JOHN KEEL NOT AN AUTHORITY ON ANYTHING

I’ll depart from my usual posting praxis here to plug Adam Gorightly’s new book Agent of Disruption. He just sent me a copy, and I find it fascinating. It’s a comprehensive (556 pages) biography of Fred Lee Crisman, that perplexing figure whose name pops up in the Shaver Mystery, the Maury Island incident, the Kennedy assassination, and other Fortean and conspiratorial topics like a stubborn weed. John and I often discussed Crisman, and at one point John lent me a copy of Murder of a City, the book Crisman wrote under his pseudonym Jon Gold. Gorightly has unearthed an astonishing amount of material about Crisman, so, if you’ve ever been curious about him, snap up a copy. I won’t link to Amazon, but I’m sure you know where to find the site on your gizmo.

I apologize for being absent for a month. The site suffered a malware attack, and it took a bit of work to fix it. It was just another reminder that, as John liked to say, “everything’s rotten,” but I hope all is well now.

So, here’s one of the raffish little pamphlets John put out in the ’80s, when he was trying to make money selling adzines, booklets, magic tricks, and other things through the mail. It was one of his more surprising activities, but, as usual, he could be pretty funny.

In 1967, Tom Monteleone was a student at the University of Maryland. While listening to a radio interview with Woodrow Derenberger, the contactee familiar to readers of The Mothman Prophecies, he called in to say that he too had met aliens and had visited the planet Lanulos. John believed his story, which he summarized in Operation Trojan Horse:

“In December, 1967, Tom Monteleone, a young student, a psychology major in Adelphi, Maryland, allegedly had a contact with a grounded UFO and conversed with a man in ‘shiny coveralls’ who identified himself as ‘Vadig.’ A few weeks later this same Vadig appeared in a Washington restaurant, where the student was working as a waiter. This time he was dressed in conventional clothing and appeared to be a normal human being except for his bulging ‘thyroid eyes.’ Altogether, the student met Vadig four times, and each time he ended the conversation with the phrase ‘I’ll see you in time.'”

John wrote more about Monteleone in Chapter 14 of The Mothman Prophecies: “Naturally, I suspected the whole thing was some kind of put-on. Either Tom and Woody were in cahoots, or Tom, who was a psychology major, was working on a paper about the gullible UFO buffs, I thought. […] I finally had to conclude Tom was on the level.”

Naturally, John’s first impression was correct. Monteleone had in fact made up the story. He later regretted the incident, and went on to a successful career as a writer, particularly of science fiction and horror. Unfortunately, John never admitted that he had been fooled, and that he had let credulity and confirmation bias affect his judgment.

Here are John’s notes from his meeting with Monteleone, as well a few lines of unidentified characters and a drawing of a black ball and tower. I don’t know if the last two pages are related to Monteleone’s story or just in the same notebook.

This is the last issue of the Athens Messenger that John kept in his files. There’s a story on the aftermath of the Silver Bridge disaster, and Mary Hyre writes her last column of the year, summing up the major events of 1967.

John made a number of short films in the ’60s; he gives a partial list of them here. Among other things, he experimented with animation, both drawn and stop-motion. “The Amoeba That Refused to Split” never progressed beyond 85 seconds of blurry silent footage, including several frames burned by the projector bulb. I don’t know how to upload it, so here it is for you to savor in storyboard format. We can only regret its abrupt ending. If John had continued it, it might have told the moving story of one of history’s earliest rebels.

We continue with the coverage of the Silver Bridge disaster in the Athens Messenger. The Dec. 29 issue has three articles by Mary Hyre: on the continuing efforts to clean up the wreckage, on the plans to construct a new bridge, and on the community spirit in Point Pleasant.

We continue with the coverage of the Silver Bridge disaster in The Athens Messenger. On December 28, there was only one article, on the continuing “search for cars and bodies.”

John died July 3, 2009. Rest in peace, John! You’re still remembered, and we still read your books.

This is a rare photo of me with John. He’s the one with the mustache.

Willard Henderson, one of John’s contacts in the Ohio Valley, writes again with more news about the mysterious red-haired woman, the whereabouts of Woodrow Derenberger, and UFO sightings. John answers with questions about NICAP meetings in the area and with some of his own postal mysteries.

We continue with our coverage of the Silver Bridge disaster. On Dec. 27, the Athens Messenger reported on the continuing investigation of the collapse and the recovery of the latest body. There’s also a mention of a rumor that some of the cars might have carried explosives, Mary Hyre had no column in the paper that day.