John Keel: the man who argued it was not aliens

John Keel was a New York journalist and broadcaster who spent 1966 and 1967 in and around Point Pleasant, West Virginia, reporting on the sightings that became the Mothman story.

The Mothman Prophecies, published in 1975, is the result. It is the most influential book in the subject that does not argue for extraterrestrial visitors.

The argument

Keel proposed that the phenomena were not interplanetary. He called the agencies behind them ultraterrestrials — native to Earth, present throughout human history, and appearing in whatever form the era expected.

On his reading, the same thing that appeared as fairies and demons in earlier centuries appears as visitors from space now, because that is the available vocabulary. He also argued the phenomena were actively deceptive.

He tied this to what he called window areas: places that produce clusters of anomalous reports of all kinds — lights, creatures, poltergeist activity — rather than one type.

Why it cannot be tested

Because deception is built into it.

If the phenomena lie, then evidence against a claim is consistent with the theory; so is evidence for it. There is no observation that could count against the hypothesis, which places it outside the range of things that can be investigated rather than merely believed.

That is not a small objection. It is the objection.

The Silver Bridge

The collapse is the emotional centre of the Mothman story and the point where the difference between reporting and construction is clearest.

On 15 December 1967 the bridge carrying US Route 35 across the Ohio River at Point Pleasant failed during rush hour. Forty-six people died.

The engineering investigation identified the cause: a cleavage fracture in a single eyebar in the suspension chain, originating in a tiny flaw, propagating under stress and corrosion. The design had no redundancy, so one failure took the whole structure.

The books as evidence

Keel wrote as a narrative journalist. His books are structured for effect, with scenes reconstructed and events compressed, and they mix reporting with material he assembled.

He did not keep the sort of case files Keyhoe's NICAP kept, which means much of his Point Pleasant material cannot now be checked against anything.

The Silver Bridge collapsed at Point Pleasant on 15 December 1967, killing forty-six people. That is a documented disaster with an established engineering cause — a failed eyebar in the suspension chain. Its connection to the sightings is Keel's literary construction and nothing more.