First of all, I apologise for the impromptu month-long hiatus I’ve just taken from the blog. My grand intentions of knocking out an update every Monday have dwindled like a fading erection, due in part to my own work schedule and also because my laptop has been so entirely unreliable recently that every time I’ve turned it on I’ve come close to a Hulk-like rage and nearly smashed the fucking thing into dust. Thankfully I’ve now managed to strip it of all the malware crap that was hoofing so much metaphorical sand into my vagina and with any luck, I can rinse myself out and reasonably normal service can resume. Although it would be obvious nonsense of me to say I can definitely stick to a new blog every Monday, as I’m evidently as reliable as a British Gas engineer (who, coincidentally, have recently been attempting to fit an entire rockery in my vagina), I promise I’ll at least try to get a blog out at some point every week, but they might not be as regular as they once were. If you’re desperate to get them as soon as I put them up there’s a Follow button somewhere on the page, why don’t you shitting well click that? Now CAN WE PLEASE JUST GET ON WITH OUR LIVES?
One of the more famous cryptids thanks to the 2002 movie The Mothman Prophecies, the strange occurrences and historical sightings that spawned the Mothman legend began in the Point Pleasant area of West Virginia in the mid-1960s. Motorists reported encountering a seven-foot figure on the roads with enormous wings that would take to the air as they approached. A woman living near the Ohio River reported that her son claimed to have seen an angel when out playing. Another witness claimed to have encountered a giant butterfly. And because apparently digging a grave isn’t a creepy enough exercise in itself, the Mothman also decided to be a total dick and terrify five men working in a cemetery near Clenendin by swooping down from the trees and flying close overhead, before presumably heading off to either defecate on a child’s birthday cake or take a hot piss on the roof of a bus full of nuns.
As is often the case with cryptid sightings, the Mothman is also tied up with all sorts of reports of bizarre supernatural activity and UFO sightings. Over the year or so that the creature was most active radios and television sets cut out or behaved bizarrely, strange lights were seen in the sky and dogs went missing. The seven-foot monster with the glowing red eyes set in its neck was seen most often in an area of West Point known as the “TNT Area”, because hey, if you’re a supernatural demon-bastard, you may as well live somewhere entirely sinister for good measure:
A large tract of land adjacent to a 3,500 acre wildlife park covered in forests and steep hills, the TNT area is littered with concrete igloos used to store ammunition in World War 2 and honeycombed with the sort of subterranean tunnels you’d have to be a suicidal fruitcake to want to go exploring in. In short, it’s a horror-story orgasm, and the perfect place for a monster to make its home.
The Mothman apparently wasn’t content with simply nesting down or making a nuisance of itself, however, and the legend became forever linked with the tragic collapse of the nearby Silver Bridge in November 1967. 31 cars plunged into the icy waters of the river that day and 46 people lost their lives.
Sightings of the creature faded pretty abruptly following the tragedy, leading to speculation that the Mothman was either directly responsible (presumably as preemptive revenge for the invention of the bug-zapper) or simply an omen of death warning of the collapse. On the other side of the argument there are plenty of sceptical explanations for the creature, ranging from a hoax by construction workers who attached red lights to helium balloons at the height of the panic, or a disoriented sandhill crane, a bird which has characteristic red patches around its eyes and an enormous six-foot wingspan:
Whatever the explanation, the Mothman is now a tourist attraction, complete with its own park, statue and annual festival featuring hayride tours of the TNT area. And of course the aforementioned movie, which went all-out in order to secure a major Hollywood star. And then failed and hired Richard Gere instead.