Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways. I don't you never know the story is
Speaker 1: of things we simply don't know the answer too. Hey guys,
Speaker 1: what's up. It's a Thinking Sideways the podcast. I'm I'm Devin,
Speaker 1: joined as usual by Steve, and I apologize for my
Speaker 1: lack of enthusiasm. It's not a real lack of enthusiasm.
Speaker 1: It's just that I have a cold that's waging war
Speaker 1: with my body right now. The creeping crud. It's the
Speaker 1: creeping crud crap in a tiny studio. I'm sure we
Speaker 1: all have it at this point. So I apologize if
Speaker 1: like my voice cracks or anything. I think we're gonna
Speaker 1: be okay. I'll take pauses for hydration if we need to,
Speaker 1: but just no, I'm sorry if I get overexcited and
Speaker 1: my voice just loses. That sounds good, Okay, Okay, everybody,
Speaker 1: let's just let's just do this mystery day. My boy
Speaker 1: just gotta sound a little funy because I'm working to
Speaker 1: put on a hazmat suit. We'll stiff the mic in
Speaker 1: there with you, don't worry. Okay. So today we're gonna
Speaker 1: do uh, something we haven't done in a long time,
Speaker 1: which is a cryptid Yeah, crypto zoology, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: go talk about the moth man. Okay, yeah, the moth person. Okay,
Speaker 1: this also listener suggestion like a really long time ago,
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, I think it was Tom Tom or Thomas, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which he has a long time, probably at least a year.
Speaker 1: I apologize it took us so long to get to it,
Speaker 1: but I and I know this came through recently on
Speaker 1: Twitter too. We've got people. Yeah, I guess the man
Speaker 1: is a very popular one apparently. Yes, so I wrote
Speaker 1: a nice little like lead in which I totally ruined
Speaker 1: with all of our other stuff. So I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: read it. Everybody, get ready, alright, colored by the fire, everybody.
Speaker 1: From November nineteen sixty six to December nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: or maybe as late as two thousand, West Virginia, in
Speaker 1: the area of Point Pleasant, kind of the middle of
Speaker 1: the western border of the state was plagued by sightings
Speaker 1: of a very mysterious kind that was good. Right, Why
Speaker 1: did I like just run over that it was good? Yeah.
Speaker 1: Mothman is perhaps six or seven feet tall, one standing.
Speaker 1: He can fold his wings and walk with this like
Speaker 1: weird kind of shuffle. People talk about it being penguin,
Speaker 1: like penguin, you know, but penguins don't fly, so maybe
Speaker 1: his pants are just down around his ankles. Maybe that's it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when he flies, his wings kind of just unfold. He
Speaker 1: has arms too, right, so that it's not he doesn't
Speaker 1: like lift up his arms and their wings. He unfolds
Speaker 1: his wings from his back and just shoot straight up
Speaker 1: into the air with great speed, is how they say it,
Speaker 1: and then levels out and goes wherever he wants. And
Speaker 1: nobody's ever seen him flap his wings exactly. And they
Speaker 1: say he can go like three hundred miles an hour
Speaker 1: or something, right, Yeah, I don't know how people are
Speaker 1: able to Yeah, I don't know either. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's one thing to be like, oh, I'm driving in
Speaker 1: my car and he's going a significant amount faster than me,
Speaker 1: but like that's crazy fast. He apparently he just like
Speaker 1: holds his wings out straight and goes spower. I guess
Speaker 1: ill and this this will come to play in the
Speaker 1: theories and later on and all of that stuff. Of course,
Speaker 1: of course, um not to be a tease, but he
Speaker 1: apparently can fly much faster, as Joe was talking about,
Speaker 1: than any kind of bird should be able to fly.
Speaker 1: They say it's like three hundred miles an hour, Like
Speaker 1: Joe said, Apparently, Mothman's favorite activity is chasing cars, which
Speaker 1: is how people are able to tell that he goes
Speaker 1: three hundred miles an hour. I don't know who these
Speaker 1: crazy people are that are like like a dog. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well maybe maybe it's a dog with wings. That would
Speaker 1: makes sense kind of, wouldn't it. And he also likes
Speaker 1: to try to tear the roofs off people inside inside
Speaker 1: they're just like they're moving anchovy tins. In some versions,
Speaker 1: he doesn't have arms. I know, I said he has arms.
Speaker 1: I think he has arms. Lots of the pictures that
Speaker 1: I've seen, the renderings I've seen, he does have arms.
Speaker 1: But some versions say he doesn't have arms, and he
Speaker 1: just has wings with like no palms or fingers or
Speaker 1: hands or anything like that. So he's like futilely trying
Speaker 1: is futileing the right word? Fueling? Futilely, I don't know,
Speaker 1: trying to tear the roof off of cars with like
Speaker 1: no hands or palms. That sounds funny to me, So
Speaker 1: it's not very smart. Yeah, So when the stories of
Speaker 1: him trying to rip car roofs off. I'm willing to
Speaker 1: like say he doesn't have arms, for the pure humor
Speaker 1: of it. I will go with that. All right, So
Speaker 1: here's how the story goes. You guys ready, really cuddle
Speaker 1: up to the fire this time? Do it? You guys
Speaker 1: doing it? I'm scared. On November twelve, nineteen six, five
Speaker 1: men who were digging a grave at a cemetery, which
Speaker 1: is already totally normal sauce a lot of Yeah, it
Speaker 1: does seem like a lot o work. Yeah. Maybe. Uh.
Speaker 1: They were in western West Virginia. They claimed to have
Speaker 1: seen a man like figure Floyd flying low from tree
Speaker 1: to tree overhead. And this is the widely accepted as
Speaker 1: the first sighting of Mothman. Do we have a time
Speaker 1: of when that was supposed to have happened? No, probably daylight.
Speaker 1: People don't usually dig graves at night unless they're robbing them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's that's my question because that will pertain later.
Speaker 1: But this, but all the other sightings that I've heard
Speaker 1: of happened at night, So this could have happened at twilight. Say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess it could have been the end of the shift.
Speaker 1: I can buy that, you know, maybe they were. It's November,
Speaker 1: so it gets darker. Yeah, okay, okay, I'll run with that, okay, okay.
Speaker 1: Then on November of the same year, two young couples
Speaker 1: who were doing total normal things in an area of
Speaker 1: Point Pleasant. Uh lovers Lane. Yeah, they were Lovers Lane,
Speaker 1: northwest northeast of that's actually yes, that's actually true. It
Speaker 1: was the t N T. It was known as the
Speaker 1: t N T Area, which is the site of former
Speaker 1: World War two munitions plant. They were hanging out there
Speaker 1: for totally normal reasons and then reported to police that
Speaker 1: they saw large white creature whose eyes glowed red when
Speaker 1: the car headlights picked them up, so they reflected they
Speaker 1: didn't glow. I'm just gonna go ahead and make that
Speaker 1: edit right now. As a reasonable human being, if you
Speaker 1: shine a light at something and it reflects that light,
Speaker 1: it's reflecting, not glowing. Yes, it's like a cat, yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: or any animal that or like just any animal. Even
Speaker 1: human eyes reflect light to some extent to some degree. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not red, but yeah, yeah, well maybe who knows, depending
Speaker 1: on the person. During the next few days, a lot
Speaker 1: of other people started to report sightings to volunteer firefighters.
Speaker 1: Um said that they saw a large bird with red eyes.
Speaker 1: A Mason County sheriff said that he thought the sightings
Speaker 1: were due to an unusually large heron that he nicknamed
Speaker 1: a shape folk. I don't know, I really I've read
Speaker 1: that a couple of times. I googled that word and
Speaker 1: I couldn't find anything. That's probably the PC way to
Speaker 1: say it tokey the origins. So harns do get quite large, actually,
Speaker 1: by the way, some of them do, and we can
Speaker 1: talk about that a little bit later. The largest herons
Speaker 1: get think it was sixty seven now sixteen, they get
Speaker 1: like a six or seven ft wingspan. Yeah, those herons
Speaker 1: only live in South Africa, so probably not that. But
Speaker 1: maybe let's get loose from or something. Possibly we'll talk
Speaker 1: about that in a minute. Contractor Newell Partridge, that's how
Speaker 1: you'd say that, right. Newell told this Mason County sheriff,
Speaker 1: whose name is George Johnson, that when he aimed a
Speaker 1: flashlight at the creature in fields nearby his house, they glowed.
Speaker 1: The eyes glowed like bicycle reflectors, and also said that
Speaker 1: there were some buzzing noises from his television set that
Speaker 1: were caused by this animal, and that his German shepherd
Speaker 1: dog definitely disappeared because of this creature. I'm going to
Speaker 1: guess this guy's TV antenna was made out of tinfoil
Speaker 1: too in the sixties. I'm guessing that's probably what it was. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: Wildlife biologists named Dr Smith from West Virginia University told
Speaker 1: reporters that he thought that all of the sightings fit
Speaker 1: the description of a sandhill crane, which is the largest
Speaker 1: American crane, which can get almost seven foot wingspan, and
Speaker 1: there have reddish coloring around their eyes. Bird may have
Speaker 1: it's that's not its typical migration route. But you know,
Speaker 1: birds wanders sometimes they aren't sometimes confined by rules. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you get insane bird too, you know. You know, so
Speaker 1: maybe he was a little nuts and just sort of
Speaker 1: like a lot, and maybe maybe his friends ditched him
Speaker 1: with migration self. And this is where having time stamps
Speaker 1: on these would be really helpful because and we'll talk
Speaker 1: about this when we start talking about the theories. But
Speaker 1: I have some problems with the idea that it's a heron.
Speaker 1: Given a lot of the time inferred times, I guess
Speaker 1: that these sightings were happening mostly I infer that these
Speaker 1: were happening at night, because everybody says, oh, when I
Speaker 1: shined my flashlight the eyes glowed. That's a reasonable Pretty yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty reasonable. And it's a lot easier to stake like
Speaker 1: a heron or a crane for you know, a guy
Speaker 1: with wings. You're not really going to do that during
Speaker 1: the days. And then this kind of tragic thing happened,
Speaker 1: this bridge called the Silver Bridge, which was in Point Pleasant.
Speaker 1: I believe is that the Ohio River was Mississippi knows
Speaker 1: the Ohio River. Sorry that I'm thinking about a different
Speaker 1: bridge collapse that we'll talk about again, Like, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was the Ohio River caused the death of forty
Speaker 1: six people. It collapsed on December sixty seven, and right
Speaker 1: after the bridge collapsed, Mothman sightings essentially ceased. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of I guess I should rephrase that. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna rephrase it to say generally accepted sightings of Mothman ceased.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of sightings since then, but almost
Speaker 1: all of them are brushed off as hoaxes or crazy
Speaker 1: people or somebody you know, falling for a prank or
Speaker 1: things like that. I'm about to say your very favorite
Speaker 1: word in this entire world, Steve upologistists. Supologist Jerome Clark
Speaker 1: wrote has written a lot about Mothman, and he says
Speaker 1: that for many years after the kind of initial events
Speaker 1: that first sixteen months, I guess it is about sixteen months,
Speaker 1: members of the Ohio UFO Investigation League reinterviewed everybody who
Speaker 1: had seen the Mothman or claimed to have seen the Mothman,
Speaker 1: all of whom insisted that their stories were accurate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there was a There was a woman named Linda Scarberry.
Speaker 1: You're welcome for that last name. She claimed that she
Speaker 1: and her husband had seen the Mothman hundreds of times,
Speaker 1: sometimes at clothes range, commenting, it seemed like it didn't
Speaker 1: want to hurt you. It just wanted to communicate with you.
Speaker 1: Most likely, otherwise I'd be a lot of dead people first.
Speaker 1: Maybe he engineered the ridge collapse. I'm sorry. I I
Speaker 1: really have a hard time when somebody is suddenly saying, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: he hangs out on my place all the time, try
Speaker 1: to chat. I really, I've got a discount that perspective.
Speaker 1: I agree, it's too easy. I agree. There's a crypto
Speaker 1: zoologist named Lauren Coleman who did a bunch of reinterviewing
Speaker 1: of witnesses that had been interviewed for a book that
Speaker 1: we'll talk about in a minute. He re interviewed a
Speaker 1: bunch of the witnesses and said that the sightings of
Speaker 1: Mothman kind of continue today, and that the mothman was
Speaker 1: a huge creature about seven feet tall, with huge wings
Speaker 1: and red eyes, and they could see the creature flapping
Speaker 1: right behind them as they fled. Sonesses are saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: and they say that that Mothman did flap his wings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a little departure there, which weren't in the original interviews.
Speaker 1: Apparently don't change over time. I got it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean the truth doesn't change over time. Really. There have
Speaker 1: also been a lot of sightings of cryptids that could
Speaker 1: be described in a very similar way to Mothman, just
Speaker 1: worldwide and in the I guess the most interesting way
Speaker 1: that these sightings correlate with the point pleasant sightings is
Speaker 1: that they harold kind of big disasters, for instance, impending
Speaker 1: doom for instance, Yeah, moth there were Mothman sightings or
Speaker 1: Mothman like creatures sighted pretty close to right before Chernobyl
Speaker 1: had the meltdown. Uh, there were Mothman sightings right before
Speaker 1: mine collapse in Germany. Two of the less popular incidences,
Speaker 1: which is one of the one that I was thinking
Speaker 1: of earlier, was that there was a mothman or mothman
Speaker 1: like Kryptid sited before the I thirty five bridge in
Speaker 1: Minnesota collapsed on August first, two thousand and seven. That
Speaker 1: was the one that went over the Mississippi Bridge or
Speaker 1: Mississippi River. Sorry, so that that bridge collapsed, and there
Speaker 1: were apparently reported sightings of Mothman or my mothman like
Speaker 1: creature around that time. As apparently there were also two
Speaker 1: pictures taken on nine eleven that were of Mothman or
Speaker 1: a mothman like creature. Okay, I gotta stop here. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I'm presuming that you've kind of gone through these
Speaker 1: photos that are of Mothman at these events. Have you
Speaker 1: seen these, Joe, They don't look like much. They they
Speaker 1: they're their way off in the distance and their blurry
Speaker 1: spots the bridge collapse. There's this protruding dark spot on
Speaker 1: a collapsing bridge, which I'm sorry it is probably a
Speaker 1: part of the bridge breaking away, not a creature hanging
Speaker 1: out on the bridge. Most likely. I don't want to
Speaker 1: poopoo this, but you know, this makes me think a
Speaker 1: lot of the watchers in that show Fringe is there's
Speaker 1: the guys who watch all these events, and so it's okay,
Speaker 1: so the moth men or the moth creatures watch all
Speaker 1: these events, and there the Harbingers and they're there to
Speaker 1: witness them all. I mean, that's that's kind of where
Speaker 1: this makes me think it's going. But okay, I can
Speaker 1: see how people do that, except none of the photos
Speaker 1: show anything to Yeah, well, I think you know, one
Speaker 1: of the interesting things is that it's it's actually been
Speaker 1: proven that um, the moth of the quote unquote mothmn
Speaker 1: sighting near Chernobyl it was just really made up on
Speaker 1: the internet. Definitely was totally made up, and I think,
Speaker 1: you know, many of the other ones likely were as well.
Speaker 1: And I guess it kind of that takes us pretty
Speaker 1: nicely into theories because I guess there are only really
Speaker 1: two theories here, and that can kind of spread into
Speaker 1: the rest of the sightings. It's either that the mothman
Speaker 1: is real or the mothman is not real. Now the
Speaker 1: Mothman again and some descriptions of them at least and
Speaker 1: most of them actually he doesn't appear to have a head.
Speaker 1: It's like he's got shoulders and then he's got the
Speaker 1: two his two glowing eyes are like kind of set
Speaker 1: in his chest. Correct. Yeah, the schwing shoulder thing is
Speaker 1: higher than than head level, I guess is kind of
Speaker 1: the way that the faces lower. That's why they call
Speaker 1: it mothman, right, is because it doesn't look like he's
Speaker 1: like a man with the head and wings that come
Speaker 1: out of his shoulders. It looks like his head is
Speaker 1: down on his body more like where you would put
Speaker 1: moth's head. Well. Yeah, if you look at a moth,
Speaker 1: their torso extends and then it actually ends, but you
Speaker 1: can't really tell that from a little bit of ways
Speaker 1: because their neck is the same size, and so they
Speaker 1: look like one kind of cylindrical thing with big eyeballs
Speaker 1: on it. Yeah, pretty much. And I can see like
Speaker 1: an owl too. Yeah. Now it's great. A great analogy
Speaker 1: is and the whole is a great analogy. Yeah. Do
Speaker 1: you guys wanna just go ahead and hop into those theories?
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of theories out there about mothman.
Speaker 1: Of course, as I'm sure all of you know, if
Speaker 1: you're even mildly into cryptids of any kind, Mothman's kind
Speaker 1: of the starter cryptid for a lot of people, I feel.
Speaker 1: But we're just gonna do some of them the thing,
Speaker 1: you know, of course, the top contenders. Of course I can't.
Speaker 1: We can't do all of them. And as I said,
Speaker 1: we're going to break them into two different sections. Either
Speaker 1: Mothman is real or Mothman is not real. Okay, and
Speaker 1: the lines do get a little fuzzy here, but just
Speaker 1: bear with me. Just doesn't matter anyways. Okay, the first
Speaker 1: Mothman is real theory, Mothman is real and an alien. Yeah,
Speaker 1: actually this is really interesting. So, uh, Lauren Coleman, that
Speaker 1: zoologist do you remember who went around reinterviewing quote, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: the crypto zoologist who went around re interviewing people was
Speaker 1: actually re interviewing people that were described as being interviewed
Speaker 1: in this book written by a man named John Keel.
Speaker 1: He wrote it in nineteen five. It's called The Mothman Prophecies,
Speaker 1: and it laid out a lot of investigation. It was
Speaker 1: battered deeply with a lot of personal theories. There was
Speaker 1: a movie made of it with Richard Gear. With Richard Gear,
Speaker 1: I know, to talk about Richard Gear, he's in love
Speaker 1: with him apparently. I don't know what's going on here, actually,
Speaker 1: Richard gear oh no, I know, but he'll has a
Speaker 1: lot of theories about UFO sightings. Apparently there were like
Speaker 1: strange lights seen around. Oh, I do remember something about
Speaker 1: lights in the sky at the same time. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he he thought pretty strongly that Mothman was indeed an alien. Okay,
Speaker 1: the alien theories my favorite theory. It is well explains
Speaker 1: a lot, I guess I kind of like the next theory. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's that Mothman is actually a mutated bird. This is awesome.
Speaker 1: So actually, it turns out that that you remember that
Speaker 1: TNT factory, the place or what did they call it,
Speaker 1: the ten or whatever that the Yeah, it was Lover's Lane.
Speaker 1: It was the old World War two munition storage area.
Speaker 1: So it's a hot spot, which, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: was evidently a bird sanctuary prior to that. Afterwards too,
Speaker 1: and afterwards, and also it was declared I don't remember
Speaker 1: exactly when, but it was declared a super fun site
Speaker 1: at one point it was. Yeah, I don't either, I
Speaker 1: don't remember where I saw that, but yeah, apparently it
Speaker 1: was declared a super fun where young teens in the
Speaker 1: sixties went to make out, so apparently since it was
Speaker 1: a super fun site and a bird sanctuary, if you
Speaker 1: just mixed those disgust it's just I mean, honestly like
Speaker 1: that it's that is an origin story legitimately, Like I'm
Speaker 1: sure that I've read that in a comic book somewhere right,
Speaker 1: Like I'm sure that's how Hawkman was formed. I'm sure
Speaker 1: of it. So the fact that this could be some
Speaker 1: kind of mutated bird over the years, like, it's not
Speaker 1: that much of a stretch actually kind of what hawk
Speaker 1: Man apparently. Listen, okay, I understand that he was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he said like he had a one liner that
Speaker 1: was like totally off topic just so that you could
Speaker 1: be in it to continue, I mean, okay, and to
Speaker 1: be fair, yes, I'm sure sure Joe is going to
Speaker 1: do the like naything like well that he never flapped
Speaker 1: his wings and like you take off really fast. Whatever
Speaker 1: Man could too, It's fine, doesn't matter. So the bird
Speaker 1: mutating into a really huge bird with red blowing eyes
Speaker 1: and so well, I don't think the thing is that
Speaker 1: I'm going to human beings. I'm not sold on the
Speaker 1: like glowing eyes thing. I really like I think all
Speaker 1: of the descriptions were that they were reflective, and lots
Speaker 1: of things glow red when you shine something. I mean,
Speaker 1: like cat's eyes do that all the time. We talked
Speaker 1: about that already. Yeah, so I'm not I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't think that that's so much of a problem for me. Okay,
Speaker 1: but now that But the trouble with the mutation theory
Speaker 1: is that it's that exposure to chemicals can cause mutations,
Speaker 1: but those those typically manifest as cancer, not as you know,
Speaker 1: magic properties and you know, like you know, sudden changes
Speaker 1: in your size. Excuse me, those chemicals don't automatically equate
Speaker 1: to getting the three eyed fish in the Simpsons. It
Speaker 1: doesn't just automatically wolf something new automatically evolved, but over
Speaker 1: over generations and decades of breeding in a bird sanctuary
Speaker 1: that also is a super fun site. So why isn't
Speaker 1: the Mothman actually at Chernobyl if that's the case, because
Speaker 1: it wasn't a bird sanctuary radiation but anyway, but but yeah,
Speaker 1: my logic is just full proof baffled. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: is a normal part of the of the of the
Speaker 1: whole process of evolution works. Just let me have my fun, Okay, sorry, sorry, sorry,
Speaker 1: thank you, but okay, Nick theory, Mokman is real and
Speaker 1: actually a different kind of cryptid or the other kind
Speaker 1: of cryptid, is it? It's hard to tell people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he's actually a transformer. Uh. You know a lot
Speaker 1: of people have suggested that Mothman actually might be a
Speaker 1: thunderbird from Native American war or or that, or that
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna keep talking here, or that thunderbirds were
Speaker 1: actually Mothman. I'm not totally clear on which went which way,
Speaker 1: but lifted from Wikipedia, the plural thunderbirds could shape shift
Speaker 1: into human form by tilting back their beaks like a
Speaker 1: mask and removing their feathers as if they were feather
Speaker 1: covered blankets. Their stories of thunderbirds in human form marrying
Speaker 1: into human families, and some families can trace their lineage
Speaker 1: to such an event. Uh. This of course would mean
Speaker 1: that Mothman would date to the sixteen hundreds, if not earlier,
Speaker 1: or that moth Man is a type of animal. It's
Speaker 1: like a like a classification, not one super shy creature
Speaker 1: that we rarely see. This the leopards and stuff that
Speaker 1: live the mountains that are seen once every thirty years
Speaker 1: or something is that what you're getting at. Or Bigfoot, Yeah,
Speaker 1: sort of Bigfoot like creature totally. Maybe Bigfoot got exposed
Speaker 1: to all these chemicals and humutiated. Maybe it was actually
Speaker 1: makes sense. Yeah, I'm not really sold on this whole.
Speaker 1: Like thunder thunderboard birds are pretty much accepted as lore,
Speaker 1: even by the people who perpetuate the myth. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, back at back, you know, eons ago in
Speaker 1: places like New Zealand, I think here too in the US,
Speaker 1: there were enormous eagles and things like that. I mean
Speaker 1: they were like in New Zealand, animals that were big
Speaker 1: enough to carry away a child. Well, I mean he's
Speaker 1: still kind of I mean, like California condors are huge still,
Speaker 1: and they're like not even that big compared to how
Speaker 1: big birds used to be. Certainly that existed, does it anymore?
Speaker 1: Would be used with Mothman in the sixties at the
Speaker 1: well and I was going to say, is that if
Speaker 1: we're going to go down the thunderbird route, that is
Speaker 1: a legend that was passed down in an oral addition
Speaker 1: for who knows how many hundreds of years. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like when we were talking about the progress into
Speaker 1: the New World and that there would be some prehistoric
Speaker 1: creatures like mammoths and stuff like that. So there's big,
Speaker 1: large creatures around and then the stories and they probably
Speaker 1: weren't as big as they were described, but of course,
Speaker 1: as with all good lore, it evolved. So it goes
Speaker 1: from a five or ten foot wide wing span to
Speaker 1: a thirty foot wing span over time. Is a story evolved.
Speaker 1: So I can see how that could be a story.
Speaker 1: I just have a hard time with rapping into the bothman,
Speaker 1: I agree. Uh so two things I don't I don't
Speaker 1: want to discuss, but I just want to say. Also,
Speaker 1: maybe it's maybe mothman is an angel, or also maybe
Speaker 1: a dude with wings, because that's different than an angel
Speaker 1: the angels from doctor who know what? The biblical thing
Speaker 1: kind of I would like weeping angels. Okay, so we're
Speaker 1: talking like like a scary old Testament angels. Are we
Speaker 1: talking like like it's a beautiful, yeah, penevolent kinds of things?
Speaker 1: Or it's a dude with wings, which again a guy
Speaker 1: in a flying suit. Well, actually, okay, that's may as
Speaker 1: well just talk about that now, that's actually dude in
Speaker 1: a flying suit or with a personal flight suit is
Speaker 1: in my Mothman is a hoax slash not real theory. See,
Speaker 1: I was going a dude with wings, actual wings, right,
Speaker 1: and I don't. I don't just hawkman, which we've already
Speaker 1: talked many Okay, so personal flight suit Okay, And I guess,
Speaker 1: like for me, I'm willing to jump down this rabbit
Speaker 1: hole to use a term that we use like all
Speaker 1: the time, apparently probably overused. We do. We definitely do, evidently,
Speaker 1: but that gets overused a lot. Evidently we evidently use
Speaker 1: evidently just evidently too much. I actually really like this
Speaker 1: theory if I can get over the like nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: the technology probably didn't exist, especially for like semi silent,
Speaker 1: pretty quiet flight. You know, that's the like kind of
Speaker 1: crux of this whole argument. Are you talking like what
Speaker 1: they referred to as the squirrel suit suit like wings
Speaker 1: with propulsion systems? Oh okay, just making sure not like
Speaker 1: the glider the guys you do the base jumps with
Speaker 1: the squirrel sites. This would have had to have a
Speaker 1: propulsion system because he took off, and also from the
Speaker 1: point it was silent. So some sort of or at
Speaker 1: least alien, Yeah, some sort of very expanding I'm thinking
Speaker 1: some sort of alien anti gravity technology something like that.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm thinking that probably it's alien origin and the
Speaker 1: military got ahold of the alien and mugged him and
Speaker 1: took a special suit and dressed up one of their
Speaker 1: test pilots in it. Yeah. I I just I like
Speaker 1: the idea that unknown technology flight suit totally testing people
Speaker 1: are jerks mess with people sometimes. Also, things like night
Speaker 1: vision goggles that glow red. They do have the red
Speaker 1: night they have the red lenses. So if you were
Speaker 1: to flashlights at some that somebody wearing those, they would
Speaker 1: maybe reflect red. I don't know, it makes sense to me. Again,
Speaker 1: we talked about this a little bit, but we'll talk
Speaker 1: about it's more very large heron Yeah really, I mean
Speaker 1: herons do get pretty big. They do, but they aren't
Speaker 1: super nocturnal, especially not super nocturnal like chasing cars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're not known for that. Actually. Okay, here's the thing
Speaker 1: about birds. The majority of birds have no night vision.
Speaker 1: That's why birds roost at night is they they can't
Speaker 1: see at night. So let's just suppose that there is
Speaker 1: a bird roosting somewhere and it gets disturbed. I've got
Speaker 1: a bird, and if it's dark and he gets lose.
Speaker 1: He freaks out and he flies around like a crazy creature,
Speaker 1: running into things because you can't see where he's going,
Speaker 1: and he goes for the one spot of light so
Speaker 1: I could see. Let's just let's just propose that there's
Speaker 1: one of these heron's and I can't remember what is
Speaker 1: the name of the heron with the big red circles
Speaker 1: around its side. It's that was a sandhill crane. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's a crane. Sorry I was calling it inherent, but
Speaker 1: the crane thing essentially, if it's something spooks it from
Speaker 1: where it is roosting or sleeping, and it's automatic reaction
Speaker 1: is to get away and fly. It then can't see
Speaker 1: where the heck it's going, so it's gonna go to
Speaker 1: a point of light where it can see to land,
Speaker 1: which would explain why it was following a car. Totally
Speaker 1: totally explain it. It was a bird, Yeah, it could
Speaker 1: have could have just been a really really huge owl too,
Speaker 1: because that was the other thing. Yeah, And they do.
Speaker 1: The other thing about owls that's like super interesting is
Speaker 1: especially like barn owls, Like if it was a really
Speaker 1: large barn owl, for instance, they have they have those
Speaker 1: legs that like look kind of like tiny men legs.
Speaker 1: They are, they're a little stubby, but they are also
Speaker 1: kind of thicker, or at least with all the feathers
Speaker 1: and stuff, they do kind of look like little dude legs.
Speaker 1: And they look kind of furry a little bit. And
Speaker 1: you know, I haven't done my research on how big
Speaker 1: certain owls get, but if it was a particularly large
Speaker 1: owl and people were set well, and if people were
Speaker 1: seeing it as a distance at a distance, and it
Speaker 1: just happens to be in that area, I think that,
Speaker 1: you know, the idea of it being a barn owl
Speaker 1: could make a lot of sense. They fly so silently,
Speaker 1: we're a great horned owl. They get even bigger. And
Speaker 1: then and for both of those owls, they appear to
Speaker 1: have no heads. Yeah, they're they're torso just segways completely
Speaker 1: up and they're sort of square, just like yeah, just
Speaker 1: like yeah. And another support for this series isn't a
Speaker 1: little known fact at that couple that was chased down
Speaker 1: Highway sixty two six they were driving a Volkswagen rabbit
Speaker 1: that he made it up. But it was good. It
Speaker 1: was good. No, I mean, you know, I like that
Speaker 1: theory probably the best. And then the last theory is
Speaker 1: that it was just a hoax. It was a hoax,
Speaker 1: and it probably was just a hope. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I think that I'm willing to say that, like that
Speaker 1: first sighting probably happened. They were tired, there were five
Speaker 1: of them. He was getting dark. They've probably been drinking
Speaker 1: a little bit. They saw probably an owl or something
Speaker 1: that was pretty large fly. They weren't used to seeing.
Speaker 1: That's kind of the time of year where things are migrating.
Speaker 1: It's totally possible a bird was migrating through there. They
Speaker 1: saw it go past the corner of their eye and
Speaker 1: one of them was like, oh, dude, you see that,
Speaker 1: And he's like, oh yeah, it looks super creepy. Looks
Speaker 1: like a dude flying. We should get out of here
Speaker 1: because it's creepy already, because it's dark and we're in
Speaker 1: a cemetery and we're digging a grave. Let's get out
Speaker 1: of here. They told they told somebody about it. These
Speaker 1: kids were out at the T and T Place or
Speaker 1: whatever they call it. Got also probably spooked by the
Speaker 1: same animals close enough, you know that, or they didn't,
Speaker 1: and they just like freaked themselves out. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's it's really easy for somebody
Speaker 1: to uh, either say hey, I want to be cool
Speaker 1: and have seen the Mothman, said oh crap, I saw
Speaker 1: them offman and this is my story. Or a bunch
Speaker 1: of teenagers or you know whatever, being jerks and going
Speaker 1: out and dressing up like the Mothman and creeping a
Speaker 1: bunch of people out. You know, it's equally easy that
Speaker 1: it could just be like a whole mix of a
Speaker 1: bunch of that stuff, and then you know, the rest
Speaker 1: is history, do you do? You know? The thing is
Speaker 1: what I never I expected to find in the research
Speaker 1: of the theories on this and the explanations and disclaimers
Speaker 1: and all of that, but I never saw mass hysteria.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean that's kind of the hoax idea, right,
Speaker 1: But but as as the you know, on the detractor
Speaker 1: side of the Mothman is real, I expect to just
Speaker 1: find something that talked about it was mass hysteria, because
Speaker 1: mass hysteria is typically a bunch of people in the
Speaker 1: same area all begin to believe very seriously that they're
Speaker 1: seeing the same event or experiencing the same thing, and
Speaker 1: that can go on for a while. And I could
Speaker 1: see you know, the story ends very abruptly with that
Speaker 1: bridge collapse, which is a huge shocking tragedy, which would
Speaker 1: really rattle that that continued thing that people were quote
Speaker 1: unquote experiencing. Well, that'shole time, that's the thing is like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like they lived in a very small town.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you if you've gone and looked
Speaker 1: at Point Pleasant on Google Maps, yeah, it's a really
Speaker 1: small town. Not a lot going on. And I could
Speaker 1: see why something like this would become kind of a
Speaker 1: fat not necessarily mass hysteria, but just something kind of
Speaker 1: fun to break that they break the monotony, and I
Speaker 1: can see where a lot of people would sort of
Speaker 1: get in on the act. And that of course it
Speaker 1: all ended with a class to the bridge because suddenly
Speaker 1: this whole thing was just knocked out of everybody's minds
Speaker 1: because you have this huge tragedy and suddenly this this
Speaker 1: this silly moth Man stuff just seem kind of pointless
Speaker 1: and stupid when you have this massive die off of
Speaker 1: so many people you knew. I guess my argument against
Speaker 1: the mass hysteria thing would be that to explain mothman
Speaker 1: sightings as mass hysteria would be the same as trying
Speaker 1: to explain most like UFO sightings as mass hysteria. Well,
Speaker 1: but but the caveat is that this is in such
Speaker 1: a small area, in a very small window of times,
Speaker 1: very small window of time, whereas UFOs tend to be
Speaker 1: spread over a wider geographical area. I don't have the
Speaker 1: sense that the sightings were so rampant that the legitimate
Speaker 1: sorry quote unquote, legitimate sightings were so rampant that it
Speaker 1: would be attributed to mass hysteria. I think it was
Speaker 1: a handful of people who and I guess to make
Speaker 1: mass hysteria be a valid theory, we would have to
Speaker 1: accept all of the reports during that time frame, which
Speaker 1: we're we've said we've kind of discounted a number of them.
Speaker 1: I don't think that many reports actually, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of them have been just sort of tacked on
Speaker 1: over the years. I would agree with that. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: with that, that's the end of the theories we've talked about.
Speaker 1: My favorite, which is the flight suit somehow also mutated
Speaker 1: bird thoughts. Yeah, I think it's a combination aliens and
Speaker 1: flight suit alien technology flight suit, Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1: I really I really buy into the bird theory. Whether
Speaker 1: it be a you know, a crane or an owl
Speaker 1: or whatever. I think that that's more likely it cool
Speaker 1: not mutated, just a regular bird. Actually, I think most
Speaker 1: likely that actually is probably really hunting a VW rebbit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can find links to some of our research on
Speaker 1: our website, which is thinking site was podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: You might be listen to us there. You probably are not,
Speaker 1: but you might be if you are, or you happen
Speaker 1: to visit it to check out the links. There's a
Speaker 1: little survey on the left hand right hand, right hand side. Obviously,
Speaker 1: I've taken it so many times that I totally know
Speaker 1: where it. It's, you know, just a little quick I
Speaker 1: think it's less than five minutes survey. Um. So if
Speaker 1: you fill that out, we greatly appreciate it. You are
Speaker 1: probably listening to us on iTunes, that would be my guess.
Speaker 1: If you are, leave us a comment and a rating.
Speaker 1: How other people find us uh and like us and
Speaker 1: become new avid listeners. You can also stream us on Stitcher.
Speaker 1: Maybe you might not be hearing this part if you're theoretically,
Speaker 1: who knows, We don't. We don't really know what's going on.
Speaker 1: Their apologies all around. If you are listening to Stitcher,
Speaker 1: and this is the first time that you've heard this
Speaker 1: little bit. Apologies all around you. We have a Facebook
Speaker 1: page and group you can guess and join us. I guess.
Speaker 1: We also have a Twitter Thinking Sideways without the G
Speaker 1: because we're so hip and cool, and you can always
Speaker 1: send us an email. If you are the moth Man
Speaker 1: and you do have fingers and palms, send us an email.
Speaker 1: That email address is Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: Speaking of email, this is something we haven't done in
Speaker 1: a while. We've been at about that. We just we've
Speaker 1: got to have to hire a couple of interns. We
Speaker 1: might actually have to at this point. You guys are
Speaker 1: sending up so much stuff better I might need to
Speaker 1: get better. Yeah, well we did. We talked about this,
Speaker 1: I think a couple episodes ago where I was just like, wow,
Speaker 1: you guys have just suggested literally every unsolved mystery that
Speaker 1: any of us have ever heard of. So cool, we're
Speaker 1: listeners suggestions for the next three years. Awesome. Anyway, this
Speaker 1: one actually was not a suggestion, um, and I'm really really,
Speaker 1: really really happy we got it for chains to the
Speaker 1: Bill Brennan episode Who's the Guy from Las Vegas from
Speaker 1: Las Vegans. Yeah, and it's from a girl named Rachel.
Speaker 1: And she says, hey, there, I'm sure you received a
Speaker 1: lot of email about this, but I just wanted to
Speaker 1: let you know that the Stardust sign is actually located
Speaker 1: in the Neon Museum in Las Vegas, So no worries,
Speaker 1: it's safe and sound. I highly recommend a trip to
Speaker 1: the museum if you find yourself in Las Vegas. And
Speaker 1: then she of course says that she loves our show
Speaker 1: and everything's perfect and wonderful in this world. Well, no,
Speaker 1: I'm really glad. Yeah, I had no idea that wasn't
Speaker 1: Neon Museum. That's awesome. So I bet that thing is spectacular.
Speaker 1: I bet, yeah, I would. I need to find a
Speaker 1: reason to go to Vegas, mainly because I need a
Speaker 1: reason to go to Vegas. Are you getting married soon? Like? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just do that? Yeah, that might have to be
Speaker 1: a well I'm I don't like to spend money, but
Speaker 1: that might be a bachelor thing or just like take
Speaker 1: your lovely fiance and like, don't spend money on a wedding.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying. I'm just saying I know she'd be
Speaker 1: totally into it. I don't think she'd be totally into that.
Speaker 1: That would not go over well. Well, we do have
Speaker 1: one other email that I wanted to share. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: so this is from Jason, and Jason said, you've probably
Speaker 1: heard this a thousand times so far, but I recently
Speaker 1: discovered your podcast. And he did what so many people do,
Speaker 1: he binge listened to the whole catalog. I like, that's cool.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of listening. Well, there's lots of listening
Speaker 1: to our stupid voices, Jason, Jason, I hope you didn't
Speaker 1: like neglect your personal hygiene or eat or anything like that. Well,
Speaker 1: Jason did say that, you know, of course, thanks for
Speaker 1: all the great work, which I appreciate and thank you, uh,
Speaker 1: and he really enjoyed it. But this is what I
Speaker 1: found so great is that he said that he's never
Speaker 1: really listened to podcasts, so ours was the first one
Speaker 1: of only two that he does listen to, which I
Speaker 1: I really I find that kind of a little feather
Speaker 1: in our cap. What's the other one? He didn't say,
Speaker 1: But you know what what I did like is, and
Speaker 1: just paraphrase this, is that he, uh, he likes stories
Speaker 1: like what we cover. But he was having a hard
Speaker 1: time finding someplace to explore him and talk about him.
Speaker 1: I guess he had tried to go on message boards
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. He got to web sluices, which
Speaker 1: kind of evidently, well, web slues gets a little depressing
Speaker 1: after a while, and he'd gone to some of the
Speaker 1: paranormal boards, but of course because he was trying to
Speaker 1: put up some alternate theories, they didn't like him so much.
Speaker 1: So Jason, we like you. You're totally welcome here and
Speaker 1: we are totally glad you you found the show, and
Speaker 1: thank you for sending this the email. Thank you, I
Speaker 1: gotta say, is careful kind of hard to slock to ca. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: you can't spend a lot of time and we should
Speaker 1: be careful. Yeah. Anyways, with that having been said, to
Speaker 1: steal a phrase, We're gonna get out of here. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna not flap my wings and fly away. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: shoot straight up, straight up in the air, and then
Speaker 1: I'm not just goodbye. Everybody who