Strange Creatures From Time and Space

This is the first John Keel book I had read and it was quite frightening to me. So much so that it kept me cold while I was forced to go outside in the Texas summer heat in 1970. It looks very good even to the beautiful, evocative cover done by the great artist Frank Frazetta. Keel could write as good as a novelist. Just wish he had a version with his sources in them. He covers a great deal of material. All over the world over thousands of years. As bizarre as any Lovecraft or Clark Ashton Smith story yet supposedly real. This is a favorite, though you need all of his books to have the most complete information on how he viewed the Phenomena. The all encompassing something that is mimetic and also creates its own images. Some of which seem to be solid and alive for a short time. Manipulations of the human race creating martyrs and religions started or ended. For every holy man there is a tragic "inventor" who ends in a bad way up to and including suicide. You can't escape it for like Lovecraft's Old Ones they are every where invisible and irresistible formless yet all forms. Benevolent one time, malevolent another. The rest like a trickster.Mr. Keel claimed that just one-third of humanity can see and interact with this. The rest may only see lights in the sky but nothing else or nothing at all. I admit I thought I was immune. I have since found out otherwise. The Phenomena seems to have intelligence. Whether one or many. Powerful and can move whole civilizations upward or end them. Or at least take credit for it. One cannot trust what its agents say. They lure you in with a series of small prophecies that come true then lay out a big one that makes you fall flat on your face. Also it if that is the proper pronoun for it, can also do pointless things like helicopters circling for no good reason then fly off signifying nothing. The trickster is definitely a part of it.I would not dare call myself an expert. I'm not sure any human can be. But I leave it open to conjecture or dismissal. This is a good primer for it. However I must warn you that the Phenomena wants you to believe the current claim they are extra terrestrial. I would disagree as others have over the centuries. Too many want it to be from outer space and the Phenomena prefers it over the reality is that it is as intrinsic to us as snow. Maybe it is like looking into the Abyss and that Abyss will look into you. I don't think you want that. I know I don't. Tread carefully and be nice. Or just ignore and it might go away. The two-thirds who can't are the lucky ones.

Some authors are really good and trustworthy. John Keel is one of them. I have several of his books and this one is very interesting. It is about "weird sightings" that have been observed all over the world. I just started reading it, and the quote on page 15 explains a lot. "...this planet is teeming with all kinds of life forms we know nothing about."

30 years after my first reading of this book, I was happy to find a copy available at a fairly reasonable price. The book must be out of print as most of the used copies of it were priced way out of my price range.I was doing some research for a presentation I was doing on the paranormal and really wanted a this book to use for a couple of citations. John Keel was a sort of pioneer of in the field of paranormal reporting. Keel cites Charles Fort as an inspiration in his pursuit of investigating the unexplained. Whereas Fort took the approach of cataloging mysterious events with cynical asides interspersed throughout. Keel takes more of a narrative approach of the subject and is adept at keeping a sense of humor throughout, with a chilling observation thrown in here and there to keep things spicy. When one bears in mind that Keel assembled this wide ranging assortment of arcane subject before the advent of computers and internet, this is a truly impressive introduction to the world that lies beyond our everyday lives. It was a a great read when I was in 7th grade and it still holds up, lo these many years later.

Had this product when I was very young it is falling apart due to binding of original product from almost 40 years ago. I loved this book and wanted to preserve one I had, needed to buy a new book so I can enjoy it all over again.

This book was written in the sixties and has a fun historical feel. The UFO chapters and the descriptions of the famous mothman and entities that look like faceless monks are very creepy. This is pretty cool for anyone who wants to believe....

I first read this book when I was entering Junior High and was fascinated by U.F.O.s and like the title, strange creatures. I was a big fan of Ivan T. Sanderson, Jacques Vallee and others who wrote about such subjects and I loved to read the magazines at my father's dentist office such as Saga and Argosy. When I saw the paperback copy of this book sometime in the early 70s in my local drug store I had to buy it and it was a favorite, so well-read that the cover eventually fell off and the book was eventually lost. To this day I don't know what happened to it. Another mystery of time and space! Long after I had lost the book I still remembered the Grinning man and other strange topics covered in the book and I remembered the name John Keel. I was so happy to find the book on amazon.com and i immediately purchased it. I'm not too happy with the cover. The original paperback had a terrific cover that drew you like a magnet to buy the book. The weird reptilian creature on this version and the yellow color doesn't excite like the darker sinister cover I remember but the contents are the same and all the chapters that fascinated and scared me are there. I highly recommend this book to all interested in the paranormal, especially the creatures that haunt our world and our imagination.

He talks none stop about UFO's. He starts talking about big foot and goes back to UFO's. He starts talking about sea monsters and goes right back to UFO's. He throws story after story at you with little or no proof any of it is more then hearsay. Everything he says about the Mothman is in he's Mothman Prophecy book. Some interesting ideas and thoughts but it's not enough.

Amazing read, make up your own mind, another great book by keel.

Very good

A fascinating read. "We have always faced denziens of an unseen world that seemingly surrounds us."

One of the earliest books by John Keel, it feels closer to his "pulp" origins than later, deeper works like The Eight Tower. It's great fun to read and it already bases its opinions on his "extra-dimensional" theories.

Der Autor sammelte viele Berichte und Fakten über geheimnisvolle Erscheinungen und Begebenheiten, die auf unserem Planeten existieren. Viele Augenzeugenberichte und Erklärungsversuche werden angeführt. Sehr spannend.