Cryptids: The Mothman

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All hail the Mothman, one of the most hauntingly provocative cryptids in the history of cryptozoology. Let’s start with some quick stats:

Mothman440

Height: 6.5- to 7-feet

Body: Half man, half bird with large wingspan and glowing red eyes

Superpowers: Flight speeds of 100+ miles per hour, reportedly shows up right before certain disasters and disappears shortly afterward

First Reported: November 12, 1966 near Point Pleasant, West Virginia

Commercial Fame: Subject of John Keel’s 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies which was later made into a movie starring Richard Gere

Possible Misidentification: Sandhill Crane, giant owl

Sightings

The first reported Mothman sighting occurred on November 15, 1966, when a carload of two married couples drove by an abandoned World War II TNT factory just outside of Point Pleasant. Seeing what they thought were two red lights near the factory gates, they got out to investigate and reportedly were startled to find that the lights were in fact two large, glowing red eyes.

According to the driver, Roger Scarberry, the animal was “shaped like a man, but bigger, maybe six and a half or seven feet tall, with big wings folded against its back.” The two couples quickly got back in the car and drove away “toward Route 62, where the creature supposedly chased them at speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour,” according to Wikipedia.

Countless other sightings of the creature took place at or near the TNT factory and around various parts of Point Pleasant over the next year.

bridge

Perhaps one of the most famous stories concerning the Mothman is that of the December 15, 1967 collapse of Point Pleasant, West Virginia’s Silver Bridge. The catastrophe claimed the lives of 46 people and was thought to have occurred due to a single eyebar in the bridge’s suspension chain suffering a 0.1-inch defect brought about by poor maintenance and “heavier loads than it had originally been designed for.”

Shortly before the collapse, several Point Pleasant residents reported having nightmares that eerily foreshadowed the impending event. In renowned cryptozoologist Loren Coleman’s book, Mothman and Other Curious Encounters, he recounts resident Mary Hyre telling The Mothman Prophecies author John Keel the following on November 19, 1967—less than a month before the Silver Bridge collapsed:

On November 19, 1967, she told Keel: ‘I had a terrible nightmare. There were a lot of people drowning in the river and Christmas packages were floating everywhere in the water…it’s like something awful is going to happen.’

When Keel returned to Point Pleasant around Thanksgiving 1967, he had a flat tire in the rain. His trip was a string of miseries. And people in the area were having dreams and nightmares about a coming disaster. Virginia Thomas had them about people dying in the water of the nearby Ohio River.

And, indeed, at 5:04 PM, on December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge collapsed during rush hour…Cars loaded with Christmas packages, shoppers, commuters, and kids fell into the Ohio River. A couple sightings of Mothman were said to have occurred near the bridge right before it collapsed.”

Curiously, Mothman sightings seemed to have dropped off dramatically after the event, leading some to speculate that the creature appeared perhaps to warn people of the impending tragedy. Whatever the case, after the bridge collapsed Mothman sightings became more and more rare.

Per Coleman:

“So what eventually happened to Mothman? Like so many monsters, Mothman just seemed to appear less frequently and then disappeared from West Virginia completely several months after it had first been seen. It never attacked anyone, never tried to communicate, nor took much notice of the people it terrified. It just liked to chase cars every once in a while as though the automobile was as intriguing to it as it was to those who saw it. It seemed to be something alien to our world, though momentarily trapped in it. It almost seems as though Mothman was someone’s nightmare that had been objectified into physical existence.”

Skepticism

Some of the most commonly referenced evidenced against Mothman is that the creature may be nothing more than a misidentified barn owl.

In a 2002 issue of Skeptical Inquirer, paranormal investigator Joe Nickell came to the following conclusion:

At this point it seems relevant to consider a real West Virginia winged creature—one that has “nocturnal habits” and “large, staring eyes” of the type that yield crimson eyeshine, plus “facial discs” that can make the eyes appear even larger. It has a large head and (unbirdlike) is “monkey-faced,” but looks “quite neckless” (its very short neck sloping into its body so it could seem headless in silhouette). It has “oversized wings and long legs,” the latter being “powerful” and (unlike the spindly legs of many birds) covered with feathers, making them look relatively thick. Its flight is “noiseless” and indeed “mothlike,” although during flight it may vocalize a “loud, trailing ‘khree-i.’” Its broad range includes West Virginia, and it is a “widespread nester in human habitations”; in fact it “hides in old buildings” … as well as barns. Because it is active only at night, it is “seldom disturbed or even seen by humans,” so when it is encountered it has an unfamiliar as well as “sinister appearance” Its name is Tyto alba, the common barn owl.

While barn owls don’t grow anywhere near seven feet in size, it’s always possible that a human spooked by an animal may report that animal to be much larger than it actually is. That sightings just suddenly decreased dramatically after 1967 is telling, though. Maybe it was a huge owl that died. Maybe it was the Mothman. Maybe it was something else entirely. Whatever it was, the town of Point Pleasant, Virginia will never be the same.

Further Reading

Mothman (Wikipedia)

The Mothman Prophecies (Book by John A. Keel)

The Mothman Prophecies (Movie at IMDB.com)

Mothman and Other Curious Encounters (Book by Loren Coleman)

Mothman (The Skeptic’s Dictionary)

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