From the unexplained to the mundane, come join us on a journey to the fringe.
Hello and welcome to Journey to the Fringe, a podcast that's pretty good.
I'm not going to oversell it, I will let the episode speak for itself.
We are your podcast hosts, Taylor and Chelsea.
We're here today following up on our John Keele episode and what I don't know if we're
classifying as a two-parter, Chelsea?
Yeah.
Okay.
You're at this point.
Nice.
And I will let you take it from there.
Okay, thanks.
Great opener.
Don't oversell the opener, Chelsea.
So, we left off on Keele and I think you may have noticed that we're clearly missing one
of Keele's most renowned marks on the UFO community, at least from my perspective, that
being the Mothman prophecies.
I decided it needed its own episode or two and I'm talking about an in-depth look at
the book itself.
I also wanted to take the time in this episode to pull out some of the major happenings in
the book to talk about.
So let's not waste time and dive right in.
November of 1966, the people of Point Pleasant and the surrounding area in West Virginia,
which is along the Ohio River, begin to experience strange things.
And the events take place over a period of about 13 months and entails hundreds of documented
witnesses and accounts, Mothman being only one of them.
It's hard to track down an official first encounter.
They differ.
But I'm going to go with this one.
It's a National Guardsman on duty at the Point Pleasant 1092nd Engineer Battalion Headquarters.
He was on the base when he saw an impossibly large creature perched high in a tree on a
fence above the base.
It was so big he thought it was a man and he sat staring at it for a little bit and couldn't
make sense of it.
He thinks it must be a bird, but it's too big and it would have been the largest bird
he'd ever seen in his life.
He goes to get someone else to come take a look and by the time he comes back it's gone.
I was going to say like, I've, I've ostriches larger than a human, but I guess he's never
technically seen one and it would still be odd to see an ostrich perched on top of that.
I don't think it's perched on top is something you hear from ostriches that often.
Yeah.
And I'm going to go out on a limb and say like an ostrich is pretty unique looking.
So I would think that if you saw an ostrich it would be, I mean if I saw the shadow of
an ostrich that would be freaky.
I mean I don't like birds so it's like one of my worst nightmares.
So I wouldn't like seeing it, but I would feel like I'd be like he was in the shape
of an ostrich because it just had like one super long neck with a bulb on the top and
a fat body.
The next day after this sighting, a man you may have heard of before but may not be able
to immediately identify named Woodrow Darenberger was driving down the highway and had an
encounter with a little entity that called itself cold.
Ah yes, I know who we're talking about now.
Yeah, so I just wanted to tell you that that's where that happened in conjunction in the
timeline.
Second encounter of the Mothman comes November 16, 1966 and I'm going to take this one right
from the Point Pleasant Register.
Quote, two Point Pleasant couples said today they encountered a man-sized bird-like creature
in the TNT area about midnight last night.
Quote, within a quote I guess because I'm quoting the article, it was a bird or something.
It definitely wasn't a flying saucer, end quote.
Sheriff's deputies and city police went to the scene about two o'clock in the morning
but were unable to spot anything.
But the two young men telling their story this morning were dead serious and asserted
they hadn't been drinking.
Steve Millette of 3305 Jackson Avenue, I love that they put their address in there, and Roger
Scarberry of 809.
This is before they came out with the term doxing, isn't it?
It would explain a lot of how much attention these people got after people started walking
out of the staining and stuff like that.
And Roger Scarberry of 809 30th Street described the thing as being six or seven feet tall,
having a wind span of 10 feet and red eyes about two inches in diameter and six inches
apart.
It was like a man with wings, Millette said.
Oh that was a quote, re-quote.
It wasn't like anything you'd see on TV or in a monster movie, end quote.
The men and their wives were in Scarberry's car between 11.30pm and midnight, and they
spotted the creature near the old power plant adjacent to the National Guard Armory Buildings.
Creature was seen standing on three occasions and was described as being extremely fast.
In brackets it flew about 100 miles an hour, in brackets, in flight, but was a clumsy runner.
That's weird.
What?
I just think it's ripped.
Yeah, it must have.
Deputy Millert Halstead said that he had seen dust in the vicinity of a quilt field, but
it could have been caused by a bird, he said.
I'm a hard guy to scare, Scarberry said, but last night I was four getting out of there.
They did just that, but the thing followed them.
They said it was hovering the car apparently gliding until they reached the National Guard
Armory on Route 62.
But we went downtown, turned around, and went back, and there it is again, Millette said.
It seemed to be waiting on us.
He said the light gray light creature then scurried through a field, it had flown across
the top of the car.
It apparently is afraid of light, Millette reasoned, and maybe it thought it was scaring
us off.
The young men said they saw the creature's eyes, which glowed red only when their light
shone on him, and it seemed to want to get away from the lights.
They said it looked like a man with wings, but that the head was not an outstanding characteristic.
Chelsea, is this a good point to bring up just a statement that they have all described
it as bird-like?
Yeah.
Like they're all man-like birds, or bird-like men.
Not one person has said like insect-like.
No.
Okay.
No, because I think most people compare it to they see a man, but then it spreads its
wings and take off.
Just generally.
I don't think I've ever heard anyone compare it to an insect.
Yeah, and I'm just thinking.
It's always man-shaped, and then there's wings.
Yeah, and bird wings.
Yeah, like bat wings.
And what year are we talking about here?
This would be 1960s.
1966.
Okay, this is right around the time that the comic book character Birdman came out.
He was in 67.
They name it after, I can't remember.
You would think I would have it in this episode, but it's not.
It's a superhero that they name it after.
Mothman?
Like a mix between Batman and something else they name it after.
It's actually somebody that works at one of the newspapers that names it Mothman.
But yeah, everybody says man-shaped, and then it'll just take off, and it spreads its wings.
They said it looked like, quote, man with wings, but that they have with not-not-standing
characteristic.
Both were slightly paled and tired from lack of sleep during the night following their
harrowing experience.
They speculated that the thing was living in the vacant power plant, possibly in one
of the huge boilers.
Quote, there are pigeons in all the other buildings, and quote, Mollette said.
Re-quote, but not that one.
End quote.
If I had seen it while by myself, I wouldn't have said anything, Scarberry commented, but
there were four of us who thought.
They said it didn't resemble a bat in any way, but maybe what you would visualize as
an angel.
The last time they saw it at the gate of the CC Lewis Farm on Route 62.
They heard a sound like wings flapping, and they said the bird rose straight up like a
helicopter.
If this doesn't have an explanation to it, Mollette said, it was an animal, but nothing
like I've seen before.
Are they going back to look for the creature?
Yes, Mollette said.
This afternoon and again tonight.
Today's Scarberry said, but tonight I don't know.
So that'll set the scene for you about kinda what's going on in Point Pleasant at the time.
We actually haven't talked about this yet.
I love the Mothman.
It has the math man.
I don't think you like the math man.
Totally different guy.
But we've never covered this Mothman before.
I love Mothman, and I've done the Illinois Mothman because I hadn't heard of them.
This guy's the famous one, the original one coming out of Point Pleasant.
That's the background.
Well, I think it's very good of us to get to it within the first four years of the podcast.
Are we in your five?
Yeah, it could come immediately.
Oh.
No, all the big ones you guys want, we're alluding to and will come at some point.
Yeah, exactly.
That kinda sets the scene for you for what's going on.
Gray Barker writes the first book on the Mothman, and it's called The Silver Bridge.
He writes it about the goings on in West Virginia, and he writes it in 1970, which is five years
prior to the Mothman prophecies coming out in 1975.
I read that one too.
Keel's Mothman prophecies accounts of his investigation into the alleged sightings of
a large wing creature known as the Mothman in the vicinity of Point Pleasant, West Virginia
during 1966 and 1967.
Gray combines these accounts with his series about UFOs and various supernatural phenomena,
ultimately connecting them to the collapse of the Silver Bridge across the Ohio River
December 15, 1967.
Official investigations in 1971 determined the bridge collapse was caused by stress-corrosion
cracking in an eye bar in a suspension chain.
Okay, so the official response was not Moth people.
No.
Okay.
It was never.
Nope.
It was years and years ago, and I was never able to get very far through it.
I got a subscription to Audible and thought, I've heard so many great things about this
book.
Everything I've heard has been that it's a great book.
I thought maybe listening would be better.
I don't think that it necessarily was.
I got through it.
The guy said, enthusiast funny.
It came up way more than you would think in this book.
It's a well-used word in the book.
He calls them enthusiasts.
Ah, and sir, who are the enthusiasts?
UFO enthusiasts.
Oh, okay.
He uses the word a lot.
That's my review of the Audible, by the way.
Not bad.
Use the word.
Now that I've had time to actually process what I read and taken a great amount of media
and other books and TV show, well, media includes all of those, about the Mothman prophecies,
I think I had a hard time with getting into it as well as wrapping my head around the
Audible book because it wasn't necessarily what I was expecting, especially after seeing
the movie, which I'll talk about in a second, which is right now.
So Richard Geer doesn't come up in the book at all, I take it?
Or what's his name?
The guy from Shameless.
What the hell's that guy?
He's the guy who dies.
Oh, did you just spoil Shameless for me?
No, he dies in Mothman prophecy.
Oh, oh, that's little Patton.
Yeah, the guy in Fargo, right?
Who's the guy in Fargo?
I don't think it's Will Patton.
Let me look at his name.
Will Patton was just in the TV show I really liked, Oder Range.
It is.
I don't think it's Will Patton.
It's William H. Macy.
The Mothman prophecies book is not one complete story.
It's not an easy linear story to follow, such as the movie had me expecting.
Is William H. Macy not in Mothman prophecies?
Do I have him confused with somebody?
No, you're thinking of the wrong guy.
Yeah, I am.
Don't think you say that.
Google Will Patton.
Oh, that guy.
Yeah, yeah, I definitely have the wrong guy.
He was in Remember the Titans.
Yes, he is.
I've never seen Shameless so I had no idea.
I disagreed with you.
So with all that being said, I wouldn't mind reading it again now knowing what I know and
taking it all in again.
This time I would read it.
Not that I haven't kind of read it based on my notes throughout a book.
The book was widely popularized as the basis of a 2002 movie called The Mothman Prophecies,
which stars Richard Gere, Will Patton, like we were just talking about.
Not Macy.
That's how I knew his name so quick.
Nope, not him.
He was in Fargo.
Laura Linney and Ellen Bates and I don't know why everybody keeps not mentioning Deborah
Messing, but she's in it too.
Only briefly though, maybe that's why.
Is she the one who has a dream?
She's the one that dies in the beginning.
Oh, oh right.
2002, I'm not ruining anything.
Well, you can't ruin the first five minutes of a movie.
Yeah.
Straight out.
That came out in 2002.
The whole home movie.
So Gere and Bates played two parts in Keele's personality, Bates' character is named Leak,
which is Keele spelled backwards, and Gere's newspaper journalist character is called John
Clime, also a play on Keele's name.
Taylor.
Yes.
You've seen the movie?
Yeah, it's a Christmas movie.
Yeah.
You know, now that you mention it, it is.
What do you think of it?
From what I remember, it was pretty good.
Based on your really good memory of it.
Yeah, my, William H. Macy was fantastic in it.
It's a shame he had to die.
I don't really know what to tell you.
Like, their Ingrid Cole is probably a little overrepresented for what he actually had
as a relationship in the whole thing.
But overall, not a bad movie.
Richard Gere and his prime.
So.
I will say that it was my first introduction to the Mothman.
Yeah, me too.
So, as we grew up together.
Yes, we were both introduced to Mothman through the Mothman Prophecies movie.
Reading the Mothman prophecies and having started out being very familiar, 2002.
So it came out when I was like going into high school and reading the book so far after
it came out.
After being a huge fan of Mothman, I was actually impressed that most major things in the book
are covered in the movie.
Not necessarily how they're covered in the book, but the first story that I told you,
well, the third story that I told you in the beginning is in the movie.
A lot of things do make it into the movie.
And I will say the movie is much more cohesive than the book is.
I was really impressed because most everything that's in the movie is in the book.
They just took key points, made it into, you know, they made it a linear story that they
can actually sell to the public.
Yeah, exactly.
That being said, there's like, Indring Cold isn't the same, but interactions that Will
Patton has with Indring Cold, while they weren't necessarily interactions that Woodrow Darenberger
actually have with Indring Cold, they are themes that are in the book.
And you'll see through some of the things that I go through in these episodes that as
well.
You're going to see some things, if you can remember the movie, come up in this that are
just presented a little differently.
He'll also said that he was pleased with director Mark Linton's interpretation of the
book.
Quote, they got a lot of stuff in the book into the movie, but with slight variations.
I have no real complaints about it.
It's Hollywood and it's done well.
That's my feeling about it.
I actually would give a similar review.
They did do a good job and a lot of the stories did make it in the movie.
Like I said, I agree.
I have to say it's probably one of the best book to movie renditions.
I do have some thoughts on the book.
I read a synopsis of the book above to you.
I mean, previously throughout, if you rewind a little bit, I read it.
And I have to honestly say I would not say it is an accurate one, but it's not.
I would summarize the book as being more about general heist strangeness than specifically
the mothman.
And while the moth person does come up, I found there to be much more information on
the men in black, UFO encounters and contactees or random thoughts and encounters where I
think keel is just trying to work out what's going on and he's trying to tie all the weird
information he's getting together.
And to that effect, I believe that's why they end up bringing the bridge into the storyline
and tying it to mothman because it gives the mothman a purpose and a closure, which is
much more comfortable to the human brain for there to have been a purpose behind the sightings
and what happened.
So in the book, is there less of a connection?
No, there's the same connection.
Oh, okay.
They do tie it together with things.
I don't really get into it.
But like I said, I think it's just much more of a comfortable thing for people's brains
to wrap their head around a tragedy as well as the really super weird things that were
going on.
Okay.
So yeah, the book jumps around a lot.
He brings in other people's work and sightings from around the world.
I think, like I said, in an attempt to make sense of what's going on, I'm not 100% sure
where he was getting some of his information from that he brings into the book because
there was a large amount of information taken from elsewhere that wasn't noted.
A lot of the book is second hand info.
That being said, he does have a lot of witness accounts too that he works on.
And Gray Barker also pulls from John Keel's witnesses that he uses in his Silver Bridge
book.
To be honest, I don't know that I have heard of any other experiences of such a large amount
of centralized weirdness going on, such as what is put together in this book that is
happening to an entire region other than to say Skinwalker Ranch.
But yeah, that's not quite as populated.
Yeah, it's more localized in Skinwalker Ranch and West Virginia, I would say, what
Keel's reporting on is less weird, but still like weirder in a wider area covered.
So I would compare them kind of the same and I hear a lot of comparisons to the two works
in all my stuff that I've been taking in.
This has been a long time coming and all I've been doing is like living and breathing the
Mothman prophecies and the Mothman.
Something that wasn't in the book that I found out from the Coast to Coast AM episode with
Art Bell that John Keel was on, he did like a little interview prior to the Mothman prophecies
coming out.
The same day he did the interview that it came out and he told Art Bell.
Way back in the day, wow.
Yeah, yeah.
So he tells Art Bell that what brought Keel to West Virginia in the first place was to
investigate Thomas, the Wing Cat.
So that's a fun tin bit for you.
That's not in the book.
That's why he's just there.
Oh man, is that a future episode?
Yeah.
Oh my God.
We could do like Bat Boy, Thomas the Wing Cat, like you know those, what are they called?
Like, oh, I don't know, but they were the weekly world news stuff.
Yeah.
Oh, we could do an episode on those guys.
The major thing that stuck out to me is that a witness statements and general high-straightness
happenings.
Keel tells more like a story than an actual witness account, what people are wearing,
the color of their skin, how good looking an individual was, inner monologues of people
that you wouldn't possibly think he could know or that they would divulge to him.
Do they all think he's really attractive and cool?
Yeah.
He thought, man, Keel's so cool and good looking.
Details that are totally irrelevant to eyewitness and countertest emojis.
And on that thought, there were many unnecessary sexual undertones.
It made me uncomfortable listening to it because you don't really get that in books anymore
unless you're listening to like one of those, you know, spicy books, which I don't listen
to.
I assume Keel's not writing.
Yeah, no.
This is the Mopin prophecies.
He definitely writes it to be like a story, but it's not.
It has true witness accounts in it and stuff like that.
So that was also hard for me to wrap my head around.
That being said, this book definitely shows its age, not only in language, but also the
way that the information is presented.
And you can tell Keel is trying to connect the dots where he should have just let them
not be connected because, you know, you're trying to connect and make a connection.
It was just kind of scrambled.
That being said, the information is mostly still relevant in the field.
Again, look at Skin Blocker Ranch.
People haven't been able to connect stuff like this.
There's no unifying theory.
That sets you up for the book.
Now I have the Mothman on the way.
I want to get into some of the various other themes that Keel delves into in his book.
So first off, do you have any questions about the book?
General questions.
So is it written in like a very misogynist way?
Yeah.
I don't know what I'm getting from Keel here.
I guess is there chapters or is it just like stream consciousness?
So there's chapters and then the chapters are divided into parts.
So this is why I had to.
It took me a good, you know, I read this over Thanksgiving, which the timeline is not going
to make sense for this coming out when it does.
I read it over Thanksgiving.
I feel like I've only just now, like within the last month, kind of put it together in
my head where I want to read it again because I was expecting something so different.
So it took me a while to figure it out in my head.
But now I do think it's a good book.
There's lots of cool stuff in it.
There's lots of different encounters.
I love the high strangeness components to it.
But yeah, some of the observations in it didn't age well.
It's interesting to hear just like, you know, you watch old TV shows and it's like kids
today think it's weird that they don't have cell phones and stuff like that.
I know it's actually kind of funny that like if you watch shows from like mid to late 2000s,
they're grasping with that idea that they actually have to write about people always
constantly having cell phones and like a trope of TV shows for the longest time was like,
oh, they can't find each other or somebody's missing.
So they have to find ways to write around people just very easily being able to get out
of that situation.
Yeah.
So kind of like that.
But very different.
Yes.
Yeah.
So first up, we're going to talk about the Men in Black.
Keel actually invented the term Men in Black in an article for the Men's Adventure Magazine
Saga published 1967.
I love those Men's Adventure Magazine.
There are.
Yes, we talked about in the first half.
Weird, right?
Yeah.
Keel comes up in it.
If I had to rename this book anything, it would be Men in Black because it's such a strong
theme throughout the book.
I was left feeling sometimes that the people he was referring to sometimes might not have
been Men in Black based on the descriptions given.
He develops a really complicated relationship with the Men in Black throughout the book,
which will kind of discover.
Is that the sexual undertones?
He's coming to terms that he's that's why he's pursuing the Men in Black.
There are some sexual undertones stuck up with the Men in Black.
Yes.
No.
Keel says, referring to the Men in Black quote, there were a few that almost pulled off their
capers without drawing attention to themselves.
But in nearly every case, there is always some small error and slip of dress or behavior
which the witnesses were usually willing to overlook but which stood out like signal
flares to me.
That being said, he does present more information than I think I've ever heard or seen on the
Men in Black, which is interesting and a little bit creepy, including that they drink
Jell-O instead of, you know, eating it with a spoon.
Yeah.
That they drove old out of date pristine cars.
The dress appeared to include everything brand new, shoes, pants, wallets, even walking through
mud with no mud appearing on brand new shoes.
Clothing out of fashion or would come into fashion years later.
They used very old slings such as 23 Skidew or Haba Haba.
They would claim to be military with no military knowledge.
I'd be very curious what the military knowledge was if it's like they saw a gun and it's like
what's that?
Yeah, it was actually.
No, don't call me on anything because I'm not going to be able to think of a single example
if you do that.
I really like that idea though.
I'm from the military.
What's that?
Come up often in conjunction with people who had witnessed a UFO or an inhabitants if
asked and would show up on the doorstep of contactees who had not yet revealed their
encounter with anyone.
Thus, the suspicious nature.
They offered contactees pills.
Some had wires sticking out of their pant legs.
I do have the story.
I think it's too long of a story to read right now.
When you say offered pills, is it literally just here?
Have some pills?
Yeah, so they had gone to the house of, I knew this was going to come up, but I didn't
prepare for it.
They had gone to the house of a contactee and offered her a pill.
They gave her two pills actually and they said take one now and then take one imprecisely
however many hours later.
She did take the pill and then she ended up telling it must have been Keele because it
made it into the book and they had it tested and it was something ordinary.
I wish I could tell you right now.
Something like that.
Yeah, still super straight.
Some had wires sticking out of their pant legs in this story.
They show up at the house of a contactee and this man is looking very strange.
It's always something that's just out of the ordinary, very well dressed, like bulgy eyes.
This guy says that he needs to come into their house because somebody had passed away in
their family and they just wanted to verify that he was actually the person of the loved
one that had died in another state.
So he needs to come in for precisely 40 minutes and ask some questions.
So he goes in and he's asking the contactee questions that are very personal about like
any identifying marks on his body and stuff like that where he went to school.
Very personal stuff.
The wife asks him if he needs a glass of water, if he'd like some coffee or anything
like that and he says he'll take a glass of water but that he would take it in 10 minutes.
It was a very precise amount of time.
So in that time he keeps talking and he is getting more flush and flush and uncomfortable
as he continues talking.
At that 10 minutes is up he says I'll take that glass of water now.
He takes a pill to which all the symptoms appear to be relieved and he continues on
and right at the 45 minute mark that he had said or 40 minutes, whatever it is, he gets
up and leaves and they are all talking at the end about how weird the encounter was
and they had all noticed that he had wires sticking out of his panty that they talk about
after and then they look out the window when he leaves and he's gone.
No car was ever in the driver or anything and the guy just disappears.
So anyhow they get a call weeks later being like yeah he wasn't the guy.
He'll believed he was being watched closely by the men in black and at one point he'll
stop making appointments and plans just because it seemed like people would be knowing about
plans and meetings that he had.
Random contactees when he was interviewing them would comment on meetings that he would
have in the future and stuff like that which he thought was very weird.
So he ends up stopping planning his life and he just does everything on a whim and he just
starts like stopping by previous contactees houses.
He'll just go about his day drive past and be like this guy's a contactee and stop by
because he wanted to get out of this where people would be able to know about what's
going on because he's keeping appointments and stuff like that.
Once he did that in a bit to reclaim some of his privacy, Keele says they were always
still a step ahead of him even when he didn't know himself what he was doing, what hotel
he was staying at, where he was going in the day and stuff like that.
Contactees would receive phone calls from Keele's secretary that contactees would relate their
experience to about their encounter and Keele did not have a secretary.
He would show up to interview the contactee and he'd be like what secretary?
That's what he talks about as just a brief rundown of men and black encounters in the
book.
Yeah, that's enough that you wonder why he decided to just go with Mothman as the title
of the book.
Yeah, I wondered that too.
It's pretty huge in the book.
There's a lot going on with the men in black and it evolved as it goes on.
He has a very complicated relationship with the men in black.
Now I'm going to move on to Indra Cold and the grinning men.
We have done a whole episode on Indra Cold and to my dismay I've left some stuff out
so I get a second chance.
Lucky me.
And in preparation for this episode I told you I took in a lot of Mothman media.
I read Woodrow Darenberger's book Visitors to Lanulos which is the story of Woodrow and
his contact with Indra Cold.
He did go on to visit the planet Cold was from named Lanulos in case you needed that
spelled out.
I don't know that I talked about that in an episode.
So he's from Lanulos and Darenberger actually goes to Lanulos.
So Woodrow and Cold contact each other.
Well Cold contacts Darenberger primarily through telepathy.
Well Woodrow would get a tingling sensation in his forehead and then receive thoughts
from Cold into his mind that would explain different things such as what Lanulos was
like and that the people there lived to be 125 to 175 earth years and then upon completion
of the conversation I guess you could call it.
Cold withdrawals from Woodrow's reign I guess and he describes it being very painful like
sharp pains on his temple and Cold always says to prepare for it because it's going
to be painful.
End quote.
No that wasn't a quote.
The quote ended before I commented on it.
Not the issues with quoting.
I've never heard it described as like painful telepathy.
Yeah it had to have been a little bit more than telepathy at that point I think.
Woodrow and those around him also had experiences with the men in black.
Salesmen went door to door around the small town.
He's actually from just outside of Point Pleasant and salesmen are in around that town
selling different things at each door like when it would be bibles the next door would
be vacuums and they would be asking about Woodrow and the validity of his alleged account.
They were asking about him in the end I guess and they're just being super weird.
Those men in black are weird.
Another interesting thing about Indra Cold is that there are cooperating stories.
Not only did someone witness Darren Burger pulled to the side of the highway speaking
with someone the night that he met Indra Cold on the same night as Darren Burger's experience
we have this one that I'm going to read right from the book and I'm going to open it up.
Turn the light on because I'm too old to not have the light on to read this.
On November 2nd 19th do you hear that?
That's the book.
Good work.
That's how you know it's true.
On November 2nd 1966 he said he and another workman this is telling the story here I
don't know let's just say he doesn't want to give his name at this point because I don't
know who does.
He and another workman were driving home to Point Pleasant from their job near Marietta,
Ohio on Interstate 77.
As they neared Parkersburg, West Virginia an elongated object appeared low in the sky
and descended directly in front of them.
They stopped their car and a man emerged from the object and walked over to them.
He looked like a normal man and was grinning broadly.
He wore a black coat and kept his arms folded with his hands out of sight under his armpits.
That's such a weird thing to do.
The witness rolled his windows down and there was a brief conversation.
The stranger asked the pair who they were, where they were from, where they were going
and what time it was.
Then he strolled back to the dark cylinder and it rose quickly into the chill drizzling
sky.
The two men had a strong emotional reaction to the seemingly pointless encounter.
They debated whether they should tell anybody deciding against it, but the Point Pleasant
resident found himself suffering from insomnia and when he finally slept he had strange nightmares.
He started to hit the bottle, something very unusual for him.
Mrs. Hyer, we're going to talk about her in the next episode, listened to a story,
non-plussed and made a few notes.
A day or so later, the man's son called on her and asked her not to print the story.
Several weeks later, she repeated the story to me and we called the man on her office
phone.
He verified the details and then said, quote, look, don't use my name, I don't want to
get involved in this thing.
That scientist fella told me.
What scientist fella?
That's Keele.
He's asking what scientist?
And then the guy continues a couple of weeks after this thing happened, a scientist from
Ohio came to see us.
He told us it would be better if we forgot the whole thing and Keele says, how did he
hear about it?
How did he find you?
And the guy says, damn, if I know, and Keele says, did he identify himself?
And he continues, sure, but I can't remember his name, but he seemed to know what he was
talking about.
Keele goes on, I couldn't, this is just his thoughts now, I couldn't get much else
out of him.
I would have ignored the whole story except for one drawing fact, the same thing had happened
the same night on the same road to another West Virginian.
Unlike the two point pleasant residence, he had gone to the police with a story, a press
conference was held and he was catapulted into the Never Neverland of the UFO contactees,
the center of one of the biggest UFO stories in 1966.
And that's Woodrow Derenberger with Indra Kolt.
So you think that's weird enough?
That was the same night as Derenberger meets Indra Kolt.
There's more.
The young college student from Adelphi, Maryland called Tom in the book.
He was driving home and sees a large object in the road, specifically a bone white reflective
object like an egg standing on four legs.
He pulls up to the object and he can make out two figures standing next to the thing
and terrify him.
There's another word there that I spelled wrong and I can't make it out.
A man walks up to his car grinning.
It was about 5'10", where light blue coveralls, thick stole boots and had a ruddy or sun tan
complexion with large eyes like thyroid eyes he says.
And the grin remained fixed the whole interaction.
I've never heard the term thyroid eyes.
Thyroid eyes are bulging eyes.
Okay.
This man tells Tom his name is Daddig and asks him random questions about where he's
from, where he's going, whatever.
Valding says to Tom, I'll see you in time and peace is the fuck out.
Thyroid makes more appearances to Tom throughout some amount of time and is actually taken
to Daddig's planet.
Wait for it, Lanulos.
Tom shares this with his college roommates and gets a hard time about it.
And it wasn't until they were all watching, this is a much longer story in the book by
the way, it wasn't until they were all watching TV together and happened to come across an
interview of Woodrow Derenberger on the TV where he's speaking about Indra Cold and
Lanulos.
And all four were flabbergasted to hear Woody describe the experiences that were identical
to Tom's.
Oh.
Isn't that weird?
That is weird.
This is the first time I've ever heard of Lanulos and the fact that two people have the same
story is interesting, I will say.
So what are you more blown away by Lanulos than that you never heard of it before or the
cooperating episode?
Uh, I think Lanulos, just the fact that it's like so out there.
Like we've heard of tons of planets that have been brought up as like things aliens say
they're from there and even places that people get taken.
But like, Lanulos for the first time.
Yeah, Keel does go on to say that he wouldn't have put that much stock in Woodrow Derenberger's
encounter with Indra Cold and even continuing because his contact with Indra Cold does different
from other contactee encounters that he's having in the book.
So he said based on that, he wasn't putting much stock on it, except that it's so corroborated.
Not only people seeing Derenberger parked on the highway speaking to Indra Cold, but
there's two more encounters with grinning men that happen.
One is with the same exact planet and the other is another grinning man that happens
the same exact night.
Like that's, that's more than a coincidence to me, which I would agree.
For Indra Cold, that one's a little bit out there as far as believable contactee reports.
But again, at the time, this is not something that was following sci-fi movies and stuff
like that.
It would have been out there to even fabricate.
So the grinning men, as you may gather from what I just said, are apparently a phenomenon
of contacts with extraterrestrials that differ from Indra Cold.
Yes, I know when I did the Indra Cold episode, there were a couple more, but it wasn't anything
crazy.
Keele says it's a little bit more than that, and he's talking to a witness here.
Quote, one night when I was walking home to my apartment, I became aware of a man following
me.
When I looked at him, he stopped and grinned at me, but there was an air of evil about
him.
I can't pinpoint it exactly.
Quote, Keele responds, quote, was he possibly some kind of sex deviant?
Good question.
Very necessary question.
I don't know what you're talking about.
A very unnecessary weird sexual comment I told you about.
Yeah.
Quote, no, I don't think so.
He was short and sly and wore a black coat and black trousers.
His face was dark and foreign looking.
I don't know why, but the evil grin is burned into my memory.
Quote, Keele goes on to say that the foolishly grinning man is a staple item of psychic lore.
Black suited with a dark complexion and craggy foreign face.
He has been described to me in many places and by many people.
He didn't provide any stories in the book other than, you know, those three about the
grinning man, but he kind of sums it up there saying he sees it over and over again.
I mean, I don't look in all places.
So there has to be more out there.
Question mark.
Because when I looked it up with Indra Cole, I didn't get a whole lot more stories, but
there was quite a few in this one.
So we're moving on from Indra Cole now to contactees.
Quote, when you entered the unreal, this is Keele, when you entered the unreal world of
contactees precision, prophecies and mysterious invasion of your privacy become commonplace.
Changes seem to develop heightened perceptions, ESP and prognition.
Is that, I'm just wondering if that's why he's able to glean what people are thinking
throughout the book.
Is he's getting it like secondhand from all these people?
Yes.
Okay.
Yes.
It must be.
The changes occur almost overnight.
In their meetings with the entities, they are served up platters of propaganda along
with rumors and nonsense, which they accept and repeat as fact.
Many of the choice tidbits of UFO lore were put into circulation by contactees who placed
their complete trust in their contactors.
Entities spun well, tales about crash saucers being confiscated by the US Air Force, farmers
shooting and wounding spacemen and so forth.
Contactees repeated the stories to wild-eyed UFO enthusiasts and certainly spread in ever-widening
circles until they appeared in articles and books.
Daren Berger never claimed psychic powers.
He said he received telepathic messages from cold, giving him specific information.
Uri Geller claimed that his psychic abilities came from space intelligences.
He became world famous after his alleged contact with a flying saucer on a desert in the Middle
East.
He has been tested by armies of scientists and parapsychologists.
Yeah, we've talked about him before.
And he was a part of something else.
Yeah, I'm trying to think too.
It was an army program.
It was remote viewing.
Yes, remote viewing.
Thank you.
I was going to say it's adjacent to Men Who Stare at Goats, but yeah, you're right.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking too.
I always have to translate Men Who Stare at Goats into remote viewing.
Usually contactee experiences follow certain patterns, which they are not even aware of
at the time.
A long series of seemingly unrelated events occur prior to the first overt contact.
These events can begin childhood and span many years.
Then too, most contactees have active or latent psychic abilities before contact.
People who see ghosts or religious apparitions have the same patterns of the UFO contactees.
And in fact, the apparitions described in religious miracles usually share the same
physical characteristics as our UFO entities, that is long fingers, dusky complexions, and
pointed fingers.
Those are just, there's many contacts within this book.
He basically, the whole book is just men in black and contactees, to be honest.
And the Mothman comes up a couple of times.
Well, there's more than a couple.
Hey, there's a Mothman.
What do you get what I'm trying to say?
I just thought that was an interesting thought that he was getting out of boat contactees.
Every so often you see him have a glimpse at what he's trying to put together and it's
pretty good.
I do like that he's making the connection between religious apparitions and UFO contactees
in that last little bit there.
But that's where I'm going to leave this episode on today.
And then I'm going to leave it for a surprise on just what we're going to be talking about
in relation to the Mothman prophecies next week.
What do you think so far?
Ah, there's actually more to it than I was expecting.
I was kind of expecting it to be more bunk than it's turned out.
Well, I think we were both surprised with the Keele episode.
Yes, just with that background and the fact that from what I've heard, yeah, he's not
the best investigator.
No, and you can tell I have my critiques in the next episode spoiler alert.
But aside from the way he tells his stories and the way he does kind of lead his witnesses,
which again, next episode, it's really entertaining.
He has some good stuff in there and I can't fault him for wanting to make it a good read.
You know, he was just generally a good writer before this.
He wasn't a UFO investigator.
He was a propagandist.
So you could see why he would bring something like that into this.
It does make it more enjoyable.
To me, it sticks out like a sore thumb and you can kind of read around it.
But still an enjoyable book.
I like the topic.
I love the stuff he's talking about.
So I don't know what to say about it in the end.
And plus, these people are all contactees and haven't had their experiences.
So it's not like he was making it up.
He was just, you know, adding his Keele flair to it.
Well, and you got to think if he's trying to draft a narrative into a linear story,
well, not necessarily a linear but a story nonetheless, he's not going to necessarily,
I don't know, this might be, I didn't read it, but I could be completely off base.
But he's not going to ask as tough of questions as he might need to to actually see if it's
a legit case, if it's aligning with what he already has.
I don't know because I didn't read it.
So you'll have to.
Yeah, but the thing with that is he doesn't know what he has.
That's fair.
But like for the most part, when we're looking at like cryptids and whatnot, they're all
like one off sightings.
They're not things that really go on for that long, but his story seemed to.
Yeah, that's something I couldn't make heads or tails of with the mothman prophecy.
There's nothing else like this.
There's nothing else where I mean, yeah, you get UFO flaps and stuff like that, but
other like I said, skinwalker ranch, there's nothing else where you get such a concentrated
area for a finite amount of time where just some really weird stuff is going on.
And it's not happening every day all the time.
But in the end, when you get all these people coming forward and sharing their experiences
and people they're investigating it, it adds up to something weird happening, right?
Like when they're investigating it.
But where else can you say something like that happens?
No, exactly.
And that's why I'm wondering.
You got mothman UFOs.
You got men in black.
Like where else?
It's really sometimes.
Please.
Sometimes.
Sometimes in our creature features at Halloween, there are kind of things that go on for a
few sightings over like a week or two period.
Yeah, but please like leave us a comment if there was anything where there was a prolonged
presence of men in black, a prolonged presence of, you know, something like the mothman doesn't
have to be mothman, just something that can't be explained that happens over like the period
of a year.
Please let us know, I would be so interested in that.
And it makes me suspicious as to and it doesn't seem, I mean, it does happen sporadically
still in West Virginia with mothman sightings and stuff like that, but not like that.
So why did it just stop?
And why right around the time he stopped investigating it, I was just going to say, and why did it
stop?
Like they obviously him and Gray Barker obviously didn't stay there forever.
No.
They didn't make it up, but why was it finite?
Well, and especially it's not like it's not like people within this community just abandoned
this location like this.
It's known for this.
Like they have mothman festivals there.
So if there were stories, they would be sharing that.
And if mothman love fame and fortune, he would be there.
Like he'd show up for the festival.
Yeah, it's a weird spot.
I agree.
It's weird.
Yeah.
And maybe that's the appeal of it as well, because that is just something you can add
to the pile.
The mysteriousness of it.
Mythos.
Yeah.
I don't know if I use that word right.
I guess with that, more questions will come or be answered, I guess, maybe in part three
of this.
So I do or do it.
Chelsea.
I have been Taylor here with Chelsea.
We are journey to the fringe.
Thank you all for listening and we'll see you next week.
Bye.
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