A Complete Guide to Mysterious Beings
John Keel
Doubleday
Nonfiction, Paranormal and Unexplained Phenomena
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DESCRIPTION: From sasquatch sightings to reported alien abductions, and through even stranger phenomena - winged cats, flying humanoids, and other impossible abominations - the world is full of unexplained incidents. Some may be hysteria, some may be misidentification, but the same things keep being seen again and again around the world. The author shares some of his vast collection of UFO-related events and other unusual things, providing some of his own theories.
REVIEW: Hold your breath, we're going off the deep end here! Keel is a dedicated believer in his theories, and is willing to accept most every tale as true with little
reservation. Reading it, I couldn't help but make mental comparisons with Agent Fox Mulder of The X-Files. Without Scully's stabilizing force, he could easily have written
this book in a few years, when he's finally booted out of the FBI. The author's own zeal, like Mulder's, tends to be blinding. Keel does comment that, to a paranoid, every black
car is a CIA agent watching you, perhaps an acknowledgement of his own faults. His very unwillingness to go deeper detracts from his arguments; he simply says what he's heard or
been told, and expects the readers to have the same faith that he does. Still, I gave it an "Okay" rating because it's a different perspective on events covered in other
books, and it's nice to see that other opinions exist. What good would it be to just read the "mainstream" viewpoints, especially on subjects like UFO's and Bigfoot? It doesn't
mean I agree with the man, I just like to see another side of things once in a while. (And any X-phile knows that Mulder's usually right, despite Scully's skepticism!)
I do think his idea about many reported encounters – with both UFO aliens and creatures such as those beasts he dubs Abominable Swamp Slobs - is intriguing. I don’t recall all
the details, and picking through the text I can’t locate it offhand, but it has to do with people seeing something their minds can’t translate, and so they invent their own Swamp
Slobs and improbable aliens. They have encountered a real event, but not what they report. What they describe to a skeptical world is just a by-product of their reaction to the
event, which he describes as some sort of transdimensional phenomenon. Of course, as yet there's no way to prove it, but that means there's no way to disprove it, either. I didn't say I
necessarily believed it... I just found the idea interesting. Wouldn't it be strange to find out that all of these "otherworldly" visitors aren't from across the stars, after all,
but simply across a dimensional barrier? (If nothing else, it's excellent story fodder...)
You might also enjoy:
Strange & Unexplained Phenomena (Jerome Clarke and Nancy Pear, Nonfiction - Cryptids, UFOs, and other odd experiences and encounters)
Cryptozoology A - Z (Loren Coleman & Jerome Clarke, Nonfiction - Mysterious animals past and present)
The Encyclopedia of Monsters (Daniel Cohen, Nonfiction - Cryptid encounters, fabulous beasts, alien sightings, famous hoaxes, and more)
Monsters: An Investigator's Guide to Magical Beings (John Michael Greer, Nonfiction - An alternative approach to unexplainable phenomena)
Mysteries of the Unexplained and Reader's Digest Facts and Fallacies (Reader's Digest, Nonfiction - Unsolved mysteries, historical peculiarities, frauds, and puzzlers from the ages)
The World's Most Incredible Stories: The Best of the Fortean Times (Adam Sisman, editor, Nonfiction - Articles from the long-running periodical about the unusual and unexplained)
Mysterious Places (Jennifer Westwood, editor, Nonfiction - Historic and prehistoric places that defy explanation)
The Mammoth Encyclopedia of the Unsolved and Unsolved Mysteries: Past and Present (Colin Wilson and Damon Wilson, Nonfiction - Unsolved mysteries, strange phenomena, and more)
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