John A. Keel, groundbreaking researcher and author of many books on UFOs, cryptozoology and paranormal topics, died of congestive heart failure at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan on Friday, July 3. He was 79, and a lifelong resident of New York City.
John Keel, first author to write about the Men In Black, enjoyed dressing as one. Photo courtesy Cryptomundo
In 1975, Keel published The Mothman Prophecies, which is an account of his 1966-1967 investigation of the Mothman sightings that were reported in Point Pleasant, WV, and surrounding areas.
The book was adapted into the 2002 movie of the same name, starring Richard Gere and Laura Linney. A lifesize statue of the Mothman was erected in Point Pleasant’s Gunn Park in 2003 to memorialize the tragic events which Keel was instrumental in bringing to the world’s attention.
Point Pleasant is also home to the Mothman Museum and is the location of the annual Mothman Festival. Although the movie was not filmed in Point Pleasant, the Mothman Museum features memorabilia from it.
“He always thought a lot of the people involved with Mothman. He talked highly of the eye witnesses, and he thought a lot of Point Pleasant,” museum curator Jeff Wamsley told the Point Pleasant Register.
Keel was born Alva John Kiehle in upstate New York on March 25, 1930. He published his first story at age 12 in a magicians magazine. He became a scriptwriter for radio and television and a newspaper journalist. His first book, Jadoo (1957), was an account of his investigation of the alleged activities of fakirs and holy men in India who perform the rope trick and who survive being buried alive. He also tracked a Yeti, Asia’s version of Bigfoot, also known as the Abominable Snowman.
Keel wrote articles for England’s Flying Saucer Review and for Saga Magazine. He was also an admirer of legendary paranormal researcher Charles Fort. Influenced by fellow Fortean Ivan T. Sanderson, ufologist Aimee Michel and author Brad Steiger, he began a full-time investigation of monsters, aerial and paranormal phenomena in 1966.
In 1967, he wrote “UFO Agents of Terror” for Saga Magazine, putting into print the story of the Men In Black that has become a cultural phenomenon all its own.
Like fellow researchers J. Allen Hynek and Jacques Vallee, Keel tried to validate the extraterrestrial hypothesis but it failed to answer all of his questions. He remained for decades one of the most original and controversial ufologists.
Keel’s concepts of “windows” about specific hotspots of combined phenomena appearances, “waves” which were cyclic appearances of the phenomena and the “Wednesday phenomena” which documented the disproportionate number of UFO sightings on that day, greatly influenced the genre. Keel looked for patterns and would document a certain location on a ridge that might have a high rate of strange events occurring after the 21st of the month on Wednesday in a high frequency month such as April.
It was Keel’s second book, UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse (1970), that alerted the general public that many aspects of contemporary UFO reports, including humanoid encounters, often paralleled certain ancient folklore and religious encounters. Keel also argued that there is a direct relationship between UFOs and elemental phenomena. He conjectured that ultimately all anomalies, such as fairies, 1897 mystery airships, 1930′s phantom airplanes, mysterious helicopters, creatures, poltergeists, balls of light, and UFOs, are a cover for the real phenomenon.
“Keel informed me often that he did not consider himself a ‘ufologist’ but a ‘demonologist,’” paranormal author Loren Coleman said. He also told Coleman that he considered ufology to be “just another word for demonology.”
“I abandoned the extraterrestrial hypothesis (of UFOs) in 1967,” Keel said in 2002, “when my own field investigations disclosed an astonishing overlap between psychic phenomena and UFOs. The objects and apparitions do not necessarily originate on another planet and may not even exist as permanent constructions of matter. It is more likely that we see what we want to see and interpret such visions according to our contemporary beliefs.”
Other works by Keel include Strange Creatures From Time and Space, Our Haunted Planet, The Flying Saucer Subculture, The Eighth Tower, Disneyland of the Gods, The Complete Guide to Mysterious Beings (revised version of Strange Creatures from Time and Space) and The Best of John Keel, which is a collection of his Fate Magazine articles.
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