JOHN KEEL NOT AN AUTHORITY ON ANYTHING

John Keel would have been 93 on March 25. Happy posthumous birthday, John! And all you Keel fans out there, keep reading his books!

The last item in John’s “Mothman Casebook” is this article, cartoonishly entitled “It’s a bird.. it’s a plane… No, No, it’s ‘Mothman’ (gulp!)” It ran in Saga, November 1968, under the more sedate title of “Mothman Monster.” Here are the first three pages, beginning with previous sightings of strange creatures in West Virginia, and a history of “winged human beings.”

This is the last part of “UFOs and the Bridge Disaster,” probably John’s first article on the collapse of the Silver Bridge, and probably intended for Fate. It’s followed in the folder by a list of phone numbers of witnesses, which I won’t post here. I’ll note that one of them wasn’t mentioned in either the article or The Mothman Prophecies: “Mrs. Artis Taylor, supervisor, W. Va. Telephone Company, Pt. Pleasant.” Maybe she was a relative of Walter Taylor, who was.

We continue with John’s “Mothman Casebook,” with the next part of his article “UFOs and the Bridge Disaster.” As he mentioned in his notes to his article for Flying Saucer Review, Fate had rejected an article on the Silver Bridge Disaster, so I suspect this is that article. It was, of course, reworked for The Mothman Prophecies.