The Mothman: Fact or Fiction?

All right, listeners, make sure you stretch for this one. It's so good. Yeah, you have to stretch. Everything popped. Welcome to Scary Mystery Surprise, where we talk about scary things that surprised us around the internet. I'm Edwin, I'm Michelle. All right, Edwin, are you ready for a big boy? I am ready. Today we're doing I'm so excited. I already know. I already know today. Sorry, Edwin's ruining everything today. We're doing the Legend of the moth Man. Edwin's screen just flashed, my flashlight just turned on, and we're having some weird technical difficulties that I don't quite understand, which is weird because this isn't about a ghost. The Mothman is not a ghost cryptid. Maybe ghost are jealous. Maybe maybe I'm really excited about the Mothman thing because this is one of those legends, right that. It's one of the legends, truly, and a lot of people don't know a lot of info. I feel like we've gotten more than one request about Mothman, so I'm excited to do it. Just to set the tone, the year is nineteen sixty six. Edwin had just finished his shift at a local diner and was walking home on a dark, moonless night. Who am I wearing? Like the white cap and light? I think so you got the paper hat on and maybe your aprons over your shoulder. I'm imagining like a pink striped shirt on. I don't know why, okay, but you're a fry cook. As he trudged along the lonely road, he suddenly noticed something moving in the sky. At first, he thought it was a bird or a bat, but as he looked closer, he realized with growing horror that it was something far more sinister. A creature unlike anything you'd ever seen before was hovering in the air above him. It was a massive humanoid figure with wings that spanned nearly ten feet, and it had glowing red eyes that seemed to bore into Edwin's soul. Oh man, that went straight for it. I like that? Oh yeah, like laser beam eyes. The creature was covered in a thin layer of gray fur, and its razor sharp talons glinted menacingly in the dim light Edwin tried to run, but his legs felt like lead. You sometimes when you hear yourself talking and you're like, oh, it's good, It's like I'm acting. Edwin tried to run, but his legs felt like lead and he could barely move. The creature's gaze held him transfixed, and he couldn't shake the feeling that it was waiting. As he stood frozen in terror, the creature suddenly released a blood curdling screech that echoed through the night. Okay, like a sea horse. Wait horse, Yeah, just like a sea horse. I don't know why I have imagined that. I love it. We're keeping it. This is. After the screech, Edwin snapped to his senses and finally found the strength to run. His heart pounding, he could hear the creature's wings flapping behind him, getting closer and closer. He turned a corner and stumbled into an alleyway, hoping to lose the creature in the darkness, but the mothman was too fast. It swooped down and landed on the ground in front of him, blocking his escape. Edwin was trapped. The mothman towered over him, his eyes glowing with an otherworldly light. Edwin could feel its hot breath on his face. Oh no, I wonder if it smelled like coffee breath. The mothman was an intense coffee drinker. His breath was thick and hot with old coffee stank. Originally the line was he knew he was about to die, but I think it should just be coffee stank. Suddenly, the creature lifted its massive wings and took off into the night, disappearing into the darkness. Shaken to the corn Edwin stumped back to his house, his mind racing with questions. How did I buy a house when I'm just a simple fried cook? I had a diner. Oh yeah, it's nineteen sixty six. What was that thing? Was it real or a trick of his imagination? What did it want? And most importantly, was he safe or was the mothman still out there? Oh? Man? Wow? I survived a lot of people in Point Pleasant, West Virginia between nineteen sixty six and nineteen sixty seven had reported encounters with a creature they described as the mothman. A woman reported seeing a mothman perched on her porch. She said the creature was peering into her house and making a high pitched squeaking noise, and then I wrote, pervert. It just doesn't seem to fit it. That's why I was like a sea horse shouldn't be like, no, that's more pervert. No, it's just like a moth brobdy would squeak, right. I imagine it being big and then it making this like yeah, that's why. It's like this evil looking monster thing with wings and gargoyle type of thing. And then it's just like ee OOPSI oopsie say I'm a mathmetic. The woman's just like, ah, what, I'm going to close my blinds now. Another sighting took place in January nineteen sixty seven. Two volunteer firemen claimed to have seen the mothman flying near McClintic Wildlife Management Area. They described the creature as having a wingspan of ten feet in glowing red eyes, and in February nineteen sixty seven, four people reported seeing the mothman near the Ohio River. They said the creature was standing near a car and was inspecting it. Huh so he's a mechanic. He's like kicking the tires. He's actually interested in buying. But when they approached the creature, it flew away. Wow. But according to eyewitness accounts, the mothman is described as a humanoid creature with large wings like a bat or a bird. And it's about six to seven feet tall, with the wingspan of ten to fifteen feet. Its body is often described as covered in dark for like scales or feathers, and its eyes glow red or amber. The mothman's appearance has been likened to that of a giant owl or bat, but with a more humanoid shape. Its wings are said to be powerful enough to enable it to fly at high speeds and perform complex aerial maneuvers wow complex aerial maneuvers like watch Out Blue Angels. In hindsight, all of these sightings in Point Pleasant seemed to be building towards something, and on December fifteenth, nineteen sixty seven, the Silver Bridge that connected Point Pleasant, West Virginia to Galopolis, Ohio, collapsed during rush hour traffic. The disaster that claimed forty six lives, many of whom were holiday shoppers traveling to and from the nearby cities. The collapse was later attributed to the bridge's suspension system causing the bridge to collapse into the river. As many people reported seeing the mothman in the weeks leading up to the collapse, the legend is often linked to the Silver Bridge disaster. Some believers in the Mothman say that he was a harbinger of disaster, warning the townspeople of the impending tragedy. Others think the creature was somehow responsible for the collapse, through direct action or as a supernatural force. Many people continue to believe in the creature's connection to the tragedy, mainly because after the accident, sighting suddenly stopped right after that. Yeah, it's kind of like an omen, like a bad omen. Yeah, that's what people think is that all these sightings, like the Mothman was warning them. Well, how would people know that that's the warning. It's like that bridge is gonna fall, but I'm just gonna fly around. Why don't you get it. I'm trying to communicate with you with Haandsen. Those like the bridge and it looks like it's flying, but really is just like and it's doing this really acrobatic dance of the sky. That's like the bridge. It's writing it out in the sky, the bridge collapse, bridge collaps. Look, the moth Man has a lot of work to do. The mo Man is trying its hardest. So others believe the moth Man is benign. So there's the people that think it's linked to that tragedy, and other people just think that was a coincidence, and they think it's benign. Other people believe the moth Man is just a benign, otherworldly creature that observes humans and their behavior. Some even suggest it might be an extraterrestrial being or a creature from another dimension, which is plausible. It's plausible. You can always make that argument. But everything you could say, I'm one of those literally everything. Also, because West Virginia has a rich history of folklore and superstition, and many of the stories in legend passed down through generations, have their roots in the region's Appalachian culture. One popular theory is that the Mothman legend may have been influenced by Native American folklore. The Shawnee tribe, known to have lived in the Point Pleasant area, has stories of a birdman who was said to have supernatural plat supernatural powers, and could fly through the air. These stories have been passed down through generations and eventually became part of the Mothman legend. Possibly that makes sense. That makes sense, it would make sense. And then another factor that might have gone into the Mothman legend is that there was a bunch of UFO sightings in the sixties in the Point Pleasant area, which I just find so random. But yeah, many people in Point Pleasant reported seeing strange lights in the sky and other unexplained phenomenon during this time, and it's possible that some of these sightings were misinterpreted as mothman encounters. So it might not have been a moth man. It might have been an alien aliens. It's the aliens. Yeah, I'm telling you. People come up with these theories. And actually I just heard something about that maybe UFOs and all these ghosts and paranormal type of things there might just be one category, basically interdimensional. I think. I think I land in that camp. I think interdimensional beings is like where I land a lot of the time. It makes sense. You think, like ghosts are these like old fashioned people that used to live there, and then maybe the aliens are the future version where they're just like have all this high tech and everything. I don't know. Yeah, I just would say they're just not in our dimension. They might not be in each other's dimension, but they aren't supposed to be an ours and they cross sometimes. At least that's what my current theory is right now. It's good. It's a good theory, or that theory that you said with the like Bigfoot, which was the maybe, Oh did I say that. I don't know. I think you did. Big Foot. Yeah, he's an interdimensional being. Yeah, we're like or maybe it was just an experiment or maybe were experiments, like alien experiments and they're just around and they come up with creatures that are like, oh, we messed up on that one. It wasn't supposed to have wings, and it wasn't supposed to do this. It's supposed to have a head, but it doesn't. It's like they messed up with the put a little too much moth in it. Yeah, oh we got the moth balance wrong. We got it way, We're not doing this again. This is way too much. Also, it's super empathetic and tries to warn people. It's just a little too much. The Mothman legend may have also been perpetuated by the media and by people looking to profit off the story. After the initial sightings, the story was picked up by newspapers and television stations and quickly spread beyond the boundaries of Point pleasant So, which has led to the legend growing and sightings from around the world, which are all more recent, which is surprising. So in twenty eleven, a group of teenagers claimed to have seen a mothmanlike creature in Colorado. They described the creature as seven feet tall, with glowing eyes and a large wingspan of about ten feet, so the exact same description. Yeah, none of them vary that much. In twenty sixteen, a man in Chicago claimed to have seen a mothman like creature perched on a building near Lake Michigan. He described the creature as six feet tall with a wingspan of eight feet and glowing red eyes. And then in twenty nineteen, a woman in Florida reported seeing a large creature described as looking like something out of a horror movie, and she said the creature had glowing eyes on a week span of seven feet. Okay, I get it. But also, if he's supposed to be warning you of bad things that are gonna happen, how does he even decide anymore? What, like what bad things he's gonna warn about. I think the poor guy's exhausted. I think he's probably warning people about them locking their keys in their car or something. Poor guy is working overtime. Hey guys, I'm back, hee, do go on the bridge. There are some kind of notable hoaxes where people have created a mothman or faked a photo, But my favorite hoax was in twenty eleven a group of pranksters in Maryland created a fake mothman statue and placed it near a local bridge, which is like douchey hoping to fool drivers into thinking they'd actually seen the creature. Oh no, they said, a group of pranksters, but I'd like to call them little shits. Not good, not good. It reminds me of the Christmas decorators like this one guy put like a Santa Claus. It was a figure like a mannequin looking thing of himself, or like of a man hanging off of his zoop. People call the police because of it. Uh oh, that's so funny. That's so funny. That's terrible. What could it be that people are mistaking for the Mothman? And so the most commonly sighted animal that people think is the Mothman but then gets confirmed later is not is the sandy hill crane, a large bird with a wingspan of seven feet. Sandy hill cranes have distinctive red patches on their heads, which could be mistaken for glowing red eyes reported in some Mothman's sightings. They can also make loud, high pitch calls, which could be misinterpreted as Mothman's eerie squeaks. So well, that sounds like that's it. I want to look at a picture of this. What are they called again, It's called a Sandy Hill crane. Sandy Hill crane. That's a crane. Oh but if you see it like standing up. Yeah, if you saw it like standing up, maybe you have drunk, maybe at night or something. I know what a crane looks like. So I don't know if i'd ever be like, oh, that's a moth Man, I'd be like, no, that's a crane. What a cool crane? Huh? Like you look at it when it's just standing there, Yeah, does it tuck? Its hidden like that? So you can't know. I mean from the pictures that I see, you know, it's just hanging out. That's what I was imagining. If it does it's heads like that and you see the two spots or whatever, the red Yeah, that's what I was thinking, like, Oh, it could be like a vulture, because vultures have those huge wingspans and then they sit all hunch. From a distance, that could look like what a mothman is described as. Also, barn owls are suspected of being mothmen as well, because nocturnal birds with their heart shaped faces and large mighty wings. How big are they? They can get pretty big and they fly low to the ground. Okay, see that one looks more humany. Yeah, it looks like if you saw that at night, you'd think it was something that didn't have a head, especially if if its wings were out. Uh huh, you could see it be all necklace. It's necklace. If barn owls have no necks, God, that is creepy. Look how it does its eyes. Yeah, that would be creepy if you didn't know what an owl was and it was just looking at you like that, and then it did a tigh pitch like screech, because owls screeched too, that's right. Oh have you ever seen those big old bats? I don't know they're faked. I don't think those bats live in West Virginia, though, But barn owl surewood, I just can't believe these things exist. But the bats are the owls? Oh man? Maybe? Okay, but yeah, you're right. They wouldn't be in West Virginia right there, you would only see whatever animals you see there, you probably have more wildlife than here. But also that area they lump like in a lot of my research, they lump the chupacabre or supacabra and the Jersey devil and the man altogether because who has weird like cryptids that live in that area or have been spotted in that area too, which I was like, Oh, chup a cabra, why is that lumped in there? But it's just I guess the same genus of cryptid goodness. That reminds me. Somebody said or I saw this on Twitter about choopa. Just the word choopa. I like, as a's a movie title, but choopa means suck and it's coming out on Netflix Choopa? Like who authorized who checked this? Who was like, Yeah, this is a good idea. There could be a movie just called suck. Is a little boy like an animal? Yeah, you're right. That might not have been run by the right people who proved there might not have been anyone that speaks Spanish in that room white choopa? Is that does that mean something? Chupa No? Not in English? No, But what it would be the name. I bet it's the name of the creature. They just call him Tupa. I hope it's not. I hope we're not making fun of a Native American name or it sounds like a sacred I don't think I don't think so, but I guarantee you know, when the speak Spanish was in that room, that was like what's in the brainstorm room? And they're like, call what are we gonna call this movie? I know suck? And then we're gonna put a little boy on the cover. Anyway, Despite the tragic events in Point Pleasant, West Virginia in nineteen sixty seven, the Mothman legend has become a significant draw for tourism in the area. The town actually is an annual Mothman festival. It has statues, a five k run and a Mothman museum. If you need to go, I guess the festivals in September so nice. Actually, I am interested in going there because it's I know that place is known for the Mothman, and that's actually the only reason only I think, the only reason anybody goes there is because it is known for the moths Man, which is fascinating because they did the whole story like creates meaning out of meaningless tragedy. Like it's almost like a comfort like they were like, oh, this creature, you don't have to think about how sad the bread the bridge tragedy is. You think about the creature instead, which I don't know. Are you comforted by the thoughts of the Mothman? Is he comforting or scary to you? Scary? Scary? But also it's such a common like I've heard of that story so much in that character that it's one of those you like a base, like you always go to that one, or like you can branch off of it. But yeah, no, if I was to bump into if I were to bump into something like that, I'd be freaked out, no doubt. And I do believe in the whole omn thing. Yeah, it could have been something like that, and also it might have been something else, because it's not just us that talk about the Mothman and flying creatures and things. Other cultures mention weird creatures that fly around. We just did a story on somebody saw somebody flying around and at night it was like this, like you could hear the wings, and somebody had a ritual to get rid of those things tying a knot literally a shoelace, took it out of the shoe and it was like a person's grandma just said, did like a prayer tied a thing and they just really tightened the knot and the thing flew out of the sky, just crashed to the ground. What the fuck? Yeah, And like supposedly it's a real thing witnessed by several people. So creatures like that have that safe like level of okay, might be real, Like I don't go full bore like this is fake, but no, this might be real. So Mothman might be something like that. I don't know. I like that idea. I feel like the Mothman that has sprung out of the legend, that guy, he's worn out. I feel like that guy's working. I feel like the story you just told, that's like a legit creature that's in the night. And maybe the Mothman started out like that, But now this Mothman, he's like all I do is watch twenty four hour news cycle and I'm so depressed smoking a cigarette. He just he's like, how do I drinking his coffee? And he's just I can't even Nobody listens to me, how do I even go warn anybody? And he's just people think I'm a seahorse. I think he just needs some self care, maybe like a vacation or something. But he can't go anywhere without people freaking out about him being an omen. I don't know what he's gonna do. I always think of how people name these things, and like how much we develop just based on the how the story develops based on that story, Yeah, the moth man, But what if it would have called it something else, like the flying creature of Point Pleasant, like just the birdman of Point Pleasant? Because I always find moths dumb, like they just yeah, don't turn on the don't turn on your porch light because they'll just crash into it all night until they die. I used to have to just grab them. It used to be like, why don't you fly away? What are you doing in my hand? I could just kill you right now. Maybe there's been tons of moth men because they keep flying into lights, flying into lights all over the city. Actually, that's why we don't have moth men anymore, is because light pollution. So they can't find their way to warn us about tragedy because they keep flying into lights, the street lights. I'm telling you, we're killing everything, all of our biodiversity. Our cryptids are in danger. Folks, so disappointed in us. That's what we're all about, is bring that energy down. Not only are real animals being killed, but our crypto they're dying too. I was putting a pattern here in the show. Show We're just like, we're killing off our cryptids climate change. Just a dollar a day. Yeah, for a dollar a day, you'll save our cryptids and the planet. It's turn off your lights, guys. Turn off the lights for the moth man. Turn off your lights for the moth man. Imagine that scene though, Like you're in your room and through the window you just see like the moth man. He's just standing out. No, he's just hitting the window like a moth does. And he's just like flying And why is it bright? Let me in? And the woman's no, and it just closes the plow. I'm not letting you in. That's why they should have just called it something else. But I always thought as a kid it was just a rip off of Batman. That's fair. I think that one town point pleasant definitely, it's it should take advantage more of the Mothman like Bigfoot. I think they have. I literally cut down the paragraph about like the Mothman festival. They have a cosplay event, they have a statue, they have the museum, they have tours. Okay, see now that sounds cool because you painted it as like you have a museum and a five K and I'm like, okay, no way, I'm going to a five K. They like have a whole festival of it. It's a big deal. It's a very big deal. And I was like, I don't want to give this like tourism bump. This episode was sponsored by Point Pleasant, West Virginia. It was not. But yeah, see that's why when you said, oh statues, I just thought, oh, people are pulling off but their statues and they're just on the side of the road displaying them. It's legit, the icon of the city. They've made it their thing. Wow, Okay, I don't know. They certainly capitalized on their Mothman tragedy, though they certainly turned lemons into lemonade. I dig it that thing was the Mothman's one of those icons. To me that it's an icon, I felt like we needed an icon. Maybe I'm running five k's by that time and at least, as you know, maybe and you could do the Mothman five k. There you go, that's a role to aspire to in the Mothman. Really thick Mothman costume, so it's and your head is covered and it's just your eyes. It's like Edwin's really dedicated to running in those wings extended ten foot wings as a just bumping it to everybody. I'm just like a liability, but only other people who are also cause playing. So everybody's a ten foot wing span. It's just slowing you down, like at the parachute effect. The slowest five k' ever seen in your life. Be sure to rate and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, and tell a friend you guys, share it, Facebook, to it or wherever. Just let someone know if they want to listen to something cool and you want to be cool too, just share it. That's cool, share it. Send in your ideas. This was a listener idea, several listeners' ideas, So send in your idea. We love to hear them, and we'll do an episode eventually. Let us know. Let us know. It will surprise you. So anyway, what are we going to talk about next week, Edwin, I don't know. I think it'll be a surprise. I really don't know. Actually I thought it was a ghost or something. Well I hope it's ghost. See you guys. Bye,