<img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1452" style="border: 0; vertical-align: top; margin: 8px;" title="keel" src="http://strangeattractor.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/keel.jpg" alt="keel" width="192" height="225" />

Legendary fortean author <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Keel" target="_blank">John Keel</a> died in New York City last Friday, 3 July, aged 79.

As a journalist Keel wrote on a wide range of subjects, but he will be best remembered for his non-fiction travel memoirs, <em>Jadoo</em> 1957, a literary equivalent of a Les Baxter or Martin Denny album, and his fortean books <em>Operation Trojan Horse</em> and the classic <em>The Mothman Prophecies</em>. The slyly baroque <em>Mothman</em> popularised the Men In Black and arguably created a new genre of fantastic writing that was neither entirely fact nor entirely fiction. An infallibly peculiar and entertaining read,  it remains a benchmark for writing successfully about anomalies and contemporary folklore.

Sadly Keel never benefitted financially from his work, even though <em>Mothman </em>was made into a curious film starring Richard Gere and the <em>Men in Black</em> films paid tribute to Keel in the central characters' names J and K.

I was lucky enough to meet John on each of my infrequent visits to New York over the past decade, usually with his close friend the writer and performer Doug Skinner, who was helping to care for Keel in his final years. I have many fond memories of our conversations about UFOs, stage magic and archaeological curiosities and remember in particular a visit to see a giant squid briefly displayed at the city's Natural History Museum. Now Keel has unravelled life's final mystery, we can only hope he'll find a way to write a book about it.

Here's a great obit from <a href="http://drdavidclarke.blogspot.com/2009/07/john-keel-1930-2009.html" target="_blank">Dr David Clarke</a> and another from <a href="http://www.ufomystic.com/wake-up-down-there/john-keel-1930-2009/" target="_blank">Greg Bishop</a>, who was on the Natural History Museum trip too.