New documentary to uncover Mothman mystery

[UM-Bot]

'The Mothman Legacy' will explore the stories behind various sightings of the enigmatic winged humanoid.

https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/334400/new-documentary-to-uncover-mothman-mystery

[Robotic Jew]

Is there really any ground that can be covered about this thing?

[stereologist]

One item that should be covered is why Mothman now has arms. The original description was no arms. The statue in Point Pleasant has arms. Why? That is not what people described.

Mothman's description has changed over time. Below is a link and if you read down the list you can see the same sort of problem with all witnesses - they don't corroborate each other that well.

https://themothman.fandom.com/wiki/Cross-referencing_Mothman's_Attributes

Possible attributes:

• wings - all
• legs - some did
• arms - no one directly mentions arms
• red eyes - half yes, half no
• feathers - some did

Even the image in the report for the OP shows arms with claws on them. The original reports make no such mention.

[Crikey]

The Richard Gere film 'The Mothman Prophecies' was interesting but I don't know how much was true and how much was Hollywood hokum.

But one interesting line caught my attention when Alan Bates said something like- "It doesn't mean the entities are causing the forthcoming disasters themselves, it just means they can see further down the road than the rest of us"

Edited February 7, 2020 by Crikey

[Nnicolette]

1 hour ago, stereologist said:

One item that should be covered is why Mothman now has arms. The original description was no arms. The statue in Point Pleasant has arms. Why? That is not what people described.

Mothman's description has changed over time. Below is a link and if you read down the list you can see the same sort of problem with all witnesses - they don't corroborate each other that well.

https://themothman.fandom.com/wiki/Cross-referencing_Mothman's_Attributes

Possible attributes:

• wings - all
• legs - some did
• arms - no one directly mentions arms
• red eyes - half yes, half no
• feathers - some did

Even the image in the report for the OP shows arms with claws on them. The original reports make no such mention.

To be honest im not at all surprised if half noted feathers and half didnt because if you imagine catching a glimpse of something like that in the night it might no necessarily be obvious or the point of your focus. Like when i saw a strange creature it terrified so much i literally fainted. In thier panic i would hardly expect them to be sure of that detail unless it was close and stationary in the light, even the legs or lack of could go unnoticed especially flying. The red eyes thing is also obvious i mean maybe it did reflect their light and look red half the time. The wings and arms are the most noticable and them being the most consistent points me to believe they really saw something. 

 

So I have a question for you guys... Was is a mass delusion? cryptid? Et? Interdimensional traveller? Escaped lab experiment?

Edited February 7, 2020 by Nnicolette

[Robotic Jew]

24 minutes ago, Nnicolette said:

To be honest im not at all surprised if half noted feathers and half didnt because if you imagine catching a glimpse of something like that in the night it might no necessarily be obvious or the point of your focus. Like when i saw a strange creature it terrified so much i literally fainted. In thier panic i would hardly expect them to be sure of that detail unless it was close and stationary in the light, even the legs or lack of could go unnoticed especially flying. The red eyes thing is also obvious i mean maybe it did reflect their light and look red half the time. The wings and arms are the most noticable and them being the most consistent points me to believe they really saw something. 

 

So I have a question for you guys... Was is a mass delusion? cryptid? Et? Interdimensional traveller? Escaped lab experiment?

Mistaken identity and then piling on embellishments is my theory. 

[stereologist]

6 minutes ago, Nnicolette said:

To be honest im not at all surprised if half noted feathers and half didnt because if you imagine catching a glimpse of something like that in the night it might no necessarily be obvious or the point of your focus. Like when i saw a strange creature it terrified so much i literally fainted. In thier panic i would hardly expect them to be sure of that detail unless it was close and stationary in the light, even the legs or lack of could go unnoticed especially flying. The red eyes thing is also obvious i mean maybe it did reflect their light and look red half the time. The wings and arms are the most noticable and them being the most consistent points me to believe they really saw something. 

 

So I have a question for you guys... Was is a mass delusion? cryptid? Et? Interdimensional traveller? Escaped lab experiment?

No one reports arms so saying "wings and arms" is not what was reported.

None of the reports say panic or suggest the state of mind of the witnesses. We need to be careful not to transfer our own experiences into the reports. For example, I've seen lots of things at night from bears to coyotes and foxes and bats and none of them has panicked me. But my experiences should not be transferred onto the reports of other people.

I think people saw something but what they saw is probably not what they imagined it was. There is something called priming. It is where you are given a hint or a suggestion about what to expect. When you experience something novel you can be misled by the priming. If you are told that a record played backwards says "taxes will crush you" then you might think that is what the garbled sounds are telling you. If someone says that a giant humanoid is flying in the area then you might think that is what you see. We've seen the same sort of thing where videos of porcupines in trees become monkeys to people told that the video shows a monkey in a tree. 

The only thing we can say for certain is that it had wings and the wings were bird like. I think it is reasonable to go with a large bird that is active at night such as an owl. 

Owls:

• Nocturnal birds
• Sit upright (birds like robins lean forward)
• Head not as prominent as in other birds
• Silent flyers
• Reflective eyes

If we look at this page on eyeshine we see that the barred owl has a strong eyeshine.

https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/jhnewsandguide.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/a/6e/a6e974d5-3639-5615-9da7-a8225e669731/54f6443b1be1d.pdf.pdf

 

Here is an article on this subject concerning owls

https://www.audubon.org/news/is-mothman-west-virginia-owl

Quote

To Nickells, the bird sounded like a match for the Mothman. “We know that Barred Owls exist,” he says. “We know they were in the McClintock WMA. We know that they have crimson eyeshine and otherwise fit the description, big-winged and so forth, with silent flight. The assumptions you’d make for the other hypothesis is that there are extraterrestrials, that they're able to come to the planet Earth, and that they have creatures that look for all the world like a Barred Owl.”

 

[stereologist]

Here you see the red eyes of the barred owl as reported by many witnesses.

 

The embellishment of the witness reports is obvious when you see that the mothman today has arms and the original reports do NOT mention arms.

Edited February 7, 2020 by stereologist

[geraldnewfie]

its just like religion, ghosts and monsters, if there was never any talk about it then nobody would mention it. imagine a world where they didnt talk about god for say, there wouldnt be nutcases saying they hear god or see god or some bright tunnel before they die. 

[Grim Reaper 6]

6 hours ago, UM-Bot said:

'The Mothman Legacy' will explore the stories behind various sightings of the enigmatic winged humanoid.

https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/334400/new-documentary-to-uncover-mothman-mystery

It appears that some of the siting were attributed to the following:  

Wildlife biologist Dr. Robert L. Smith at West Virginia University told reporters that descriptions and sightings of Mothman all fit the sandhill crane, a large American crane almost as high as a man with a seven-foot wingspan featuring circles of reddish coloring around the eyes, and that the bird may have wandered out of its migration route. This particular crane was unrecognized at first because it was not native to this region.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothman

Peace

[Carnoferox]

Fixed the title:

"New documentary about a few guys mucking around in the woods and finding nothing"

[Dradan]

It seems like one of the better documentaries about mothman, im definitely going to check it out.

[Varelse]

8 hours ago, Carnoferox said:

Fixed the title:

"New documentary about a few guys mucking around in the woods and finding nothing"

"New video evidence found on youtube!"

[Matt221]

"Mothman"or" Bloody great Owl" as some of us like to call him

Edited February 8, 2020 by Matt221
b*****ed it up

[Jetstream587]

Is it only spotted around Virginia? I've heard reports of it being spotted as far as California.

[stereologist]

On 3/15/2020 at 3:39 PM, Jetstream587 said:

Is it only spotted around Virginia? I've heard reports of it being spotted as far as California.

It was originally spotted in West Virginia. That was Mothman 1.  Lately there has been Mothman 2 in the Chicago area.