Cold Open:

The mythology of the cryptozoological creature known as “Mothman” begins on November 12th, 1966.

On that day, five men were digging a grave at a cemetery near Clendenin [clin DEN in], West Virginia, and one of them claimed to witness a man- like creature fly over their heads. A creature they and other witnesses in the coming days would describe as a terrifying, large, man-like, grey monster with glowing red eyes and a roughly ten foot wing span that could fly at speeds anywhere from impossibly slow to over 100 mph.

The Mothman creature would be described by someone as not having a head at all - two huge, ominous red eyes set inside its chest - eyes consistently reported to be glowing, or at least reflective. The details of his face, if “he” even has a face - if he is even a “he”, and his feet have never been adequately described. One witness who did claim to see its face, saw its face clearly, could only say that the details were horrible and monstrous. She had terrible nightmares and nearly suffered a nervous breakdown.

Most who report getting a close look at the Mothman seems to suffer from extreme fear and psychological distress, sometimes lasting for months or years afterwards. In particular, people say that a sense of pure evil overcomes them when they see Mothman's eyes.

The legend of Mothman, and most of the sightings, strangely center around the collapse of a bridge. On December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge that rose above the Ohio River and connected Point Pleasant, West Virginia with Gallipolis (gal uh POLICE), Ohio - collapsed and took the lives of forty-six people. And ever since, stories have abounded connecting this collapse to Mothman. Was this creature trying to warn locals that something bad was going to happen? Did it know the bridge would collapse? Is Mothman, head or no-head, some harbinger of impending doom? Was some bizarre creature trying to save the lives of those who died on December 15th? This is what some still believe.

Or - is this all just a bunch of crazy, wackadoodle horseshit? Is this legend nothing more than the collective product of overactive imaginations and a few creative writers exploiting those imaginations? Always have to entertain that possibility when it comes to the paranormal!

The story of Mothman would have never become a major part of American cryptozoological folklore if it weren’t for the 1970 book, “The Silver Bridge” written by noted ufologist Gray Barker. And then there was the “The Mothman Prophecies,” another important piece of the Mothman canon, written by another ufologist and journalist, John Keel, in 1975.

We’re gonna look at the story of Mothman from all sides today. From absolute believers to “get the Hell out of here, there’s no way this happened” deniers.

Today we’re gonna dig into the tale of creature that inspired the 2002 Richard Gere and Laura Linney thriller - love me some Laura Linney - the Mothman Prophecies, a movie based on that 1975 book of the same name. It’s also a movie that scared the shit out of my wife Lynze when she first saw it and a movie Chicago Reader critic Lisa Alspector called “The scariest movie I’ve ever seen.”

Will today’s tale scare you? Does the Mothman give you the heebie jeebies? Or will this just be a wackadoodle gasser of a tale?

Find out today, as we deep dive into the strange and hard to explain, today, on Timesuck!

PAUSE TIMESUCK INTRO

I. Welcome!

A. Happy Monday:

Happy Monday, Timesuckers. Hail you! Hail the mighty Timesucker! Trailblazer on various paths of curiosity. Hail the Cult of the Curious! Hail Nimrod and Lucifina as well. Praise Triple M and sweet Bojangles. Such a good boy.

B. Joe Dimeo Pre-Roll:

Timesuck is brought to you again today by the Broaum (Bro-um (one syllable word!) podcast.

Broaum is show about how it’s ok to be a dude but all dudes should be better dudes . Each week on Broaum, Joe and Ben pick a topic that they think dudes could use a little help with. And, based on what I’ve heard so far, this info is fantastic for ladies also. It’s for everyone!

This week on Broaum (Bro-um (one syllable word!) the guys discuss ways to enjoy art without being a wine swirling jerk .

Also - what are the benefits of changing up your routine and seeing something new? Would you feel better if you had a different , possibly more artistic, creative outlet? This week Ben and Joe chat with Portland artists Bryce Wong and Alex Moan about ways to dip your toes into the art world.

Tune in each week for new topics, new discussions and new ways to continue seeking enlightenment through deadlifts.

Broaum (Bro-um) it up!

https://www.broaum.com/ for more info.

Link in the episode description. Or push the button on the Timesuck web or app.

C. Tour Dates: our Dates: Thanks to everyone who came out to the Providence, Bridgeport, Albany, and New Brunswick. Whether the crowd was small or the room was sold out - the energy was fantastic every single show. Worked on a lot of new material and having awesome, enthusiastic crowds helped get the new stuff get funny fast. Pumped now for the whole rest of the year.

Gonna have more fun Happy Murder Shows next week in Wisconsin. Those shows are packing out. Saturday early show may already be sold out

Comedy on State - are you ready for the Happy Murder Tour? Are you ready for the first live Timesuck of 2019. The Ant Hill Kids! A Canadian tale of a fire and brimstone cult leader fathering 26 children and torturing followers before finally meeting his own violent end. It’s a helluva true crime story. Lot of wackadoodle in this one. Been awhile since we Sucked into a crazy cult, and this is a crazy cult.

Bringing the Happy Murder tour to Philly the following week, and then both the live podcast and standup to downtown Salt Lake City soon after. And then Zanies in Nashville. Check out dancummins.tv for a full year of fun shows.

More live Sucks coming up in Cleveland in April, Nashville in April at a comedy festival, Spokane and San Francisco in May, Orlando in August, Phoenix in September and then Denver, Grand Rapids, and Tacoma at the end of the year. And that’ll be it for the Ant Hill Kids!

Hope you Space Lizards enjoyed the release of the video for the Denver show on Patreon this past week. Gotta check those Patreon posts and emails from time to time if you missed it.

D. Sweatshirt: The first generation Meatsack sweatshirt for all Timesuckin' meatsacks is here! That’s pretty sweet. That’s a thing I’m happy about. Something I enjoy!

It’s a varsity crew style Alternative sweatshirt that says MEATSACK right on the front so people know you’re on Team Meatsack aka Team All Humans Who Aren’t Assholes.

(Team Meat Sack Fight Song (melody in voice memos):

“We are the Meat-Sacks, you see! Fighting stupidity. We still make mistakes. Still suffer our heartaches. But we’ll try hard until we die.

(Fight, fight, fight!)

We are the Meat-Sacks, you see! Curious until the end! We will keep learning on, fight ignorance ‘till it’s gone.

And make life better for one and all!

(fight, fight, fight!)

It’s an Alternative (Lynze’s FAV sweatshirt brand) Vintage French Terry style sweatshirt. Comes in either navy or porcelain.

A meatsack uniform to face the world in. Represent the TImesuck home team or away team in whatever world or galaxy you’re in

Both colors are a 50/50 Cotton/poly blend. Also a 100/100 imported manatee nutsack/domestic mongoose vagina blend. Why? Because those were the only soft, illegal animal parts available from our illegal animal part sales contact. Also - might want to size up if you like your sweatshirt to fit a bit looser - Alternative is more of an athletic fit. Not a lot of give. Finally, they only run to 2X in Alternative so Gildan will be used for 3X-5X. Stay cozy and hail Nimrod!

E. Street Team Winner:

Congratulations to the winner of our first Timesuck Street Team Sticker Challenge!

Round 1 of the Timesuck Street Team has come to a close! We had a blast and we are already preparing for round #2… more details on that in the coming weeks!

As for Round 1, Timesuck stickers were slapped and tagged in thirty different states, plus Germany and The UK… spreading that suck far and wide, hopefully convincing more and more people to join the Cult of the Curious. We saw stickers on streetlights, cars, dvd rentals, shopping carts, phone booths, billboards, bathrooms, tables, chairs, windows, gas pumps, trashcans, soda machines, ATM’s, mirrors, and so many more places… THEY WERE EVERYWHERE! I was amazing to see it all unfold over the last couple months.

From all of the stickers stuck and tagged on social media using the hashtag #spreadthesuck, Reverend Doctor Joe Paisley - brainchild of this project - randomly went through and picked one winner… Paisley literally brought them all up on the screen and blindly pointed his finger to select somebody.

And the winner of over $100 in Timesuck merch isssssssss…. Rachel LaFraniere!

Congratulations Rachel - we’ll send you some cool swag soon and again… round two details will be announced sometime in the near future.

F. Spotify: Finally - Spotify! If you haven’t heard my standup before and are curious - start off with my handpicked favorites in a Spotify playlist. It’s free. Link in the episode description! Sorry I didn’t get that link in there when I first announced this a few episodes ago.

https://open.spotify.com/user/1253351401/playlist/ 2ldySEdIW3YfhHLQpkX2AS?si=snvNrIagRbWI5frN6_3Sdg

G. Segue to Topic: Now let’s get weird! Like, real weird. Like West Virginia bird dude weird. Time for Mothman. Yip, yip, yaw! Bird folk! Moth Folk!

PAUSE TIMESUCK INTERLUDE

II. Point Pleasant, West Virginia: If you really want to dig into the tale of Mothman, like really immerse yourself, you need to get your ass to West Virginia. Hogfolk! Hogfolk/Mothfolk! Hog-Moth Folk!

Specifically, get to Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Birthplace of the legend and the beating heart of Mothman love and lore to this day!

Point Pleasant is a quiet little town of just over 4,000 people on the banks of the Ohio River about 100 miles from and less than a two hours drive southeast of Columbus, Ohio. It’s forty-two miles northeast of Huntington, West Virginia - one of my favorite little cities in America. Used to love visiting Huntington back when it had a comedy club in Pullman Square. Wrote a few jokes in that Starbucks. Point Pleasant has a quaint little business district downtown and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

It sits is just across the river from Gallipolis (gal uh POLICE), Ohio. A new bridge connecting the two towns, the Silver Memorial Bridge, was completed in 1969, two years after the original Silver Bridge collapsed. Gallipolis (gal uh POLICE) is a little town of about 3,600 people. Actually, it is now technically a “village” due to Ohio law requiring a town to have at least 5,000 people.

Sorry Gallipolis (gal uh POLICE) - I hope a new, terrifying monster attacks your village soon so that the buzz surrounding it brings in some much needed tourism money and exposure and hopefully kicks you back up to town status. Hope Mothman comes back and focuses his energy on the other side of the river this time.

The area around these two towns has some interesting history.

America’s first President, Ben Franklin, first visited the area in 1770. Said it was pretty. Said there were a lot of varmits and critters. Said the river smelled decent. He was so inspired he invented laundry detergent and the pencil eraser. Even opened up America’s first taxidermy shop to showcases the area’s vast abundance of world-class jack-a-lopes.

Wait.

Those aren’t the right notes. Those are some notes I wrote after I fell out of the back of a truck the other day and suffered a massive head injury.

Sorry. Ben Franklin didn’t visit or do any of that and he, of course, was not our first President or any President.

George Washington visited the area in 1770. Yeah, that’s right. The cherry tree fella.

The Battle of Point Pleasant was fought a few years later in 1774 between over a thousand Virginia militiamen led by Colonel Andrew Lewis and an Algonquin [al-gong-kwin] confederation of about a thousand Shawnee [shaw-nee] and Mingo warriors led by Chief Cornstalk. He wasn’t born as “Cornstalk” by the way - that’s just the closest English translation of his name. The Virginians had about 75 men killed and another 140 wounded in this battle. The Shawnees' and Mingos’ losses could not be determined, since they carried away their wounded and threw many of the dead into the river. The Shawnees quietly withdrew back across the Ohio River at night after a day of fighting and the Virginians held their ground, and are thus considered to have won this battle.

The event is celebrated locally as the first battle of the Revolutionary War even though most historians regard the battle as part of Lord Dunmore’s War - a conflict between the Colony of Virginia and various tribes of American Indians.

Camp Point Pleasant was established because of this battle and a settlement of the same name soon followed.

A few years later, during the fall of 1777, Chief Cornstalk made a diplomatic visit to Fort Randolph, the new American fort built in present-day Point Pleasant, seeking to maintain his people’s neutrality with the early Americans.

And the meeting didn’t go well. At least not for Chief Cornstalk. But it does feed into part of the Mothman lore!

Chief Cornstalk was immediately detained by the fort commander, who decided on his own initiative to take hostage any Shawnees who fell into his hands. Then, on November 10th, an American militiaman from the fort was killed nearby by unknown Indians, and the commander allowed his angry soldiers to brutally execute Cornstalk, his son, and two other Shawnees in retribution.

And some believe Cornstalks murder placed a curse on the land! According to Virginia’s first official historian Virgil A. Lewis, "Point Pleasant did not flourish for many years [after the turn of the century]. There was no church for more than fifty years and society was at a low ebb. There was a popular superstition that because of the fiendish murder of Cornstalk there in 1777, the place was laid under a curse for a hundred years.”

Did this curse lead to the birth of the creature of Mothman? Is Mothman a physical manifestation of this curse? Did the curse last longer than a hundred years? Does anyone even believe in curses? Can anyone perform curses? Can you teach me? There are some people I woulnd’ mind sicking a Mothman on.

In the late 18th century and early 19th century, settlers slowly trickled in to Point Pleasant, including humorists Mark Twain’s grandparents. It would take until 1910 for the population to surpass 2,000 people. It reached a high of around 6,000 in 1970.

Neighboring Gallipolis (gal uh POLICE) got a little bigger - made it up to almost 9,000 people in 1960. Weren’t no village then - yip, yip, yaw!

Gallipolis (gal uh POLICE), Ohio was initially settled by a group of French, known locally as the French 500, who were fleeing the French Revolution. They made it to the area in October, 1790. The town’s name is French, and means “The Cursed Sister City of Winged Demon Monsters.” Not sure if that ties in to the Mothman legend or not.

No. It means, “the City of the Gauls.”

Other than that big 1774 battle, and Gallipolis (gal uh POLICE) being the home of Bob Evans - BOB EVANS! - founder of the chain of Bob Evans restaurants that are my favorite chain of cheap and easy breakfast and lunch spots. You’re damn Skippy I’ll have a side of warm banana bread! Seriously. Bob Evans is legit. But other than that, the area really isn’t known for much other than Mothman. Mothman is far and away the Point Pleasant area’s biggest claim to fame.

There’s a big statue of Mothman in the heart of downtown. There’s a Mothman museum, and every third weekend in September, there’s the Mothman Festival, which has been packing or kind-of packing the town every year since it started in 2002.

This year, the event takes place on September 21st and 22nd. Get your tickets now, Moth-fans! A big fun Mothman fest full of cosplay, live music, food vendors - even tasty Mothman pancakes! That seriously is an option. What are Mothman pancakes? They are normal pancakes. Normal pancakes kind of shaped like Mothman. So don’t miss that! There are also hayrides for some reason - not sure what hayrides have to do with Mothman but why not make a little hayride money off some Mothman pilgrims? There are guest Mothman expert speakers, shuttle tours of the nearby creepy TNT storage bunkers, and much more.

What about those TNT storage bunkers? Are those bunkers related to Mothman? Some think they have a lot to with Mothman. Led to his creation.

The nearby bunkers are part of what once called the West Virginia Ordnance Works, a military facility that manufactured and stored TNT = an explosive chemical compound - during World War II.

At the height of its production, the facility outside Point Pleasant, West Virginia, produced 500,000 pounds of TNT each day. Most of the site was closed in 1945. What wasn't was eventually made into a regional airport and became recreational space. Much of the land, contaminated by TNT and its chemical precursor DNT, is now a Superfund site that's been on the National Priorities List since 1983.

Surprisingly, actually fixing up this site doesn't seem to be that much of a priority. Doesn’t seem to involve much removal of hazardous material. Monitoring and containment is the strategy.

Did this hazardous material create some sort of toxic avenger? Some sort of mutant later given the name of Mothman? Some sort of comic book superhero who’s really bad at explaining to people that the reason he’s showing up is to keep people away from a bridge? That actually is another one of the Mothman theories.

Beyond the explosion in 2010 of a storage igloo that contained 20,000 pounds of unstable materials, the bunkers have been pretty quiet. Just one huge explosion. No big whoops.

The Mothman Museum looks pretty sweet. Can’t forget about that! It was voted #1 destination on tripadvisor.com for "Things To Do" in Point Pleasant. Number one! And the competition for that top so[pot was intense. Boy howdy! The Mothman Museum narrowly beat out a nearby state park, the Point Pleasant River Museum, the West Virginia State Farm museum, and the US Navy Poster Museum. What a VERY specific museum. How many US Navy Poster enthusiasts are out there? And how many of them heading to Point Pleasant? All nineteen of them?

“Welcome to the US Navy Poster Museum!

Man we hope you like posters! That’s all we have here. And we REALLY hope you like posters about the US Navy, because that is quite literally the only type of poster we have here. Thank God we do not need to make money because this is obviously nothing more than a tax write off!

Come take a tour - tours run on the hour every hour and generally take 2-5 minutes. We don’t actually have that many posters.

Check out our new US Navy posters! Then look at our older US Navy posters! Take a gander at are even older US Navy posters! And, of course, don’t miss out on our oldest US Navy posters! So many different ages of posters!

Do we have British Navy posters? German navy posters, you ask? Perhaps, some Canadian navy posters! Are you kidding me? No! This is the US Navy Poster museum. How about you take a peek at our “Go fuck yourself” posters! How dare you ask that!?! I’m so SICK OF BEING ASKED THAT!!! Get out of here! GIT!”

Now You have a feel for the area.

Couple sleepy little blue collar towns. Rural West Virginia and a bit of rural Ohio. Little slices of Americana.

Now let’s jump into the origins of the Mothman legend in today’s Timesuck Timeline right after a quick word from another sponsor.

A. Timesuck Fake Sponsor - Woody’s Spirit Supplies and More Spectral Emporium

Timesuck is brought to you today by Woody’s Spirit Supplies and More Spectral Emporium.

(Sad Woody) “Hi guys, it’s me, Woody. I’m not gonna lie to you, sales of my Paranormal Rape Repellant have been real slow. I lost my ass on those things. How’s that for irony!?! Turns out there isn’t much of a market for demon trying to rape you.

(Happy Woody) So now I have a new product! I’ve rebranded as Woody’s Spirit Supplies and More Spectral Emporium! Yay! And today we have a gosh darn heck of a steal of a deal on Woody’s Mothman Monster Magnets!

What’s a Mothman Monster Magnet? It’s a big magnet that sucks any and all Mothmans to it so you can, um, fight ‘em, or, uh…ah shit.

(Irritated Woody) Charles! Someone get Charles in here!

Really, Charles? This is the bullshit you’re having me pitch? Why not Mothman voodoo dolls? Those would at least look cool even if they don’t work!

(Evil Woody) Take Mr. Charles Guttman and put him back in his naughty boy cag! Take his clothes off. Grab my leather whip and put more rusty nails in it. Charlie - if you won’t whip yourself fifty lashes - a hit doesn’t count unless it draws blood - if you won’t do it I’ll skin you alive! I’ll chew a hole through your windpipe and reach down and pull out your still-beating heart! I’m sick of drowning in shitty paranormal products!

Are we still recording??

Ah, fuck.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!

PAUSE TIMESUCK TIMELINE INTRO

III.Timesuck Timeline

1. Sorry about that sponsor. Woody’s clearly having a rough go of things lately. I hear he’s drinking again. And it sounds like his human ventriloquist partner, Charles Guttman is REALLY having an extra rough go of it. Sorry to hear he got put back in the cage.

If you’re a new listener - Woody had NOTHING to do with today’s Mothman tale. Let’s refocus.

2. November 12, 1966: The first recorded Mothman sighting took place on November 12, 1966, near Clendenin [clin DEN in], West Virginia which is actually a seventy-six mile drive southeast of Point Pleasant. Clendenin’s [clin DEN in] pretty dead now - about 1,000 people still live there but it used to be a booming oil town - The first petrochemical plant in the world was built in Clendenin [clin DEN in] in 1920.

Five men - Kenneth Duncan, Bob Lovejoy, Bill Poole, Andrew Godby, and Emil Gibson were digging a grave for Ken’s father-in- law, Homer Smith, in a cemetery near Clendenin [clin DEN in].

And this is where Kenneth claimed to see a man-like figure that flew out from some nearby trees and glided low over their heads.

The other men Ken was working with that day did not see the creature before it flew away - how does that happen? - but Ken said that the brown creature lifted off beyond the trees and was no bird; it was a humanoid. He said, “It was gliding through the trees and was in sight for about a minute.” He was baffled. It didn't look like any kind of bird but seemed to be a man with wings.

This is said to be one of the first sightings of the Mothman. Ken only initally discussed the sighting with a few friends and it would have been forgotten if others didn't also start claiming to see the winged man around the same time.

Anyone else think it’s weird that this thing was in the air for a full minute, this big ass, flying man-bird, and Ken doesn’t point it out to his fellow grave-diggers? C’mon! He doesn’t think to say something like,

“Hey - other four guys standing here with me, get a load of this bird dude flying overhead?

Hey guys! I know you are really busy right now digging a West Virginia grave, and I don’t want to interrupt the undoubtably incredibly interesting discussion you are currently having right now - maybe about how you’re sick of your wife Linda making tuna casseroles all the time. Or about how good Suzy Lee’s ass looked in those tight blue jeans at the Corner Tavern last night. Or about how if coach would’ve just played you a little more senior year you could’ve gotten a full ride and been a Mountaineer at West Virginia U - BUT - there is a large, red-eyed monster that you may want to get a look at.

It is flying above us right now.

If you wouldn’t mind setting your shovel down for ten seconds, you can see something cooler than anyone in your entire family tree has ever seen.”

Ken’s sighting is referenced in the November 18th, 1966 edition of the Gallipolis (gal uh POLICE) Daily Tribune. Says right in the paper, “Four other men helping to dig the grave didn’t see it.”

I don’t know, Ken. I just don’t know about you.

Also - how the Hell did that little ass town have a daily paper?

While that is the first reported sighting of Mothman, the Mothman tale really doesn’t getting moving until a few days later in Point Pleasant.

That’s why THEY have all the cool museums, Clendenin [clin DEN in]! Old Kenny blew it for you! If only he would’ve had said something, YOU could have that annual Mothman festival. YOU could be eating those sweet ass Mothman pancakes. But what do you have now? You have a ghost town since Interstate 79 bypassed you in the 80s. Why did the Interstate bypass you? Because Kenneth Duncan fucked up and ruined everything. Kenneth “Dumbshit” Duncan couldn’t think to point out a LARGE FLYING MONSTER!

3. November 15th, 1966: Three days after Kenneth Duncan doomed his entire town to future failure by being the worst person who ever lived on November 15th, 1966 - I hope you know I’m intentionally being over the top about Ken by the way - there was a Mothman sighting in Point Pleasant that kicked off the heart of this legend.

Roger and Linda Scarberry were driving in Roger's black '57 Chevy Bel Air with Steve and Mary Mallette through the area around midnight when Linda noticed two large, glowing red eyes in the darkness beside the old North Power Plant. And unlike Kenny Tight Lips - unlike Kenny “1966 West Virigina State Unnecessary Secret Champion” Duncan, she screams and alerts the other three people in the car to the presence of a Goddman monster like a red-blooded terrified American is supposed to do!

The four young locals - all around the age of twenty - soon learned that these eyes belonged to something that looked both very human and very inhuman, a biped monster about seven feet tall with wings folded against its back. Roger stalled in the road for a minute, inspecting the strange creature, making sure it wasn’t some sort of bird. The four quickly realized this was no ordinary animal. They watched the creature spread its wings and head right for them and they put the pedal to the floor in that old Bel Air and raced down Highway 62 to the Point Pleasant city limits at speeds exceeding 100 mph, the monster at one point easily keeping up with them.

The four arrived in town, startled and confused, and then the monster seemed to have stopped following them.

Roger parked his car at the edge of town and they discussed the encounter, eventually convincing themselves that what they saw had to be nothing more than some strange, giant bird. In an attempt to face their fears they headed back out of town towards the scene of the encounter, driving towards the TNT Area.

It wasn't long before they saw the creature again, apparently waiting for them beside Route 62. The couples were now sure that this thing was no bird. The instant that the car's headlights landed on the creature it lifted vertically into the air with tremendous speed and disappeared above the tree-line.

They raced back into town again and went directly to the Mason county courthouse and told their story to Sheriff George Johnson and Deputy Miller Hallsted.

Two hours later, City Police began investigating the area, only to return empty-handed. The next day, a press conference was held and the local press began printing on the story, causing others to come forward with previous and future sightings. People like Kenneth “Why Don’t You Just Keep Your Sighting To Yourself Now That You’ve Blown It” Duncan.

The November 15th Point Pleasant sighting was what got the buzz going about Mothman. In the November 16th issue of the Point Pleasant Register, the strange encounter would be brought to the public eye with the headline "Couple Sees Man-Sized Bird...Creature...Something."

4. First Mothman News Article: Here’s that article in it’s entirety:

“‘It was a bird...or something. It definitely wasn't a flying saucer.’

Two Point Pleasant couples said today they encountered a man- sized, bird-like creature in the TNT area about midnight last night.

Sheriff's deputies and City Police went to the scene about 2 o'clock this morning but were unable to spot anything. But the two young men telling their story this morning were dead serious, and asserted they hadn't been drinking.

Steve Mallette of 3305 Jackson Avenue and Roger Scarberry of 809 30th Street described the thing as being about six or seven feet tall, having a wing span of 10 feet and red eyes about two inches in diameter and six inches apart.

"It was like a man with wings," Mallette said. "It wasn't like anything you'd see on TV or in a monster movie.."

The men and their wives were in Scarberry's car between 11:30 p.m. and midnight when they spotted the creature near the old power plant adjacent to the old National Guard Armory buildings.

The creature was seen standing on three occasions and was described as being extremely fast ("It flew about 100 miles an hour") in flight but was a clumsey runner.

Deputy Millard Halstead said he had seen dust in the vicinity of a coal field. But "It could have been" caused by the bird, he said. "I'm a hard guy to scare" Scarberry said, "but last night I was for getting out of there."

They did just that but the "thing" followed them. They said it was hovering over the car, apparently gliding, until they reached the national Guard Armory on Route 62. "We went downtown, turned around, and went back and there it was again," Mallette said. "It seemed to be waiting on us". He said the light-grey-creature then scurried through a field, It also had flown across the top of the car.

"It apparently is afraid of light," Mallette reasoned, "and maybe it thought it was scaring us off.” The young men said they saw the creature's eyes, which glowed red, only when their lights shined on it. And it seemed to want to get away from the lights.

They said it looked like a "man with wings" but that its head was "not an outstanding characteristic.” Both were slightly pale and tired from lack of sleep during the night following their harrowing experience. They speculated that the thing was living in the vacant power plant, possibly in one of the huge boilers. "There are pigeons in all the other buildings," Mallette said, "but not in that one."

How would he know that detail? How does he know where all the local birds live?

(Bird guy) “There are pigeons in every other building - but not that one. Once a week, I like to do a quick little bird check of all the abandoned TNT buildings. I use this whistling technique where I walk around the old armory (whistle) - and when I hear chirping - that’s how I know - yep - still birds in that building. But the huge boiler building?? NOT. A. PEEP!”

Scarberry is then quoted in the article, saying:

"If I had seen it while by myself I wouldn't have said anything, but there were four of us who saw it.” They said it didn't resemble a bat in any way but "maybe what you would visualize as an angel."

Okay. Weird.

“It was terrifying! It was monstrous! It was hideous! It looked… like an angel!”

The last time they saw it was at the gate of the C. C. Lewis farm on Route 62. They heard a sound like wings flapping and they said the bird rose straight up, like a helicopter.

"This doesn't have an explanation to it," Mallette said, "It was an animal but nothing like I've seen before.” Are they going back to look for the creature?

"Yes," Mallette said, "this afternoon and again tonight.” "Today," Scarberry said, "but tonight, I don't know!"

5. November 16th, 1966 - Afternoon: On November 16th, 1966, the day the article I just read came out, one of the Mothman witnesses, Linda Scarberry, was rushed to the hospital by her father after experiencing a nervous breakdown.

6. November 16th - evening: Mothman strikes again the evening of the 16th.

Marcella Bennett, her brother Raymond Wamsley and his wife Cathy, were bringing Marcella's two year old daughter, Tina, to visit relatives who lived near the TNT Area of Point Pleasant.

Marcella and her brother had read about the strange being in the newspaper and they even thought it might be fun to go out and look for it one day, but they never expected to see it that night. The house they were visiting was a little bungalow back among the igloos of the TNT Area. It belonged to Ralph Thomas who was the superintendent of some work being down out there. Ralph's wife, Virginia Thomas, was Marcella Bennett's sister.

When Marcella, Raymond and Cathy arrived, they discovered that Ralph and Virginia had both left to go to church. The only ones home were the three Thomas children, Rickie, Connie and Vickie. After exchanging a few words with the children, Bennett and the Wamsleys headed back to their car. It was about 9PM.

That’s when they say they saw him.

They claim to have spotted some strange lights in the sky, hovering above the trees, when they made it outside. Raymond stopped when he got to the bottom of the steps and tried to get Marcella's attention. She told him that she didn't want to see any lights. He said "No stop, you've got to look at this. This isn't a plane". She ignored him and began walking to the car, carrying her daughter.

Is Marcella related to Kenny “Dumb Dumb” Duncan? Your husband is telling you that something strange is in the sky and you don’t bother to even look up for one second? Just look up for ONE SECOND. What’s going on with the people in West Virginia around this time?

Suddenly, a figure stirred in the darkness behind the parked car. And NOW Marcella sees the creature out of the corner of her eyes as she is unlocking the car door. She first saw a man's legs that looked like they were covered with gray feathers. She didn’t see any feet. Like a slow-motion scene in a horror film, she pulled her eyes up. The wings were drawn in towards its body. The head was titled sideways. It looked like a bird but was too big to be a bird.

Standing only a few feet away from her was a giant man-bird, its head sunken into the shoulder area. She saw no red eyes, but later said she might have been too frightened to notice. Marcella described the creature as "Over six foot tall with feathers. It just looked like a giant bird but yet, a man, and it was standing with his shoulders [arched] and its neck down".

She was terrified but unable to run. "I just stood there and looked at it, but I couldn't figure out what it was that I was seeing" said Marcella. Her brother saw it but would not come towards where it was. Raymond and his wife were both very frightened. He kept yelling for Marcella to run, but she was paralyzed by fear.

When Marcella finally managed to turn around, she took maybe four steps towards the house before falling to the ground in a state of shock on top of her daughter. She was unable to get up as if in a trance. "I just couldn't do what my mind was wanting me to do." she explained. Marcella had heard the flapping of wings as she was trying to run.

Can you imagine how scary this would be if this really happened? You head to some relative’s house to visit, they’re not home so you head back to the car, and then some literal flying bug-man monster lands next to you. I have no idea how I’d react if something like that happened. I’d like to think I’d grab my kids and run, but, who knows? Maybe I’d be paralyzed with fear too? Maybe I’d freeze - my brain stuck as I try to process what’s not supposed to be possible but is now somehow standing in front of me.

After pulling herself together, Marcella picked up her child and ran to the house. The Wamsleys were waiting on the steps and Raymond heard the creature once again flap its wings as Marcella reached them. The family locked themselves inside the house to protect themselves. Marcella's hands and knees were badly skinned up, scrapped, bruised and bleeding from the fall. She had even been burned from falling on top of her lit cigarette. The side of her face was also bleeding from where she had fallen.

Jesus. That is some fall. Bleeding from her face, hands, and knees AND burned. If Raymond had a history of domestic violence, which he doesn’t have that I can find, I’d say this was the weirdest version of a “Look who got clumsy and fell down the stairs again” story I’d ever heard.

(Wife-beatin’ greaser) “I didn’t hit her officer! Never laid a hand on her - I don’t care what her crazy mom says! How’d she get all the bruises and the cigarette burn!?! How the Hell should I know?? You want dem answers how ‘bout you track down that Mothman son-of-a-bitch! Winged creep roughed up my gal! You better find him ‘fore I do, or the only Mothman anyone sees is gonna be a dead mothman - you hears what I’m saying!?!”

The children inside were all screaming and crying in panic while this is going on. Raymond Wamsley frantically phoned the police. By this time Marcella was lying on the sofa and could hear him telling the Sheriff's Department to get to the TNT area because they had seen the creature. He told him that they were locked in the house and that it was still outside.

While Raymond calls the police, the Mothman creature shuffled onto the porch, pushed on the door and peered into the windows. It took the police about 15 to 20 minutes to arrive at the house but the creature was gone by the time they got there.

The police searched all around the house but found nothing but a bunch of rubber-neckers. The front yard quickly filled up with curious people and cars from everywhere. Pretty soon it looked like a drive-in theater. Raymond talked to the police and filled out the paperwork and police reports.

Marcella Bennett has since described this night as the most frightening experience of her life and something she felt uncomfortable talking about. She was traumatized and couldn’t sleep. "I would think I could hear the wings flapping and noise on top of the roof. I kept feeling that this thing had followed us home." she said.

Somehow, she felt the creature now had a link to her and would come back. She never drove at night after this experience. "I couldn't sleep and I was hearing things and thought that it was right outside and still after me. I couldn't imagine what this thing was, or where it came from, and what was its purpose. It was close enough to harm me, but it didn’t.”

She even sought medical attention at Holzer Hospital to deal with anxiety and sleeplessness.

She would later feel the Mothman's presence at times that would send her into a panic, for example she would feel as if he was in the backseat of her car, hit the brakes and turn to look behind her.

Marcella’s sighting was captured in detail in author John Keel’s book, “The Mothman Prophecies.”

7. November 17th, 1966: The next day the local press was abuzz with tales of Mothman. Here’s a little excerpt from the November 17th, 1966 edition of the Point Pleasant Register:

Ever since two young couples sighted a man-sized creature in the McClintic Wildlife Area Tuesday night, ridicule after pun after cute remark has been quoted about "Mason County's Monster" or "bird."

Nevertheless, it was seen again last night by several of the hundred of curious citizens scouting the massive area.

And the same description was given - grey in color, 10-foot wing span, six feet tall, and huge red eyes.

The latest to see the "thing" were Raymond Wamsley, 19, Cathy Wamsley, 18, Marcella Bennett, 21, and Ricky Thomas, 15, according to the Mason County Sheriff's Office.

They told sheriff George Johnson the "huge bird" was in the yard of Ralph Thomas whose home is located northeast of the White Church Road in the TNT area.

The sighting this time was about 10 p.m. Wednesday. They said the bird-like creature came around the car and started at them and then soared away.

Civil Defense and National Guardsmen were patrolling in the area last night along with the sheriff and deputies.”

8. November 18th, 1966: The next day, on the 18th, there was another sighting.

Captain Paul Yoder and Benjamin Enochs, both volunteer firemen from Point Pleasant, revealed that they had seen a very large bird in The TNT Area in November 18th 1966. "It was definitely a bird," they stated flatly, "with big red eyes. But It was huge. We'd never seen anything like it".

Was an odd, giant bird causing all the Mothman commotion? Sending folks into hysterics? Maybe. We’ll discuss that possibility later. Did that bird take a local man’s dog?

Merle Partridge, also sometimes listed as Newell Partridge, from Salem, West Virginia, about 115 miles northeast from Point Pleasant, later reported that his German Shepard chased something with red, reflective eyes, around this time - ran after it into the cold, November West Virginia night - and was never seen again.

How much would that suck? Man. If I ever see a monster or alien - PLEASE - leave the doodles alone. Don’t take Penny Pooper or Ginger Bell. They’ve done nothing to deserve this.

Well, that’s not entirely true.

Sometimes one of ‘em takes a shit in the basement and sometimes Ginger chews on furniture BUT - let US decide how to punish those fluffy little weasels. Not you, Mothman. Not you. a) Given the name “Mothman”: It was during these first few days of sightings that the creature seems to have gotten its name.

A November 17th, 1966, headline from the Herald-Dispatch in Huntington seems to be the earliest example of the creature being called “Mothman.” It read: "Bird, Plane or Batman? Mason Countians Hunt 'Moth Man’" and it was written by local reporter Pat Siler. Since none of the actual early witnesses called the creature “Mothman”, it seems like Pat just came up with that herself. Nice writing. “Mothman” sounds way better than “Bird Man” which IS closer to what the actual creature was called by witnesses. Nice alliteration, Pat. And, Batman was already taken so you’d look silly going for that one.

The next day on November 18th 1966, the Huntington Advertiser printed the headline "Could the 'Moth Man' Be A Balloon?" Later on November 19th 1966 a headline from the Herald-Dispatch read: "That Mothman: Would You Believe A Sandhill Crane?".

Some people assumed that what people were seeing when they claimed to be seeing Mothman was a weather- balloon, like with the Roswell sightings I discussed in both the Alien Extravaganza Suck and in the Area 51 Suck. And while I do believe there is a good chance that the flying saucer from the Roswell incident was in fact a weather balloon, I do not think that makes any sense with Mothman. No one described seeing an orb - an orb that from a great distance with the sun reflecting off of it could be mistaken for a flying saucer but could NOT be mistaken for a red-eyed, winged humanoid when looked at up close.

Anyway - the name “Mothman” has just stuck ever since.

9. November 21st: Police in Charleston West Virginia, received an excited phone call from one Richard West at 10:15 PM, Monday November 21st, 1966. Partolman D.L. Tucker handled the call.

West insisted that a "Batman" was sitting on a roof next to his home. "It looks like a man it's about six feet tall and has a wingspread of six or eight feet" West reported. "It has great big red eyes.” "Did it fly?" Tucker asked. "Straight up, just like a helicopter,” West answered.

10.November 25th, 1966: Thirteen miles East of Salem, in little Clarksburg, West Virginia, the mystery monster was spotted again four days later. This time by Tom Ury, assistant manager of the Kinney Store, at 7:15AM on the morning of November 25th.

Tom told the sheriff's office he had an experience with the "bird" as he traveled north on State Route 62.

Ury was driving home from Point Pleasant to Salem, a little town thirteen miles East of Salem and around 130 miles from Point Pleasant, after spending Thanksgiving in Point Pleasant with relatives when he encountered the "bird".

"I know people think you're crazy when you tell of seeing something like this", Ury said “but I've never had such an experience, I was scared.”

In giving an account to the Point Pleasant Register, Tom said as he went up the road he spotted a flying object that seemed to come from the woods on his fight.

After his description of the area it was determined it came from the area back of the Homer Smith residence. Who’s Homer Smith? Name sound familiar? It’s Kenny “Dumb Dumb” Duncan’s father-in-law - the one he was digging that grave for when he just couldn’t mention seeing a flying monster to his buddies. Didn’t want to bring him up again but here we are.

And Tom said that near Homer’s house, Mothman “came up like a helicopter and then veered over my car. It began going around in circles about two or three telephone poles high and kept staying over my car" he added.

While his first thought was that of fear, Ury noted "I tried to get away and was going 70 miles an hour, but it kept up with me easily."

He stated that it kept soaring over his vehicle until he got to Kirkland Memorial Gardens, the Point Pleasant cemetery - why do cemeteries keep popping up in this tale? And then it made its way to the left and over toward the river. Ury said "I have a convertible and at first felt it was going to come through the top but after it stayed in the air at about the same height. I didn't feel it would attack."

"I've seen big birds, but I've never seen anything like this" he commented.

In giving a description he said it was grayish brown color, was some six feet in length and had at least an eight to ten foot wing spread.

I like how he felt compelled to add that he had seen big birds before, and that he would no the difference between a big bird and a large red-eyed winged demon-man. Who wouldn’t be able to tell those two things apart?

(Investigator) “Are you sure you saw a red-eyed, monster- faced, seven foot tall grew demon man with a ten foot wingspan? OR - do you think maybe you saw a crane or condor or maybe an owl or even an unusually large pigeon or robin.

(Confused witness) “Golly gee, officer. I mean, heck, when it stood up on two legs and raised it wings and stared at me with it’s red eyes and flexed it pecks, I thought for sure, this has to be a man-like monster of some sort. BUT… now that I think on it again, it could’ve been an eagle or maybe even a gray parrot or a mountain bluebird or something.”

Tom probably felt compelled to say that because some witnesses, as we’ve already heard, were saying that what they saw was a bird. And some people do still think that the 1966 Mothman sightings were actually just strange bird sightings. a) Mothman a Crane? Have you heard of the Sandhill Crane? Some people think that one of these birds is the real Mothman.

Just three days after the first Mothman story was published about the Point Pleasant sighting of the Mothman following a car full of two young local couples who then drove back out of town and saw it again, a story was published in the Huntington Herald-Dispatch on November 19th 1966 titled 'That Mothman: Would You Believe A Sandhill Crane?

Here’s what it said:

“The case of the Mason County monster may have been solved Friday by a West Virginia University Professor.

Dr. Robert L. Smith, associate professor of wildlife biology in WVU's division of forestry, told Mason Sheriff George Johnson at Point Pleasant he believes the "thing" which has been frightening people in the Point Pleasant area since Tuesday is a large bird which stopped off while migrating south.

"From all the descriptions I have read about this 'thing' it perfectly matches the sandhill cranes." said the professor. "I definitely believe that's what these people are seeing."

Since Tuesday more than 10 people have spotted what they described as a "birdman" or "mothman" in the area of the McClintick Wildlife Station.

They described it as a huge gray-winged creature with large red eyes.

Dr. Smith said the sandhill crane stands an average of five feet and has gray plumage. A feature of its appearance is a bright red flesh area around each eye. It has an average wing spread of about seven feet.

"Somebody who has never seen anything like it before could easily get the impression it is a flying man." he said. "Car lights would cause the bare skin to reflect as big red circles around the eyes."

Okay. So, I had to stop reading this old newspaper article at this point and look up some pictures of this crane. It looks NOTHING like a dude. What the Hell is Dr. Smith talking about? “Perfectly matches the description of a sandhill crane?”

No.

It has a tiny little bird heard with little not human at all bird eyes on each side of it’s super narrow bird head that rests at the end of a super, duper long crane neck. It does have big, cool, powerful looking wings. It’s a big bird. But, in between those wings is a skinny ass little bird body! It looks, honestly, like a long necked duck with big wings and literally sticks for legs. It’s legs look like there about one inch in diameter. Look like little bamboo sticks with webbed feet at the bottom. No one who can actually see would ever see those legs and mistake them for human legs. No way. I don’t care if it’s dark, I don’t think you could be dumb enough to mistake this creature for a monster bird man and still be smart enough to speak to a reporter and tell them you saw something.

Some people like to work themselves up and see what they want to I guess, but this crane doesn’t look anything like what these people describe.

“While such birds are rare to this area, Dr. Smith said this is migration time and it could not be too difficult for one or more of the birds to stop off at the wildlife refuge. There are no official sightings of such birds in West Virginia, although there have been unconfirmed reports in the past, he added.

The birds are rarely seen east of the Mississippi now except in Florida. Distribution mainly is in Canada and the population is increasing in the Midwest. They winter in southern California, in Mexico and along the Gulf Coast.

According to one book, the sandhill crane is a "fit successor" to the great whooping crane which in almost extinct. The book states that the height of the male when it stands erect is nearly that of a man of average stature, while they bird's great wings carry its compact and muscular body with perfect ease at a high speed.

Dr. Smith said that while the birds are powerful fliers they cannot match the 100 mph speed one couple reported the "thing" attained when pursuing their car.

Dr. Smith warned that while the sandhill crane is harmless if left alone, that if cornered it may become a formidable antagonist. Its dagger-like bill is a dangerous weapon which the crane does not hesitate to use when at bay and fighting for its life. Many a hunter's dog has been badly injured, he said.

Some of those who reported seeing the "monster" remembered best the eerie sound it made. The description of the sandhill crane also fits there.

"The cry of the sandhill crane is a veritable voice of nature, untamed and unterrified," says one book on birds. "Its uncanny quality is like that of the loon, but is more pronounced because of the much greater volume of the cane's voice. Its resonance is remarkable and its carrying power is increased by a distinct tremolo effect. Often for several minutes after the birds have vanished the unearthly sound drifts back to the listener, like a taunting trumpet from the under-world.”

Alright, so let’s see what this thing sounds like.

(Demonic Scream sound effect) https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=7R4fCL6AH24

That is pretty scary. Let’s hear it again. (Same clip)

One more time. (James Brown hot button)

That one sounded like James Brown.

Now for the real one: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=tAT4Bw9W66c

That really is the real sounds these cranes make. I will say, hearing that in the middle of the night in the woods would creep me the Hell out. Especially if I then pointed a flashlight or headlight at it and it was a creature, bird or not, over five feet tall.

That would for sure bother me. In a perfect, non-scary world, it would sound like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnRm8b0ilpk

Tweety bird! Why you out here pretending to be Mothman? C’mon now! (play a little bit more)

11.November 26th, 1966: The next day, on November 26th, in St. Albans (All bins), West Virginia, just outside of Charleston and 45 miles South of Point Pleasant, Mrs. Ruth Foster claimed that Mothman appeared on her front lawn on the evening of November 26th, 1966.

"It was standing on the lawn beside the porch" she told reporters. "It was tall, with big red eyes that popped out of its face. My husband is six feet one and this 'bird' looked about the same height, or a little shorter, maybe" she continued.

"It had a funny little face. I didn't see any beak. All I saw were those big red poppy eyes. I screamed and ran back into the house. My brother-in-law went out to look, but it was gone".

Alright Mrs. Foster may have seen a bird. I vote bird with her based on what she say having a little face. But some of the other people are either lying or have really hyped a bird up in their minds if it isn’t a monster.

12. November, 27th, 1966: The next day in St Albans (All bins) , on November 27th 1966, two teenage girls were allegedly chased on foot by a gray seven foot tall creature in St. Albans (All bins), West Virginia.

Sheila Cain, age thirteen, and her younger sister were walking home from the store when they saw an enormous "something" standing next to a local junk yard.

"It was gray and white with big red eyes," Shelia reported, and it must have been seven feet tall - taller than a man. I screamed and we ran home. It flew up in the air and followed us part of the way."

Connie Jo Carpenter, eighteen year old waitress at Tiny’s Diner in Point Pleasant - now Village Pizza - also claimed to have an encounter with Mothman on November 27th.

Connie Jo Carpenter was described as a shy, studious girl of eighteen from New Haven, West Virginia. She claimed to have an encounter with Mothman at 10:30 A.M on Sunday, November 27th 1966.

She was driving home from church when she saw what she thought at first was a large man in gray standing on the deserted links of the Mason County Golf Course on Route 62 about 15 miles north of Point Pleasant.

Ten foot wings suddenly unfolded, the thing took off straight up and headed for her car. "Those eyes! They were very red and once they were fixed on me I couldn't take my own eyes off them," she declared. "It's a wonder I didn't have a wreck".

Connie Jo said the creature flew directly at her windshield, then veered off and disappeared. She stepped on the gas and raced home in hysteria. She locked herself in her bedroom. "Those eyes, that's all she'd ever say was, Those eyes" her boyfriend would later say. She was so upset that she was unable to go to school for several days and required medical attention.

She was also suffered from an ailment called "Klieg Conjunctivitis" or "Eye Burn” after the encounter. Her eyes were red, swollen and itchy with water coming out of them for two weeks. Miss Carpenter was also one of the few to claim a close look at the Mothman's face. "It was horrible . . . Like something out of a science fiction movie".

Many years later, in 2001, when filmmakers making the Search for The Mothman Documentary wanted to talk to her about it, she declined. Her husband Keith Aeiker, who was her boyfriend at the time of the sighting, did speak on her behalf.

In an interview he said "I'd like people just to understand that, I'm here to make sure that they don't think she’s a kook because she’s not, and what she has said she’s seen, she has actually seen".

He went on to say "The only thing I have to say is, keep an open mind, because some day it could happen to you, and if you try to tell somebody what are you going to do if they laugh at you?”

I doubt someone would get that worked up over a bird. I doubt a crane would emotionally scar you like that. If it does, you’re just terrified all the time then. Life is just constantly scary if you get PTSD from an encounter with a crane. 13. Sometime in November, 1966: At some point during November, 1966, Bob Bosworth and his friend Alan Coates are said to have seen the legendary Mothman within the TNT Area's abandoned North Power Plant in Point Pleasant, West Virginia.

And these two - if they saw anything - did NOT see a crane. I feel pretty sure of that.

There’s a fair amount of alleged sightings written about that happened “at some point” during the Fall of 1966. I’m leaving out most of them because they’re vague sightings that were never reported in the papers at the time and they don’t really add much to the story. Just know that they’re out there. This one I wanted to include because Bob has repeated this story to numerous interviewers, authors, and documentary filmmakers over the years and, well, it’s a good one.

"A friend of mine, Alan Coates, had a motorcycle" Bob said in an interview with local Author, Jeff Wamsley. "We were just riding around and Al said 'You want to go up through [the] TNT area?' and I said 'we might as well.’”

Bob and Alan had already heard news stories about the Mothman which locals referred to as simply "The bird". Bob had even once offered Roger Scarberry $5 to take him to where he saw the bird, but Roger declined the offer. It was chilly weather so the men were wearing heavy coats. They drove along Camp Conley road. The road was adjacent to the old armory which later became fairgrounds.

"So we're riding out through there and Al said, 'look at that!". We stopped and up on top on the roof of that old power plant building, it was I believe a three story building, and up on top we seen two big, what looked like red eyes looking at us. We sit there and looked at it and Al said, 'You know what that is?' ...He said, 'Somebody's probably got a couple reflectors nailed to a board trying to fool somebody.' and I said, 'I bet you're right.' So I said, 'Let's go up and see what it is'".

I like these guys style! If they’re being honest, we finally got a pair of adventurers with some balls in this tale. Hail Nimrod! Enough squealing and running and racing and falling down on your baby in this story - let’s have Mothman get a chased for once!

Yip, yip, yaw! West Virginia Hogfolk going ta’ git ‘em now! Whoooo Boy! You done did it!

"We stopped right there and we looked up. Well it looked like these red eyes were looking down at us then - that still didn't bother us much because we thought whoever it was just turned the board.”

The men tried to pick up the front of the motorcycle and shine the headlight on the red eyes but the motorcycle was too heavy. They couldn't get the front end of it up high enough so they decided to just go up to the top of the building. They entered the power plant and went up to the third floor on a concrete platform. There were metal grating catwalks that veered off toward abandoned equipment.

Dude. That would be spooky as shit. Walking through an abandoned power plant looking for the source of two shiny lights that may be the eyes of Mothman? Scary and SO exciting. I wouldn’t do it alone, but probably with a friend. The feeling, whether it’s real or not, of safety in numbers.

"In the process of a lot of demolition work they had removed the ladders that took you up on the roof. I thought that how in the world could anybody get up there? All of a sudden this...I don't really know what to say...whatever I saw. - It very slowly and precisely walked toward us."

The floors of the abandoned power plant was littered with broken glass from the windows and you couldn't really take a step without hearing it crunch beneath your feet. The moonlight was so bright it was shining through the openings of the windows creating a spotlight effect while leaving certain places still in complete shadow. "We heard it walk and it walked right up and just stayed [in] the dark"

At this point he didn't see any red eyes. "I thought about that and I think that it is because there was no light to reflect them."

"All of its movements were slow and precise, no flighty movement, no waddles or anything like that. - It got to the point that if I had taken one step and extended my arm I could have touched it."

Bob claimed to have seen just a distinct outline of the creature. The unique shape was large and had broad shoulders. He estimated that it was 6'6" to 7ft tall.

If that’s true, it wasn’t a bird. Unless someone released an especially tall, especially short necked emu or ostrich in West Virginia in late 1966 - it was no bird.

"I don't know of any man that I have ever seen that's built that way - back then I weighted 170 pounds. - It's shoulders went past me and it had a taper to it like, well I compare it with a robin, you know a bird looks when their wings are folded and how they're bulged at the top and then come back down to a taper."

"It was just as though it had a head, a large head sitting on its shoulders."

Here's what we did, because you can't sometimes comprehend what you're seeing. Well it looked very strange so I told Al, 'You know,' I nudged him with my elbow so he would go along with it, I said, 'Al, that's that bird.' I said, I'm gonna shoot it'.

“We didn’t have any guns. If it were somebody they should have spoke up and said, 'Hey man don't shoot, It's me'. No. Nothing. It just stood right there. I said it again. I said 'Al, I mean it, I'm gonna shoot it.' he said, 'Well go ahead.' Well I put my hand into my coat like I had a gun. No sound. - It stood right there just as if it were looking right at me."

"I'm 5'9" and I had to tilt my head back a little bit to look to where it's face should be. And it was a rounded head. Well if you can imagine a 'U' upside down. - it was just too big to be a man."

"[There were] no quick or threatening moves whatsoever and had it meant any harm it certainly had its chance right there, towards either one of us. But I remember that any nervousness went away and I started becoming more interested in trying to figure it out. I became at that point very calm. I wasn't afraid. I was unsure."

Bob and Al stared at the thing in front of them for 5 to 6 minutes.

It very slowly and precisely turned towards the catwalks. Now these catwalks had been torn up and everything else. They went out to nothing and dropped off three stories down. It's where they had removed equipment so whatever this thing was turned - and started walking out the catwalk. - So I'm still to the point that I'm not sure what I am seeing and I didn't want anyone to get hurt. So I yelled out, 'Buddy, don't go out on that catwalk. There's no railing it drops off out there three stories down'. Never a hesitation. Then we heard [the] sound like wings."

"It was just as though it said, 'Well, I'm bored', and left."

"It walked to the back of the catwalk and only at that time for some reason is when we started getting a little nervous. - we hastily left."

Bob and Alan ran down the steps. They didn't hear anything else but kept looking back as they ran to the motorcycle and drove off.

"One thing that always stuck in my mind all these years is how in the world, if it was a person or someone out to scare us, how they could get up there and then get down that quick and inside [the building] while were coming up the steps".

Bob and Alan mostly kept to themselves about what they saw. They didn't think the police could help and Bob's father thought he was seeing things and that "no one would believe him" even if he told them about what he had ran into late that November evening.

And Bob added, ”I would give anything - [to] see it again one more time before I die. I would do things differently. I would try to touch it. I just got the feeling when it was in front of me that I was safe and it wasn't going to hurt me".

Bob told that story to Jeff Wasmlsey, who published it in his 2005 book, "Mothman...behind the red eyes". In 2017, the audio from this interview was used for an animated sequence in The Mothman of Point Pleasant Documentary.

Alright. So, that’s what they say happened. Only part of their story I really have a problem with is the lack of a flashlight. If you’ve been planning on going out and looking for some scary creature out in the woods, at night, I would think that the most important item on your list, next to maybe a gun, would be a flash light. And these dudes didn’t bring either. And a dude in rural West Virginia in 1966 FOR SURE has flashlights and guns.

However, I also know that I do shit without properly planning it all the time. Lynze can attest to that. I’ll have plenty of time to plan something, won’t be sure if I even want to do it, and then at the last second will just leave without thinking. I’ll go to the grocery store without the grocery list, I’ve gone to the airport without my driver’s license. I’ll go to the gym without my membership card or walk into a store without my wallet. So, there is also a chance that these two yahoos are just as absentminded as I am.

14.Sometime in November, 1966: Another alleged eye witness who supposedly saw this creature sometime in late November, 1966, who has a sighting worth mentioning is Faye Dewitt-Leport.

That November in Point Pleasant, then thirteen year-old Faye and her siblings decided to see if they could find the mythical Mothman said to be haunting the area. Her older brother Topper had heard of sightings and said he wanted to prove it fake once and for all.

So they drove to the creature's rumored hiding place - that damn TNT area - in a green '59 Ford Truck. As they drove, the Mothman is said to have appeared and began running beside the car. Terrified, Faye found herself face to face with the creature through a car window.

Her brother told her not to look at it but she caught glimpses from the corner of her eye. She said it was whiteish and "sandy". It had the features of a human - no beak - almost everyone by late November is sure to point out that they what they saw was NOT a bird - and it had those now infamous giant red eyes. She didn't see the creatures wings until later. It did not fly at first, only run. She was impressed by the creatures ability to keep up with them as her brother drove up to 50 mph.

Faye said, "All I could see was the eyes, they were so big other than anything else on its face, it just held you and thats about all you saw, The eyes was the reddest I've ever seen in my life and to this day I've never seen anything that red".

In a panic, she told her younger sister Betty and her younger brother to hide by ducking down in the back seat. Her older brother went as fast as he could around a sharp corner to try and lose the creature but the beast was simply too fast.

It turned along with them and continued to follow. Faye's brother went around another sharp turn and stopped the car sideways in the road, the creature jumped on the hood of the car and looked at them through the windshield.

The creature leaped to the top of the nearby abandoned factory building in The TNT Area. "It jumped on top the building and then just turned and sat down and crouched like a gargoyle" Faye described. The creature was amazingly able to leap the height of a tall building in a single jump without flying.

She then says that her brother got out of the car and started throwing rocks and pieces of coal at the creature.

What the fuck!?! Dude. Don’t do that! If this was a horror movie, you would be the first one to go. Why would you get out and throw rocks at this thing? AND - how much more stereotypically West Virginia could you be right now? Throwing lumps of coal just that are just lying on the ground?

“Yip, yip, yaw! Go on n’ git you damned Moth feller! Take that! I’ll bean you right ‘tween yer red critter eyes with this here coal lump! No one done do scurd my sissy you damn bug man sum bitch! Git! Git on off dat ‘dere bildun’! Damn you gargoyle! Damn you crane feller!”

Anyways - that’s Faye’s story and she’s sticking to it.

She said that finally her brother threw a larger coal chunk that landed by its foot and that's when the Mothman stood up, looked at him, turned sideways and jumped down from the roof in the same way it got up. Faye's brother rushed back to the car and closed the door.

I bet he did. “Oh I done made that Moth feller real hot and heated - yip, yip, yaw! See the way he looked at me with his big ol’ blood red eyes!?! Hot dawg he was all kinds of bothered! Keep that door locked - he liable to wring our coal flingin’ necks now, boy!”

They then saw the creature spread its wings for the first time and fly off into the darkness, leaving the children stunned.

Faye described the Mothman by saying "I'd say its close to five, six, feet [Wing] span there but I know they were big enough to have to carry something like that" and "The eyes almost took up his whole face, that's why it was so weird. It was the largest part in its face was its eyes".

She also told her story to local author Jeff Wamsley for his 2005 book, "Mothman...behind the red eyes". Faye then went on the Monster Quest television show and was later featured in the Eyes of The Mothman Documentary.

In 2017, Faye appeared in The Mothman of Point Pleasant documentary and when asked if she thought the creature could be some sort a mutation she said "This was not a mutation. This was something that was perfectly formed the way it was supposed to be, just like any other thing is".

If you’ll recall from the Men in Black Suck - it was around this time that the Men in Black supposedly started visiting Mothman witnesses. I said in that Suck that local West Virginia journalist Mary Hyre was approached by the Men in Black who asked her to stop reporting on Mothman (and than just gave up and left when she said no). She said other locals were also approached by the Men in Black. One was the witness we just spoke of, Faye Dewitt- Leport.

Faye said that when and her brother tried to return to The TNT Area a few days after their sighting, it was blocked off by two Men In Black who would not let them enter.

One of those four Mothman witnesses who really kicked off the news coverage of Mothman back on November 15th, Linda Scarberry, would also claim to have had Men in Black encounters. She later said in an interview: "The MIB wore black suits, black hats, and sunglasses. They drove black cars -Cadillacs, I think. ... They looked like human beings, but their skin was somewhat transparent. You could see the veins in their hands very clearly. Their fingers were longer than a normal person's fingers, as well. Daddy shook hands with them, and he said they were awkward in shaking hands. They seemed to not know what to do or how to shake hands."

She said: "One of the cars would follow us around. There were three men in the car. ... The MIB went so far as to follow us through the drive-thru of a restaurant. We were afraid to turn around, and just looked in the mirror at them."

15. December 1966-1967: Within two weeks of the initial publication of the first Mothman sighting, sightings of the creature tapered off but did still steadily pour in for the next year until December of 1967.

A steady stream of sightings of everything from an impossibly large bird, to a giant owl, to the Devil himself sitting next to one man in his bedroom at night: Lawrence Grey of Point Pleasant reported feeling like something was in his house, looking all over in the middle of the night, not finding anything, but then we he lied back down in bed and rolled over, there was a winged humanoid with red eyes sitting in his room staring at him. He was paralyzed with fear and claims it was the Devil himself. He said it dissipated and vanished into thin air, and that he woke up his wife who agreed that it was the Devil.

(Wife) “Just the Devil, Larry. Not Mothman, just Satan. Now go back to bed. I’m sure he’s moved on to some other sinner. What have you been doing anyway that the Devil would come to our home, Larry? Have you been hanging around the Corner Tavern staring at Suzy Lee’s ass again!?!”

16. May 19th, 1967: Two women swore they saw a "Mothman" fly to meet a UFO on May 19th, 1967. The flying creature with glowing red eyes approached the hovering luminous object and disappeared. "We were driving past the TNT Area on Route 62 around 10:30 PM," Brenda Stone said, "when we saw two bright red lights on a shadowy form high in a tree just off the road. Suddenly this big red light appeared and approached the tree, and the form rose up towards it and disappeared. Then the big light took off to the north.”

17. November 1967: On November 1967, Four adult males claim to have encountered a giant gray figure with red eyes while hunting in Chief Cornstalk Park in West Virginia. They were so frightened they never thought to raise their rifles until the creature was gone.

18.December 15th, 1967: And then, on December 15th, 1967, the Mothman sightings seem to come to an end exactly thirteen months after the stories began.

At 5:05PM local time that cold Winter’s day, the Silver Bridge connecting Point Pleasant to Gallipolis (gal uh POLICE), Ohio collapsed on the coldest day of the year.

Forty-six people died, nine more were injured, and two additional people disappeared. It was the worst bridge accident in American history up until that time. For days rescue workers pulled smashed cars and bodies from the river.

In an interview, Bridge Collapse Survivor, Charlene Wood said "When I got to the traffic light, here in point pleasant, I got the red light. When it changed I started going up onto the bridge and just about that time, the bridge started shaking". She heard a loud noise and thought that a boat had hit into the bridge underneath. She reversed her vehicle as the bridge began folding inward on itself, with her tires stopped on the ledge where it broke off.

The department of transportation conducted a detailed investigation of the collapse and found the cause to be a small 0.1 inch (2.5 mm) deep defect on the 13th steel pin eye-bar on the bridge that was improperly manufactured. Unlucky thirteen.

A couple of sightings of Mothman were said to have occurred near the bridge before the incident. Nothing there are records of and names attached to. Just whisperings. Rumors eventually spread that the bridge collapse was connected to the Mothman in some way and that he could have been a warning or a dark premonition. This was the beginning of The Mothman being associated as an “Harbinger of Doom” or some sort of “dark omen.”

And that, while it doesn’t take us out of the Mothman story, does take us out of today’s Timesuck Timeline.

PAUSE TIMESUCK TIMELINE OUTRO

IV. Additional Thoughts

A. Other Mothman Sightings Around the World:

While Mothman sightings in West Virginia have been rare since the collapse of that bridge in 1967, other sightings of winged humanoids have accompanied other disasters around the world adding the Mothman legend, like the Black Bird of Chernobyl.

1. The Black Bird of Chernobyl: The Blackbird of Chernobyl is an internet legend about a creature allegedly seen in Ukraine around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the weeks leading up to the Chernobyl Disaster on April 26th 1986. It's description is very similar to the famous Mothman creature.

It’s humanoid in appearance and black or dark gray in coloration. It has wings and glowing red eyes and was supposedly sighted by several workers before they died.

Reportedly, a bizarre winged creature was seen flying over the town on numerous occasions. A few workers at Chernobyl also allegedly saw the same creature hovering over the plant. Even stranger, those who claimed to have seen the creature were reportedly plagued by nightmares and harassed by incessant, threatening phone calls thereafter.

Was the Black Bird of Chernobyl the same creature as the one seen prior to the Silver Bridge disaster? Or was it, as some have suggested, a rare black stork? Or, is it entirely an internet legend?

The story doesn't seem to appear to be in any known newsprint or book publication. Doesn’t show up anywhere until about fifteen years ago. The earliest known telling of this tale comes from a 2005 post on AmericanMonsters.com :

“Beginning in April of 1986, a rumor tore through the ranks of what was then a little know nuclear power plant located in the southern tier of the Ukraine - Chernobyl. In the days preceding the tragic meltdown, four Chernobyl employees had reported seeing what they claimed was a large, dark, headless man with gigantic wings and fire-red eyes.

... Chernobyl employees began to share unsettling and strangely similar experiences. Some had been having horrifying nightmares, while others received threatening phone calls. According to accounts, some of these employees even mentioned their bizarre experiences to their superiors at the facility, but without evidence or any clear cut indication of what the problem may be, there was very little these officials could do - even had they been willing to take action.

On April 26, 1986, during a routine test of Reactor 4, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was rocked by a massive explosion. Thirty people died that morning, followed by ten additional ten deaths due to radiation exposure. Over the next nine days the graphite of the reactor continued to burn, resulting in tremendous environmental damage and an untold number of radiation casualties over the next 17-years.

As the Soviet helicopters circled the smoldering plant, dropping over 500 pounds of clay, sand, lead, and other extinguishing chemicals on top of the flames, some of the surviving workers - who, at the sacrifice of their own lives, heroically struggled to prevent any further destruction - claimed to have witnessed what has been described as a '20-foot bird' gliding through the undulating tentacles of irradiated smoke, which continued to spew from the reactor."

2. 9/11 Sighting: The Mothman legend is also linked the collapse of the World Trade Center towers in NYC on 9/11.

Following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, rumors emerged that witnesses reported seeing a large crane-like figure in the vicinity of the towers five days prior to the attack. It had been 31 years since any such sighting of Mothman in North America. On the day of the horrific attack, Mothman was reported to have appeared again, some claiming they could see his face through clouds of smoke and debris.

Two Images said to have be taken by Steven Moran show what is thought to be Mothman in New York City on September 11th 2001 during the terrorist attacks on The World Trade Center. Mothman is known to be a dark omen of disaster and given that this day was one of the worst American tragedies of the early 21st century, a creature sighting occurring makes sense. Mothman is associated with hysteria which there was plenty of on that day.

Steve Moran, a resident of New York said, "I live in New York and when I heard the twin towers were attacked, I immediately rushed to the scene to take photographs. First of all, I t[ook] pictures of medical workers who are providing assistance. Then I took pictures around the site towards the south on Greenwich street. When I got home, I realized there was an object that caught my camera".

Steve went on. "Looks like an angel was hovering above the ruins of the World Trade Center fractions. Maybe it's not a pigeon or a stork because of their large size. Moreover, we do not have the pelicans or bird carcasses in New York". Steve is said to have taken the images with a digital camera Kodak DC 4800, and he believes the creature is an "angel helper" or "angel of death".

To me, Steven’s pictures look VERY photoshopped. But not everyone online seems to think so.

3. 2007 Minnesota Bridge Collapse: In 2007, Mothman became associated with another bridge collapse. This time in Minnesota.

The I-35W Mississippi River bridge, officially known as Bridge 9340, was an eight-lane, steel truss arch bridge that carried Interstate 35W across the Saint Anthony Falls of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States.

On August 1, 2007, during rush hour, it suddenly collapsed, killing 13 people and injuring another 145. The bridge was Minnesota's third busiest, carrying 140,000 vehicles daily. A design flaw was the likely cause of the collapse.

The bridge was coincidentally built in 1967 which is the same year of The Silver Bridge Collapse in Point Pleasant. Another weird numerical coincidence - this Minnesota bridge was a portion of I-35 and The Silver Bridge was part of U.S. Highway 35. Not to mention that the death toll is the number 13 - a reoccurring number in the MothMan legend.

George Noory, host of the “Coast to Coast AM” program we’ve talked about on a few alien-centric Sucks, took various calls from individuals who reported many kinds of strange creature sightings in the days after the collapse. People told their own eyewitness accounts for hours.

A caller in Illinois claimed to have witnessed the Mothman on Wednesday June 27th 2007, over a month before the August 1st 2007 collapse of the I-35W Bridge, while driving outside of Stewartville, Minnesota. She said the creature had a huge wingspan.

The fact that these calls came in AFTER the bridge collapsed is a little suspicious. But it’s part of Mothman lore now all the same.

There are other supposed, random encounters with winged humanoids at times of disaster that some have connected to Mothman.

4. 2009 Swine Flu in Mexico: On April 10, 2009, residents of La Junta in the Mexican state of Chihuahua began noticing a strange creature in their midst. He was very tall and hairy, with two expansive wings and wide, bloodshot eyes. One young student even reported that the creature chased him relentlessly. “Those were 15 minutes of maximum despair,” said the student, who chose to remain anonymous during the interview.

It was during this time that the area began to see a rise in swine flu cases tied to the ongoing 2009 outbreak. Two other witnesses by the names of Angela Mendez and Viviana Ledezma claimed to have heard the creature in an apple orchard near a cemetery. Some believers theorize that this creature was the Mothman. Seems like a stretch, but again, part of the lore.

5. 1978 German Mine: On September 10, 1978, a group of miners in Freiburg, Germany came face to face with a seemingly headless creature with glowing red eyes on its chest blocking the mine’s entrance. At first they thought it was a man in a trench coat, but they quickly realized it was not coat, but unfurled large black wings. The men remained in the mine entrance, stunned and staring at the creature, until it let out a blood curdling screech that sent the miners scrambling out.

About an hour later, the men felt a seismic rumble and witnessed a plume of dust shoot from the mine as it collapsed. If the men had gone to their stations in the mine as usual, the majority of them would have died. It appeared as though what they dubbed the "Freiburg Shrieker" saved their lives.

HOWEVER - can’t find any original sources for this legend and I have a feeling it was manufactured on the web.

6. Fukishima Nuclear Meltdown: Marcus Pules, an American visiting Japan, was out with a friend near the Fukushima plant in 2011 when suddenly they heard a loud whooshing sound and a terrible screeching. As they looked back towards the plant they saw a figure Pules described as: “Large and black, from the distance I was at it looked to be sitting on top of one of the squared shape buildings. It sat there for about 5 seconds then it unfurled a large set of what I could only describe as large, black wings.”

The creature took flight, circling the plant a few times before coming closer to them: “That’s when I noticed the two large red eyes. They seemed to glow from within and with a blood red hue. They were unblinking in the 3-4 seconds we saw them, we knew they were looking straight at us, we knew this creature knew we could see it and it made no attempt to disguise itself.”

Pules describes an immense feeling of dread that washed over him, and the creature vanished as quickly as it had appeared. It wasn’t until Pules was back home in America, hearing the news on CNN about the devastation of the Japanese earthquake and the explosions at the very same nuclear power plant where he had witnessed the creature, that he realized he may have seen the infamous harbinger of disaster known as the Mothman.

And there are other even less cited and more obscure supposed legends.

So what do I think about Mothman? What do I think it or he is? I’ll sum up my Mothman thoughts right after we check in with the web on today’s Idiots of the Internet.

PAUSE IDIOTS OF THE INTERNET INTRO

V. Idiots of the Internet

A. Today’s Video: Today’s first video is The Mothman Documentary, just over a million videos, posted on November 25th, 2015 by Top5s.

1. Funny dude Jake Jones brings up an excellent pointing, “Maybe it’s just a huge ass moth.”

That would be so creepy and great. If there are just some giant, man-sized creepy ass moths out in West Virginia. I would rather be attacked by moth man than a giant fucking moth.

2. User Nina-Morales makes an interesting Project MK ULTRA connection: “This is a time when the CIA was experimenting with lsd so maybe they were having lots of fun lol fkn with this town.”

Nina is correct about the timeline - the Point Pleasant Mothman sighting occurred in December of 1967. The MK ULTRA LSD experiments ran from 1953 until at least 1973. And they were headquartered, at least initially in Camp Detrick, now Fort Detrick, Marlyand. Point Pleasant is only a five hour drive West of Fort Detrick. And, if you’ll recall from the MK ULTRA Suck, the CIA did dose unsuspecting US citizens with LSD.

The United States President's Commission on CIA Activities within the United States, set up under President Gerald Ford in 1975 to investigate the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies within the United States, a commission led by the Vice President, Nelson Rockefeller, sometimes referred to as the Rockefeller Commission, uncovered this.

3. User Nick Does knows that Mothman is real. 100% sure. He’s thought it out and posts:

“Mothman is real. I cant for sure say Yeti's are real, but Mothman and El Chupracabra are real.. just cause Mothman hasnt been seen, dosent mean it isnt there. As well, I think a Thunderbird is also possible, but I know, scientifically its highly unlikely. It's just hard for me to imagine every creature, from the sea, to the land and the skies are all cartographied and on some list, is plain rediculous.

To sit here and say Mothman or the lesser known creatures, besides Yeti's, are not real is quite silly. A whole town, freaking said they saw it, or saw something... so ya, question is, do you to believe it a Moth or a bird?”

What a confusing argument.

“New species are still being discovered so to claim a species isn’t real doesn’t make sense. Unless it’s bigfoot. That doesn’t seem legit. And I question the existence of Thunderbirds. But Mothman? Chupracabra? Of course they exist!

What a strange line to draw. “Frankenstein is a bunch of horeshit! Get out of here with your Frankstein talk. But Dracula? Werewolves? Of course those are real.”

4. User Shanty Gaming is my spirit animal in this thread, posting:

“Haha, I'm here to warn you of a disaster about to happen. I can somehow sense disasters before they come. But can't write a note, talk, or actually land on the bridge in public to bring attention to myself and the problem. I have to be cryptic, scare people in random areas hoping they somehow get the message, and maybe sneak onto the bridge for two seconds and fly away.

If you can't tell, I find it hard to believe whatever was here wanted to bring knowledge of a coming disaster.”

Haha! Exactly. What a shitty harbinger of doom. Leave a fucking note already you worthless flying man-bug! Stop attacking cars and just write a note. Or play a quick game of charades. Or, if you can’t do that, then fuck off. No one understands your warnings. You’re the worst warning system in the history of disasters.

5. User Tanner Phoenix also brings up a great point, posting “Wait. This thing showed itself to a woman and her baby. Followed people in their a car. Peered into some ones front door window. But when the POLICE arrive this thing runs away!? LOL! How does it know of the POLICE?”

Exactly. It doesn’t know how to warn us, but, it does know who are police are? Lot of logic holes with this creature.

a) User Suhaer Osman has a funny reply: “I guess it had weed on it and couldn't take the risk.”

6. User Jack Pritchard posts a comment similar to so many others I saw in this long thread, “a moth hit me when i was watching this, coincidence i don’t think so.”

I want to make fun of this but can also see myself doing this. Watching Mothman video after video. Alone at night. Videos with jump cuts and spooky and suspenseful soundtracks. Working yourself up. And then suddenly a moth lands on you. I’d probably spook myself good.

“Get away from me! Tell your giant leader to stay away! Are you also a harbinger of doom? Please tell me that the amount of doom coming is relative to your tiny size. Instead of a bridge collapsing, maybe you’re warning me that I will stumble and almost but not quite fall down on the sidewalk tomorrow. Is that it? Please tell me that’s it!

B. Mothman hunters videos: I tried to find some good wackadoodle video from someone who claims to have witnessed Mothman first hand, and, they all these witnesses seem to have one thing in common in addition to seeing Mothman - they have no idea how to record a video with decent fucking audio. They love to record outside in the wind or at the Mothman festival with a live band behind them making it almost impossible to understand what they’re saying. A good Mothman witness interview is almost as elusive as Mothman himself. Or, it’s just painfully boring.

But then I found some clips from a Destination America show called Mountain Monsters.

Holy… Wackadoodle… jackpot.

Mountain Monsters is five of the most hillbilly looking motherfuckers you have ever seen in your entire life going out in the woods and looking for bigfoot, Mothman, and other crytoids. They are so deliciously batshit crazy.

There’s Buck - an “expert caller” who looks like Larry the Cable Guy’s long lost little brother. A guy who’d like to “Git r Done” but most of the time just barely “gits r started.”

There’s Trapper John Tice - the “Team Leader” who looks like me Monster Hunts part time when he’s not making moonshine or participating in civil war reenactments.

There’s Jeff, the “Team Researcher” who looks like Santa Claus if Santa left the North Pole, traded his red and white suit for dirty jean overalls and abandoned Christmas to be a roadie for a blue grass band that only plays West Virginian county fairs.

There’s Willy - their “expert trap builder” whose traps haven’t caught a single cryptoid ever. Maybe they need to replace him. Dude looks like an extra from Duck Dynasty. Looks like a Robertson who wasn’t ever allowed on camera because he looks TOO redneck.

And then there’s my favorite, a man who goes only by the name of “Huckleberry.” Like some sort of backwoods Drake or Madonna who is the team’s Head of Security. Dude looks like he’s been living alone in the woods for at least a decade since escaping from a mental institution.

And in one clip I found, Huckleberry claims to have been hypnotized by a cryptid in the middle of a night hunt and the rest of the team decides to throw him in a river to “snap him out of it.” It’s so ridiculous.

Before we hear that clip, let’s listen to Huckleberry talk about a childhood Sasquatch sighting to get a feel for him and his crew:

Bigfoot Sighting Clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=5OdWHplmuWs

“I’ve been thrown out of school.” Haha! This guy is so full of shit. “Huckleberry! Did you say you saw a bigfoot? You did? Then get the fuck out of school! You’re out! Don’t come back you bigfoot liar!”

No one has ever been thrown out of school for thinking they saw bigfoot. That is ludicrous.

“Dad, how come you never graduated high school?”

“Got kicked out for talking ‘bout bigfoot one time. They never let me back in.”

And why would you not tell your crew of cryptoid hunters about this? They believe just like you do. It’s why you are a team of cryptoid hunters. I don’t trust this Huckleberry fellar one bit.

Spoiler alert - they don’t find bigfoot.

Now that you understand a little more about this crew, let’s listen to the clip of these grown men - average age of about 50 - who’ve lost track of Huckleberry and then hear him screaming out in the forest. He claims to have been attacked by the “Cherokee Devil” who they think is a type of bigfoot.

Huckleberry Gets Hypnotized: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=C5wLrEZbKi0

Spoiler alert - they never find that sumbitch either. Five seasons. Fifty episodes. They haven’t found shit. Not one damn monster.

Now. Here’s the boys talkin’ bout Mothman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49c0bw76cPw

The eyes he sees are so obviously a prop of some sort. Looks like two motorcycle headlights put next to one another. You can see white light beaming out from them like two flashlights. For sure a producer is out in the woods doing that.

1. User Kirigaya brings up an important question when it comes to hunting Mothman at night: “why dont they use night vision?”

a) And Froggo Loggo says something along the lines of what I’d say: “Because if they did... You'd see a truck :)”

Exactly, Froggo Loggo.

If Mothman is real, he’s smart enough to make sure these idiots will never find him.

PAUSE IDIOTS OF THE INTERNET OUTRO

VI. What is It?:

So what is Mothman if Mothman even exists? Let’s go over the most popular theories.

A. Bird: The most popular theory, outside of paranormal explanations and people having over active imaginations, is that Mothman is a Sandhill Crane or some other sort of strange bird. You guys know my thoughts on this now. I don’t think most witnesses reporting Mothman actually saw a crane. Some, perhaps, but not most.

B. Owl: Another similar explanation is a barn owl. Barn owls can have huge wingspans, just like sand hill cranes and they have a bigger, rounder head which could look more human-shaped like in the dark.

In December of 1966, a big ass owl was killed just outside of Point Pleasant. It had a wing spread of nearly five feet. However, it’s body still wasn’t very big. A two foot tall barn owl would be a GIGANTIC fucking barn owl. They generally don’t have bodies more than 15 inches long. And, they don’t weigh much. Generally, they don’t weigh more than two pounds. Two pounds is actually a giant barn owl. They’re mostly feathers. Two pounds is a long way from human- size looking.

C. Alien: Is Mothman an alien? Maybe. Why not? About the time the Mothman sightings were being reported in such high volumes (beginning in 1966 in Point Pleasant, West Virginia), also being reported – and as sorted through and cataloged by paranormal researcher John Keel in his book the Mothman Prophecies – were mysterious energy fields, glowing orbs, weird animal behaviors/ disappearances technology failures, loss of time, and the “men in black” who would visit the town. So, while of course all of it may be nonsense, there is also a chance that some of it isn’t and that the Mothman sightings could have been related to other UFO activity at the time in that area.

D. Thunderbird: Is Mothman really a Thunderbird? What the Hell is a Thunderbird? American Indian legends from the area surrounding Point Pleasant have tales of giant, terrible birds called Thunderbirds that could easily swoop down and carry away a man. In their depictions and representative artifacts, the images resemble the Mothman. If this is true, Mothman may have been in the area at least as far back as the early 1600s.

Many legends suggest that Thunderbirds had the ability to shapeshift into human form. They’re believed to sometimes watch the happenings of human life. According to Algonquian [al-gong- kee-uh n] legend, Thunderbirds were ancestors of the human race and are protective of humans.

Again - who knows? It’s not like Thunderbirds have been proven to exist. Could Mothman be a Thunderbird? Yeah - in the sense that one creature we don’t for sure exists could be another allegedly similar-looking creature we don’t for sure exists. I think the odds that Mothman is a Thunderbird are higher than say, the odds that Mothman is a unicorn or leprechaun.

E. Toxic Mutant: There’s my favorite theory, which is that Mothman is a mutant created from chemicals stored at that TNT site where so many sightings occured. Mothman seemed to make its home in that former WWII munitions dump, which also used to be a bird sanctuary. Did that combo create some mutant?

I don’t know. If you listened to the Chernobyl Suck, you learned that unfortunately, the forests and streams around the site of a large nuclear meltdown aren’t full of wolf-men, or people who can start fires with their minds, of three-headed bears or alligator people, winged snakes or anything cool at all. Pretty certain that giant mutant creatures - especially cool ones - rising from toxic waste is the stuff of comic book legend and nothing more. Gonna give this one a hard no.

F. Angel: There’s some who think Mothman is an angel! An angel who came to warn locals about the impending bridge collapse. I’m gonna go with Shanty Gaming again on this one and say that if Mothman is a messenger, he is fucking TERRIBLE at that job. Why would an angel, if that’s a thing, go through the trouble of showing up to warn people but then NOT actually warn people. Hard no on this one for me again.

Demon also gets brought up and I don’t think that makes any more sense than angel. It didn’t actually terrorize anyone. It just showed up and occasionally flew towards people. It actually attacked zero people. Hard no on demon.

G. Strange, unidentified flying machine: Some think the creature was some experimental, possibly secret government, flying machine. Yeah. That might be the dumbest theory. If the government had some Mothman suit back in 1966, why isn’t there some sightings or reports of a way more advance flying suit now? Flying suit technology has stalled in the age of MAJOR, world altering tech advancements? Don’t buy it. If that was true, I’d have a jet pack in the garage right now and would be spending a lot less time podcasting and a lot more time jet-packing.

H. Feral Polish Person:

Perhaps the most credible, and promising theory I came across in my research is that Mothman was actually a feral Polish dude living in the West Virginia wilderness.

I know I said I don’t believe that toxic waste can create a monster earlier, but, very little studies have been done regarding Polish people and toxic waste. The few studies that have been done do confirm that Polish people aren’t smart enough to know better than to eat toxic waste AND, because they’ve lived on sausages and sauerkraut and stuff like that for so many years, they’re actually capable of living on just about any substance, theoretically including toxic waste.

So, was some Polish man living out there in the TNT area, eating nothing but chemicals and whatever birds and owls and rats and feces he could get ahold of for years? It’s very possible. Probable, even.

Point Pleasant had a large influx of Polish settlers in the 1820s and 1830s but they didn’t stay in town long. They couldn’t figure out how to do basic jobs like serve whiskey at the bars without throwing it in people’s faces and fighting them or anything that required wearing clothes and not grunting. And they kept doing typical Polish stuff that infuriated other locals like fucking in the middle of town or taking a shit in the aisles of various businesses. They also ate a lot of people’s pets, scared kids on Halloween by refusing to dress up and not looking like monsters at least one day a year, and set several structures in town on fire by lighting their farts. That kind of Polish stuff.

And so they went into the nearby woods and just ate dirt and their own poop and toxic waste and had sex with their families for over a hundred years before Mothman showed up. What kind of creature does that create? I’d ask my Polish wife but she’ll probably just snarl and try and bite me like normal and then I’ll have to get a stick and beat her into a cage and I’m just tired of having to do that.

Everyone knows I’m kidding about the Polish thing, right?

I. Final Thoughts/Hoax: Who knows what Mothman is. It’s an interesting tale if nothing else. Fun folklore! Might be a big hoax, but, if it is, it’s one that numerous people from different families and different towns in the same area all seem to believe to this day based on documentary footage I’ve seen.

If they’re lying they’ve been holding onto their lies for over fifty years now and many have taken those lies to the grave.

I don’t think Mothman is some harbinger of impending doom. That makes no sense to me. But, when it comes to the strange and unexplained, the spiritual, extraterrestrial, mythological, paranormal or cryptozoological - this stuff doesn’t have to make any sense! That’s the beauty of the paranormal. If it was so creature different from the creatures we know for sure exists - all bets are off as to what it wanted, why it was here, or where it is now.

I do think at least some of the people who claimed to see Mothman did in fact see SOMETHING they couldn’t explain. And I don’t think all of those who saw something they couldn’t wrap their heads around saw a bird or an owl.

So what did they see? I don’t know. No one can know. Maybe there really was some strange humanoid creature in those woods. Might be a pretty sad story if that’s the truth. Some creature, alone and on a new planet, or alone in a new dimension. What was it doing out there? How did it get there? What did it think of those who saw it? Where is it now?

Can you imagine if you somehow ended up in another realm or in another world? Creatures just as strange to you as you are to them are trying to get a look at you, or make contact with you, or capture you or just outright kill you.

How terrible. If that’s the truth, it seems that Mothman did what I don’t think I’d be able to do on some other world - he got away. If he was a traveler from another land, I hope he made it back home to his Moth-wife and Moth-kids. Hope he’s telling the story of all the crazy shit he saw to his Moth-buddies to this day. Would they believe him any more than we believe those who may have saw him?

That’s all I got. Except of course for one more bit of new info I’ll share in today’s top five takeaways!

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEAWAYS INTRO

VII.Top Five Takeaways

1. Number One: While later supposed sightings would come in from supposed Mothman witnesses like Kenneth “I forgot to mention a winged monster hanging out in the sky above us for a solid minute to the four men I was working outdoors with at the time” Duncan, the legend really got going on November 16th, 1966, when an article was printed in the local paper about two young Point Pleasant, West Virginia couples claiming to see Mothman the night before. Telling local police a winged humanoid chased their car as they drove back into town and was waiting for them by the side of the highway when they went back to make sure what they saw was real.

2. Number Two: Mothman is most consistently described as a bipedal, winged avian humanoid. His coloration varies from Black, gray, to even brown or white, although its is usually the darker shades. He is often reported to be about seven feet tall, with a wingspan of about ten feet, plus the ability to fly over 100 mph. Sometimes he's described as not having a head with the two huge red eyes set in the chest. These eyes are reported to be glowing, or at least reflective. Next to wings, the intense, glowing or at least reflective red eyes of Mothman seem to be the creature’s most consistent physical feature.

3. Number Three: The vast majority of Mothman sightings occurred between mid-November 1966 and December 15th, 1967, when the Silver Bridge that rose above the Ohio River and connected Point Pleasant, West Virginia with Gallipolis (gal uh POLICE), Ohio collapsed and took the lives of forty-six people. And ever since, many Mothman believers believe that Mothman tried to warn people about that bridge collapsing.

4. Number Four: I believe in the possibility of Mothman being real MORE than I believe in the collective credibility of the cast of Destination America’s Mountain Monsters. Unless your last name is Finn, I think it’s pretty weird to go by the name of Huckleberry.

5. Number Five: New info! It seems that if Mothman is indeed real, he may have moved to Chicago! There were fifty-five reported Chicago-area sightings of a flying humanoid in Chicago in just 2017 alone. Accounts have varied regarding what this creature looked like, ranging from "a large, black, bat-like being with glowing red eyes” to "a big owl” or something that resembled a "Gothic gargoyle” or a “Mothman.” Most eyewitnesses spotted the being in-flight, but some particularly disturbing reports detailed it dropping onto hoods of cars, peering in through windows, and swooping down at bystanders.

One Chicagoan who claims to have seen the Chicago Mothman is John Amitrano, who was working a Friday shift as security for Chicago's popular Logan Square hangout The Owl during the summer of 2017 when we went outside and saw something odd.

He told vice.com in 2018, "I saw a plane flying, but also something moving really awkwardly under it. It didn't look like a bat so much as what illustrations of pterodactyls look like, with the slenderness of its head and its wing shape. I know what birds and what bats look like. This thing didn't have any feathers or fur, and it didn't fly like anything I've ever seen.”

Amitrano added that the thing he saw—which, according to him, had muscular legs, a jutting tailbone, and a human-like shape— flew in a "strange swooping motion, undulating up and down." After it flew away, he retrieved his phone from charging in the bar and texted his girlfriend and close friends what had happened. “I remember thinking, This was the worst time in the world to have my phone charging.”

Why can’t these things ever appear in front of someone who has a fully charged phone and a camera ready to go? Mothman, if you’re out there - give us a decent photo for once. It would make a fantastic update to this Suck.

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEAWAYS OUTRO

VIII.Final Announcements

A. Episode has been sucked!: Mothman has been sucked! I enjoyed taking a little stroll down into Cryptozoology-ville for that one. Love me some folklore. Love me some paranormal if that’s what it is.

It’s already a weird world. Maybe some Mothman’s out there making it a little weirder.

(Sung to Elton John’s Rocketman)

“Mothman! Burning out of fuel in the woods alone!

And I think it’s gonna be a long, long time, ‘fore Mothman takes a photo we can find,

He’s not a bird, and he’s not an owl, oh no, no no.

He’s a Mothman!

Mothman! Burning out of fuel in Chicago alone!

B. Thank you to Timesuck Team (including episode researcher):

Thank you to the Timesuck Team! Thanks to the Queen of the Suck Lynze Cummins, High Priestess of the Suck Harmony Vellekamp, Jessie “Guardian of Grammar” Dobner, Reverend Doctor Joe Paisley. Timesuck High Priest Alex Dugan, the guys at Bit Elixir, Danger Brain Axis Apparel, and the Lillie Twins - Reba and Sarah - Hammers of Knowledge for kicking off my Mothman curiosity with their research this week.

C. Facebook Group/Discord: Have you joined the Cult of the Curious private Facebook group?

There are over 6,000 Timesuckers in the private Cult of the Curious group on Facebook and over 1,200 Discord members now. Link to the Discord chatroom/messaging app right on the Timesuck app.

Links to the private Facebook group and to the Discord channel in today’s episode description.

D. Next Episode Preview: Next week the Space Lizards have spoken and voted in another fantastic topic. The Bubonic Plague! The Black Plague! The Black Death!

The Black Death was a devastating global epidemic that struck Europe and Asia in the mid-1300s. The plague arrived in Europe thanks to Mongol soldiers literally catapulting plague infected bodies over the walls of the Black Sea city of Caffa in 1346. Yup.

Over the next five years, the Black Death would kill more than twenty-five million people in Europe – some think many more - possibly well over a third of the entire continent’s population.

It’s been called by historians, The Greatest Catastrophe Ever.

Blood and pus seeping out of strange swellings. A host of other horrible symptoms – fever, chills, vomiting, diarrhea, terrible aches and pains – and then, in short order, death.

The plague was terrifyingly efficient. And 14th century humans had no idea what the Hell was causing it. People who were perfectly healthy when they went to bed at night could be dead by morning.

The Black Death! We shall sucketh it next-eth week-eth! Some great history AND a great excuse to talk about insane medieval doctors.

E. Segue to Timesucker Updates: Now let’s check in once again with the Cult of the Curious in today’s Timesucker Updates.

PAUSE TIMESUCKER UPDATES INTRO

IX.Timesucker Updates

A. Email From: Let’s kick things off with an interesting Ed Kemper Update from Timesucker Ticen Rothrock

Hello master sucker, my name is Ticen Rothrock planning on being a space lizard within the next few weeks I’m writing in after listening to the sick fuck Ed kemper, after learning he was caught in my hometown of Pueblo Colorado it blows my mind that he makes a long list of serial killers caught in my hometown. Leo J. Romero of Pueblo was linked to three killings during a 27-year span. He was sentenced to 10 years to life in prison for the 1955 slaying of John Meintasis in Pueblo. While in treatment at the Colorado State Hospital in 1969, he stabbed and killed fellow patient Gilbert Romero (no relation). Leo Romero escaped from the state hospital in 1972 and stabbed to death Verenia Martinez of Pueblo. Carl Taylor, a Texas drifter whose family was linked to a murderous cross-country crime spree, was prosecuted in Pueblo in 1974 after heavy publicity tainted the jury pool in Denver. He pleaded guilty to the 1971 killing of a young waitress in Lakewood. He admitted roles in 20 murders in six other states. John Edward Robinson Sr. was linked to the deaths of 51-year-old Sheila Dale Faith and her wheelchair-bound daughter, 21, both of Pueblo. The Faiths disappeared a few months after they moved to Pueblo from Fullerton, Calif., in 1994. Their bodies were found in June 2000 inside a storage locker that Robinson rented in Raymore. Just a side note that city is a shithole where crime is inevitable but just thought it was weird all of them are caught in one town. Keep on sucking and doing great things! - Ticen

Wow! Thanks, Ticen! That’s a lot of darkness for a city of roughly 110,000. Never been to Pueblo. Been all over the country but haven’t made it there. Not giving me a lot of reasons to visit.

Random trivia - Pueblo is one of the largest steel producing cities in the nation, Bat Materson - one of the gunslingers in the Doc Holliday Suck was once sheriff of Pueblo, and David Packard, the co-founder of Hewlett Packard computers and the man dubbed “The Father of Silicone Valley” was born and raised and graduated high school in Pueblo.

Keep on suckin’, Ticen.

B. Made up mush mouth word definition coming in from Timesucker Geoff Asser. Geoff writes.

Hail masterus suckerus. Here is the definition of decapicated. Decapicated. /Dee•cap•ee•kay•ted/

Adjective To forcefully remove a person's cap from their head and throw it upon the ground followed by stomping on it furiously whilst taunting the person from which it was removed.

"Pootie decapicated JuJu whilst yelling put that in your lunch box Shirley!"

Another weirdly funny case of mush mouth.

Hope this gives you a laugh. Hail Nimrod - Geoff Asser

It did give me a good laugh. Thank you, Geoff! I appreciate it!

C. Fantastic Area 51 Suck update coming in from (Shaw-ree) - (“sorry with an h”) hardinger

Shaw-ree writes:

Dear Master Sucker, I recently discovered Time suck and I'm enjoying it very much. I think people are too hard on you for mispronunciations. I'm still trying to catch up so I hope no one has already updated this. I just finished the Area 51 suck. I learned some interesting(?) or whackadoodle(?) info from a book I listened to when I was still a believer. Ironically, this book killed my belief. Its called Area 51 by Annie Jacobsen. She told me a lot of the info you did regarding the secret projects. She claimed to have interviewed one of the top scientists that worked at Area 51...anonymously of course. The big twist in the end was revealed to be about the Roswell incident. Apparently, Stalin had heard about the panic caused by The War of the Worlds broadcast and he wanted to create another panic he could benefit from. So, he made a "flying saucer" that crashed on purpose. The pilots of this UFO were children he had altered with sadistic plastic surgery to look like aliens. Boom. Mind Blown!(?) Seems like a bunch of made up bull shit to me...but what do I know? Thanks for the podcast. I clean houses for a living and it makes my painfully dull job much more fun. In the Sparticus suck, you kept saying "dead dude bridge" and it made me laugh way more than it should have! � � � My husband bought us tickets to see you live for my birthday next month in SLC. Can't wait! Sharai Hardinger (Shaw-ree) like sorry with an h

I love it! Not crazy at all. Just putting surgically altered kids into an experimental aircraft in the 40s and then crashing it in the New Mexico desert. Stalin was both sadistic and an evil genius technologically ahead of his time! Who knew?

Excited to see you in SLC! Those shows are going to be fantastic. Love performing in Salt Lake City.

D. Funny message from Megan Wulber was sent in I’d like to share about how important a dark sense of humor is to us Suckers.

She writes:

Dear Dan,

I’d like to tell you a story. I recently moved from Ohio to Florida to take a job with a new Sheriff’s Office. This office is very formal and by the books, so I’ve been containing my weirder side.

My new Lieutenant was telling a story the other day : He is originally from Buffalo, NY. He had a sister and brother-in-law still there. Some context, the whole family hated this dude. Total toolbag I guess. One time, they were jogging in a snow storm, went to cross a street, and were hit by a car due to the visibility. The brother-in-law was killed and the sister was seriously injured. Queue absolute silence and horror in the room. Then he said something along the lines of “They had it coming, who runs in a snow storm?”

And that is how I discovered my Lieutenant has a beautiful sense of humor and I’m going to be alright here.

You’re Welcome, Space Lizard Megan Wulber

E. Some Kick ass now comes our way from Meat Sack Supreme Ian Young

Wow Dan, way to fail! I recently listened to "Timesuck Sucks Itself". I can't believe I missed this one before but I'm glad I caught it the second time around. I don't know how to properly articulate my feelings of pride and joy. To hear about how many failures you had to suffer through before finally succeeding has inspired ME to be willing to fail. I'm normally very reserved and I try to carefully calculate my every move in an attempt to avoid failure in any situation. Now, I've started to take this life out of the box and play with it a little bit. This new approach landed me a new gig making almost double what I made last year. I'm working for one of the largest media companies in the world and finally pushing the boundaries of my comfort zone. I have YOU to thank for that push. Thank you for enduring all the shit this world has thrown at you in order to get us to where we are now. KEEP ON SUCKING! Your Loyal Space Lizard, Ian Young

Hail Nimrod you beautiful bastard! Great job Ian! F. More inspiration flowing forth to all of us from another wonderful wizard - Dustin knoche ( ka-no-key)

Dustin writes :

Dear master sucklord. I just want to say thanks if it doesn’t make it to the show no big deal just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for all that you have done with Timesuck. Recently I have realized that both me and my amazing girlfriend were both at a decent risk for diabetes and heart disease. So we starting dieting and working out I have done this in the past but no luck but being able to listen to you’re podcast helps while I at the gym. Also the recent inspirational sucks you released were my main motivation. I want to let anyone in the group know just do it put your mind to it and do it. I’ve lost 25 lbs since the first and feel the best I have since jr high. Just wanted to say thanks couldn’t have done it with out you, sorry for the long message. Dustin knoche ( ka-no-key)

G. Finally, Timesucker Joe Campbell closes things out with some love for his lady.

: Dear Dan, Lindsey, Joe and all other members of the timesuck team. I just wanted to reach out and say thank you for all the work you guys do. I am so excited I finally got to see you live at your Providence show and I brought my girlfriend of two years with me. She has been forced to listen to your podcast for a couple of months before i showed her your comedy to really try to show her why you are the way you are.... It worked. She has gotten to the point where she stopped complaining the second she started to hear your voice when we were together in the car. When we were leaving the show i asked her if she would be more open to the podcast now, she immediately was open to listening to your Cleopatra suck because thats always interested her. I know you may get a thousand of these today but I would love it if you could give a little shoutout to my beautiful girlfriend Kat, I just want her to know that no matter how hard things may get between work and life and our new fur baby Beau, she is tough enough to get through it all with that perfect smile. I love you Kat and I hope we continue to grow with each other through the next steps of our life. Sorry for the trailing email but i really just wanted to reach out after all this time and let you know how thankful I am for you putting out such quality material each and every week. Please never ever stop being as crazy and fun to listen to as you are I will forever appreciate the weird looks I get whenever somene hears you talking about those sweet sweet suckin skills of yours. Keep on suckin

P.S Hearing your here come the spoons bit probably made my 2019, it was the first stand up bit I had ever heard from you and I was hooked right away. Thanks again for listening to my obnoxious scream and not tearing into me for being obnoxious

Thanks Again, Your loyal suck servant. Joe Campbell

PAUSE TIMESUCKER UPDATES OUTRO

X. Goodbye! That’s today’s show, Timesuckers. If you head out into the woods at night looking for a monster this week, for God’s sake, bring a flashlight! And, if you see a monster flying overhead during the day while your gravediggin’ with some buddies - SAY SOMETHING FOR FUCK’S SAKE! And keep on suckin’!

SOURCES:

https://www.destinationamerica.com/tv-shows/mountain-monsters/bios https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mothman_Prophecies_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Pleasant,_West_Virginia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornstalk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Dunmore%27s_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Point_Pleasant https://www.wired.com/2014/03/joshua-dudley-greer-tnt-storage/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallipolis,_Ohio http://www.galliagenealogy.org/French500/french500.htm https://www.johnkeel.com/?p=1070 http://themothman.wikia.com/wiki/ Kenneth_Duncan%27s_Mothman_Sighting http://themothman.wikia.com/wiki/Couples_See_Man- Sized_Bird...Creature...Something http://themothman.wikia.com/wiki/Navy_Poster_Museum https://www.mothmanmuseum.com/ https://www.mothmanmuseum.com/mothman-festival.html http://themothman.wikia.com/wiki/ Marcella_Bennett%27s_Mothman_Sighting http://themothman.wikia.com/wiki/Ruth_Foster%27s_Mothman_Sighting

http://themothman.wikia.com/wiki/Oh,_That_%27Bird! %27_It_Was_Seen_Again http://themothman.wikia.com/wiki/ Monster_No_Joke_For_Those_Who_Saw_It http://themothman.wikia.com/wiki/City_Getting_%27The_Bird, %27_Want_It_Or_Not http://themothman.wikia.com/wiki/ Short_MothMan_Sightings#Quick_Car_Chase_-_November_17th_1966 http://themothman.wikia.com/wiki/ Merle_Partridge%27s_Mothman_Sighting http://themothman.wikia.com/wiki/Shelia_Cain%27s_Mothman_Sighting http://themothman.wikia.com/wiki/Shelia_Cain%27s_Mothman_Sighting http://themothman.wikia.com/wiki/ Connie_Carpenter%27s_MothMan_Sighting http://themothman.wikia.com/wiki/ Village_Pizza_%28Formerly_Tiny%27s_Diner%29 http://themothman.wikia.com/wiki/Richard_West%27s_Mothman_Sighting http://themothman.wikia.com/wiki/ That_Mothman:_Would_You_Believe_A_Sandhill_Crane%3F http://themothman.wikia.com/wiki/ Bob_Bosworth%27s_Mothman_Sighting http://themothman.wikia.com/wiki/ Lawrence_Gray%27s_Mothman_Sighting http://themothman.wikia.com/wiki/Men_In_Black http://themothman.wikia.com/wiki/Giant_Owl_Killed_On_Area_Farm http://themothman.wikia.com/wiki/ Steven_Moran%27s_Mothman_Sighting http://themothman.wikia.com/wiki/The_Blackbird_of_Chernobyl http://themothman.wikia.com/wiki/The_Silver_Bridge_Collapse

http://themothman.wikia.com/wiki/Giant_Owl_Killed_On_Area_Farm https://listverse.com/2012/08/04/top-10-explanations-for-the-mothman/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_owl#Description https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbird_(mythology) https://mythology.net/mythical-creatures/thunderbird/ https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/paqv9z/mothman-sightings-in- chicago