Premium Episode 118: The Mothman (Cryptid Series) Sample
The story of the Mothman and John Keel — the author who grew fascinated by it. How the small town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia became plagued by cryptid sightings and was eventually struck by tragedy.
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Welcome, listener, to Premium Chapter 118 of the QAnon Anonymous Podcast, the Mothman episode.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rokitansky, Julian Field, and Travis View.
A woman prominent in civic affairs in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, was driving on Route 2 along the Ohio River with her elderly father.
As they passed through a sector on the edge of a park known as the Chief Cornstalk Hunting Grounds, a tall, man-like figure suddenly appeared on the road in front of them.
I slowed down, she told me years later, and as we got closer we could see that it was much larger than a man.
A big grey figure.
It stood in the middle of the road.
Then, a pair of wings unfolded from its back, and they practically filled the whole road.
It almost looked like a small airplane.
And then it took off straight up, disappearing out of sight in seconds.
We were both terrified.
I stepped on the gas and raced out of there.
We talked it over and decided not to tell anybody about it.
Who would believe us anyway?
This is an excerpt from John A. Keele's The Mothman Prophecies, the book that was eventually to inspire the 2002 film starring Richard Gere, Laura Linney, and Will Patton.
The film did pretty well and has become somewhat of a cult classic, but that's not what we're here to talk about today.
This isn't a QAA movie night, but rather a strange book report and a journey into the mind of the book's original author, John Alva Keele.
The Mothman.
There are slight variations on the description of the Mothman.
The consensus seems to be that this is a bipedal, humanoid-type creature.
Some describe it as wearing clothes, a dark cloak, or coveralls.
Some say its body is covered with fur.
Others claim it's coated with translucent skin.
A handful of people have described the creature as having no head at all, and that its eyes seem to protrude out of its chest.
Many agree that the thing resembles a large bird or large bat.
One woman who claims to have witnessed the creature, Faye LaPorte, describes what she can remember of the creature's face.
You had a nose like people had a nose, but you didn't see a point.
It was kind of round with nostrils in it.
I don't remember a mouth because, like I said, the eyes, that's where your attention went to.
There are two things that nearly every account agrees upon, however.
That the creature has giant glowing red eyes, and that its wingspan stretches the length of an entire country road.
The legend goes that the Mothman itself is the harbinger of doom, that with its sighting comes tragedy and despair.
Hearing its high-pitched screeching causes people to become sick and vomit, and staring into its eyes for too long is said to drive people mad.
Although the sightings of the Mothman as it appears in John Keel's book are concentrated to the Point Pleasant, West Virginia area between November of 1966 to December of 1967, Keel details many previous accounts of people going on record claiming to witness large, flying, humanoid-type creatures.
Early in January 1948, Mrs. Bernard Zayalowski reported seeing a sizzling and whizzing man with silver wings maneuvering about 200 feet above her barn in Chehalis, Washington.
The Air Force scoffed.
Four months later, Two laundry workers in Longview, Washington, about 40 miles south of Chalice, claimed to see a trio of birdmen circling the city at an altitude of 250 feet.
When they first came into sight, I thought they looked like gulls.
But as they got closer, I could make out that they weren't gulls and I knew that they were men, Mrs. Viola Johnson told reporters.
I could see plainly that they were men.
They wore dark, drab flying suits.
I couldn't make out their arms, but I could see their legs dangling down, and they kept moving their heads like they were looking around.
I couldn't tell if they had goggles on, but their heads looked like they had helmets on.
I couldn't see their faces.
Somebody was on some pharmacist-approved Novocaine.
I love the idea of seeing these winged beasts with two little human legs kind of dangling down below.
I just think it's such a funny sight.
I mean, I guess in 48, did they already have those kind of like parachutes where you kind of look like that when you fly?
Did she not just see just like three?
Possibly.
Possibly.
These were experimental paratroopers or perhaps rocket men.
Rocket men.
The Rocketeer.
Also, I love that in 48 that they fucking call women by the full name of their husband, Mrs. Bernard Zalowski.
Unbelievable.
Long before that, in the late 1870s or early 80s, beachgoers laying out on Coney Island, New York, spotted a man wearing black With giant wings attached to his back, flying thousands of feet above the ground, performing, quote, aerials and acrobatics for the crowd.
In fact, it became such a phenomenon that the New York Times wrote an article about it on September 12th, 1880.
Julian?
An aerial mystery!
One day last week, a marvelous apparition was seen near Coney Island.
At the height of at least a thousand feet in the air, a strange object was in the act of flying towards the New Jersey coast.
It was apparently a man with bat's wings and improved frog's legs.
The face of the man could be distinctly seen, and it wore a cruel and determined expression.
The movements made by the object closely resembled that of a frog, in the act of swimming with his hind legs and flying with his front legs.
What the fuck am I reading?
Of course, no respectable frog.
What?
Come on, man!
Respectable frog?
What is this shit?
Of course, no respectable frog has ever been known to conduct himself in precisely that way.
But were a frog to wear bat's wings... Oh, yeah.
But were a frog to wear bat's wings and attempt to swim and fly at the same time, he would correctly imitate the conduct of the Coney Island monster.
When we add that this monster waved his wings in answer to the whistle of a locomotive, and was of a deep black color, the alarming nature of the apparition can be imagined.
The object was seen by many reputable persons, and some reputable frogs, and they all agree that it was a man engaged in flying toward New Jersey.
Oh my god, man.
Okay, so that is a legit- Come on.
That is a legit article from the New York Times.
I actually went into their archives to get it.
That's amazing.
They'll have the cryptid beat like they used to, you know?
They really don't.
Well, I was gonna say, you know, I feel like newspapers back then were essentially just circus advertisements, so I'm not surprised that someone was assigned to the winged creature beat.
But also, I love how painfully bad the writer is at just describing how this thing was moving.
That they have to get to the point where they're calling frogs respectable.
I mean, that's when you know you've failed to describe physical motion.
When suddenly there are frogs coming in in suits and fucking tuxedos.
Well, sir, no respectable frog would kick his slimy little legs in such a fashion.
Woody, wear bat wings.
You can't buy bat wings.
There's no little stores for frogs where you can go buy other animal parts that you strap on.
This isn't Mario World.
Let's be real, though.
In the 1700s and 1800s, there was no shortage of dudes trying to craft themselves a pair of wings out of parchment or some shit to show off to the other wigs at the cigar club.
I mean, Leonardo da Vinci famously studied the patterns of birds in an effort to create such a contraption called the ornithopter, but it never materialized.
There are, of course, loads of guys who have fallen to their deaths after jumping off buildings and cliffs in an effort to prove to the world that they had achieved human flight.
It wasn't until 1962 that a man by the name of John C. Wimpeny, real name, flew on a craft powered by his own strength.
He named the flying machine the Puffin and it flew 993 yards at a height of above 5 meters.
He did not break any bones and his record would not be beat for 10 years after.
Whoa, that's pretty good.
I do like the idea of people being like, I'm Mothman!
Well, there went Mothman.
Yeah, dudes do be trying to fly without airplanes.
There was also a, I'm sure you've heard of this, Julian, but there was a story about this famous guy from France who had invented his own parachute that kind of looked like wings.
It was like a big piece of cloth.
And he, you know, walked up to, he wanted to jump off of the Eiffel Tower to prove that it worked.
And on the day, literally everybody is trying to talk him out of it.
The friends who came with him, the journalists who were there, you know, the weather was kind of iffy, so they were saying, oh, well at least just postpone it for another day.
This guy's like, nope.
He goes up to the top of the Eiffel Tower, or the first, I think maybe the first sort of rung.
That's high enough, believe me.
High enough.
And as soon as he jumps, the suit just wraps around him and he falls to his death and dies right then and there.
Well, the main issue with his suit is that people had told him, rightfully so, that he had jumped in the past from shorter heights and failed and hurt himself horribly every time.
And so they knew there was no point at which this thing worked.
Yeah.
And they were like, don't you want to use a safety rope just in case?
And he was like, no, I intend, I intend to show the worthiness of my invention.
And the New York Times was like, he was a respectable frog and now he's dead.
What I love about this is that people kept trying to make flying suits and man-powered flying machines that didn't work after powered flight was already invented.
Like, we had figured it out, and there was a certain science to it that was being developed, and we're like, nope, I want to sew some carpets together and jump to my death instead.
What about the flat earthers, that guy who died with his homemade rocket?
It's like, we have all this stuff.
Yeah, dudes really do rock.
Speaking of dudes that rock, I want to talk a little bit about the author of The Mothman Prophecies, who in and of himself is an incredibly interesting guy.
John A.
Now, before we dive into the events between 1966 and 1967 in the town of Point Pleasant, I think it's important to give a little background on the grandfather of the Mothman, John Alva Keel.
He's so vital to this story because, in a lot of ways, he is the story.
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