whats the big deal about a mothman anyway

there's so many deadly weapons that can be made out of mothballs that he's basically boned.

probably like the most easily countered monster next to the witch in the wizard of oz and the aliens in mars attacks

I agree that they could have come up with a way better name than "Mothman". He's supposed to be slightly scarier than something that bats at a screen door or goes belly-up in a light fixture. I don't know what to tell you there.

West Virginia is also home to the "Flatwoods Monster", which scared the shit out of people well before Mothman.

In the area of WV where I lived, there was a link to the Mothman story in the personage of "Indrid Cold". It was never clear who or what Indrid Cold was, but I always found that story to be way creepier than Mothman's. A local businessman was driving along when a vehicle overtook him and blocked the road. A man got out and walked to the businessman's door. Reports vary but the general idea was that the man communicated telepathically with the guy and had sort of a fixed, maniacal grin on his face. He told the guy he was going to follow him around.

Then the story gets kind of wacky, the guy said he was abducted and went on all kinds of adventures with Indrid Cold, and he really was nowhere to be found when this was going on. My family corroborated this- he worked with my grandfather and lived next door to an aunt. The thought at the time was that he was running off somewhere and the whole thing was, quite obviously, fabricated. I guess he alienated (no pun intended) his family, lost his business, and so on, maintaining till the end that Indrid Cold was real and stalking him.

The really weird part of all of this is that there really was some guy following him. There are pictures that have surfaced of a man, fitting the description that the businessman gave of Indrid Cold, in the background of various crowd scenes, street scenes, outside the guy's house, and so on. No one knew who the guy was and no one could remember ever seeing him before. But it was always the same guy, popping up in every picture this businessman was in, somewhere in the crowd or scenery. So that was definitely strange. I don't know what the truth of the thing is, but Indrid Cold was a name that gave me goosebumps when I was a kid and I used to be absolutely sure sometimes that I would turn around and see a face with a maniacal, fixed grin looking in through the window.

Indrid Cold is spookier to me than Mothman, but maybe that's because I grew up in Indrid territory.

This all makes me yearn for Unsolved Mysteries. I've got a couple of books about ghost stories in Alberta, but it's all pretty boring. You'd think the prairies would be rife with spooky stories, but no dice.

I've read a couple of short stories in Canadian Lit about people who went nuts listening to the wind and murdered their families in prairie province cabins, but that's about it. I think there might also have been one about a guy in northern Ontario (maybe Quebec?) who went nuts listening to turbines at the isolated hydroelectric plant where he worked. I think almost all of the creepy Canadian stuff I had dealt with isolation, sort of Shining-esque scenarios.

Indrid Cold has been called "The Grinning Man". I don't know if it was a Joker sort of grin or what...I always pictured just this fixed, transparently fake look of good-naturedness that was hiding something really horrible. The scariest thing about Indrid Cold was, to me, the many times the story intersects with fact. Yes, it was a bit of a stretch to imagine that Indrid Cold was an alien from the planet Lenulos. But more than one person reported seeing his vehicle, all of those people were on the same road at the same time as the witness, and there were lots of independent, incidental reports of things that verified that the Cold guy might be a real person. For some reason the thought of some psychopath randomly stalking a businessman was the scariest thing of all to me...moreover, the fact that he disappeared. I always thought he was going to show up again. Maybe outside my window. After all, the whole thing happened practically down the street.

we have a urban legends museum here in zacatecas is pretty nice you have dioramas that follow the story, a recording plays as the dioramas different parts light up and some figures moves etc

I want to go there so bad. I found out about Mothman about when I was 16, and I still think it's extremely interesting.

In related news, I keep getting this ad.

Ominous! If you hear a high-pitched noise at night, try to upload a few pictures before your unassumingly untimely demise

I doubt I have the time, what with the surprise I'm supposed to prepare for.

So this is coming up again, and I just don't know if I can make it down there again this year. Part of me is okay with that, because I tell you Point Pleasant just gives me the damn jibblies.

I'd like to commemorate the occasion, though. Probably the wearing of Mothman t-shirts, which now fit me more like nightshirts. Definitely the making of Mothman pancakes.

We actually did a qualifying round for Little Miss Mothman and bombed that one big, which confirmed that a) we're just not pageant people and b) we're so ugly we don't even place in rural WV beauty pageants. So, suck on that, ego. It actually was kind of a really negative experience, which surprised me. Gonna give that whole...way of life...a wide berth from now on.

But Mothman! Nothing can kill my love for things that glow red in the night, or inexplicable chrome monuments to monsters that terrorize small towns. So I'm open to suggestions.

How about a tap-dancing Mothman cake?

Ooh.

I have an idea for some kickass cookies :D

Kitsa, reading your post about this Mothman festival really makes me want to go to this sometime and do a photo piece for the site. I don't know if I'll be able to do it this year (not sure exactly when it is?) but West Virginia is only a few hours away from me. I could easily make a day trip of it, or stay for a weekend.

You're just in time for it. It's in September.

Anyway.

Another theory about Mothman is that it was a pissed-off owl, mutant or otherwise. Barred owls are common to the TNT area, one might have gotten mutated to some giant proportion; fish there did. It's not entirely impossible that an Incredible Hulk (Hawk?) of an owl was flapping around the place scaring the shit out of people.

Owls can get pretty terrifying when they feel threatened or when they're pissed off. I wouldn't want to be alone with one.

Exhibit A- Imagine this suddenly appearing before you on a dark road, with the eyes reflecting red.


Exhibit B- Owls can make themselves look considerably more evil when they want to.


I don't know that Mothman was an owl, but I guess I wouldn't be surprised. An owl would appear threatening and could divebomb people. An owl could have perched on the Silver Bridge. That place is all forest, I bet there are owls everywhere, and it's creepy enough in Point Pleasant that anything threatening would be way amplified.

See also:

Seeing Red- Demonic Owl Eyeflash

I've always thought the Owl explanation was pretty boring.
But a giant, mutated red-eyed Owl that attacks people and can predict/cause a bridge to collapse? That would make a pretty respectable Mothman. :halloween2

I guess it's boring, but the more I look at the evidence, the more likely it seems to me.

you fools that's what the mothman wants you to belive

My daughter says that all moths and owls are mothman's friends. Sort of like the all-mall-santas-being-real-santa's-helper concept.

She's 2, though.

Oh shit, she talks? I guess because we never see pics of her, I consider her to still be in the larva stage.

She hasn't shut up since she was about 5 months old.

It's getting closer...

Well, he's the Mothman, glowing red eyes
Ten feet tall, (? tracking you?), he flies
They say he's a bird, they say he's a man
It was late one summer when it all began

My friends and I, we were playing it cool
Cruising around, and acting a fool
Not suspecting what was up ahead
If it were a nightmare, we'd wake up dead

from the
MOTHMAN
Glowing red eyes
Ten feet tall, baby that's no lie
MOTHMAN
He's not from Japan!
He's a...genuine...
A-MER-I-CAN.

:lol I had no idea Mothman was a patriot.


Hmm... maybe I'll make some Mothman pancakes this week.