JOHN KEEL NOT AN AUTHORITY ON ANYTHING

May 1, 2016

Special Report on Incidents in Ohio and West Virginia (1)

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 8:47 am

buy gabapentin illegally I continue to ponder the material that John called “Confidential File: Special Investigations.” These are three folders which collect his research from 1967, including reports, clippings, and correspondence with witnesses, contactees, and other investigators. It was a very busy year. Most of this material ended up in John’s books, particularly The Mothman Prophecies, but the raw notes often include odd details and intriguing dead ends.

So, next up here is a 16 page report called “Special Report on Ohio and West Virginia,” written April 11, 1967. I’ll post it in four parts. In this first part, John outlines some of his method, contemplates the importance of Wednesday, and reports on Leonard “Shy” Elmore’s encounter with a disappearing shed.

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15 Comments

  1. The Leonard case, assuming the man didn’t experience somnambulism, has always fascinated me. Surreal goings-on at 4:00 AM in a podunk town. I almost WANT it to be absolutely factual. And if it was, what does it mean? Aye, there’s the rub….

    Comment by William Grabowski — May 1, 2016 @ 10:58 am

  2. This shows why Keel was so great. He really grasped the big picture of unexplained phenomena. So many writers and investigators act as though these things are simple and if they could just get that one piece of evidence, the mystery would be solved. Keel understood that the paranormal is way, way more strange and complicated than we understand now, maybe more than we ever can understand. “Mothman Prophecies” hooked me because of Keel’s recounting of stories like that of Leonard Elmore- it’s not a clear-cut “genre” encounter, i.e. UFO, Bigfoot, ghost, etc. It’s this fascinating WTF encounter with no clear meaning that feels like a peek outside of the limited perceived reality we normally live in.

    Comment by Vincent Treewell — May 1, 2016 @ 1:00 pm

  3. Insightful comment, Vincent. How about the seeming “name game” synchrony of the case? Elderly Leonard Elmore, participant in a mystery . . . Elmore Leonard, late author of mystery-oriented novels.

    Comment by William Grabowski — May 5, 2016 @ 4:01 am

  4. awesome thanks!

    Comment by patty g — May 5, 2016 @ 1:47 pm

  5. To whom do you think he directed the preface ? do you think he thought these were his most significant reports?

    Comment by patty g — May 6, 2016 @ 8:34 pm

  6. John sent reports like this to his fellow researchers. I find them particularly interesting because he was writing about the raw data and his methodology, rather than tying it all together for a wider audience. I don’t know if he thought they were the most significant, but they were the latest.

    Comment by admin — May 7, 2016 @ 8:01 am

  7. Seeing the raw data after reading Keel’s works, really helps to understand the big picture and how he processed/analyzed this stuff. Thanks.

    Comment by Clarence Carlson — May 7, 2016 @ 1:53 pm

  8. Hi Doug,

    Again, many thanks for posting these unique materials. I don’t think we will ever get to appreciate just how plain weird the 1950’s and especially 1960’s UFO scene was. The case of the missing shed reminds me of the case of the (dis)appearing grain silo thing.

    Looking forward to the next installments!

    Best regards,

    Theo

    Comment by Theo — May 7, 2016 @ 5:43 pm

  9. […] Special Report on Incidents in Ohio and West Virginia […]

    Pingback by 13.24 – MU Plus+ Podcast | Mysterious Universe — June 21, 2016 @ 7:53 am

  10. was the detailed report ever written? who did this special report go out to?

    Comment by patty g — June 24, 2016 @ 1:10 am

  11. re my previous question, do you think it went out to a few, several or dozens of series researchers? any idea specifically? were there any other researchers as serious as John? non hoaxing, in the field researchers?

    Comment by patty g — June 24, 2016 @ 1:21 am

  12. I think a version of this appeared in the British magazine “Flying Saucer Review”; and, of course, it was later expanded into “Mothman.” John sent his reports to Ivan Sanderson, Jim and Coral Lorenzen, Charles Bowen, Jerome Clark, Gray Barker, and Jim Moseley, among others. At least, those are the ones whose responses he kept in his files. Barker and Moseley were hoaxers, but the others weren’t. John probably did more traveling and interviewing than most of them.

    Comment by Doug — June 24, 2016 @ 1:53 pm

  13. Barker and Moseley should not be considered equal in their hoaxing. Moseley went way further than Barker, and was the instigator. Moseley got John really pissed off during the above time period. John continued to correspond with Barker because he knew he was sincere. I am sorry, but I get worked up by the fact that the slippery John Sherwood was able to so effectively ruin Barker’s reputation, even though he himself (Sherwood), is a known hoaxer who used aliases and palmed off bogus material. He is still it at today, in fact, as far as I can tell. He posts endless reviews on a daily basis, in an effort to skew the field and, as much as is convenient, embarrass it – just like his buddy, James Randi. Please reconsider the contributions of Barker, whose stamp is still on ufology today, providing recurring saleable material.

    Comment by Andrew Colvin — August 7, 2016 @ 10:23 pm

  14. Both Barker and Moseley committed plenty of hoaxes. I don’t know who did more; I wasn’t there. They both also did plenty of other things that weren’t hoaxes. It made things more difficult for John, but ufology survived anyway…

    Comment by Doug — August 8, 2016 @ 12:25 pm

  15. The shed was clearly a TARDIS.

    Comment by 8th — July 6, 2017 @ 2:43 pm

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