Mothman

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Revision as of 19:56, 5 April 2011

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Hiding with Schrödinger's cat

The story of Mothman is even weirder than that of Spring Heeled Jack. The events described in John A Keel's The Mothman Prophecies run, briefly as follows: in 1966, a foursome of young lovers out for a drive in West Virginia claimed to see an extremely strange flying creature that swooped over their car and scared them a lot. Over the following year, dozens of people in the area also claimed to have seen the creature; there were also reports of UFOs, men in black, a contactee or two and bizarre telephone messages from unknown persons. The events apparently ended with the collapse of the local bridge in 1967, which killed dozens of people.

Keel and another writer, Gray Barker, wrote this all up in a couple of exceedingly strange books. Keel's book was made into a film starring Richard Gere. Whether it is the book or the film that most resemble what actually happened is probably moot.

Contents

Curse of Mothman

There are a couple of odd developments stemming from this weirdness. One is a meme running through the Mothman literature that the creature is a harbinger of disaster; it was said to have appeared before the 1985 Mexico City earthqhquake and the Chernobyl disaster.[1] therefore, anywhere that gets a visit from this thing is DOOOOMED!!!ZOMG!!!11!... except for the places that had disasters without preceding Mothman reports, or reports with no ensuing disaster.

A more personalised service is the "Mothman death list", a supposed curse that befalls anyone who sees it - you'll be dead in a year, apparently. Like, say, Linda Scarberry, who was one of the original quartet in the car, and, um, oh, here she is alive and well in 2002. oops. Of course, many people have died over the years; after all it was over 40 years ago, and natural causes take their toll.

Tourism

Despite no sighting reports for over forty years the Mothman is still a considerable tourist attraction - hey, they may be weirdos but they're still spending dollars - so the town of Point Pleasant even has a Mothman Festival (3rd weekend in September, Mothfans).

External links

References

  1. Ancient Myths - The Mothman Prophecies
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