Customer Reviews

Mothman and Other Curious Encounters

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book, a follow-up to Mysterious America by cryptozoologist Loren Coleman, is basically a compendium of reports, anecdotes and myths dealing with strange creatures.
Apparently published to capitalize on the film `The Mothman Prophecies' (the back of the book displays a prominent ad for the film), this book is a fun read, great for a rainy evening. And, for those unfamiliar with such Fortean phenomena as Mothman, The Flatwoods Monster, thunderbirds and other such critters, this is a good overview. However, for those who have read John Keel's Mothman Prophecies, Our Haunted Planet or Strange Creatures from Time and Space, or who are familiar with the books of the late Charles Fort (namesake of the word Fortean), there is little new to be found here.

Within the book's 200 pages are nine chapters, two appendices and a section on `Mothman bibliography and other resources' (did you know you could order an "action Mothman figure"?). The chapters aggregate `types' of creatures, such as `Winged Weirdies', `Mothman' and `Lizardmen'. And, given the influence of John Keel's work on Coleman, one chapter is even called `Keel's Children'. In fact, this book arguably should have been sub-subtitled `An Homage to John Keel'. One whole appendix is a direct re-print of reported Mothman sightings lifted from Keel's Strange Creatures from Time and Space. Without Keel's contributions, this would likely have been a pretty slim volume indeed.

As mentioned, this is an entertaining way to spend a few hours, not requiring much in the way of deep thinking. The style of the book is breezy and engaging, although it could have benefited from better proofreading (the late ufologist Gray Barker was sometimes referred to as Gray, other times as `Gary'). For those who are interested in a solid introduction to the arcane field of `cryptozoology', this is a great place to start, and for those who are generally familiar with the material, this is a good refresher. It's certainly worth the modest price.

That's two and a half stars. Maybe I'm just jaded from reading too many open-mouthed catalogs of strange facts over too many years. Coleman is one of today's most popular practitioners of the genre, and he certainly is better than the average. His attitude is more like Charles Fort's than like Erik von Daniken's. You may disagree with his conclusions, or find his recital of testimonies credulous, but you feel he is being straight with you, and that he is aware of the value of sometimes just letting mystery be. If you own a bunch of books of this kind, and are hungry for more, you should bump the rating up another star.

I found myself suspecting this particular volume was slapped together under this title to generate extra sales in the wake of the Mothman movie. The Mothman himself takes up less than a third of the book. No significant info is added to what John Keel wrote in his 1975 book (and a good deal of that left out, as not relevant to Coleman's real theme.) We do get some neat new Keel quotes and anecdotes that spotlight his startling personality. And that's fun, but the same personality was fully on display in Keel's book, too.

So if it's not "about" Mothman, what is it about? It is a brief Fortean treatise on cryptozoology - the study of animals, especially large animals, unknown to science. It touches on well known stars like Sasquatch and Nessie, but concentrates on flaps in which cryptozoology bumps up against "high weirdness," and seems to call for investigations as much by unnatural historians as by natural ones. Thunderbirds, Cupachabras, giant black dogs with fiery eyes, and lizard men predominate.

There are no footnotes, but there's a good bibliography. There's also an odd 18-page index of "places of high strangeness" in the U.S. and Canada. It's odd in that it's just a list of names, by state and province, with no indication of what's weird about any one of them. There are bound to be several within driving distance of your home... I guess you just drive there, stake your tent, and try to be ready for anything.

The Fortean world is a difficult one. A Fortean knows that the most unusual elements can somehow be connected in surprising ways. It is difficult to take things in isolation - and Loren Coleman, as a good Fortean, knows this. And so his latest book on Mothman covers so much more than the Mothman sightings we all know and love from Point Pleasant. A particular favourite of Coleman's is the name game and along with cryptozoology it's well represented in this latest book. Many other cryptozoological entities are covered in this tome - owlman, lizardmen etc. In one sense it's a book that looks at the poor relatives of cryptozoology - hundreds of books on Bigfoot but information on these - just as fascinating - creatures is harder to come by.
Excellent appendices give subsequent researchers a chance to follow in the footsteps - a list of Mothman sightings, a list of sites of American high wierdness and a comprehensive bibliography. If there's one thing missing it's pictures - but that said what could be shown in a work of this nature? There are no pictures of these entities and I don't want to look at endless pictures of bridges and towns, so that's not a complaint merely a comment - mind it does have a seriously cool cover.
Apparently there were some typos that crept into the first edition but these have all been corrected in subsequent print runs.
All told this is an excellent book which I can wholeheartedly recommend to the Forteans, cryptozoologists and lovers of the weird out there.
If only the movie had been this good...

Ever since childhood, I've been fascinated by books that detail eyewitness accounts of bizarre phenomena, such as Mothman, the Dover Demon, Thunderbirds, Lizardmen, etc. And Loren Coleman certainly provides the reader with an abundance of such accounts and encounters.

But there are problems. For one thing, this book was rushed into publication to take advantage of the recently released Richard Gere film (which has since disappeared). This is evidenced by the weak writing and very poor editing, as well as by the shameless plugging. In addition, the book has no real structure; it's a hodgepodge. At one point, for example, Coleman engages in a defense against the criticisms of Darren Naish. Ho-hum. And the reader is subject to way too much pretentious and often incoherent theorizing. This is especially true when Coleman rhapsodizes about his silly little "name game" concept -- e.g., [page 166] "In acknowledging the possible links between these named locations and Fortean events, the objective is not linear, that is to say, is not solely bound to the immediate and obvious events recorded, but may in fact be a part of a larger, symbolic ritual magnified by the power of the electronic media, for the purpose of processing in the subconscious." No doubt. Also, Coleman contends that certain geographical locations are "windows" -- i.e., loci for unusual phenomena. He mentions, for example, West 57th Street in Manhattan. To say that that's vague is an understatement akin to saying that Jayne Mansfield was well endowed. I mean, come on! WHERE on West 57th is this "window" located? ...

Being a fan of Loren Coleman's style of writing, I awaited his newest book with a sense of wonder and expectations. The wonder was how he was going to document the phenomenon of Mothman beyond what John Keel had already dealt with in his book The Mothman Prophecies. The expectations were simply that more than just Mothman would be dealt with, but that other unusual creatures that defy easy classification, such as Momo, Thunderbirds and Lizardmen would be evaluation. With the arrival of Coleman's book the wonder and expectations were answered, and more than fulfilled.

Coleman deals naturally with Mothman, its history and legacy. But, beyond the limiting scope of Mothman, the reader is shown the other phenomenons that run the border between Cryptozoology, Fortean Studies and the moniker of UFOology and the Paranormal. One is taken to the winged mysteries of the Thunderbird in North America, the odd and culturally rich history of the Chupacabra and the legacy of phantom trains, to name but a few of the topics covered.
Perhaps the real gem in the book though is the dealing with the Mothman and its legacy over the years, which in 2002 will be brought forth even more with the release of the movie The Mothman Prophecies. The reader is shown what John Keel did in the 1960's in Point Pleasant, West Virginia by looking at the phenomenon of Mothman culturally and anthropologically. The circumstances and related occurrences of the time put the entire situation into a cultural and evidentiary guide.
That is the hidden subtext to the book, that although these creatures do not necessarily fit into any one neat category, they all have basis in the history of the areas. They fall into mixed arenas and hence are often waylaid and overlooked by mystery historians or classified according to a particular theory. Even within the text of the book the creatures, entities, beings, or whatever you choose to call them, are not necessarily categorized, rather they are looked at for what they are and chronicled in true Fortean style.
One can choose to nit-pick certain areas of the book, and some are easier than others to do this too. But, remembering the above commentary about chronicling versus categorizing, these criticisms are really without merit. This reviewer has in the past been critical of the placement of Merbeings in the context of unknown primates, for example. Yet, even though they are dealt with in the book, they are dealt with as a manner of chronicling. Even the mention of UFO's and stereotypical paranormal events may toss a cold hand to some readers that are looking for a true Cryptozoological evaluation of the subject, yet that is not what this tome is about, and one should not progress in reading the work believing it is strictly a Cryptozoological book, or any other type of book. The one criticism that this reviewer will make though is that the book bogs down a little when concepts of date coincidences are looked at, these areas are dry and may cause the reader to loose interest even though they are a fascinating piece of Fortean information.

The best example of classification of Coleman's book is that it is an extension of the style and content produced in his 2001 book Mysterious America: the Revised Edition (also by Paraview Press). Reader's familiar with Jerome Clark's Unexplained! (2nd Edition, Visible Ink Press, Farmington Hills, 1999) will find Coleman's book of interest as it goes beyond strictly and encyclopedic look at the subject, but contains similar content as Clark's work. Perhaps the best analogy to another work though would be the more obscure work by D. Scott Rogo and Jerome Clark, Earth's Secret Inhabitants (Tempo Books, New York, 1979). The style's are different between Rogo/Clark's and Coleman's book, and the content is different, but both look at the unusual accounts of many creatures that defy classification.

The reader of Mothman and Other Curious Encounters is bound to be left with a feeling that more is out there then they may be aware of. More exists in a Fortean world than we would think, and perhaps the reader will take a look for themselves and play some "name games" and date comparisons of events. The reader is taken to the world of the unusual, and brought safely back to the comfort of home, but the essence of the unusual will linger, the wonder will not be abated.

Coleman, himself, sums up the work as:

"Indeed, I find myself still considering possible cryptozoological answers for Mothman, while at the same time appreciating what Keel did. Some of my friends who read this book will think I have gone to the "dark side" by merely allowing myself to think about Mothman, let alone researching Keel and his radical ideas. You see, I am a Fortean, and in a very strange way, Point Pleasant all makes sense to me. Mothman's time has come. Mothman lives. The events wrapped in the riddle called Mothman has focused so many mysteries in one place. We are not able to ignore it, any longer, even if we don't have all the answers yet."

So come along and experience Mothman, Bigfoot, Batsquatch, Owlman, Lizardmen, Momo, the Honey Island Swamp Monster, Thunderbirds, Hell Hounds, Banshees and the other kin of Mothman, essential "Loren's Paradigm." The journey is worth the cost, you won't soon forget it.

The premise of the Mothman movie--that sightings of a winged creature in Point Pleasant, Virginia in the 60s led to a series of weird events there, reaching a crescendo with a fatal bridge collapse in the area--is but one entry in this broader examination of the Mothman phenomenon. It includes a chart of 26 "most responsible" other Mothman sightings supplied by Mothman Prophecies author John Keel, as well as Loren Coleman's look at similar critters in history, like the Flatwoods Monster of 1952 and various thunderbirds and lizard men. A consummate Fortean, Coleman notes "Today, to scrutinize the world the way Fort did is rather common, as questioning authority, critically looking at experts and governments, is in vogue." Mothman and Other Curious Encounters is not just a catalog of weird creature sightings, like The Mothman Prophecies itself, it helps readers orient themselves to a more critical way of regarding the world.

If your interest lies in winged creatures and the weird and unexplainable (or maybe this book can explain them) then this is the book for you...this book provides loads of information not only about the mothman legacy but on scores of other flying creatures of interest. Mothman and other curious encounters is an in depth book that raises all sorts of theories and explanations on many of the flying favorites we have all heard about but never could really find the explanation for......until now.

Excellent reading from Mr. Coleman. You'll find plenty of new material along with older material covered in greater detail. Excellent background on John Keel, "Name Game" content, and excellent lists in the back of the book. Loren also covers some common traits of Mothman and other crypto-beasts. Very good stuff.

This book was a nice try at capturing the Mothman events in our home town of Point Pleasant, WV. The author missed (or just hurried past) several inaccuracies in what little is written about the Mothman in this volume. Most of the book is about other creatures, the Mothman has a small place just big enough to draw moviegoers to buy the book. There is no Route 66 in Point Pleasant, WV like is stated in this book. The route is 62. There are too many other mistakes to take up space in this review. [In my opinion, the book was] printed to take advantage of the Sony Pictures movie release, because the content is scarce and vastly inaccurate. (whatever you do, don't trust this book as a reference guide) [I don't feel] this author studied this subject very well before spitting out this attempt at the Mothman story. It had some decent info, but nothing that hasn't been printed by John Keel. If you want to know the truth and details behind the Mothman story, check out "Mothman: The Facts Behind The Legend," written by two local authors from Point Pleasant, WV, the town in which the Mothman legacy circulates.

It is a curious coincidence that two of the most infamous paranormal designations - Flying Saucers and Mothman - were created by paid copywriters instead of paranormal researchers proper.

Such is the evasive, egalitarian nature of Mothman and his impish (and sometimes sinister) ilk. They defy being trapped like butterflies under a glass jar by "experts." Classification eludes us. No one has yet managed to codify a taxonomy of these bizarre, reality-bending bandits.

Loren Coleman is reminiscent of the best Fortean writers that precede him. He recognizes that definitions and explanations are impotent in the face of the inherently undefinable and inexplicable.

Coleman's freedom from dogma allows him to offer multiple, simultaneous perspectives without falling into wide-eyed credulity.

A jewel of the genre and worth every dollar of the price tag.