Mothman

The Mothman is a strange flying cryptid that has been sighted numerous times, most of the time before a disaster hits the area of ​​the sighting. It is described as tall, with large bat or moth wings, no neck, and large bright red eyes. It is sometimes described as human in form and sometimes birdlike.

The physical appearance attributed to this creature is that of a humanoid over two meters tall, with large wings that fold back or a large cape that would cover the back and arms, covered in what appears to be dark gray or black hair. , without a defined head and with two large luminous red eyes to which hypnotic faculties are attributed. His appearances seem to be closely related to the imminence of great catastrophes, being sometimes defined as a "harbinger of misfortunes and death".

The Mothman casuistry is tangentially related to ufology, as its appearances supposedly coincide with observations of UFOs or with the presence of other supposed creatures, including the men in black.

Nov 15, 1966
 '11.30 pm.'

Two couples, Roger and Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Mallette, drive through a popular TNT area, a former WWII warehouse, and head toward Point Pleasant, which is now seven miles away.

The night is cold and dark, and a fine drizzle begins to fall on the moon of the car.

The lights of Point Pleasant, still distant, but visible in the November darkness… The two couples chatting relaxed. And suddenly, in the solitude of an old secondary road, something breaks with the habitual nature of that situation and, somehow, changes the history of that small town almost unknown even to the inhabitants of the neighboring towns. In the solitude of an electric generator located a few meters away from the road, large reddish eyes seem to watch over the two couples.

As the car approaches the place, the protagonists are more and more perplexed when they distinguish a strange figure of about two meters in height and grayish color. But what is most striking are the large wings that the unknown being seems to have ...

Roger, at the wheel, stomps on the accelerator of his old Chevrolet and tries to flee the scene, crossing Highway 62. The car reaches 162 kilometers per hour, and yet… That strange winged character seems to follow the car very carefully. close and effortless. There, just two meters from the Chevrolet, the figure of the strange character is illuminated by the reddish light of the drivers.

Thus, he followed them without any expression, without showing signs of despondency ... without even bacillary. When the car reached the entrance of the town, the strange being spread its wings, and disappeared in the darkness of the night, under a starry sky.

With their hearts pounding and without a word between them, the two couples head to the police station, where they are served by an old friend who trusts them, Sheriff Milard Halstead.

The sheriff proposes that they return to the place to see if there is a trace of the strange being, and although at first none of the witnesses is willing to return to the dark area TNT, in the end, being the authority, they end up accompanying him.

Once there, still scared, they begin to inspect the area with fear of meeting those red eyes again. But there is no longer a trace of the 2-meter winged being.

The next morning, Sheriff George Jhonson called a press conference at the Palace of Justice, where the four witnesses narrated the events to the journalists who were there, and those journalists spread the news, making it reach any corner of the world.

No one imagined that this strange odyssey was just brewing, and that the worst would come very soon. Linda Scarberry moved a short time later to her parents' house, since she "was afraid of living alone with that loose being." Her nights have never been the same since that day.

When the event jumps to the press…
After the press conference, there were many journalists (John Keel, among others) and people who crowded night after night in the TNT zone for a week, without witnessing much, except for the occasional low-quality home recording. Dozens of reports were printed in the local newspaper and in newspapers around the world. These reports rest in the archives of the "Point Pleasant Messenger", in addition to the archives of other newspapers that also echoed the event.

The being was baptized as Mothman (moth man), for its wings and the grayish color described by all the witnesses.

Jounarlist Mary Hyre began publishing articles about this strange character in the newspaper "The messenger", and initiated an investigation for her publications. In them she, she even, she claimed to have been harassed by the visits of some men dressed in black who advised her to stop publishing articles on the subject.

This journalist also claimed that almost every night she kept awake, victim of a dream that was repeated every morning ... She saw how the Silver Bridge bridge, which is located at the entrance to Point Pleasant, collapsed, and she fell and swam between gift packages. A dream that was not far from reality ...

Another of the journalists who followed the case closely was John Keel, who had published the first chronicle of it in the New York Times when he was only 16 years old, and who had managed to spend a whole night inside the pyramid of Gizeh. He was 36 years old when the events occurred, and he became more and more known since he began to follow the Mothman case and publish reports in his magazine "The fliying sauce review" (literally, "The magazine of the flying saucers" ).

Surge of sightings.
At that time, when fear was the basis of citizenship, sightings multiplied and the people of Point Pleasant never slept soundly again ...

On the night of November 14, 1966, Newell Partridge was about to make his dinner when he heard Bandit, his German shepherd, bark strangely. The witness left and approached the barn where the barking was coming from.

There he saw two small red dots that were approaching him, while the dog entered the field, in the direction of those small lights ... Newell Partridge did not see Bandit again. Later he would assure that he "knew the appearance of the eyes of animals, but that was something different."

On November 16 of that same year, dozens of people gathered in front of the TNT zone; some armed to the teeth to hunt down the Mothman, and others, holding their camcorders to try and record the humanoid. At that moment a car passed unnoticed by the place, oblivious to the curious glances that were concentrated in front of the old building.

In this car were traveling Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Wamsley, Mrs. Marcella Bennett and her daughter, Teena, who were visiting the Thomas' house, located ten kilometers from the TNT zone.

Upon reaching the Thomas' house and parking the car, a large being emerges from the ground with its two red eyes blazing in the night.

They all began to run towards the Thomas' house, while the being followed them agilely. Upon entering the house, the Mothman leaned out of the window while Mrs. Wamsley called the police. When she arrived, the character had already left.

Mrs. Bernett, who lived on the outskirts of the city, near the TNT zone, ended up moving to the center of the city, since she claimed that every night she heard strange sounds that seemed to come from her roof and that terrified her, since all those who saw the Mothman, recognized that sound as the one emitted by it.

On the morning of November 25, Tom Ury, a shoe salesman, was driving on Route 62 (also near the TNT zone) when he saw a grayish figure looking at him a few feet from his car. The being raised its wings and flew over his convertible ... Tom Ury declared that the strange being was flying at a height of about "three telephone poles". The witness stated that the sight of him caused so much terror that he did not come to work that morning.

On the afternoon of November 27, Connie Carpenter was leaving the church and taking the car to go home, when as she passed by the golf course near Mason, she saw a strange grayish figure that was staring at her, without moving even an inch. The creature raised its wings, flapped them a few times, and headed for Connie's car.

She was one of the few people who got to see the face of that creature. Moments later, the witness's face had been burned and her eyes were so swollen that she was unable to open them for a week.

On January 11, 1967 Mabel McDaniel, mother of Linda Scarberry (who saw the Mothman for the first time) was also traveling with her car on the outskirts of the city, when she spotted something that “at first she mistook for an airplane, but He realized that it was flying too low, it was grayish and had wings that were longer than two meters ”.

The tragedy of Silver Bridge. Forty years later.
This past December 15th marked the 40th anniversary of the Silver Bridge tragedy and, curiously, also the end of the Mothman sightings.

That night, on the Silver Bridge there were some witnesses of that winged being, traveling by car. Among them, the journalist Mary Hyre, who had almost identical dreams at the end that she awaited ...

The bridge began to emit a slight screech that gradually became a great roar. The large metal structure began to give way, and soon, for no apparent reason, Silver Bridge collapsed, killing more than 46 people.

Curiously, the Mothman was never seen in the place again and that gave rise to a question that still has many of the protagonists of that nightmare year in suspense ... Was the Mothman the cause of that accident or, on the contrary, I was just trying to warn?

Causative or prophet?
There are numerous theories about the Mothman; Some say that he was an angel who came to warn of the catastrophe;  others, that it was a demon that came to cause it.

Some claimed that it was a sandhill crane (a very popular bird in the area), which could even have mutated due to the radioactivity that the TNT zone could still host, although all the witnesses assured that what they saw was not a crane.

There was also talk of a 500-year-old curse, by the leader of the native tribes, a Shawnee chief named Hokolesqua, before he was ambushed to death. For some, this being was neither more nor less, the spirit of Hokolesqua.

.=== The other "Mothman" === A being very similar to the one described by all the witnesses of Point Pleasant also appeared in other places where, to top it all, serious catastrophes also happened.

These are just some of them ... In Chernobyl, April 1986, a dozen workers at a power plant in southern Ukraine claimed to have seen a strange grayish, headless, red-eyed person. In addition, some of them had repetitive nightmares, and others received strange calls.

On the morning of April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, when the power supply of the generator failed, killing 30 people, and later another 10 due to exposure to the radiation. The graphite in the reactor continued to burn for 9 days, causing extensive radioactive damage to the area.

And while the helicopters tried to put out the fire, the workers who witnessed the fire and survived it, watched in amazement as a strange character of 7 meters high, flew over the smoke of the fire.

In China a serious catastrophe occurred on January 19, 1926, when one of the largest dams in the world (Xiaon Te Dam) collapsed, spewing more than 50,000 million liters of water and killing people. of 15,000 people.

Most of the survivors claimed to have seen the "dragon man" who appeared to the victims of the place around the dam. The case is difficult to verify since most journalistic records were destroyed when the communist regime came to power in China.

Chicago in 1951 saw the first earthquake in its history. Everyone was alarmed and nervous. Several days before the earthquake, several witnesses who were navigating the Michigan River claimed to have seen a large grayish being that flew over the buildings of the big city.

The sightings continued until May 5, the day the earthquake occurred. That day lots of people claimed to have heard someone knock on the doors of their houses, and even those of their closets.

In Germany, on the morning of September 10, 1978, some workers who had to carry out a mission in a coal mine in Freiburg, found that the entrance to the mine was blocked by a strange being with two large outstretched wings.

Many of the men attempted to catch up with the creature and enter the mine, but were forced back when the creature began to let out unbearable high-pitched screams "as if 50 people were shouting" or "as if a train were stopping." .

They all left the place, but around 8 in the morning, the ground began to shake. The mine was rapidly catching fire. If it had not been for that character, more than 20 people would have died at the scene ...

Other Theories

 * The Mothman is a 7 foot tall, bipedal, flying creature/alien that first appeared in Point Pleasant, WV in 1969. It is said to be since been be active in America since. People claim it is a Bio-genetic Mutation, because it was first sighted near a WW2 bomb factory. Others say it was an alien, because there were UFO sightings around the areas it was sighted. Whatever the case, this immortal creature is known to be aggressive and prone to attacking those who see it. The creature is capable of flying to speeds of 100mph and attacking with it’s large claws, making it quite dangerous to come across.

Anatomy
The Mothman resembles a 7 foot tall, immortal, winged creature with glowing red eyes. Its wings were said to resemble a bird's, a bat's, or a combination of the two. It is covered in a black/brown feathers/fur, with long talons extending from the edge of it’s wings.

In Popular Media

 * In the movies The Mothman Prophocies and Mothman, the beast is the main antagonist.


 * In the videogame Scribblenaut, if you type in Mothman; a Mothman-like beast will appear.


 * The Mothman is part of The Creature boy Platoon as the Cryptic leader.