‘Apol’ and Princess Moon Owl of the UFO

by Charles Lear

The 1975 book by John Keel, “The Mothman Prophecies,” is a complex book. The book’s through line centers on events in Point Pleasant, West Virginia from Nov. 15, 1966 to Dec. 15, 1967.  These involved UFOs, sightings of a winged humanoid with glowing red eyes dubbed “The Mothman” and the collapse of the Silver Bridge, which spanned the Ohio River. But, the book is about so much more than that. It can be read several times and, depending on the reader’s perspective, be a completely different experience each time. It contains contactee stories, abductee stories, MiB encounters, Grinning Man encounters, a nighttime bedroom invader in a checkered jacket, strange metallic voices on the telephone, paranoia, poltergeists and prophecies. The reader can dive in repeatedly and come up with a tale that is interesting enough on its own to warrant further research. The tale involving Jaye P. Paro, Apol and Princess Moon Owl is one of those.

John Keel was a New York City resident and freelance writer who traveled the world looking for stories. During the period covered in “The Mothman Prophecies,” he was dividing his time, investigating strange events in both Point Pleasant and Long Island. The Long Island tale begins in the book with Keel’s investigation of reports of strange visitors by residents living on Mount Misery. Mount Misery is the highest point on Long Island at 400 ft and, put simply, is a big pile of gravel left behind by the last glacier that stopped by around 20,000 years ago. One resident there told of being visited by four men, three of whom looked “like Indians.” They politely told her that her land belonged to their tribe and they meant to reclaim it. She was “frightened” by their feet.  They had no car and would have had to walk through mud to get to her house and yet they had none on their shoes. Keel was running into many similar stories of people who didn’t seem to quite fit in. He was becoming convinced that the people being described were extraterrestrials from another planet, or ultraterrestrials from another dimension.

Mount Misery has a long history of paranormal reports going back to the original natives who avoided it. The local expert on that history was Joanne Perrano. Keel got in touch with her, she introduced him to some local contactees and things got weird.

Perrano went by the name, Jaye P. Paro, as a radio personality on WBAB, Babylon and Keel uses this name in the book. A character named Jane also represents Perrano in the book. Jane is used for episodes of alien/ultraterrestrial contact and Paro is used for the less bizarre moments. The following is the tale told in the book.

After a UFO encounter that involved missing time, Jane was instructed by a “strange metallic voice” over the phone to go to the nearby public library. She was to look for a particular book on Indian history and read page 42. At the library, she was struck by the librarian’s odd appearance, which was mostly due to her 1940s-style clothing. The woman handed her the book as if she was expecting her. When Jane went to read page 42, the print shrank, then grew large and a message emerged. The message began with a friendly greeting and informed her she had been chosen for contact through “autosuggestion” and that she must take notes when in the “suggestion state.” It was signed, A Pal. The text returned to normal and Jane was sick and vomiting for the next two days.

Jane began to see the “librarian” everywhere. At one point, the woman approached her and asked if there was any A-U in the area. Jane described that her speech and behavior were bizarre, “as if she were dead.” The woman later stepped out of an alley and said, “Peter is coming.” Jane connected the statement with the Catholic belief that Peter will be the name of the last pope.

Then a new black Cadillac pulled up. A man opened the back door and stepped out  with a grin. He looked Hawaiian and was dressed in an expensive-looking grey suit. The suit’s shiny, silk-like material was similar to that of the clothing worn by the “librarian.” His hand was icy cold as he shook Jane’s hand and he told her his name was Apol, pronounced, “Apple.” He gave Jane a small metal disk wrapped in old parchment and told her to wear it at all times. She mailed it to Keel, he examined it and sent it back. When she received it, it had turned black and smelled like “rotten eggs.”

In the meantime, Paro was visited at the station by a “very dark” woman with “glassy eyes” wearing a costume made of feathers. She was gasping for breath and managed to get out that she was “Princess Moon Owl.” She told Paro that she had arrived from another planet in a flying saucer. Paro interviewed her on tape and she described her life on Ceres. She was familiar with the local flying saucer enthusiasts and called some “phonies” while praising others. As she talked, an odor like “rotten eggs” came from her that became gradually “overpowering.”

Apol and his friends visited Jane and gave her details of Keel’s investigations. They also gave her disturbing predictions to pass along to him. Keel then went to Jane’s house, hypnotized her and talked to Apol through her. Apol wanted to gossip about Marilyn Monroe and Robert Kennedy and then warned that Kennedy was “in grave danger.” Apol predicted some plane crashes and then went back to Monroe and Kennedy.

The plane crashes came to be and Keel was convinced that Apol and other entities like him were in touch with the future. He also found that when he’d think of a question, Jane would call him and give him a message from Apol that answered it.

Besides Jane, Keel was getting messages from others whom he referred to as “silent contactees” because they avoided publicity. Through them, the entities gave predictions to Keel. Keel became more and more paranoid as the predictions got direr. Some came true, such as the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, and others didn’t. He was given one prediction that there would be a disaster on the Ohio River, next to Point Pleasant. That, unfortunately, did come true.

How much of all this did Keel believe, how much of it did he believe was a put on, and did he just make some of it up for dramatic effect? Keel himself tells the reader that he felt “Princess Moon Owl” was a put-up job. James Moseley was organizing a convention in Manhattan at the time and Keel suspected the “princess” was part of a creative promotion campaign. To answer further questions, the reader is directed to the website johnkeel.com, which is maintained by a longtime friend of Keel’s, Doug Skinner. Keel’s personal notes from this period and his correspondence with Perrano/Paro/Apol have been preserved by Skinner, who offers his comments.

The first thing to address is the prediction about Dr. King. Keel wrote in his book that he received a phone call saying that King would be killed on Feb. 4. He attempted to contact King and never got through. King was actually killed on April 4. This writer could find nothing to support the claim. If it was an embellishment, it’s quite tasteless, but that doesn’t seem to fit with Keel’s character. He could have left it out and the book would not have suffered. There was also nothing found to support Apol’s warning about Kennedy.

Despite the apparent lack of support for the above, there is a great deal of evidence that Keel believed he was in contact with an actual entity named Apol. The story in the book of Jane’s first meeting with Apol is taken almost verbatim from his notes dated July 7, 1967. One detail in his notes left out of the book was that there was a phone in Apol’s car. In notes from August 21, 1967, he wrote that a man named Joe Henslik called to tell him he was visited by man who “heard” he’d seen a flying saucer. The man fit Apol’s description, wore a gray suit and there was a telephone in the car. Keel constantly refers to Apol throughout his notes and his name is spelled variously as Apol, Appel and Appell. There are other entities as well. There is Chloe, Agar (the “librarian”) and Argo. Keel’s notes relate a phone conversation with Argo about politics, that resulted in Argo angrily yelling at him. It seems as if Keel believed these were really alien beings with psychic ability and the capability of manipulating our reality.

There is one document that Skinner posted July 13, 2018 that he found disturbing. It’s a letter to Mary Hyre, a friend and a reporter in Point Pleasant who handled the huge number of UFO reports that came into The Athens Messenger. The letter is dated Nov. 3, 1967. Keel wrote that he believed there were UFO bases all over the Ohio Valley and that there was an alien military buildup taking place. He advises Hyre to only write about UFOs and not the “people.” What may startle those unfamiliar with this letter is this section:

Mary, I have good reasons for suspecting that (sic) may soon be a disaster in the Pt. Pleasant area which will not seem related to the UFO mystery. A plant along the river may either blow up or burn down. Possibly the Navy installation in Pt. Peasant will be the center of such a disaster. A lot of people may be hurt. If this should happen, notify me as soon as you can, and write the story normally. Don’t even hint to anybody anything about this.

On Dec. 15, 1967, The Silver Bridge, which connected Point Pleasant with Gallipolis, Ohio, collapsed into the river killing 46 people. At the time, it was the deadliest bridge disaster in U.S. History.

Keel came to believe that he was dealing with entities as confused as we are about our place and purpose in this universe. He ended his book with a quote from Charles Fort: “If there is a universal mind, must it be sane?”