mostly nonfiction and bakersfield news | October 1st, 2009
The Mothman Cometh: Tale Was Too Weird For Print
Unless it’s the Chinese tunnels of the Central Valley, Native wolf spirits or fake Merced lights, there just aren’t that many local urban legends.
But thank goodness Mothman, the red-eyed, winged creature of mid-1960s West Virginia lore doesn’t often pack his bags for Fresno or Bakersfield.
I don’t hear of him popping into living rooms or standing in the middle of vineyards, spooking farm workers as some ominous foreshadowing of pesticide gloom. As far as I can tell, there have been no mushroom clouds in the nearby desert with images of the creature flapping his wings merrily in apocalyptic fashion.
Yet, while researching Mothman for the mysterious places section of Random Obsessions, I have to admit I got freaked out. I peeked out windows late at night. Creeking doors got me out of bed and windstorms made me think at least once: “What if Mothman can howl?”
After all, it’s just an urban legend, right?
When writer Christopher Knowles (The Complete X-Files: Behind the Series, the Myths, and the Movies, Our Gods Wear Spandex: The Secret History of Comic Book Heroes) told me about Andrew Colvin, I didn’t know what to think. I was just looking for people connected to Mothman, who might talk about past sightings or strange beliefs in the creature.
Already, my own publisher, Viva Editions, was strangely connected to the ordeal. Brenda Knight’s uncle saw the creature in 1966 at an old TNT factory where young couples drove to make out. Brenda was six years old at the time. Just a few month later she almost died in the Silver Bridge collapse of 1967.
Her mother was driving in the next car that was going to drive onto the bridge that suddenly fell beneath Christmas shoppers on Dec. 15. Thirty-seven cars plunged into the Ohio River. Strange connections.
Colvin and I spoke late one night early this year. When I started talking to him, he said his life was in turmoil. He was out in Cincinnati with an investigator searching out local legends. His conversation was jumpy. He seemed spooked that Brenda was linked to the creature. He kept saying “synchronicities.” I imagined him looking over his shoulder as he spoke strangely, even about the investigator: “His sister saw something she thinks was Mothman right after hurricane Ike,” he said. “She had other things go on at her house.”
Possibly the most bizarre twist on the Mothman legend comes from Colvin, author of The Mothman’s Photographer: The Work of an Artist Touched by the Prophecies of the Infamous Mothman and The Mothman’s Photographer II: Meetings With Remarkable Witnesses Touched by Paranormal Phenomena, UFOs, and the Prophecies of West Virginia’s Infamous Mothman.
Colvin is a photographer of what he calls “normal life” and is also a videographer. He also claimed to be a Mothman witness who once saw the creature in 1973 masquerading as a tree in the same area where others witnessed lights and strange MIB.
He called it an area of synchronicities and also said there was a car bombing and a suitcase filled with heroin later found at that tree. There is also an infamous photo of Mothman allegedly peering into Colvin’s bedroom. It looks oddly like a tribal birdman mask propped outside his window.
Colvin, who defines Mothman as a spooky supernatural creature, wrote in his blog on Dec. 26, 2008, “Mothman definitely seems to be trying to expose an internationalist, globalist, fascist, military-industrial elite spiderweb.”
What? So Mothman isn’t a mutant stork, or a prop in a cheesy Richard Gere movie, but a creature of conspiracy warnings and of the supernatural? It was hard to peg Colvin to one simple description of what the creature signifies…
Read the full article: On Fresno Famous.
Claims she saw Mothman over her bed in Mound, WV
Image by Andrew Colvin of Sharon Moore
More on Mothman: Get more Mothman history, silver bridge collapse weirdness, spooky Chief Cornstalk mysteries and more in Random Obsessions: Trivia You Need To Know by Nick Belardes. Also learn about strange ailments like Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, mysterious places like Cannibal Island, and Star Wars oddities: Click here to order.
1 Response for “The Mothman Cometh: Tale Was Too Weird For Print”
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Some people here claim to see Yokut medicine men wearing wolf/coyote skins, or dog-like men… Strange tales of Central Valley lore… I've only heard one in detail.