Book Evaluation: The Mothman Prophecies (1975) by John A. Keel

The Mothman Prophecies by John A. Keel is a creepy supposedly nonfiction book. Now let me just say that if this book is nonfiction than the world is a much creepier place than most of us have ever known.

I'd like to believe this is nonfiction. It makes me truly think that the world is much more interesting than I had ever known.

I like this book. I like it a lot.

See, it talks about the Mothman, a moth-like entity that supposedly visited people in Point Pleasant, West Virginia between 1966 and 1967. Keel was a journalist dealing in paranormal kinds of stuff and he was investigating these strange sightings.

One particularly disturbing group of incidents described in the book concern "The Grinning Man" Indrid Cold. Indrid Cold is supposedly a paranormal entity who contacted Keel and others in Point Pleasant and Elizabeth, New Jersey during that same period of time. This whole episode of the book is incredibly creepy with strange sounds and lights appearing all over the place and Cold asking questions to some of the people who saw him. He is used as an example of some kind of extraterrestrial because his features are supposedly very alien-like, which is kind of awesome.

I guess this book simply excites me. I love the idea of reality being more interesting than what we can sense with our limited capabilities. I like to think there's more to life than living and dying and finding someone to live and to die with. It would seem empty if that were what life was all about.

I just have to say that I really like this book. I find it creepy and convincing,but mostly I find it fascinating that something like the account written within could be the truth.

The Mothman also goes down in history as one of the strangest phenomena of all time, a convincing scary creature that was almost meant to be a bad omen of something or other.

I should also give a mention to the collapse of the Silver Bridge, which in the book is shown to be a culmination of the paranormal events and an end to the grouping of sightings of the Mothman and Indrid Cold of this time period.

I think that this is the best of the nonfiction paranormal books in existence, and easily my favorite. It was made into a movie in 2002, but the movie was frankly not very good. I didn't like it at all and it really screwed up the source material which is a damn shame. I'm going to end this review with a quotation that I particularly liked from the book, even though it isn't scary or whatever else... I found it memorable and a little funny. So, there's that.

They expressed surprise that I had been given a tour of the exchange building. This was unheard of. The FBI and the CIA hate each other, and they both hate the telephone company. The telephone company, in turn, seems to hate everybody.