Speaker 1: Strange Arrivals is a production of iHeart Radio in grim
Speaker 1: and mild from Aaron Nakey. For the best experience, listen
Speaker 1: with headphones.
Speaker 2: We had a variety of strange incidents that happened over
Speaker 2: and over again and never made any sense at all.
Speaker 2: One of my favorites is the phantom meter reader.
Speaker 3: This is where a.
Speaker 2: Man would knock at a door of a house in
Speaker 2: the suburbs and say he'd come to read the meter,
Speaker 2: the electric meter, the gas meter, and he would be
Speaker 2: dressed in the proper coveralls and all, and they would
Speaker 2: let him in. He'd go down into the basement. He
Speaker 2: wouldn't come out, and these people.
Speaker 3: After about an hour.
Speaker 2: They said, what the hell is he doing?
Speaker 4: Down to my face?
Speaker 2: And they would look and sometimes a man would be
Speaker 2: gone all together, never to be seen again, and even
Speaker 2: though there was no way out of his face at
Speaker 2: that basement. But the found of mena readers was one
Speaker 2: type of MiB that we had.
Speaker 5: I'm Toby Ball and this is Strange Rivals Episode nine.
Speaker 5: The monster in the.
Speaker 6: Igloos what is Battleship Gray five to seven feet tall,
Speaker 6: has a pair of red eyes two inches in diameter,
Speaker 6: which blaze like two lasers, wings which extend to ten
Speaker 6: feet when spread, and loves to chase automobiles. Give up
Speaker 6: if it's any constellation. Nobody else seems to know what
Speaker 6: it is either, but over one hundred people in Ohio
Speaker 6: and West Virginia swear that they have seen such a
Speaker 6: creature since November nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 5: These are the opening words to an article in the
Speaker 5: October nineteen sixty eight edition of Saga magazine titled Mothman Monster.
Speaker 6: The subtitle was Is it a bizarre behemoth from the
Speaker 6: bowels of the Earth or is it some winged night
Speaker 6: maarish visitor from outer space? One thing is sure. It
Speaker 6: has terrorized hundreds of people in Ohio and West Virginia,
Speaker 6: and its nocturnal visits are becoming more frequent and frightening.
Speaker 5: The author was an eccentric paranormal researcher named John Keel.
Speaker 5: Although he never saw the Mothman, he is the pivotal
Speaker 5: character in this story because, through his reporting and his
Speaker 5: book The Mothman Prophecies, he turned the story of a
Speaker 5: few sightings into a compelling tale that captured the public imagination.
Speaker 5: Because of Kiel's influence on how we have come to
Speaker 5: understand the Mothman story. It's helpful to be clear about
Speaker 5: the actual sightings around Point Pleasant, West Virginia, beginning in
Speaker 5: late nineteen sixty six, and then the way Keel related
Speaker 5: those events to create the popular legend we now know
Speaker 5: the Mothman sightings really began around midnight on November fifteenth,
Speaker 5: nineteen sixty six. Two young married couples identified in the
Speaker 5: Saga article as mister and missus Roger Scarberry and mister
Speaker 5: and missus Steve Molett. We're driving through a place known
Speaker 5: as the TNT area, about seven miles outside of Point Pleasant,
Speaker 5: West Virginia. This is John Keel from a fort Fest
Speaker 5: convention in the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 3: In November of nineteen sixty six, forty young people in
Speaker 3: a car and we're driving past this building. And he
Speaker 3: saw what looked like a very large man six or
Speaker 3: seven feet twelve next to this color plant, and for
Speaker 3: some reason, they were all he scared to death. They
Speaker 3: were all scared to death.
Speaker 5: Roger Scarberry told Kiel that quote. It was shaped like
Speaker 5: a man, but bigger, maybe six and a half or
Speaker 5: seven feet tall, and it had big wings folded against
Speaker 5: its back. Scarberry's wife added that it was those eyes
Speaker 5: that got us. It had two big red eyes like
Speaker 5: automobile tail light reflectors.
Speaker 3: Suddenly, boy who was driving at the accelerator and they
Speaker 3: drove out of here in a high speed, and looking back,
Speaker 3: this thing rose up in the air and followed their car.
Speaker 3: And they were going over sixty miles an hour on
Speaker 3: these jared roads and this thing was flying right along
Speaker 3: with it. So they drove straight to the police station.
Speaker 5: Roger told Keel quote, it followed us right to the
Speaker 5: city limits. Funny thing. We noticed a dead dog by
Speaker 5: the side of the road there, but when we came
Speaker 5: back a few minutes later, the dog was gone.
Speaker 3: Now you have to realize in small towns, teenagers do
Speaker 3: not go to the police station voluntarily. And the police
Speaker 3: were so convinced by their behavior that they held a
Speaker 3: press conference the next day and reporters from the local
Speaker 3: newspapers from Charlotte another citizen around there, came to hear
Speaker 3: this very bizarre story of this flying man.
Speaker 4: At that time, Batman was.
Speaker 3: Very popular on television, so the newspapers labeled this creature Mothman,
Speaker 3: and that was at the beginning of the Mothman paper
Speaker 3: I guess you call it.
Speaker 5: A deputy named Millard Halstead later remarked to Keel about
Speaker 5: the two young couples. I've known them all their lives.
Speaker 5: They've never been in any trouble. I took them seriously.
Speaker 5: They saw something. They were really scared. The TNT area
Speaker 5: where the two cups had seen the creature consisted of
Speaker 5: hundreds of acres of fields and forests that had been
Speaker 5: a site for storing explosives during World War Two. The
Speaker 5: explosives were housed in what they called igloos, domed concrete
Speaker 5: bunkers covered with a thick layer of earth for camouflage.
Speaker 5: Here's John Keel again, this time from a meeting of
Speaker 5: Saucer News in the late nineteen sixties, describing the TNT area.
Speaker 4: I said as twenty five hundred acres. There are hundreds
Speaker 4: of these igloes there. There are poor families living within
Speaker 4: this area, so it's very thinly populated. If the mark
Speaker 4: man wanted to live there not very many people with
Speaker 4: the batherin. I also discovered that during the Second World War,
Speaker 4: when they were building this ammunition dump, they built a
Speaker 4: whole network of tunnels in which to transport to high
Speaker 4: explosives from the arsenal to the various big glues. No
Speaker 4: one in the whole region I knew the location of
Speaker 4: these tunnels. There were no maps available. There were some
Speaker 4: entrances to some of these tunnels, but when I went
Speaker 4: into them, I found them full of water. But it's
Speaker 4: very possible that there is a network of tunnels down
Speaker 4: there that it is not full of water. I wanted
Speaker 4: to explore them more fully, but the few companies that
Speaker 4: I found I couldn't get anywhere. Perhaps it's just as
Speaker 4: well as I didn't, because I hate to be crawling
Speaker 4: through a tunnel. It needs something seven feet toll.
Speaker 5: It was, in many ways the perfect spot for a
Speaker 5: mysterious creature, massive and creepy. It's also the perfect spot
Speaker 5: to spook yourself if you see something unexpected. It's been
Speaker 5: repurposed as a nature preserve. You can walk around and
Speaker 5: into these igloes, which are of course empty.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 3: The next year there were over one hundred reports of
Speaker 3: this monner. Some of the people who before saying this
Speaker 3: time were not only adults, they were responsible adults, like bankers, locals.
Speaker 5: Keel went to West Virginia to investigate, and it's here
Speaker 5: that the distinction between sightings of the creature and Kill's
Speaker 5: reporting on a broader paranormal context begins to complicate things.
Speaker 8: Keel gets involved and goes down there and talks to
Speaker 8: the witnesses and establishes a relationship with this woman. Mary Hyer,
Speaker 8: who is a newspaper editor, reporter correspondent for the Athens,
Speaker 8: Ohio Newspaper, which is the closest major newspaper to Point Pleasant,
Speaker 8: West Virginia. I am Aaron Gullias. I am a historian
Speaker 8: and teacher and writer, and I have a podcast called
Speaker 8: The Saucer Life. The way the story goes along is
Speaker 8: you've got these sightings in West Virginia of the Mothman,
Speaker 8: overlaid with UFO sidings, and Keel through correspondents and visits
Speaker 8: and phone calls, trying to keep up with the story
Speaker 8: and seeing how it develops.
Speaker 5: Mary Hyer worked for the Athens Messenger, where she was
Speaker 5: both a reporter and the author of a column called
Speaker 5: Where the Waters Mingle. It became a kind of running
Speaker 5: clearing house of Mothman and UFO reports which were apparently
Speaker 5: happening with alarming frequency. After the initial sighting by the
Speaker 5: Scarberrys and molettes. Here's an example of her column from
Speaker 5: January twenty second, nineteen sixty seven, two months after the
Speaker 5: initial Mothman sighting.
Speaker 9: It seems that West Virginia is seeing its share of
Speaker 9: strange objects. The latest was by Tad Jones of Dunbar,
Speaker 9: who said he came upon the unidentified flying object on
Speaker 9: Interstate sixty four. Its descriptions like that of many which
Speaker 9: have been reported in many areas of the United States
Speaker 9: and around the world. One woman in Point Pleasant reported
Speaker 9: several weeks ago about seeing something like that, but it
Speaker 9: was in the air several hundred feet. There are, also,
Speaker 9: of course, the sightings of the monster and unidentified objects
Speaker 9: seen recently by people in Cheshire, Gallipolis, Eureka, and Addison.
Speaker 5: In addition to her newspaper work, she kept up a
Speaker 5: correspondence with Keel, keeping him informed of paranormal reports during
Speaker 5: the times when he was not in West Virginia. The
Speaker 5: Mothman story began to incorporate strange elements that have now
Speaker 5: become part of our culture, but were not widely known
Speaker 5: at the time. The story of a young woman named
Speaker 5: Connie Carpenter is a good example of how this worked.
Speaker 5: John Keel kept a spiral notebook the size that could
Speaker 5: fit into a shirt pocket. Under the date November twenty seventh,
Speaker 5: nineteen sixty six were the following notes.
Speaker 6: Harri Joe Carpenter, eighteen, near New Haven. Later that night,
Speaker 6: two girls saw a UFO on Route sixty near Saint Albans,
Speaker 6: ran into neighbor's house. Neighbor confirmed sighting boyfriend Keith Gordon.
Speaker 5: In his article for Saga magazine, Keel included Connie's story
Speaker 5: among many other stories of encounters with either the creature
Speaker 5: or UFOs.
Speaker 6: He wrote, Miss Connie Carpenter, a shy, studious girl of
Speaker 6: eighteen from new Haven, West Virginia, allegedly had an identical
Speaker 6: encounter at ten thirty am Sunday, November twenty seventh. She
Speaker 6: was driving home from church. She told me. When she
Speaker 6: saw what she thought at first was a large man
Speaker 6: in gray standing on the deserted links of the Mason
Speaker 6: County Golf Course outside of Mason, West Virginia, those ten
Speaker 6: foot wings suddenly unfolded. The thing took off straight up
Speaker 6: and headed for her car.
Speaker 5: The creature flew directly at her car before veering off
Speaker 5: and disappearing. Not Surprisingly, Connie was Upset by this counter,
Speaker 5: she didn't return to school for several days, and, according
Speaker 5: to Kiel, required medical attention. She claimed to get a
Speaker 5: look at the mothman's face, which she described as horrible,
Speaker 5: like something out of a science fiction movie.
Speaker 6: The next morning, her eyes were reddened and swollen, shut
Speaker 6: and itched fiercely. This condition persisted for over two weeks.
Speaker 6: In fact, her eyes were still red and watery when
Speaker 6: I first interviewed her. I had seen this odd ailment
Speaker 6: several times before, but only on UFO witnesses who claimed
Speaker 6: to have gotten a close look at the luminous objects.
Speaker 6: Cottie Carpenter was the only Mothman witness to come down
Speaker 6: with this eyeburn.
Speaker 5: This was the extent of Connie's experience with the Mothman,
Speaker 5: but she continued to experience strange events. In February of
Speaker 5: nineteen sixty seven, Connie married the Keith Gordon mentioned in
Speaker 5: Kills an Ope book. The newly weds moved across the
Speaker 5: river to a house in Middleport, Ohio. On the morning
Speaker 5: of February twenty second, Connie left the house to walk
Speaker 5: to school. As she walked, a large black buick pulled
Speaker 5: up beside her. The story was written up in an
Speaker 5: article and kills so called Mothman case book.
Speaker 6: The occupant of the car opened the door and called
Speaker 6: to her, Thinking that he was seeking directions, she approached him.
Speaker 6: It was a clean cut young man of about twenty five,
Speaker 6: she told me later. It was wearing a colorful mod shirt,
Speaker 6: no jacket, and had neatly combed thick black hair and
Speaker 6: appeared to be sun tanned. He spoke with no noticeable accent.
Speaker 6: When she reached the car, the driver suddenly lunged and
Speaker 6: grabbed her arm and ordered her to get in with him.
Speaker 6: He did not get out of the car. She fought back,
Speaker 6: and there was a brief struggle before she finally broke away.
Speaker 5: The implication in this story is that this incident was
Speaker 5: connected to her Mothman sighting. He's not a kidnapper trolling
Speaker 5: the streets before school begins. He's there because of Connie's experience.
Speaker 5: While he isn't in the garb that we would come
Speaker 5: to expect, he seems to be performing the same function
Speaker 5: as what would come to be known as the Men
Speaker 5: in Black. While Keel was not the first to write
Speaker 5: about the Men in Black, they play a prominent role
Speaker 5: in both the book The Mothman Prophecies and his narrative
Speaker 5: of the events around Point Pleasant, Connie herself would experience
Speaker 5: the more stereotypical man in black within the year. On
Speaker 5: December twenty second of nineteen sixty seven, Connie and Keith
Speaker 5: were visited by a person who Keel identified as a
Speaker 5: man in black type. This man apparently talked with them
Speaker 5: for about two hours, but Connie was unable to remember
Speaker 5: anything about the conversation, just the man arriving and then leaving.
Speaker 5: Kiel continues, for the past year there have been repeated
Speaker 5: poltergeist manifestations in her home, strange noises, objects that have
Speaker 5: been in one place for years, suddenly falling off of shells, etc.
Speaker 5: She has also been receiving many odd phone calls. Later,
Speaker 5: he writes of Connie, like everyone in New Haven, she
Speaker 5: has seen a number of UFOs in recent months. So
Speaker 5: in Connie's case as well as others, the mothman sighting
Speaker 5: is just one of a number of paranormal experiences that
Speaker 5: Kiel believes are linked. The book The Mothman Prophecies is
Speaker 5: full of Keel's drawing connections between different paranormal occurrences, and
Speaker 5: at least in one instance, an event that was tragically real.
Speaker 5: After the break, strange arrivals will return in a moment.
Speaker 5: Why do some paranormal stories have staying power while others
Speaker 5: fade from public consciousness. Sometimes events are just events until
Speaker 5: someone spins them into a narrative. For the Mothman events,
Speaker 5: there was John Keel, his book The Mothman Prophecies, and
Speaker 5: the movie that was made from the book, starring Richard Gear.
Speaker 1: A few months, people have been coming up to me
Speaker 1: and reporting strange things.
Speaker 4: Weird lines, strange phone calls.
Speaker 8: Who is this?
Speaker 4: How do you do when someone comes into your office
Speaker 4: and tells you they saw this in their backyard.
Speaker 5: The Mothman Prophecies, published in nineteen seventy five, doesn't read
Speaker 5: like most books on the paranormal. In fact, its style
Speaker 5: is more along the lines of crime or maybe Philip K.
Speaker 5: Dick again Post of the Saucer Life Aaron Gaullias.
Speaker 8: It's a fun book to read. It's very engaging. It's
Speaker 8: written in this first person investigative journalistic feel. He's a reporter,
Speaker 8: he's checking out the story. He's got his reporting contacts
Speaker 8: there in Athens, Ohio with Mary Hire and other people
Speaker 8: on the scene and the story of trying to uncover
Speaker 8: what's going on at the heart of these sightings that
Speaker 8: these young people and others have had of this flying
Speaker 8: creature with the giant red eyes that gets dubbed the Mothman.
Speaker 5: In doing this, Keel widens the scope both geographically and
Speaker 5: as we heard earlier in the case of Connie Carpenter,
Speaker 5: to include other paranormal and mysterious phenomena.
Speaker 8: It's a sort of weird, sprawling story that's hard to
Speaker 8: describe because it goes off on these little tangents. You've
Speaker 8: got the Mothman and stuff, but then you've got Keel
Speaker 8: talking about these men in black encounters that other people,
Speaker 8: not people in West Virginia have had, but these other
Speaker 8: people various places have had, and how it relates to
Speaker 8: similar encounters with strange men telling Mary Higher to stop
Speaker 8: looking into this story or telling witnesses to stop talking
Speaker 8: about this. So Keel is telling the story of what
Speaker 8: happened in West Virginia, but tying in specific things that
Speaker 8: are happening in West Virginia to the wider world of
Speaker 8: UFOs and the paranormal. He's telling the story that he's
Speaker 8: trying to tell about a certain time and place, but
Speaker 8: giving it a lot of context. In the wider UFO scene.
Speaker 5: This said times leads the reader far from West Virginia.
Speaker 5: For instance, there's a great scene of a man in
Speaker 5: black having difficulty figuring out how to eat at the
Speaker 5: legendary New York City club Max's Kansas City. This strange
Speaker 5: man is described as wearing an ill fitting suit and
Speaker 5: having bulging eyes what Keel calls thyroid eyes. He beckons
Speaker 5: the waitress over with long, tapering fingers. She offers him
Speaker 5: a menu that he looks at helplessly and then merely
Speaker 5: says food. The waitress thinks that perhaps he can't read,
Speaker 5: and suggests a steak, which he then brings to his table.
Speaker 6: She bought a mistake with all the trimmings. He stared
Speaker 6: at it for a long moment and then picked up
Speaker 6: his knife and fork, glancing around at the other diners.
Speaker 6: It was obvious he did not know how to handle
Speaker 6: the implements. The waitress watched him as he fumbled helplessly. Vitally.
Speaker 6: She showed him how to cut the steak and spirit
Speaker 6: with the fork, he sawed away at the meat. Clearly
Speaker 6: he really was hungry. Where are you from she asked gently.
Speaker 6: Not from here where world boy? Another put on artist,
Speaker 6: she thought to herself.
Speaker 5: But one of the novel's great conceits relates to an
Speaker 5: all two real tragedy that also marks the end of
Speaker 5: the Mothman sightings.
Speaker 8: He crafts a narrative story that culminates in this deadly
Speaker 8: bridge collapse right before Christmas in West Virginia between West
Speaker 8: Virginia and Ohio, and he links and there's some debate
Speaker 8: about whether or not this was a factually correct thing
Speaker 8: to do, he links the Mothman with the bridge collapse.
Speaker 8: Maybe not explicitly, but there's this implicit notion that the
Speaker 8: Mothman was a warning, the Mothman was a harbinger, and
Speaker 8: he's able to, like I said, craft this narrative.
Speaker 5: This is John Keel from his Fortfest lecture.
Speaker 3: In the Christmas season of nineteen sixty seven, in Point Pleasant,
Speaker 3: West Virginia, there was a bridge called a Silver Bridge
Speaker 3: across the High River, and on December fifteenth, nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 3: that bridge collapsed and it was loaded down with cars
Speaker 3: people who had been Christmas shopping for forty years.
Speaker 10: The Silver Bridge spanned the Ohio River laking Point Pleasant,
Speaker 10: West Virginia, with Caanaga, Ohio, laking those two points until.
Speaker 11: Five oh two yesterday afternoon. The Silver Bridge, so called
Speaker 11: because of the aluminum paint covering It was packed with
Speaker 11: rush hour traffic and holiday shoppers, all sitting and waiting
Speaker 11: on a red light. Then there was a loud cracking
Speaker 11: sound and one of the towers began to violently twist.
Speaker 11: Within minutes, three spans collapsed into the forty three degree river.
Speaker 10: At least fifty seven automobiles and trucks were spilled into
Speaker 10: the icy waters of the Ohio. Eyewitnesses said the bridge
Speaker 10: seemed to shudder and then drop into the water. Some vehicles,
Speaker 10: those in the center of the span, fell eighty feet.
Speaker 10: The massive steel superstructure crashed down onto the automobiles. Passengers
Speaker 10: were trapped on the twisted wreckage.
Speaker 8: I think that Harbinger connection is probably the weakest thing
Speaker 8: he does in the book. It's always has struck me
Speaker 8: as more of a narrative device that he thought would
Speaker 8: be good than anything else, Because you know, there's the
Speaker 8: Mothman doesn't talk, you know, so we don't have any
Speaker 8: indication from the Mothman that there's this thing coming. People
Speaker 8: have a sense of foreboding, but they're frightened by the
Speaker 8: Mothman things and all the other things that are going
Speaker 8: on at the time. I think the link is tenuous.
Speaker 8: There have been other alleged Mothman sightings since then in
Speaker 8: various places, and people have tried to link them to
Speaker 8: various disasters, and it always seems like a bit of
Speaker 8: a stretch.
Speaker 4: To me.
Speaker 5: It seems like kil is taking advantage of the proximity
Speaker 5: of the Mothman flap with the bridge collapse and superimposing
Speaker 5: some kind of connection. It's not surprising that people who
Speaker 5: saw the moth Man would feel ill at ease. That
Speaker 5: would seem more connected to the sending itself than the
Speaker 5: perception of foreboding. But of course the connection does make
Speaker 5: for a more compelling story. So what was the moth Man?
Speaker 5: The fairly obvious idea that it could be a large
Speaker 5: bird was put forward early on here at the Saucer
Speaker 5: News meeting. Keel makes the case that the bird hypothesis
Speaker 5: can't be right.
Speaker 4: The moths Man has pursued automobiles on a number of
Speaker 4: occasions and has reached speeds up to one hundred miles
Speaker 4: an hour, scaring the daylights out of the drivers. There
Speaker 4: is only one bird that can go anywhere near that fast.
Speaker 4: It's a certain ego, and it can reach seventy or
Speaker 4: eighty miles in a steep dive straight down if it's
Speaker 4: diving at some prey on the ground. But we don't
Speaker 4: know if any bird that could do that thing is
Speaker 4: a bird is see wordess bird. On Mothnam first appeared,
Speaker 4: a number of distinguished scientists hundreds of miles away decided
Speaker 4: that it was the sand hill crane. So I got
Speaker 4: some pictures of a sand hill crane, which is a
Speaker 4: large bird stands about this high, has very long neck.
Speaker 4: I took this picture around to all the witnesses of Mothman,
Speaker 4: showed it to them, and they said it wasn't a bird.
Speaker 4: It wasn't a sand hill crane.
Speaker 5: Despite Keel's objection, the sandhill crane has continued to be
Speaker 5: a popular explanation for the Mothman, but a new theory
Speaker 5: has been proposed by a researcher who agrees that a
Speaker 5: large bird is likely responsible for the sightings, but not
Speaker 5: the sand hill crane. His story begins with an invitation
Speaker 5: from a friend.
Speaker 7: One day. He said, Hey, let's go to point pleasant
Speaker 7: and check out the Mothman Museum. I said, sure, let's go.
Speaker 7: While we were there, we decided both of us independently
Speaker 7: had been to the Mothma Museum, but neither of us
Speaker 7: had been to the TNT area, So why don't we
Speaker 7: venture out there? And he said sure. My name's Daniel Reid.
Speaker 7: I've done a lot of things in my life. I've
Speaker 7: been interested in the strange and the utre and the
Speaker 7: paranormal for most of my life. I've taught on the
Speaker 7: graduate and undergraduate level, psychology, sociology, different types of things.
Speaker 7: So we drove out. We hoped that we were headed
Speaker 7: in the right spot. I had directions pulled up on
Speaker 7: my cell. We pulled in and we got out and
Speaker 7: started walking. Well, the minute that we got there, I
Speaker 7: looked up and I saw a blue heron that was
Speaker 7: up in a tree, and the blue heron sort of
Speaker 7: took off and flew.
Speaker 5: Great blue herons can be quite big, up to four
Speaker 5: and a half feet tall with a wingspan of nearly
Speaker 5: seven feet. As Reid and his friend explored the igloos
Speaker 5: at the TNT area, he thought about the sand Hill
Speaker 5: Crane explanation, and.
Speaker 7: So I thought, huh, I wonder how prevalent a sand
Speaker 7: hill crane is this area, and so that led to
Speaker 7: the research.
Speaker 5: It turns out that, while not unheard of, sandhill cranes
Speaker 5: are not common in this area. Great blue herons, on
Speaker 5: the other hand, are the sandhill crane and the great
Speaker 5: blue heron have similar physical attributes that make them plausible
Speaker 5: explanations for the Mothman sightings. Remember, the first sighting occurred
Speaker 5: at night in the Creepynt area, so a panicked misidentification
Speaker 5: was not surprising. After that story came out, people were
Speaker 5: conditioned to interpret any large flying thing as the Mothman.
Speaker 5: But what about the shiny red eyes that witnesses mentioned.
Speaker 5: A different explanation may account for these encounters.
Speaker 7: Joe Nickel has determined, and I agree that bard Ow's
Speaker 7: are probably some of the cases, but I think those
Speaker 7: are where eyeshine is seen. So Joe Nickel put forth
Speaker 7: that in cases where I shine that it was most
Speaker 7: likely people were seeing barn owls.
Speaker 5: Nicol had published an article in The Skeptical Enquirer right
Speaker 5: as the Mothman Prophecies movie was being released, identifying the
Speaker 5: Mothman as a barn owl. He later corrected himself asserting
Speaker 5: that it was a barred owl that was responsible for
Speaker 5: the sightings that referenced red reflective eyes.
Speaker 12: I once did a Mothman and rushed to print because
Speaker 12: there was a movie coming out. I made a big
Speaker 12: mistake and I identified it as the Barnell again, and
Speaker 12: then nobody caught anything. But I realized later with further
Speaker 12: research that I was wrong. It wasn't a barnell. It
Speaker 12: was a barred owl, and I knew for sure because
Speaker 12: it had crimson eye shine and that just tells you
Speaker 12: it's a barnell for sure. I even had a wildlife
Speaker 12: expert take me out one evening. My wife and I
Speaker 12: wore moccasins and went with him out into the wilderness
Speaker 12: and he knew right where there was a big, tall,
Speaker 12: tall tree with bar dowls, and I got to shine
Speaker 12: a spotlight up and see those like bicycle reflectors. Turned
Speaker 12: out on further research where Mothman was first seen was
Speaker 12: a bird sanctuary wildlife sanctuary with known bar dowls right there.
Speaker 4: And then in January somebody shot a large owl down
Speaker 4: there and so they which solved the mystery. It's an owl,
Speaker 4: and the owl of quested about this high it was
Speaker 4: a pretty big owl. But again the witnesses went around
Speaker 4: and looked at the aisle, and he said, no, that's
Speaker 4: not the moth man. The month man is from six
Speaker 4: to seven feet toll. He has two large red eyes
Speaker 4: two inches in diameter.
Speaker 5: Keel ignores the idea that the barred owl and the
Speaker 5: crane or heron are responsible for different sightings or different
Speaker 5: parts of the same sighting. Again, people were primed to
Speaker 5: see the mothman. Any eerie encounter would be interpreted through that.
Speaker 5: Lens Keel maintained that zoological explanations for the mothman were inadequate.
Speaker 5: In fact, he questioned whether the mothman was actually flying
Speaker 5: in the way a bird or I guess a moth would.
Speaker 4: Now all of the witnesses say the same thing. He
Speaker 4: has a wingspread of ten feet. And here's another little irony.
Speaker 4: And actually this size needs very large wings to support it.
Speaker 4: A human being, you or I, if we were going
Speaker 4: to make a glider that we could strap on ourselves
Speaker 4: and fly with that, we would need a wingspan of
Speaker 4: about thirty five feet. Now, mothman is bigger than we are,
Speaker 4: and he's got a ten foot wingspan, and he flies anyway,
Speaker 4: like the bumblebee. Some of the witnesses down there, and
Speaker 4: I'll say that they have heard the sound of some
Speaker 4: kind of motor sounds the object passes over their head.
Speaker 4: So possibly this thing is propelled by something.
Speaker 5: Now Kiel is speculating that the mothman might be wearing
Speaker 5: a kind of jetpack and not using his wings at all.
Speaker 4: The wings do not move when it's in flight. When
Speaker 4: this creature is standing on the ground, his wings are
Speaker 4: pulled back, and then when he takes off, the wings spread.
Speaker 4: As I said last night, no one has seen any
Speaker 4: arms on a thing. The wings spread, the thing takes
Speaker 4: off straight out. Now, most large birds need a running start,
Speaker 4: and this thing doesn't do that. It just goes straight
Speaker 4: up in the air and then goes straight across and
Speaker 4: pursues whatever it's pursuing. People or automombile are buying to
Speaker 4: his flying saucer to go away.
Speaker 5: Here, Keel has directly connected the mothman to the UFO sightings. Again,
Speaker 5: Daniel Reid.
Speaker 7: I think that there was a lot of well, I
Speaker 7: don't want to say hysteria, but there was a lot
Speaker 7: of imaginative people that were involved in looking for it,
Speaker 7: and so on and so forth. I think that a
Speaker 7: lot of the hype that came of this was a
Speaker 7: lot of imagination on a lot of different people's parts,
Speaker 7: and the stories conflated, many went into one and it
Speaker 7: ended up being what we have now.
Speaker 8: It spawned numerous documentaries, and you can say, well, the
Speaker 8: Mathman story was out there before kil wrote it. It was
Speaker 8: in the late sixties. Keell's book came out in the
Speaker 8: mid seventies. So why does Kill get the credit for it,
Speaker 8: Because he's the one who put the story out there
Speaker 8: and packaged it in such a way that it grabbed
Speaker 8: the imagination.
Speaker 13: But don't forget there's lots and lots of other equally
Speaker 13: baffling mysteries, UFO flaps and monster outbreaks that haven't had
Speaker 13: that sort of storytelling imput. You know that are being
Speaker 13: forgotten about. You know that there in the archives some way.
Speaker 13: You know they were reported in a local newspaper or something.
Speaker 5: Folklorist and journalist David Clark we heard from him last
Speaker 5: season about his research into the Rendolsome Forest encounters.
Speaker 13: But he needs someone like a proselytizer, like John Fuller
Speaker 13: with Betty Barney Hill, and like John Keele with the
Speaker 13: Mothman and like Arthur Shuppelwood for the Warmingster mystery in
Speaker 13: England in the nineteen sixties, to transform that into a legend.
Speaker 13: If you don't have that, then these stories fade away
Speaker 13: or become obscure mysteries that you know, turn up some
Speaker 13: in a book, some wear a few lines. So I
Speaker 13: think it's important to have that storytelling element, and effectively,
Speaker 13: all the best stories live on because they are good stories.
Speaker 13: It's something inside us that we react emotionally to those stories.
Speaker 13: That's why the legend of King Arthur has lived on,
Speaker 13: and the legend of Robin Hood. Whereas you know, Robin
Speaker 13: Hood was this medieval outlaw, but there's tons of other
Speaker 13: medieval outlaws who peoples have been long forgotten about. If
Speaker 13: I mentioned one of their names, that you'd say who.
Speaker 5: John Keel took the events of nineteen sixty six in
Speaker 5: nineteen sixty seven around Point Pleasant, West Virginia and turned
Speaker 5: them into a story whose tentacles spread from the Mothman
Speaker 5: sightings to other parts of this country and other phenomena
Speaker 5: occurring around where the Mothman was seen. In this broadening
Speaker 5: of the tale, we can see signs of Keel's beliefs
Speaker 5: about paranormal phenomena, beliefs that can be seen behind the
Speaker 5: work being carried out by government funded UFO investigators today.
Speaker 5: So what did John Keele really believe? Next time on
Speaker 5: Strange Arrivals.
Speaker 1: Strange Arrivals is a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and
Speaker 1: Mild from Aaron Manky. This episode was written and hosted
Speaker 1: by Toby Ball and produced by rima Il Kayali, Jesse Funk,
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Speaker 1: and Aaron Mankey, and supervising producer Josh Thame, with voice
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