I noted that this so-called "absurdity of ET", and these mixing together with phenomena attributed to the "paranormal", rest on a certain number of errors, sometimes huge errors and a casebook which does not reveal any "paranormal" but very "normal" things, such as tall tales without any relevance to the UFO problem. This is one example, a collection is here.
I am being told (I paraphrase the reasoning):
A mysterious being named Apol, which does not have anything extraterrestrial about him but neither a normal human being, and must thus be some sort of "Man-in-Black" or "ultraterrestrial" or "interdimensional" being from a parallel world or the emanation of a higher intelligence who manipulates reality, made a prediction.
Apol predicted that the Silver Bridge was going to collapse, and it happened like he predicted.
This proves that Apol exists and is indeed an "anomalous" or "paranormal" being, which proves that the UFOs are by no means extraterrestrial craft neither non-existent, and proves that there is a certain kind of mysterious higher intelligence which manipulates the fabric of reality and causes UFOs and all these paranormal phenomena.
Actually not! Here is the real story.
The totality of the Apol story comes from a single source: John Keel, in his book "The Mothman Prophecies."
Keel tells:
"... I discovered that Long Island swarmed with contactees, of all age and of the two sexes. One of them was an exquisite blonde, whom I called Jane... Jane was not illiterate, but she seldom read anything else than comics... She regarded herself as a "catholic that went astray"... She was a sensitive woman, more aetheral than sensual...
That is what we get as "witness profile according to the investigator".
Then, Keel tells that Jane was in a car, that the driver felt sick, that there was a ray of light and that they found themselves in another place.
This entire encounter, told by Keel, is summarized in 12 lines in its book and contains no more information than in the two lines above.
This is from the very same Keel who elaborates pages after pages on "ufologists" as idiots, who criticizes them for alleged inaccuracies and for keeping witnesses anonymous (largely false, it is Keel's "witnesses" who are practically always anonymous) and so on.
Some days later, Jane is said to have had an appointment in a library. The librarian is "strange": figure this out, she is out of fashion and has a bony face. Worse, she has punts shoes. That's all. The strange librarian is in the library and that's all. She does not speak to Jane and Jane does not speak to her.
John Keel seems to find all that very paranormal, but actually, unless being deprived of common sense, one should realize that all there is to learn here is that Jane's personality is, say... fantasy prone, just like Keel described her in the first place.
Anyways, Jane tells that within the library, she opened a certain book at a certain page that was indicated her by phone, and that... "you would never believe it, the letters became increasingly small, then increasingly large."
And Jane then reads a meaningless message which informs her that she was "chosen". Why her?
"For many reasons."
And, the only indicated reason:
"One of the reasons is that you have good capacities for autosuggestion."
That part sounds true!
There is a message. What message? "Time has come". Time for what? We are not told, but "Proof will be given".
The message is signed: "A. Pal", which means "a pal", pronounced "Apol" vaguely.
Other "highly paranormal" event: when Jane comes out of the library, "she fell very sick and vomited the two following days.".
Keel is very impressed with that. Get this: the message is signed "A. Pal", and precisely, he knows one "contactee" who claims to be in contact with an alien named "Apholes".
"A. Pal", "Apholes", is undoubtedly must be the same chap to John Keel.
Then Jane sees the weird librarian everywhere. For example, she goes out in the streets at night, and the librarian meets her and tells her:
"Peter is coming".
According to John Keel, this is a highly paranormal prophecy: the last Pope will be called Peter, therefore the end of the world is for soon.
Next, among other fantastic episodes, a black Cadillac pulls up and a guy with "a dark skin", wearing a suit and sunglasses (wow!) steps down and gives Jane an "ice cold" handshake to Jane. Jane thinks that his features are Eastern and that he thus must be Hawaiian.
He "knows things" about Jane: he advises "to avoid iodine", and Jane precisely has "minor health problems which obliged her to avoid iodine in her diet".
The guy says his name is Apol. He gives Jane a folded paper, there is metal disc a bit like a coin inside. Jane is under a sudden impulse and sends it to Keel by mail.
Keel says that he would never have believed in all these stories, that he would have called them hallucinations, but now, there is the metal disc. Hard evidence.
At this stage, you would expect that Keel has the thing analyzed, as "hard evidence", and that the story would go on with a lab's report on some unusual purity or abnormal isotopic rate, or on the contrary with the discovery that the small metal disc is a part of rear view mirror or some other commonplace object.
But he does not!
John Keel returns the disc to Jane by mail.
Keel meets a black woman with blurry eyeballs. She is "Princess Moon Owl", who tells him she "came from another planet in a flying saucer".
The remainder is of the same stuff, read the book, I cannot narrate it all and I only mention the "Apol" and prophecies connection.
Apol "and his friends" come to see Jane, he gives her pills, she takes one - no questions asked - and gets a good headache and one inflated eye. She takes another of those pills two days later. Then, she says, a US Air Force colonel comes to see Jane to ask her what she knows of a flying saucer landing she never heard of.
(As for myself I know somebody in France who told me to have "the 7th fleet" of the US Navy at his orders and told me that the aforementioned fleet was going to destroy the house of his best enemy anytime soon!)
Keel hypnotizes Jane, but he finds himself in direct contact with Apol. Keel tells that Apol predicted airplane crashes to him and that they all occurred at the predicted dates.
(There was never any checking of what Keel tells there, no date is given, nothing. Keel just writes that Apol predicted airplane crashes and that it came out true. You are asked to believe him - or not.)
Keel writes:
"I became convinced that the entities were to some extent connected with the future."
Finally, we get "Apol's prediction".
John Keel buffs claim that Apol predicted the destruction of the Silver Bridge. But this is untrue. What Apol predicted is:
"Things will get hot in the Middle East. The Pope will go soon go there in a mission of Peace. He will suffer a terrible martyr over there... Stabbed to death in a bloodshed. Then, the Antichrist will come in Israel."
And:
The Pope will be murdered in an airport in the middle of the crowd by a man in black with a black knife. After the assassination of the Pope, there will be three days of darkness, and a general power failure on Earth."
Guess what? Nothing of all that happened.
Instead, a bridge collapsed.
... and your are being told that Apol predicted it.
A lie. Just a lie.
Let's read Keel further:
"Between the IRS, the phone company, Apol and his gang, and the flying saucers, I was soon psychiatric asylum material... After all, the Pope had escaped with the assassination... Perhaps this was only one malicious error of the prophecies... And on certain occasions my own senses have betrayed me..."
In connection with the collapse of the Silver Bridge, Keel wrote:
"They [the "ultraterrestrials"] threw at me all this nonsense on a general power failure. They knew. They only wanted to prevent me from warning anybody. I believe that's what it was. That's what it was, quite simply."
And in the afterwords of his book, he writes, seriously:
"Fortunately, I am rather traditional. Let the others go after the little green men."
