In January 2002, the American mystical thriller with elements of the detective director Mark Pellington's "Moth Man" was released. The story told in it is not pure fiction at all. The picture is based on real events that continue to this day …
Nightmares at Point Pleasant
According to the plot, the main characters of the film - reporter John Klein and his wife Mary - are planning to buy a new house. After they examine one of the options, a car accident occurs, during which Mary sees a mysterious creature. Soon, the woman dies of brain cancer, and strange things begin to happen to John.
The film is based on facts from the book by John Keel, published in 1975, "The Prophecy of the Moth Man." Its author is investigating a phenomenon that took place at Point Pleasant (West Virginia, USA).
Early in the morning of November 25, 1966, a 25-year-old resident of Clarksburg, Thomas Urey, encountered a creature that resembled a giant moth near Point Pleasant. According to Yuuri, the body of the mysterious insect was about two meters long. His face resembled a human, but his eyes were large, round, red and sparkled like burning coals. The Moth followed Thomas's car, circling in the air above it. Thomas increased his speed, but the creature kept up. The winged monster was observed by other eyewitnesses. In the district he was nicknamed Mothman - Moth Man.
In January 1967, a certain Mrs. McDaniel witnessed the Moth Man flying over the trees. Before her eyes, he suddenly swooped down, made a circle over the nearest restaurant and disappeared from sight.
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By the end of 1967, there were about a hundred reports of meetings with the alleged Moth Man. On December 15, 1967, a tragedy occurred at Point Pleasant: the Silver Bridge over the Ohio River collapsed. The crash killed 46 people. At this moment, Motman was also seen near the bridge. It is curious that after this, there were no more reports of his appearance at Point Pleasant.
John Keel, in his book, suggests that Mothman is of otherworldly origin and appears to the inhabitants of Point Pleasant to warn of disasters.
After the release of the movie Moth Man, a statue of this monster was even erected in Point Pleasant to attract tourists. Festivals in honor of the Moth Man are held regularly in the city.
Batman visits
However, such creatures were seen not only by the inhabitants of Point Pleasant. Repeatedly "flying monsters" appeared on the territory of Italy. For the first time, a strange man with wings was noticed in the summer of 1945 over the port of Taranto. The next time a similar message came from Bobbio (Piacenza) on August 19, 1971.
After that, the flyers were observed in different parts of Italy. So, on December 16, 1991, a 22-year-old student from Parma, Manuele B., saw a creature flying across the sky with dark green skin in folds, red eyes, burning like headlights … It moved very slowly and, perhaps, awkwardly, sometimes freezing motionless in place. The girl claimed that the flyer's movements were somehow monotonous-mechanical, like a robot. And in 2001, the Italian newspaper La Nazione reported that in the town of Carozzo, located 150 kilometers south-west of Bologna, a man in black flew across the sky. According to eyewitnesses, he looked like Batman from the comics …
Death at the lighthouse
In May 1992, the American tabloid Weekly World News published a report about a giant moth that was burned up in the fire of a naval lighthouse near the Norwegian city of Buda earlier that year.
The lighthouse keeper Karl Friedensen at first mistook a huge insect that emerged from the darkness of the night for an airplane: its wingspan reached about 10 meters. The creature crashed into the top of the lighthouse. When Friedensen, who was at that time below, went upstairs, he found that the night guest, having broken through the powerful glass of the Fresnel lens, landed directly on the red-hot electrodes. The burned remains resembled shots from a horror movie. Besides, they gave off an unbearable stench.
The article said: what remained of the creature was transferred to the laboratory, where a group of entomologists came to the conclusion that the remains belonged to an unknown representative of the order of Lepidoptera. Researchers have suggested that this is a giant butterfly native to the jungle of South America, where there are many areas with unexplored fauna. And according to the authors of the article, the monster could come from a parallel dimension. True, the majority of readers considered this information to be just a newspaper duck, or, as they say now, a fake, from those that are constantly published by the yellow press.
Events in Chicago
And now it looks like Moth Man is back! This was told by the Chicago paranormal researcher Manuel Navarett.
On September 12, 2017, at about 10 pm, an eyewitness who wished to remain anonymous was returning from work. She walked down Millard Avenue towards Little Village where she lived. Suddenly, the girl noticed in front, as it seemed to her, a very tall man. A little later, she saw that the stranger had huge black wings and brightly glowing orange eyes.
The girl thought that it might be a large owl, but the closer she got, the clearer it became that it was a humanoid creature. According to her, the creature was just over two meters tall.
“He just stood and looked at me for about five minutes and made a strange chirping sound,” says the witness. - And at that time I was slowly walking right at him and thought that it was the devil himself. I began to pray to myself. I kept walking because I understood that if I stopped, I was simply paralyzed with fear. When there was less than 20 feet between us (about 6.5 meters), he suddenly screeched loudly, as if he was trying to warn me about something, and the next moment he jumped up and flew towards West 25th Street.
When the girl got home and told her family about this case, her grandmother stated that it was either the devil himself, or Lechusa, an owl-like creature from Latin American folklore.
By the way, similar creatures in Chicago and its environs have been observed before. So, in the spring of 2017, reports began to appear in the press about meetings with a monster, according to the description, very reminiscent of the creature from Point Pleasant. The same eyewitness told Navarett that in Little Village, where she lives, there are legends about a certain Un Diablo Negro - "Black Devil".
The Moth Man recently appeared in Chicago's Pitrowski Park. Here is a description given by one of the eyewitnesses:
- In the evening, my friend John and I were sitting in the car, when suddenly something hit her in the trunk. This seemed very strange to us, because if a car came up from behind, it had to first illuminate the interior of our car with headlights. Finally, we could hear the noise of the engine, and then it was as if someone sneaked up on purpose and deliberately hit our car. John swore and was already grabbing the door handle to get out of the car and see what happened, when suddenly … something huge descended on top of the trunk, so much so that the car sank. The very next moment we realized what kind of creature attacked us - the Moth Man! These wings, like a bat, red eyes and the fantastic size of the monster - at least eight feet high (about 2.5 meters) immediately reminded us of stories about the mysterious cryptid (an animal whose existence is possible,but not proven by science).
The witness said that the monster literally pounded into the interior of the car, trying to break the rear window. But after the driver shone a flashlight directly into the creature's eyes, it, uttering a terrible cry, fell off the hood and retreated.
Reality or myth?
Where do such creatures come from? As always, there are many versions. For example, according to ufologists, "moth people" are representatives of an alien civilization. Cryptozoologists are convinced that these are flying lizards that miraculously survived on Earth. It was also hypothesized that the Moth Man is the result of some secret military development.
According to folklore specialist Jan Harold Brunwald, eyewitness accounts have many coincidences with legends and stories about such monsters, which can be read, say, in children's books. The researcher believes that the hype around the Moth Man could be based on a real single episode that provoked fear and even mass hallucinations in people. So the creepy thing is just a product of the human imagination …
But perhaps it all started with a hoax. For example, someone played a trick on someone, and then stories about monsters, which in fact could be planes or large birds, followed. As for the burning eyes, it could be just a light reflection. Who to believe here - decide for yourself …