An Early Cryptozoology Influence: Strange Creatures from Time and Space

 Strange Creatures from Time and Space

John A. Keel

Original 1970

Reviewed: Sphere Books, 1976

My only interest in things sometimes grouped under "oddities" or "the paranormal" is physical cryptozoology, so I look at books from that angle.  Normally I only review cryptozoology books that stick with zoology.  Keel, though, had a great deal of influence, at the time of publication and 52 years later. 

Keel’s mind goes in many directions, often at once. He can be illogical, provocative, and sometimes very funny.  The philosophical blood of Charles Fort runs strong in him.  Where Fort was content to show his readers how strange the world is by sheer force of accumulated facts, claims, and stories, Keel went a bit further, and we’ll come back to that. 

First, to give the author credit, he put in a lot of roadwork.  He did a lot of traveling around the United States and some world travel as well.  He believes he has seen a yeti-type creature. He talked to many witnesses directly and did the emerging field of cryptozoology a lasting favor by recording some of those first-reported items here and elsewhere.  He also refers to a group of beasts that seem to hang around water, including what today is called Lizardman, as Abominable Swamp Slobs (A.S.S.), and I’m sorry that didn’t catch on. Keel is the literary father of “Mothman,” which he is certain is a very real thing but which he also recognizes, given the reported size, wingspan, and speed, can’t be a physical animal. Keel will always be known for connecting Mothman, however speculatively (as in, based on no evidence whatsoever) with the December 1967 collapse of the Silver Bridge over the Ohio River, in which 46 people died.   Keel often zooms off into UFOs and other topics, sometimes connected to “creatures,” sometimes not.  

Keel was an early proponent of “windows,” places where there are paranormal connections between this world and others that come and go, resulting in “flaps” of reports of UFOs, creatures, and other weirdness. That’s a million miles from zoology, but Keel believes there are also perfectly “normal,” if sometimes bizarre, animals in hiding around the world.  

All these decades later, Keel’s influence on flesh-and-blood cryptozoology has declined – you don’t see him quoted much in the related literature, but some of the reports are still interesting. His influence on the paranormal remains strong.  “Windows” are a permanent and prominent part of paranormal beliefs, even though no one has ever proved such a thing exists. Keel would have enjoyed that paradox.