Invisible Things

I recently read John Keel's 1976 book, "The Mothman Prophecies", about a period of strange events that took place in and around Point Pleasant, West Virginia in between November 1966 and December 1967. Without going into excruciating detail for those unfamiliar with the story (or the only tangentially connected film of the same name from 2002), "The Mothman Prophecies" is a tale of the breakdown of reality, or at least one community's perception of reality. For over a year, people saw and experienced things that drastically challenged their preconceived notions of how the universe works, and in fact, what the universe is.

Keel, a UFO investigator/author/hypnotist and God knows what else, is the real focal point of my interest in the book, though. For all the bizarre, chilling visions of creatures with red eyes and strange flying objects and oddly colored men who shadowed and threatened UFO contactees, Keel's reaction to the events remains strongest in my brain. He begins as a naturally skeptical reporter dispatched to an area of intense paranormal incidence. But the afterword of the book, written to coincide with the release of the theatrical film, goes a long way toward conveying the impact the year had upon him, and the implications of the paranormal, for all of us.

In this afterword, Keel seems to have become cynical and jaded, a man who has long since decided that he will be forever thwarted in his attempts to decipher the intricate and maddening code that has been laid before him. The change in his tone is obvious; this seems to be man who's resigned himself to never really understanding the dark forces he's encountered, and to me, he seems more than a little bitter at being manipulated and deceived by those forces. He seems like a beaten man, to be honest. And his reaction is completely understandable.

Each of us operates on a kind of daily perceptual tightrope; we assume that all we see before us is reality, and that in fact, it is the only reality there is. Our car is made of metal, our house is made of wood and concrete and slate. Our bodies are made of flesh. We have to eat, drink and sleep. We live, give birth and die. The five senses that we have are capable of detecting any and all manifestations of reality around us.

But what if we experienced something that forced us to question those perceptions? What if we saw something that seemed to question the laws of known physics or found ourselves in a situation that nothing in our rational minds could sufficiently explain? My guess is that such an experience would pull the metaphorical rug out from under us, and make us question about very basic assumptions about the universe and our place in it.

This is what seems to have happened to Keel. His existential firmament was shaken and he had difficulty re-establishing his equilibrium. And who can blame him? I doubt that it's possible to experience things such as he did and simply walk away unscathed, or come to any kind of easy truce with the "new reality" displayed before him. Questions would haunt you; questions that you would more than likely never know the answers to.

This is one thing that always bothers me about the fictional depiction of supernatural events, whether it be in films, television, or books. When confronted with unquestionable proof of the existence of the supernatural, the characters don't seem nearly affected enough. There is generally a short period of "Oh, God, that can't be real!", followed quickly by an almost total acceptance of the phenomena. I realize this is in large part due to time and plot constraints; in a two hour film, the director really can't spend eighty percent of the movie dealing with the characters' reactions to the paranormal elements. Doing justice to those reactions would probably take up the running length of the entire film.

Think about it. You have an experience that convinces you, beyond any doubt, that something otherworldly has happened to you. How do you simply go home and balance your checkbook, or take out the garbage, or do the dishes? How can such an experience not shake you to your philosophical core? How can it not drive you to the brink of madness with the questions it raises? So many of the fundamental concepts about your world would now be up for grabs. The attendant loss of control would be overwhelming, even debilitating. If that experience was possible, what else might be? What further disturbances of your reality might be possible? Without the proper perspective, you might well live every day dreading the next such occurrence, unable to concentrate on your daily life and generally depressed at the apparent randomness and impenetrability of the world.

Religion offers a kind of "out" for people, positing the best of both philosophical worlds. That is, it embraces the concepts of the paranormal, of the things that we cannot define or categorize scientifically, but with its dogma it effectives eliminates the "unknown" factor. It posits very definite and understandable rules. Lying is a sin, charity is a virtue. Those who follow the precepts of a particular relition get an everlasting reward, those who do not face an everlasting punishment. There is a plan in mind for reality and we all play our parts.

These concepts eliminate the fear and dread that are associated with the non-religious based contact with the paranormal. The practitioners of the particular religion are then free to believe in the non physical world that cannot be detected by our senses without fear of misinterpreting or misunderstanding any of it. The various holy books clearly delineate all of these concerns and keep the faithful at ease.

My own experience is that anyone who truly believes they have a monopoly on understanding the way the universe works, who can easily interpret all the dark mysteries contained therein, is either terribly arrogant or terribly delusional, or both. The frightening (and yet, ultimately, liberating) realization I've come to is that part of the human condition seems to be an inability to fully understand some of the univerese's Ultimate Answers. That's not a disparagement in any way; we're just not hardwired to process all of that, at least not in this lifetime. It's like trying to stream a broadband quality video through a dialup server. You can get flashes and glimpses of what is really going on, but the full picture escapes you. You just don't have a powerful enough hookup.

A few months ago, I went to a medium. I wrote about it in this blog. I was open minded and hopeful, but guardedly skeptical as well. I figured that way if something happened that seemed to be beyond my ability to explain, great. But if it seemed there was something more mundane and explicable at work, I wouldn't be disappointed. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

What I got was something in between, I think. There were many moments of real revelation, where the thoughts communicated by the medium seemed to truly be those of loved ones of mine that had crossed over. Some of these things just could not have been guessed at, at least not in the detail and context that they were presented. But there were also questions. There were people that came through that I couldn't completely recognize, and references that to this day I haven't been able to properly identify. Moreover, the entire experience left with with questions about why certain people came through, what some of the comments they made truly meant, and how to interpret the entire process. In short, as I said in the "Piece of the Puzzle" post, I felt like what I had experienced was a piece of a larger mosaic, that something genuine and ultimately positive had indeed happened to me, but that it might be unrealistic to expect to unravel and understand the entire process in this lifetime.

As I finished "Mothman Prophecies" and noted the apparent effect the events had on Keel, my own experience came to mind. Surely Keel's experiences were much more complex and in many cases, disturbing and negative, than mine, and I can understand how they would have affected him in such a way. But I recognized his frustration at the seeming impossibility of really grasping the entire picture of what he had experienced. Like Keel, I have yearned to know more about the unseen world, about to paraphrase Janey Slater, a character from Alan Moore's "Watchmen", the "invisible things that are all around us". I felt a similar loss of control and a feeling of powerlessness in the face of entities and events that dwarfed my own power to understand. I thought immediately (and still consider) returning to the medium and having her answer (or try to answer) some questions I have, or maybe even having another session. The questions the last one raised were so puzzling, and yet so tantalizing and compelling, and some cases, just frustrating. I needed to know more, to really be able to put my arms around this matter and define it and therefore, control it.

But I'm trying to remind myself, with each obsessive thought about the matter, to be realistic and remember that no matter how much I learn, it will never be a complete answer, and it will always, always, leave further questions. Like Keel, and I suppose, everyone that is confronted with otherworldly experiences, I yearn to know more but am doomed to only know so much. Whether these experiences involve entities that seem bent on misleading, confusing and occasionally causing outright havoc, such as Keel's or they involve a more gentle motive that seeks to counsel and soothe those left behind in the wake of death, such as mine, the ultimate "unknowable" quality of them is the same.

The unseen world can be fascinating to explore, it seems, as long as we don't expect to ever obtain a real, useable road map, and as long as we remember that once we return "home", we might never be sure exactly where we have been. Perhaps one day we shall. But for now, maybe it's helpful to realize that we are only supposed to enjoy the journey, not completely understand it.