Cryptid Compendium: Mothman
Welcome to Field Notes from the Beyond!
We’re taking a break from our series on Pennsylvania cryptids influenced by Indigenous beliefs to stick with the Mothman theme of the month. You can listen to us talk about Mothman and other flying humanoids on Beyond the Human this month, so let’s also take a deeper dive into it in the Cryptid Compendium.
Most people who think about cryptids at all know who Mothman is or have at least heard of it. The most famous case is in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, so let’s start there.
Case Study Zero: Point Pleasant (1966–1967)
For thirteen months, this small town became the epicenter of what many people call high strangeness, with numerous sightings of Mothman culminating in one of the worst infrastructure disasters in American history.
It all began on November 12, 1966, in Clendenin, West Virginia. Five gravediggers working in a cemetery spotted what they described as a “brown human being” that launched itself from nearby trees and glided over their heads.
Scarberry and Mallette
On November 15, 1966, one of the most famous sightings of the time occurred. Four people, two young married couples, including Roger and Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Mallette, were driving late at night near the so-called “TNT Area,” an abandoned World War II munitions manufacturing site officially known as the West Virginia Ordnance Works.
As they passed the North Power Plant, they saw two red lights in the shadows. Stopping the car, they realized the lights were eyes. A massive figure, “shaped like a man, but bigger,” came toward the door of the plant.
Roger Scarberry, who was driving, became panicked and spun his ‘57 Chevy around, speeding toward Route 62. As they exited the TNT area, all four of them again saw the creature standing on a small hill. It spread its wings and took off. Scarberry proceeded to speed back towards town, hitting speeds of 100 miles per hour. The creature flew directly above the car, matching his speed effortlessly. It did not attack, but did make a high-pitched sound that they later described as a “squeak” or a mechanical hum. It left them as they reached the city limits.
Bandit the Dog
On the same night, roughly 90 minutes before the Scarberry and Mallette encounter, Newell Partridge, a local contractor living in Salem (about 90 miles from Point Pleasant), was watching television when the screen went dark and made a loud humming or whining sound. His German Shepherd, Bandit, began barking outside the house.
Partridge went to the porch with a flashlight that he pointed toward his barn. In that area, he saw two red circles that he described as “like bicycle reflectors.” Bandit ran towards the barn. Partridge heard him snarl, then yelp, followed by silence. Bandit was never seen again.
Additional Sightings
Over the next year, over 100 sightings were reported in the area. One notable sighting was that of Marcella Bennet. While driving to a friend’s house near the TNT area, she saw a gray figure rise from the ground behind her car. She was so terrified she dropped her infant daughter in shock. She was, thankfully, able to quickly regain control of her daughter. She then fled into her house where she claimed she saw the glowing red eyes looking through the window. Many more sightings were reported and we highly recommend reading John Keel’s The Mothman Prophecies to learn more.
Other Strange Activity
Mothman was not the only high strangeness reported in Point Pleasant at this time. People in the area also reported strange men in ill-fitting dark suits who drove black cars. These “Men in Black” spoke in monotone voices and warned everyone to stop talking about what they had seen. This is one of the most popularized sightings of the Men in Black, who seem to intimidate people into not speaking about a variety of paranormal things.
Many witnesses also reported electrical anomalies, such as phones ringing with no one on the line, televisions malfunctioning, and inexplicable mechanical failures in vehicles. These are sometimes referred to as poltergeist-like activity. There are also a variety of UFO sightings, possible alien encounters (maybe meaning Mothman is an alien?), and strange lights.
The Silver Bridge Collapse
The climax of the events in Point Pleasant occurred on December 15, 1967. The Silver Bridge, an eyebar suspension bridge built in 1928, connected Point Pleasant to Gallipolis, Ohio. On this afternoon, the bridge was packed with rush-hour traffic and holiday shoppers. At approximately 5:00 PM, a single steel eyebar (Eyebar 330) fractured due to microscopic stress corrosion cracking. The failure was instantaneous and the bridge collapsed. Within seconds, 31 vehicles plunged into the water and 46 people died.
Charlene Wood, a 21-year-old survivor, remembers driving across the bridge when she felt it shudder. In her rearview mirror, she saw the structure folding. She described the bridge “slithering like a snake” as it twisted and fell into the freezing waters of the Ohio River.
The sightings of the Mothman stopped immediately after the collapse, leading many people to infer that it had been warning them of the collapse. Whether this is actually true or not is up for debate.
Other Notable Mothman Sightings
In the decades since Point Pleasant, there have been many other sightings of Mothman or similar creatures. It appears to be a global phenomenon. Some people point to a recurrent theme that it manifests when human technology is about to fail with catastrophic consequences. This is not a proven fact nor is it something for which there is true consensus in the paranormal community, but it is often reported and there is some evidence to potentially support the idea.
The Black Bird of Chernobyl (1986)
In April 1986, rumors began to circulate among the workers of the V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine (then USSR). In the days leading up to the explosion of Reactor 4, workers in the control room and on the grounds reported seeing a “large, headless black bird” with a 20-foot wingspan and red eyes flying over the cooling towers.
Those who saw the creature reportedly had horrific nightmares and received threatening phone calls to not talk about it. From the Men in Black?
On the morning of April 26, just after the reactor exploded, workers who survived the initial blast claimed to see the black shape circling slowly through the radioactive plume rising from the shattered core. It became known in local folklore as the “Black Bird of Chernobyl.”
Fukushima (2011)
While less documented than Chernobyl, stories emerged following the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan. In the chaos surrounding the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, survivors and emergency responders saw something flying over the area. Descriptions of this creature were more wraith-like than the Point Pleasant descriptions, with witnesses reporting a dark, winged silhouette that sat on top of the debris from the disaster, watching.
Chicago (2011, 2017–Present)
Not all sightings of Mothman seem to tie to disasters. The most significant sightings that don’t seem to tie into a disaster are the recent sightings in Chicago, Illinois. We sincerely hope that they are not leading up to something.
Beginning in 2011 and increasing in frequency in 2017, the Lake Michigan region has had over 100 reported sightings of a winged humanoid. In April 2017, a woman walking her dog in Oz Park on the North Side of Chicago witnessed what she described as a large, bat-like creature standing on the path in front of her. It did not interact with her, but rather spread its wings and flew vertically into the night sky. John Amitrano, a security guard at a club called The Owl, saw a “pterodactyl-like” creature flying beneath a plane in what he claimed was an unnatural way.
Descriptions of Mothman
While there are some variations to descriptions of Mothamn, they are actually fairly uniform. It is consistently described as bipedal and humanoid, standing between six and seven feet tall, though there are some descriptions that have a somewhat taller height. It has a broad, muscular frame, sometimes likened to a bodybuilder, sometimes a heavy-set man, distinguishing it from the typical structure of known birds.
It is described as having a neckless, sloping upper torso where the head should be, but no distinct head. The face appears to be situated directly on the upper chest or in the shoulder region. The eyes are the defining trait. They are massive, around two inches in diameter, and set six to eight inches apart. They glow red on their own, not from shining a light on them, suggesting that they are bioluminescent. Witnesses frequently report a hypnotic or paralytic effect if they lock eyes with it.
The wings are not described as feathered, but rather membraneous, leathery, and bat-like. They fold against the back when not in use and span 10 to 15 feet when extended. The flight mechanics are not what would be expected from a bird or similar creature. Mothman is reported to rise vertically, sometimes described as similar to a helicopter rising, without a running takeoff. When flying, it seems to glide without flapping its wings, achieving speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour.
What is Mothman?
There are three primary theories, including a misidentified bird, a curse that is specific to Point Pleasant, and an ultraterrestrial or interdimensional being.
Many skeptics point to the Sandhill Crane as a possibility. These birds can stand 4-5 feet tall and have a large wingspan. However, cranes do not have glowing red eyes, do not glide at 100 mph without flapping, and do not possess the bulk described by witnesses. Others say the Great Horned Owl is a possibility, but they, too, lack the specific characteristic attributed to Mothman.
Local folklore in Point Pleasant attributes Mothman to a curse placed by Shawnee Chief Cornstalk. Betrayed and murdered by American soldiers in 1777, Cornstalk is said to have cursed the land for 200 years. The Mothman, in this view, is a spiritual manifestation of that vengeance, sometimes called a demon summoned to oversee destruction of the town.
John Keel (and others) suggests Mothman is not an animal or an alien, but an entity from a dimension that overlaps our own. It is a “window area” phenomenon. The creature appears to exist outside of our time, perhaps perceiving the Silver Bridge collapse before it happened. Its presence was not to cause the disaster, but to witness it, drawn to the high energy of impending death.
We’re not sure what Mothman is, but it’s really interesting to think about! Tune in to Beyond the Human for more!
For Further Information:
John Keel’s The Mothman Prophecies:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780765334985/themothmanprophecies/
A description of the Silber Bridge collapse from the perspective of people who build bridges:
https://theconstructor.org/structures/point-pleasant-bridge-disaster/299049/
The Smithsonian’s take:
https://folklife.si.edu/magazine/mothman-point-pleasant-west-virginia
Real History:
Coming Up Next
Next in Field Notes from the Beyond: Another installment of Defining the Paranormal.
This Month on Beyond the Human: Mothman
Next Month on Beyond the Human: Xenoanthroplogy
Who are we?
We are a group of scholars interested in understanding paranormal, supernatural, and anomalous phenomena from an academic perspective. We want to document and validate experiences people have and study them in a rigorous way to bring credibility to these phenomena. Join us for our monthly podcast Beyond the Human and follow us on Spotify, Instagram, and Patreon to learn more about who we are, our methods, and what we want to learn!