John Keel recently died.

I can hear the vast majority of you right now, asking “Who?” Okay, fair enough. Unless you spend an inordinate amount of time hanging out in the Speculation section of your nearest bookstore (the section I personally like to refer to as “The End Is Extremely Fucking Nigh” section) and/or live in West Virginia, you really aren’t required to know who John Keel was. But any horror/sci-fi fan worth their salt should bloody well know of the Mothman, that winged harbinger of doom allegedly spotted before and during such major tragedies as Chernobyl, Hurricane Katrina and September 11th.

In 1975, John A. Keel released his book “The Mothman Prophecies” a non-fiction collection of eyewitness accounts of the bizarre and possibly paranormal phenomena which supposedly occurred in Point Pleasant, West Virginia during a yearlong investigation between 1966 and 1967. I just happened to pick up a copy at a secondhand bookstore this past Thursday, unaware of John’s death and ignorant of much of the legend of Mothman. I would learn of Keels’ passing at age 79 due to congestive heart failure the next day and would be reminded of Fox Mulder’s words: “If coincidences are just coincidences, why do they feel so contrived?” Confusingly, there is a disclaimer on the copyright page (a 1991 reissue, btw) which states that what follows is a work of fiction, and all characters and events within are products of the author’s imagination.

What the hell?

Color me confused, because I just watched a rerun of Paranormal State not too long ago, in which ghost hunter Ryan Buell and his crew made the trip to Point Pleasant, WV and interviewed several of the people who made an appearance in Keel’s book. They looked pretty real to me. Granted, I’ve never been to Point Pleasant (I did once drive through Wheeling and kept right the hell on going; Yeesh, I’ve seen more cheerful landfills), I mostly watch Paranormal State because I have a terrible crush on tech specialist Sergey, and the closest I’ve come to seeing Mothman was coming home one humid summer evening in Indiana and finding a moth the size of a puppy hanging on my screen door. And despite the fact that many of the statements within the 267 pages of Keel’s Mothman Prophecies smack of schizophrenic ridiculousness, Keel himself acknowledges this. At the book’s core are some genuinely chilling and disturbingly honest eyewitness accounts, provided by reluctant persons living in fear and doubt and, in more than one case, anonymity.

Piecing together the legend of the Mothman is like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle in a pitch black room. I read the book in its entirety in less than 48 hours and I still don’t understand everything that happened or why. Mark Pellington took a shot at making some sense of the stories with his 2002 film The Mothman Prophecies, starring Richard Gere and Laura Linney, by combining characters, compacting stories and setting the events out on a mostly coherent timeline. But the real story behind the movie is so freakishly distorted and so outright weird that it defies any sort of rational confines.

In the film version, Mothman is identified by a name: Indrid Cold. In fact, Indrid Cold is thought to be an entirely separate entity, more along the lines of a Man In Black, a term coined by Keel. The Men In Black, whom witnesses state showed up in Point Pleasant in the days following the collapse of the Silver Bridge, seemed far more interested in suppressing the stories of Mothman and the UFO activity surrounding him/it. John Keel himself is not depicted in the film, although Richard Gere’s character, John Klein, besides, sharing the same first name, acts as an unwitting catalyst for the Mothman sightings. Similarly, Gere’s character consults a Professor Leek – Keel spelled backwards, in case you’re not dyslexic – a fearful believer-turned-recluse, after his experiences with Mothman drove him to the point of insanity. In truth, John Keel was always rather matter-of-fact about his investigations, keeping a low profile to weed out the weirdos but never denying his involvement with ongoing research. In the film, John’s wife Mary dies shortly after seeing Mothman in a car crash which brings attention to a lesion on Mary’s brain. In actuality, the only Mary mentioned in The Mothman Prophecies is Mary Hyre, a one-time reporter and platonic friend of Keel’s who assisted him in his investigations and died at the age of 54 following a short illness, just two years after the Silver Bridge collapse. In actuality, it was also Mary Hyre who had the foreboding dream of the gift-littered river, mentioned in the film by Laura Linney’s character Connie.

What both film and book agree on is Mothman’s prediction of a “great tragedy on the river Ohio” although the finer details differ. In the film, the bridge collapses on Christmas Eve, killing 36 people. In actuality, the bridge collapsed on December 15, killing 46. The end credits of The Mothman Prophecies claim that the cause of the collapse was never determined, although the cause was eventually attributed to a faulty eye bar and common old age wear and tear. But something predicted its collapse, that much is agreed upon.

The bizarre occurrences experienced by the God fearing population of Point Pleasant in the months leading up to the tragedy are too similar and too coincidental to entirely dismiss. Strange phone calls and tapped lines were verified by the phone company. Sightings of Men In Black were verified by people with nothing to gain but public ridicule. And the Mothman? Hasn’t been seen in Point Pleasant since the bridge fell, but reports continue to flood in from around the world, claiming to have spotted the seven foot creature hovering around the sites of disaster. End-of-the-World paranoia is only increasing as we approach 2012, the year which the ancient Mayans point to as the cease of life as we know it and outrageous claims become the norm as such times: UFO sightings, alien abductions, apocalyptic predictions which never pan out, etc. The claims of Mothman might be easier to dismiss if they hadn’t been documented as far back as 1877, when a similar apparition appeared in the skies over Brooklyn, NY. Ancient tales of “thunderbirds” and “bat men” sighted by Native Americans and early settlers lend credence to the rumor that Mothman has been around longer than we have, and suggests that not all sightings can be attributed to the misidentification of owls and cranes. After all, I would think that Native Americans could tell the damn difference, having lived alongside such animals for centuries.

Nevertheless, Mothman has made the town of Point Pleasant a popular destination for UFO hunters, New Age nerds and monster geeks, going so far as to hold a week long Mothman Festival every year in September which features a Miss Mothman Pageant and a serve-up of some traditional Mothman pancakes, the contents of which I really don’t want to know. In the off season, you can always swing by the Mothman Museum at 411 Main Street, Point Pleasant and buy yourself a plush keepsake Mothman…a thought that would normally make me tamp down my bile if I didn’t own a plethora of plush Cthulhu’s. Who the hell am I to judge?

So, keeping in mind how the value of artists works skyrocket in the days immediately following their deaths (cough, Michael Jackson cough) I’d take advantage of the 1 cent copies of Keel’s book The Mothman Prophecies still available on Amazon. The movie is readily available as well, and only slightly more expensive (21 cents!) but I recommend reading the book first for a truly disorientating descent into the Weird.

http://www.mothmanmuseum.com