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E165: The Mothman
4.6k Plays3 years ago
For thirteen months from 1966 to 1967, a creature (or creatures) terrorized several small communities across Ohio and West Virginia, particularly the West Virginia town of Point Pleasant. The stories that come from witnesses to the phenomena are the stuff of nightmares, so much so that they were later made into a hit film. Was this all just a big media storm and all hogwash? Some say it was another example of mass hysteria, of people buying into a myth. Do you agree? Or will you even allow yourself to believe even a small portion of the stories to be true? Listen to our coverage to hear the history, the headlines, and the horror surrounding the Mothman.
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Transcript
Introduction to Gone Cold and Patreon Updates
00:00:00
Speaker
Looking for a new true crime podcast because you're all caught up on coffee and cases? Look no further because we are about to introduce you to one we know you'll love from our friend Vincent. His podcast is called Gone Cold and focuses on cases in the state of Texas. Here's a little bit about the show from Vince himself. Texas is best known for the scorching heat, Longhorn steers, and incomparable barbecue.
00:00:26
Speaker
Beyond Big Bend and big trucks, however, lies something dark, big crime. Hi y'all, my name is Vincent.
00:00:36
Speaker
Join me on Gone Cold podcast, Texas True Crime, as we dive deep into the facts and theories of one of the 20,000 unsolved Texas cases each week. From the mysterious 1974 disappearances of Rachel Trillisa, Renee Wilson, and Julie Mosley, collectively known as the Fort Worth Missing Trio, to the orange Texas abduction and murder of four-year-old Denaria Finley in 2002.
00:01:05
Speaker
To hear those and nearly 200 other stories of unsolved homicides and missing persons cases, subscribe to Gone Cold, Texas True Crime, wherever you fulfill your podcast needs. So, Sleuth Hounds, in an extremely unfortunate turn of events, the episode that Maggie and I struggled with technology on for three hours last night to record was when I went to edit it today completely erased.
00:01:33
Speaker
So instead of crying about it, and we may have done a little bit of that also, we just made an executive decision. For your true crime fix this week, we decided to share with you an episode from our Patreon. Now don't worry Patreon members, we aren't going to share all the content that you gain access to by being a Patreon member, but we did decide to share an episode today as a glimpse into what our Patreon has to offer.
00:01:58
Speaker
Each month on Patreon, we post three mini episodes. Some are spooky, some are funny, some are stories about Maggie and me, but they are always entertaining. Then we post one full bonus episode each month, like the one you're about to hear. We keep our full episodes focused on mostly solved cases with a few paranormal thrown in for good measure.
00:02:20
Speaker
We switched our focus for Patreon because we decided that we would never want to make a profit from telling a story that deserves widespread public attention and still needs to be solved. So if you like what you hear today, then you will love all of the other content available on Patreon, and we would love to see you over there. So just head on over to patreon.com forward slash coffee and cases, all one word, or click the link in our show notes to get started.
00:02:50
Speaker
We have several levels available with the top tiers also getting quarterly swag boxes in addition to the content. We are also super excited to welcome our newest Patreon members from this past week. You and everyone who reached out to us on social media last week wrote us a review. We'll all get your shout outs on the show, but I want to wait until Maggie and I are back together since obviously the love is from both of us.
00:03:16
Speaker
Now, without further ado, here is an episode from Patreon, our coverage of The Mothman.
Spotlight on Unsolved Cases: Mothman Episode
00:03:58
Speaker
Welcome to Coffee and Cases where we like our coffee hot and our cases cold. My name is Allison Williams. And my name is Maggie Dameron. We will be telling stories each week in the hopes that someone out there with any information concerning the cases will take those tips to law enforcement. So justice and closure can be brought to these families.
00:04:17
Speaker
With each case, we encourage you to continue in the conversation on our Facebook page, Coffee and Cases podcast, because as we all know, conversation helps to keep the missing person in the public consciousness, helping keep their memories alive. So sit back, sip your coffee, and listen to what's brewing this week.
Unveiling the Mothman Legend
00:04:35
Speaker
All right, Maggie. I figured I would do a case that has creeped me out since I first heard about it around 20 years ago. Oh, okay. I know. It is the story of a creature.
00:04:48
Speaker
that terrorized a small community in Ohio that is only about an hour away from where I grew up right outside of Ashland, Kentucky. So only about an hour away. Yes. Yes, it did. I was like, this is coming after me. So where I grew up in Ashland is part of this tri-state area of Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, all together.
00:05:15
Speaker
So this town that is in Ohio that has ties to this creature is about an hour away from Ashland. But that community is also tied with a community in West Virginia.
00:05:32
Speaker
So the word crossing borders in this creature tail. Now, the community that I have ties with is Gallipolis, Ohio, because when I was growing up, I used to ride all the time with my granny and gramps when they would go on their flea market adventures. Oh, I did that. I love doing that.
00:05:56
Speaker
Yeah, and I would always tag along with them. And this town of Gallipolis is tied with a West Virginia town called Point Pleasant. And the creature that I'm speaking of is now known as the Mothman. So Mothman has ties to both this Ohio town and the West Virginia town?
00:06:24
Speaker
Yes, because the two towns are connected in ways that I'll talk about here in a second. Now, I will go ahead and tell you in full disclosure that what we know of the Mothman is only one small part of the phenomenon that happened in this community and the 13 months
00:06:44
Speaker
that they were plagued by sightings. So a lot of people know about the Mothman because of the movie Mothman Prophecies that came out in 2002 with Richard Gere in it. But that film and the information in this episode actually comes from a book
00:07:04
Speaker
called the Mothman Prophecies that was written by John Keel. But John Keel's book was actually written in 1975, eight years after the events that it chronicles. So this is all based on true accounts.
00:07:29
Speaker
Kiel himself was a journalist and a UFO-ologist. UFO-ologist? I want to be that. Yes. I don't know, but I want to be that. Yeah. He investigated the claims that were made by people in Point Pleasant, and it was a role that he took very seriously, Maggie. He, in fact, when he was researching all of these sightings and people telling him about the Mothman,
00:07:57
Speaker
and UFOs, we're going to connect the two. He took it so seriously that he didn't even discuss with anybody what people told him. So he decided, you know, if somebody feels comfortable enough with me and they trust me enough to tell me what they saw, I'm not going to tell anybody else because I don't want to spread
00:08:23
Speaker
like rumors or make it into this big to do where people are going to hear claims and then say that they saw the same thing too when really they did it. Yeah. So he decided to keep his sources completely confidential because if he's going to verify that what was happening was true, he wanted to know that stories were truly corroborated.
00:08:47
Speaker
You know what I mean? And it wasn't public knowledge. And what he found was that the story of the Mothman goes beyond the creature itself into stories of UFOs, men in black, and far more strange happenings. So if you decide to read his book, and let's say you only believe a tenth of it to be true, you will be terrified.
00:09:17
Speaker
Oh, scared out of your wits. And what I'm going to relay is just a small part of that story. Well, I'm excited. OK, so I'm going to start with a little bit of history of Point Pleasant that isn't well, it isn't pleasant.
00:09:35
Speaker
But back in 1774, there was a Battle of Point Pleasant, and that was the first and only battle in what is now called Dunmore's War, which took place between John Murray, who was the governor of Virginia, who also held the title of Lord Dunmore, hence Dunmore's War.
00:09:55
Speaker
and the Shawnee and Mingo warriors from the local Native American tribes because Lord Dunmore actually shared ownership of the land with the Shawnee and Mingo but had decided to negotiate with the Iroquois on the ownership of the land all the way to the river without even consulting the Shawnee and Mingo whom he co-owned the land with.
00:10:18
Speaker
Okay, so the Mingo tribes must have been pretty prevalent because isn't there a Mingo County, West Virginia? I don't know, but right around where I grew up there is Shawnee University.
00:10:32
Speaker
There's a Mingo County high school. It's like next to the Pike County side. So there you go. Yeah, both. So the tribes had fought Dunmore's militia in an attempt to gain back control of the land that rightfully belonged to them as well. Like he couldn't just unilaterally give it to the Iroquois. But when it looked as though the militia would defeat the tribes, they had signed a peace treaty.
UFO Encounters and Cold's Telepathic Communication
00:11:01
Speaker
Okay. So a few years later, in 1777, the chief of the Shawnee Nation went on a diplomatic, peaceful visit to Dunmore and was taken hostage. The chief's son and two others from the tribe came to visit the chief and they were also taken hostage.
00:11:21
Speaker
While they were held captive, Governor Murray's men heard that some of their militia had been killed by some Native Americans in the woods. And upon hearing this news, even though they have no idea if the people who killed their friends were Shawnee or not, they murdered the chief and his son and the two others from the tribe who had come to visit him.
00:11:47
Speaker
Sounds a little bit like the Hatfields and McCoys. Wow. Wow. Wow.
00:12:03
Speaker
was passing out of him, Lore has him stating the following, quote, I was the border man's friend. Many times have I saved him and his people from harm. I never warred with you, but only to protect our wigwams and lands. I refused to join your pale faced enemies with the red coats. I came to the fort as your friend and you murdered me and have murdered by my side, my young son. And for this,
00:12:31
Speaker
The curse of the great spirit rest upon this land. May it be blighted by natures. May it even be blighted in its hopes. May the strength of its people be paralyzed by the pain of our blood." End quote. Okay, me chills. And this is known as the cornstalk curse because cornstalk was the Americanized version of the chief's name. And this is happening right on the land of Point Pleasant.
00:13:01
Speaker
where this creature later comes to haunt. And over the years, it does seem quite obvious that this area has been cursed with misfortune more than most, especially given the small population. Some of those events were between 1966 and 67, which we're going to talk about. And those are just
00:13:30
Speaker
one of those events of misfortune. The first indication that something was wrong happened on November 1st, 1966 at the Point Pleasant, 1092nd Engineer Battalion Headquarters, when a National Guardsman who was on duty saw something perched high up in a tree. It was in the distance at the edge of the guard base, but he was sure he saw it.
00:14:00
Speaker
creature. That was the only word for it because it looked like a bird but even at that distance he could tell that it was the size of a grown man. In awe of what he was seeing the guard went to go find somebody else to look at the creature to verify that it wasn't just a figment of his imagination but by the time he returned with someone the thing was gone.
00:14:29
Speaker
And even though this guard eventually came forward with what he saw, at the time, he just kept quiet about it, chalking it up to it being a mirage, right? A shadow of the night that was playing tricks on him. Yeah, it could have been like another animal, but just a bear or something. And from a distance, you just thought it was a bird-like thing. Exactly. Unbeknownst to this guardsman and seemingly unrelated,
00:14:55
Speaker
The very next day, November 2nd, 1966, around 7.25pm, a man named Woodrow Derenberger, who was a traveling sewing machine salesman, was traveling just outside of Parkersburg, West Virginia, which is about 50 miles from Point Pleasant. He was headed south. Can we just talk about
00:15:22
Speaker
So can we bring back traveling vacuum salesman, traveling sewing machine, sewing machine salesman, traveling encyclopedia salesman? I know. Make it to where I don't have to go to a store. Come to my house. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So he is leaving Parkersburg, heading south, and he sees this car fly past him. But that wasn't what startled Darren Berger.
00:15:53
Speaker
What startled him was the low flying UFO that was chasing after the car, which was a black Cadillac. This UFO looked like a long tube with a bulge in the middle. And what happened next is what rattled him to the core. He watched as the object slowed down from chasing the car
00:16:19
Speaker
to slowly come to a halt, turned sideways, blocking the road. It was about 35 feet long, so it blocked the entire road and nine feet wide, so Derenberger had to stop his vehicle.
00:16:36
Speaker
Wow. He sees a door on the side of the craft open and a man got out. Stop it. Yes. So keep in mind this story that Darren Berger will later tell, he tells a story to a journalist and he tells it sane and straight faced. Like he even said in this interview with the journalist that if he heard somebody else tell this same story,
00:17:03
Speaker
even just the day before he himself had experienced it, he would have said the person were a nut. Wow. So Woody, he has his car pulled off to the side of the road, like the driver's wheels are on the road, the passenger wheels off the grass, off the shoulder. This man who got out of the craft walked over to the passenger side of the car and asked Darren Berger to roll down the window.
00:17:32
Speaker
They proceeded to have like, yes. Amen. Amen. They proceeded to have an entire conversation. He asked what Darren Berger was called and where he was from. And the man said that he was called cold. Like Burr, it's cold. The man looked towards Parkersburg and asked what that place was called and whether people lived there.
00:18:02
Speaker
Derenberger told him the name of the town and that it was a city. It was the center of living, of business. And Cold responded that his people call those a gathering. And all of this is super creepy, but I haven't told you the creepiest part yet. The whole time Derenberger said they were having a conversation, he was the only one speaking. Cold was communicating via telepathy.
00:18:32
Speaker
So you're telling me this man is driving south from selling a sewing machines. A UFO is chasing a black Cadillac and it blocks the road. We don't know why it's chasing the black Cadillac, but it is. So out from this UFO walks an alien who looks like a human, whose name is cold and communicates using telepathy. And he wants to know what the gathering down the road is called.
00:19:03
Speaker
Okay. Here is an audio clip of what Derrenberger said about the interaction. And this is from the later television interview that he did with the journalist. And as far as I can understand, this was all mental. There was no spoken words from him. I knew what he was asking me.
00:19:27
Speaker
But yet he stood there and his mouth did not move. He had a smile on his face. He appeared very courteous and friendly. And after I talked with him a while, he told me he would see me. He said, we will see you again. And he left in his vehicle. Now, Mr. Durnberger, for the sake of our television audience here,
00:19:54
Speaker
the words that you used, cold. Cold would be like cold is his name. This is how it sounded to you that his name was cold. Yes. And the word gathering was like we would know together or something like that. Yes, that's what he meant. That was the impression that he gave. And he did not move his lips nor utter any sound whatsoever. He talked with you in telepathy there.
00:20:21
Speaker
That was right. That his lips did not move. He uttered no words at all. But you talked. I mean, he did. Yes, I talked. He told me he told me twice that I could either talk or I could think, which either would be better or easier for me. How creepy is that? Well, now. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. So as all of this
00:20:51
Speaker
I'm going to use air quotes. Communication conversation was going on. The UFO had actually risen straight up in the air and it was hovering above the scene so that as other cars passed by, cars who would later say that they saw Darren Berger talking with a man on the roadside didn't see the craft. So nothing seemed amiss to them.
00:21:21
Speaker
Okay. Yes, they only saw their headlights light up a tall around six foot man, 30 to 35 years old, 180 to 185 pounds, dressed normally in a dark overcoat.
00:21:39
Speaker
And the whole time, cold was grinning widely and he kept his arms crossed with his hands tucked under his armpits. Like if you've ever seen Saturday Night Live, like Mary Catherine Gallagher, like hands tucked up high. But he seemed to Darren Berger to be polite. I mean, he said that polite, friendly, curious.
00:22:07
Speaker
And Darren Berger told Cole that he was a traveling salesman and Cole responded that he was a searcher. Of course. And as he turned to leave, he said to Darren Berger, we will see you again. And that was it. So do we think then that he is connected with Mothman?
00:22:34
Speaker
Well, yes, Keel does in his book. This is one of the things that he talks about. And by the way, the spot where this happened, where Derenberger encountered cold, as the story goes anyway, is the exact spot where Cornstalk was murdered and left his legacy of the
Widespread Mothman Sightings
00:22:52
Speaker
curse. So some people have wondered if these two seemingly distinct instances are actually related.
00:23:00
Speaker
Interesting. The next oddity that happened around this area happened on November 12, 1966, when five men were digging a grave in Clinton and West Virginia.
00:23:15
Speaker
They saw a huge shadow, like on the ground, only to look up to the sky to see something flying over them. It was huge, like too big to be a bird. Plus it didn't quite look like a bird. What was flying overhead looked like a large brown colored human with wings.
00:23:42
Speaker
And while nothing also initially came from this sighting, here was a group of five separate people who would later swear that they all saw this creature.
00:23:58
Speaker
Okay, and so this isn't that long after the army base. Right, I mean we are starting like that first sighting is on November 1st and here we're only to November 12th.
00:24:18
Speaker
Gotcha. On November 14, 1966, things were amped up a notch concerning this moth-like creature. This one happened about an hour east of Parkersburg and about 90 miles away from Point Pleasant in Salem, West Virginia.
00:24:38
Speaker
A man, an avid hunter named Newell Partridge, was watching television when his German Shepherd Bandit started going crazy, barking on the front porch. It was around 10 p.m. At that point, Partridge's television went completely dark and then came back on with an eerie pattern.
00:25:04
Speaker
Outside, Partridge heard these odd sounds. He said it was almost like the whining of a generator. And that was when Bandit began howling. Partridge grabbed a flashlight and went outside himself to look around. And he ends up looking in the direction that the dog is howling, which is toward the barn. And that's when he saw something.
00:25:32
Speaker
two red glowing eyes so big that they could have been bicycle reflectors. But these weren't, so these were not like the small beady eyes of an animal. Could they have been some type of reflector though?
00:25:48
Speaker
Well, I mean, this was his barn and he didn't have anything parked over there. Yeah. And this was something, and remember, he's been an avid hunter his whole life. Whatever these were the eyes of, it was something that he had never seen before. Bandit actually jumped off the porch and ran toward the barn and Partridge is yelling for Bandit to stop.
00:26:14
Speaker
And when the dog didn't, Partridge went back inside to grab a shotgun because he was going to head toward the barn himself. And this is a man, right? Avid Hunter, he is used to hunting large prey. He is used to hunting at night and who obviously was not scared to open the door and look outside. But as he started towards the barn, after he grabbed his shotgun, he was so overcome with a sense of fear.
00:26:44
Speaker
that it stopped him in his tracks and he went back inside, convincing himself that, you know, the dog had been hunting with him before the dog would be fine. Is the dog die? Well, perhaps. So he's telling himself this is a good hunting dog. He knows how to protect himself. And Partridge was so unnerved by this feeling that he slept with his shotgun right beside the bed.
00:27:15
Speaker
The next morning, Partridge, with the light of day, he's feeling better, he went on the front porch and realized Bandit never came back. So in the safety of this morning light, Partridge made his way to the barn where he had last seen Bandit and where he had seen the two red eyes. There in the mud were Bandit's paw prints going round and round in a circle and never going anywhere else.
00:27:45
Speaker
but Bandit had disappeared, or was taken. Okay, so I can, first off, that's extremely sad, but now I can kind of see the connection with the possible UFO and this possible Mothman. Yeah, like there's these strange things. The next evening,
00:28:03
Speaker
November 15th in 1966, two young couples, Roger and Linda Scarberry, and Steve and Mary Millett, were out for a night of driving. They were driving in what is called the TNT area of Point Pleasant, which is this remote wooded area about six miles outside of town. And that name, the TNT area, it might seem odd,
00:28:28
Speaker
But during World War II, more than 8,000 acres here in Point Pleasant had been part of an ammunition manufacturing facility where they made and stored explosives, hence TNT area. Those explosives were housed in underground igloos and they, it actually looks like an igloo built into a mound, even though they were all manmade.
00:28:54
Speaker
So like they planted grass over it so you wouldn't be able like an aerial view. You wouldn't know what was there. And I put some pictures.
00:29:05
Speaker
It looks really creepy now because after the war it was abandoned and it was later deemed severely contaminated from all the hazardous byproducts from the manufacturing of the manufacturing. So I'm sharing with Maggie these pictures and Sleuth Hounds, she can attach them hopefully to our Patreon so you can see them too, but it looks very creepy after it's abandonment.
00:29:29
Speaker
Yeah, it looks like a place you would go to be murdered. Yeah, it does. So as the four were driving along, Linda looked outside of the car and she saw two large glowing red eyes. She said they were about two inches in diameter and about six inches apart. And she saw them just up ahead. So all four of them now are peering into the night and they all see the same thing.
00:29:57
Speaker
Roger slammed on his brakes because whatever this was, it was in the road just up ahead. So none of them know what it is. They are all terrified. And the headlights are now shining on what appears to be a creature that was six to seven feet tall with red eyes as big as automobile taillights.
00:30:23
Speaker
It looked like a huge man but had wings tucked behind its back and they said the eyes were almost hypnotic. Oh, so kind of like
00:30:37
Speaker
I don't know, a picture like flies being able to hypnotize things. Like that, yeah. And all of a sudden, this thing leaped straight up in the air with its wings spread. Linda screamed. Roger stepped on the gas and sped away as fast as he could, because now it's not in the road in front of him, right? So he's speeding along. All of the passengers, they're looking in their rear view like the window.
00:31:05
Speaker
They start yelling realizing that the creature was following them It was like gliding not flapping its wings just gliding through the air after them with the UFO or no Um, I don't think no
00:31:22
Speaker
Uh, Roger actually looks down at his speedometer and he was doing a hundred miles per hour and the creature was staying right with him. Wow. This creature was making a sound like a squeaking sound like a large mouse. So Roger went as fast as he could straight towards town and right near the city limits, they spotted a dead dog on the side of the road.
00:31:51
Speaker
Yeah, is it bandit? Well, it could be. And that was just about the place where the creature stopped following them. So do we think like Mothman is like a giant bat? Because that's the kind of vibe he's giving me eyes. It's something like that. Yeah.
00:32:09
Speaker
So this foursome went straight to the police station and they reported to deputy sheriff, Millard Halstead, what they had seen and what they had experienced. And the officer actually took them seriously, Maggie, because these were good kids and they were clearly terrified. Like this is not some joke. So the officers at the station separated the four of them and had them recount what had happened. And they all said the same things.
00:32:40
Speaker
Halstead took Roger with him to drive back to the TNT area so Roger could point out the location of the of the siding and all of that. And if I were Roger, I'd be like, can I just describe it to you? So I don't have to go back. And when they went back, the dog's carcass was gone. Interesting. And while the two didn't see the creature again, while they were out, Halstead
00:33:07
Speaker
who was trying to talk to dispatch back at the station couldn't hear them because the radio kept making a loud sound, like a gargling, like a record player playing at 10 times speed. Everyone who had seen something over the past two weeks felt like something bad was going to happen.
00:33:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's so really weird. So many random things. Right. So this makes multiple people now who've seen something like the Mothman and then one, Derenberger, who was experiencing something else otherworldly.
John Keel's Investigative Findings
00:33:47
Speaker
But things were about to get even more bizarre and seemingly interconnected.
00:33:55
Speaker
So Keel in his book about the Mothman, and he believes that the two are in some way interrelated, the Mothman and the UFOs. He shares another sighting that happened on the same night as Derenberger's. And remember, he's the one who saw cold.
00:34:14
Speaker
During the process of writing his book, Kiel actually befriended a local, respected journalist reporter for the Athens Messenger named Mary Heyer. And as Kiel was completing his research on the Mothman, he and Heyer actually worked together, piecing the information that each one of them had been told throughout the time span of the Mothman sightings. So why Heyer? Why pair with her? Because she was the journalist
00:34:44
Speaker
who first reported on the sightings themselves. Her story was published on Wednesday, November 16th, 1966. There on the front page was the headline, Winged Red-Eyed Thing Chases Point Couples Across Countryside.
00:35:04
Speaker
And here's how the article started, quote, what stands six feet tall has wings, two big red eyes, six inches apart and glides along behind an auto at a hundred miles an hour. Don't know. Well, neither do the four point pleasant residents who were chased by a weird man like thing Tuesday night, end quote.
00:35:27
Speaker
And because it was reported publicly, that is why this sighting with these two young couples is widely recognized as the first official sighting of the Mothman, even though as Keel's research showed, there were other sightings in the weeks just prior.
00:35:50
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:37:51
Speaker
There are so many times when I want to do something digitally like read a book or take notes, but I miss the feel of real paper. I've tried journaling on my iPad, which is a great New Year's resolution by the way, but the feel of the screen didn't give me the same satisfaction as writing on paper until I got the Paperlike. Paperlike is a screen protector that makes an iPad feel exactly like you're writing or drawing on paper. It is perfect for note takers, journalers, and artists for anyone.
00:38:20
Speaker
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00:38:46
Speaker
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00:39:12
Speaker
Head over to paperlike.com forward slash coffee and cases to get started. But back to this Mary Heyer. As Keel was researching and they were putting their shared information together, Heyer related to Keel that on the same night as Darren Berger, someone else saw something. An elderly man had come to see Heyer.
00:39:42
Speaker
saying that he just had to tell someone what he had seen. He said that he and a coworker had been driving back toward his home in Point Pleasant from Marietta, Ohio. And Marietta, by the way, is only about 13 miles north of Parkersburg, where Derenberger had the contact with cold. They also saw an elongated UFO flying low, and it stopped to block the road in front of their vehicle.
00:40:13
Speaker
A man got out of the object, he was wearing a long dark overcoat, smiling widely, and he kept his arms crossed the whole time with his hands tucked into his armpits. However,
00:40:28
Speaker
Unlike with Derenberger, where the UFO kind of rose up straight in the air so the other traffic didn't see it, with an increase in traffic, the man who had gotten out of the UFO actually got back into the craft and disappeared upward, at which point the two men zoomed away.
00:40:47
Speaker
And initially, they didn't have any conversation. Right. Right. They didn't have a telepathic conversation with him like Darren Berger did. And initially, they had actually decided we're not going to tell anybody about this, right? They're like, nobody's going to believe us anyway.
00:41:01
Speaker
But what led this elderly man to come forward was that he couldn't sleep afterward. And when he did sleep, he had awful nightmares that made him afraid to go to sleep. So he took to drinking and this was something that this man had never done.
00:41:20
Speaker
So he thought maybe telling somebody what happened would ease his mind. And of course he goes to hide because remember she might believe him. She wrote this article about the Mothman. Not long after this man came to hire to tell his story though, his son called and asked her not to print the story. So she hadn't.
00:41:45
Speaker
Now later when Hire is like telling about this event to Kiel, right? Cause she's saying, Oh my gosh, this Derenberger guy saw this. There was an elderly man who told me almost an identical story. So she's telling this to Kiel and he wants to confirm the details. So they call this elderly man. He confirmed every single detail just as Hire had recalled him telling it to her, but he asked,
00:42:11
Speaker
that if they printed the story that his name not be used. When he was asked why, the man replied that, quote, the scientist had told him not to get involved with this thing, end quote. So of course, yeah, higher and keel, they're like, exactly what you said, Maggie, what scientists, but all he could remember was that the man said he was from Ohio.
00:42:39
Speaker
And since the man had told Mary and his own immediate family about the incident, Hire and Keel asked how this scientist had known about his experience. Cause he's only told Mary and his immediate family. So they're like, how did the scientist know about what you saw? And the elderly man says, I have no idea how he knew. Maybe he was an alien aboard the craft. Could be, or this is one of those like men in black stories.
00:43:07
Speaker
Right, who, if you've seen the movie, right, if you've come into contact, they want to like, erase your memory. Mm hmm. Crazy. Yeah, before the end of November, Maggie, so many more people would come forward with stories about the Mothman creature.
Mothman as a Harbinger of Disaster
00:43:24
Speaker
At 4.45 a.m. on November 17th, a local music teacher woke up to her small dog whining and barking like crazy. She saw outside her window what she thought was a UFO with flashing green and red lights. And that same day, a local 17-year-old boy said a huge bird man creature had followed his car for nearly a mile. And this chase happened
00:43:52
Speaker
right in front of the music teacher's home. So I think that's why Keel thinks that they're related because they're similar, like they're sightings of both things around the same areas. On November 18th, two firefighters were in the TNT area and stated that they saw what they thought was a huge bird, but it was unlike anything that they had ever seen.
00:44:18
Speaker
Even more people came forward. Some were saying that they saw what was the biggest bird they'd ever seen, like the firefighters. Others said that what they saw looked like a man with wings, like more like a man because of the muscular legs and not, it didn't have like skinny bird legs. But one thing that they all knew was that this was not a bird.
00:44:42
Speaker
the red glowing eyes were far too large to be either a barred owl or a sandhill crane because those are the two most popular speculations by people who are like, there has to be a logical explanation and it's a bird.
00:44:56
Speaker
The eyes are far too big to be either one of those things. Five more people together in a group saw the bird-like creature. And while they stood there, hypnotized by its eyes, they said it turned and ran away after a moment. And another elderly man opened the front door when his dog started going crazy.
00:45:22
Speaker
And there in front of him was a large gray shadowy figure with glowing red eyes. The man said he felt terrified and hypnotized at the same time and that he went into almost like a trance-like state and lost track of time.
00:45:40
Speaker
A few days later, a woman was arriving home with her brother and her three-year-old daughter, and they were unloading the car to go inside when her brother pointed to something in the air. She reported that she caught sight of something out of the corner of her eye and paralyzed in a trance-like state, fell on her daughter. But the creature was no longer in the air, Maggie. It was right there in her yard and coming closer.
00:46:09
Speaker
and feeling that she and her daughter would die right there if she didn't move. She was finally able to gain enough strength to get up, grab her daughter, and run with all of her might to the door of her home. And even though she got inside, the thing was still coming. It was on the porch.
00:46:30
Speaker
And then it was peering in the window. Yes, she called the police, but the creature was gone by the time they arrived. This woman was so scarred by this experience that she had to get counseling.
00:46:45
Speaker
Well, yeah. Sounds traumatizing. Yes. On November 27th, a woman named Connie was on her way home from church. And unlike most of the sightings, this one was in the daylight. 1030 a.m. and about 10 miles north of the TNT area, Connie saw a creature that stood over seven feet tall. It was gray and had red glowing eyes.
00:47:15
Speaker
She, too, reported that the eyes when they were focused on her made her feel like she was in some sort of a trance. What broke the trance was the creature opening its wings, which, when opened, appeared to be about 10 feet in width.
00:47:31
Speaker
and it seemed to defy physics and jumped straight up without flapping its wings and started making its way toward her car, staring at her the whole time. So it's a little aggressive. Yes, she floored the gas and that was why she felt she was able to get away. Wow.
00:47:51
Speaker
Maggie, during the winter of 1966 into 1967, more than 100 people reported encounters with this creature or potentially multiple creatures of the same kind. And I say that because this is one theory as to why like that one ran away while others chased people.
00:48:16
Speaker
And then some reported the creature as brown, some reported it as gray, but Kiel spoke with many of these people and was told details that corroborated the stories told by others, details that were not reported in the papers.
00:48:32
Speaker
And what's more, Maggie, many of these people who say that they saw the Mothman and the UFOs for weeks afterward suffered from what is called welder's conjunctivitis or Klieg conjunctivitis, which is something like pink eye, but it's caused by prolonged exposure to ultraviolet light.
00:48:55
Speaker
So maybe like the eyeballs. And this condition is something that like if this experience were chalked up to like mass hysteria, that would be nearly impossible to replicate among that many people. So mass hysteria seems to be off the table.
00:49:14
Speaker
And there were other happenings during this period as well, according to Keel's book. For example, a young couple had driven into a rural area for a make-out session when they saw a floating blue light and seemingly went into a trance. When they both snapped out of it, thinking it had only been about two minutes, they looked at the clock to realize that it had been two hours.
00:49:39
Speaker
Wow. Still others received phone calls that were only beeping or screeching noises and their televisions were also affected. Like, remember the guy with Bandit, his TV goes black and then, right, it's making weird noises? That happened to a lot of people. And many of Keel's own phone calls with people who had had sightings, he tried to record them.
00:50:09
Speaker
But when Kiel would play them back, he would find that they were only static. When he would go back to try to listen to them.
00:50:19
Speaker
There had been months of sightings, Maggie, before Keel arrived in town to try to document it. And when he did, he could sense the trepidation in the air. Everybody was on edge. Everybody was anxious. And again, everybody felt that this thing was just a sign that something worse was coming. Linda Scarberry had to get sedatives to sleep.
00:50:47
Speaker
Connie wouldn't go on camera even up to 50 years after her experience because she was still so terrified. And her now husband went on record saying that it even took forever for her to tell him about what had happened to her because she was so shaken by it. And even the National Guard as well as the state police actually came to the Point Pleasant area to search for what could be causing this panic.
00:51:16
Speaker
So if it's not real, why did they come? On January 6th, 1967, the Christensen family had an encounter.
00:51:28
Speaker
They said a man around six foot six inches and weighing around 300 pounds showed up at their home. He wore a long black coat and a furry Russian style hat. He said he was from the heirs bureau and that his questions might lead to the family receiving an inheritance.
00:51:47
Speaker
His appearance was a little bit off-putting to the family members, though, who noticed that this man's head was strangely large, and he had widespread bulging eyes, only one of which moved, leading them to believe that the other one was a glass eye.
00:52:03
Speaker
His shoes had very thick soles and they noted a long thick green wire coming up from his sock and into his sickly pale skin on his leg. They said he spoke in clipped phrases like a robot.
00:52:22
Speaker
And the Christensen's dog barked at this man at first, like wouldn't stop barking until the man turned and like whispered and spoke directly to the dog after which it stayed calm the whole rest of the time. I need him to come do that to Willow. When the family offered him food, he declined, but he did say that in about 10 minutes he would take some water.
00:52:45
Speaker
His robot voice wheezed out as he asked about the schools that the patriarch of the family attended, if he had any scars and questions like that, and all the while the man's face grew more and more red. About 10 minutes into the conversation, the man asked for a large glass of water, which he gulped down while taking a large yellow pill.
00:53:07
Speaker
So I wonder if this is like concealing his alien identity. Right. I think that's what they think now. When he finished his questions, he thanked the family and got up to leave. And they noticed that as he walked, his shoes made a squishing sound like they were wet.
00:53:23
Speaker
Once he got outside, like there's no car visible, he raises his arm and a black Cadillac without its headlights on, came to pick him up and drove off into the night again without headlights.
00:53:39
Speaker
And there were five witnesses in the family to this experience. On March 5th, 1967, marks another phenomenon. A Red Cross blood mobile was heading toward Huntington, West Virginia, when they saw a bright white object off the side of the road that began heading toward them.
00:54:00
Speaker
The nurse who was in the passenger seat screamed and the driver sped up. They saw a metal arm coming out of what looked like a UFO and coming toward the blood mobile. And another arm came out from the other side of this craft trying to reach around to the other side of the vehicle.
00:54:19
Speaker
Oncoming traffic finally, luckily caused the UFO to forget its plight and fly away, but the driver and the nurse immediately went to the police to report what had happened. And I guess it's at this point that I should also mention that Keel noticed a pattern
00:54:37
Speaker
of the Mothman. Now, I mentioned the dog, right, and its carcasses there, potentially drained of blood. Here we have this UFO going after a blood mobile, and there was a pattern that Kiel noted that the Mothman appeared almost primarily to women when the women were on their period. Hmm.
00:55:02
Speaker
In April 1967, even John Keel, while he was with Mary Hyer, swear that they saw a UFO. Keel, unafraid, I don't understand that, I would be terrified, used his headlights to flash in Morse code the word descend.
00:55:24
Speaker
And the UFO began its descent, falling in a leaf-like falling motion back and forth. Before getting spooked by something and then taking off again, I would be like, thank the Lord. Yeah. Yeah. The next day.
00:55:41
Speaker
Kiel says he woke up with conjunctivitis. Oh, no. So all while Kiel was investigating, like I mentioned at the beginning, he tried to keep his eyewitnesses private. He wouldn't share names. He didn't want them to speak with one another. Yeah, he would even often drop by to see them unannounced to make sure that they weren't making things up.
00:56:03
Speaker
But people were continually calling him throughout 1967. But near the end of 1967, Keel was actually getting more and more communication from the people that he had interviewed. So it was normal that they would call him and they would stay in contact. But it was like it was weird because all of them were calling him all the time near the end of 1967. The people who had he had meticulously kept apart
00:56:32
Speaker
were calling to tell him similar things. Weird things even began happening to Keel. Like he would make a split second decision to stay at a hotel. And in the five minutes that it took him to unload his car and make his way to the front desk to check in, the clerk, after hearing his name when he's asking for a room, would say, oh, I have messages for you. Like these people somehow knew that he was going to be there before he was there.
00:57:00
Speaker
He kept getting information from his contacts, and these are all people who saw the UFO or the Mothman, that some huge disaster was going to happen on the Ohio River and that people would die.
00:57:15
Speaker
That was one thing that they kept telling him. But they were saying other things too. Like they were saying the Pope was going to be killed by a man in a dark coat with a dagger. They told him that when the president would commence the tree lighting ceremony that year, that the whole country would suffer a blackout. And so these are the things they're telling him. And the Pope was actually about to take a trip. So Keel is watching all of the coverage of the Pope with bated breath.
00:57:45
Speaker
But nothing happened. This is crazy. Yeah, not taking any chances. Keel actually wrote a letter on November 3rd, 1967. So now we're almost we're right at a year after the first sightings to marry higher to say that he had reason to believe that there would be a disaster in the Point Pleasant area, maybe
00:58:06
Speaker
A plant on the river would blow up or it would burn down. But weeks and weeks went by and nothing happened. So now he's thinking, okay, maybe all this chatter and the similar messages, maybe it's just some misinformation. Around December 13th, the traffic lights on the Silver Bridge connecting Point Pleasant, West Virginia and Gallipolis, Ohio began malfunctioning.
00:58:31
Speaker
Mary Heyer saw two men climbing on the bridge and she remembered them because they were dressed oddly like in checkered coats, black trousers and ordinary shoes. So not dressed for the winter weather. So she's thinking, are they fixing the lights? Like, are they checking out the bridge? What are these men doing? That's on December 13th.
00:58:51
Speaker
On December 15th, 1967, 13 months to the day after the first reported Mothman sighting, again, Keel was closely watching the television. The president was about to light the Christmas tree. And Keel had his flashlight ready for the blackout that he was sure would ensue. Right? Because that's what the chatter said. President Johnson lit the tree.
00:59:21
Speaker
the lights stayed on. So again, Keel is thinking, okay, maybe this information, it's just wrong, right? This information that I've been given. But just then, a noise on the television signaled breaking news.
00:59:36
Speaker
The Silver Bridge spanning the Ohio River from Point Pleasant to Gallipolis had collapsed during rush hour traffic. 31 vehicles holding 64 people fell into the icy waters below. 44 died in the collapse. An additional two have never been found.
01:00:00
Speaker
Oh, that's a fear of mine for real. The entire tragedy took place in less than 60 seconds.
01:00:08
Speaker
So was this the tragedy that the Mothman had portended? Many people think so because the sightings of the Mothman fizzled away after this catastrophe. On paper, the cause of the bridge collapse was that there was a cracked eye beam, a defect only 2.5 millimeters deep that had caused the entire bridge to fail.
01:00:37
Speaker
And those who believe in numerology find it interesting that the defect was found on joint C13. The details of the failure are written in paragraph 13 of the report. And the disaster happened 13 months to the day of the first sighting. Was this all just a big media storm and all hogwash?
Closing Remarks and Listener Engagement
01:01:07
Speaker
Some say so. Another example of mass hysteria of people buying into a myth. Others point out that even though the plan was foiled on November 27th, 1970, the Pope was nearly assassinated by a man in black who tried to kill him with a dagger. Eyewitnesses reported that the man who tried to kill him seemed to be in a trance.
01:01:37
Speaker
So is it all fake? Enough to discount the whole thing? Or will you even allow yourself to believe a tenth of it is true? After all, even that tiny bit, a kernel of truth, is enough to make the whole thing terrifying.
01:01:57
Speaker
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01:02:26
Speaker
Stay together. Stay safe. We'll see you next week.