Adeptus Ridiculous - MOTHMAN: AN AMERICAN LEGEND | Detective Ridiculous

Episode Date: November 26, 2022

 https://www.patreon.com/AdeptusRidiculous https://www.adeptusridiculous.com/ https://twitter.com/AdRidiculous https://orchideight.com/ https://www.collectiblesquids.com/ code: ADRIC In West Virginia folklore, the Mothman is a humanoid creature reportedly seen in the Point Pleasant area from November 15, 1966, to December 15, 1967. The first newspaper report was published in the Point Pleasant Register, dated November 16, 1966, titled "Couples See Man-Sized Bird ... Creature ... Something". The national press soon picked up the reports and helped spread the story across the United States. The source of the legend is believed in modernity to have originated from sightings of out-of-migration sandhill cranes or herons. The Mothman was introduced to a wider audience by Gray Barker in 1970, and was later popularized by John Keel in his 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies, claiming that there were supernatural events related to the sightings, and a connection to the collapse of the Silver Bridge. The book was later adapted into a 2002 film, starring Richard Gere. An annual festival in Point Pleasant is devoted to the Mothman legend Support the show

Welcome everybody to another episode of a detective ridiculous, where we talk about the only thing scarier than Warhammer, real life. But before we start, go ahead and check out the Patreon over at patreon.com slash That's Ridiculous, where you can see great stuff like amazing posters, joining the Discord, being part of any bloopers, if they happen, and other wonderful benefits. Patreon.com slash Deps Ridiculous. Also, I would recommend that you check out the Orchid 8 sale. We have a big Black Friday sale going on right now.

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and the carneasada and the... Ooh, avocado. Alvacado. Picoagio. Oh, yeah. I haven't had California brito in forever. I'm actually not a big fan of California burritos. I think the fries take away from it.

The fries need to be like really... Something about the fries just makes it all the more appealing to me because it's like a science experiment. It's like you're not supposed to be here, but you are, and I appreciate you. I feel as if it's like it needs to be crunchy, like really crunchy fries to add that proper amount. Oh yeah, you can't have like soggy fries in there.

That's a no-go. Because Kearney a soggy. Flacid fries. Karniastata already has enough chew to it. You know, you don't need to add even more chew. A good surf and turf is great. Like, crunchy shrimp in there. Mmm.

Or a good breakfast burrito. Oh, what's like, when you have like hash brown and, yeah. Eggs, maybe some sausage. So, does this have anything to do with our episode? Is there a burrito-based murder? No. There's not. There's no, no burritos at all.

in this. None? No, no burritos. How do I sign up for this show? I know. But today on Detective Ridiculous, we're venturing into kind of new territory, you know, because this isn't really like an unsolved murder case. It's not like a grisly slaughter.

Nobody really went missing. But we're going to be dipping our toes into the world of cryptids. Oh shit, like lockness monster and crap? Yes, yes, I was going to say if we're going to be talking about cryptids, it might be helpful to know what a cryptid is. It's like an animal or creature that its existence has never been proven. There's no evidence that they actually exist. But through folklore, stories, unproven sightings, or rumors,

people still believe that these mythical creatures exist. So like you said, things like Bigfoot, the Jersey Devil, El Chupacabra, the Loch Ness Monster, and of course, our topic for today, The Moth Man of Point Pleasant. Holy shit, we're doing the Moth Man? The Moth Man of, there's no better place to start with cryptids than the Moth Man. I mean, I guess you could start with Bigfoot, I suppose. Yeah, I suppose you could start with a Bigfoot or a Loch Ness Monster.

or something, but you know, this is like, you know, there's something special about the mothman. Well, yeah, because he was kind of a meme for a bit in the last couple of years, but... Really? Well, just the, there was like mothman jokes, and there, there were some mothman stuff. I remember more mothman things in the past bit, but I honestly thought that, like, Loch Ness are big, so, so a cryptid, when you mentioned, like, elk chubacabra and stuff, I was thinking, like, oh, it's like the, the Spanish, or, is it? Spanish, Mexican, I don't remember which.

Folktale of like La Eurona. That's not a cryptid. That's like a ghost. We're talking about like an animal sighting thing. Yeah, like an animal creature sighting thing. Not like a ghost or a spirit, I think. It's got to be like an animal thing. Yeah.

Oh, okay. All right. All right. I'm here. I'm here for it. Let's find lamp. All right. So let's talk a little bit about Point Pleasant West Virginia.

before we go into the legend of the Mothman. Point Pleasant is a small little blue-collar town. It has a population of like less than 5,000 people. Lots of farmlands, factories sitting right on the old Ohio River. Not a whole lot going on in this little town of Point Pleasant, just a tight-knit community where everybody probably knows everybody's name. The town does have a bit of a murky past with curses and heated battle with indigenous Shawnee tribes. But we'll circle back to that a little later in the episode.

So Point Pleasant West Virginia is just this nice little sort of tight-knit community and just, you know, a little slice of America. So let's talk about the mothman, now that we know about this tiny little town. We got to go all the way back to 1966 for the first reported sighting of this thing. Now, there's a little conflict on which one of these sightings was the first, but they were both very early. But they were from around November. There were a bunch of grave diggers doing what they do best and digging a grave at night. Wait, they weren't taxmen? No, they were just grave diggers.

Digging a grave. What I've never expected this. Just wouldn't you never have assumed it. Shocked. Diggers digging a grave? Who? Shocked. And out of nowhere, they see this huge figure that starts flying through the air above them.

They reported that it looked like a flying man. In that same month, there were also two couples that reported a similar sighting as they were driving near what was known. in Point Pleasant as the TNT area, which was an old World War II munition site near the town. They claimed that this massive winged thing with glowing red eyes, kind of like bike reflector, shining in the night, began to follow their car through the air, and as they tried to speed away, this thing managed to keep up with them as their car was reaching a hundred, miles per hour. They also noted that when it finally landed and scurried off towards the forest near the TNT area,

it was very, very clumsy on its feet. When local newspapers reported on it, their headline read, couple seized man-sized bird, creature, something. That was the title of it. Is it like comma, like bird, comma, comma. Creature, something. It's couple, couple sees man-sized bird,

ellipses, creature, ellipses, something. Goody, okay. And in this article, the two couples state that

it was a bird or something, but definitely not a flying saucer. Oh, thank God. Yeah, they were sure this was no flying saucer. This was like a man bird,

thing. They were also pretty naturally hesitant to come forward because they were like, man, this sounds crazy. Like, we sound insane. But since there were two couples at some, since there were four people that had seen it, they were like, okay, we can come forward. There's four of us. I mean, if it was just one of us, maybe it sound crazy, but four of us, we got to say something. They also made sure to reiterate that they had not been drinking or under the influence of anything when they saw this creature with a near 10-foot wingspan and was also apparently afraid of the light. In the article, they said, it was like a man with wings, but not like something you'd see on TV or in a monster movie. They also said it was maybe what you'd visualize as an angel to describe this thing.

Oh, but with blazing red eyes. Yeah, but with blazing, glowing, fierce red eyes, yes. What was our sanguineous quote where he's like, man, you ever seen an angel that have a wing dipped in blood? That's insert, insert quote here. It was the moth man. Mothman. He's time traveling from 40K, yep. So literally that same night, some 90 miles away, according to sources,

the mothman would make another appearance. A building contractor named Newell Partridge was relaxing and watching some good old TV at around 10.30 p.m. At 10.m., his television abruptly cuts out and starts to strangely hum and buzz, Some sources say there were some weird patterns that also started playing across his television screen. His German shepherd, named Bandit, suddenly takes off out the door and into the front yard. Chasing after his dog and calling out his name, Newell notices two red eyes. They're circling around the front yard, just circling and circling. I think he said it was almost like a siren.

Like circling like the two red eyes like like in a circle like Yeah, there's a circle around his front house If he turned around obviously like the eyes would go away because they're around But huh it's like flying up and like up and down in the air Circling it's flying in circles it's making a circular flying pattern Oh like a vulture kind of circling yes like a Oh, okay. Gotcha. Yep.

Now, I've seen a couple sources conflict about what he did next. I think one video had an interview with him where he said he tried calling his dog Bandit back. But when Bandit didn't come back, he was just like, well, I'm going back inside, sleep this off, and just, you know, this is just some weird thing that happened. Bandit will find his way home, and I'm just going to put this out of my mind. move on, head my ass to bed. What an asshole. He left his dog out overnight. I apparently... He sees a flying motherfucker in the sky with double red eyes and he's like,

ah, the dog will take care of it. It'll be fine. What could it possibly be? This guy is a shitter. He shits everywhere. But I saw another source say that he went back into his house looking for his gun, but then found himself too goddamn terrified of whatever that thing was to go back outside and he decided to stay huddled up in his bed and sleep with his gun at his bedside. Okay, that's slightly better, but still. Yeah, regardless, the German Shepherd Bandit was never seen again.

No, motherfucker, you son of a bitch! It was never seen again. A source did say that apparently when Newell went outside the next morning to check, he found Bandit's paw prints and they looked as if Bandit had been running around in a circle almost like he was chasing his tail but there was no sign of Bandit.

There was no blood trail, there was no body, nothing. I'm very upset with this man. I know. Poor Bandit. Poor Bandit. Poor Bandit. Now naturally, once the media started printing sightings of the Moth Man,

people started flooding into Point Pleasant looking for, either evidence of it or to try and kill it if they could find it because it was terrorizing the town of Point Pleasant. And because it was the 60s and it's like, well but get our guns, because West Virginia

right? Yeah, West Virginia. They were going hunting. Yep, going to go hunting and kill ourselves, the moth man, get rich. Get rich. I recall also reading or hearing somewhere that there were actually like really large search parties that would go

into the TNT and even the force around the T&T area with like legit rifles looking to kill the Mothman. There were even some people that thought that the Mothman might have actually been an alien because the sightings actually coincided with numerous UFO sightings in Point Pleasant at the time. According to Wikipedia, there were well over a hundred sightings of the Mothman and actually significantly more because there were so many people that were like that first couple, they were like, yo, we sound crazy, like we can't say anything, like nobody's going to believe us. And then there are some people that were like, well, this thing might be like

cursed. Like, I'm not going to report this. I'm just going to pretend like this never happened. So, Mothman is picking up some steam and, you know, while it may seem, like the moth man only appears at night. There was one sighting that happened in the middle of the day, well, at around 10.30 in the morning in broad daylight. Woman named Connie Carpenter had reported that she saw a winged man when she was driving home from church on November 27, 1966, just outside New Haven, West Virginia.

At first, she thought that the gray figure was just a man, kind of just standing on the side of the road, waiting for a ride or something, but then wings sprouted from its back, and it leapt straight up in the air and started to dive down towards her. While naturally horrified by this, Connie couldn't take her eyes off the creature's glowing, glaring red eyes.

Connie is said to have reported that the creature's eyes had some sort of hypnotic effect on her, and she couldn't stop focusing on them. As Connie absolutely gunned the accelerator, as anyone would, the creature flew overhead and flew off, and Connie never saw it again. Connie, however, her eyes became so red, and they got so red. so swollen afterwards that they were almost completely shut. That is weird. Yep.

And this also kind of ties back into the UFO alien theory. Because this phenomenon had actually been seen by numerous people who claimed to witness UFO sightings. In a couple of articles I saw it referred to as eyeburn, where like a bright old ultraviolet light, supposedly from like a UFO or some extraordinary event, could cause these symptoms and could cause this eye irritation, the swollen eye problems and stuff like that in the aftermath. So people are thinking, hey, mothman, this thing might actually be an alien. However, I couldn't find any other reported sightings like anybody that had seen the mothman that also had this eye problem or the eye burn, which is kind of strange since anybody that sees the mothman is like, yeah, I couldn't stop looking at the glowing red eyes. Right, but like, eye burn.

So, hmm, it's similar to UV light, you said. Yeah, it's like, just bright, unnatural light, like a UV that just fucks your eyes. This was, she saw this thing in the day, though, right? Yeah, she saw it in the middle of the day. Interesting. Yeah, yeah. I wonder if she's the only one because she stared at the moth man. The mothman flew away.

She couldn't stop staring. It was just the sun. And she was like, ah! She was looking up. Ah, Jesus. Looked at it too long and, that's an eye. Right. That's an eyeburn. So, up until this point, the mothman seems fairly harmless, maybe a little scary because

it's a giant humanoid with wings and fiery glowing red eyes and it flies around at 100 miles an hour. But it hasn't really hurt anyone, except for maybe, you know, poor, poor bandit. And it might have fucked up Connie's eyes. But things would change with how people looked at it. the Mothman on December 15th, 1967. There was a bridge in Point Pleasant

called the Silver Bridge that collapsed and killed 46 people. Holy shit. Yep. It was this old bridge and it just, you know, it wasn't made for modern cars. It was made way back in the day for old school cars. And it just,

It also didn't have a lot of redundancies on it So if like one system on this bridge failed Everything failed So it just it was a disaster It just went down and took everyone with it basically Pretty much unfortunately God damn, all right And many people believe that the incident occurred

Because of the Mothman sightings that had happened recently As if the creature was an omen of bad things to come. It was the harbinger of doom. Oh, okay. But again... Not the mothman fucked up the bridge,

more of like the mothman as a warning. Yes, the mothman was bringing warning of doom and the herald of destruction. It became popular opinion that mothman's sightings were a sign that disaster was coming. People have claimed to have seen

the Moth Man before Chernobyl before the awful tsunami in Japan that wiped out the Fukushima reactor I believe there was an apartment bombing in Russia that people saw the Mothman and even 9-11 people are claiming

they saw the Mothman before 9-11 and it was the Herald. Oh no Mothman, Mothman burn a second Moth has hit the tower Mr. Bush. Yeah and then there was also the popularity of the Mothman Prophecies book and movie

which also pretty much painted Mothman in this manner as sort of like this mythical creature. It's the harbinger of disaster and doom. I think in the movie the main character's wife sees the Mothman and then she dies. When was this movie made? 2001. Oh, recent.

Fairly recent. The book and movie. I think it was 2000, 2001 was the movie. The book was before. I'm not sure when the book was written to be fair. Oh, wow. Okay. All right, all right.

The movie was in our lifetime. Yeah, yeah. Though at the time of the collapse of the Silver Bridge, that pretty much killed, killed the local's interest or desire to indulge in the Mothman. legend. This absolutely horrible tragedy had just occurred. The town was grieving. And it just, it didn't seem like this stupid urban legend was something anyone should waste their time on. You know, we have more important things to do, more important things to grieve. And this urban

legend is just whatever. So, I'm imagining superstition hid into it too, where it's like, no more talking about the moth man. This has happened because of the moth man. Oh yeah, that could be too You know even people that maybe did believe in it Were just like oh dude like Let's not even talk about it Because who knows what could happen if The moth man did this to us

Because we were trying to seek it out This is punishment for For trying to find them Yep So like UFO sightings Talks of government involvement Because there were people that thought there was like I saw a couple sources

Literally called them the M.I. be like men in black, like government agents that were wandering around doing some shady stuff in Point Pleasant. And even just Mothman sightings in general, they all just seemed to kind of slowly fade away. Like nobody wanted to talk about that anymore, for whatever reason. But in 2002, the Mothman legacy would be sort of revived. There weren't like any new sightings. or anything like that, in Point Pleasant anyway. But Point Pleasant would hold its first annual Mothman Festival to commemorate the first sighting of the cryptic in 1966

and celebrate the town's storied history. Granted, it was more of a way to try to get tourism up and convince people to visit Point Pleasant and spend money, but still! And, man, Point Pleasant, Really, really leaned into the whole Mothman thing from that point on. There's this really awkward looking 12-foot statue of Mothman, big silver statue with beaming red eyes, smack dab in the middle of Point Pleasant.

Shai just put a picture up of it. Look at that thing. Oh my God. Oh, my good God. Is he have chest hair? He has like a 12-Bats. Shy, show him the picture of the Moth Man's ass. He's got to see it.

Huge, he's shredded to shit. He's shredded. And he's got like, he's got like curly ass chest hair. Look at those toned glutes. Look at them. Look at them. Amazing. Oh my god.

Oh my god. My god. My man works out. Are you sure? The furries are going hard with this. But it looks like it's straight. out of like Godzilla or Ultraman. Take him to Ultramar.

There's also a Mothman museum. There is a Mothman cafe where you can buy Mothman droppings. Which are just black candy-coated chocolates. There's a pizza joint that makes a Mothman pizza where the toppings on the pizza are artistically placed to look like a moth. And it seems like you can buy Mothman merch on just about every goddamn corner of Point Pleasant. I mean, it's basically become the official mascot of Point Pleasant.

They might as well put this thing on their flag. Because everyone who was really upset by it is dead now or very old. And now this is a good way to get a shill of tourism. Yeah, because why else would you go to part? point pleasant. Like it's this small little town that doesn't really have a lot going on to it. Now it's like, hey, that's where Mothman was and people will come and spend their money

and, you know. Oh, thank God. The Bahamas cringe. Mothman, extremely based. Thank goodness. And business seems to be booming. Because according to the Wiki, the festival

organizer Jeff Wamsley has apparently said that the annual attendance for the Mothman Festival is somewhere between 10 to 12,000 people a year. Wow. So a couple people show up. Well, it's a lot to make your way out to bum fuck nowhere West Virginia. Yeah, a little bit, a little bit, 10 to 12,000. Okay, so now that we've got sort of a really,

quick sort of brief rundown of the mothman's history, what exactly could the mothman actually be? Is it actually some kind of half-man, half-wing demon hybrid? Is it an alien from outer space that visited our world? Or maybe, since it was near the TNT area where munitions were held, and those munitions obviously leaked some toxic materials into the land, people suggested that maybe it was like some sort of deformed, mutated animal. It's also been suggested that maybe the mothman was completely made up, that the sightings were just a way to put Point Pleasant on the map to get people talking and to get people to come to Point Pleasant.

There was a theory that people, thought that after that initial mothman sighting, there was one prankster that was just tressing up like a mothman to scare people and then when he finally gave up and stopped the prank, people just kept seeing it because, you know, they were kind of seeing what they wanted to see.

Pretty classic cryptid questions regarding that stuff. It's also been suggested that what the people of Point Pleasant actually saw was a sandhill crane. There was a professor at West Virginia University back in 1966. His name was Dr. Robert L. Smith,

and he was specifically the associate professor of wildlife biology. According to him, all of the sightings and descriptions matched up almost perfectly with a sandhill crane. It stands about five feet tall. It has around a seven to ten foot wingspan, and it has this bright red flesh around its eyes that would probably look like glowing red eyes if you shined a bright light on him. He even goes on to say that somebody who has never seen something like the Sand Hill crane before could easily get the impression that it is a man. car lights would cause the bare skin to reflect as big circles around the eyes. There's even some explanation to what Newell Patrick might have heard in his sighting, and potentially what happened to poor little bandit.

So when Newell heard the humming and the buzzing, he could have been hearing the cry of this crane. Other sightings had reported sort of an eerie, loud cry. which also matches up with the sort of weird, loud, high-pitched cry of the Sand Hill Crane, which Dr. Smith referred to as a taunting trumpet from the underworld, which I think is a little dramatic. No, no, that's incredible. I want to refer to things as taunting trumpets from the underworld from now on.

Yeah, the taunting trumpet from the underworld. And the good doctor also said that the... sandhill crane is normally harmless if left alone, but if it feels like it's in danger, it has a razor-sharp beak that it will use to defend itself. In the article I found, it specifically states that the sandhill crane has hurt and killed many a hunting dog with it. Wow, really? Yeah, yeah, it's a crazy beak. So it could be that night, that Newell Patrick saw those glowing red eyes, that it was a sandhill crane that was kind of humming and buzzing around his property, Bandit hears a bird and boom, goes into hunting

mode to try and catch it, maybe chases it around in circles before the crane gets the better of it with its deadly beak, and sadly, no more bandit. But if that is the case, why didn't Newell ever find Bandit's body or some kind of blood trail or any evidence that bandit had been attacked. Dr. Smith also said that the flight speed of the Sand Hill crane was nowhere near a hundred miles an hour. So what the hell was keeping up with those cars in the earlier sightings if the crane couldn't reach those speeds?

Also, so I know that the crane has like those red circles around its size, but I don't know. Like, those don't look like they would shine that brightly. Like, I guess maybe the reflection of its eyes would maybe cause that. But I don't know. It doesn't seem like that fiery, glowing, you know, thing that people said was like glowing in the dark. So, and add to that, turns out that Dr. Smith also said that it was probably one sandhill crane that was stopping in Point Pleasant while it was migrating south. Just, one. I can't believe that just one

Sand Hill crane was responsible for like over a hundred reporting sightings, reported sightings, like one crane that was stopping off. Yeah, there's like a certain level of assumption you have to make that like a certain percentage of the sightings you probably will assume is

people kind of getting up in the hype and things like that. Oh yes, certainly, certainly. But like you can take a pretty good percentage out of that, but you can't take a lot of it. You can bring it down low, but you can't bring it down low enough to where

it's the single crane. I'm not going to lie. Shai's photo of that cream in the black and white is fucking horrifying. Oh yes, that is absolutely horrifying. Absolutely terrifying. It does not, I don't think the face really gives away the red eyes.

It's not also not eyes. It's just a big ball on the face. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They said it was glowing red eyes And there was, uh, uh, Connie saw it in the middle of the day they were glowing. Yeah. Although that's really, I really enjoy the, um, I really enjoy the picture of, of the mothman killing the crane. That's very funny.

Yeah, that is actually, it's like, it's not a crane fucker look. I got him. I got him. Also, I see that moth man is very often depicted in, in dark colors. Is that because it's always seen at night? Or is that actually because they think it has dark? feathers and dark skin. I would assume it's because it's always seen at nighttime.

Most people say it looks like a gray figure, if they're going to represent it with colors. Just a gray figure that's a 10-foot wingspan and glowing red eyes. That's usually how they describe it. Gray absolutely works when it comes to the bird. Oh, yeah, definitely. That totally works gray-wise. Oh yeah, you could definitely see that as gray, sure.

I guess one could argue that maybe it could be like two birds that were flying overhead, and that's why it looked like eyes, but they don't travel, do they travel in packs at all? Like Paris? I mean, there's that one picture shy posted where they're all together, and birds of a feather flocked together, so. That's just a say. That's just the saying. Birds aren't real. Birds aren't real.

Wait, fall of 76 has moth made? Yeah, and it looks so cool. Wow, I thought, never mind. I thought Fall 76 was trash. This is real. This is real. This is a real good video game now. Big boy gaming hours.

Thank you, Todd Howard. There is one more interesting tale that sort of has relevance to the Mothman legend. And it involves a battle that took place way back on October 10th, 1774. It was called the Battle at Point Pleasant, and it was between the Virginia militia and the Shawnee and Mingo indigenous tribes.

It was, as many wars are, Aidal Land dispute. There had been a treaty laid out with the Iroquois tribe that their lands to the south of the Ohio River would be the Virginia. militias. Problem was, no one decided to consult with the Shawnee tribes about this treaty and that

their lands would suddenly belong to the Virginia militia. I imagine the Americans were very kind and talked this through, right? Oh, he's just funny. Of course. America. Yeah, but obviously the Shawnee were not about to give up their lands for a treaty that they knew nothing about. So, while they fought very, very bravely,

the Shawnee were unfortunately forced to retreat from the militia after they were flanked, and it would be the Shawnee leader chief Cornstalk who would eventually negotiate a treaty with the Virginia militia to stop the fighting. I think the Virginia militia did actually end up getting the land. So, in 1777, Cornstalk would make a diplomatic visit to an American fort that was built on modern-day Point Pleasant.

However, he and his two sons were taken into custody by a soldier who thought he was taking the initiative by capturing these three Native Americans. So they were all imprisoned in this fort. And then later on, there was an American soldier, I think, they were stationed at that same fort. Um, but this soldier was murdered by an unknown native. And so in retaliation, Cornstalk and his two sons were brutally executed. No.

I think, I think a soldier kind of surprised them and just shot him with a rifle while they were being held prisoner, sort of a, oh my God, I need retaliation. Um, and though the murder of Cornstalk and his sons was, condemned by their commanding officer. The commanding officer even called the guilty party vile assassins. None of their fellow soldiers would testify against their fellow man, and the murders went completely unpunished. Now, that's something, something, something American Indian tribes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now, the reason I tell you this story is because there are

was this really old, like, cabinet or closet or some kind of chest of drawers that was uncovered in Point Pleasant a long time ago. And inside of this cabinet, closet, chest of drawers, whatever, there was a script. It was a play that reenacted the Battle of Point Pleasant and Cornstalk's unfortunate execution. And in this play, Cornstalk has... has a, before he dies, he is said to have cursed Point Pleasant for 200 years with his dying breath. So a lot of people think that Cornstalk's curse is actually Mothman or possibly is Mothman because a lot of bad shit has happened in Point Pleasant. There's been a lot of flooding.

There was the Silver Bridge. There's the Mothman. There's that creepy TNT area. So is all of this? Could it all be because Cornstalk put a 200-year curse on Point Pleasant? And Mothman is a symbol of this curse and is still haunting and bringing calamity to Point Pleasant after all this time. Might sound spooky and interesting, but this curse of Cornstalk has, all but been debunked.

Every historian that has heard this tale pretty much says the same thing. It's a work of fiction to make that place sound more exciting and keep it interesting and get people talking. Historians also note that Cornstalk was killed, like we said, rather suddenly with a gunshot,

with a rifle, and that if someone was surprised and shot like that, they probably wouldn't have the strength to utter a monologue of of a curse. And aside from this fictional play, there was also literally

no other accounts of this supposed curse ever existing or being recorded. So, the curse, you never seen a, you never seen a dead man's trigger curse. You ever,

you know, you never, you never seen that? No, no, I never seen that. No? Oh, too bad. All right. It's fine. We'll figure that out one day. But that's that's the mothman. Bricky, are you, are you convinced? Do you believe in the mothman?

Do you believe that he's a herald of destruction, an alien, a crane, a mutated crane? Or what, what do you, what do you think? An industrial crane? An industrial crane? Yeah, which kind of crane? It has to be one version of crane. Yeah. Yeah, Shy wants you think it's a bird, mass hysteria, or a mutant.

Because there are people that are like, oh, yeah, it kind of fits what some people see as their sleep paralysis demon. So a lot of people might just be, it's just, you know, mass hysteria. They're just seeing what they want to see. I mean, naturally, most of the time. I mean, I don't believe mutant stuff because mutations are not, are not what they always look like. like in the movies. Mutations are, mutations are often very,

very malignant and, uh, and, and very bad. And, and you just, you, you don't grow wings. You, you, you grow the ones to be on bed arrest for a long time. Yeah. You know, the, the radiation doesn't always make

a lizard into Godzilla. The, the bird in mass hysteria, you know, this, this, this one seems like out of the cryptid stuff, I mean, I didn't know what the cryptid really was before, but now that you have defined it, has the most, like, kind of put, play? I don't know.

It's the most convincing. Yeah, it's the most convincing. It's the most convincing out of all the options out there. Because, like, luckness monster to me, it's just, it's like a thing coming out of the water. Like, I don't know, whatever. Bigfoot looks like a hairy dude. Mothman is a bit more out there,

but it's also, I'm curious about it. stuff because like crane is a good theory um but not quite good enough mass hysteria is often the right answer but also but also not quite good enough um and there's a lot of in between things going on there i like i like the museum i want to go visit it it's so what they have in that museum I like the image where it's like The World's Only Mothman Museum And the Mothman drawing behind the lady Is jacked out of his mind

Out of his brain His chest He's got giant tits for fucking pecks there He's insane Wrapped man He's absolutely You gotta have to You gotta work those obliques

You know when you're flapping those wings But no honestly it's a It's gotta have a fun one I kind of don't want to be proven right or wrong. Yeah, the mystery is what makes it so fun, right? Yeah, as far as folklore, tale, it's just silly enough to where it's, like, it's just goofy enough, but also not. Like, I love the fact that it's, if it's, they take it too seriously, then I believe people are just making shit up and tryharding. If it's too goofy, I'm like, shut up.

But it's just enough in between. It's like if you go Watch a ghost hunting show Like if someone goes to the camera and goes Like as a fucking ghost I'm like okay whatever And if someone like pretends to hear something And that's it

I'm also like whatever But if like a chair just slightly screeches across the floor Like half an inch That that's it I'm like oh like that that starts to freak me out Like it has to be the right The right level And it's

Oh Shai said shy personally does not buy the theory that they tried to make the town famous because OG people were very reluctant to talk about it. They went to the cops with real reports and after the bridge collapse it was more of a tragedy for them. If they think they saw, if they think something that day for real, but what was, I'm not sure, if I had to choose a freak giant owl. That's true. Could be a giant owl. I also tend to think it's some I would like some unfound type of like creature

you know I could go with that I can go with that yeah I mean nobody knows what the hell it is it's scared so of course it's swooping around being kind of crazy because it's you know

I must say the Mothman it looks more like an owl than it does a crane by far of the way eyes look on an owl similarly to Amoth you know how it's all directly in one it looks straight ahead and the eyes are quite large oh definitely and also you know like I mean I don't know how how the red eye phenomenon occurs when it comes to cameras that don't know if something along the lines of like

old school headlights or just lights on cars or something yeah and also I don't buy the town famous thing either because after the bridge collapse people didn't want to fucking talk about it at all. Oh yeah, yeah. If they wanted to make the town famous, they, well, might seem a little cheeky and poor taste to be like,

hey, guys, the bridge collapse, come celebrate the moth men that, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I don't particularly like that one because I think they all, like if a town are 5,000 and the bridge collapsing killed 47, there's a lot of people who are degrees to those people who died.

Yeah. You know, like, it's not going to be hard to find a decent amount of, of genuine family members there that are probably quite sad. Oh yeah. Funny story about the Mothman name. Is this so the only thing I saw about the Mothman name was that it was in large part

due to how popular Batman was at the time, the detective comics. And Batman was fighting something, he was fighting like the killer moth. And because of how popular that was, people saw the killer moth and then they didn't, I don't know why they didn't call it the killer moth. They just called it the mothman. Yeah, don't.

So, oh, because, so they called him originally Batman, but then Batman was a thing, so it was like, don't fucking call him Batman. Call him mothman, yeah. Because he was fighting the killer moth, too, and hey, that looks like a moth, and yeah. But again, Mothman sounds better than Batman and better than killer moth, because then it's thinking stuff too seriously. Mothman is just, it's just, it's just enough for a cryptid name. It's just perfect. Yeah. But that's the Mothman of Point Pleasant. That's what I got. It's a, it's a, it's a fun little one. I, I, I, I don't need to myself, but I like the, I like the, um, you know, I sit, I sit back with popcorn. I sit back with popcorn. I'm like, ha, this. I sit back with popcorn. I'm like,

Ha! This is funny. This is good. Yeah. I like this. It's a good one. That's fun. I do like the I want to believe. Oh, crap. What was it again?

X-Files. Thank you, X-Files. Yeah, the little picture of the UFO, the classic wall art. Yeah. Need to go and buy some mothman droppings. Bro, I'm going to layer myself in that shit. I'm going to get into a bed and just drown myself in moth. man droppings.

You just want to bat, you just want to get into a bathtub full of mothman droppings. If they can, if they can make, give me an among us pizza, I can get a mothman pizza. And I'm gonna enjoy it.

You can. Yeah. They put little olives and little, I think, pepper and chinis to make the eyes look kind of red, little peppers. A lot of, I think they use mushrooms to make the wings,

you know, Buzzfeed went there and saw all the different things. And yeah, you can, but we did it. The mothman. The Mothman.

Oh, thanks for teaching me about the Mothman. I didn't actually know about, I mean, I knew of the Moth Man. We've all, I, of course, I knew about the Moth Man. But, you know, you never go delving for details. And we hear a detective ridiculous just love teaching you about things that might show up on trivial pursuit. We hear, and it's ridiculous, love just giving you Moth Man droppings. Mm-hmm. They say.

part of American folklore, says shy. They say that white people have no culture. I disagree. Mothman. Yeah, next time someone tells you America has no culture, be like, yeah, what about the Mothman? Let's get out of here. Take us home, D.K. Take us back to the Moth.

Wait, no. Country Roads. Take me home. To the place. Live along! And the episode shy! West Virginia. Mountain Mama.

Take me home. Enter home.