What's the Deal with Mothman

ARRRGHH!!! One of those links had freaky creepy music! The Mothman film scared me SHITLESS and sitting here alone, in the dead of night, at my computer - was the last thing I needed!!!

But thank you anyway, because the information - once I muted my laptop - is very interesting.

Ooh, sorry about that, istara, if you mean my link to http://www.mothmanlives.com/. If it is any consolation, I saw the movie too, and the website’s soundtrack creeped me out as well when I posted it, a few minutes before midnight local time.

For a good explanation of the whole Mothman brouhaha, read the story about him called “The Mothman Visitations” in The Big Book of the Unexplained. Very good story. Scared me shitless for years.

Mothman is cool. Owlman is cool. Why don’t these aliens just come to San francisco? It’s not like anyone here would notice the difference.

Mothman was probably fake, i have not heard enough stuff on owlman to make a decision on if people actually beleive they saw him or not. (not that that makes him a real alien or not)

Ahh yes, ridiculing what you do not understand. How typical.

You’ll stop scoffing when Mothman comes to your house and starts circling around a lightbulb.

I have no fear of your puny Mothman.
I enclose a recent picture of my back yard. Do you see the moth that was sitting on the park bench?

Didn’t think so.

Well, this fellow identifies Mothman as a common barn owl.

With this in mind, I think we can safely conclude that Owlman is really a moth.

I’ve never seen the Mothman Prophecies movie, but I’ve read the book it was based on, by John A. Keel. It was originally printed in the 60s, I think, but the released it again when the film came out.

I have no doubt the book was better than the film.

I’m holding it right now. Envy me.

It’s a fascinating book. He interprets the Mothmen, UFOs, Indrid Cold and company as different manifestations of a single phenomena.

Reading through the book it looks to me like Indrid Cold and friends in thickly soled shoes, nonpeople as Keel calls them, destroyed the bridge themselves.

There were nonpeople fiddling with the bridge before it collapsed, you see. I’d look it up in the book but it gives me the creeps. Maybe when the sun comes up.

And yeah, they were screwing with Keel’s head. I can’t imagine how they would have shown it all in a movie. There are parts of the book I can see as a movie, but not the paranoia about former US Secretary of Defence Forrestal, the many strange telephone phenomena and so on. It just wouldn’t make a good movie.

The eight foot tall man with wings and glowing red eyes set in his chest had to make the movies eventually. Bridge collapsing and weird “aliens” sucking the innards from raw eggs makes good cinema, other parts of the book, important parts, don’t.

The first chapter, “Beelzebub visits West Virginia” emphasises how gullible people can be and how they often believe what they want to believe along with this own quest for objectivity. Doesn’t make good cinema, does it?

The TV Guide online review sounded very skeptical:

Two Words: Jersey Devil

I highly recommend Keel’s ***Disneyland of the Gods***, which is broader in scope, and IMHO was written by someone who is a kindred spirit to Cecil. (I talked to a guy who’d claimed to once had a book he’d written reviewed by Keel. “He said it was the best book he’d read all year.” The guy then pointed out that Keel had said this to him on something like January 4th after having just finished reading the book. :D)

I pull out my trusty Encyclopedia of Monsters by Daniel Cohen for illumination.

Chronology:

On Nov 14, 1966 two young couples from Point Pleasant Virginia saw a distressing sight. Standing on the side of the road was something, “Shaped like a man but bigger”, with large folded wings and bright luminous red eyes.

Even without a bloody hook hanging from the door of his car, the driver still freaked. He floored it and sped down Route 62. The Bird took to the air and followed them, despite the fact that they were pushing 100 mph!

Subsequent police investigations turned up nothing.

Luckily our intrepid foursome called a press conference the next day. As “Bird” didn’t seem to fearsome and “Big Bird” was already taken by the Children’s Television Workshop, some enterprising reporters settled on “Mothman” as a more suitable moniker.

As it happened, nobody described Mr. Moth as particularly moth-like in appearance: witnesses were typically struck by his beady little red eyes. It was six or seven feet tall, grey, and prone to loitering on the side of the road.

Oh yeah, thirteen months later, on December 15, 1967 a bridge collapsed. Experts pointed out that it was built in 1928, was unsuited for modern traffic and had been poorly maintained. But that’s what they always say.

I’ll cosign to that.

Well, it turns out there really was a Bunnyman, so I’ll reserve judgment on the Mothman thing until I see one.

The connection between certain States, a moth, and psychedelia becomes clearer:

Hence. Jimsonweed growing nearby gets inadvertently (?) added to dinner, which attracts moths and induces hallucinations. ERGO, Mothman!!!

http://waynesword.palomar.edu/ww0703.htm

I have to interject with a tiny hijack to give some kind of recognition to my tiny hometown that will never be famous.

The Avalon Motor Inn, where Richard Gere’s character stayed during his time in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and many of the rural scenes in the movie were filmed in my tiny little (less than a thousand people little) home town.

</hijack>

As to the likelihood of Indrid Cold or ‘Mothman’ or whatever being a real thing, I have no idea. Maybe something weird did happen before the bridge collapse. Maybe those weird things were related and maybe they weren’t. The only ‘proof’ that could possibly exist are the recorded statements of people who say they saw the thing, and even that is no more reliable than any other eye-witness testimony of an event that can’t be proven. Makes a hell of a ghost story though.

Ok. So Mohthman’s bullshit. Here I thought this was gonna be the one. :wink:

As a native West Virginian, I feel a need to come to my state’s defense. Multiple people on this thread have referred to Point Pleasant, Virginia, a town which, if it does exist, has nothing to do with Mothman. The relevant Point Pleasant is in West Virginia. West Virginia doesn’t have that many claims to fame, so we need to hold on to whatever we can get.

My humble apologies, TOO. I feel your pain. I too would be extremely perturbed if a fellow poster relocated the Jersey Devil to, say, Pennsylvania.

Mothman indeed hails from West Virginia. Mea Culpa.

  • flowbark, who spent too much time in the Garden State.