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Summary: Legendary! This is the one book America should own!
Review: John A. Keel has been around a long time and I personally think he is one of the most underrated authors of this century. He tells of emotions felt while experiences are taking place as they happened which is really a missed factor in writing now-a-days. Skeptics hate this book down to the cover dismissing it as unbelieveable, yet, none of the information in the book has been explained yet.
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Summary: This book is a classic!
Review: I read it first in the 60's and have never forgotten it. I was pleased when it was reprinted as I had wanted to read it again. It holds up surprisingly well. Keel had realized things about the 'UFO phenomena' then that most other researchers are only now beginning to understand. If you have a sense of wonder, get it. If you are a researcher, get it. If you are an open minded skeptic, this will give you a better perspective. If you're just looking for entertainment, it's a lot of fun.
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Summary: Not What I'd Hoped For
Review: I had expected, or at least hoped for, a more or less straightforward account of the Mothman phenomenon of some 30 years ago. Instead, this meandering book comprises "hick" UFO sightings that are only infrequently connected with Mothman, and Keel's trust-me-I- know-what-I'm-talking-about theories and explanations. I was particularly dismayed by seemingly endless accounts of men (in black) behaving badly. With little to recommend it (and aside from providing some details on the Mothman sightings, there's no other recommendation), "The Mothman Prophecies" is a considerable disappointment.
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Summary: A refreshing perspective on the UFO phenomenon.
Review: This is a thorough, thought-provoking narrative of Mr. Keel's investigation in the late 1960's of a rash of UFO, "creature" and "MIB" reports in and around Pt. Pleasant, WV. The reader is presented with an almost journalistic accounting, relatively free of the bias, presupposition or fanaticism that tends to characterize this genre. Particularly impressive is the attention given to historical precedents and similar themes found throughout human myth and legend
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Summary: Believe it or not, it's scary either way.
Review: The great thing about this book is it works as a nonfiction book, if you're a believer and as a book of fiction, if you're a nonbeliever. If you believe in UFO's and monsters, the interviews with the people sound very sincere and convincing. If you don't believe in the subject, the book reads like a good horror novel with a tragic ending which is based on a true event
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Summary: The movie and the book are not the same thing!
Review: I just had to clarify the fact that the movie is "based" on the events that are recorded in Keel's book. The book is by far and away better than the movie. First off the book takes place in 1967/68 not the present. Besides giving you a look into all the paranormal phenomenon floating around Point Pleasant at the time it also gives you a look into the attitude and fear the people of the small town were feeling at the time.
There are stories of aliens, strange lights, men in black, mysterious phone calls and of course the mothman. The name is misleading as he does not resemble a moth at all (in fact the name came from a reporter making a reference to a Batman villian). But to anyone interested in cryptozoology he is a beast that is worth looking into.
True the book is a little egotistical as John Keel makes himself out to be a superhero at times but I genuinely enjoy his take on the situations. His writing style is a little choppy and sometimes jumps into other accounts of unexplained events but it is easy to get through.
As this is really the only book that centers on the Mothman and the events in Point Pleasant it is definately reccommended reading for paranormal fans. There is even a section on Indrid Cold (another being worth looking into for the interesting and sometimes ridiculous story).
Just please don't slight this chilling tale because of the terrible movie apparently made from the book's cliff notes.
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Summary: THIS BOOK IS WHOOPING A HORSES BEHIND
Review: Well for one thing, the book is pretty freakin' freaky. Aside from the fact that Keel often goes off on crazy tangents about how he thinks the world works, the book is pretty good. I'm not sure if all of this actually happened, but if it did then I'm sold!
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Summary: A Quixotic Adventure into True Horror
Review: I can remember when "The Men in Black" were an urban legend, a myth, a bogeyman to frighten paranormalists. Now the phrase is a sign on an office door hidden deep in the basement of the Pentagon. No individual is more responsible for this paradigm shift than John Keel, whose Mothman Prophecies exploded onto the paranormal scene in 1975 and changed forever the way we would look at events from the outer limits of human knowledge.John Keel lives in a world in which paranormal phenomena take strange forms: hairy giants, red-eyed and sulphurous, skulking through lovers' lanes; invisible electromagnetic fields which induce terror; winged weirdies such as Mothman; and finally, and most importantly, the Men in Black, a sort of advance guard for the CIA from Outer Elsewhere. These last entities tapped Keel's phone lines, tampered with his mail, spread disinformation and terror among his associates, and generally made his life a living hell until they had distracted him long enough to achieve their nefarious ends: the destruction of the Silver Bridge at Point Pleasant, West Virginia, on December 15, 1967. The purpose behind this act was identical to that of all the entities which Keel calls "ultraterrestrials:" to confuse, annoy, and generally interfere with humanity, as they have since the beginning of time, appearing as gods, fairies, devils, and flying saucer occupants. These and most other paranormal phenomena exist somehow in the spectra of energy beyond the ranges of our physical senses, and make themselves known to us only when they wish to advance their own sinister purposes. By means of light flashes, they hypnotize their subjects, and are thus subsequently able to manipulate the belief systems of the observers. This is Keel's Grand Unified Theory of paranormal phenomena. My first impression of this book was that it is a paranormalist's homage to Ovid's Metamorphoses. Keel's book, like Ovid's poem, lacks structure and form, and shifts fluidly from one narrative to the next, with only the slightest pretext of connection between incidents. This narrative structure is reflected by events in the text itself: everyday objects transform into creatures from the outer dark, lights in the sky turn into flying saucers, phone lines become a tool of hostile forces from another dimension. One of the ramifications of this flowing narrative style is that the reader is not encouraged to consider closely the implications of these events, however. This flaw undermines Keel's own apparent goal in publishing this account, but may also give us clues to understanding events described therein. Frightening though it may be, the ultraterrestrials may actually be the text's true authors. I came to this last conclusion after a recent re-reading, in which the work reminded me not so much of Ovid's Metamorphoses as it recalled Cervantes' Don Quixote, which challenges the narrative voice of the Western novel. Keel is at times a friendly narrator, at others a cynical and battle-weary one, and the reader soon comes to respect and trust him, as he tries to sort facts from disinformation, expresses concern for those who have been used by the ultraterrestrials, and faces the threat of possible psychic attack, injury, or even death at their hands. A careful reading of the work raises questions, however: if Keel was in close contact with these entities, and exposed to the same forces which create delusions in other human subjects, how did he escape being subject to their hypnotic power? There are two possible answers. In the first case, Keel is a superman, somehow capable of deflecting or absorbing without ill effect the malign rays sent forth by these black garbed spooks, and he can perhaps show us a way out of many centuries of deception and trickery. For this, he should be ranked with the luminaries of the Enlightenment--Newton, Galileo, and Bacon, among others--who led the way out of the darkness of superstition and into a new age of clear thinking and empiricism. The second possibility is much more frightening, and the evidence for it is stronger. This narrator whom we have come to trust, who bravely faces these creatures from Outer Elsewhere, is nothing more than a puppet, a conduit for these beings. In such a scenario he is in fact effecting the very actions he rails against throughout the book. He admits that they had some effect on his life, and even if one chooses to believe that he vanquishes them in the end, one is left with the possibility that he has been played: that he was merely led to believe that he had won, that the ultraterrestrials might better continue their games. The narrator of Don Quixote is similarly befuddled by uncertainty regarding his sources, and this leaves the reader wondering about the narrator's credibility, and if he might not have a hidden agenda. Several times in the novel the narrator steals bits from other writers, and shamelessly distorts them to his own ends. These snippets of text, and the narrator's unblushing thievery, distort and undermine the narrator's authority. He is a clear example of the unreliable narrator, and after reading the work, the reader is left with a new understanding of the nature of the Western novel. In Keel's hands--or the hands of his masters--this breakdown of narrative authority becomes a source of horror. Even as Keel rails against the ultraterrestrials, he strengthens their hold on the human mind, enslaving us to their alien whims, by providing a belief system for their continued manipulation of the human race. As Keel himself says, "Belief is the enemy." Does Keel want to break the ultraterrestrials' grip on humanity, or continue it? After reading this work, one does not have an answer to that question. The mere presence of entities such as Mothman or the Men in Black was enough to give me goosebumps, on my first reading: that the seemingly trustworthy narrator might be their unwitting dupe, part of the ultraterrestrials' Operation Trojan Horse, has provided the material for many nightmares.
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Summary: Intriguing but choppy
Review: The fact is, these things "happened" - in the sense that they were reported about - and the Mothman phenomena is fairly well-documented in other places. However, this is one of the only actual published books I have managed to locate on the topic, so it deserves scrutiny. Its very apparent that something very strange was going on in West Virginia in the months leading up to the Point Pleasant bridge disaster. Taken as a more or less matter-of-fact document of the times, it works pretty well. Its almost funny how Keel describes his participation in these events, like sitting up and watching strange lights in the sky every Wednesday evening is no big deal. Keel maintains a general tone of paranoia and eerieness throughout the book, due to his rambling, but more or less matter-of-fact tone. Credibility is questionable because lot of the reconstructed conversations sound a little too contrived and detailed to be anything more than fiction or imagination (I should mention Carlos Castaneda's name at this point). Keel seems to be putting forward a very Terence McKenna-like philosophy of the goings-on, that there are invisible inter-dimensional psychic entities that are capable of influencing the world about them (except of course the part about needing heroic doses of psylocibin to see them) and they were somehow involved with what happened around Point Pleasant. But to what end? Keel seems to have opinions but he more or less keeps them to himself, or allowed his publisher to purge them. The book has been too chopped up and filtered to be anything more than kitsch. Its still a fascinating read and recommended for fans of the paranormal.
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Summary: Not what you'd expect!
Review: Although the movie was very well done for those who enjoyed a spooky and suspenseful story, the book however is not the movie. It seems that Hollywood took very few pieces from the book and turned it in to a great movie which is kind of the other way around from the usual book being better than the movie. This book is good if your a UFO buff only. It mentions the Mothman but other than that it was a very boring read as I expected to be reading about the same scenario as what I saw in the movie. I was extremely disappointed.
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