Book review of The
Mothman Prophecies
'The Mothman Prophecies' starts off with a perplexing gallop from the shades of spookiness. From the outset, one is surrounded by bizarre
events at every corner, which seem to move around in currents locked in an endless continuum.
The writer John
Keel is a master of his subject matter: the Paranormal; the
Book and its chronicling of real events is his hunting ground. The scene is a small, remote town called Point Pleasant in West Virginia, near the Ohio border; the time-frame is 1967/68. Keel gets lost in the labyrinth of rural backroads, he has arrived at a place, unknown to him and totally off the beaten track, like a story from the Twilight Zone or the Outer Limits except this had really happened. Seeking help, he solicits an inhabitant of this ‘otherworldly’ place, but is met by a hostile and excitable householder who seems to take him for some harbinger of doom…..
Subsequently, a whole series of bizarre events occur to Keel: unaccounted Phone calls, simultaneous appearances of him in two places - Doppleganger-like, numerous UFO sightings; all revolving like fleas around the epicentre, which was the alleged
sightings of a terrifying creature, resembling a huge mothman being with a wing span of eight feet. These sightings become more numerous along with seeming occurrences of missing time.
John Keel stays in Point Pleasant for six months recording all of these events in typical journalistic fashion; it’s obvious that these events are building up to a crescendo, as if some sort of harbinger. The book with its strong plot, always has an undercurrent of this, as if it was a real-life thriller or horror. On Christmas Eve, the time-bomb exlodes; the bridge on the great Ohio River collapses, resulting in a large death toll.
The events as chronicled by John keel were published in 1973; Keel’s incisive and atom-splitting expertise (he’s written some 30 books on the Paranormal) are called to task here and his theories and hypotheses are always uniquely Keelesque…..He talks of extra-terrestrials and ultra-terrestrials, different dimensions on earth, of places in the world being crossroads between such realms, the possibility of unexplained
Paranormal phenomena occurring at such places, as if with a centrifugal force! Regarding the omnipresent Men in Black: his appraisal of them is original and better than the orthodox one!
In sum, The Mothman Prophecies is a gem for the Paranormal enthusiast but it could also appeal to the uninitiated - because Keel is so deft in his genre. It would also appeal to Science-Fiction enthusiasts although it is factual; a very unusual book written which chronicles very unusual events;
herein the Mothmans’ wings will flap eternal
and Point Pleasant is a world fraternal!
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