His parents soon divorced and Keel was raised by his grandparents in Perry, New York until his mother remarried.

[3] He worked as a freelance contributor to newspapers, scriptwriter for local radio and television outlets, and author of pulp articles such as "Are You A Repressed Sex Fiend?"

He tried to find performers of the Indian rope trick, investigate fakirs and yogis and he even tried to track the Yeti.

[4] He also made repeated visits to Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and investigated sightings that was the topic of his best known book, The Mothman Prophecies (1975).

[1] Richard Hatem, the screenwriter for The Mothman Prophecies, has described Keel as the Hunter S. Thompson of paranormal writers.

[1][9] Like contemporary 1960s researchers such as J. Allen Hynek and Jacques Vallée, Keel was initially hopeful that he could somehow validate the prevailing extraterrestrial visitation hypothesis.

As Keel himself wrote: In his books UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse and The Eighth Tower Keel argues that a non-human or spiritual intelligence source has staged whole events during a long period of time in order to propagate and reinforce certain erroneous belief systems.

[full citation needed] He used the term "ultraterrestrials" to describe UFO occupants he believed to be non-human entities capable of assuming whatever form they desire.

[citation needed] Keel did not state any hypothesis about the ultimate purpose of the phenomenon other than that the UFO intelligence seems to have a long-standing interest with interacting with the human race.

[1] The book was widely popularized as the basis of a 2002 movie of the same name featuring Richard Gere, Will Patton, Laura Linney and Alan Bates.

Sherwood also reported that Keel, who was well known for writing humorous and outrageous letters to friends and associates, would not assist him in clarifying the differences.

[6] In re-prints of his book Jadoo he is described as "a real-life Indiana Jones" by his publisher Barnes and Noble.

[6] Keel's apartment was "littered with literally tens of thousands of books in stacks, and papers piled unreachably high".