Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Daniel Drasen is an award winning documentary filmmaker and has
Speaker 2: been a photographer and a media producer for more than
Speaker 2: six decades. Since the early nineteen nineties, has featured in
Speaker 2: his documentary Calling Earth. Daniel has been actively investigating the
Speaker 2: field of after life communication through traditional mental and physical
Speaker 2: mediumship as well as modern electronics. He lives in the
Speaker 2: San Francisco Bay area and his brand new book is
Speaker 2: a Science of the Afterlife, Space, time and the Consciousness Code.
Speaker 2: Daniel Drasen, Welcome to Coast to Coast AM. How are you.
Speaker 3: I'm very well. Thank you, Richard. It's a pleasure to
Speaker 3: be here with you.
Speaker 2: I want to start off with John Keele. You were colleagues,
Speaker 2: and I had heard this story about John Keele and
Speaker 2: people who are familiar with this, perhaps one of the
Speaker 2: world's most influential ufologists, journalists, paranormal researcher, had heard this
Speaker 2: story years ago, but I had no idea until you
Speaker 2: and I met several months ago and talked about it
Speaker 2: that you were also involved in this remarkable paranormal supernatural incident. So,
Speaker 2: first of all, just maybe begin by telling us how
Speaker 2: you connected initially with John Keel, and then we'll get
Speaker 2: into this remarkable incident.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, this was back in the mid nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3: I was living in New York City at the time,
Speaker 3: and I found myself one day up at a place
Speaker 3: called the Cloisters, which is a beautiful museum of medieval
Speaker 3: art that's located on the upper west side overlooking the
Speaker 3: Hudson River. And as I was up there, I noticed
Speaker 3: a funny Looking out over the river towards the Palisades
Speaker 3: of New Jersey, I noticed a kind of a funny
Speaker 3: looking flying object that was flying in a northerly direction,
Speaker 3: And having been a student pilot at the time, this
Speaker 3: object attracted my attention, and particularly attracted my attention when
Speaker 3: it stopped and reversed its direction instantaneously. That was, I suppose,
Speaker 3: my very first actual UFO sighting. I had been interested
Speaker 3: in the subject for many years, but this had been
Speaker 3: my first actual experience of seeing something that I an
Speaker 3: aeral object that I could not explain. So I've mentioned
Speaker 3: it to a friend of mine who said, Oh, there's
Speaker 3: this writer John Keel who's giving a talk tomorrow whytt
Speaker 3: you go to his talk and discuss your sighting with him?
Speaker 3: So I did, and long story short, we became friends.
Speaker 3: He at the time was investigating I just begun to
Speaker 3: investigate the phenomena that we're going on in Point Pleasant,
Speaker 3: West Virginia, the moth man, right, a moth man, primarily
Speaker 3: the moth man, but also a variety of other fascinating
Speaker 3: and sometimes disturbing phenomena. Anyway, I accompanied John on four
Speaker 3: of his trips to Point Pleasant. Met quite a number
Speaker 3: of witnesses there who had seen the mofman and the
Speaker 3: other phenomena, which included UFOs that flew over the town,
Speaker 3: up and down the river. That's Point Pleasant. Point Pleasant
Speaker 3: is located right on the Ohio River where the Ohio
Speaker 3: and the Kanawa rivers come together. At the time, the
Speaker 3: two states were connected by a bridge that had been
Speaker 3: built in the nineteen twenties. It was called the Silver
Speaker 3: Bridge because it was of at that time a novel,
Speaker 3: very lightweight aluminum construction, and it was in a way
Speaker 3: Point Pleasant's main source of economic support because the bridge
Speaker 3: came right over the river right into the downtown business
Speaker 3: district of Point Pleasant. So it was a sort of
Speaker 3: a major feature of the town, so it was kind
Speaker 3: of a crossroads of that part of the country. Anyway,
Speaker 3: people there have been reporting seeing this quite startling creature
Speaker 3: there for a period of time, notably to adolescent couples
Speaker 3: who were out canoodling one night and one of their
Speaker 3: automobiles out in a forested area, and when they heard
Speaker 3: a disturbance around them, they turned their headlights on and
Speaker 3: lo and behold, there was this seven or eight foot
Speaker 3: tall creature with big glowing red eyes and wings that
Speaker 3: levitated off the ground. Startled these kids. They put the
Speaker 3: car in gear and skidaddled went down the main highway.
Speaker 3: This creature followed them, hovering, flying over the over their car,
Speaker 3: and as they approached the lights of the town, the
Speaker 3: creatures sort of peeled off and disappeared. So they reported
Speaker 3: this terrifying incident to the local sheriff's department, which turns
Speaker 3: out had received quite a number of other reports of
Speaker 3: sightings of this creature. Nobody knew what it was, where
Speaker 3: it was from. It was missing from the annals of
Speaker 3: cryptozoology as far as anyone knew. It was quite a
Speaker 3: unique kind of creature. Wasn't a bigfoot or anything like that.
Speaker 3: So anyway, long story short, dozens of people saw this creature.
Speaker 3: I spoke to a private pilot at an airport across
Speaker 3: the river in Ohio who had seen this thing in flight,
Speaker 3: and he says, well, at first I thought it was
Speaker 3: some kind of a small airplane. I got closer to it,
Speaker 3: and my god, it was this flying critter. And this
Speaker 3: guy's thaught of the earth, you know, local price, this pilot, Uh,
Speaker 3: he didn't impress me as making making the story up.
Speaker 3: So while I did not myself see this creature, I
Speaker 3: have certainly have no doubt that it existed. People have
Speaker 3: very strong emotional responses to encountering it, sometimes in broad daylight,
Speaker 3: actually at all hours of the day and night in
Speaker 3: that general area. Now when I say that general area,
Speaker 3: I'm talking about the the Ohio River area, mostly north
Speaker 3: of the town of Point Pleasant, which actually has a
Speaker 3: history of paranormal phenomena going back at least into the
Speaker 3: last century.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: There are there were tales about a Native American chief
Speaker 3: called Chief Cornstalk having put a curse of some kind
Speaker 3: on the land. People believe that that this was, you know,
Speaker 3: partly the cause of some of these phenomena. Now, not
Speaker 3: only was the Mothman scene, but as you probably know,
Speaker 3: a number of individuals were witnesses to the so called
Speaker 3: men in black, and they were what I guess upologists
Speaker 3: would consider the classic men in black of they were
Speaker 3: kind of a swarthy complexion, dressed in dark business suits,
Speaker 3: and they would often show up driving vintage vintage automobiles
Speaker 3: from maybe twenty thirty years in the past and looking
Speaker 3: brand news if they'd just come off the assembly line,
Speaker 3: and they would, they would either subtly or very directly
Speaker 3: threaten people to not talk about their experiences. And again
Speaker 3: I never personally witnessed them, but I spoke to a
Speaker 3: number of people who had. One of them was one
Speaker 3: of the kids who had first sighted the offman, and
Speaker 3: that on that terrifying evening. She and her boyfriend eventually
Speaker 3: married and they had a young child, and one day
Speaker 3: these men in black showed up in a vintage Buick
Speaker 3: limousine with carrying an old sort of nineteen forties vintage
Speaker 3: press camera and offering to photograph their child. And this
Speaker 3: is something that had John Keel had run into in
Speaker 3: the past, the utterly bizarre kind of situation. These strange
Speaker 3: guys were sent away and they never came back, They
Speaker 3: never made good on any sort of threats. So, you know,
Speaker 3: what are these things about? And a question that I
Speaker 3: ask about a lot of paranormal phenomena, or so called
Speaker 3: paranormal phenomena, including the whole question of an afterlife, is
Speaker 3: is this really paranormal? Do these things go on much
Speaker 3: more frequently? Do people have these experiences much more frequently
Speaker 3: than we give credit for? Is our social norms really
Speaker 3: responsible for the definition of paranormal or supernatural? We say supernatural?
Speaker 3: You know, what are the limits of nature? We think
Speaker 3: something is supernatural? We're sort of arbitrarily putting limits on nature.
Speaker 3: You know, maybe the whole thing is natural. So get
Speaker 3: into some of of what I get into in my
Speaker 3: book about language.
Speaker 2: Right, But I just wanted to get to the incident.
Speaker 2: It was a just I believe, just before or just
Speaker 2: after the collapse of the Silver Bridge, and you're in
Speaker 2: New York with John Keel and he receives a visitor.
Speaker 3: Right, Okay, let me just go back a little bit.
Speaker 3: On our last trip to Point Pleasant prior to this
Speaker 3: particular day, John was given us sort of a prophecy
Speaker 3: by a psychic woman in the town, and it was
Speaker 3: to the effect that she said that there will be
Speaker 3: a disa on the river the night that President Johnson
Speaker 3: likes the White House Christmas tree. So on that particular night,
Speaker 3: and in December nineteen sixty seven, John and I were
Speaker 3: back in New York. I was at my home, he
Speaker 3: was at his, and we agreed that I would come
Speaker 3: up to his place. We'd turn on the TV, watch
Speaker 3: the news reports and see if anything happened on the
Speaker 3: Ohio River. So I go up to John's place and
Speaker 3: he lets me in and he introduces me to a
Speaker 3: friend of his, a guy named Joe, who has been
Speaker 3: an old, old friend of John's. But John hadn't seen
Speaker 3: him in years and had sir lost contact with him.
Speaker 3: And yet Joe appeared at John's door on this very
Speaker 3: interesting and unusual evening. I met Joe. Big guy. I'm
Speaker 3: about six foot one, He's at least six foot two,
Speaker 3: strong guy, dark hair, mustache, looks as if he was
Speaker 3: in his forty late forties.
Speaker 2: I shook his hand.
Speaker 3: I shook his hand, and the thing about it was
Speaker 3: it was one of the strongest handshakes I've ever experienced.
Speaker 3: The guy was really strong. And anyway, we chatted for
Speaker 3: a while, we turned the TV on. There was no news,
Speaker 3: So John and Joe went out to dinner and they
Speaker 3: actually went to a UFO conference that was held in
Speaker 3: Manhattan that evening. I went back home, got home, turned
Speaker 3: my TV on. Just at that moment the network feed
Speaker 3: was interrupted from the news from Point Pleasant with the
Speaker 3: news from Point Pleasant that the Silverbridge had collapsed into
Speaker 3: the Ohio River in the middle of this is a
Speaker 3: Christmas season rush hour traffic. It was a huge tragedy.
Speaker 3: There wasn't anyone in the town who didn't know someone
Speaker 3: who was killed in that grin, right, and so that
Speaker 3: you know, that's that's a you know, a part of
Speaker 3: them Offman's story that everyone seems to know. It was
Speaker 3: feature in the Richard in the Richard Gere movie, which
Speaker 3: is a very very loose adaptation of the story. But
Speaker 3: the interesting thing was that I didn't think, I didn't
Speaker 3: think much more of this fellow Joe that I met,
Speaker 3: until John found out a couple of years later that
Speaker 3: Joe had been dead for two years hm.
Speaker 2: Hm, prior to your meeting Joe.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, uh and uh. Following that meeting, Joe was untraceable.
Speaker 3: John tried to reach him as phone was disconnected and
Speaker 3: so on. Uh. And the only way he found out
Speaker 3: about this was a couple of years later, he was
Speaker 3: happened to be in Macy's department store and ran into
Speaker 3: Joe's wife, and I said, oh, hi, you know how
Speaker 3: how's Joe? I saw him a couple I saw him
Speaker 3: two years ago. I haven't been able to find him.
Speaker 3: And she said, oh, you know, don't don't mess with me, John,
Speaker 3: Joe's been dead for five years.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, and so on, you know.
Speaker 3: She he he died in my presence and and I
Speaker 3: went to a funeral and all that.
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