"Bob Durant, an airline pilot and Fortean, once said that Operation Trojan Horse was the 'most discussed and least read book in ufology.' I'm afraid he is right," writes John A. Keel in a letter to The Fortean Times. "Worldwide sales of the book were negligible. Barely 2,000 copies were sold here in the USA." [1]
Years later, in the IllumiNet edition of The Mothman Prophecies, he continues his tale of woe: "Fifty percent of the original manuscript was edited out by faceless editors in tiny cubicles, but I managed to salvage part of the deleted material by shaping it into another book titled The Eighth Tower." [2]
Curious, then, that John Keel is one of the major forces behind what might be termed the perception of UFO and paranormal phenomena in the modern world. People claim to have been abducted by aliens, controlled by them, even impregnated with human/alien cross-breeds -- Keel took down stories like these back in the 'sixties from frightened and confused folk he termed "silent contactees". The concept that paranormal phenomena are all related somehow, simply "The Phenomenon" as some investigators call it, is an idea that had its seeds in the books of Charles Fort but became the central theme in Keel's works.
Keel has written voluminously about "Window Areas", "flaps" of UFO and monster sightings, the "Name Game", synchronicities having to do with days of the month and specific areas on the map, and the "reflexive" nature of Fortean events. His ideas have been touched upon in almost every book on the unexplained printed in the last thirty years. He is simultaneously the subtle influence behind and the vociferous bad boy of ufology and Forteana. His book The Mothman Prophecies, adapted for the big screen in 2001, details his own personal trip beyond the looking-glass. Keel has collected and passed on mistakes and hoaxes, as every writer on the unexplained probably has, but sometimes affirmation of other accounts come from unexpected sources.
The present writer has always been fascinated by monsters, of the movies, the comics, literature, mythology, folklore, and even (maybe) reality. By age eleven I thought I knew all there was to know about ghosts, monsters, and bizarre creatures in general.
Then one night my father took my brother and me to the bowling alley. We were expected to entertain ourselves while he bowled for the Warren Petroleum Company league. I slipped over to a nearby drugstore and scanned the bookracks. Nothing. Then, for some unknown reason, I dug past the front layer of books on one rack and found a neat paperback with the compelling title Strange Creatures from Time and Space in canary yellow on a somber violet-blue background. A Fawcett Gold Medal book written by someone named John A. Keel, it featured a fantastic cover painting by Frank Frazetta. I plunked down my six bits and spent the evening reading.
I had never heard of the Mothman of West Virginia, or of the Beast of Bungay, or of the Men-in-Black who harassed UFO witnesses. I had never heard of the Burning Man of Germany, or of Thomas, the Winged Cat, or of the Bigfoot-type creatures reported from such unlikely places as New Jersey and Florida. Far from being knowledgeable about Strange Creatures, I was merely a novice.
Since that time I've read about all manner of things, from werewolves and vampires to dinosaurs that may yet roam the earth, from objects and entities that may come from outer space to poltergeists and tulpas that have their origin in the basement of the human psyche. When Keel expanded his account of the "Mothman" into a book of its own in 1975, I was first in line at the local library.
A troubling aspect of many books on unexplained phenomena is their criminal lack of references. John Keel -- and/or the faceless New York editors in their little cubicles -- leave out many details and most sources for events that happened beyond Keel's personal experiences and interviews. This is a tradition that stretches back to such efforts as C. B. Colby's Strangely Enough!, Frank Edwards' Stranger than Science, and many paperbacks by Brad Steiger, Daniel Cohen, and Bernhardt J. Hurwood. Indeed, it is not limited to paranormal. Researchers into the Ripper murders of 1888 find that earlier books on the subject give few sources beyond obvious publications like the London Times. The scientific essays of Isaac Asimov often lack references. The idea is that these are "popular" books read for entertainment, and the general public would cringe from dreary footnotes and long bibliographies. Those more deeply interested in the subjects covered are left to track down sources themselves.
Perhaps that is the true reason for this effort at annotation. The monster-addled eleven-year-old who read Strange Creatures in 1970 certainly became deeply interested in Mothman and its accompanying phenomena. He never went out "in the field" with an oversized butterfly net, but perhaps he can capture information that will expand upon the curious narrative of The Mothman Prophecies.
(This is definitely an ongoing project. A chapter at a time is about my speed, and there is always the possibility of updates that will enhance earlier annotations. The little digging man of pages under construction will always have a home here.)
1. Keel, John. "The Mutilated Horse" [letter], Fortean Times No. 40 (Summer 1983), p. 3.
2. -- Mothman Prophecies (Lilburn, GA: IllumiNet Press, 1991), p. 272.
My interest in Mothman goes way back, as you can see from this ancient, silly comic strip page.