One of the strangest stories of the paranormal to emerge from the bewildering and often mystifying realm of cryptozoological wonders is undoubtedly the legendary "Mothman". While much of the public today might wish to dismiss this story as a fictional creation of the media or an exagerration of myth by John Keel who wrote the book, "Mothman Prophecies" later turned into a movie with Richard Gere, this Fortean wonder of the sixties remains as one of the most puzzling and unique predators of the unknown.
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Point Pleasant, West Virginia was a peaceful place in 1966 until a winged monster with glowing red eyes suddenly appeared from nowhere and terrorized over a hundred people living in the region. The first sighting actually occurred on November 15, 1966 in the old TNT area located on the outskirts of Point Pleasant. Two couples, the Scarberry's and the Mallettes, were cruising down a dirt road near the old power station when they spotted what appeared to be a "man with wings" standing near a telephone pole. As their car's headlights illuminated the strange being, it rapidly walked towards the power station and entered it.
Growing increasingly frightened, the driver of the car, Roger Scarberry, abruptly turned the car around and headed back on to route 62 towards town when all of a sudden the winged monstrosity appeared in their rear view mirror, flying towards the vehicle. Everyone screamed and the driver gunned the engine up to over 100 miles per hour with the "thing" flying right behind them. Eventually the creature flew ahead down the road and was later seen sitting atop an advertising billboard leering at them as they drove down the highway before eventually flying off towards a dam on the Ohio River.
Later, the two couples drove pell mell into the Mason County police station and related their tale to town authorities. All claimed to have witnessed a being six to eight feet tall with a ten-foot wingspan and glowing red eyes. Other features of the face were indistinguishable since the being's countenance appeared dark and obscure. Amazingly, over the next several months over a hundred witnesses saw this creature and many claimed just as the first witnesses to have been chased by this thing.
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Probably the most bizarre event of all was the fact that on December 13, 1967 two truck drivers said they saw the creature perched atop the old Silver Bridge that conjoins Point Pleasant and Gallipolis, Ohio. Upon their approach, the winged thing flew off into the night never to be seen again. It was on the following day (Dec. 14) around 5:00 p.m. during a frigid rush hour with dozens of Christmas shoppers and workers criss-crossing the bridge returning to their respective homes that the Silver Bridge suddenly collapsed sending over 46 people to their deaths in the icy waters of the Ohio River.
Engineers later said that a faulty I-Beam might have been responsible for the tragedy but no ultimate cause for the disaster was ever found. As mentioned earlier, all reports of the mothman seemed to cease and desist following this unfortunate episode
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Over time, other sightings of Mothman have occurred in various parts of the world since its visitations in Point Pleasant. During the Vietnam War, a troop encampment near DaNang witnessed a flying creature resembling a female form with wings and glowing eyes just before a military defeat resulting in heavy loss of life. And more recently and perhaps more poignantly, a winged figure was photographed from afar unknowingly by an amateur photographer the day of the World Trade Center attacks in New York. His photo (at this time not analyzed to our knowledge) clearly depicts a large bird-man figure flying amidst the rubble and chaos moments following the attack on the north tower. Is it possible that the Mothman represents a sort of angel of death figure that occasionally appears in areas of the world where tragedy is destined to strike? It is an enigma that is difficult to say one way or the other.
An interesting side note to all of this is the recent spate of sightings in Texas and Wyoming in 2003. As recently as June, a couple returning home from a camping trip near Yellowstone Park sighted a large winged monster tracking a small herd of terrified deer across a country road. "The creature," they said "flew very fast" and had "large glowing red eyes". Whether or not the paranormal predator was chasing the animals for food or something else may never be known.
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However strange and impossible these stories might seem to the layman, let it be known that such things do and have occurred in modern times. There are simply too many witnesses to a phenomenon that continues to perplex psychic investigators to this day. In the case of the West Virginia sightings, why on earth would so many good-hearted country people make up a story so preposterous as this? It also must be kept in mind that many who saw the creature never sought after any kind of publicity.
To this day, no one knows what the Mothman represents. There is still a lingering fear and terror widespread among those communities that have had brushes with it. And an uncertain, frightful feeling that someday it might return to haunt their town once more.
Here is the supposed picture of the Mothman on Sept 11, by the World Trade center. I'm not really sure If I believe this one or not, I kind of think it's a fake. With the amount of news teams on the seen there that day, if there would have been something that big flying around in the bright daylight you would have heard about it? Here is more info on the Mothman:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothmanhttp://www.prairieghosts.com/moth.htmlhttp://www.worldoftheunknown.com/mothman.htmlhttp://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/WVPOImothman.html