Fern Flower
Published on April 20, 2017

The Moth Man

  • Mofman

Regions of expansion

United States 1
United States of America

Description

"The moth Man", or in the English version "Mothman" (Mothman) has been known since the sixties of the twentieth century. He is found in the list of famous urban legends of America, but the history practically does not go beyond its borders.

It looks like a winged creature about 2 meters high with a cylindrical torso. The wingspan is about three meters, but eyewitnesses note that they do not look like birds, but rather resemble the webbed wings of a bat. According to most eyewitnesses, the creature does not have a head, but at the same time there are two eyes burning bright red, which are located at shoulder level.

It all started on November 12, 1966, when five people digging a grave in a cemetery near Clendenin (West Virginia) saw a flying humanoid figure.

The next message was from November 15, 1966. Two young couples from Point Pleasant, Roger and Linda Scarsbury and Steve and Mary Mallett told police they saw a large white creature with glowing red eyes. They described him as a large flying man with wings of about 3 meters, who was chasing their car.

In the next few days, similar statements began to arrive. For example, two firefighters described what they saw as "a huge bird with red eyes."

The most famous case describing a meeting with a human moth occurred in Point Pleasant on the eve of the collapse of the Silver Bridge, during which 46 people were killed. It is believed that the appearance of the Human Moth is associated with this disaster and he was a harbinger of tragedy.

In total, there are more than a hundred reports about this creature in the USA.

There were also testimonies in Russia. For example, in 1908, the traveler Arsenyev saw a huge dark creature with wings that emerged from the fog and swept over the river. And a certain Inassa Grigorieva, who came to the village of Anisimovka in 1997, saw a huge bird with legs similar to human ones.

What phenomena can be attributed to the human moth? From the point of view of mysticism, researchers believe that this creature is a cryptid (a real animal whose existence has not been proven, or is considered impossible in this area), similar to bigfoot, Chupacabra or Nessie. There are very few reports of the observation of this creature, so it is difficult to prove such an affiliation. This creature almost never got on the film, and also did not leave obvious traces. According to these signs, it can be attributed to ghosts or aliens. Thus, it makes sense to single out the human moth as a separate phenomenon.

Skeptics also note that from the point of view of aerodynamics, such a creature is not adapted to flying and, most likely, is a fiction. Among other versions, hallucinations (or affective illusions), observations of real birds (for example, the owl family, or a kind of crane) can also be distinguished.

Reports of the appearance of the human moth continue to arrive to this day, although this does not happen as often as at the very beginning, at the birth of the legend, so researchers will still have the opportunity to study this phenomenon.

The Moth Man in popular culture

Links

  • Joe Nickell, The Mystery Chronicles: More Real-Life X-Files