The Mothman Prophecies

[The Harlequin]

[font=gothic][color=crimson]Anyone who has seen this most excellent movie will know that it is based on a true story. To satisfy a curiousity, does anyone happen to have anymore information on any other reported sightings of the Mothman?[/font][/color]

[Amphion]

I dunno about Mothman, batboy either. I dont see how there so bad, their nothing a 9mm cant stop.

[The Harlequin]

[color=crimson][font=gothic]Perhaps I should have mentioned that I'd like remotely intelligent replies...[/font][/color]

[Amphion]

Inteligence? This coming from one who beleives in the National Inquirer crap...

Excuse me, I will leave you and your mothman alone...

[Fall]

O.O

Eh, well I don't think there'd be [i]much[/i] info about the mothman around, though I've tried searching for info, and got nothing. -.- Still, it's an interesting story....

I'll look for more info, as I'm interested in this stuff aswell.

[Ravenstorture]

[color=darkgreen][font=gothic]Information from Prarie Ghosts:
The weird events connected to the Mothman began on November 12, 1966 near Clendenin, West Virginia. Five men were in the local cemetery that day, preparing a grave for a burial, when something that looked like a "brown human being" lifted off from some nearby trees and flew over their heads. The men were baffled. It did not appear to be a bird, but more like a man with wings. A few days later, more sightings would take place, electrifying the entire region.
Late in the evening of November 15, two young married couples had a very strange encounter as they drove past an abandoned TNT plant near Point Pleasant, West Virginia. The couples spotted two large eyes that were attached to something that was "shaped like a man, but bigger, maybe six or seven feet tall. And it had big wings folded against its back". When the creature moved toward the plant door, the couples panicked and sped away. Moments later, they saw the same creature on a hillside near the road. It spread its wings and rose into the air, following with their car, which by now was traveling at over 100 miles per hour. "That bird kept right up with us," said one of the group. They told Deputy Sheriff Millard Halstead that it followed them down Highway 62 and right to the Point Pleasant city limits. And they would not be the only ones to report the creature that night. Another group of four witnesses claimed to see the "bird" three different times!
But there could have been a logical explanation for some of the sightings. Even John Keel (who believed the creature was genuine) suspected that a few of the cases involved people who were spooked by recent reports and saw owls flying along deserted roads at night. Even so, Mothman remains hard to easily dismiss. The case is filled with an impressive number of multiple-witness sightings by individuals that were deemed reliable, even by law enforcement officials.

But if Mothman was real... and he truly was some unidentified creature that cannot be explained, what was behind the UFO sightings, the poltergeist reports, the strange lights, sounds, the "men in black" and most horrifying, the collapse of the Silver Bridge?

John Keel believes that Point Pleasant was a "window" area, a place that was marked by long periods of strange sightings, monster reports and the coming and going of unusual persons. He states that it may be wrong to blame the collapse of the bridge on the local UFO sightings, but the intense activity in the area at the time does suggest some sort of connection. Others have pointed to another supernatural link to the strange happenings, blaming the events on the legendary Cornstalk Curse that was placed on Point Pleasant in the 1770's.
[/font][/color]

[The Harlequin]

[font=gothic][color=crimson]How surprising I didn't manage to pick that all up from the movie. Any other sightings, I believe I said.[/font][/color]

[Ravenstorture]

[color=darkgreen][font=gothic]AAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!! Give me a chance, dammit!!!

Another sighting had more bizarre results. At about 10:30 on that same evening, Newell Partridge, a local building contractor who lived in Salem (about 90 miles from Point Pleasant), was watching television when the screen suddenly went dark. He stated that a weird pattern filled the screen and then he heard a loud, whining sounds from outside that raised in pitch and then ceased. ?It sounded like a generator winding up? he later stated. Partridge?s dog, Bandit, began to howl out on the front porch and Newell went out to see what was going on.

When he walked outside, he saw Bandit facing the hay barn, about 150 yards from the house. Puzzled, Partridge turned a flashlight in that direction and spotted two red circles that looked like eyes or ?bicycle reflectors?. They moving red orbs were certainly not animal?s eyes, he believed, and the sight of them frightened him. Bandit, an experienced hunting dog and protective of his territory, shot off across the yard in pursuit of the glowing eyes. Partridge called for him to stop, but the animal paid no attention. His owner turned and went back into the house for his gun, but then was too scared to go back outside again. He slept that night with his gun propped up next to the bed. The next morning, he realized that Bandit had disappeared. The dog had still not shown up two days later when Partridge read in the newspaper about the sightings in Point Pleasant that night.
One statement that he read in the newspaper chilled him to the bone. Roger Scarberry, one member of the group who spotted the strange ?bird? at the TNT plant, said that as they entered the city limits of Point Pleasant, they saw the body of a large dog lying on the side of the road. A few minutes later, on the way back out of town, the dog was gone. They even stopped to look for the body, knowing they had passed it just a few minutes before. Newell Partridge immediately thought of Bandit, who was never seen again.

On November 16, a press conference was held in the county courthouse and
the couples from the TNT plant sighting repeated their story. Deputy
Halstead, who had known the couples all of their lives, took them very
seriously. ?They?ve never been in any trouble,? he told investigators and had
no reason to doubt their stories. Many of the reporters who were present for
the weird recounting felt the same way. The news of the strange sightings
spread around the world. The press dubbed the odd flying creature
?Mothman?, after a character from the popular Batman television series of
the day.

The remote and abandoned TNT plant became the lair of the Mothman in the
months ahead and it could not have picked a better place to hide in. The area
was made up of several hundred acres of woods and large concrete domes
where high explosives were stored during World War II. A network of
tunnels honeycombed the area and made it possible for the creature to move
about without being seen. In addition to the manmade labyrinth, the area was
also comprised of the McClintic Wildlife Station, a heavily forested animal
preserve filled with woods, artificial ponds and steep ridges and hills. Much
of the property was almost inaccessible and without a doubt, Mothman could
have hid for weeks or months and remained totally unseen. The only people
who ever wandered there were hunters and fishermen and the local teenagers,
who used the rutted dirt roads of the preserve as ?lover?s lanes?.

Very few homes could be found in the region, but one dwelling belonged to
the Ralph Thomas family. One November 16, they spotted a ?funny red light?
in the sky that moved and hovered above the TNT plant. ?It wasn?t an
airplane?, Mrs. Marcella Bennett (a friend of the Thomas family) said, ?but
we couldn?t figure out what it was.? Mrs. Bennett drove to the Thomas house
a few minutes later and got out of the car with her baby. Suddenly, a figure
stirred near the automobile. ?It seemed as though it had been lying down,?
she later recalled. ?It rose up slowly from the ground. A big gray thing.
Bigger than a man with terrible glowing eyes.?

Mrs. Bennett was so horrified that she dropped her little girl! She quickly
recovered, picked up her child and ran to the house. The family locked
everyone inside but hysteria gripped them as the creature shuffled onto the
porch and peered into the windows. The police were summoned, but the
Mothman had vanished by the time the authorities had arrived.

Mrs. Bennett would not recover from the incident for months and was in fact
so distraught that she sought medical attention to deal with her anxieties. She
was tormented by frightening dreams and later told investigators that she
believed the creature had visited her own home too. She said that she could
often hear a keening sounds (like a woman screaming) near her isolated
home on the edge of Point Pleasant.

Many would come to believe that the sightings of Mothman, as well as UFO
sightings and encounters with ?men in black? in the area, were all related. For
nearly a year, strange happenings continued in the area. Researchers,
investigators and ?monster hunters? descended on the area but none so
famous as author John Keel, who has written extensively about Mothman and
other unexplained anomalies. He has written for many years about UFO?s but
dismisses the standard ?extraterrestrial? theories of the mainstream UFO
movement. For this reason, he has been a controversial figure for decades.
According to Keel, man has had a long history of interaction with the
supernatural. He believes that the intervention of mysterious strangers in the
lives of historic personages like Thomas Jefferson and Malcolm X provides
evidence of the continuing presence of the ?gods of old?. The manifestation
of these elder gods comes in the form of UFO?s and aliens, monsters,
demons, angels and even ghosts. He has remained a colorful character to
many and yet remains respected in the field for his research and fascinating
writings.

Keel became the major chronicler of the Mothman case and wrote that at least 100 people personally witnessed the creature between November 1966 and November 1967. According to their reports, the creature stood between five and seven feet tall, was wider than a man and shuffled on human-like legs. Its eyes were set near the top of the shoulders and had bat-like wings that glided, rather than flapped, when it flew. Strangely though, it was able to ascend straight up ?like a helicopter?. Witnesses also described its murky skin as being either gray or brown and it emitted a humming sound when it flew. The Mothman was apparently incapable of speech and gave off a screeching sound. Mrs. Bennett stated that it sounded like a ?woman screaming?.

John Keel arrived in Point Pleasant in December 1966 and immediately began collecting reports of Mothman sightings and even UFO reports from before the creature was seen. He also compiled evidence that suggested a problem with televisions and phones that began in the fall of 1966. Lights had been seen in the skies, particularly around the TNT plant, and cars that passed along the nearby road sometimes stalled without explanation. He and his fellow researchers also uncovered a number of short-lived poltergeist cases in the Ohio Valley area. Locked doors opened and closed by themselves, strange thumps were heard inside and outside of homes and often, inexplicable voices were heard. The James Lilley family, who lived just south of the TNT plant, were so bothered by the bizarre events that they finally sold their home and moved to another neighborhood. Keel was convinced that the intense period of activity was all connected.

And stranger things still took place..... A reporter named Mary Hyre, who was the Point Pleasant correspondent for the Athens, Ohio newspaper the Messenger, also wrote extensively about the local sightings. In fact, after one very active weekend, she was deluged with over 500 phone calls from people who saw strange lights in the skies. One night in January 1967, she was working late in her office in the county courthouse and a man walked in the door. He was very short and had strange eyes that were covered with thick glasses. He also had long, black hair that was cut squarely ?like a bowl haircut?. Hyre said that he spoke in a low, halting voice and he asked for directions to Welsh, West Virginia. She thought that he had some sort of speech impediment and for some reason, he terrified her. ?He kept getting closer and closer to me, ? she said, ? and his funny eyes were staring at me almost hypnotically.?

Alarmed, she summoned the newspaper?s circulation manager to her office and together, they spoke to the strange little man. She said that at one point in the discussion, she answered the telephone when it rang and she noticed the little man pick up a pen from her desk. He looked at it in amazement, ?as if he had never seen a pen before.? Then, he grabbed the pen, laughed loudly and ran out of the building.

Several weeks later, Hyre was crossing the street near her office and saw the same man on the street. He appeared to be startled when he realized that she was watching him, turned away quickly and ran for a large black car that suddenly came around the corner. The little man climbed in and it quickly drove away.

By this time, most of the sightings had come to an end and Mothman had faded away into the strange ?twilight zone? from which he had come... but the story of Point Pleasant had not yet ended. At around 5:00 in the evening on December 15, 1967, the 700-foot bridge linking Point Pleasant to Ohio suddenly collapsed while filled with rush hour traffic. Dozens of vehicles plunged into the dark waters of the Ohio River and 46 people were killed. Two of those were never found and the other 44 are buried together in the town cemetery of Gallipolis, Ohio.
On that same tragic night, the James Lilley family (who still lived near the TNT plant at that time) counted more than 12 eerie lights that flashed above their home and vanished into the forest.

The collapse of the Silver Bridge made headlines all over the country and Mary Hyre went days without sleep as reporters and television crews from everywhere descended on the town. The local citizens were stunned with horror and disbelief and the tragedy is still being felt today.

During Christmas week, a short, dark-skinned man entered the office of Mary Hyre. He was dressed in a black suit, with a black tie, and she said that he looked vaguely Oriental. He had high cheekbones, narrow eyes and an unidentified accent. He was not interested in the bridge disaster, she said, but wanted to know about local UFO sightings. Hyre was too busy to talk with him and she handed her a file of related press clipping instead. He was not interested in them and insisted on speaking with her. She finally dismissed him from her office.

That same night, an identically described man visited the homes of several witnesses in the area who had reported seeing the lights in the sky. He made all of them very uneasy and uncomfortable and while he claimed to be a reporter from Cambridge, Ohio, he inadvertently admitted that he did not know where Columbus, Ohio was even though the two towns are just a few miles apart.[/font][/color]

[Jesus Chicken]

Amphion... Do you believe in God?
Because if you do you have no right to criticise anyone's beliefs.
More to the point if you belive in God, or in any controlling power, any power, any spiritual being, whatever you want to call it, you have a total right to criticism of anyone else that equals 0...
People have seen it... Mothman, whatever you want to cal it, and considering that is currently one of my favourite movies, I beilive that something, whatever you want to call it...
Are you saying that seeing aliens, from another planet, is entirely different. From say, about 20 odd people seeing something with red eyes, hearing vioces about a tragedy, then one happening, recorded in history is stupid...
Sorry but you can go to hell...

[The Harlequin]

[font=gothic][color=crimson]Raven, I thank you and apologise. Jesus Chicken, you summed up what I was thinking perfectly.[/font][/color]

[Amphion]

Well, I planned on leaving you guys alone untill I was verbally assualted again.

If anyone wants to beleive in Mothman, thats fine. I was responding to what harlequin said to me. True its not all crap and not everyone who beleives it is un-intelligent. That I apologize for.

Chicken, Yes I beleive in God. But beleiving in God does not take away my right to have an opinion on something. Heres anotherone, your a dumbass. Its people like you who annoy me cause they take offense to everything. theres alot of people out there who dont beleive in mothman, are you gonna wine to them too? What I said was true, if mothman exists, he is a living creature, which could be killed by a 9mm, so what I said might not have been what you was looking for it was my opinion. The only un intelligent ones here are Harlequin, who cant take a joke, and Chicken who has to stand up for him all the time.

You both need to learn how to deal with life, your going to hear things and opinions you do not like, it just pisses everyone around you off when you wine and complain about them. There many opinions I do not lie, but I do not sink low enough to tell a fellow human being to go to hell over it.

Thats all I have to say. Again I apologize for the comment cause not all of the National Inquirer stuff is wacked. But Harlequin and his daddy Chicken can get off my case. If you want to say anything else, pm me. Your spamming up the boards with posts like this, shows your intelligence level. Im through here.

[SSJ Gotenks ok]

That movie was ok tha part in tha end was crazy but i believe in tha mothman.:D

[Smoke]

That stuff is interesting. I have never witnessed anything, but sometimes I think it would be cool to. I think I am going to go rent the movie now.

[Lilac oranges]

the mothman has also had reported sightings in norway, i don't know how that connects to point pleasent but there have been sightings there. harlequin if you are still looking for info i think there is a book on it in the city libary

[The Harlequin]

[font=gothic][color=crimson]Jesus Chicken couldn't find the book when he checked, and I wasn't looking for information pertaining to Point Pleasant. Any further details on the Norway sighting?[/font][/color]

[Ravenstorture]

[color=darkgreen][font=gothic]There have been more than one hundred sightings all around the world since the 1970's. Nothing of norway, however, alot of UFO's there though.... Point Pleasant was only famous because it was american, and everyoen there went to church so they believed them. Until then, they just called the rest of the sighters crazy.
[/font][/color]

[The Harlequin]

[font=gothic][color=crimson]And you feel that your information comes from an unimpeachable source?[/font][/color]

[Jesus Chicken]

Sorry to stop this, but...
Amphion, you weren't verbally assulted, I just stated that if you believe in anything that cannot be proven, you have no right to say that something else that cannot be proven doesn't exist...
If anyone has issues it's you, I was just saying something, but you had to get personal, and talk about my intelligence, which, I am sure you would be suprised at if you took the time to take some creative criticism.
People like you, people who take everything the wrong way, and will comment, with little or no understanding of the topic...
Once again, You can go to hell.

[Ravenstorture]

[color=darkgreen][font=gothic]I never said that, but I am willing to take it's word. Why? Where do you get your information from? Am I meant to take offence from that? Why are you questioning my sources? What's wrong with them? The information above is a precis of about three thousand words that I skimmed out of an american book on phenomena published last year, if that helps. You could tell that by the movie, anyway... if none of the people who saw it went to church, they wouldn't have been taken seriously. The book supports this, as does a few websites. The movie, from the info I have read, is startlingly accurate for something with Richard Gere in it, seemingly as he has often had a hand in slaughtering certain historical tales....


And as for Chicken and Amphion, when people open a thread with a topic named "The Mothman Prophecies", they expect that they will be reading a thread concerning just that - info about the mothman prophecies. So don't fill people's threads with arguments that have nothing to do with a 7 foot mythalogical creature called the Mothman that, surprisingly, this thread happens to be about.
I have argued with people through email, and I have argued with people through PMs, believe me, it's alot more satisfying, easy, LEGAL and much less spammish. So save us the agony of listening to your banter and cut it out.


Remember, I know where you live. [/font][/color]

[Guest Saiyangohan2002]

[color=green] [B] I believe in God, and i believe in the mothman too. Just think, America is filled with all sorts of cover ups. The Mothman could be some sort of radioactive experiment gone wrong. He could be a prototype Biological weapon. Or he could be but one of a species of moth living in the african jungle that hasn't been discovered yet, that lost its way and ended up in the U.S taking refuge in a TNT plant. thre are many other explanations to the phenomenon of the Mothman. so it doesnt have to come from space I personally dont think it was responsible for the bridges collapse, it may have been a terrorist act by some sickos, to further the mad hysteria. [/B] [/color]

[The Harlequin]

[font=gothic][color=crimson]Ahem. Speaking of governments...

The latest idea of the Mothman is that it is actually a government mind control experiment. Some people went back to research Point Pleasant, before the movie was made, and found some interesting discoveries. They received several visits from men clad in black suits telling them to leave, and received several phone calls saying the same thing. When the phone was tapped, the calls originated in the same house the people were in.[/font][/color]

[Jesus Chicken]

Godamn!
It just keeps goin huh?!?

[Guest Saiyangohan2002]

[color=green] Here is some more info on the curse of Cornstalk, and the Silver Bridge disaster


[B] The Curse of Cornstalk [/B]


[IMG]http://members.aol.com/mothmanwww/monument.gif[/IMG]

Point Pleasant has seen its share of devastating floods and fires; some attribute it to the dying curse of the great Shawnee chieftain, Cornstalk.


On October 10, 1774 a great battle took place between Virginia militiamen led by Andrew Lewis, and a multi-tribal confederation led by the Shawnee warrior, Cornstalk; this battle took place at the confluence of the Kanawha and Ohio Rivers, later incorporated in 1794 as the town of Point Pleasant. The Native American tribesmen were duped by the British-loyalist Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, into believing the militiamen were coming to sign a peace treaty. The confederation suffered a massive defeat, never to return to the area to fight again; the militiamen suffered heavy casualties also. Dunmore's intent was to divert the attention of the colonists away from independence from Britain by stirring hatred between colonists and Native Americans. Because of the British interests in the battle, some have declared this battle to be the first of the American Revolution; detractors label it the last battle of the border/Indian wars.

Upon Cornstalk's demise as the result of an ambush, he reportedly with his dying breath cursed the area for 200 years. His words spurred many a discussion upon each unfortunate occurrence in the town during that time span, including floods and severe fires that seemed to plague the downtown through the years, up through a cowardly, murderous hostage situation at the Mason County Courthouse in 1976.


(Photo is postcard image circa 1930 of the Cornstalk monument in its former location on the Mason County Courthouse lawn. In the early 1950s it was moved, along with the chief's remains, six blocks south to Battle Monument State Park at the confluence of the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers, scene of the battle described above.)


[B] The Silver Bridge Disaster [/B]


[IMG]http://members.aol.com/mothmanwww/bridge.gif[/IMG]

On December 15, 1967 at just after 5:00 pm the Silver Bridge spanning the Ohio River between Point Pleasant and Kanauga, Ohio collapsed; 46 people died in the tragedy. The rush hour travelers had been going about their daily lives, preparing for the Christmas holiday when the structure gave way beneath them.


The bridge was constructed in 1928 as an "eyebar" suspension bridge, meaning that in place of wire cables such as those found on the Golden Gate Bridge, the bridge used eyebars linked in a chain from which the bridge deck was suspended. (An eyebar resembles, for all intents and purposes, a dogbone with a hole, or "eye," in each end. These eyebars ran in pairs linked by massive pins.)

In the months following the collapse, the pieces of the bridge were recovered and laid out like a massive jigsaw puzzle in a field just south of Point Pleasant; all but the roadbed was recovered. Final analysis conducted by the U.S. Department of Transportation ruled that failure of the number 13 eyebar pin, on the upriver (north) side of the bridge and west of the Ohio tower, had failed, causing the eyebar chain to drop below the roadway. The downriver (south) eyebar chain was unable to support the weight of the entire structure, resulting in immediate, complete failure of the span.

Carrying U.S. Route 35 at the time, the bridge had two twin structures: one just upriver in St. Marys, West Virginia and one in Brazil. The St. Marys span was immediately closed, destroyed and replaced. In 1969, a new bridge was completed just south of Point Pleasant and Route 35 was relocated to the south side of the Kanawha River, following the path of the former WV State Route 17. The former Route 35 was renumbered as WV State Route 62.


(The image above is taken from an early postcard illustration. The view is from the Point Pleasant ramp looking west towards Kanauga, Ohio. The photo is taken above the former intersection of U.S. Route 35 and Main Street, adjacent to the Mason County Courthouse. The railroad bridge in the background is still standing and still in use by Conrail. It dates from early this century, originally part of the Kanawha & Michigan Railroad and later used by the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway. In 1914, a U.S. Government anti-trust suit forced the C&O to divest the line; it then served the New York Central Railway, later Penn Central and now Conrail.) [/color]