Mothman Around The World

The Mothman is one of the strangest and unusual phenomenon that has existed in recent history. Sightings have been recorded in numerous places all around the world. Many have been linked with sites of destruction or terrible accidents that have happened which have led many to think that the Mothman is some kind of "dark angel" or prophetic being that only appears around signs of destruction.

            To this day the Mothman is unexplained and probably never will be. There are no concrete amounts of evidence documenting the existence of the Mothman, other then the series of eye-witness testimonies the unilaterally describe the same phenomenon. Many people are led to believe that the events recorded during 1966-67 in Point Pleasant happened for a reason and that the major piece of prophetic evidence is that the Mothman is never seen again after Silver Bridge collapse, prompting several to question why and what the Mothman was about, rather than if or not it indeed appeared. John Keel admits personally getting too close to the phenomenon during his investigation to provide an accurate objective standpoint. He notes that human perception is limited in the ways we perceive what we consider real, noting that throughout all his research of the unexplained, many conceptions of what he traditionally thought as “grounded beliefs” were able to change with introduction of new theories and evidence, thus altering his perception yet again. While evidence suggests that the residents of Point Pleasant were subjected to an array of widely paranormal events, all the claims made by witnesses are still circumstantial, with the only explanation being the oral descriptions.  It comes back to human perception and how we as intellectual beings decide what and how to interpret what we see and hear in the world. Trying to differentiate between Fact and Fiction requires a very open mind when thinking about the Mothman. Judging from the research I’ve done on the topic, I believe that the events of Point Pleasant did in fact happen accordingly, and that the entire mystery sounds too strange to be considered hoax. Furthermore, the real life horrifying details of the Silver Bridge accident prompt me to question more than what I read and hear at first glance. As Keel states toward the end of the book, “Belief has always been the enemy of truth; yet, ironically, if our minds are supple enough, belief can sometimes open the door.” (Keel 267)

 This website lists Mothman sightings that have been submitted by readers all over the world.

Here is a link that connects the Mothman to the famous nuclear disaster at Chernobyl

Here is an article written by John Keel that connects the Mothman to the Native American "Thunderbird" folklore.

Here is a disturbing video I found on YouTube, Apparently some kind of Moth-like creature has landed in Spain. Most of the video is just camera shaking and men speaking in spanish, but the last few seconds will make the hairs stand up on your neck...enjoy!

Tragedy on the Ohio River

This is a copy of a newspaper the day after the collapse. The final death toll would be recorded at 46. 

On December 15^th, 1967, at approximately 5 p.m. the Silver Bridge connecting Point Pleasant, WV and Kanauga, Ohio collapses into the Ohio river. Full of rush hour traffic combined with the bustle of the approaching holiday season, the bridge is packed to the brim when thirty seven vehicles go under, killing forty six people in total, two of which the bodies are never found. In the aftermath the cause of the collapse is attributed to several factors including a flaw in unique eye-bar design causing it to break and placing undue stress on the other parts of the bridge.

  “The fracture was caused from a minute crack formed during the casting of the steel eye-bar. Over the years, stress corrosion and corrosion fatigue allowed the crack to grow, causing the failure of the entire structure. At the time of construction, the steel used was not known for subduing to corrosion fatigue and stress corrosion. Inspection prior to construction would not have been able to notice the miniature crack. Over the life span of the bridge, the only way to detect the fracture would have been to disassemble the eye-bar. The technology used for inspection at the time was not capable of detecting such cracks. Stress corrosion cracking is the formation of brittle cracks in a normally sound material through the simultaneous action of a tensile stress and a corrosive environment. Combined with corrosion fatigue, which occurs as a result of the combined action of a cyclic stress and a corrosive environment, disaster was inevitable for the Silver Bridge. The two contributing factors, over the years continued to weaken the eye-bar and unfortunately the entire structure.” (WV Quarterly Volume XV, NO. 4 Oct, 2001)   

           The collapse focused much needed attention on the condition of older bridges, leading to intensified inspection protocols and numerous eventual replacements. There were only three other bridges built to a similar design, one upstream at St Mary's and a longer bridge at Florianopolis,  Brazil. They were both closed immediately, and the St Mary's bridge demolished. The Brazlian bridge remains, but is closed to traffic. It was built to a higher safety factor. Modern non-destructive testing  methods allow some of the older bridges to remain in service where they are located on lightly traveled roads, while most heavily used bridges of this type have been replaced with modern bridges of various types, and as an extra benefit containing additional lanes. The accident prompted Congress to draft new legislation making sure all bridges nationwide were properly inspected and maintained.

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Bridge

The bridge was renamed The Silver Memorial Bridge when it was reconstructed.

The Silver Memorial Bridge design has proven more stable than the previous design.

Indrid Cold And All His Splendor

The case of Woody Derenberger and his encounter with the extraterrestial "Indrid Cold" is one of the most famous and publicized UFO contact stories in history. Woody reported that he met an alien visitor on a stretch of road off Interstate 77 near Mineral Well, WV. The alien said it was from a planet named Lanulos and communicated with Derenberger through telepathy. His story was partly collaborated by other witnesses claiming to have seen strange lights in the same area during the same time. Over time his story blew up the media and became an overnight sensation, prompting other witnesses to come forth about similar accounts of alien contact. Indrid Cold would contact Derenberger several more times, even taking him aboard his spaceship and transporting him to Lanulos.  Below is an excerpt from John Keel's book, The Mothman Prophecies, (1975) about Woody Derenberger and Indrid Cold:

Woodrow Derenberger is a tall, husky man with close-cropped sandy hair, twinkling blue- gray eyes, and an honest open face. In 1966 he was in his early fifties but looked considerably younger. His life had been normal to the point of being mundane—a long succession of modest jobs, hard times, constant movement from one rented house to another pursuing no particular ambition. Surviving. Feeding and clothing his attractive young wife and two children. Now he was working as a salesman for an appliance company and living in a simple two-story farmhouse in Mineral Wells, West Virginia. It was a good time in his life.

At 7 P.M. on November 2, 1966, he was heading home in his panel truck after a long, hard day on the road. The weather was sour, chill, and rainy. As he drove up a long hill outside of Parkersburg on Interstate 77 a sudden crash sounded in the back of his truck. He snapped on his interior lights and looked back. A sewing machine had fallen off the top of a stereo, but there didn't seem to be any real damage. A car swept up behind him and passed him. Another vehicle seemed to be following it. He eased his foot on the accelerator. He had been speeding slightly and thought it might be a police car. The vehicle, a black blob in the dark, drew alongside him, cut in front, and slowed.Woody Derenberger gaped in amazement at the thing. It wasn't an automobile but was shaped like "an old-fashioned kerosene lamp chimney, flaring at both ends, narrowing down to a small neck and then enlarging in a great bulge in the center." It was a charcoal gray. He slammed on his brakes as the object turned crossways, blocking the road, stopping only eight or ten feet from it. A door slid open on the side of the thing and a man stepped out.

"I didn't hear an audible voice," Woody said later. "I just had a feeling ... like I knew what this man was thinking. He wanted me to roll down my window."

The stranger was about five feet ten inches tall with long, dark hair combed straight back. His skin was heavily tanned. Grinning broadly, his arms crossed and his hands tucked under his armpits, he walked to the panel truck. He was wearing a dark topcoat. Underneath it Woody could see some kind of garment made of glistening greenish material almost metallic in appearance.

Do not be afraid. The grinning man did not speak aloud. Woody sensed the words. We mean you no harm. I come from a country much less powerful than yours. He asked for Woody's name. Woody told him. My name is Cold. I sleep, breathe, and bleed even as you do.

Mr. Cold nodded toward the lights of Parkersburg in the distance and asked what kind of place it was. Woody tried to explain it was a center for business and homes—a city. In his world, Cold explained, such places were called "gatherings."

While this telepathic conversation was taking place, the chimney-shaped object ascended and hovered some forty or fifty feet above the road. Other cars came along the road and passed them.

Cold told Woody to report the encounter to the authorities, promising to come forward at a later date to confirm it. After a few minutes of aimless generalities, Cold announced he would meet Woody again soon. The object descended, the door opened, Cold entered it, and it rose quickly and silently into the night.

When he got home, Derenberger was in a very distraught state. His wife urged Mm to call the Parkersburg police. They seemed to accept his story without question and asked if he needed a doctor.

The next day he was questioned at length by the city and state police. The story appeared in the local press and on radio and television. People who had driven that same route the night before came forward to confirm that they had seen a man speaking to the driver of a panel truck stopped on the highway. Mrs. Frank Huggins and her two children had reportedly stopped their own car and watched the object soar low over the highway minutes after Woody watched it depart. Another young man said the object had frightened him out of his wits when it hovered over his car and flashed a powerful, blinding light on him.

Woodrow Derenberger became a super-celebrity. Crowds of people gathered at his farm every night, hoping to glimpse a spaceship. His phone rang day and night. He switched to an unlisted number but within a short time the calls began again. Crank calls, threatening him if he didn't "shut up." Calls that consisted of nothing except eerie electronic sounds and codelike beeps Mr. Cold kept his promise. He returned.

After just reading the first few sentences describing Woodrow Derenberger's account with Mr. Cold its easy to chalk it up as made up and completely bonkers. When most people take this tale at face value its hard to believe but the way Derenberger speaks is perceived as a very honest. He wasn't ever known to be one to make things up, and his family collaborated his story with their own experiences. Overall the ultimate media attraction led to a constant stream of harrasment and criticism of Derenberger and helped facilitate a destruction in his marriage. One would think no seemingly normal person like him would ever want to bring such unwanted attention upon themselves for no reason. Here is an excerpt from Keel's Mothman Prophecies, which describes his encounters with Cold and the public reception.

As I write this book, I keep getting phone calls warning me to stop. They have even called my wife at her place of employment, telling her to stop me or they will. These people have also called my friends making the same threat. I have no way of knowing who these people are, yet they are calling too often to be crank calls. Several times I have written material that has disappeared from my home. When I leave home for any reason, I always lock all doors and windows, yet several times when we returned home, we found our home had been ransacked, drawers pulled out, papers strewn all over the floor, and valuable tapes missing, and my tape recorder broken. ... I have mailed letters, dropped personally by me in the Post Office letter box, that have failed to reach their destination.

After Woody's contact became widely known, two gentlemen dropped into the appliance store where he worked and walked directly up to him.

"We think you know who we are, Mr. Derenberger," they said flatly. "We'd advise you to forget all about what you've seen."

They left as abruptly as they'd arrived. Woody described them as being short, stocky, dressed in black suits, and having olive complexions. For some reason he concluded the Men in Black were really from the Mafia.

No matter where he moved—and he moved several times in 1967—the phone pranksters and black Cadillacs managed to find him, he claims.

Meanwhile, his pretty young wife and their two children also met Indrid Cold and his colleagues from the planet Lanulos. Mrs. Derenberger was frightened of them and felt they were engaged in something evil. They were just like us, she told me, traveled about in ordinary automobiles, and were probably infiltrating the human race in large numbers.

Woodrow Derenberger's story troubled me from the outset, and for many reasons. It didnot fit the mold of the usual UFO contact tale. While the telepathy element was common enough, the total physicality of his experiences seemed too real. They defied easy classification and would not fit into any of the pigeonholes I had constructed. Either he was the world's most convincing liar, and had somehow trained his wife, children, and friends to back up his lies, or he had had a very special set of experiences beyond the limits of ufology.

By March 1967 the crowds had given up in discouragement and Mr. Cold was able to safely land his spaceship on Woody's farm. Woody went aboard, according to his story, and took a flight all the way to Brazil and back. The interior of the spaceship was disappointingly normal, with bunks and equipment of obvious terrestrial manufacture. Later that year, Derenberger would be flown to Lanulos ... a pleasant little planet where the people ran around nearly nude. Most contactees who claim to have visited other planets, and there are many, usually described a futuristic world. There was something mundane about Woody's descriptions of that nudist colony in outer space. Too mundane.

Listen to complete audio file recorded by the local news station the day after the incident interviewing Woodrow Derenberger and his meeting with Indrid Cold:

For fun here is a clip from the 2002 film, The Mothman Prophecies starring Richard Gere that takes a creepier take on Indrid Cold:

What do you think? Did he make it up or is Cold for real? Post any comments below!

Here Come The Men In Black (minus Will Smith)

As sightings of the Mothman begin to die down, an enormous influx of UFO sightings and encounters begin to explode in Point Pleasant. With five to twenty calls a night, the local police become overwhelmed. Witnesses report clusters of lights moving in strange patterns across the sky, with frequent sightings near power lines. Other people claim having direct contact with UFOs, seeing their ‘saucer shaped’ craft on highways in broad daylight. Some even had direct contact with extra terrestrials, such in the case of Woody Derenberger, whose famous UFO encounter story is often is related with the Mothman since it occurred during the same time. Click Here for more information about Mr. Derenberger and his encounter.

            As Point Pleasant begins being associated with the UFO phenomenon, the town becomes subject to a plethora of men in black, government-looking agent types who begin to harass the residents of Point Pleasant whom have had contact with UFOs. They were described as dressing in all black, out of date brand new clothing, relatively short and olive colored skin, and driving late model black 1940’s Cadillacs that appeared brand new. These individuals stuck out in a town like Point Pleasant, as well as their odd behavior of seeking out all UFO related stories and attempting to suppress them. (Keel 171)

            Mary Hyre, a journalist for the Athens Messenger based in Ohio and longtime friend and fellow investigator with John Keel, was well known and trusted in the town of Point Pleasant, and credited for first bringing media attention to the Mothman story. Late one evening in her office in Point Pleasant, a mysterious short, olive skinned man dressed in black with large framed glasses and a bowl haircut asks Mary what she would do if someone told her to stop reporting on UFO sightings in the area. While slowly moving closer towards her, the man grabs a pen off her desk and stares at it fascinated. The man then runs out, laughing hysterically. (Keel 13) Click Here to read the passage from the book.

In another instance, several days after the collapse of the Silver Bridge, Mary encounters more mysterious men in black again at her office. Click Here to read the passage from the book.

In another case, the Scarberrys, who witnessed the first official sighting were visited by an unknown visitor roughly a year after the events in Point Pleasant were seen. Click Here to read the passage from the book.

THE OBVIOUS QUESTIONS:

1) Who or what are these men in black? Are they from the government, which is the first assumption one would make, or are they made to look like government agents for the authoritative presence they command?

2) If they are from the government, why do they display such odd behavior and mannerisms when dealing with people who are aware of their irregularities? Does the government really buy into the stereotype of an ominous force of agents fully clad in black from head to toe. Why stick out so much if you're trying to keep something secret?

3) The men in black are only interested in the UFO sightings, nothing else. Does it make more sense to think that these men are associated with the government or are they other worldly beings, posing as authoritative figures which they think will grant them better access in their investigations?

Please post your thoughts on the subject :)

It's Just A Bird....Right?

            

Professors at the neighboring West Virginia University presented the theory that the Mothman could indeed be the Sandhill Crane, a bird that is commonly three feet tall with an average wingspan of five feet, that has a distinctive patch of red coloring on its head. They “suggested that maybe the “thing”, crane or whatever the people reported seeing, wasn’t as large as they thought it was during their excitement.”(Herald-Dispatch) Witnesses feel insulted when they’re presented with these ‘sandhill crane’ explanations, as Chad Lambert, author of “Return to Point Pleasant,” notes that the town is full of avid hunters and outdoorsmen who know what birds look like. None of the witnesses equate what they saw with the sandhill crane theory. (Lambert, Eyes of the Mothman, 1:15:00) Jeff McKee, professor of Anthropology at Ohio State University describes how birds of prey were known to attack cavemen and small animals, as well as reports of eagles attacking infants. He states that the amount of known species of animal documented thus far pales in comparison to the unknown amount of species that have yet to be discovered. (McKee, Eyes of the Mothman 1:20:00) One variation of the sandhill crane theory is the possibility of a mutated bird from the neighboring Wildlife preserve, due to the heavy level of contamination from the TNT plant over the years. Professor of Environmental Science at Marshall University, Scott Sinanton states that, “Chemicals we find here and assume were here fifty years ago could definitely possesses mutagenic effects, the extent to which is unknown.”(Sinanton, Eyes of the Mothman 1:22:00)

The Sandhill crane has a patch of red on its face that could have been mistaken for red eyes.

Here is a discussion about the Mothman and its correlations to animal species facilitated by Robert A. Goerman.