We have another odd item from John’s early career. In his article “Bosoms, Blood, & Baloney” for Writer’s Digest, he said he heard a story from a ship’s doctor about a man who fought a tiger by thrusting his arm down its throat. John turned it into a story of his own, with the usual lashings of local color. Editors refused it, however, insisting the protagonist had to use a knife to make it believable. John obliged, and the story was published in the July, 1957 issue of Escape to Adventure, under his favorite pseudonym, Randolph Halsey-Quince. The curious thing about all this is that the magazine actually published it the way John wrote it originally, without the added bit about a knife. Did another editor like the first version better? Did John remember it wrong? Maybe we can just assume that communication often became scrambled between Alex Jackinson (John’s agent), the editors of the adventure magazines, and John, roaming through India.
Here’s John’s original typescript, and the beginning of the article as printed. The illegible phrase on the third page should read: “There are many rivers and swamp areas in Sunderban […]”
Hello there, Doug. I’m sorry for the off-topic question, but I have a question for you.
I’ve read that John Keel initially wasn’t convinced that Mothman was connected to the Silver Bridge disaster. However, I can’t seem to find any records of that in the archive you have here. If that document does exist, can you provide me with a link to it?
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Keel initially concluded that the Mothman was likely the result of people seeing unusually large birds in the area and that “it is completely erroneous to blame the collapse of the rickety old Silver Bridge on flying saucers or ‘Men in Black.’” Unfortunately, by the time Keel published The Mothman Prophecies, his views had changed. The Mothman was now one of his sinister ultraterrestrials, as well as a portent of the impending doom of the bridge collapse.
https://aiptcomics.com/2022/01/12/mothman-indrid-cold-department-of-truth/?utm_content=cmp-true
Comment by Cryptid Hunter — October 16, 2024 @ 7:16 am
I posted John’s first attempts at writing up the story starting here: https://www.johnkeel.com/?p=5383
As far as I know, he didn’t think all the sightings were large birds, because some witnesses insisted they weren’t. And in The Mothman Prophecies, he didn’t say Mothman was a portent of impending doom; Mary Hyre asked if it had any connection to the Silver Bridge, and he said there was no way to know, and that the bridge’s condition was already known. Also, as far as I know, John always said he had no idea what Mothman was, and that if he did, he’d have had a better book.
Comment by Doug — October 17, 2024 @ 9:31 pm