I’ve been having a busy time juggling work, family and studying recently, and I’m struggling to find time to read for entertainment. Audiobooks are ideal for my current situation, but I find it difficult to find free non-fiction audiobooks that are even slightly relevant to my interests. When I found an audiobook copy of Keel’s 1971 book Our Haunted Planet, I thought I’d give it a go.

The only other book I’ve read by Keel was The Mothman Prophecies, and this is a far less focused book than that one. There’s a lot of stuff about UFOs, ancient archaeology, and most other Fortean phenomenon in here. The main idea is that there were civilisations on Earth before humans evolved. This was entertaining enough to listen to while I washed the dishes, but the stuff in here that I’ve encountered before is so ludicrous that it was hard to take any of the other information seriously. This is very much in the same vein as Pauwels and Bergier’s Morning of the Magicians and that kind of crap.

Very few of the ideas in this book have any basis in reality. Our Haunted Planet is more than 50 years old at this point, and the immediate availability of more accurate information on the internet renders it obsolete. I can only recommend reading this if you want to understand what people on the fringes of thought were into half a century ago. I do quite enjoy thinking about that, and I will probably read more Keel in the future.

Normally I only post on Sundays, but I have a seasonal post lined up for Thursday. Check back then if you’re interested!