Hello, Welcome everyone. It's when I take a minute to introduce everyone here,
just in case anyone isn't familiar. So with me tonight is Andy Mercer,
who composed the music you just heard. So Andy, instead of exercising
demons, uses demons to exercise his neighbors. Absolutely, and also with me
is Steve Ward, who has replaced Mothman as Point Pleasant's weirdest resident. I'm
happy to do so and joining us now. Hi, Bill, good evening.
Hi Susie, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too.
I think I know these other two guys I can see. I think you've
heard me before, but usually hide behind them. Doesn't have a camera on.
But Mi's the fun one this time for a giant. Hi, Andy,
how are you? I'm pretty good? Bill, that's how you doing.
I've got no legitimate complaints. Hello, Steve, Hey, how's it
going? Bill? I'm waiting for your introduction here the boy by the way.
Will Jackie be able to stay with us tonight? You know what.
I just got off the phone with her and she's on the way home.
She won't be here for an hour or so. Okay, Susie, Shall
I go ahead and introduced Bill? Absolutely, and I'm going to introduce Jackie
as well in case she can join us later. Jackie and Bill Kuslis,
PhD are authors of Bridging the Tragedy, a book based upon the nineteen sixty
seven Silverbridge disaster in Point Pleasant, West, Virginia, Mothman and post traumatic
growth, a phenomenon that often occurs after tragedy. Bill's interest in the paranormle
began in the late seventies with the original Project UFO television series. In two
thousand and three, he was introduced to the Mothman Prophecies movie and it changed
his life. Jackie is a retired USPS postmaster and a current business owner operator.
She specializes in research, data analysis, and connecting the dots between intuition,
perception, and reality. Since twenty sixteen, Bill and Jackie have visited
Point Pleasant regularly, where they have become friends with several area residents, including
Mothman Museum owner Jeff Walmsley and the lake Carolyn Harris, co founders of the
Mothman Festival. Bill holds a doctorate in psychology with a focus on post traumatic
growth the good things that can come from bad experiences. They reside in Sycamore
Illinois and it's great to see Bill again. Good to see you, Steve.
Yeah, and thanks for joining us, Bill. And that kind of
hit me the most when I read the Mothman Prophecies the first time. Was
you know, Mothman's kind of the least interesting part of the whole story,
right, And the way Keel described the bridge collapse itself, no one,
you know, everyone kind of glosses over that, but it was I'm from
a small town about the same size as Point Pleasant, and I just,
you know, if that number of people had died in my hometown, you
know, I think about like that would have been the end of the world
for us. You know at the time that it's such a huge event that
everyone kind of glosses over when they talk about this. So your insight,
I think it's perfect for this. Well, thank you. You're right.
I think you're the first person besides me that I've ever heard say that the
Mothman was really not the most interesting or central part of the whole tale.
I mean, the Mothman prophecies is named the Mothman Prophecies, but I think
that a lot of the times people forget what the prophecies really were. We
hear about the black wings, we hear about people being scared, the red
eyes, chasing cars, all this kind of stuff, and that's fascinating,
horrifying, But the prophecies and the Silver Bridge disaster are equally powerful, if
not more so. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah, I'd like to
say that. You know, I I was a follower of John Keel back
in the early days, which everybody that has heard any in my show knows
that. But I got the Mockman Prophecies book as soon as it was available,
and I visited Point Pleasant a couple of years later to kind of see
the area. But it wasn't until two thousand and six I went to my
first Mothman festival, met some of the people there, and then the next
time I read the Mockman Prophecies and read that chapter on the bridge collapse,
it really hit home. It wasn't just a story people that I met people
that you know, survived the disaster. I met people that were in town
at the time and saw the collapse or heard it, and it just made
a whole difference in the story that actually have been there and met the people
in Point Pleasant and now you live there, and now I live there.
Yes, on the very on the very road that the Scarberry's and Mallets were
chased by the wing Garuda. You know, I mean, who would have
would have thought, you know that a kid in junior high who read that
first major report that hit the wire services all over the world about the two
couples chased the int area into Point Pleasant and now here I am. And
what you said, Steve really resonates with me because after we you know,
we've been traveling to Point Pleasant. We've probably been there ten times since twenty
sixteen, you know, at least once a year, if not twice,
and we've gotten to be friendly with so many people there. It really is
just a wonderful, wonderful small town. And having interviewed people that we did
for our book and gotten to know them, you know, really had an
end level. Jimmy Wedge lost both his mom and dad and the bridge disaster.
Susan Sayer talked about how things were in her fifth grade classroom when Kathy
Bias's chair was pulled out because they never could find her body in the river.
I mean, all these different things. We watched the Mothman Prophecies movie
and I'm a junkie, I mean, I've probably watched it hundreds of times,
but when we watched it for the first time, you know, front
to end, after we did the interviews and got to know the people that
we did, I mean, I had tears come to my eyes when that
bridge went down, because I know now what it felt like for those people
who lost their parents, their children, their friends. You feel it.
I mean, it's just such a powerful story. It's interesting that you were
introduced to all this from the film, and as someone who works occasionally at
the Mothmaan Museum and greets people and answers their questions. So many people,
very few people have read the book, very people few people hit anything by
John Keeld, but so many have been introduced by that film, which now
is about twenty years old. So that's that's really amazing that that film had
such an impact on you. When you saw it, you know, it
pulled me in. But when I picked up the book, started reading that
and then of course downloaded the audio version and have read and listened to that
thing countless times. At that point, you know, it just it became
part of who I am, I mean fundamentally, and Susie, like you
said, for me, we live in Sycamore, Illinois, which is a
little bigger than Point Pleasant, it's closer to nineteen thousand people. But five
miles to the north of US is a small town called Genoa. It's almost
exactly the same size as Point Pleasant. So whenever I talk about the bridge
disaster and about Point Pleasant with people who live in our area, I always
say that, picture a town of Genoa losing forty six people in a bridge
disaster. If you didn't know somebody in the bridge disaster, you knew somebody
who knew somebody who was in the bridge disaster. Yeah, when I was
in high school, we had two kids that got killed in a crash,
and I remember how the town shut down practically, and that was two people.
So it's kind of even harder to fathom forty six at a time.
You know. What we heard from the people that we interviewed was disbelief when
they heard the Silver Bridge collapsed, or even people who knew because they saw
or came upon it shortly after it went down. When they told family members,
the family members didn't believe them. They said, you must mean a
smaller bridge, or you must mean part of the Silver Bridge. The Silver
Bridge didn't just fall into the water. That didn't happen, but absolutely it
did. So Yeah, super powerful and just life altering for that whole region.
Really, and people do either of you know, did people in town
immediately connect the bridge collapse with Mothman or was that afterwards that that came to
be you're asking me either of you, if either of you have an opinion.
I'm just listening for Steve because I've been Okay, Well, I think
that when you know, there still may have been sightings of this creature or
apparation or whatever it was, There still may have been UFO reports. I
think that that horrible disaster took everybody's mind off that it was when there's a
there's a part in the book by John Keel where these strangers these call them
men in black if you want, or there's just these creepy dudes that came
in to talk to Mary Higher, the reporter friend and colleague of John Keel
that wrote the column where the waters mingle. Uh. You know, here
she is dealing with the bridge disaster and you know, people's deaths and up
with the news, and some creepy dude asks asked her about UFO reports in
the area. If it was still going on, nobody gave a damn about
it anymore. Now, I tend to think there's a lot of people think
Mothman was a harbinger. Some think that it created the disaster somehow. I
tend to think that all this and there's so in Susie're right, because Mothman
isn't the only strange thing that happened in that during that time period. UFOs
strangers they called men in black animal mutilations, a psychic phenomenon. I tend
to think that it all just happened at the same time that the bridge collapsed.
I don't think there was a direct connection, but in people's hearts and
minds, there is a connection because it happened that same within that same about
thirteen once. And so that's why it's it's so amazing that uh uh you
know mentioned Carolyn Harris. Uh. That's great lady that Bill and Jackie met
up when they came down to Point Pleasant. I met her when I came
down to Point Pleasant, a co founder of the Mothman Festival. Uh,
a superb lady. She lost her young son. Uh. Her son was
crossing the bridge with her ex husband at that time. But nevertheless, uh,
you know, even though again the uh, this tragedy is connected with
the weird stuff that happened that year, she was all about doing whatever she
could to bring the town back. You know, she she must have she
must have had great foresight. I mean, who would have thought that this
little festival would irrupted to thousands of people, bringing millions of Dolphards into the
town. And but it was it was due to people like like Carolyn that
that just forged ahead and did not let that tragedy like this is that kind
of stuff that Bill writes about. Did not let that horrible tragedy win and
just bog everything down. So I don't think Mathman had a direct connection with
this bridge collapse. And I agree. I'm sorry. Go ahead, go
ahead, Susie. So I was going to say. In the beginning of
the book Keil Talks, he tells his story. I think it was a
home in New York that was haunted by a man wearing a cape and a
slouch hat. But there was never anyone that lived there that fit that description,
except for there was a writer who wrote a book with a character with
that description, kind of implying it's like a Tulpa type thing, and when
the bridge collapsed and it took everyone's minds to the bridge and everything going on
there and away from all the strange activity, the activity slowed down at least,
if not stopped for a while. So it you know, them not
focusing on it anymore and focusing on something else may have been what stopped it
from happening. And that's what Jeff Walmsley says too. He said that although
there still were sightings, people didn't want to talk about Mothman because we're burying
loved ones. Now, you know, we've had this horrible tragedy happen.
This is real, we can quantify this. It's right in front of us.
It's a horrible disaster. We don't want to hear about any quote unquote
nonsense. Now that stuff was still happening, I don't think that it stopped,
although it had slowed down a little bit towards the tail end of sixty
seven as it was anyhow. But yeah, absolutely, to answer your original
question, I think it's more of a contemporaneous type thing. Two different things
happening at the same time. And my thought would be that if Mothman had
anything to do whatsoever. With the bridge disaster, it was more or as
a harbinger or as a warning. I don't think that it caused that disaster
to happen. Yeah, we like to blame things we don't understand and vilify
and demonize entities. I'm not going to talk about Puckquaji Steve, I see
you making the face. Well, I will say this, Susie and I
have discussed the way that so many people blame Native American curses or for so
many things. I mean, can't we just cut the Native Americans some slack
and you know, look elsewhere for curses for crimes. Yeah, we did
enough. Like alone, i'd say from a UK perspective, if you're like,
I've come to this the other way around. I first saw the movie,
then read the book afterwards. I remember watching the we think this is
amazing much learn more about this. For me as an observer, it gave
the impression that there was a correlation between the collapse, but more, as
you guys have said, more of the sense of a warning of something that's
going to happen. But one of the theories I kind of find interesting is
the very fact that that dramatic event occurred called ripples almost through time, I
feel like going backwards, so that these strange, anomalous occurrences were caused by
the collapse by sending sort of strange impressions backwards through time, I feel like
and causing normally used to start to occur in a build up towards a rather
dramatic event. And that kind of relationship I found really quite fast, the
possibility there's some kind of connection in that sense that it almost like a backwards
compatibility effect of the strange sightings were caused by an event that yet to occur,
and it kind of makes any sense, But that's one of the ways
I've sort of looked at the idea. But for me, certainly reading the
book after having seen the movie was like, hell, it is even more
strange and bazal and the movie is. It was really what's quite taken by
that fact that these guys always saying. John Kill talked a lot of stuff
in the book that relates to the more general sense of weirdness that I found
absolutely fascin and it's really got me into this sort of area more than the
more conventional ghost stuff, which is my more back my background has been goes
investigations for many many years to move into the more the stranger stuff. She'll
we say that for me was a real life of reading the book, having
seen the movie and think about how the editors. I love that we Keel
would talk about the faceless editors cut out half his manuscript for Crying out Loud,
which fortunately some of that was salvaged in the Eighth Tower, which is
kind of a follow up. Yes, I must read that actually, so
I'm not read that one yet. I must get hold of that and read
that. Yeah, good good stuff. And the one that I've talked about
before, Operation Trojan Horses, one of the books that you know, did
a major change room for me as soon asie I noticed that somebody at Horace
Smith has asked about the relationship between Keel and Gray Barker. Okay, if
I expound on that a little bit, that was on my list of things
to ask you, So thank you Horace for reminding me Gray Barker. I
actually met Grey Barker at the nineteen seventy six U Found Symposium. I won't
go into that store, but I got to talk to him and ask him
a bunch of questions. It was very cool. Never got to meet John
tele John Keel. Now Grey Marker was kind of a trickster. He would
some of the stuff he wrote was legitimate, but he wasn't above embellishing.
And for example, his first book, famous book was called They Knew Too
Much about Flying Saucers, which was all about the Men in Black, right,
the first to think the first book written about the men in Black.
And these, of course are the alleged UFO silencers that come and visit people
that have seen you know, UFOs or taken photographs and want to confiscate them.
And he said, you know, Gray started in an interview he gave.
He said, Grace started writing this book and he was serious about it,
and then he kind of threw up his hands and started making it up.
He said, you have to be very careful with Grey Barker. In
fact, there was a guy in the town that in two years ago before
he moved down to Point Pleasant. He won't give his name, but he
wrote a book published by Gray Barker. And Gray said, hey, if
you pretend to be this particular person that was silenced by the Men of Black,
I'll publish your book. So he was like, it's seventeen or eighteen,
so he said, okay, sounds good. And then years later,
I think it was in the nineties, he came forward and said, you
know, I was just a young kid and it was just all made up.
I forget the name of the character in the book, but Barker was.
And you know, if you ever get a chance to visit the Gray
Barker Archives, they're in the Clarksburg Library. There's a separate building there,
and there's a room devoted to this awesome library of Gray Barker's, including six
issues of The UFO Phenomenon, which was the publication that our high school UFO
club published. If you open up a certain file, there they are.
But yeah, one last thing, there's a Grey Barker wrote his own book
about the before Keel did about Point Pleasant and the Mothman called the Silver Bridge.
And I even asked Barker about that, because a lot of people said
that Keel just ripped off Gray Barker, and of course he didn't. And
uh, and it was funny because Grey Barker says, oh, I'm sure
John, He said, none of us like to get our literary toes stepped
on, but I'm sure John wrote his own book he was such a character.
But there's a chapter in there about Grey Barker and John Keel when they
went to Point Pleasant and John Keel said he got everything wrong, so he
had to rewrite the chapter. So that chapter in the Silver Bridge was written
by John Keel, I think where one of the men in black characters said
he was a friend of Gray Barker too. Yes, yeah, the Mothman
prop and I'm trying to think. I was just listening to the audio version
of it over the course of the last week, just to kind of refresh
my memory a little bit. But there is a guy who I think,
and Steve helped me out here a little bit. Was it was it?
It was the part in the book where I think it's on Long Island where
there was a family that had witnessed a UFO and a number of people were
coming to the house and checking things out. I may be getting stuff conavoluted,
but I remember that there was a guy who showed up at this house
and he was asking questions about Keel, but they had a baby and he
wasn't even acknowledging the fact that the baby was there. Okay, that was
surround for like five hours. Am I am I convoluted. That was actually
in the inter a round point, wasn't It was the Scarberry's baby, and
this guy was said he was Jack Brown. He was this little, short,
creepy guy, you know in quote some man of black type. Now,
look, it could be that, you know, some of these people
we associate with the dreaded men in black might just be a little strange.
I mean, we've all been in this realm for a while and we all
know people that are a little strange. Right, Okay, no, no
names are going to be mentioned here, but uh yeah, he showed up
and he had had a tape recorder that he didn't seem to know how to
operate. He said he was from Cambridge, Ohio, and when he met
somebody else from that area, he didn't seem to know anything about Cambridge.
So it was just totally bizarre. But yeah, he that was that was
from his Jack Brown, and always wanted to meet that guy. I wanted
to make a comment about the last question that the gentleman kind of kicked out
to us here about Keel and Barker. There's one place in one of the
Keel compilation books, one of the articles that Keil wrote, and he was
talking about Barker, and he used the term faction because Gray Barker would blur
fact and fiction into what he called faction. I like what Steve was saying.
Also, I remember, you know, specifically, when he was talking
about doing this writing and how he was he was really immersed in what was
like a report. He was like making a report, and then he just
says the hell with it and just started making up all kinds of stuff after
that. So I think that Keel thought you needed to be wary of Barker
because of his research methods and he just made things up. But he liked
him too. Oh, sure he liked him. They were friends. Yeah,
definitely. It seems a real problem to have somebody who was not presented
the full truth and was inventing part or rewriting part it because of course them
people were detractors. Will say that throws it all into into out of Keel.
Really, you go out of Keel. But when he does affect the
whole area of research, and if one person has proven to be again even
faking things in making them or invent you or editing anyway, really I think
gives a problem to the whole picture. I mean, you know, there
are defunct the entire thing, and that gives them fuel. Unfortunately, well,
and that's the problem too. I think when legitimate researchers decide to get
involved with creative writing, it can taint their entire legacy, which is unfortunate
because I think Gray did a lot of good work, and I think he
was he was a very good writer. I mean, the whole silver Bridge
book that he wrote. I don't take it literally. It's I think it's
meant to be more of an allegory, but it's really very well done,
very creative, and it's it's part of the whole picture. I mean,
you have to be you have to be careful about reading everything. I mean,
even John Keel got skunked once in a while. You know, he
accepted things that weren't true and made mistakes. So, you know, and
people that criticize Keel, will or anybody will focus on something they see as
a mistake or or whatever and amplify that and then you know, block out
the whole important you know, and we've all been through that. It becomes
a common problem. In one of the things I researched a lot, and
they actually did a show last week and a different networking, but the Enfield
poltergeist that one is. And again it's a good example of the similar kind
of thing where you've got the teenage two teenage girls involved in the case.
Now, can you expect two teenage girls to behave properly the whole to not
make things, not fabricate stuff. Of course you can't. The kids,
you know, but because they probably did some of the stuff, wasn't real
that they actually did them, So they see the entire thing wasn't really because
there's so many witnesses was seeing strange political life activity in the house. You
had the police officers, you had other adults in the building, you had
researchers all seeing strange things occurring. But because the kids kind of admitted they
made some of the stuff up themselves, people will dismiss the entire case.
It has been all fabricated. See. It is that problem where you have
stuff that's been even deliberately faked or misconstrued, almost deliberately to try and build
the story. Even though they think, well, maybe there's a different nextmation
of these events, but we'll go with the one that fits the narrative we're
working on, which could often happen even to the best researchers. Even in
the Mothman Prophecies, there is an episode that was later unraveled as being a
hoax. There's a guy by the name of Tom who is about two thirties
to three quarters of the way into the Mothman Prophecies book, and he talks
about having he's waiting tables, and this guy comes in to one of the
spots where he's waiting on tables and he orders food and he says that his
name is Vadig. And his story was almost identical to what Woodrow Derenberger talked
about with Indrid Cold, even down to the point where he came for Tom
and then took him on a rickety type of estate spaceship to Lanulos, which
is the same place that Cold said that he was from to Darrenberger. But
then later on it turned out to be an entire hoax. But Keel took
it as gospel, and it's in the Mothman propit. So was he perfect?
Absolutely not. Did he make mistakes, I think we all do,
but I don't think he deliberately set out to do that. I think this
is somebody who duped him and he thought it was legitimate. And the reason
he thought it was legitimate this is Tom montalone. Actually Tom Montlone wrote the
introduction to a book called The Mothman Files, and then there he tells what
happened. He said this was a college prank. He was telling John Keel
all this nonsense, and he said he could see Keel was zoning out and
he wasn't buying it. So he thought, I'm just going to pull stuff
out of my and he did. He came up with like black cars and
men in black. He hit about three things that Kiel had been investigating but
had been had kept close to his vest. He did not publish everything at
the time, but to actually prevent hoaxes. So Keel at that moment thought,
Holy Kyle, this guy has had a real experience. So I don't
know what it was, a bizarre coincidence or some kind of paranormal skullduggery.
I don't know, but I can understand why he bought it at that time.
Yeah, I mean you could also talk about the whole injured Colbusus itself
is Darrenberger doesn't seem particularly credible, but yeah, he seed a feature quite
prominently in the book always found that was quite interesting. Well, I was
going to say, and Andy to your point, Keel. When he was
interviewed later on, like years after the Mothman prophecies came out, he was
asked about Woodrow Dhrenberger and if he thought he was legitimate, and he said,
you know, I think that initially the first story was legitimate, but
then after that it seemed like he kind of lost it and went off the
deep end and made up more and more encounters and things got stranger and stranger
and stranger after that. So I think he think he did buy it.
At first, he did believe him, but then he lost his credibility as
time went on. As far as Kiel was concerned, well, as you
recall, there were a couple other incidents that were very injured cold likeing one
that happened before darren Berger came forward, almost identical, and it was the
same kind of a contact around along Route seventy seven, the elongated craft,
the landing, a pointless conversation with an individual that looked suspiciously like Indrid Cold
and then the guy decided he wasn't going to go through with the story,
and because he had told John Keel and Mary Hyer and he said, you
know that sigentist fella said we should just forget all about it. And Keel
said, what scientist fella? And he said, well, I don't know,
but he seemed to know what he was talking about. And he said,
well, how did he find out about your story? You didn't tell
anybody except Mary Hire and I And he said, damned if I know.
And then there was the woman in Gallipolist that had a very sort of an
indrid cold like experience with the craft and individuals. Another bizarre point. You
know, if these guys are from other planets, it can't they have a
more a deeper conversation than just a mundane babble back and forth. Something we
can, you know, quote in a in a in a book or something.
But so it's the the in re coll thing is a complete paradise where
some of it seems to be substantive and I don't know whether it was black
ops or paranormal, but some of it was just nonsense. So where did
you go with it? There was a big scene in the movie that was
wondering. I remember I chance to fully read read the books of the other
things, but the scene in the movie where you have the voice on the
phone talking too, and you have the analysis later on and saying, this
is just mechanical sounds. It's not person's voice. That could hear someone speaking,
but it's produced my machine. Was that from the actual story I just
made up from the movie I can't remember? Well, it was there was
a a so called mister Apple, a po L that was in contact with
a woman named Jay Perrow. Uh. It was the implication is that some
of these contacts were actually more channeling or whatever. And Keel said when he
was actually talking to some of the contact e's on the phone, they would
say, well so and so is here, and supposedly they'd be handing the
phone to the the entity, but he believed that they are actually that the
voice was actually coming through the contact EVE and talking to him on the phone.
So there were conversations like that with mister Apple, who probably didn't really
exist. Uh it was. Uh. There there's a couple of books uh
uh the Big Big Breakthrough in the Big Blackout, which are our document our
documents that Keel never published that you can get from John Keel dot com.
Uh by Doug Skinner, And this is a whole area where uh uh,
Keel seemed to be really buying into and I know, Bill, those these
these these books where he was buying into these uh these messages, but he
wasn't talking to any of the people himself. These were all coming through all
these different contact ees, and there seemed a point where he was really freaking
out. But if you read the Eighth Tower, there's a point in there
what he says. He writes how he was embarrassed and how he was believing
these messages. He'd be talking to a contact ee out in the middle of
the woods, channeling whatever ashtarre from the Great Beyond, and it was all
deception. It was all nonsense, the trickster, if you will. So
there was a they did take elements and in fact with the film, if
you get the DVD and you look at some of the extras, you see
where they tried to get more of the book into the movie, but certain
scenes were just deleted. So, and I've got a chance to talk to
the screenwriter, Richard had him and I can talk about that a little bit
later if you want to. Yes, sir, I think this is a
good question for you. Were Keel's thoughts about alter tryst Well developed before his
Mothman investigations or were they a consequence of them. I don't I don't remember
them being part of the Operation Trojan Horse book. Were they Steve Well,
I think he talked about I don't remember if he used the term altraterrestrial,
but he did talk about transmogrifications. One of my favorite words of all time,
transmogriifications of energy. You know. The only other place I've ever seen
that is in Kelvin and Hobbes comic strips. But that's a that's an aside.
But he uh. I think the the idea of it was developed before
the Mothman prophecies, although I'm not sure which what terms he used then Well,
and interestingly enough, I think that he coined that. He didn't coin
that phrase. He popularized it, but I think he really got it wasn't
from Ivan Sanderson, he said Ivan Sanderson. He also said he used it
as kind of a literary device because he wanted to get people away from the
notion that these things all had to be extraterrestrial. You know, he really
thought the were something to do with a natural condition of the planet, something
that Andy said a few minutes ago really dovetails nicely with this question about ultraterrestrials,
because I mean half of the Offman Prophecies book was edited out and then
was republished as the Eighth Power. So really those two books are supposed to
be the same, but the editors, the Faceless editors, took out a
good chunk of that. Where he really goes into the extraterrestrial are the ultra
terrestrial hypothesis, and he talks about transmogrifications of energy, and I think one
of the analogies I really like for you know what happened in Point Pleasant as
well as other window type areas, is that it's almost like a radio frequency.
You know, if you're on these things are able to slip through the
cracks when the radio dial is set to a particular frequency, and then they
can manifest, but otherwise they really can't. And he really goes into that
in depth in the Eighth Tower. So I know we're supposed to be talking
about the Mothman prophecies. That's sort of been in the Mothman Prophecies. Yeah,
definitely bring it up the because it should be one one book together.
Certain im I must read it even more what you're saying there, because that's
again, as I say, that's the ultra stressful idea is something I've I
kind of hypothesize myself sometime ago that that kind of thing might be going on.
But to read and hear some other people thinking on those similar lines,
it was like, yeah, this really makes sense and that I need to
dig it to that one as well. But yeah, the two books belong
together because it's almost, if you like, the mothing propheies is the story,
the eighth time material is the background to the story. It's like,
why we got to this point of of a belief idea that these things are
essentially from here, but an alternative kind of version of here, like rather
than being from some far away planet. Yeah, and I learned way too
much about radio frequencies from that book, more than I ever want the super
spectrum. Yes, yeah, yeah, for sure. So we do have
to take a quick commercial break. And while we are at break, I
want you guys to think about who your favorite character from the entire book was,
and I will give you mine when we come back from the commercial deal.
All right, here's your commercial time. Are you haunted by legal troubles
that just won't vanish. Do you suspect foul play beyond the natural realm?
Hi, I'm Susan Graves, your paranormal attorney. If you're dealing with ghostly
contracts, spooky disputes, or supernatural misdemeanors, I'm here to help. Don't
let your legal issues haunt you. Call me the lawyer who isn't afraid of
what goes bump in the night. Remember when the law gets paranormal. You
need a lawyer with spirit. Call me today for free consultation. Susan Graves
fighting for your rights, even from the other side, and we're back.
So my favorite character from the entire book is the man who stole the pen.
It is the most pointless thing and that is fascinating to me and I
think of so I always try to put myself into their shoes. You know,
if I was an ultraterrestrial, what would I do? And I would
do random stuff to confuse or annoy people. So that was why that character
I loved him so much. And it's also a good thing to have some
of those clicking pens, so that if you are visited by men and black,
just throw some pens at them and they'll be distracted and they won't be
asking you any more questions, just trying to compensate your photographs. But were
there any characters that really stood out to any of you guys? Oh?
Yeah, I got one, But you guys go ahead, you bube h.
You know, I've been thinking about this for a while and I'm drawing
a blank. So if you guys can jump in, maybe work better.
Let it sly. The guy from Duncan Falls, John he uh, he
was an elderly gentleman that couldn't sleep sometimes, so he'd go out and and
this is in Ohio and he's uh, he would wander around and he saw
this strange looking l shaped building next to a school that he'd never seen before.
And and so as he approaches it, here's a voice coming from it
and to welcome him him in, I think, And it was freaked him
out, so he started to he went, he went back home and he
got his gun, and uh, he came back and it was gone,
and he called the police. Said, of course that you thought he's an
old guy, doesn't know what he's talking about. When when John Keel talked
to me, he said that Leonard told him the story with no embellishments or
whatever. But he said, he said, I didn't exactly run, but
I walked pretty fast going away from the building, and that that's my favorite
character in the mark Man Prophecies. Well, for me, i'd actually deviated
over to the movie and the scene where John Clyme meets the former professor who's
strange things and he starts to tell him what's happened to him, and there's
one line that really it gave me chills. It's always stuck with me,
you know, quite quick to be about other this kind of stuff. Is
the line that you noticed them and they noticed that you noticed them. It's
like GIF you shivers, and I think about that, but I know that's
not of the real events, but that scene I think crystallized for me the
slightly more sinister side of this. The film itself had been a strange events.
Obviously, it was like weirds sightings, but then it took a from
angle and that scenes like they noticed you noticed them, and now they know
you're you're noticing them and they don't like that. That was a kind of
vibe it gave me, and I thought that was really good. It was
a nice little scene and said for me that bit, particularly of the movie
rather than the books and saying it's already didn't get a chance to But to
me, that crystallized that notion of there's something more going on here that maybe
even deeper. Those scenes with Richard Gear and Alan Bates were phenomenal because played
doctor Leak heel spelled backwards. And my favorite exchange is when you know,
Richard Gear was really good in this in this film, of course Bates was
too, but uh, he's at a point where Bates is telling him all
these things had happened to him, and Richard Gear you could tell it's just
towards the end of the movie because it has wits end, and he said,
didn't you need to know? And Alan Bates has this kind of quizzical
look on his face and he cocks his head a little bit and he says,
we're not allowed to know, and that that's chili. Also, I
have something like that written down as my favorite quote from the book. Something's
something wants us to not understand this phenomenon in his true purpose, right.
I love the exchanges between those two in the movie, you know, And
my favorite part that he talks about is when they're in Chicago the first time,
and they're looking up and Bates points up to the window washer and he
says, that window washer up there. From where he's standing, he can
see a little further down the road. But I think my favorite character in
the movie is Gordon Smallwood bar None. I just loved the way that Will
Patton just that role. He did a fantastic job. And my favorite line
from the movie is when he says and then I hear this weird howl coming
out of the sink and he's just losing his mind. I love that.
But I've had to really think hard about this, guys in terms of my
favorite character from the book, and I think it's got to be Ja Perrol,
And for me, it's Jay Peril because she's on the Long Island end
of things, which really gets lost when we talk about Mothman. People don't
really go in depth about that. But she was responsible for a lot of
the channel the prophecies that Keel was receiving, whether they were legitimate or not,
and she's been kind of an enigma because she kind of fell off the
radar after the Mothman Prophecies book, and nobody seems to know what happened to
her or anything about her, And I find that to be really fascinating.
There's a missions one to find and you get more about Jay Perrow. I
forget what her real name was, but from the big breakthrough in the Big
Blackout, and you get more from it. And Keel's thinking this is in
the midst of when he's buying into some of these messages and so forth.
But you can see he keeps thinking about Jay Peril. For example, he
said, you know, she is she hoaxing this? You know, is
she making this up with anything? But she there's certain things that she knows
she couldn't possibly know, you know, So you get you get more into
the thinking process of Keel in those books than you do in the Mothman Prophecy.
And she could very well have been duped just like he was. I'm
sure, just like a lot of you know, us researchers can. When
we get closer to this phenomena, it really starts toying with us. That
trickster thing or that reflexivity or whatever it might be that goes on along the
lines of the super spectrum that we just don't understand, really begins toying with
us. And there's another one that Steve mentioned, the Big Breakthrough in the
Big Blackout. There's one that came out a couple of years ago, maybe
a year year and a half ago, called the Big Bamboozle. And in
that one there are two or three articles written by j Perrow and they're fascinating.
Is that the one about Mount Misery? Yes, okay, Mount Mount
Misery, New York. Long Island, I think where a lot of weird
stuff was a lot of weird stuff was going on, Like you said,
Bill on Long Island, whatever Keel was, you know, it's almost like
he was a lightning rod for some of the stuff. All that a Native
American curse too. Yeah, there you go. I think that comes back
the whole idea of he's noticed them, he's talking about them, so they've
noticed him talking about them, and they're going to give closer eyes. So
yeah, the idea of becoming almost like a mathet for these kind of events
I'm talked about, the idea that sort of in that other realm world,
if you are more attuned to it, you're like a beacon of light.
It's visible to them. They think this, what's this person doing? And
they come towards you. The more you involve, the more you draw them
to you. And you know, I make mation of the film. My
first reaction to it was a bit negative because you know, I'd read the
book so many times and I wanted more of the book in there. I
wanted more of the Men in Black. And of course soon after I thought,
well, you know, they can't do the classic Men in Black because
they've already done two silly films as comedies. It's a minimal add and people
are just going to associate it with that. But as time was going on,
I love the film as much as Bill does. And you know,
Andy Mercer is a composer, and so I want to mention the soundtrack to
The mothmand Prophecies, Tom and Andy is phenomenal. Andy does a lot of
would you call it dark ambient? Is that correct? Yes? Yes,
and that's kind of what the Moth Band Prophecies we call that dark ambient,
and it just fits the film so well. Yes, it was for good
music. I remember that. Yeah, it was quite subtly. He did
have a non sort of flow of unwelderness to it sometimes what was writting in
music. Yeah, So one of the things that kept like screaming from the
back of my mind as I'm reading this, or other things like it is
the communication with the Trickster entities and Andy, I kind of wonder, do
you know what you're talking to? Because I'm not a sensitive person at all.
I don't communicate with anything other than living humans. Well, I've certainly
over the years come to a very firm belief that what you talk to,
how it presents itself is according to what your expectations are, what you're experiencing,
what you believe them to be. I don't think these things have an
identity of their own. They just assume what works for you, whether it's
something that is for your personal history or a personal belief system, or something
greater from your own cultural background, if you like. But that's I've become
more and more convinced that these things exist, but they don't have an identity.
You're not talking to, you know, the old thing. I'm afraid
perhaps not in American the comparable TV shows that this goes as a demon.
Really it's highly to be something else. I don't think you'll all be a
demon if you want it to be, because that's your you're framing it.
But the things themselves have no particular identity. It's just they will communicate in
a way that works for you. Whether they're giving a direct information of anything
particular, I don't know, but certainly that's how I always think of it.
And so when you have something like Mothwing, particularly the identity kind of
forms around the phenomena, kind of from descriptions of his idea of the mothman
or a creature of that kind of form. I think it almost began,
I think took that form because it was being talked about in that sense as
a descriptive form, if you like, what people were seeing experiencing, and
I think maybe even refined itself even further based on those reports, not that
it was read the newspaper like that, but how people were reacting to relating
to this strange phenomena. And that's pretty much the way John Keel described this
mister apple Apol again that he never met but only talked through through channelers or
whatever over the phone. It's like he had no identity and he just kind
of faded away, and he said he talked to this whatever for hours sometimes.
By the way, I've got to show off my shirt here, through
the rules. Yes, okay, okay, we're done with that. You
know, when I was reading Bill's book, had brought home to me that
I didn't meet a survivor of the bridge collapse. And his name was Bill
Edmondson, and I met him in twenty seventeen at the fifty year remembrance ceremony.
He was driving a semi across the bridge when it went down, And
unlike the film when Richard Gear had all kinds of time to warn people off
the bridge, this happened about thirty to forty seconds. He went in the
water. He was forced through the passenger window right arm first. It's twenty
degrees out, it's freezing. He gets out of the truck, comes to
the surface and he grabs onto some of the material had been hauling, and
a tugbook captain saw him and pull him up out of the water. They
got him to the hospital right away. There's an article on him in the
Markeda Museum. So that that's another thing that just brought all that even closer
to home, hearing a personal, one on one experience about that tragic night.
Yes, we interviewed eleven people for bridging the tragedy. At least six
of them talked about that semi floating down the river and seeing the presence floating
in the river and how profound and powerful those images were. Yes, from
the movie, I was the representation Bridge speaking in a movie. I was
incuse me New York two years ago and we happened to get tickets for laure
Lni doing a solo show, which we watched and enjoyed, and we literally
see him up by the front that you did come off the stage at the
end was talking to some of the audience who hoped to get in and ask
about mofem but unfortunately and we didn't get a chance. But that was quite
interesting experience, very good action. Seeing that one stage was brilliant. But
yeah, it's a shame to get a chance to speak to So. Did
any of you see the Hallier series. I've seen. I've seen both seasons
of it. I thought it was very well done. I really enjoyed it.
Towards the end of it, I think it got scripted and maybe was
scripted throughout maybe part of it anyhow, But the very beginning of it,
in maybe the first half a dozen episodes, I found really very riveting and
there was some really interesting correlations and things that they talked about, and that
dovetail really very well with with Keel's books. It was very well done.
I can't help but think that possibly the whole thing may have started out with
a hoax that they followed up on. I mean, and it was right,
you know, they did the right thing by by investigating and looking into
it. I'm just not sure. I just don't know how much substance there
was behind the original events that pulled them in. And when they get into
the injured Cole stuff, I think, I'm sorry, but Edward called does
not exist. Maybe he did briefly at one time. Maybe there was some
kind of hoaks going on, but I don't know what. Somebody is pulling
some strings and I don't think they are. I don't think there. I
don't think the Hellure people have hoaxed anything. I think they have gone ahead
and trying to unravel mysteries. And but yeah, it's it was very well
done. And I talked to Seth Bridlove who does small Town Monsters, and
he was very impressed with their their editing and their production and so forth.
I agree it was very well made, editing and put together. I have
similar thoughts to Steve, I think I think they were hoapes. I think
they kind of figured out going along during the series. They'd been hoped,
but started to keep going with the progress they got so far with already.
But I think that moment when they realized that the original communication had come from
nowhere near where it's supposed to come from, when game form somewhere near to
where it was Greg was living at the time, I thought, that's bringing
two big alarm belts. So this sounds like they're being duked here. But
because they're so invested in the program that carried on going on with it.
I could be wrong, but he just felt to me that it got to
a point where it started to feel it was drifting a little bit Citta the
second So it's kind of drifted a little bit too much, and I think
they were trying to sort of fill time and bringing things that injury cold into
It was kind of stretching a little bit for me, and I quite enjoyed
it. Greg doesn't like me. We've had an altercation once on Facebook and
I've been blocked by him completely, So nothing to do with his program,
but something completely unrelated. But yes, so my views a little tainted by
that experience, I have to say so, if you haven't seen The Unbinding
yet, it's definitely worth watching. I thought it was very well done,
it's very interesting, and it's it's it's not as sensationalized as hell. You're
was right, I'll check that out. It's it's definitely worth watching. This
is all completely foreign to me. I feel like I have a look stuff
I have to watch now. I was going to mention earlier that Susie and
I are not experiencers. I forget what Susie has a term for that.
What is it? A paranormal Yeah, that's a paranormal repellent without without an
aerosol. It's just natural. Find it just amazing. We used to particularly,
I mean, you've been in these for a few years now. Somebody
experiences. I had that one weird experience with a television set, which I
will not repeat, and I had one weird experience with a television set,
to which I think is weird. Both of us are. One weird experience
was with the TV. Maybe we should just give somebody else the remote and
not touch it. You know now that you're mentioning TVs and my wife just
walked into the room. She's not going to come on camera though, but
she was in the process of we're working on our next book right now,
and she was transcribing one of the interviews and she had it on the YouTube
up on the TV set that we have mounted on our wall, and as
it was getting to a particularly interesting part of the interview, the TV just
died. I mean it totally died. And I guess it was probably eight
or nine years old. I didn't realize we'd had it for that long,
but it just poof. It just went right. During that transcription session,
well, I told my TV experience where I walked into the room and it
turned on was slipping through channels to a guy that interviewed me at the Mothman
Museum yesterday, and he said he knew a guy they had kind of a
similar experience in a motel across the river. And it turned out it was
the same motel that we were both in, not the same room. But
I thought, WHOA, Okay, maybe I'm not crazy, but I still
could be crazy. I just want to want to make that clear you might
be. So this is what was your TV experience. Then it was gone
out to the T and T area north of Point Pleasant alone at night to
impress the babes. You know. I wanted to be able to tell that
the ladies that, hey, you know, I'm very, very brave guy.
So I came back. I was on a route sixty two experienced a
couple flashes of light, like a couple of strobes, and I thought,
that's weird. Didn't have the presence of mind to think where it was on
the road, and so I went back across the river, went to my
motel and opened up the door, and the TV set turned on by itself
and started flipping steadily through stations, just like a blur. And I thought,
no, this doesn't happen to me, it happens to other people.
And so I unployed the thing and went to bed. And then the next
year there was another similar experience, not quite the same, in the room
next to it, with a couple of friends. And then a few years
later two couples were having some weird thing going on with their TV and something
flew off the table during them off band festival. So all in this one
corner of the motel, and the way I always end this is that if
I brought something back with me from the TNT. Fortunately he's still there flipping
channels because he never came home with me. And TV experience mine was when
I was having those nightmares that turned out to be about my great grandmother.
Someone had suggested like talking to her and setting boundaries and like telling her to
leave me alone. So I did that, and then I get up to
walk out of the room and I walk past my dresser, which had my
TV on it at the time, and that as I'm walking by, right
after I walked by, the TV flew off the dresser. You're blowing and
I had a runner underneath it and that was still there. It was just
the TV. So much like Steve just turned that TV off, I took
that TV and put it in the closet shades of the last scene in the
movie Poltergeist. Right. Yes, there's both more poultar, guized space and
anything else. Those experiences definitely very strange. Well, I've had too many
to list. Have been doing ghost hunting for twenty odd years, so I've
had lots of weird experiences. What about you, Bill, anything particular.
Yeah, you know something that we talked about earlier when Steve mentioned route seventy
seven. We were talking about injured cold and some of the things that had
happened on that route. So we've covered a lot of ground tonight. But
one of the things that I was thinking with this whole trickster element that kind
of gets involved with those of us that investigate this strange stuff. So there
has been the alleged Chicago Chicago land mothman flap that's been going on off and
on for ten fifteen years, and Jackie and I first got involved with investigating
it with the Illinois State Moffon Director Sam Moronto. But we quickly found some
things that we just didn't They didn't jibe with us, so we didn't feel
that it was a horribly legitimate type thing that was going on in Chicagoland area,
which would bummed us out because we lived sixty miles from downtown Chicago,
so it was right here. So what we did do is we went to
Thatcher Woods, which is writ in suburban Chicago. We did a ghost box
session there and we got some data that really correlated with some of the stuff
in Point Pleasant. So on our next trip that we took to Point Pleasant,
Jackie and a lady that was with her at the time. They did
a ghost box session and it mentioned seventy seven, and we had a lot
of inverse numbers like thirteen's and thirty ones. Thirty ones were very prominent in
Chicago Land and the Mothman reports there. Thirteen's were very prominent in Point Pleasant.
But they used the ghost box and it said a place to go Visit
was one of the signals that got. So they went to Route seventy seven
and then that they got they did a ghost box session there and that took
them back to to ndy Way, the point right there in Point Pleasant where
the two rivers come together where cornstock is buried. And we got all kinds
of really interesting information from all the different sites that we did these sessions at
that led us to believe that either we were being guided along or we were
being messed with, or a combination of home. So that whole trickster thing
that goes on. I think with all these investigations, I just really think
that a lot of this stuff is over our heads. We kind of co
create it to a certain degree, and it's mirrored back by whatever is out
there that's that's giving us the signal back in return. Yes, I kind
of almost like a two way flow of theology of these things forming around what
we expect. What about Kristen of anybody? We other examples of Mothmann actually
definitely appearing occurring in other parts of America or the world, even the really
real possible examples. I about the Chicago one there, but there are other
definite examples of what could be the same phenomena elsewhere. Well, there is
a similar one in the Bridgewater Triangle. I believe it was seventy one,
and it was a police officer that spotted him. He was on his way
home and he got to an intersection. Is this keel making an appearance?
Willis? Willis? Oh, sorry, I got distracted by a cap.
The police officer was on his way home and he was coming to an intersection
and he saw a figure about six feet tall. Uh. He thought it
was a hitchhiker, and he pulled his car up a little bit closer,
and as he did that, wings just erupted from its back and it flew
straight up into the air. No flapping of the wings at all, just
you know, the wings came out and it went straight up and he went
he was like so taken by it. He went back to the police station
and reported it, which did not go well for him. Yeah, but
it was not like so in the area. There's thunderbird sightings, there's tero
dactyl sightings, but that was a winged humanoid sighting. He thought it was
a man at first, but there's not He didn't report it having red eyes.
You know, There's been no chasing cars or anything like that, but
the physical description similar there. And I know around I don't know a lot
about it, but I know around Chernobyl there have also been some sting.
That's what I was going to mention. I'd heard that as well, that
this sort of Again, it's one of those things. Is the phenomena starting
to form an appear in a way that correlates with people's beliefs and ideas,
or is this is the same phenomenal it self appearing in different parts of But
yes, Chernobyl's one i'd heard of before that has seen variety of strange phenomena.
And then whether it's to do with mutated living animals obviously mutation for the
radiation, or it is more of a panormal entity, I don't know,
but I've certainly heard of that one before. Well, there are many,
and of course John Feels just mentioned the Element of Cornwall. Yes, that's
that's one. Yeah, very similar but not identical Keel talks about. And
there's the uh I think it might be the second chapter in the book,
the Flutter of Black Wings or or whatever, where he goes through a whole
array of winged whatever wing wing weirdos they call him sometimes, and they're not
not mothband per se. But you know, there was the Houston batman,
the Wisconsin man bat and all kinds of bizarre things. There's only one report
I know that was very similar to I'm going to say my mothband here in
Point Pleasant, and that is almost three years earlier to the day that the
scarberries and mallets were chased by this wing creature uh. In Kent, England,
I think they call it the Saltwood Horror. A group of students were
coming back from a dance. They saw a light come down behind a grove
of trees and it disappeared. Then the light reappeared and disappeared, and then
they saw this uh, six seven foot tall sort of a humanoid creature didn't
seem to have a head. It kind of shoveled along like the mouthman,
bat like wings, and it did not have the red eyes. But that's
the closest I've ever heard of a something like the Mothman. It's very interesting
because Paul Devereaux calls it one of one of the proto entities where the light
or the craft or whatever it is seems to be inseparable or morphed into the
entity. Yes, and so, but that's the like they say, the
term mothman is thrown around quite a bit. If Keel was onto something and
the Mothman prophecies, if these were truly transmorgorifications, if they're they're paraphysical,
he was. He became less and less enamored with whether or not the craft
had portholes, or or what it would look like, or what the creature
looked like. He wanted to understand the cosmic mechanism behind these things. And
he also discovered that people that witnessed creatures or UFOs would suffer from the same
physical ailments thirst, muscle ache, and even Connie Carpenter, one of the
original mark Man witnesses, did not see a ufo or a light, but
she received conjunctive items that I burn when she saw the marth Man in broad
daylight. So I just like I say, hey, marth Man, he's
here in Point Pleasant. I know because I know where his statue is.
So don't don't mess with my marth Man. Goutle of thoughts. Actually mean,
first of all, I'll just come back from coolwol on enough on holiday
for very good. I didn't see the almun I'm afraid, but there is.
I think that's one thing you said about the eyes is a phenomena seems
almost radiation like seems to be linked to this film as well. So we
brings you back about Chernobyl of course been a highly radiated area, so maybe
the guests, top of my head, they're drawn to the radiation. Maybe,
so you get these forms and creatures appearing animals, energy animals what they
want to call them, are focusing around as a radiation because you can talk
about the idea of these things appening near nuclear science as well nuclear basis.
So maybe there was a correlation there with the whole power energy nuclear connection that
may be connected with them. Again obviously with the T and T area,
I mean it's not nuclear, but of course there's a lot of the two
waste there as well, So maybe there's some kind of almost like earth connection,
if you like. The alledge of these things are perhaps trying to guard
the land or look after or warn of danger, which of course these just
the bridge collapse. That there are rumors that there was some nuclear activity or
going on in the tn T area. I have no idea if there's any
substance to them or whatever. Speaking of the mt area, the last time
we were out there, Steve, for the Mothman Festival, you know,
we had Michael Hacker with us, who's the narrator of a lot of John
Keel and Brad Stegger compilation works, as well as Jacques Bealle, and we
took him out to the TNT and Jackie and Michael and I were driving through.
When we came back from that, Jackie's left ear was bleeding. Oh
my god, I had a minor case of conjunctivitis, which just blew our
minds. And by the way, Jackie says to say hello, Steve,
she heard your voice. She says that word. I said, yes,
Hi, Jackie. The Night of the Bleeding Ear is one of the chapters
in the mock Man Prophecies, right right, right, So One of the
most things that I found the least believable in this book was when Keel talks
about male UFO witnesses, and it was these symptoms after the comic from Okay,
fine, that's that's what Mirry. Guys need to have that excuse in
back of their head. I guess, I mean I might have flown in
the sixties. I mean, people are going to want to read The Mark
Man Propose is now to find out about the cosmic Collap'll tell you, yes,
yes, ways to avoid because I was just thinking again about the hour
Man of Cornwall. Of course, the hour Man or mothbed are going to
look pretty similar, aren't they look could be that kind of similar phenomena.
Again. I've just a little I've been working on for a number of years
and anywhere near finishing yet. Is a collection of strange high strangers occurrences in
main sort of Victorian times eighteens up to the nineteen thirties. I read a
book on basically spells and chants from that sort of period of Victorian times in
the nineteen thirties, and I kind of follow up one was this collection of
weird tales of strange experiences and there's one particular one that sticks in my mind
where we talk about mothman. Or is one example up in the antibrities in
Scotland where fishermen had gone out, this is the eighteen nineties. A fisher
have gone out in a trawler basically to fish. This birdlike creature there was
about five or six feet tall with glowing red eyes I had on the topmost
mass of the ship. Stayed there for about three days, unmoving, just
looking at them from above, and then disappeared. And the description I gave
I say it was like a tall bird like creature with gy red eyes and
straight sort of think of mothmen. And this is the eighteen nineties in northern
Scotland. So this kind of creature seemed to crop up in other parts of
the world where it's specifically mothmen. Not seeing the point blasn't one, of
course, but a mothmen esque creature seems to occur at various places throughout the
world. And when you mentioned nuclear sites earlier a few months ago, somebody
asked me to look into if there were puckwadgy sightings in this particular area in
Illinois, and they had said they had seen one near a pond next to
a nuclear power plant. And something I always look into what I'm looking into
little people's sightings is if there are thunderbird sightings in the same area, and
I found tons of them in that same area. I don't remember the name
of the town, but there was a nuclear power plant there. I think
it was Southern Illinois off the top of my head, but yeah, and
you know the Bridgewater Triangle too, no power plant, but a lot of
the sightings are under these high tension power lines that run straight through it.
It's like a creature highway type of thing there. Susan Sayer told us when
we interviewed her that in the TNT area even today, sometimes vehicles will be
driving along and the power just cuts out. The cars still totally stall and
everything shuts down, and then it fires right back up again, and there
are some high tension wires that are back there also. It sort of speaks
the whole lote of em distortion fields, these things that things like nuclear power,
power cables, just the local EM field. And if one of the
theories that ghost film because of distortions and recordings in the e M field,
as oppose the idea of the stone tape theory of buildings is the em field
of the media era is recording these events, So it could be that they
are triggers if you like, as well, the energy that stay is triggering
off these kind of weird sightings, almost as if it is the way these
things get into our reality for the distortions of the e M field, because
things distorting it be nuclear bit mainly empower that kind of thing. What about
Keel's writing style. Colin Wilson wrote a great book called Alien Dawn. He
talks a lot about his correspondence with John Keel and then there he says,
John Keel is incapable of writing a doll sentence any any passages of scenes in
the mark Man prophecies that stand out to any of you. So a few
weeks ago I listened to Keel on Art Bell their interviews, and that I
like he was much more likable from that and in writing. In writing,
I feel like he comes across like egotistical and judgmental. You know, he
opens the book talking about the woman coming to the door in a cheap bathroom
bathroom alone or male order bathroom. Yep. But he was much more likable
in that interview spoken word to me, I must be that actually threw When
I first read the book for the first time and he was talking about himself
coming to the door, it was like, oh, right, didn't It
was almost like funny, kind of kind of like a love crafty instart of
like changing your the characters of the characters on this game man or Robert Chambers
kind of style that there's the character talking about themselves almost in the third person.
Oh right, now, they talked about himself coming to their door,
and quite threw me at first. Well, for a long time I thought
that was simply a literary device, you know, when he talks about those
two people ended up dying on the bridge. So in an interview he was
asked about that and he said, no, he actually came across that story
later one time when he's in Point Pleasant, people were telling the story about
this couple that died on the bridge, that had this mysterious stranger all dressed
in black that came to the door. So I thought, how cool is
that. I have a couple one of my past news. I can't quote
it directly, but I always dusted off prior to every Mothman festival because it
sounds exactly like John Keel was for telling the Mothman Festival, and it was
talking about something about the strange ones were coming to West Virginia. They were
trooping down the hollers like leprechauns seeking Impover's shoemakers. The what was it?
The uh? I forget what it was, but and the procession of a
damned marched once more. Anyway, it sounded like everybody you know coming into
Point Pleasant, all the thousands of people. I should have got the quote
out to actually read it. And of course the other one that the best
one is the year of the Garuda was at hand. A shadow was passing
over little town. I never heard of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. And
it goes on, there's so much, so much good stuff in there,
and even the opening lines, you know, about the thunder and the fingers
of lightning to our angry holes of the sky. But man, and he
comes across as a little bit well, I mean a little racist really in
certain spots. He comes across pretty sexist in certain spots in the Mothman prophecies.
But if you take a look at what he writes about Jay Perrow in
the Big Blackout the Holy slam her. He just totally slams her. She's
not hot enough for him. He doesn't use those words, but that's really
what he's coming down to. Of course, are trying to pair them together,
and he's like, what's up with this? She's not good looking,
She's there was like a person, and I want to fight. It's a
good thing he didn't meet that redhead. I'll tell you jeez. He would
devote a whole chapter tour Night of the Angry Redhead. But just because we
would fight, does that mean I'm going to write him off? Because if
I wrote everyone off that I would fight with, there would be no one
left. He had a great sense of humor, but you're right, it
doesn't come across in his writing all the time, and he does in the
interviews. He was a fun guy. Oh god. The lectures that there
are several lectures you can find sometimes on YouTube a bad video, but he
talks about his military experience and when he went in Jaddu, when he went
to Egypt and Tibetan and so forth. I mean, he was such an
interesting guy. And the interview that Susie referred to, that was the interview
he gave Art Bell was in two thousand and two when the film came out.
He hadn't done any interviews for a long time, and Art Bell had
knew very little about The Mothman. You know that this back when John Keel
was being forgotten about. Thank god now that he's been revived and his books
are in print and so forth. But you know, he was, he
was, Bill and I have talked about this many times about how far ahead
of the time Keel was with you know, I mean, and people detested
him back from the sixties on because he dared question the sacrilege of extraterrestrials.
You know, I don't. I think Giorgio suclists. But maybe that's why
his hair is like that, because he read John Keel. I love the
fact that he wasn't afraid to be the lone dissenting voice in the room.
Right. I've never really been that guy. I kind of like to go
along with things and get along with people. But he didn't seem to have
a problem went out and basically telling you where he was coming from. Even
if there was only one percent, and he was the one percent, ninety
nine were against them, right. That race has certainly changed these days.
I think it's moving more towards the ultra dristial for theory, though obviously the
nuts of alts aliens people will stick to their like grim Death. But I
think the field is moving, and that more general direction and more of a
unified direction as well of different kinds of phenomena being seen as aspects of the
same thing rather than being ampit separate. You know, the idea when I
was first involved in sort of the idea of studying ghosts end UFOs like now
one or the other different worlds, you know, mixed ours up, and
then I say that's not true. Very early on back in then sort of
late the mid nineties, was first in a great good earthquakes, weves seed
everything no matter what it was, whatever kind of formen. But then when
the advent of ghosts TV programs like Most Haunted that started the whole thing off
and shows, then this big separation began to occur between ghost paranormal stuff and
UFO type paranormal. So it did diverge considerable. Then there's coming back to
the middle ground again, I feel. But people like Keel are the ones
that have put push forward these ideas of ultraterrestrials rather than extraterrests. And to
say to me, it makes perfect sense. Even Jaq Coule's first two books
were looking at the phenomena as more of a nuts and balls privacies with an
enemy of a phenomenon and challenge to science. And then you know, you
can you can almost see these people like, well, they just throwing their
hands up. And then he wrote Passport to Magonia, looking at the connections
between elements of folklore and some modern day UFO experiences. I often wonder what
made Valet's direction change so quite dramatically, almost like midway through further on in
his writing career, there was a real change, another sort of another day,
I imagine. But yes, someone could onto that would be definitely a
future book, The Possible to Magonia for for our group, right, that
was on the list for this time. It got beat by this prophecies Instant's
non existent book the next show the exist the book. I'm gonna have to
I'm gonna have to pull a Gray Barker and you start making it up.
Then you can do it. I could. I'll source, uh Bill Kulis
is my my source. And there you go. This is borrowed those written
by Susie Bastile, edited by and we're all accessories before the fact. Now,
yeah, all right, gentlemen, I think it's time to wrap it
up. Otherwise, we talked about Keel all night long with this group.
I fear and Susie, I would hate to keep talking about John Keel.
You know that, I know you. It's just been so painful for you.
I'm sure. Thank Bill again for joining us. Thank you very much,
appreciate it. You're very welcome. Well, I think we should thank
Susie for creating this podcast in this book club, because this has been a
blast, and this is all started from my desire to force people to talk
about books that I'm reading with me. Ah, I see on board very
early on with this Andy, We've been manipulated, That's what happened. I
don't mind that. I can live with that. Okay, there's a reason
I like trickster energies. But this has been a great time setting. And
one thing I would have to say is I've been doing shows with Steve for
about five years now, and I don't think it's ever been a single show
where John has not been meanted at least once, so I had a chance
to mention many times tonight. I think it's in my contract and I would
not absolutely the contract, so I know that, all right. Thank you
all, and thank everyone in the comments and everyone watching. It was a
lot of fun and I'm looking forward to the next book, whichever one that
will be. So get on over to the Facebook group and we'll start a
new poll for the next Times book. Thanks for listening, everybody, everyone,
Thanks everybody, good night, good morning from the UK.