In November of 1966, Point Pleasant, West Virginia played unwilling host to an explosive and unsettling cacophony of the weird. Residents all over town experienced power outages, strange phone calls, and there were even reports of UFO sightings. The crisis of hysteria that befell the area seemed to begin with a certain pair of crimson eyes that terrorized a select few friends, out on an afternoon drive.
Sightings of a massive winged apparition with glowing red eyes were dubbed the “Mothman”. The Mothman, as it came to be known, appeared to several young men and women, flashing its crimson eyes leaving those that encountered it suffering from nausea, paralyzing fear, and lasting emotional damage. Shortly after, appearances of him multiplied, becoming a national sensation. His yearlong jaunt in town would end with the tragedy of the Silver Bridge collapse that took the lives of 46 people. Several of the deceased were have said to been visited by the creature premortem. Since then, he has become a cultural icon in Point Pleasant. The town even has a massive statue and a large festival devoted to the folk monster.
The Mothman and other “supernatural” occurrences that took place in and around West Virginia have been well recorded in documentaries and television specials. There is a book in regards to the subject titled, The Mothman Prophecies. However, as weird and exciting these windows may seem, they are not as unique as they first seem.
Humankind has been engaging with hairy men, giant bats, and glowing apparitions for centuries. Flying saucers are found in Renaissance paintings. In France, archeologists observed a character in prehistoric cave art known as a “shapeshifter”, that takes the likeness of both a man and a beast. Creatures similar to these have terrorized us across time. We can see quite plainly that millions have experienced visitation with unknown beings. In fact, these are recurring characteristics that accompany a plethora of supposedly “different” phenomena. It is entirely possible that whatever fear we carry has compelled us to tell the same stories again and again, even while the devil may seem to wear different masks.
In the 1830s, an apparition known as Spring-heeled Jack terrorized London. After his first appearance, a rash of sightings followed. The black monster possessed a human-like shape, wings, and in some reports – glowing red eyes. People who ran into Jack told of paralyzing fear. Sound familiar?
In her book, American Monsters, Linda Godfrey dedicates an entire section to creatures from the sky. No less than 67 pages speak of “winged humanoids” which resemble large men often with bat wings. Often, they possess frightening, glowing eyes. The culprits begin to seem more akin to one another. Mothman actually received his name simply because the first written report opted to take the name since “Batman” was already taken.
Keep in mind that these bat and moth-like creatures also bear a striking resemblance to the Christian interpretation of devils and demons. Quite often, they bear large stature and membranous wings similar to bats. Synonymous with all of these monsters is that ever-present paralyzing fear.
Vampire sightings, also bat-like, have always been associated with a deep paralyzing fear. Accounts from as early as the middle ages speak of blinding lights preceding the visit of a vampire that in turn freezes the victim in horror. This effect in general even has made it into pop culture depictions of the folk creature wherein its gaze locks their victim in place.
To stray from depictions of evil, yet remaining with this theme of Christian imagery, angel sightings have also been reported across history. These encounters, while sometimes devoid of the permeating fear, include lights of exceptional power. We also tend to view them as semi-humanoid though with a face we cannot quite describe – another usual detail of these meetings with unknown harbingers of the outer walls. These angels, the Mothman, Jack, Bigfoot, dog-men, werewolves, and aliens all seem to be vaguely human, yet their facial details are never distinctly clear.
Another similarity in these breaks in (perceived?) realities are these floating and otherwise powerful lights. They are mostly associated with UFO activity or alien visitation and abduction.
Man has always gazed skyward. Both aliens and angels float in rhythmic movement, hover and bend and break into speeds that no terrestrial form could handle. These are some of the most lurid and provocative pieces of modern paranormal lore. Similarly to our other entities, aliens have long been associated with sleep paralysis (paralyzed in fear) and floating lights (burning red [orbs]). In Point Pleasant, Mothman was accompanied over a hundred reports of soaring lights and flying saucers. Here we have a concept that most consider science fiction overlapping heavily with religious conceptions of supernatural beings with both bathed in the fear of unknown and unexplainable. The key here is the human interpretation changes, not the phenomenon.
There are still smaller details to consider. In the rabidly Puritan times of Europe and colonial America, there existed the “devil’s sign”, that Lucifer would use to mark his victims. This is in little way dissimilar to the mark supposed alien abductees receive after their alleged episode. Another smaller lesser known detail that appears across almost all categories of monster encounters is that the smell of sulfur seems to permeate the area after a sighting. Spring Heeled Jack left it behind, as did our friend Mothman, and so do aliens. In fact, it was long known as the scent Satan himself leaves behind.
The variable appears to be human interpretation. If linking wolfmen to aliens, and then to angels seems tenuous, then remember that human beings can only build their experience with what lies in their consciousness. Without our instincts or cultural programming, we would not know what to fear. Puritans in New England saw the devil and middle Europeans saw the vampyr, or nosferatu. It is not too hard to imagine that a devout Catholic is more like to see an alien as a demon, or a paranormal junkie to see a wolfman as finally catching Bigfoot. Assuredly, there are also many in the United States alone who would love to claim they saw a vampire. Of course, these are conceptions that are built from a far deeper pool of thought and feeling that we barely have access to. This can be the only explanation given the startling similarities across history and culture when it comes to “encounters” with the unknown.
The fringe of the human experiences has always been rife with ambivalence. No one quite knows how to talk precisely about it – even while we live in this information-super-communication-network age. There are, of course, believers and skeptics, but there are all those who lie in between. The majority of the human race knows that beyond the fragile wall of perceived existence is a massive cadre of questions.
The devil has been at our door for centuries, only wearing different clothes. The remaining questions should instead relate to ascertaining what lies beyond the disguise. While the majority of us will never tarry even a glimpse of the frayed ends of understood reality, there have been on occasion these instances and events that speak to still a greater world beyond us. Whether it exists as a psychological phenomenon, psychic manifestations, the otherworld, or a purely scientific explanation. As John A. Keel writes in The Mothman Prophecies, “Nothing in the paranormal is as it seems.”
