ABSTRACT

Monsters are in the world but not of the world. They are paradoxical personifications of otherness within sameness. On its most fundamental level, the experience of the monstrous is the experience of radical anomaly. The monstrous can also function as a hierophany, that is, as a moment of revelation of a deeper order of things, of the sacred. John A. Keel was a Fortean; that is, an author inspired by the original archival research and mind-bending, flippant, frick'n hilarious books of the American humorist turned mad collector of anomalies Charles Fort. Keel's most famous case of how the superspectrum and these ancient tricky gods work was the Mothman of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. A hint of Keel's youthful trek through Hindu India and its jadoo adds yet another mythical layer to the creature's descriptors in the book: "An Investigation into the Mysterious American Visits of the Infamous Feathery Garuda". Garuda is the winged mount of the Hindu god Vishnu.