Episode 166: Mothman
/Join us as we take a dip in to the beautiful broth that is Mothman (we’ll explain what that means, we promise). From the first reported sightings, to the work of Gray Barker and John Keel, and Mothman’s enduring legacy, we break down the story of West Virginia’s own Mothman.
This week, Amanda recommends Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert. Grab tickets to our L.A. live show at multitude.productions/live!
Point Pleasant Register, Point Pleasant, WV, Wednesday, November 16, 1966
Williamson Daily News, November 18th, 1966
Gettysburg Times, December 1st, 1966
The Case of the Chicago Mothman
How Did A Bunch Of Mythical Monsters Become Queer Icons?
Nessie Is My Girlfriend: What Is it With Queer People and Cryptids?
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about alligator attacks, death/graves, dog/animal death and mutilation, bridge collapses, aliens, government conspiracies/The Men in Black, tragedy/natural disasters/terrorist attacks, alien abduction, and The Cold War.
Sponsors
- BetterHelp provides professional counseling securely online, with financial aid available. Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/spirits.
- Skillshare is an online learning community where you can learn—and teach—just about anything. Visit skillshare.com/spirits2 to get two months of Skillshare Premium for free! This week Amanda recommends “Writing The Truth: How to Start Writing Your Memoir” by Mary Karr.
- Doordash is a fast, convenient food delivery app. Get $5 off your first order of $15 or more when you download the DoorDash app and enter CREEPY at checkout.
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Transcript
Amanda: Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends and folklore. Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda ...
Julia: And I'm Julia.
Amanda: ... and this is episode 166, Mothman.
Julia: Oh yeah. I was so inspired after our Sexy Urban Legends episode that I kind of fell down a Mothman rabbit hole, and at one point while I was researching this episode, I think I messaged you or messaged the group and being like, "Mothman lore is wild."
Amanda: Yeah, this is maybe like the most primary source derived episode we've ever had. It was so much fun.
Julia: Yeah. Basically, everything for the first half of this episode I found directly from newspaper articles from the time period.
Amanda: And I think you did a wonderful job narrating that in a way that made me feel like I was watching a movie in my brain.
Julia: Oh, that's very sweet. Thank you friend.
Amanda: Do you know who else is just the sweetest and absolutely uses primary sources and sites them in MLA format anytime they write anything ?
Julia: Is it our new patrons?
Amanda: Our new patrons, Alexa, Emma, and Anmi.
Julia: They are absolutely the sweetest and you know who is like a glass of lemonade on a hot day?
Amanda: It's our Supporting Producer level patrons, Phillip, Megan, Deborah, Molly, Skyla, Samantha, Sammy, Neil, Jessica and Phil Fresh, and the Legend level patrons, Brittany, Josie, Kylie Morgan, Tyler, the Husky, Beam Me Up Scotty, Audra, Chris, Mark, Mr. Volk, Sarah and Jack Marie.
Julia: What wonderful, refreshing folks we got there.
Amanda: Absolutely wonderful. We're sending them a great shaker and spoon box as their patron reward this month. I'm stoked about it.
Julia: What flavor is it?
Amanda: It's like a Valentines related, it's very citrusy.
Julia: I'm into that. Very, very nice. Speaking of cocktails, I mentioned this after the refill, but we decided on Earl Grey French 75s for this episode, which I thoroughly enjoyed. That is my kind of drink.
Amanda: Yeah. I love Earl Grey as a not a morning tea time thing. For me, it's a special ritual, so it was fun to have a boozy interpretation.
Julia: It's a nice mixer that I think is kind of overlooked sometimes.
Amanda: Totally.
Julia: Amanda, speaking of refreshing things and Earl Grey being both of our thing, what you been watching or reading or listening to lately?
Amanda: I have been continuing my 2020 of getting pleasure from my hobbies and loving those romcoms, Julia. So, this week I am recommending Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert, which is one of these lovely romcom books that I love a lot. There is a very wonderful romance and very attractive leads but also the protagonist is living with a chronic illness and there are storylines about recovering from abuse. So, I found that it really dealt with these topics that are certainly no laughing matter, but they are a daily experience for a lot of people.
Amanda: It sort of balanced treating them with gravity but also they don't define or even really meaningfully limit the characters. I really appreciated that, and it was also just a sweet and nice and set in the UK romcom.
Julia: Usually I'm not a romcom fan, but you might turn me around with all these great recommendations you've been doing.
Amanda: I just really enjoy it. There's also camping and I was like, "I want to go camping."
Julia: Camping, very good.
Amanda: Good stuff. Do you know what else is really good and exciting though?
Julia: Is it our live show that we're doing in Los Angeles?
Amanda: It is, we are coming to LA on February 15th to draft the coolest cryptid to go and have a drink with. Julia has set up a full bracket with slides and I am so excited.
Julia: I am very interested to see which one you and Schneider end up picking. I think that there are a lot of really great choices on there and a lot of unexpected choices on there, so we'll see.
Amanda: I can't wait, and this is also our first time performing in California so we are going to see how it goes and if we're going to be able to come back. So please, if you live in the LA area, if you want to make a road trip or a weekend trip and enjoy it or if you have friends and family in the area, we'd really appreciate it if you sent the link multitude.productions/live to your friends. Whether you listen to the show or not, it's going to be a really fun night. Join the Party is opening beforehand with one shot that I promise you do not want to miss. We'll have merch there, we'll be signing things and seeing you and taking pictures, so definitely come out and see us if you can.
Amanda: And without further ado, enjoy Spirits Podcast, episode 166, Mothman.
Julia: Let me set the scene for you, Amanda.
Amanda: Okay.
Julia: It was midnight in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Steve Malette and Roger Scarberry were out with their wives. They hadn't been drinking that night, they're just having a date night. Sure. They were in their car driving past Point Pleasant's old power plant, which was adjacent to the old National Guard armory buildings, when they saw it. It took about two hours for the Sheriff's deputies and city police to arrive and investigate the scene, but they found nothing.
Julia: By that point, both couples were pale and tired from a lack of sleep. After their experience, they described what they saw as quote, "It was a bird or something. It definitely wasn't a flying saucer." Instead, they described it as a man size bird-like creature. They recounted their experience to the Point Pleasant register, which posted a story on Wednesday, November 16th, 1966. "It was like a man with wings," said Malette, clarifying that it was unlike anything he has seen on TV or in a monster movie. The creature, they told the newspaper was fast as it flew, the men estimated that it moved at close to a hundred miles per hour in the air, but it was clumsy as it ran on the ground.
Amanda: It's like the same thing as an alligator only instead of flying, which would also be terrifying, the alligator, it's just like you don't want to be in a water with an alligator and I guess you don't want to be in the air with Mothman.
Julia: Alligator is actually extremely fast on land.
Amanda: Yoinks.
Julia: Fun fact. That's why you have to serpentine cause they can't turn their body easily, but they will outrun you.
Amanda: Well, that's good to know.
Julia: Yep, sorry. Sorry to ruin your alligator thoughts. They're like, "Oh, I'm safe if I'm on land." No, no,
Amanda: Nope.
Julia: When the men drove away, frightened by the sight of the creature, it reportedly followed them gliding above their car until they reached a major road. In a moment of bravery after the creature disappeared, they turned the car around and returned to the scene. The creature was still there. "It seemed to be waiting for us," according to Malette. This time they got a better look at it, describing it as light gray and with red eyes that glowed as their lights shown on it. It was then that they noticed that the creature seemed to be afraid of that light and tried to flee when the lights were on it, which is the opposite of a moth.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: In the light of the day of the next morning, they described it as, "A man with wings, but that the head was notably not an outstanding characteristic of the body," meaning that the head was kind of like small compared to the rest of the body and the giant wings.
Amanda: You know, Julia, that reminds me of a cat I hung out with yesterday named Hops, who is a tiny kitten and his head has stayed that way, but his body has become a chunky lad and it is extremely adorable.
Julia: Is there a picture of him?
Amanda: Yes.
Julia: All right, good. We will link it in the show notes. So, rather than winged like a bat, they noted that it looked like, "Maybe what you would visualize as an angel."
Amanda: I was thinking that, too.
Julia: So, they speculated that the creature might be living in the vacant power plant building inside one of the huge boilers, noting that the other abandoned buildings housed many pigeons but that one did not, implying that the presence of the creature perhaps scared them away.
Amanda: Fascinating.
Julia: Yes. The article ends saying that the two couples were possibly going to go look for the creature again, but maybe not at night.
Amanda: Okay, okay. Okay.
Julia: Something at least. One of the wives was like, "We're going to go look tonight," and the husband's like, "I don't know about that. Not sure. Maybe not the nighttime."
Amanda: I mean, people in the 60s also like to have a good time, and I'm sure there were some cryptid lovers like us, but that's just, no, thank you.
Julia: So Amanda, not two days after, the Williamson Daily News reported a story about how eight people had now spotted the "creature" and that a dog might have fallen victim to it, and that according to a grave Digger in Kanowah County, he had seen it fly past him the weekend before.
Amanda: This is so fascinating. You normally don't see the first sighting of a thing. You're like, "Oh yes, there was a rumor and then it was seen," or, "There was a rumor and then it was photographed." But this is like a true origin story.
Julia: Yeah, absolutely, and the fact that it's documented in newspapers makes it so much more fascinating.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: So, according to Kenneth Duncan, the gravedigger in question, he saw the creature when he was digging his brother-in-law's grave saying, "It was gliding through the trees and was in sight for about a minute." However, Duncan was the only one to have seen the creature out of the five men who were helping him dig. So, like Malette and Scarberry's story, he too reported the birdlike creature had eyes that were like, "red reflectors and had a wig span of about 10 feet."
Amanda: Wow.
Julia: It's a big wingspan. It's pretty epic.
Amanda: That is a big wingspan.
Julia: Yeah. Meanwhile, about a hundred miles north of Point Pleasant, Newell Partridge had reported the disappearance of his German Shepherd, Bandit, which he claimed the creature was responsible for.
Amanda: Bandit, no.
Julia: So, the first signs that something was wrong was that his television started, "acting like a generator," which I don't know, means it was starting up and ...
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: But this is a new twist on the reports that seen before. We weren't seeing any sort of electrical interference or anything like that with the car that the first two couples saw. So then, his dog started acting strangely, and when he shone his flashlight outside into his field to see what was causing the disturbance, he also saw eyes that were, "like red reflectors." Before he could stop the dog, it chased down the creature and never returned, with no trace of the dog being found in the morning.
Amanda: Bandit.
Julia: Bandit, no. We're sorry.
Amanda: Gone too soon.
Julia: When questioned about the sightings, Mason County sheriff George Johnson theorized that those who had seen the creature had seen nothing more than a , "freak, shitepoke," which is a large member of the Heron family.
Amanda: Oh. Also, definitely would have been my AIM username if I knew about that when I was 10.
Julia: That's fair enough. However, the article was doubtful, claiming that a shitepoke couldn't possibly fly as quickly as the Scarberry and Malette report had indicated it had.
Amanda: Shitepoke shitpost is such a valuable thing, Julia. It's so challenging and so worthwhile.
Julia: That's extremely dumb. I love it. I love it so much. So, despite how ridiculous we find the word shitepoke and how silly it seems that the sheriff, Johnson, theorized that it could be just a big old crane-
Amanda: I think it's a great theory, but I find the name extraordinarily funny. I mean cranes look like people. If you pictured an angel person, in the way that we think about them, with the wings coming out of your shoulder blades, standing like your arms wide so the arms aren't apparently different from the wings. I see how a crane's body and long legs and wide wings could look like that.
Julia: Well, they're also saying that this thing was extremely tall and if I remember correctly looking at ... Actually let me just double check this real quick, but like a shitepoke is not that big.
Amanda: I was picturing a Heron. I did research into a shitepoke.
Julia: Yeah. No, it's a heron, but it's not huge.
Amanda: I guess I'm picturing it flying overhead.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Oh yeah, a green Heron. It says a little baby heron.
Julia: The height is 16 to 18 inches.
Amanda: Oh, that's a little bird.
Julia: That's not big enough.
Amanda: That's a little bird.
Julia: But the report about it being a bird was actually echoed in the Gettysburg Times not long after on December 1st, 1966. So, in a paper boasting first pictures of the moon's craters, buried on page seven, the Gettysburg Times reported that, "Monster bird with red eyes may be a crane."
Amanda: Yay.
Julia: This is also the first time that we see the term Mothman used in the papers. Up until now, they were using things like creature or monster. In the two week aftermath of the first reported sightings of Mothman, apparently the area had been overrun with people trying to glimpse the Mothman, to the point where volunteer fire department members had to help in keeping the traffic moving through Point Pleasant.
Julia: However, two of these firemen, Paul Yoder and Benjamin Enox were also supposedly witnesses to the creature, saying they saw what was definitely a large bird with large red eyes. The Gettysburg times then interviewed Dr. Robert L. Smith, who is an associate professor of wildlife biology at the West Virginia University, who claimed that the creature fit all of the descriptions of the Sandhill crane. Which is, to his credit, the second largest American crane, ad which according to the Times, "stands almost as high as a man and has the wingspan of more than seven feet."
Amanda: I don't know, just if you look at pictures of cranes flying, I see how silhouetted against the moon. It definitely has a humanoid shape.
Julia: Yes, and if you Google and look at pictures of a Sandhill crane, you'll see that the Sandhill crane has distinct red patches around it's eyes. Though that doesn't explain why they would reflect back in the dark like many people claimed to have seen when they sighted the creature.
Amanda: Right.
Julia: It's actually a very pretty bird.
Amanda: It looks extremely dorky when it's walking, like the first image on Google images. It's like walking and leaning forward and it's like it's about to fall. But when it's standing it looks beautiful.
Julia: It almost looks like the American version of an emu, but less creepy looking.
Amanda: Oh no, Julia, in the third image on Google images, there are two babies walking behind it and they do look like people. They do like Victorian Flanders.
Julia: Fair enough.
Amanda: Okay, putting that image on the Instagram.
Julia: All right, there we go. Perfect. Great. So then, Amanda, this is where the Mothman story kind of takes an interesting and weird turn that you wouldn't expect.
Amanda: Okay.
Julia: Because on December 15th, 1967, a little over a year after the first sightings of the Mothman, the Silver Bridge, which crossed the Ohio River connecting Point Pleasant, West Virginia with Gallipolis, that's probably not how you pronounce it. It's like Galli Poliess, Ohio.
Amanda: Oh yeah, can't even guess. Who knows how those Ohioans pronounce it?
Julia: Gallopolies. The second thing you type in when you type in that, is the cityofgallipolis.com, and it says Gallipolis, pronounced Gallopolis.
Amanda: Excellent.
Julia: Thank you. So, it connected Point Pleasant, West Virginia to Gallipolis, Ohio. That bridge collapsed.
Amanda: No.
Julia: 46 people were killed.
Amanda: Wow.
Julia: This tragedy was linked to Mothman first by the writings of Grey Barker. Barker was a writer who primarily focused on UFOs and is credited as the person who introduced the concept of the Men in Black in a larger scale to UFO folklore in the 50s and 60s.
Amanda: Oh, is that an archetype besides the movie?
Julia: Yes. So that's what ... The movie is based off of a comic book, which is based off of this archetype about men from the government coming and ... If you've read American Gods by Neil Gaiman, they have kind of the, I think it's like Mr. Stone and Mr. something or other. It's been a while.
Amanda: It makes a lot of sense.
Julia: But yeah, those are supposed to be like Men in Black archetypes who are very much part of the American folklore as we know it in modern day society.
Amanda: Wow.
Julia: Barker, in 1970, published a book called The Silver Bridge. He claimed to be the first researcher on the scene in the Mothman cases. If you read The Silver Bridge, the book is basically a mixture of fiction and nonfiction kind of implied to all be nonfiction. And the book has received both criticism and praise in presenting all of its stories and interviews contained within as fact. I think we can return to Mothman and The Silver Bridge, but first I'd kind of like to take a sidebar. Because Barker introduces another element to the Mothman lore with the introduction of Woody Derenberger and the story of Indrid Cold, who's also known as The Grinning Man. I will tell you more about Indrid Cold just as soon as we returned from the refill.
Amanda: You got it.
Amanda: Julia, we are sponsored this week by Better Help, which I had a call with my therapist last night and it was so nice to be able to sit in my own home, which is comfortable and lovely, and speak with this therapist who I've gotten to know and really has helped me over the last few months. And that is what Better Help does, it helps you get therapy outside of the normal nine to five. If you have a job it is very hard to find appointments or find the time to get away and go to therapy over your lunch break and then come back like, "This is a normal day."
Amanda: So, you can have video or phone sessions weekly with your therapist. You can also talk in between, so if something's on your mind or you want to make some notes and not forget what you want to talk about at your next therapy appointment, which I definitely used to do all the time, you can send it to your counselor any time of day that you want.
Julia: Yeah, one of my least favorite parts about doing therapy is that kind of weird uncomfortable moment where the person walks out of the session before you, and then you have to not look at them because you don't want to like disrespect their privacy, and then you walk into the room yourself but you're both know that you were there. That's horrible. And also, not a problem with Better Help.
Amanda: Absolutely. It's also often more affordable than traditional offline counseling, and they also have financial aid, which I think is super important. So, you can try Better Help, whose mission is to provide everyone with easy, affordable, and private access to professional counseling at betterhelp.com/spirits. That's betterhelp.com/spirits for 10% off your first month.
Julia: Yep, that's betterhelp.com/spirits.
Amanda: And we're also sponsored this week, Julia, by something else that's really great for you, learning new stuff.
Julia: Love to learn new things.
Amanda: I love to learn new things and there is nowhere else I would rather do that than Skillshare. They are an online learning community, of course, that are offering our listeners two months of free premium membership. Whether you want to explore new skills, deepen your existing passions, or just get lost in creativity and the hobby, you can get started on Skillshare. This week, I took a class by someone I really admire. I was so shocked and happy to see that Mary Carr, who is a writer and memoirist, is teaching a class on memoir.
Julia: Oh wow.
Amanda: Absolutely. It's called Writing the Truth, How to Start Writing Your Memoir, and I think that the recommendation she has and the exercises in these short and really digestible video lessons are really helpful for anybody. Whether you want to put a more personal perspective on the writing you're already doing, or start thinking about how to take your journaling and self-reflection to the next level. So if you would like to sign up for Skillshare and get unlimited access to all of their classes, go to skillshare.com/spirits2, that's the number two, for two free months of premium membership.
Julia: Yeah, you can explore your creativity at Skillshare by going to skillshare.com/spirits2 for two free months of premium membership.
Amanda: Thanks Skillshare.
Julia: Amanda, and we're going to be doing a lot of traveling in the next couple of weeks during February, and one of the most difficult things, I think, is when you're exploring a new city but you don't have time to really walk around and figure out where everything is. Sometimes you're stuck in hotels so you can't really go out. Those hotels aren't within walking distance of restaurants and stuff like that.
Amanda: Yeah, or convention center and all you have is an overpriced Dunkin Donuts and you're like, "No."
Julia: That is when I call upon DoorDash, because DoorDash brings all of America's flavors to your door. I like that new copy that they added there. Ordering is super easy. All you have to do is open the DoorDash app. You choose what you want to eat and your food will be delivered to you wherever you are. So, when you don't know what's around, having those options in front of you is always a great thing. And not only is your favorite pizza joint already on DoorDash, but there are over 310,000 restaurant partners in 4,000 cities, so you might find a new favor too, especially if you're out of town.
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Amanda: Australia.
Julia: ... and you can order your local go-tos, in which case you don't know what those local go-tos are sometimes and sometimes you just craving stuff like Chipotle, or in Amanda's case, always The Cheesecake Factory.
Amanda: Always, but with DoorDash you never have to worry about whether you can walk to the nearest Cheesecake Factory. You can let cheesecake come to you.
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Amanda: And now, let's get back to the show.
Julia: So Amanda, we're back from the refill right now. I've made some Earl Grey French 75s. Earl Gray for the Mothman.
Amanda: Appropriate for an 11:30 AM recording.
Julia: Of course. It's almost like a brunch cocktail.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: It's like a little bit of tea, a little bit of lemon, a little bit of sparkling wine. And then of course gin, but if you're not in the mood for hard liquor at 11:30 in the morning, you could always just leave out the gin.
Amanda: That's always an option. Is it recommended?
Julia: No.
Amanda: Not sure.
Julia: Live your truth, drink your gin when you want to drink your gym, but drink in moderation. That's all.
Amanda: Totally. Totally.
Julia: So Amanda, we are returning to the story of Woody Derenberger. Woody Derenberger was a sewing machine salesman, or so the story goes, and he was returning home from a day of sales. However, he was forced to stop his van when what he thought was a police patroller stopped in the middle of the highway. However, as he approached and stopped his van, it appeared that it wasn't a car at all, though Derenberger couldn't quite come up with a description of what it actually was.
Amanda: Interesting.
Julia: Whatever the vehicle was, a man exited out of it. A distinctly average looking man, despite the deep tan and the dark swept back hair. The most noticeable feature, however, was his smile. The man had a distinctly broad grin to the point where it didn't look natural. He wore a dark overcoat that covered a sort of metallic looking uniform that was green and reflected the minimal light of the road at night.
Julia: The man approached Derenberger's van and identified himself as Indrid Cold, saying that he was from a place "less powerful than the United States." Weird Cold War flex, but okay.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: He encouraged Derenberger to tell people about meeting him before returning to his vehicle, but not before mentioning to Derenberger that this would not be their last meeting.
Amanda: No, I hate it.
Julia: As he drove his vehicle away, Derenberger realized something, that none of the conversation had been spoken aloud.
Amanda: Oh, no.
Julia: That's good. I'm glad that your reaction is just on point.
Amanda: Oh, no. This also reminds me so much of the opening scene of Watchman, the new Watchman series, which is so fucking good. I think about it like twice a day from various like images and just memories that come up, and that is so terrifying.
Julia: Yeah, no, it's creepy. Indrid Cold also, I hadn't heard of the name Indrid Cold before I started researching this, outside of the fact that in the second adventure zone arc they introduce a character who is the Mothman who goes by Indrid Cold. So, the two are very much ingrained and we'll talk a little bit about why.
Julia: So, Derenberger claimed to have met Indrid Cold many more times and that Indrid Cold eventually revealed to him that he was from a planet called Lanulos.
Amanda: Oh?
Julia: There were other reports of a man similar to Indrid Cold made across the country. One such being in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and another two men claiming to have a similar experience to Derenberger the same night, though Indrid Cold's conversation and questions seemed pointless and perhaps not aimed at them at all. Kind of like implying that injury cold like exists outside of time and reality, and so when he's not lined up ... You still haven't watched the end of A Haunting of Hill House, I don't think, Amanda-
Amanda: No, but you're welcome to tell me.
Julia: There's distinctly a character who, after death, she kind of like is having conversations that aren't quite lined up with everyone else, until they actually start having the conversation they're meant to have in which everything lines up perfectly.
Amanda: Man, again, that is so Watchman. I wonder if Damon Lindelof is familiar with this myth.
Julia: Probably. I feel like that would be correct and I feel like American folklore and especially like post-50s American folklore, definitely is ingrained in how we view superheroes because a lot of the silver age of comics was during this period. So, the fact that we're creating these mythos and also creating media around it, it makes sense that they're very much ingrained within each other.
Amanda: Yeah, there's no US folklore outside of superheroes and there's no superheroes outside of the folkloric context of the society creating it.
Julia: That's absolutely true.
Amanda: Listen to Join the Party, season two.
Julia: So, Indrid Cold and Mothman are intertwined in Barker's accounts in The Silver Bridge. Barker claimed that Indrid Cold apparently followed and targeted several Mothman witnesses. The timing between the Indrid Cold and Mothman sightings, as well as the fact that they were both located so close to Point Pleasant, West Virginia, also keeps the two linked in lore and memory. So much so that the 2002 film, The Mothman Prophecies, credits the voice inside one of the characters' heads warning him about the upcoming tragedy, to both Mothman end Indrid Cold, implying that they're one in the same.
Julia: But speaking of The Mothman Prophecies, we have to return back to Silver Bridge and the accounts of John Keel from 1975. John Keel ran in similar circles to Grey Barker. He was a noted UFOlogist. He reported on UFO events and the Men in Black phenomenon that Barker first reported on. He often linked supernatural concepts like demons, ghosts and monsters to UFOs. In particular, writing this book called UFOs, Operation Trojan Horse in 1970, which went into greater detail about that theory. Basically implying that when we see demons or ghosts or monsters in history and in folklore, that's UFOs using technology in order to communicate or have relationships with humans.
Amanda: I see the logic. It's a interesting unified theory.
Julia: Yeah, no, and I think it's something about a lot of people embraced during this period of time and I think we also probably see a lot of that in monster of the week stuff like the X Files.
Amanda: And Scooby Doo, as so many pointed out.
Julia: Yes, as Scooby Doo.
Amanda: Yes, people. We watch Scooby Doo. We know it's long running. We know there's monsters.
Julia: We know, it's fine. So in 1975, five years after Barker's The Silver Bridge and eight years after the bridge collapse itself, Keel wrote The Mothman Prophecies, a supposed true story of Keel's investigation into the Mothman sightings, which culminates in the Silver Bridge collapse. Keel describes getting strange phone calls regarding the Mothman, including tales of mutilated pets, which I guess kind of ties into the story of Bandit, the German Shepherd earlier on.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: Keel lays out a peculiar scene in the book. An area in and around Point Pleasant, West Virginia, claiming many sightings of not only Mothman, but of UFOs and the Men in Black, all leading up to the Silver Bridge collapse. Some people, the day the bridge collapsed, claimed to have seen Mothman by the bridge just before it fell. Others are quick to point out that after the bridge collapsed, supernatural sightings of any kind in the area ceased for a very long time.
Amanda: Really? Is that the case?
Julia: Yeah. Well, supposedly according to Keel.
Amanda: Sure. I mean, I could definitely see it going either way, where it kind of pulls your mind into the here and now or maybe when your circumstances are tragic, you unconsciously dwell on bigger explanations for something that is just like an unexplainable tragedy.
Julia: Sure, and this association is why people were led to believe that perhaps Mothman predicted the incident and was trying to warn people, or that Mothman is a omen of impending doom. John Keel actually tells one tale of the story about a reporter named Mary Hyre, it's H-Y-R-E. Could be here, could be higher, who works for the Athens Messenger and who had been working with Keel regarding his Mothman investigation.
Julia: So, on November, 1967, she had told Keel, according to his book, "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."
Amanda: Oof.
Julia: So, since the release of Keel's book, Mothman's legacy has only grown. He has supposedly been cited across the world right before tragedy strikes. A Georgian newspaper, the country not the state, apparently linked sightings of Mothman in Russia in 1999 to the Russian apartment bombings of the same year.
Amanda: Wow.
Julia: Yeah. Recent years have seen an influx of Mothman sightings. One in particular. in 2016, had photo evidence that a man said he took on Route 2 in Point Pleasant. I'm going to send you those, Amanda, so you can see it real quick.
Amanda: I definitely see how that could have been like a clay figure that somebody sort of superimposed with toothpicks or something, but it's pretty, it looks like a flying Mothman.
Julia: So, apparently the man, he declined interview and declined to be identified in the article that I sent you, but he claimed that he recently moved to Point Pleasant for work and didn't know about the legend. So, seeing this thing, he just started taking pictures cause it was wild to him. And the fact that he took those pictures and didn't know about the legend, I think, kind of implies something towards the truth of it.
Amanda: That is pretty persuasive.
Julia: Yeah. And then, in 2017, Mothman was spotted in Chicago, 55 times. 55 separate accounts seeing Mothman.
Amanda: That's so interesting.
Julia: Yeah, it's kind of wild. I'm going to see if I can pull up ... NPR did a interesting spot on it called, The Case of the Chicago Mothman, which I'll link. Here's one that was reported on the Phantoms and Monsters website, and this was from August 21st, 2017. So they say, "We were watching and observing as the moon began its transit, when we heard a very loud scream. It sounded like squeaky truck brakes that squeal when you're pressing hard on them. At first we thought that's what it was, maybe a CTA bus or a big truck with brakes that needed changing or maintenance. We heard it again. This time it lasted about three seconds, whereas the previous sound was brief. I looked up to see a large object flying low over the docks that stick out in the Burnham Harbor from across the water. This object looked like a large black bat but also had humanoid features such as pronounced arms and legs."
Amanda: Dang.
Julia: This other one has video evidence, and this is also from August 21st. The woman says, "I was spending the afternoon on a rooftop and I saw something in the sky," and then linked to the video evidence, "fairly high up and fairly far away. It wasn't being buffeted about by the wind. It was moving slowly but not randomly." And hold on, I have video evidence for Amanda.
Amanda: Now, Julia. What are the odds that somebody made a flesh suit for a drone?
Julia: I hate that. Hate the thing that you just described there. It's not particularly close up and it's really hard to see any specific details, but it does exist. There is video evidence.
Amanda: I'm sticking with my drone flesh suit. I love that somebody in the background is yelling, "Ambah." Like Boston Rob, did you see Mothman?
Julia: Chicago Rob.
Amanda: Boston Rob, do you have a cousin whose wife is also named Ambah and you met on a seminal reality television show?
Julia: That was a good survivor joke, Amanda. Thank you for that.
Amanda: Thank you. Thank you.
Julia: Okay, so speaking of kind of evidence about Mothman, Mothman is now an enduring piece of American folklore, especially in West Virginia, and has become beloved to cryptid hunters and cryptid lovers all across the world. I think we would be remiss not to talk about the fact that Mothman, and a lot of cryptids for that matter, have become sort of mascots for the queer community and their association with being misunderstood and somewhat absurdist. There are two great articles about this topic, one is from Buzzfeed. I'll link both of them in the description of the episode. One is from Buzzfeed called, "How did a bunch of mythical monsters become queer icons?" And the other is from Autostraddle, which is, "Nessie is my girlfriend. What is it with queer people and cryptids??
Amanda: Yay. I remember a lot of these coming out around the Babadook era and I'm all for it.
Julia: Yes.
Amanda: What flavor of cryptid queer are you?
Julia: Oh man. I feel like it's almost like too basic to say Bigfoot, but like-
Amanda: No it's not.
Julia: Bigfoot's like it's up there for me. I feel like, and this is not like cryptid, but like Medusa, my type, for sure. I think a Bigfoot, not too weird.
Amanda: I do quite like Nessie. I do quite like Nessie, Loch Ness Monster, because I too feel like slightly too big for the body of water I'm in, a lot of the time. I just think that mostly not wanting to be seen but sometimes like rearing your head when you're having a really good like scale day is very into me.
Julia: I'm sorry, are we talking about cryptids we want a fuck?
Amanda: No. Ones we identify with.
Julia: Okay, nothing fit then, what I was thinking.
Amanda: I identify with wanting to just show off a little bit when you're feeling super cute, but otherwise like, "No one ever look at me."
Julia: Okay, that's cool. I feel like Alien, like UFO sighting Alien thing, like "Oh, I've lost time and also I just show up and hang out sometimes."
Amanda: Tight.
Julia: Yeah. I will link those two articles in our episode description. I think they're well worth a read for our listeners and I highly encourage you to check them out. Additionally, I also highly recommend checking out some of folklorist Jan Harold Brunevans writings on Mothman. I think they're well worth the read. You can also check out the Point Pleasant annual Mothman Festival, which has been running since 2002. And while you're there, check out the Mothman Museum and Research Center which opened in 2005, or the Mothman statue created by Bob Roach. If you do, be sure to grab that statue's butt because Mothman is, as we have learned, a very sexy cryptid.
Amanda: And let us know, tag us, show us your photos.
Julia: Tag us in videos of you grabbing Mothman's butt. That's all I want. That's all I possibly need. So Amanda, that is the story of Mothman. How you feeling?
Amanda: Amazing. I love that it's so well documented. I loved the tie-ins into kind of broader UFOlogy and the Men in Black lore, which I now know about.
Julia: Yeah, no, I think there's a lot to be said about reading The Silver Bridge and The Mothman Prophecies firsthand. I'm not going to say like, "Oh, these are like the actual facts about Mothman," but they did very much create the additional surrounding lore, the Mothman extended universe, so to speak. So, highly recommend checking those out if you want to get a full view of the kind of span of the Mothman lore, including the UFO sightings and the Men in Black and everything around that. Because I think that that period of time in particular, the 50s, 60s, early 70s, were very much focused around UFO culture, so a lot of the cryptid sightings of that time do kind of get folded into that as well.
Amanda: Totally, and the broader ideas of governmental experimentation and the Cold War and drugs and people flouting societal rules. There was just a lot of stuff going into that stockpot that created the beautiful broth that is Mothman.
Julia: I love the beautiful broth that is Mothman. I want to make it into a good, good soup.
Amanda: Oh, I know.
Julia: So yeah, Mothman, super sexy. Really a pinnacle of American folklore, especially during the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and just a hot, hot bastard.
Amanda: Absolutely, and also extremely localized, which I also find to be so fun. So listeners, if you have a extremely local cryptid as well as, of course, your extremely local urban legends, which we always want to hear about, please let us know. Go over to spiritspodcast.com and you can write us a little email that we can talk about in the future Urban Legends episode.
Julia: Yeah, that would be great. I want to hear all about your sexy local urban legends.
Amanda: Or non-sexy, or frankly, birds. I just, I love how many herons were in this episode. I just really like tall birds and I identify with them.
Julia: Amanda, just big fan of birds. Like CJ Craig, I, too, am taller than most people around me, and an ungainly bird.
Amanda: Wonderful, and with that I feel we can provide listeners to, like CJ Craig, stay creepy.
Julia: Stay cool.