John Alva Keel, born Alva John Kiehle (March 25, 1930 – July 3, 2009), was an American Fortean author and professional journalist.

Keel wrote professionally from the age of 12, and was best known for his writings on unidentified flying objects, the "Mothman" of West Virginia, and other paranormal subjects. Keel was arguably one of the most widely read and influential ufologists since the early 1970s.^[1] Although his own thoughts about UFOs and associated anomalous phenomena gradually evolved since the mid 1960s, Keel remained one of ufology's most original and controversial researchers. It was Keel's second book, UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse (1970), that popularized the idea that many aspects of contemporary UFO reports, including humanoid encounters, often paralleled ancient folklore and religious encounters. Keel abbreviated Gray Barker's term "men in black" to MIB. It describes the mysterious figures said to harass UFO witnesses^[2] and he also argued that there is a direct relationship between UFOs and psychic phenomena. He did not call himself a ufologist and preferred the term Fortean, which encompasses a wide range of paranormal subjects.

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life and career

Keel's first published story was in a magician's magazine at the age of 12. He later moved to Greenwich Village and wrote for various magazines.^[3] He was drafted into the United States Army during the Korean War, and served in Frankfurt, Germany on the staff of the Armed Forces Network. He was then employed as a press correspondent for several years, before resigning to tour Egypt and the Middle East. His first published book, Jadoo (1957), was serialised in a men's adventure magazine. Jadoo details Keel's travels to India to investigate the alleged activities of fakirs and holy men who perform the Indian rope trick and who survive being buried alive.

[edit] Initial UFO Investigations (1960s)

Influenced by writers such as Charles Fort, Ivan Sanderson, and Aimé Michel, in early 1966, John Keel commenced a full-time investigation of UFOs and paranormal phenomena. Over a four-year period, Keel interviewed thousands of people in over twenty U.S. states. He read over 2,000 books in the course of this investigation, in addition to thousands of magazines, newsletters, and newspapers. Keel also subscribed to several newspaper-clipping services, which often generated up to 150 clippings for a single day during the 1966 and 1967 UFO "wave". Keel wrote for several magazines including Saga with one 1967 article UFO Agents of Terror referring to the Men in Black.^[4]

[edit] Rejection of Extraterrestrial hypothesis

Like contemporary 1960s researchers such as J. Allen Hynek and Jacques Vallée, Keel was initially hopeful that he could somehow validate the prevailing extraterrestrial visitation hypothesis. However, after one year of investigations, Keel concluded that the extraterrestrial hypothesis was untenable. Indeed, both Hynek and Vallée eventually arrived at a similar conclusion. As Keel himself wrote:

I abandoned the extraterrestrial hypothesis in 1967 when my own field investigations disclosed an astonishing overlap between psychic phenomena and UFOs... The objects and apparitions do not necessarily originate on another planet and may not even exist as permanent constructions of matter. It is more likely that we see what we want to see and interpret such visions according to our contemporary beliefs.^[5]

In UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse Keel argues that a non-human or spiritual intelligence source has staged whole events over a long period of time in order to propagate and reinforce certain erroneous belief systems. For example, the fairy faith in Middle Europe, vampire legends, mystery airships in 1897, mystery aeroplanes of the 1930s, mystery helicopters, anomalous creature sightings, poltergeist phenomena, balls of light, and UFOs. Keel conjectured that ultimately all of these anomalies are a cover for the real phenomenon.

In Our Haunted Planet, Keel discussed the seldom-considered possibility that the alien "visitors" to Earth are not visitors at all, but an advanced Earth civilization, which may or may not be human. Interdimensional life is also considered.

Keel took no position on the ultimate purpose of the phenomenon other than that the UFO intelligence seems to have a long-standing interest in interacting with the human race.

[edit] The Mothman Prophecies

In 1975, Keel published The Mothman Prophecies, an account of his 1966–1967 investigation of sightings of the Mothman, a strange winged creature reported in and around Point Pleasant, West Virginia.

The book was loosely adapted into a 2002 movie, starring Richard Gere, Will Patton, Laura Linney and Alan Bates. Gere and Bates played two parts of Keel's personality. Bates' character was "Leek," which was "Keel" spelled backwards, and Gere's character worked for a newspaper, "John Klein," also a play on Keel's name.

In the May/June 2002 issue of Skeptical Inquirer, journalist John C. Sherwood, a former business associate of UFO researcher Gray Barker, published an analysis of private letters between Keel and Barker during the period of Keel's investigation. In the article, "Gray Barker's Book of Bunk," Sherwood reported finding significant differences between what Keel wrote at the time of his investigation and what he wrote in his first book about the Mothman reports, raising questions about the book's accuracy. Sherwood also reported that Keel, who was well known for writing humorous and outrageous letters to friends and associates, would not assist him in clarifying the differences thus raising doubts about Sherwood's supposition.

[edit] Health

On Friday October 13, 2006, Keel admitted himself to New York City's Lenox Hill Hospital, having suffered a heart attack, and underwent successful heart surgery on October 16. Keel then was moved from the hospital to a rehabilitation center on October 26, according to his friend Doug Skinner who remained in contact with him and who requested that well wishers contact Keel by mail in order to give him time to recover. Although annoyed by postings of his premature death, Keel continued to improve for some time. In early 2009, Keel moved into a nursing home near his apartment on the Upper West Side.

He died on July 3, 2009, at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, at the age of 79.

[edit] Bibliography

• Jadoo (1957)
• UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse (1970)
• Strange Creatures From Time and Space (1970)
• Our Haunted Planet (1971)
• The Flying Saucer Subculture (1973)
• The Mothman Prophecies (1975)
• The Eighth Tower (1975)
• Disneyland of the Gods (1988)
• The Complete Guide to Mysterious Beings (1994) (revised version of Strange Creatures from Time and Space)
• The Best of John Keel (Paperback 2006) (Collection of Keel's Fate Magazine articles)

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• John Keel - Daily Telegraph obituary
• Fortean Times interview http://www.forteantimes.com/features/interviews/2053/john_keel_rip.html
• John Keel magazine articles http://www.philsp.com/homeville/FMI/s1171.htm#A43298
• Mothman Central
• SciFi Online Interview with Keel
• The Great UFO Wave of '73: Interview with John A. Keel
• FortFest tapes
• Ultraterrestrials: Do they walk among us?, article by Ken Korczak at Unexplained Mysteries, 26 March 2006
• John Keel website with bibliography and biographical details

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