Mothman & the Thunderbird
Creature Chronicles
Fortean Times
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Mothman
bob's pop culture place
On December 15, 1967, the seven-hundred-foot Silver Bridge spanning the Ohio River at Point Pleasant, West Virginia suddenly collapsed, sweeping scores of people into the water and killing thirty-eight. The facts behind this tragedy form a real-life horror story.
In the months before the disaster, Point Pleasant had been haunted by some strange monsters and apparitions, and mysterious aerial lights had traveled silently over the little town on a regular schedule. Homes throughout the area were plagued with unearthly noises and ghostly manifestations.
Author and UFO expert John A. Keel spent a year in Point Pleasant investigating the many bizarre events and his report on the so-called Mothman, a primeval monster with blazing red eyes and a pair of batlike wings, is a true tale of gothic mystery. For thousands of people in the pastoral Ohio River Valley who were haunted by Mothman, they lived in surrealistic horror for thirteen months. Haunted by the fearsome demonic "Bird" and besieged by legions of strange beings who seemed to spring from the fires of hell, this account is stranger than most science fiction.
Keel has investigated the entire phenomenon, including the mysterious "Men in Black" who were also traversing the Ohio valley during this period of time. His report investigates the possibility that the collapse of the Silver Bridge is related to the eerie manifestations that proceeded the disaster.
The Mothman Prophecies will jolt your placid preconceived notion of the nature of the universe and those who might visit it.
John Keel is the author of three previous books, his most recent being Operation Trojan Horse. He is an acknowledged leader in the field of UFO investigations.
Thus reads the dust-jacket synopsis of a most unusual book I came across several years ago while browsing the public library. Oddly out of place, it was, considering the seemingly Fortean content, in the general fiction section, its pulpish purple spine a magnet to the eye among the warmer tones of the more gentile works surrounding it. And prominent upon it a word — a name — that retrieved a dark memory which had not been accessed in a long, long time... "Mothman". A frightening swooping red-eyed creature from parts unknown whose invasion of a peaceful Midwestern river town and its environs over thirty years ago is today legend beyond that locale.
More recently, Agent Mulder's reference to the fabled Appalachian night monster in the X-Files episode entitled "Detour" (#5X04:11.23.97) reminded me once again how truly scary the dark can be to the youngster inside us all. Especially to the boy whose odd fascination with the thing compelled him to draw picture after picture of it as he had heard it described and as he himself imagined it to appear. Each sketch was more grotesque than the one before but every single one found a place on the walls of his room. Why do you suppose one so young would envelope himself in images of the object of his deepest fear? Perhaps to say, "If I know you well enough...you won't hurt me."
I was, you see, one of the "thousands of people in the pastoral Ohio River Valley (a region not all that far removed from both Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and Adams County's so-called "Little Area 51") who were haunted by Mothman." And while I can't claim to have seen the apparition, I knew some of those who did. Regular people, friends and kin, hard-working and God-fearing, with nothing in the world to gain by making such claims. I can attest to the fact that something beyond conventional explanation created a very real, very palpable fear in the community from which few seemed proof.
That no reported sightings of the creature ever occurred after the Silver Bridge disaster is a point of great significance. Not taking Keel's conclusions into account, it could be reasonably argued that the shock and grief brought about by the tragedy greatly diminished and utimately overwhelmed the phenomenon of a hoax-spawned hysteria. A plausable explanation, to be sure. But one unlikely to be accepted by anyone who was there at that time and in the midst of it all and dreaded the coming of night.
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