Apr 21 2008
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Keel, UFOs and More
At her newly set-up blog Mothman Flutterings, which (as you’ll guess from the title - if you don’t know already) is dedicated to all things of a Mothman nature, Regan Lee says:
“Loren Coleman over at Cryptomundo has a post about John A. Keel, asking what others think of him.
“I was surprised and disappointed at a few of the responses that dismiss Keel. Others appreciate his incredible contributions to Forteana, which includes UFOs and Bigfoot and other creatures, like the Loch Ness creature, etc. (Despite the insistence by some researchers those things have no place in the more esoteric, Fortean realm.)
“Keel (like Jacques Vallee and a few others) have always done their own thinking, and brought to all of us new ideas, new ways of looking at it all. It’s such a shame that there are those who can’t appreciate these ideas, or who get impatient with them, thinking that they’re quaint or old fashioned, or have nothing to do with UFOs, Bigfoot, and so on.
“Not to say I agree completely with writers like Keel, Vallee, Steiger, and so on but none of us ever agree completely with each other — that’s not the point. Showing us new and different perspectives, and often the only voice among hundreds of voices that stick to the same rigid views — that’s what Keel has always done.
“Let’s not forget about writers like Keel, who goes his own way, always has, and has brought us so many intriguing possibilities concerning the esoteric.”
Amen to that. Not everyone out there agrees with Keel’s views (although I would say I share a lot of his views); but his contribution to Forteana has been enormous.
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April 21st, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Is all this build-up really necessary to justify reprinting Jadoo? Geeez. haha. Seriously though Keel’s take on the Indian Rope trick — that there’s a secret suspended horizontal rope — is something of a let down compared with the traditional take: Mass hypnosis.
Keel must be right because mass hypnosis would take some serious juju, on the other hand — how many people have interviewed a levitating man before?
Ah Jadoo….the fact that it remains out of print enables me to disown the whole publishing industry in one “final” blog comment.
April 21st, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Well, folks at Cryptomundo are what you might call “traditional crypto-enthusiasts”. They believe Bigfoot to be nothing more than a yet-to-find, blood-and-bones anthropoid or hominid, possibly a Gigantopithecus or a >i>Paranthropus, as Loren himself has proposed. So obviously they resent getting their Crypto-coffee mixed with weird fortean anomalies and UFOs. They prefer to drink it black, thank you
Having said that, I was pleased to see several Cryptomundians defending Keel’s views and opinions, if nothing as a way to understand that we need to study “the whole package” of the phenomenon, not leave the bits and pieces which we may find “distasteful”.
I would have written something in that regard myself, but unfortunately Cryptomundo has been experiencing some server problems lately, although there seemed to be fixed by now.
April 21st, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Huge influence on me. Just huge. Even though I have found factual errors in some of his writings, the main value is in his original thinking, which is in a class by itself.
Just to brag a bit, I have a first edition of Jadoo signed by Keel himself in 2000.
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:06 am
I had a copy of STRANGE CREATURES..
back in the late ’sixties, and Keel
and Sanderson were pretty much my
earliest armchair mentors.
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:40 am
So Keelians are much preferred to Raelians. Or maybe not. My mom discovered that my pineal gland flexing causes my adam’s apple to pulsate. At the dinner table last night first she said: Are you having trouble swallowing? Then later she asked if I had a problem and I stated it was an attribute that she didn’t understand. Today she said it was not only not attractive but annoying so I told her that she had led a spoiled life wasted in front of the boob tube.
Watch out for us Keelians. haha. Seriously though — compare Jadoo to say Gavin Young’s travel books. I like Young but he’s mired down in historical detail — even though he worked for MI6 on the side. Keel creates what he studies to a much greater effect.
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:46 pm
It’s like this: Keel isn’t one hundred percent correct–he overstates some facts and states some murky theorizing as fact sometimes, and other times he just plain old gets facts twisted around and wrong.
BUT–much of his theorizing on the nature of things paranormal have stuck me as true in a way that is “hit you in your gut” visceral.
Vallee is much less shrill and more careful to get his facts correct–what do we expect from a scientist, but what he often lacks in his writings is direct experience with the–numinous, shall we say.
Keel on the other hand, has had experiences with the otherworldly phenomena of which he speaks, and so much of his writing is informed by his own personal experiences.
I value both Keel and Vallee and agree with much of what they have to say, in large part because it not only makes sense from a historical perspective, but also because it dovetails with my own personal experiences, which I suppose some day I should actually write about.
However, I am not surprised to see a lot of cryptozoologist sorts dismissing Keel. He isn’t a cryptozoologist–he is something else altogether. While scientifically minded crytozoologists will dismiss any paraphysical and paranormal phenomena surrounding Bigfoot sightings or the like, Keel refuses to ignore witness accounts that include such oddities. I agree with him that it is unscientific to discount some data while elevating other data, but then, again, what do we expect from nuts and bolts, or rather, plaster cast and bones researchers?
That is not to say I think that all the folks who seek a physical Gigantopithicus/Bigfoot/Yeti are wrong–some of these sightings and experiences do point to an unknown primate.
However, I, like Keel, cannot ignore the fact that there are folks out there experiencing hairy hominids in conjunction with electronic buzzing, beeps, UFO’s poltergeist activity and other weird happenings.
So, yeah–Keel, Vallee and, believe it or not, Katherine Briggs (British folklorist known for her work on fairy lore), have been my greatest influences when it comes to my own worldview surrounding UFOs and the paranormal in general.