The Mothman Prophecies (1975)

Life at home: As my never-ending project of downsizing continues, my eye often lingers long and cold on cruddy old mass market paperbacks. I've got a handful or so that fell into the bin of "read before probably tossing" and here is the first. I read and enjoyed ufologist John A. Keel in the '70s, notably Operation Trojan Horse, but wasn't sure at all how I would feel about him now. But I enjoyed The Mothman Prophecies much more than I thought I would. The whole Mothman thing, I admit, has never meant much to me but I have known people who are into it. I didn't think the 2002 movie that gave this book a second life had much going for it. And I see a fair amount of grumbling around the internet that the book is disjointed, aimless, and obscure. It is all that, although at least it sticks to a timeline. But it's really all over the place—for one thing, is Keel a skeptic or a believer? He's trying to have it both ways. It's all anecdotes, as opposed to scientific or even methodical. But what anecdotes! It took me a while to figure out (as Amazon reviewers and many others have noted before me) that Keel is actually a pretty good paranoid horror story writer, working sneaky special effects, including the now famous "men in black," along with phones on the fritz and strained synchronicity, e.g., was I making too much of a coincidence? Yes, probably, we can only answer, but please continue. Basically, the book details scenes and incidents around Point Pleasant, West Virginia, from November 1966 to December 1967. So many UFOs you think they should have sold concessions. Then this man-shaped man-sized flying thing, like something out of a Ray Bradbury story, and the sightings thereof. The climax is a spectacular failure of infrastructure—a fairly famous disaster, as these things go—in the collapse of the Silver Bridge at rush hour during Christmas season. Wikipedia has the death toll at 46. Mothman and UFO sightings dried up after that, followed by Robert Stack, ominous organ chords, and a commercial break. This book is like a grand expiation of some kind, sold in drugstores. Keel comes across a little like one of H.P. Lovecraft's preoccupied investigators, or maybe just a nutty Bircher, especially when he is harassed by unseen but powerful forces. Not the phone ringing again! Men in black have been a joke since the movie franchise, but they work for me here. Keel is at pains to make clear they are not likely government men. They are the aliens, whatever the aliens are. The Mothman Prophecies is a lot of fun, complete with thrills and chills. Just don't ask me whether it is nonfiction.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic.