Mothman : Sightings & Theories

Filmmaker and paranormal researcher Charlie McCracken discussed his comprehensive research on the Mothman sightings, including little known witness accounts. He was joined during the evening by Travis Shortt and Matthew Flemming who worked with him on his documentary about Mothman, Dark Wings. For the film, McCracken said he took one of the original 1966 witnesses, Linda Scarberry, back to the location of where she saw a winged creature in Point Pleasant, WV.– and all these years later she was still terrified to return to the site.

Shortt noted that all the witnesses were scared by what they saw and though they varied in their estimates of the creature’s height (from 6 ft. to 9 ft.) they all concurred that it had glowing red eyes that were mesmerizing. He suggested that Mothman is a type of demonic manifestation, and added that there have been sightings of such a creature as recent as 2005, outside of Nashville.

McCracken hypothesized that because Point Pleasant sits at the juncture of two large rivers, the moving water may create electrical or magnetic disturbances which could either affect residents’ perceptions or open a portal to another dimension. Flemming opined that Mothman may simply be an as-of-yet unidentified type of creature such as Bigfoot.

Biography:

Charlie McCracken, who makes his home in the state of Virginia, has honed his skills as a journalist working in television news regionally and nationally, eventually branching out into documentary filmmaking for which he has won several awards. His interest in the paranormal began at a young age with the tragic death of his sister. He is the director of “Dark Wings: The Mothman Chronicle”, the first feature length documentary ever produced about the Mothman sightings.

Wikipedia
Mothman is a legendary creature reportedly seen in the Point Pleasant area of West Virginia from 15 November 1966 to 15 December 1967. The first newspaper report was published in the Point Pleasant Register dated 16 November 1966, entitled “Couples See Man-Sized Bird…Creature…Something”.

Mothman was introduced to a wider audience by Gray Barker in 1970,[2][3] later popularized by John Keel in his 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies, claiming that Mothman was related to a wide array of supernatural events in the area and the collapse of the Silver Bridge. The 2002 film The Mothman Prophecies, starring Richard Gere, was based on Keel’s book.

Paranormal

Some UFologists, paranormal authors, and cryptozoologists believe that Mothman was an alien, a supernatural manifestation, or an unknown cryptid. In his 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies, author John Keel claimed that the Point Pleasant residents experienced precognitions including premonitions of the collapse of the Silver Bridge, unidentified flying object sightings, visits from mysterious or threatening men in black, and other bizarre phenomena. However, Keel has been criticized for distorting established data, and for gullibility

Claims of later sightings

UFOlogist Jerome Clark writes that many years after the initial events, members of the Ohio UFO Investigators League re-interviewed several people who claimed to have seen Mothman, all of whom insisted their stories were accurate. Linda Scarberry claimed that she and her husband had seen Mothman “hundreds of times, ” sometimes at close range, commenting, “It seems like it doesn’t want to hurt you. It just wants to communicate with you. “

Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman claims that sightings of Mothman continue, and told USA Today he re-interviewed witnesses described in Keel’s book who said Mothman was “a huge creature about 7 feet tall with huge wings and red eyes” and that “they could see the creature flapping right behind them” as they fled from it.