Is John Keel A Crank?

[Kondoru]

No, `he` wasnt a crank....

 

[gridban]

Very interesting discussion but I think the question "is Keel a crank" may be a red herring. At least one post mentioned Robert Anton Wilson, as soon as I saw this poll R.A.W.'s writings about "e-prime" or english without the verb "to be" sprang to mind. To paraphrase, I don't, and can't, know whether John Keel *is* or *is not* a crank, I only know how he *seems* to me. But on the basis that in one form of e-prime *negative* is-statements are acceptable, I've voted no in the poll.

Aside from questions of "is-ness", should we as forteans really be using pejorative terms like "crank" to characterise people we disagree with? Isn't it rather the sort of term many would use of forteans in general?

Anyway I've learnt from this thread that I really should read some of Keel's books, and Jung as well. It's all fascinating stuff if you don't take it *too* seriously...

 

[Graylien]

People in glass houses...

Certainly anyone who proposes that we are being invaded by flying saucers full of aliens (as does Jerome Clark) is in no position to call anyone a crank.

Forteans who regularily browse the UFO Updates mailing list (http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/) will surely be disappointed to discover that many Ufologists seem to spend as much time sniping at rival Ufologists as they do actually investigating anything. Jerome Clark himself seems to be reponsible for many of the lists most childish and petty posts, including the following on Keel: (Link to source)

Apparently it needs to be pointed out that Keel has long sought to replace sober investigation and theory with wild-eyed occult notions for which zero supporting evidence exists.

A rather silly point coming from a proponent of the ETH, for which there is also zero supporting evidence despite over fifty years of investigation.

If you think demons are responsible for UFO and other anomalous phenomena, or that this is at least a respectable, arguable hypothesis, then John Keel is your man.

Keels position, as I understand it, is not that demons are driving spaceships, but that there is a single underlying cause behind all strange entity encounters - whether they appear to be demons, or aliens, or fairies or dog-headed men, or whatever other form takes their fancy. Unfortunately, this distinction seems too subtle for Clark, and his fellow proponents of the ETH, to understand. They would prefer to reduce the complex UFO phenomenon to the cozy certainties of a bad 1950's B-movie rather than accept that we are dealing with something which is fundamentally irrational in nature.

 

[Steveash5]

Jerome '[sic]-boy' Clark seems to think so according to his article 'Keel Vs Ufology' in FT156, but just how seriously does Keel actually take all that Ultraterrestrial stuff?

Taking off my Fortean hat and putting on my professional philosophers one (well I do get paid sometimes for it!), I'd also question the term crank.

If it means not being rational, I don't think you can accuse Keel of that at all, he seems one of the most rational people in this field I've yet read.
I've heard tales that he has entertained some imaginative hypotheses that many have found strange or unsupported by evidence, but he always seems to have refrained from publishing these. His published thesis on Ultraterrestrials seems to fit the data he has and he seems to apply a rational analysis to it. It just doesn't fit the current scientific world view and that disturbs some people. But this doesn't mean its not true. And
as others have said Mr Clarke believes in ET's for which there isn't the slightest scrap of evidence. Quite an irrational belief then and certainly
one that would fit the crank definition proposed here.

There have also been accusations of bad methodological, but I hardly think that defined crankery, if it did half the scientists on the planet would be cranks.

Crank often means someone with a fanatical belief system though one that doesn't change no matter how much evidence is stacked against it, like believing that aliens are visiting the Earth, and it seems to me that Keels approach is far more flexible than this.



Crank is often used to mean someone who defies accepted belief systems, but given that we've reached a phase in culture in which everything is uncertain (including Science) it seems strange to deploy the term in this way. A crank might today be someone who was certain they know the way the world actually was (whether from a scientistic or ideological stance) and denounced others who disagreed.

However you define Clarke seems to come out as the crank in all this rather than Keel.

Keel to be seems to be rather like Fort, a person who challenges conventional belief and the hegemony of 'science' and its mythos and exposes the anamolies that do not fit the 'scientific' worldview, and does so in a relatively scientific way.

Steve

 

[dreeness]

Keel isn't a crank, and Clark isn't a crank, but they have incompatible personalities. Keel is recklessly exuberant, Clark is studiously bland.

 

[Anonymous]

I haven't seen it mentioned here, so far, but apparently John A. Keel is also a keen amateur conjurer.

Magic Times Spotlight News: John A. Keel From Jadoo To The Mothman
Monday January 21, 2002

The enigmatic John A. Keel is back.
At age 72 his story is now told on film.

John A. Keel, the Indiana Jones of the paranormal, the real-life X-File before Mulder is now a feature film starring Richard Gere who plays John Klein (note initials), a writer investigating the paranormal, and who is possibly experiencing insanity. "It's a great picture. They did things very cleverly. Everything is implied. The director Mark Pellington gets a lot of credit," an unusually enthusiastic John A. Keel told MagicTimes during an hour-long interview.

Keel began his career at age 12. "I sold a an article to a magician's magazine and they sent me a check for two dollars. That was it." He moved into Manhattan's Greenwich Village at age 16 and supported himself by writing for poetry magazines, and fraternized with another Village resident, Ted Annemann. "Annemann and I were both from upstate NY (Annemann was from Waverly, Keel from Perry, NY) and we were both young, manic writers with worldly interests." Keel told MagicTimes.

Three different editions of Jadoo

Keel is best known to magicians for his "autobiography" written at age 27: "Jadoo." It is one of the first western books to tell the story of Indian street magic. The author befriended many galli galli men, and those who performed feats no longer seen, such as the instantaneous appearance of many small birds from under a basket. The publisher of the 1957 magnum opus was aggressive, and by the time Keel was living in Germany years later, he was famous. In India he was close friends with Sorcar Sr., and in Germany he spent time with Kalanag. Back in the US, he spent countless hours with one of his closest friends, Walter B. Gibson. Keel and Gibson saw eye to eye. Gibson's "Shadow" was Keel's "Jadoo."

Keel has seemingly done it all. Author of 30 books. 100,000 articles in too many languages to count. He's made ropes and snakes rise in department store windows. He's been on and written for every talk show since talk shows began. He even performs a neat little "Out to Lunch" business card trick every now and then at his favorite luncheon counter. A book of original tricks he has on a shelf has never been published.

John A Keel letterhead

Magic, written about, performed or debunked, real or imagined, illusion or reality, in New York or Tehran (he's lived in both) is the central pursuit to the man whose letterhead used to boast a wand, quill and noose.

From real research of the vanishing caste of street performers with snakes ("the samp wallah") in India, to hosting radio broadcasts from the interior of the Great Pyramid of Giza, the road John Keel has followed is captured in his genuinely horrifying book "The Mothman Prophecies." Originally published by the "Saturday Review Press" in 1975, Keel's book has been optioned for film many times, but this time, it happened. What makes a feature film "a go" these days?

"A young screenwriter named Richard Hatem is a Keel fan with a huge collection containing articles since 1952. He read "Mothman" 20 times. He wins the Expert Keel Cup." Keel quipped. "He wrote the screenplay, and was very instrumental in making this happen."

"He had a romantic angle that no one who ever pitched the screenplay ever had. The movie is really a very good exposition of my thoughts. Alan Bates gives a speech in the movie that is word for word a speech I gave once. Gere plays one side of my brain. Bates the other. It's very clever. Neither is me, entirely, but I am both of them in the movie."

The Mothman Prophecies book covers

HBO is currently (last two weeks in January) running a short film called "The Making of Mothman." January 23 the F/X channel will run an hour-long documentary about the actual case Keel investigated in the movie. The reprint "Mothman" book cover also matches the gripping movie poster. The original "Men in Black" made their first appearance not in Will Smith's jiggy vid but in Keel's life. Then he wrote about it, and the story will scare you to keep the lights on when you sleep.

Keel jokes, "Richard Gere is not the problem...I'm the problem. I can't get any comps to the screenings!" He continued, "The movie is sort of a crossover from one world to another, the psychic and the real world. This is hard to do with out making it hokey, and this is not hokey."

One reprint cover to Keel's monumental tale of magic, mystery and genuine intrigue is a famous Frank Frazetta painting of the dreaded red-eyed beast, the Mothman. The poster has sold in the thousands, and the book? Probably, millions. But Keel hasn't seen the cash. "I'm the most ripped off author! Even little presses in Finland have knocked off my titles" the matter-of-fact author said. ...

Ben Robinson

http://www.magictimes.com/archives/2002/2002-01-21-spotlight.htm

John A. Keel is certainly a man of many and surprising talents. :lol:

 

[ruffready]

I voted "no" way back when-I've always enjoyed Keel, and think his Ideas make ya think- he's sort of the America version of that french guy , Jock Valley- (author of one of my favs "messengers of depression" ) :shock:

 

[Anonymous]

The Mothman Prophecies was my rough and tumble introduction to a plethora of non-ETH notions about ufos and other Forteana. Even if, as the late Karla Turner said " He just makes things up", he's a master at it. No, not a crank, but a treasure.

 

[Justin_Anstey]

Hey, it's nice to see one of my old threads still alive and kicking. Three years! Crikey!

I just spotted this in the latest Saucer Smear:

THE "SAUCER SMEAR" HALL OF SHAME

Below is a list of ten people with whom we have had Problems over the years. Like David Letterman, we list them in reverse order of importance - i.e., obnoxiousness. In other words, #10 is the least obnoxious of the group. It gets worse from there.

#10 - Richard Ogden - long-ago pro-Adamski fanatic
#9 - Julie Schuster - Roswell UFO Museum
#8 - Lucius Farish - "UFO Newsclipping Service"
#7 - Jerry Clark - touchy UFO historian
#6 - John Keel - former UFO writer
#5 - Vicki Cooper - UFO Magazine
#4 - Don Ecker - UFO Magazine
#3 - Erik Beckjord - Bigfoot nut
#2 - Richard "Dick" Hall - humorless UFO historian
#1 - Budd Hopkins - Twilight Zone abduction guru

Let us add, however, that we, as followers of the Great Spirit (or whoever), hold little if any grudge against the above-named people. They are listed here for entertainment purposes only.

Oh, and in the piece above it about CF and FT it says:

...And then there was a short-lived attempt by the notorious John A. Keel to run a Fortean Society in New York City in the 1970s. Such a group should, by definition, have the same sort of openminded skepticism as did Fort himself, but Keel's highly opinionated beliefs may well have contributed to the death of this particular group. Also lack of funds, as often happens.

 

[TVgeek]

I am currently re-reading Keel's "Disneyland of the Gods"...
and I feel I need to clarify my previous post:

I referred to him as an "armchair researcher"... I did NOT mean
to imply that he doesn't do his fieldwork. Few researchers
have done as much on-the-spot investigation as Mr. Keel.

I meant that he is still doing research by collecting
news/magazine clippings of true Fortean events
(although, I'm sure he has moved to the internet by now.)

Keel is a true pioneer in that he sees all aspects of paranormal
phenomenon as being part of one grand metaphysical cause.
Although he sees Wilhelm Reich and Orgone Energy as being
pioneering research as well... :shock:

TVgeek

 

[BaronVonHoopla]

I think he is fantastic, I only wish he provided footnotes.



-Fitz

 

[lopaka]

Hey, it's nice to see one of my old threads still alive and kicking. Three years! Crikey!

And three years on I've never voted in the poll or posted to the thread because I honestly cannot decide what I truly think about John Keel, though condreye buch comes fairly close to my own feelings at the present. But that's as a reader, I've never personal dealings with him, which sounds as if that's colored people's perceptions.

I just spotted this in the latest Saucer Smear:

THE "SAUCER SMEAR" HALL OF SHAME

Below is a list of ten people with whom we have had Problems over the years. Like David Letterman, we list them in reverse order of importance - i.e., obnoxiousness. In other words, #10 is the least obnoxious of the group. It gets worse from there.

#10 - Richard Ogden - long-ago pro-Adamski fanatic
#9 - Julie Schuster - Roswell UFO Museum
#8 - Lucius Farish - "UFO Newsclipping Service"
#7 - Jerry Clark - touchy UFO historian
#6 - John Keel - former UFO writer
#5 - Vicki Cooper - UFO Magazine
#4 - Don Ecker - UFO Magazine
#3 - Erik Beckjord - Bigfoot nut
#2 - Richard "Dick" Hall - humorless UFO historian
#1 - Budd Hopkins - Twilight Zone abduction guru

Let us add, however, that we, as followers of the Great Spirit (or whoever), hold little if any grudge against the above-named people. They are listed here for entertainment purposes only.

Glad to know the FTMB has seen the appearance of at least one them (that we know of) in the board's unofficial Top Ten list.

 

[Graylien]

I believe that entry should actually read:

"Eric Beckjord: Bigfoot nut, Mensa member, and self-proclaimed Mothman. And Mensa member."

(see: http://www.beckjord.com/bigfoot/news.html and scroll down. And down. Then down some more.)

 

[Anonymous]

is keel a crank?

No, because his writings are based on experience and research...actually being out there. A krank is someone who hides behind a screen name and has no first hand experience........ .oops!

 

[lopaka]

Based on that brutal takedown by Jerome Clark in the latest FT, I guess the answer is 'yes' (unless it's 'no, crank is too generous') but ultimately, how much does it matter? He sure made a lot of people think about stuff they might not have previously considered. The Mothman Prophecies may be 80% made up for all I know, that doesn't make it not a classic (of a certain kind).

(And as I suggested over eight [!!] years ago, he was apparently so *difficult* on an interpersonal level it does seem hard for those who interacted with him to evaluate his work dispassionately. Though TBH, all UFOlogy disputes seem to end up rather less pleasant than your average civil war.)

 

[GNC]

Yeah, Clark's recent slamming of Keel will have made up a lot of minds that he (Keel) is not a reliable source anymore, and is more a fantastist than an investigator. I've only read The Mothman Prophecies, which was entertaining but I found it difficult to take wholly seriously, it was that wacky.

 

[uair01]

Strangely enough I have read "The Mothman Prophecies" several times. It may not be the best literature but the atmosphere is wonderful. It is perfect escapist literature. I think I'll re-read it again (I have it as an audio-book).

(Note: I know "real literature" and have even read Gravity's Rainbow but Keel's book has a very deep charm. I hope I'm not the only one and if anyone can explain this ...)

 

[Pinlight_Duke]

Strangely enough I have read "The Mothman Prophecies" several times. It may not be the best literature but the atmosphere is wonderful. It is perfect escapist literature. I think I'll re-read it again (I have it as an audio-book).

(Note: I know "real literature" and have even read Gravity's Rainbow but Keel's book has a very deep charm. I hope I'm not the only one and if anyone can explain this ...)

You're not the only one. I find the story to be very eerie and unsettling. Whether it's "true" or not is irrelevant to me. It's realistic enough, unlike most of the "scary" stories available these days which don't even allow one to suspend one's disbelief. It's also very well-written, whether "real" literature or not. Literary cred is less important to me than a good, entertaining, scary, well-told story. Hell, I like a good old Stephen King once in a while even though snobs will turn their noses up at his work. Reminds me also of Whitley Streiber's books. I don't believe in his stories one bit but they are quite frightening to read alone in the dark on a cold, windy night.

ETA: I think the spookiest part of the Mothman story is the phone-calls Keel receives. Most of us can relate to strange phone calls, silence on the other end, voices or sounds, things like that. It lets the imagination run wild. I get goosebumps at that part of the story. What makes Mothman so eerie as well is that the "monster" is never revealed. There's no real answer.

 

[JamesWhitehead]

Operation Trojan Horse is Online Here

I picked up Why UFOs (Operation Trojan Horse) last night, started browsing and found myself reading over 100 pages at a sitting. I had last read it - I see from this thread - back in 2004.

Since then, the internet has grown to a point where it ought to be possible to put in the footnotes Keel conspicuously omitted. I don't think he has yet found his Mister X - who performed the same service for Fort's works.

I am fairly sure that when Keel quotes contemporary papers on scareships, for example, he accurately transcribed what he found. He was clearly very active as a collector of data in the days when serious library-work and cuttings-services were the norm. As an investigator, however, he studiously avoids stepping outside his chosen framework. If the papers kept up a long saga about supposedly well-known vice president of the Sure Seal Manufacturing Company Wallace E. Tillinghast and his use by trickster-ultraterrestrials to confuse Americans about the real agenda, well it ought to have been possible to have ascertained if Tillinghast or indeed his Company ever existed. Google the name now and you mainly get Keel.

There does appear to have been a Sure Seal Company in Worcester - it specialised in vacuum heating systems - but Tillinghast himself seems to be mentioned only in connection with the 1909 claims. His status as a well-known local figure is accepted even in sceptical accounts of the whole affair.

In his use of newspaper stories, Keel frequently asserts that nineteenth-century papers operated in glorious isolation, so that reports of scareships on one continent were unknown elsewhere. Nothing could be further from the truth!

Anyone who looks into Victorian papers will be aware of how rapidly curious items were sent down the wire and reprinted word-for-word. If the papers did not reprint stories, there were readers who would include cuttings in letters to relatives abroad and plenty of professional and amateur scientific societies who quickly shared information. Personal networking was not the invention of the 1990s!

Publications such as Notes and Queries would quickly point curious readers to sources they may never have otherwise found. N & Q was written by its readers, a briliant and economical model that we have rechristened crowd-sourcing of content!

Keel remains entertaining and a fine source of yarns. Whether he believed his own stuff is harder to ascertain. He certainly thought of himself as a Fortean but Fort was essentially a cosmic joker himself and I never feel Keel had much of a sense of humour.

 

[JamesWhitehead]

Reaching a chapter called Unidentified Aeroplanes, Keel remarks that one of the distinctive features of some mysterious propeller-driven plane sightings is the way the cockpits were illuminated. He gives several cases.

Checking any more recent information on Ghost Fliers, I came up with a piece by Dr David Clarke on the sightings of WWII aircraft in the Peak District

Near the end of the article is an account of 1997 sighting by a police special constable near Bolsterstone, ‘the weirdest thing I have ever seen … it was big and it was well below the legal altitude for night flying. All its windows were lit up which made it look even more odd as no pilot would fly blind at that time of night over these hills.’ :shock:

 

[JamesWhitehead]

The website johnkeel.com contains material from Keel's private papers.

Among the documents singled out for attention are a series relating to a contactee called Helen. It dates from October 1967, the time of his Mothman investigations. The woman is pregnant. There are transcripts of telephone calls in which she alleges Men in Black are sitting with her to arrange the controlled birth of her hybrid alien child.

Scroll down to July 17th 2013 post for the start of the Helen documents and up for the later installments. Keel gives the case his detailed attention, though he prefaces his account with the words "I believe that she is telling the truth as she knows it."

 

[JamesWhitehead]

Lots of background to the Mothman book, including letters, sketches and drafts

It includes scans of letters from Mary Hyre, the Point Pleasant jounalist.

Her obituary is also on the site.

As are scans of several of her columns where the Mothman story grew wings.

 

[JamesWhitehead]

Though this thread actually began before the article, Colin Bennett's 2002 FT piece Invasion of the Doll People has not been mentioned.

The originally posted link to the Bennett article is dead. The MIA article can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/2008031...articles/252/invasion_of_the_doll_people.html

Bennett sees Keel, as a "wounded initiate . . . sick and exhausted. Occult initiation is always a near-death experience."

Re-reading the Mothman book, I think that sums things up more eloquently than the crank-word. :imo:


edit 17.11, 10:50 pm, Quite a good summary of Keel's Mothman Experiences.

 

[Mag-ona]

I was just reading an obit of John Keel and I found the following interesting:

"After investigating incidents of paranormal telephony – spirits supposedly communicating electronically – Keel found his phone calls being mysteriously re-routed to another number, one digit different to his own. Oddly, the person answering claimed also to be called John Keel; odder still, the voice of the doppelgänger sounded remarkably similar to Keel's own."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/science-obituaries/5797746/John-Keel.html

 

[Vardoger]

I wonder if the men in black John Keel saw on TV during the Nixon inaugural address in 1969 were those hatted men in the upper left side of the photo?

Here's the old BBC film where the image comes from.
They remove their hats during the seremony and put them on when the address starts.

 

[Coastaljames]

Keel for me is one of heroes of the paranormal. He's a trickster breaking the cover of other tricksters...ufos, faeries, ghosts...

It takes a crook to catch a crook.

 

[dr wu]

I feel the same way as Coastaljames. Keel wasn't a 'crank' per se but he certainly could be a Trickster at times.
I highly recommend the Eighth Tower for a fascinating read where Keel gives us his Superspectrum Theory and best overall explanation of what he actually believed about the whole darn ufo thing.

I just realized how old this thread was.......well that fits since I haven't posted here in some time.

 

[Roland Deschain]

Keel is not without value. Take that as you will.

 

[dr wu]

^ Duly noted....and where do you think his value lies regarding the ufo enigma....?

 

[Graylien]

Interesting that Jacques Vallee reached quite similar conclusions to Keel, but seemed to attract far less opprobium from the mainstream UFO community.

Was that because of Vallee's undoubted scientific credentials, or was he just better at getting along with people?