The Mysteries of Mothman

On November 12, 1966 near Clendenin, West Virginia five men were in the local cemetery. They had been preparing a grave for a burial, when something that they described as a brown human being, lifted off from some nearby trees and flew over their heads. The men were baffled. It did not appear to be a bird, but more like a man with wings. Only a few days later, more sightings would take place, electrifying the entire region. This strange being had the whole town of Clendenin and other surrounding towns discombobulated.

It would be nearly impossible to create a description of Mothmans characteristics, because there have been many different descriptions. Most observers describe the Mothman as a man-sized creature. He is said to have large reflective red eyes and the wings of a moth. Other observers said that it had no head, only eyes set into its chest. With these simple descriptions of the characteristics of the strange creature, the press dubbed the odd flying creature "Mothman." The original Mothman was a character from the popular Batman television series.

Mothman is believed to appear as a warning. He is said to warn people of upcoming disasters. The most famously known Mothman warning was the collapse of the Silver Bridge. Shortly before this disaster the Mothman sightings had come to an end.

At around 5:00 in the evening on December 15, 1967, the 700-foot bridge linking Point Pleasant to Ohio suddenly collapsed while filled with rush hour traffic. Dozens of vehicles plunged into the dark waters of the Ohio River and forty-six people were killed. Two of those were never found. To this very day the citizens of Point Pleasant believe that Mothmans appearance was a warning of the upcoming disaster.

Mothman was always thought of as being a semi-peaceful creature. People thought that he was just there to issue a warning, and he did no harm other than scaring people. But Mothman is linked to the killings of two dogs. On the 14^th day of November, Salem resident Newell Partridge saw two red objects hovering above a field. His German shepherd, Bandit, took off into the field and was never seen by Partridge again. (Keel par 5)

The next night a family was driving down the road in their car and saw Mothman and also a dead German shepherd on the side of the road. But when they returned to the scene, neither Mothman nor the dog was there. The final violent incident was when New Haven farmer Ernest Adkins reported something very odd also. He found his eleven-week-old beagle lying dead in his front yard. "There was no evidence the dog died in a fight," Adkins said. What made it strange was the fact that the dog's chest was chewed open, and its heart was lying outside.

Late in the evening of November 15th, two young married couples had a Mothman encounter as they drove past the abandoned TNT plant near Point Pleasant, West Virginia. The couples spotted two large eyes that were on a body that they described as shaped like a man, but bigger, maybe six or seven feet tall. It also had wings folded against its back. When the creature moved toward the plant door, the couples panicked and drove away. Moments later, they saw the same creature on a hillside near the road. It spread its wings and flew into the air, following their car. One of them said, "That bird kept up with us." They would not be the only ones to report seeing the creature that night. Another group of four witnesses claimed to see the "bird" three different times that same night.

Nobody knows what Mothman truly was or if he even existed at all. Many theories have been proposed as to what this strange creature might have been. Three of the most extreme theories are tht he might have been the demonic result of a magic ritual, a bio-chemically altered bird, or perhaps the ambodiment of a 200-year-old Shawnee curse onthe land. Skeptics had problems with these theories They stated instead that Mothman was propably just some normal bird, probably a sand hill crane. The sand hill crane has red patches on its head that could possible be mistaken for large red eyes. And sand hill cranes are very large - some reaching roughly the size attributed to mothman.

Nobody knows what Mothman was. His sightings have nearly come to a stop, but he has been seen all over the world since his Point Pleasant debut. A movie was made about Mothman, it was entitled The Mothman Prophesies, and it stated that Mothman was seen as a warning. The movie showed that he had warned of the Silver Bridge collapsing, but it also showed of other disasters that Mothman had warned about. This movie gives the idea that Mothman was a violent creature. I believe that he only puts fear into people and gives awareness of upcoming disasters and nothing more.