John Klein". Note that "Leek" is Keel spelled backwards! 

Keel did investigate a series of weird events in West Virginia shortly before the 1967 collapse of the Silver Bridge in Point Pleasant. A winged humanoid monster later known as the Mothman had been sighted by several people in the community. Keel also looked into an unrelated UFO case in another part of West Virginia, where a farmer claimed to have recieved messages from an alien entity named Indrid Cold. In the 2002 film, Mothman and Indrid Cold have been conflated into the same character. Indeed, it seems that all supernatural visitors from Keel´s book have contributed to the film´s version of Indrid. 

As already mentioned, the main point of the film seems to be the eminently Keelian claim that the supernatural dimension, while very real, is also completely unfathomable. Its denizens act in ways that are frequently illogical, baffling or morally ambivalent from a human perspective. Is "Indrid Cold" an angel or a demon? Cold causes a car crash which severly hurts Klein´s wife and drives the character Gordon mad until the madness kills him, but eventually saves Klein and his new love interest Connie from the disaster at Silver Bridge. Why? Nobody knows. Leek tells Klein that the supernatural creatures might not be wiser or smarter than us - they just see more of reality, a bit like a guy in a high building sees more of the city than a pedestrian. Of course, even such an elevated observer can be rational, but the problem with "Indrid" is that he doesn´t seem to be. 

The real life Keel drew the disturbing conclusion that the "ultraterrestrials" are part of a malevolent cosmic control grid over humanity, and in a later book even suggested that God himself might be insane! However, Keel also had a more interesting idea: Mothman, Indrid and their associates are fairies or fey, trickster-like creatures from folklore known for their abilities to shape shift. This made him unpopular in UFO-logical circles, since the average believer in UFOs insist that they are literal space craft from alien worlds in the physical universe. To Keel, this is just the latest form the fey have taken to confuse the human observer. As Indrid explains to a skeptical Klein in the film, when the latter asks how Indrid looks like: "It depends on who is looking"...

Of course, in order to believe this solution to the mystery, you have to accept the existence of fairies in the first place. Even apart from the fact that it´s not much of a solution anyway, since we still don´t know where the fey are at.

But then, we really don´t know anything else important either, so why should this be the exception?

Another victim of the Coronavirus

 It seems the Coronavirus has spread from County Cork to US fly-over country, somewhere close to Banjo Deliverance, WV... 

I¨m a hard coal miner, ANTHRACITE

Next year´s POTUS election will be even more crazy than 2016. Just watch! 

In Trump´s country

“Coal Mining in the American Heartland” is an interesting documentary about miners in West Virginia, USA. (It´s available on YouTube until 15 August 2019.) The producers have tried to give as objective view of West Virginia mining communities as possible. We get to meet both traditional working class families who staunchly support Donald Trump, a Cherokee activist who just as staunchly opposes strip mining and environmental destruction, and a police officer in a near-ghost town hit by the opiate crisis who has sued the pharmaceutical companies he believes are responsible.

Unsurprisingly, the job as a coal miner turns out to be extremely dangerous, both in the short run (the constant risk of accidents) and the long run (black lung). However, the miners are also among the best paid workers in the nation – one of the miners interviewed, who hardly has a high school education, earns 5000 dollars per month! Very little is said about the union, the near-legendary UMWA, but I get the impression that the workers interviewed haven´t joined it. Trump has deregulated the coal industry, which is good for the workers (and the mining bosses) but bad for the environment, although it´s not clear how effective the old regulations *really* were – probably not much, judging by the interview with the Native activist.

The most peculiar part of “Coal Mining” deals with the snake-handlers or snake-throwers, an extreme Pentecostal revivalist movement. The supporters handle dangerous snakes and drink literal poison during the services! The local congregation is very small, though. Everyone in the featured communities seems to be White, except one of the snake-handlers, who is African American.

I liked this production, which tries to be as non-judgmental as possible towards a part of America usually considered among the more backward parts of “fly over country”. Recommended.

Take me to your leader

I recently took a funny personality quiz at Cryptid Wiki, called "What cryptid are you". Apparently, I'm the...Flatwoods Monster?!

Here is the description of this unlikely creature: "Like the Mothman, another cryptid from West Virginia, the Flatwoods monster is very mysterious. With a spooky appearance, the monster is believed to be of extraterrestrial nature. First sighted in 1952, this reptilian creature appeared to be mostly machine. Highly intelligent and logical, the Flatwoods Monster is all objective."

Can confirm!

Some say it thundered

On 25 July, 1977 in Lawndale, Logan County, Illinois, 10-year old Marlon Lowe was attacked by a gigantic raptor with a 3-meter wing span that lifted him 60 cm off the ground and carried him for 12 meters. The boy was eventually saved by his mother. Indeed, his experience has become the classical Thunderbird encounter. It was a close one!

There is only one problem: according to modern science, Thunderbirds aren't supposed to exist. The creature is considered to be purely mythological.

Mark A. Hall is a cryptozoologist who believes that Thunderbirds are real, flesh-and-blood creatures. His book contain a lot of reports, both old and new, about birds carrying off people or livestock. Several modern reports come from Alaska, where birds with the even more dramatic wingspan of 4 meters have been reported.

The problem is that Thunderbirds are a world-wide phenomenon. The author mentions legends from Siberia, Russia proper, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, New Zealand, Fiji... More recently, Thunderbirds have been sighted in Iran, southern and eastern Africa, England and even Norway. If these outsized raptors are so universally well-known and have an almost global range, how come we don't see them more often? Why haven't any bird-watcher spotted them? What do they eat? Why don't they swoop down on carrion on a regular basis, scaring away all the vultures and crows in the process?

As usual in cases like this, there are only two possible answers. One is that they don't exist. They really are mythological creatures. The other is that we are dealing with some kind of paranormal phenomenon. We have a bunch of Unidentified Flapping Objects on our hands! The least likely possibility is that we are dealing with an exceedingly rare, flesh-and-blood bird who just happens to be substantially larger than a condor or sea eagle... (And who has survived all over the world, despite being rare.)

Hall also promotes the idea that an unknown, monstrous owl lives in the forests of eastern United States. He calls it Bighoot and believes that it may be responsible for the Mothman observations. Apparently, Bighoot is a master of disguises, and resembles a very large tree trunk when it sits on the ground!

OK, I suppose anything is possible in the state of West Virginia, but there are obvious pitfalls in explaining one unknown with another! Bighoot?

I decided to award Hall's book three stars, since this seems to be one of the few books available on the subject of Thunderbirds. However, "Thunderbirds" is so badly edited, that two stars would have been a more logical option. It may not be a book for the birds, but perhaps another writer should try his hand on this subject?

So what happened in Lawndale that summer day back in 1977? The truth is that we don't know, and probably never will, unless a Thunderbird is sighted by a group of respected ornithologists. Perhaps we don't *want* to know? We do know that Marlon Lowe still stands by his story. He is interviewed on the episode "Birdzilla" of the TV series "MonsterQuest". With that, we must unfortunately close the case for now and await further developments...

What about the dwarf, mate?

"Animal X" was an Australian TV series with some kind of cult status. I never bothered watching the original, but "Animal X: Natural Mystery Unit" is apparently a U.S.-oriented version of the same show, albeit still with Australians on the cast.

The concept is simple: Bill Kerr a.k.a. the Mission Controller sends out two young investigators, David and Nathalie, to investigate alleged sightings of Bigfoot, ghosts, aliens and other paranormal creatures. Kerr tries to make it all seem spookier than it actually is, while Dave and Nat turn out to be singularly non-charismatic. Not even the disco beat in the background can save the day. But sure, if you are well-disposed towards shows of this kind, I suppose you could get *something* out of it, at the very least a good laugh!

In "Winged Creatures", the team visits Point Pleasant, West Virginia and a town in Maine weirdly called...wait for it...Pleasant Point. Jungian sync? They also make a trip to Mexico. Then, it's back to another part of Maine to meet the dean of cryptozoology, Loren Coleman for some kind of closure. The mission? To find some explanation for the bizarre winged humanoids reported from various parts of North America. Of these, Mothman of Point Pleasant is arguably the best known, mostly due to John Keel's classical blockbuster "The Mothman Prophecies". One of the original eye witnesses, Linda Scarberry, claims to have seen both winged humanoids and transparent Men in Black. Scarberry reports that Keel told her that the MIBs wanted to kidnap her child, since five women in Point Pleasant became pregnant simultaneously after the Mothman encounters?!

Some sceptics have attempted to explain away Mothman as a barn owl (sounds familiar?), but Coleman can do better. He believes that Mothman is an unknown, truly *gigantic* species of owl. Bighoot, not Bigfoot. But what about the transparent MIBs and threatened child nappings? What about the evil dwarf observed by Keel on more than one occasion? Well...? Much as I like the idea of a thunderowl, it doesn't seem to cover all the bases, even apart from being an example of explaining one unknown with another...

Here, "Animal X - Natural Mystery Unit: Winged Creatures" ends. Although I can't say this show is my cup of Australian tea, I nevertheless give it three stars for showing us the absolute fringes of cryptozoology.

I mean, winged humanoids...? ;-)

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!

Games non-people play

"Mothman: The facts behind the legend" is a collection of interviews, newspaper clippings and letters about a series of bizarre events in Point Pleasant, WV 1966-67. Some local residents were seeing UFOs and a bird-like monster nicknamed Mothman by the media. The paranormal happenings were followed by the tragic collapse of the Silver Bridge, killing 46 people. The events were immortalized and turned into local folklore by John Keel's book "The Mothman Prophecies", first published in 1975. In 2002, Hollywood released a film with the same title, starring Richard Gere.

But what really happened in Point Pleasant? "Mothman: The facts behind the legend" doesn't give an answer, but it does present the reader with a lot of interesting material about the case.

First, there are original newspaper articles from 1966-67 about the purported UFO sightings and (of course) the sensational encounters with the winged monster itself. The first article about the creature later known as Mothman was published in The Point Pleasant Register on November 16, 1966 and somewhat facetiously titled "Couples See Man-Sized Bird...Creature...Something!" The original four witnesses were Linda Scarberry, Roger Scarberry, Steve Mallette and Mary Mallette. The local story about Mothman went national almost immediately. Three days after the Scarberry-Mallette encounter with "the red eyed creature", the U.S. armed forces in Vietnam could read about it in "Pacific Stars and Stripes", where the Mothman report was featured on the front page immediately below more important news about UN threats against Ian Smith's Rhodesia!

I couldn't help noticing the sexist conventions of the day, since Linda and Mary are frequently not mentioned by name in the newspaper reports. In one article, the four eye witnesses are called "Mr. and Mrs. Steve Mallette and Mr. and Mrs. Roger Scarberry", in another they are "Steve Mallette and Roger Scarberry and their wives". Ironically, it was Linda Scarberry who would become the most important eye witness, since the three others eventually refused to give further interviews.

Second, the book contains previously unpublished reports on the original Mothman encounter, letters from John Keel to Linda Scarberry and her parents, and a recent (2001) interview with Linda made by the editors.

I felt the plot (or fog) thickening after reading this book. For instance, Scarberry's present account of her encounter with Mothman seems to be embellished compared to her original story, both as reported by the newspapers and as reported by herself in a private notebook. The original report didn't mention that Mothman had arms, in fact Scarberry's private notes explicitly says that it *didn't* have arms. There is also a classic sketch of the creature made by Scarberry, which doesn't show any arms. Nor did the original report say that one of Mothman's wings had gotten stuck in some wires. As far as I can make out, these details aren't mentioned in Keel's book, either. Yet, in Scarberry's recent statements (both in this book and elsewhere), the arms and the stuck wing are important parts of the story. Of course, if the present version is correct, Mothman would be more human-like, while in the original story the creature is more bird-like. Sceptics, of course, claim that Mothman may indeed have been a misidentified bird...

The newspaper clips does confirm one of Keel's claims: the Mothman sightings took place concurrently with a UFO flap. However, Keel also claims that the town of Point Pleasant was virtually besieged by Men in Black (MIBs) who harassed witnesses and investigators, including Linda Scarberry and the local newspaper columnist Mary Hyre. This was not mentioned in the local newspapers. Admittedly, this doesn't prove much either way - perhaps Scarberry and Hyre were afraid of being seen as paranoid, and therefore kept quite about their bizarre experiences. Hyre died in 1970, five years before Keel's book was published. In the 2001 interview, Scarberry does indeed claim to have been harassed by some kind of supernatural entities, and reveals details not mentioned in Keel's book.

This brings me to the most interesting and curious part of the story: the close relationship between John Keel and Linda Scarberry. During his investigations, Keel quite literally lived in the house of Scarberry's parents. So did Linda and her husband. Keel lived "upstairs" while "Mr. and Mrs. Roger Scarberry" lived in the basement! Judging by both Keel's book and Linda Scarberry's 2001 interview, Linda is well-versed in ufological and paranormal lore, from MIBs and alien abductions to exorcisms and government conspiracies. I think it's obvious that John Keel groomed her. While this doesn't disprove that Linda Scarberry had paranormal experiences, it does make the case somewhat more complex...

In a letter to Linda's parents, we get a glimpse of Keel's own state of mind during the period in question: "Hope you are all okay. The invisible characters are playful but harmless *unless* you smell a very strong odor of some kind. Don't let 'em upset you. They feed on fear. If you panic, they get much worse. If you have a very strong feeling that someone is around...try talking to them. Tell them very firmly that you know they are there and you wish they would go away. (I know this sounds insane so please don't repeat it to "outsiders". They'll think we're all nuts.)". In a letter to Linda herself, Keel writes: "Mary [i.e. Mary Hyre] has been bothered by a lot of cranks and weirdos and she has apparently taken some of them seriously. My own life is threatened by some nut about once a week. If I took them seriously, I would have been in the booby hatch long ago. When such threats fail, `they' often take to issuing threats to people who know me". In the 2001 interview, Scarberry reveals that Keel told her to carry out what was essentially an exorcism, featuring a gilded crucifix. Keel suspected that the MIBs wanted to abduct Linda's baby! The crucifix stopped the demonic beings from harming the toddler, something Scarberry claims to have witnessed up front. That Keel was rapidly getting paranoid is obvious from "The Mothman Prophecies", but many of the details seem to be new.

So what happened in Point Pleasant 50 years ago? A sceptic would surely say that the UFOs and Mothmen were misidentified natural phenomena, later fuelled by mass hysteria, while the MIBs and "aliens" mostly existed in John Keel's imagination. Keel then influenced some of the local residents, most notably Mary Hyre and Linda Scarberry. Of course, the MIBs might also have been real people, presumably cranks who believed in UFOs and demanded information from eye witnesses. In his book, Keel admits that such very human kooks were all over West Virginia at the time, and that *he* was once confused with the Devil during a nocturnal excursion.

Forteans, true believers in the paranormal and perhaps evangelical Christians will presumably have other explanations. About a dozen different species of birds have been proposed as an explanation for the Mothman sightings (including Canadian geese?!), but some of the reported behaviour of Mothman doesn't fit any bird known to science. Apparitions, haunting and mysterious lights in the sky often go together. And sure, crucifixes are said to scare away the Evil One...

Perhaps the verdict of the reader on this complex case will be wholly dependent on his or her fundamental worldview.

Such are the games people play. And, I suppose, non-people. ;-)

The search for Sugarman, I mean, Mothman

"MonsterQuest" is arguably the most boring monster show on U.S. television. In this episode, they manage to make Mothman (of all scary, paranormal creatures!) boring, too. This despite having original witness Linda Scarberry, author Jeff Wamsley, Fortean investigator Nick Redfern and notorious sceptic Joe Nickell on the show. Perhaps a guest appearance by Apol or Princess Moon Owl would have livened up the proceedings a little bit? And then, maybe not. For those who saw the creature, Mothman aint no joke...

Sceptic Joe Nickell demonstrates, with the help of illuminated Mothman models, that eye witnesses aren't very good at judging hight or distance, certainly not at night. One witness thinks the super-Mothman model (about 9 feet tall) is only 16 inches! He believes Mothman is simply a misidentified Barred Owl (not to be confused with the Barn Owl, another prime suspect in cases like this). Meanwhile, Nick Redfern tries to find Mothman in the hills of Wisconsin, where the monster was recently spotted. He only finds deer. A police investigator interviews some of the witnesses, including Scarberry, and concludes that whatever people are seeing, it looks pretty similar across several decades... If it looks like a Barred Owl is, perhaps, another matter entirely.

Here, the story ends, more inconclusively than ever.

Geezus, you'll probably learn more about the bird-man watching the Hollywood blockbuster "The Mothman Prophecies", starring Richard Gere!

Only two stars for the valiant knights of cryptozoology on a quest...

The dark side

I always assumed that Loren Coleman belonged to the moderate, flesh-and-blood, Bigfoot-is-an-ape school of cryptozoology. Maybe he did once? In this book, by contrast, the author goes out on a limb, paying homage more than once to John Keel, the bete noire (pun unintended) of both cryptozoology and ufology.

Despite the Keelian angle, only one chapter of "Mothman and other curious encounters" deals with the bizarre events that supposedly took place in Point Pleasant in 1966-67. The rest of the book deals with lizard monsters, mad gassers, chupacabras, werewolves, orange demons with spindly fingers, black dogs, the Flatwoods Monster, Batsquatch...well, should I continue? Coleman even takes the Men in Black seriously! The only "classical" cryptids mentioned in the book are the Thunderbirds.

Coleman doesn't know what to make of all this (as behoves a good Fortean, I suppose), but he does seem open to the "ultraterrestrial" hypothesis of Keel, according to which all these creatures are fundamentally similar and hail from a supernatural reality ("the superspectrum") beyond our own. But what is their purpose?

Several chapters are devoted to decoding the "message" of the daimonic creatures. Thus, Coleman claims that monsters usually show themselves on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and that they have a special affinity for June 24, St. John's Day or Midsummer. He mentions the phenomenon of flaps, and the idea that certain areas ("windows") are more susceptible to paranormal activity than others. One such place is Skookum, a valley in Oregon notorious for its Bigfoot activity.

Keel believed that the ultraterrestrials lived in a kind of symbiotic relationship with humans. They feed on our energy and are therefore dependent on us. In one sense, they are demons: "ufology is really demonology" is a classical Keel quip. The creatures often predict disasters, some of which seem to happen. On the other hand, they also play a role in humanity's spiritual development, forcing us over the threshold to the superspectrum kicking and screaming. If we listen to them, they will become divine messengers and harbingers of a positive transformation. Coleman summarizes Keel's views in a remarkably objective manner.

If Coleman wants to pursue this subject further, perhaps he should rise above Keel and read, say, Patrick Harpur?

I can't say "Mothman and other curious encounters" thrilled me. Perhaps I already read too many books on this subject. Perhaps it's just badly edited, with Coleman jumping back and forth between descriptions of sightings, tributes to his old friend Keel, and attempts to analyze the ghost stories he has collected. The analysis isn't very deep. At one point, the author jokingly says that many of his readers will accuse him of joining "the dark side" - I suppose belief in Mothman and MIBs are no-noes in more respectable cryptozoological circles.

However, Coleman is clearly not fully indoctrinated in the mysteries of the eternal twilight...yet! When he joins us, I'll let you know through the usual channels...

Be afraid, kids, be very afraid! :-0

The search for the Flatwoods Monster

This episode of MonsterQuest, "Lizard Monster", deals with one of the most bizarre monster or UFO sightings ever reported, the 1952 "Flatwoods Monster" case in Braxton County, West Virginia. Witnesses reported encountering a UFO and a lizard-like humanoid hovering in a small, metallic craft. The alien even attempted to poison the witnesses with gas!

For rather obvious reasons, a case of this kind is virtually impossible to investigate in any meaningful way (at least not today, 60 years later). "MonsterQuest" makes a brave attempt, however. They collect samples from the site of the encounter, search the area for gases which can cause hallucinations, analyze the Starchild skull (a supposed alien-human hybrid) and collect eyewitness reports of later meetings with the monster.

The whole thing feels very forced, as if the producer didn't really know what to come up with next. For instance, Starchild was debunked long ago (it's a human skull). The sceptic Joe Nickell, often featured on documentaries like this one, believes that the original witnesses saw a meteorite impact and a barn-owl, and that hysteria made them fill in the monstrous details and caused the "poisoning". The later observations of the Flatwoods Monster are simply cultural conditioning.

Maybe. But then, that's what they always say, isn't it? ;-)

I'm not sure how to rate this episode. "MonsterQuest" isn't my favourite monster show on TV anyway. Two stars?