by John A. Keel
Mrs. Lilly looked out and saw a flashing red light disappearing over the trees.
“Do you think those things are back?” Gary asked.
“It was probably an airplane,” she answered. But she turned off the lights in the living room so they could see better into the darkness outside.
A few minutes later a second light appeared, moving in the same direction as the first. It was one of those glaringly bright prismatic lights so familiar to the residents of Camp Conley Road. They went outside to watch it.
“It wasn’t an airplane,” Mrs. Lilly assured me later. “It was one of those things, bobbing up and down like they do. There wasn’t any sound.”
For the next hour, Mrs. Lilly, Gary, and daughter Linda divided their attention between the TV set and the eerie aerial activity outside. “We counted twelve of them,” Mrs. Lilly reported. “Most of them were just above the treetops. They seemed to be coming down from up around the TNT area and moved south toward the town.”
The hundreds of people milling around the streets of Point Pleasant did not see anything in the skies that night, however. Perhaps the objects followed their old route, dipping into the ravine behind North Park and cutting eastward to the hills.
“I was getting scared,” Mrs. Lilly recalled. “We’d never seen so many of these things in one night. I kept trying the phone, wanting to get somebody to drive out and pick us up and take us out of there.”
Finally around 9 P.M. she got a dial tone and was able to place a call to a neighbor who drove over, picked them up, and took them to the home of Mrs. Lilly’s mother in Point Pleasant.
A few months later James Lilly moved his family away from Camp Conley Road.
III.
Around 2 A.M. I finally got a line through to Point Pleasant and was very much relieved when Mary Hyre picked up her phone. She spoke very slowly, obviously exhausted.
“It’s the most terrible thing I’ve ever seen,” she told me. “But I was kind of prepared for it. You know those dreams I had … well, it was exactly like that. The packages floating in the water. The people crying for help. Those dreams came true.”
“Is everyone all right?” I asked anxiously. “The McDaniels, Connie, the others.”
“I think so. It’ll be awhile before we know who was on the bridge. There could have been as many as one hundred people. Some of them were rescued. But an awful lot of them are trapped under all that metal.”
After a month of brutally hard work, divers and rescue teams recovered thirty-eight bodies. Several other people in Ohio and West Virginia were never heard from again and it was assumed they also went down with the bridge. A number of UFO witnesses were among the dead.
“I talked to one woman who lives right by the bridge,” Mary continued. “She says that two days ago she saw two men climbing on the bridge.”
“Climbing on it?”
“Yes. They weren’t walking across. They were climbing around the sides of it.”
“Was she able to describe them.”
“They were wearing checkered coats and black trousers. She couldn’t see their faces too well because they were so far away. But she did notice their shoes. They weren’t wearing boots, just ordinary shoes. She thought that was odd because of the weather we’d been having.”
“You’d better have the police talk with her, Mary,” I said.
“I will. There’s just so much to do. People are coming from all over. And as soon as my phone was working again I started getting calls from newspapers and radio stations all over the country.”
“You’d better try to get some sleep.”
“I know, but I just can’t leave the office now. Ambulances and rescue trucks are coming in from all over. They’ll be working all night. I’ve got to be there.”
Later the bridge was lifted from the water piece by piece and reconstructed in a field near Henderson. Engineers finally determined the collapse was due to metal fatigue and structural failure.
“John,” Mary began hesitantly, “do you think this had anything to do with UFOs and the ‘Bird’?”
“There’s no answer to that, Mary. Maybe there were people on the bridge that could have told us something. I knew the condition of the bridge. And I’d had warnings about something terrible that was going to happen. If I could have put things together sooner, maybe we could have saved all those lives.”
“It’s not your fault. Some things are just meant to be. You can’t change the future … even when you know what is going to happen.”
I heard the sound of a woman weeping in the background.
“A woman just came in. Her husband is missing,” Mary whispered.
After we hung up I sat for a long time by my big glass windows, looking out over the lights of Manhattan Island. For one long year my life had been intertwined with the lives of the people of Point Pleasant. I had been led into relationships and events that seemed to follow a structured pattern beyond my control. Even beyond my understanding. I had stood on those distant hills and watched those wretched bouncing lights mock me. In the months ahead there would be many changes in the lives of those who had been touched by the Garuda. Roger and Linda Scarberry would divorce, as would Woodrow Derenberger who, in what has become a tradition among contactees, would remarry … this time to a beautiful young woman who was also a contactee. They would slip away together to obscurity in another state. Others would eventually suffer nervous breakdowns and undergo long periods of hospitalization. A few would even commit suicide.
Death would claim too many of the participants in the dramas of 1967. Mrs. Mary Hyre passed away in 1970. Ivan T. Sanderson left us in 1973. Dr. Edward U. Condon, Fred Freed, and many others would be gone long before the tenth anniversary of the appearance of the winged thing in front of the old power plant. Some of the people who viewed the tall, hairy red-eyed monsters died within six months. Even Mr. Apol staged an odd departure, acting out a charade with the Men in Black that left him broken in spirit. He wasted away like a human suffering from a stroke until there was nothing left but his Cheshire smile.
Out there in the night those puzzling spheres of light still ply their ancient routes in the Mississippi and Ohio valleys. A new generation of young people stand on the hilltops, expectantly scanning the skies. Their elders, jaded by nearly thirty years of signs and wonders, no longer scoff. Believers in extraterrestrial visitants and saviors from outer space are now welcomed on the most respectable television shows to broadcast their propaganda for that imaginary world with its superior technology and its marvelously stupid representatives who adopt the names of ancient gods and moan they are prisoners of time.
People ask me still if I know what the future holds. But, just as I used Socratic irony in my investigations, I can only admit like Socrates that the more I learn the less I know. My glimpses of the future were all secondhand and were frequently garbled by accident or design.
All of the generations before ours were infested with false prophets, workers of wonders, and signs in the sky. In a sense, each generation is truly the Last Generation from their microscopic viewpoint. But our modern electronic Communications and sophisticated press agentry have given present-day prophets tools the ancients lacked. Ideas, no matter how bizarre or fallacious, can span the world in a flash. And there are always people ready to rally to any banner, no matter how absurd. In recent years we have seen a worldwide revival of interest in psychic phenomena and the supernatural. Stern no-nonsense scientists now drag their beards to Loch Ness to search for the monster, while others comb the woods of the Northwest seeking the Sasquatch, and still others soberly discuss robots from outer space with Mississippi fishermen. But gradually all these men are being drawn closer and closer to ontology; to an examination of the question that lies beyond the simplistic, “Can these things be?” The real question is, “Why are there these things?”
Like Mr. Apol and his merry crew of mischief-makers, we do not know who we are or what we are doing here. But we are slowly learning.
Once we begin looking beyond the mere manifestations we will finally glimpse the real truth. Belief has always been the enemy of truth; yet, ironically, if our minds are supple enough, belief can sometimes open the door.
After spending a lifetime in Egyptian tombs, among the crumbling temples of India and the lamaseries of the Himalayas, endless nights in cemeteries, gravel pits, and hilltops everywhere, I have seen much and my childish sense of wonder remains unshaken. But Charles Fort’s question always haunts me: “If there is a universal mind, must it be sane?”
Notes
3. The Flutter of Black Wings
*Yuri B. Petrenko, “Forerunner of the Flying ‘Lady’ of Vietnam?” Flying Saucer Review, vol. 19, no. 2 (March-April 1973): 29–30.
1Harold T. Wilkins, Flying Saucers on the Attack (New York: Citadel Press, 1954), chapter III.
2Jerome Clark and Loren Coleman, “Winged Weirdies,” Fate, March 1972.
3FSR Case Histories, No. 10, June 1972.
4Charles Bowen, ed., The Humanoids (London: Neville Spearman, 1969).
5. The Cold Who Came Down in the Rain
1American Indian Linguistic Families and Tribes, a map issued by C. S. Hammond & Co., New York.
6. Mothman!
*In one of my notebooks covering this period I find the following notation: “Nov. 16th-UPI man from Charleston saw low-flying object over TNT area—made humming sound—flashing red light. Some girls with him. They watched object for several minutes.”
*Monsters, UFOs, and apparitions have an interesting affinity for garbage dumps and junk yards. Even the famous miracle at Lourdes, France, in 1858, took place at the local garbage dump.
7. The Night of the Bleeding Ear
1No one ever tried to steal my copy. It was subsequently published in a special issue of Flying Saucer Review, June 1969.
*The head of NASA at that time was Dr. Thomas O. Paine.
8. Procession of the Damned
*Hang-gliders are lightweight frames covered with nylon. They look something like kites and the rider hangs underneath on bars and straps. They are launched from steep hills or cliffs. Route 62 runs along the edge of the Ohio River and the terrain is very flat.
9. “Wake Up Down There!”
1Brad Steiger, Haunted Lovers (New York: Dell, 1971).
2Woodrow W. Derenberger, with Harold W. Hubbard, Visitors from Lanulos (New York: Vantage Press, 1971).
10. Purple Lights and April Foolishness
1John Magor, ed., Canadian UFO Report, No. 16, Box 758, Duncan, B.C., Canada.
11. If This is Wednesday, It Must Be a Venusian
*A Fortean event is any event which does not have a rational scientific explanation. The word was coined after Charles Fort. There is even an International Fortean Organization (INFO); Box 367; Arlington, Virginia.
13. Phantom Photographers
*Awareness, Autumn 1973 (J. B. Delair, ed. 19 Cumnor Road, Wootton, Boar’s Hill, Oxford, Berkshire; England).
14. Sideways in Time
1C.E.F.C.; 12, rue des Bossons; 1213 ONEX; Geneva, Switzerland.
15. Misery on the Mount
1Canadian UFO Report, #13, 1972–73
*Springheeled Jack was a tall, caped phantom with a bright light on his chest who appeared in England in the 1830s. He was able to leap great distances and he spewed a nauseous gas into the faces of surprised witnesses. Although he was the subject of a massive manhunt, he was never caught or identified. A black-garbed phantom terrorized Mattoon, Illinois, in the 1940s, spraying a noxious gas into bedroom windows.
*In comparing notes with psychic investigator-author Brad Steiger, he told me he had similar experiences with hypnosis; that is, the control was taken out of his hands by some other intelligence.
17. “Even the Bedouins Hate Their Telephone Company”
*“Everybody hates the telephone company. Even the Bedouins hate their telephone company.” Line from the 1967 movie The President’s Analyst.
*Male UFO witnesses sometimes develop a temporary set of symptoms resembling gonorrhea.
*Dr. Berthold Schwarz, a deputy police officer in Pennsylvania, and several other serious investigators have had similar problems with their tape recorders. Even former President Nixon had trouble with his tape recorder.
19. “Where the Birds Gather…”
*On June 16, 1967, Mrs. Gladys Fusaro of Huntington, New York, received a phone call from a woman claiming to be Princess Moon Owl. The princess gave her this statement to pass on to me: “The pebbles on the beach are washed under the bridge where the birds gather and where rays of light show through.”
Afterword
We had begun the 1900s with an unlimited number of beliefs about ourselves and our universe. The world seemed to be a bright and wonderful place. Famed astronomers assured us that Mars was also bustling with life along beautifully engineered canals. Automobiles and flying machines were being perfected. The 20th century was going to be terrific. But, by the end, we were embittered cynics, exhausted by wars and suspicious of mysteries and those who promoted them. The century had become a bloody scam.
For one hundred years, no matter where you lived on this ball of nitrogen, oxygen and cosmic spit, someone within two hundred miles of your home had personally seen a monster with big red eyes and, often, a penetrating stench. They were everywhere, along with the maddened dictators, publicity hungry generals and warlords, and wild-eyed scientists who kept mumbling incomprehensible formulae for manipulating things we could not see. Everyone was clearly nuts and very few of us were left alone to stumble through the forests, swamps and deserts, grimly determined to prove somehow that sanity would ultimately triumph.
We failed. Technology took over and our machines were nuttier than all of us. Our millionaires, who were multiplying like cockroaches, filtered their loot through TV networks, liquor companies, computer whizzes and assorted military contractors to try to capture dinosaurs in the Belgian Congo, giant sea serpents in the lochs of Ireland and Scotland, and tall, hairy humanoids in the Pacific Northwest, China, and Russia, along with kangaroos in the midwest and ghostly demons that mutilated cows and drank blood wherever they could find it. The end result was millions of bucks down the toilet while hundreds of bad movies and even worse TV shows were churned out, along with gigantic stacks of bad books that are still used to prop up tables in poorer communities.
Fortunately, I am a classier type. Let others chase little green men. No millionaire came knocking on my door with an offer to finance a search for the giant worms of Australia. But I must admit I once went to Norway and Sweden where unidentified submarines were causing an uproar. It turned out that American and Soviet subs were playing Cold War games with each other. The last really big UFO flap took place in Russia in the 1980s and that too proved to be a Cold War swindle.
Hoaxes, frauds and blatant chicanery have always been an important element of what really can be described as the carnival trade. For years, a huckster traveled the U.S. with a tent show of a stuffed Bigfoot in a tank of ice. People may still be paying admission to view that Hollywood creation. The Wright-Patterson Air Force Base has a public museum displaying things that supposedly came from flying saucers, including a couple of pancakes. Each year Nessie draws thousands of summer tourists to Loch Ness. Often Nessie is obligingly sighted just before the season starts. UFOs tend to appear in obscure places around the time of the solstices. Mothman—or “The Bird”—has been appearing almost constantly since the 1960s. He reportedly flapped around South Dakota in July, 2001. Judging from the endless mail and clippings that have poured in on me for over thirty years, Mothman seems to follow regular routes in several parts of the country. Red-eyed flying dragons also circle the globe periodically. Earlier, in the 1950s, we seemed inundated by them worldwide; but we eventually learned that the famous U-2 spy plane had one serious flaw. It glowed bright red while traveling at high speed through the upper stratosphere.
When I first visited Point Pleasant in the 1960s and talked to sco
res of witnesses, I was convinced I was on the track of a very big bird of spectacular size. I have no idea what I would have done if I caught it … or it had caught me. In later misadventures, I had experiences with numerous demonic forces and in my dotage I am very aware that our entire planet is occupied by things we see only by accident. They seem able to boggle our minds and even control our feeble little brains.
UFOmania is no different from demonomania. My forms of religious and political fanaticism are linked directly to these other manias and to paranoia and schizophrenia. We are meant to be crazy. It is an important part of the human condition. Otherwise there would be no wars, no Hitlers or Napoleons, no Woodrow Derenbergers (and his unfortunate psychiatrist). This planet is haunted by us; the other occupants just evade boredom by filling our skies and seas with monsters. I was clearly meant to blunder into that little town in West Virginia, and learn things that some men have known for centuries but were afraid to ask. I warned Sheriff Johnson and Mary Hyre that this was folklore in the making. Gray Barker did try to turn it into a celestial fairy tale, making me decide to write this book and tell the truth as it happened. It has taken three decades for the whole story to get out and this would not have happened without the help of many, many devoted friends such as Knox Burger, the Maxwell Perkins of our era; Ivan T. Sanderson, the zoologist who helped guide me through those frightening days; Martin Singer; David Blakiston; Ronald Bonds; Richard Hatem; Coral Lorenzen and a virtual army of advisors, experts, editors, newspapermen and girlfriends who often got scared out of their wits. Hordes of plagiarists, comic book artists, sideshow lecturers, and mindless exploiters of the little-old-ladies-in-tennis-shoes set have all given it a shot. Now it is Hollywood’s turn and they have managed to squeeze the basic truths into their film. Not an easy task. But the truth is always the most difficult thing to sell.
—John A. Keel
New York City
August 2001
THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES
Copyright © 1975, 1991 by John A. Keel
