The best writers are painters; not content merely to describe, they scorn the base instincts of cloddish objectivity and, as John Keel has done, allow themselves to become part of the investigation itself. Like the characters of Borges and Castaneda, such writers allow themselves to be fooled on occasion in order to hack into the system and let the investigation talk to them. Sometimes this risky participation mystique brings them near to death and madness, as it brought Coleridge and De Quincey and indeed Keel himself. If they survive at all, such shamanic writers bring back wonders, demonstrating that a seeker who takes no risks learns nothing.

In The Mothman Prophecies, Keel tells an astonishing tale of how, as a budding UFO researcher in November 1966, he began investigating sightings in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, of an incredible animal form with characteristics of both man and moth.