John Keel, the legendary ufologist and author of “The Mothman Prophecies,” died Friday, at the age of seventy-nine. The news reminded me of a chance encounter I had with Keel a couple of years ago, during a visit a friend and I made to an old-age home on the Upper West Side, part of a program that sends chirpy youngsters to drop in on Jewish seniors; for someone who’s desperately lonely, a ten-minute visit can makes a world of difference. On that day, there was no Mrs. Goldberg inside the room we’d been sent to. We asked the lone occupant—a Mr. John Keel—where we could find her. He told us that she had died, and invited us in.

We listened as Keel told his life story, completely absorbed and incredulous (though unfailingly polite). We thought that he might be delusional, or, at least, a highly entertaining fabulist. He told us about U.F.O. sightings and his experiences with a mythical creature from West Virginia called the Mothman. He said he wrote a book about the Mothman (we figured it must have been self-published), and later negotiated to get Richard Gere to play him (i.e., John Keel, not the Mothman) in a movie. Keel then spent forty minutes describing a trip to India, where he investigated the magic of the fakirs.

I think Keel knew that we didn’t really believe him, but he didn’t seem to care. Everything was presented as a lesson. (I think he even called us “whippersnappers.”) He lectured on the nature of belief, on the variances of truth, on the dangers of extreme skepticism, and on his aversion to love. When we finally had to leave—nearly two hours later—and were standing in the doorway, Keel called us over and said, “One day you’ll know,” then bid us farewell.

Was he referring to his fame, which we discovered that afternoon online? (We immediately picked up “The Mothman Prophecies”—both the book and movie—for peanuts on Amazon.) Or the truth of his theories? Or something else entirely?

Posted by Menachem Kaiser

[Story Link Here] [ Book Cover Pic ]

I'll admit I knew about this on Friday,I just didn't want to post it because I was starting to feel like I was the Dark Realm's grim reaper or something.

This article from Cyptumondo is probably a better example of a good obituary for an intresting man who lived an extrodianry life.

Article

John Keel

A fellow New Yorker!

Evening Tribune (Hornell NY)

Wikipedia

Aw Thankyou so much for finding that!. I was searching just now for something more and found this on...

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/07/06/john-keel-rip.html


What I found rather interesting, but yet so awlful sad was in one of the comments made:

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#1 posted by Anonymous, July 6, 2009 8:02 AM
Oh that's terrible. Keel was a hero of mine since I was 12 years old. He taught me the meaning of the word, "agnostic," which has shaped my entire life up to this point. The last time I ran into him on the upper west side, he wanted me to make a documentary about him but I wanted to get alot of pretty girls to interview him, haha. I probably would have killed him back then from the excitement. I'm glad he lived to see the Mothman Prophecies movie get made, he was always annoyed that he had not gotten his true due before that. He told me Speilberg interviewed him for days before making Indiana Jones, and that Indy was inspired partially by Keel's book, "Jadoo." He told me that in Men In Black, the reasons the agents are named J and K is because those are Keels' initials. He told me that the MIB publicity kit contained alot of his writing but all uncredited.

I'm hoping that Richard Gere playing him in the movie version of Mothman evened the score a bit.

I hope Keel will be remembered as a philosopher as well as journalist, as he is referenced in Robert Anton Wilson books for his worldview. He was an individualist like they don't make any more. He was very very oldschool, never adapting to email, only snail mail.

There'll never be another person like John A. Keel.

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This would be so awlful if all thoses people truly did go and pump him for ideas to make more money for themselves.