Complex Numbers

Mothman

Y'all might have figured out by now that I have a thing for cryptid legends.

The Urban Legend Of The Mothman, West Virginia's Famous Red-Eyed Omen  

Come to think of it, I wonder why there isn't a cryptid associated with the Great Dismal Swamp (from yesterday's entry). I guess because the reality was fucked-up enough that they didn't need to invent a... I dunno... bearigator or something.

I swear if I find stuff about a bearigator all over the internet after this, I'mma get angry. Unless they credit me for what is, really, come on, an awesome idea.

There are no alligators in the GDS, by the way. Not yet, anyway, not that they know of. I've seen them a bit southeast of there, though, around the Outer Banks of North Carolina, so what with climate change and all, it's probably only a matter of time.

Anyway. Today we're talking about our neighbor to the northwest.

If there’s two things the state of West Virginia is known for, it’s an unfortunate dependence on the dying industry of coal mining, and the legend of the Mothman.

That's a joke, right? It is Cracked, so I'm assuming it's a joke. If there's two things West Virginia is known for here in Real Virginia, it's strippers and hillbillies. If there's three, it's also stripper hillbillies. I'm not saying I've gone to hillbilly stripper clubs in West Virginia, so don't ask me how I know this.

More seriously, though, don't believe all the stereotypes. It's a beautiful state and the part they're talking about here, Point Pleasant, is a rare case of a town actually being named something descriptive (see also: Lynchburg, VA).

The first sighting of the beast comes from November 1966, in Clendenin, West Virginia. The first people to spot him were a group of gravediggers, which seems like a great job to pick up if you want to be creeped out all the time.

Ever notice that in movies and shows, no one ever digs up a grave during the day? It's always at night. That way no one's surprised when zombies attack.

The gravediggers described a huge flying figure dashing from tree to tree. They further described its appearance as a “brown human being,” which sounds like something a nervous neoliberal mayoral candidate would say while campaigning in a black neighborhood.

Another thing WV is known for is rampant racism, but I don't think this is a case of that. It's more a case of... cryptidism?

The article goes on to quote the newspaper account of the Mothman's second sighting:

"Two Point Pleasant couples said today they encountered a man-sized, bird-like creature in the TNT area about midnight last night. Sheriff's deputies and City Police went to the scene about 2 o'clock this morning but were unable to spot anything. But the two young men telling their story this morning were dead serious, and asserted they hadn't been drinking."

Suuuuuuure they hadn't.

However, he also said that it looked like “maybe what you would visualize as an angel,” which is like, the number one thing not to say if you’re trying to avoid a rubber room.

Yeah, I don't know about that. People claim to see angels fairly often. It's when their opposites, demons, start whispering in the person's ear that they get fitted for a nice canvas jacket with straps.

The legend continued to grow over the years, but one thing that never received further clarity was the Mothman’s motives, or relationships with the population he was allegedly haunting. There are no reports of direct violence or aggression.

You want to find out his motives? Ask him. I'll be right over there.

Perhaps the most unsettling sighting was the claimed sighting of the Mothman standing on the local Silver Bridge, which would collapse the next day, killing over 40. This served to add a new supernatural level of mystique to the Mothman, that of an omen, or for the especially suspicious, a saboteur.

I should note here that I don't know where the Silver Bridge was, or if it's been rebuilt, but the whole point of Point Pleasant is that it's located at the confluence of the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers. So there are a good number of bridges in the area. Some of them have even stayed up.

Oh, and yes, I've been there. There was, in the Before Time, a brewery pretty close to the Mothman statue. They brewed, among other things, hemp beer. It tasted like Mothman piss. The statue, by the way, is illustrated in the link. It is GLORIOUS.

I talked about the brewery before, about a year ago: "Liberating the Angel" 

Some researchers note that this appearance is very common in the description of sleep paralysis demons, the sightings or hallucinations of which can stick in the subconscious and manifest later during times of fear.

I've never actually seen -- or, I guess I should say, I never hallucinated -- a sleep paralysis demon, despite my struggles with the affliction. Usually it's an inchoate presence. Sometimes there are footsteps, which you wouldn't expect from a flying cryptid.

The flying is also not a particularly unique detail in a location with plentiful wildlife, specifically occupied by populations of herons, which are, well… huge, man-sized birds. From this comes one of the most compelling scientific theories of the Mothman. Dr. Robert L. Smith postulates that the original Mothman, the one seen frequently and in detail in the 1960s, was in fact a sandhill crane.

Yeah... I looked up "sandhill crane," and a) they're not human-sized and b) they don't live in the Ohio River Valley. I'm all for finding logical explanations for these sorts of things, but I'm not convinced about this one. On the other hand, it's sometimes hard to tell actual size at night, and birds sometimes fly outside their established ranges. So, okay, maybe.

When you take all this into account, it seems very likely that the area was occupied by an unusually large sandhill crane, perhaps even one that did possess some level of mutation caused by chemical leaks.

Common enough in the Ohio River Valley.

I will point out, though, that genetic mutation doesn't work that way. You don't expose a crane to gamma rays and thereby turn it into Heron Hulk.

The lifespan of a sandhill crane is around 20 years, and one could assume even less if the bird was indeed mutated or sickened by chemical leakage, which would explain its fairly brief reign of terror. Which is to say, the Mothman was probably dead long before you were born.

Except the first sightings were during the year I was born. Not all your readers are whippersnappers, Cracked.

Anyway, the reason I'm fascinated by cryptids is not that I "believe" in them; it's because of what the legends tell us about ourselves. Was there an actual Mothman? Hell no. But I accept that people saw something, and part of the fun of life is that we can't definitively explain everything.