Twenty years ago, on Jan 25, 2002, The Mothman Prophecies opened in movie theaters. Starring Richard Gere and Laura Linney and directed by Mark Pellington, the movie was a critical and commercial nonstarter, but in recent years it has developed a cult following as a truly creepy psychological horror flick. Atmospheric and unsettling, the movie also features one of the weirdest product placements in cinema when a demon-alien voice on the phone tells Gere’s character that it knows he’s holding Chapstick lip balm. (Just say “Chaaaaapstick” to a fan of this movie and watch the response.) To honor the anniversary of this weird movie — which Keel said “managed to squeeze the basic truths” of the real story into it — let’s explore some original Mothman lore. Steve Mallette and Roger Scarberry reported seeing a “man with wings” “about six or seven feet tall, having a wingspan of 10 feet and red eyes about two inches in diameter and six inches apart.” Moreover, the thing was said to be a clumsy runner but extremely fast, traveling up to 100 mph once it took flight. As around 100 other accounts mounted, wildlife biologist Dr. Robert L. Smith postulated the creature was a sandhill crane. Mason County Sheriff George Johnson said he thought it was a “freak shitepoke” heron.
John A. Keel
Journalist and UFOlogist John A. Keel wrote The Mothman Prophecies in 1975. It collected his research on the Point Pleasant sightings while also connecting them to a larger pattern of phenomena such as UFOs, reports of flying men, Men in Black (MiBs), Native American Thunderbirds, the birdlike Garuda of Buddhist and Hindu lore, and even ghosts. Keel posited theories of “ultraterrestrials,” or beings not from outer space, but from a reality slightly out of alignment with our own, whose presence aligned with ancient folklore. It should be noted that Gray Barker published The Silver Bridge, a book about the Mothman, in 1970, five years prior to Keel. Barker also notably introduced the concept of MiBs to the mainstream in his 1956 book They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers, though Keel is attributed as coining the term. Barker’s credibility remains dubious due to his involvement in hoaxes. Communicating telepathically, the figure introduced himself as Indrid Cold, and said “we mean you no harm.” Derenberger said he visited with Cold and others like him subsequent times, and learned they were from the planet Lanulos. The man even said he visited the planet. Cold came to be known by another moniker, The Grinning Man. Along with an October 1966 sighting in New Jersey, Keel’s Mothman investigation came to include Cold and these strange smiling visitors. Derenberger is adapted into a character played by Will Patton in The Mothman Prophecies, and it is Cold who is the voice of Mothy, uttering the creepy “chaaapstick” line while on the phone with Klein. Keel viewed her as a friend, and held her in high regard, writing, “If you wanted to find out anything about the area, and its people, the quickest way was to ‘ask Mary Hyre.’” Indeed, Mary joined Keel on his investigations, and she likewise experienced phenomena. She was also visited by potential MiBs that warned her not to write about sightings. In the film, Debra Messing plays Klein’s wife, Mary, who encounters the moth creature, and later dies from a brain tumor. Laura Linney’s police officer character Connie is more closely the Mary Hyre of the film as she befriends Klein and provides a voice of sanity as he unravels.
The Bridge
The Mothman sightings mounted, with upwards of 100 associated with the phenomenon. These preceded the collapse of the Silver Bridge into the Ohio River on Dec. 15, 1967 — a year and a month after the first reported sighting. The collapse during rush hour killed 46 people and was attributed to a defect in a single link of the low redundancy eyebar-chain suspension bridge. The Silver Bridge disaster was linked to Mothman sightings, with some paranormalists concluding the creature was either a harbinger of doom, a messenger who seeks to warn of disaster, or simply an observer of human events. Keel’s book brought Mothman into the mainstream, and paranormal weirdos (aka fans of anomalistic phenomena) knew of the creature, but aside from being mentioned in the 1997 X-Files episode “Detour,” it wasn’t getting a lot of love. The film helped make Mothy a rock star over time. As for sightings, there have been numerous accounts in the years since the movie was released. Unfortunately, most — like the Freiburg Shrieker at a collapsed mine in Germany — are likely the stuff of internet legend that then influenced urban legends.
