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Genuine Question: Why Is John Keel So Revered?

From what I've read, he appears to have at least half-believed his own stuff. The books cover a lot of ground, shifting all the time, so they are real page-turners. It's not dissimilar to Strindberg's Inferno, the classic record of an occult-driven breakdown. We know that Strindberg boosted the weirdness in the telling; the contemporaneous notes are less lurid every time!

Keel's published works are the tip of the iceberg; his productivity was, at times, manic. The devoted website has been mining his correspondence and notebooks for years! It is unlikely to recruit new fans but there seems enough interest to keep it afloat! :thought:
 
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Keel was an interesting character for a number of reasons. His early books (Jadoo & etc.) are fascinating and well written. His experiences in the Middle East and other places make for good reading. I think most of his modern fans appreciate that he was the rare real journalist who took a strong interest in UFO encounters and other such weirdness. He was in fact a real, credentialed journalist. To me, he seems like a sharp and observant person who confronted the various phenomena squarely and honestly. The various phenomena returned the attention. The website JW linked is a treasure trove of bizarre happenings, often with Keel at the center. It certainly helps that the site is well done with no attempt to interpret the events; just the files published unedited with minimal comment.

The files published at the site over the past couple of years (I think) have been a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at what was going on as the events at Point Pleasant unfolded. The weirdness didn't stop, it seems. The episodes involving Jaye Paro and her "alien" friends are particularly twisted at times. I don't think most people could have come out of that period of two years or so of manipulation and assorted other bizarre events with much in the way of sanity. I don't agree with many of the conclusions he arrived at in the aftermath, but I have to respect his integrity and intelligence. He spent years deep in the shit, and lived to write some important books.

I think there was a lot of tampering going on during the Point Pleasant years, both in terms of events, and messing with people. By whom I can only guess. I have to say that my favorite character in that rich soup of silliness and terror is Princess Moon Owl. I would love to know exactly who or even what she was, other than fabulously entertaining from the safe distance of fifty years on.
 
I've been a 'fan' of his books since the late 70's but I never knew that he was 'revered'. I suppose he's no more 'revered' than say Charles Fort who seems to get a good deal of recognition also based solely on his writing it seems.
I think Austin's post above captures Keel's weirdness. I also think that Keel was well aware he was embellishing his tales and making them seem more weird than they probably were. He was a writer after all.
 
I've only read The Mothman Prophecies, I enjoyed it in the semi-"believing" frame of mind I approach most Forteana with. As stated above I think it does a great job of synthesising a lot of Weird Shit into one text and is a great bit of pulp writing in itself, I suppose the thing I've read that closest is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, though it is of course very different to that. It reminds me a little of Iain Sinclair as well.
 
Well..he wasn't necessarily the first in that Dr Vallee had 3 books before Keel's first book on ufos came out in 1970...but I would certainly say that both men were the first to explore those high strangeness aspects. Passport To Magonia..1969...explored those weird aspects and Operation Trojan Horse did in 1970. I suspect they both knew one another even then....and probably exchanged notes.
 
I would say he is respected rather than revered, but that's just my opinion. As the previous two posters said, he was among the first to really explore the idea that flying saucers might be more than just a purely nuts 'n bolts physical phenomenon.

Personally it find it credible that they are what they often appear to be- physical craft crewed by physical beings, but that some of the high strangeness cases are some kind of lab rest they're conducting to test how we react to psychological warfare.

Jadoo is a good book and well worth a read, btw!
 
Kryptonite said:
I would say he is respected rather than revered, but that's just my opinion. As the previous two posters said, he was among the first to really explore the idea that flying saucers might be more than just a purely nuts 'n bolts physical phenomenon.
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Jung did that some years previously.

Jung continued to publish books until the end of his life, including Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies(1959), which analyzed the archetypal meaning and possible psychological significance of the reported observations of UFO.
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It occurs to me, as I was rambling about visual processing on another thread, there's a neat argument that might be made in support of UFO's being a psychological phenomenon. In the days of ubiquitous cameras, it's still depressingly common for images and videos to be blurred or poor resolution. Might it be, that the brain's interpretation of such objects as a 'UFO' type object, is because the object, as seen, is indefinite and at the limit of what can be processed by the eye/brain?

So, on the occasion where someone, a witness, 'gets out the camera', they've already interpreted what they've seen and the resulting blurry images either suggests the witness was mistaken, or more probably, the witness interprets the blurry 'evidence' in the same way as their first-hand memory was formed. Possibly followed by bafflement that no-one else can see what they see.

Naturally, this means that anything that can be processed 'correctly' or accurately, in context (planes, ballons, et al) don't get photographed or videoed.
 
Coal said:
Jung did that some years previously.



It occurs to me, as I was rambling about visual processing on another thread, there's a neat argument that might be made in support of UFO's being a psychological phenomenon. In the days of ubiquitous cameras, it's still depressingly common for images and videos to be blurred or poor resolution. Might it be, that the brain's interpretation of such objects as a 'UFO' type object, is because the object, as seen, is indefinite and at the limit of what can be processed by the eye/brain?

So, on the occasion where someone, a witness, 'gets out the camera', they've already interpreted what they've seen and the resulting blurry images either suggests the witness was mistaken, or more probably, the witness interprets the blurry 'evidence' in the same way as their first-hand memory was formed. Possibly followed by bafflement that no-one else can see what they see.

Naturally, this means that anything that can be processed 'correctly' or accurately, in context (planes, ballons, et al) don't get photographed or videoed.
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I think there is definitely a process where the brain can overrule the eyes and convince us we've seen something that we haven't. I may have experienced this but the other way round - I once saw an unusual object maybe 30 feet long gliding silently through the sky at fairly close range and instantly felt dread and thought 'what the eff is that?'. Then, the thought 'its only a plane' came into my head and I felt instantly calmer and went about the rest of my evening quite happily. It was only a few days later when I thought about it again and realised that planes don't tend to fly at around 40 feet off the ground in complete silence that I began to think that the brain can sometimes adjust our perceptions as a coping mechanism.
 
dr wu said:
Well..he wasn't necessarily the first in that Dr Vallee had 3 books before Keel's first book on ufos came out in 1970...but I would certainly say that both men were the first to explore those high strangeness aspects. Passport To Magonia..1969...explored those weird aspects and Operation Trojan Horse did in 1970. I suspect they both knew one another even then....and probably exchanged notes.
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yes they were good friends, keel mentions vallee several times in operation trojan horse
 
Never read him, but as part of my resolution for 2019 to read all the stuff I've meant to for years, but never got round to, I've just got Mothman.
It amazes, and delights me that, thanks to the Magic Lantern of the Net books are so easily found now second hand, years ago I couldn't afford most of what I wanted to read, now a couple of quid will get pretty much anything.

CW.
 
frankly i can't believe how someone can't be fan of him, he was one of the very few voices of sanity to have joined ufology along the years
 
I think if you read his books with a large supply of salt to hand, they're enjoyable in a kind of Philip k. Dick in 'real' life way - mind bending and with an exciting feeling that reality is more plastic than we usually think.
 
James_H said:
I think if you read his books with a large supply of salt to hand, they're enjoyable in a kind of Philip k. Dick in 'real' life way - mind bending and with an exciting feeling that reality is more plastic than we usually think.
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how so? there are very few things in his books that aren't correct and most are due to the fact they were written in the 70's, so some information is dated
 
humanoidlord said:
how so? there are very few things in his books that aren't correct and most are due to the fact they were written in the 70's, so some information is dated
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I believe he was not averse to making things up if it made a better story. In 'Jadoo', his travel book, he wrote about swimming in the pool in front of the Taj Mahal. That pool is only a few inches deep.

Also his friend Gray Barker was known to have pranked him.

Edit: I recall from letters and articles in ft that Jerome Clarke had beef with keel, anyone know why?
 
James_H said:
I believe he was not averse to making things up if it made a better story. In 'Jadoo', his travel book, he wrote about swimming in the pool in front of the Taj Mahal. That pool is only a few inches deep.
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wasn't jadoo supposed to be fictional, half-truth, half-fiction?
James_H said:
Also his friend Gray Barker was known to have pranked him.
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how so?
 
Reading Keel's journal (that's what it was, essentially) it's obvious that Barker and Moseley were at the top of the suspect list when weird things happened. People nowadays like to assume Keel was naive or credulous, but reading his field notes and letters to other researchers paints a different picture. He was well aware of the shenanigans pulled by those clowns.

I suspect he had a row with Jerry Clark mainly because he knew Jerry. He's pretty cranky.
 
James_H said:
There are some details here. Basically the 'mysterious phone calls' detailed in the mothman prophecies may have been orchestrated by Barker and friends, Bart Simpson style.
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thats a possibility, but some calls were to people that weren't even registered on the yellow pages
so unless barker was a pre-internet master sleuth...
 
humanoidlord said:
thats a possibility, but some calls were to people that weren't even registered on the yellow pages
so unless barker was a pre-internet master sleuth...
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In the USA the 'yellow pages' are business listings for which one must pay. As of the 1960's / early 1970's all residential listings were in the separate 'white pages' listings, and one had to pay a fee to obtain an unlisted number (i.e., prevent his / her number from being listed in the white pages). Unlisted numbers were quite rare in those days.
 
EnolaGaia said:
In the USA the 'yellow pages' are business listings for which one must pay. As of the 1960's / early 1970's all residential listings were in the separate 'white pages' listings, and one had to pay a fee to obtain an unlisted number (i.e., prevent his / her number from being listed in the white pages). Unlisted numbers were quite rare in those days.
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yes but they still existed
 
humanoidlord said:
where have you been in the last 2 years?
it means to the stars academy
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I have not the first clue about it.
I have vaguely heard of it, but that was ages ago.
 
humanoidlord said:
yes but they still existed
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Do you have any specific examples of persons Keel phoned whose number(s) he shouldn't have been able to locate on his own?
 
Mythopoeika said:
I have not the first clue about it.
I have vaguely heard of it, but that was ages ago.
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oh boy, where do i even begin...
so basically since the end of last year (my god its almost new year again!) a man by the name of tom delongue along with his friend elizondo have been teasing ufologists and making the disclosure hype train even more annoying than it was before
 
EnolaGaia said:
Do you have any specific examples of persons Keel phoned whose number(s) he shouldn't have been able to locate on his own?
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i am still reading mothman prophecies, i haven't got to the telephone calls part yet but he did mention it in his other books
 
humanoidlord said:
oh boy, where do i even begin...
so basically since the end of last year (my god its almost new year again!) a man by the name of tom delongue along with his friend elizondo have been teasing ufologists and making the disclosure hype train even more annoying than it was before
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Probably to be ignored unless/until they come up with something concrete.
 
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