Customer Reviews

Disneyland of the Gods

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

John Keel is an entertaining, controversial figure in the Fortean world. This book covers a lot of ground trying to makes the case for his Grand Unified Theory of paranormal phenomena. Unfortunately, his rhetorical tricks and baseless assertions get in the way of his legitimate threads of argument, but the careful and interested reader will find it worthwhile.

Yes, the truth is out there, but much of the UFO community is largely unwilling to search where the evidence really seems to point. In this book, Keel leads the way into this mysterious realm, postulating that what we know - or, rather, think we know - about UFOs and their ilk is in need of serious reconsideration. The possibilities Keel has uncovered through his years of research are controversial, to say the least; what he has to say will undoubtedly infuriate or alienate (excuse the pun) many readers. This is most unfortunate, since Keel is only trying his best to make sense of what seems at times a senseless matter indeed, perpetuated by some eternally manipulative and elusive intelligence. If there was ever a "must-read" for anyone interested in the paranormal, occult, etc., this must surely be it.

Keel writes that we are the playthings of the "gods." He argues that U.F.O.s, monsters, and other strange things come from some primary energy field that is being manipulated by the "gods." They do this in order to confuse us about their real intentions. Unfortunately, Keel does not develop his thesis. He leaves the reader hanging as to what the true solution may be. If he had done more research, he would have found the answer. The answer is in philosophy and pagan religion. According to the philosophy of soliphisim we are projecting reality from our mind. Magick, Hermetisim, Hinduism and Buddhism are all based on this philosophy. We literally create the entire world and our experiences in it. As incredible as this sounds, it is the only logical explanation. This seems to be the basis of U.F.O.s, and why the beings in them seem to change dress and appearance as human culture changes. No alien is playing tricks on us. We are the cosmic jesters. Keel does not develop this point, which should be obvious. This is why I cannot give it the hightest rating.

Author, John Keel, writes a series of essays on Fortean phenomena, such as strange holes in the ice, things falling from the sky, and UFOs. The essays are written in a very engaging style and are quite fun to read. Don't read without a healthy dose of skepticism.

As a cataloguer of odd phenomena (called fortean after researcher Charles Fort), Mr. Keel is quite exceptional. However, the leaps of reasoning he uses are quite difficult to swallow at times. I especially bridled at his harping on how "primitive" cave dwellers couldn't have built the many large megalithic monuments found around the world, such as Stonehenge, the Pyramids and Easter Island.

These so-called primitives were people, just as intelligent as us. These prehistoric peoples were no more primitive and stupid because they only had stone tools, than I am because I grew up before the days of cable television and Game Boy.

Looked at from Mr. Keel's perspective the medieval cathedrals of Europe are amazing, and certainly couldn't have been built by illiterate people without cranes and power tools. However, nobody says that the medieval builders needed help from beings from another dimension, and that they couldn't possibly have done that with their level of technology.

This book shouldn't be taken as a research into strange phenomena, since very few references, checkable dates and locations are provided. If you think of it as a series of editorials or opinions by the author, you'd be in much better stead. If you're looking for some fun reading, and not "the Truth" I recommend the book.

As a final note, the book is nicely published with very readable text and nice cover art. Unfortunately, there are a number of typos in the book, enough to be quite noticeable. I just finished reading another book published by IllumiNet Press and it had the same problem. May I suggest that IllumiNet's editors not rely so much on spell check in the future.

Mr. Keel is known in the UFO community for being so bold as to have revealed an encounter, in his own life, w/ the infamous MIBs. He is also known, unfortunately, for hostility toward the extra-terrestrial hypothesis. In this book, he writes - superbly so - a brief and terrifying overview of inexplicable visitations and interventions throughout the history of our variant cultures. His conclusions will haunt you, if nothing else; and to refute them almost seems redundant.....

A look at John Keel's body of work shows a thoughtful man and a writer of speculation. Disneyland of the Gods is just his take on the old Fortean idea that mankind is property, or, at best, simply interacting with other realities that poke through into our space - time. This is just better speculation but is not based on much. We don't have to rethink anything. There are too many good reports with multiple witnesses and radar to conclude all the data simply needs a new frame of reference.

Although somewhat entertaining, this lightweight book does little to bring the conversation about strange phenomena forward. If anything, it distracts and misdirects.

WOOF! I just read this book about 23 years after Keel began writing it. "Woof" is the best single word descriptive possible. Sadly this book is a dog.

Keel's "Mothman Prophecies" is a seminal and timeless classic which dragged me to his entire bibliography. However, this book is a completely different beast. The itchy tone of the book becomes instantly evident as Keel screeches about how writers get screwed, and it is hard to make money writing in the 80's, but if everyone wrote flea-bitten material like this, books would vanish completely. Most of the book was very pointed and badly compiled without much care for what was presented. For example, John describes a local Equadorian tale of invading giants so edited and rewritten with assumptions it would make anyone blush in embarrassment for his skills... and yet he wrote quite accurately about the same tale/recounting in "The Eighth Tower" and dwelt on it much better in that previous book. One of the worst mistakes he commits is starting the book with a false set of events, and he admits it is false much later, and yet he wants the reader to take anything he wrote without a grain of salt after that ruse?

Keel comes off dumping slack facts and a bag full of paranormal and archaeological rubbish on the reader and then asking crazy questions about all the bits and pieces. Though he disputes others' findings and criticizes their investigative laziness, this book is completely slack in terms of documentation and investigation. I wanted to love this book, be exposed to a new facet of Fortean investigations, perhaps see the world in a new way. All I got was rant as pertinent and fact based as anything the enviro-wackos publicly bellow these days. In that way, Keel might have been far ahead of his time, but in 2010 it is quite passe.

Unless you are a die-hard Keel fan, skip this book and save your cash. There is a reason it was never reprinted.

"Disneyland of the Gods" is yet another of John Keel's great works. He did a lot of rearch over many years on subjects such as UFO's, Mothman, Bigfoot, and the paranormal in general, and determined a connection between them all. This book was published in 1988, and is as good as "The Mothman Prophecies", "Strange Creatures From Time and Space", and "Our Haunted Planet". I highly recommend it!

Just as John Keel always makes referance to, the true believers in the "bug eyed greys" are a humourless lot. And anyone who does not share the reasoning that all ufo related activity is accountable to our benevolent space beings is crucified. If you truly READ this book with an OPEN mind perhaps you can see what Keel is getting at, that paranormal activities are related and a big part of THIS planets history. And, he stesses that a good number of incidents were probably only real in the witnesses MIND. This book is not recommended for the quasi-religious followers of the wonderous space people and the fans of OBVIOUS fiction writers like Whitley Strieber and Bud Hopkins.

Mr Keel tells many interesting stories in this book, but he does not cite any references or sources for his alleged findings. No newspaper articles, no journals, no books, no scholarly studies - nothing. Many of the things he alleges are so zany that I cant help but think they are a product of the author's overheated imagination. Still, it was fun to read and worth a few laughs.