Haunted Cosmos - Mothman (Part I)

Episode Date: April 5, 2023

Join us as we investigate the high strangeness found in the dark corners of God's spoken world.In this episode, Brian and Ben begin digging into one of the greatest epics of high strangeness in North America: The Mothman of Point Pleasant.Enjoy! We're glad you're here.Love Haunted Cosmos? Get access to our exclusive show, The Dusty Tome, early ad-free access to main episodes, monthly AMA's, and livestreams with Ben and Brian by becoming a patron of the show: https://www.patreon.com/c/HauntedCosmosBuy the Haunted Cosmos book: https://www.newchristendompress.com/cosmos PS: It's also available as an audiobook!Support the show

The origins of the Shawnee people in West Virginia are not fully known. But by 1600, they had settled in the Ohio River Valley with a large population. Spiritally, the Shawnee people believed in a highly popular Great Spirit who had two deities, one of them being the grandmother, who was in charge of all Indian affairs, the other in charge of the white men, who was the grandson. They held to this basic faith rigidly, but there was another aspect of it they rarely told. There was an evil spirit they believed in. a dark being named Muchi Monito, who was able to oppress and punish all mankind.

Though as the myth goes, this spirit was weaker than the great spirit and was in subjection to it. In the 1770s, seven Indian nations formed a confederacy to resist the westward expansion of the white man. Their chief was a shawnee man respected by all. Cornstalk was his name. In 1774, he led the Confederacy in a stand against American settlement to protect the Valley they called home. But the tribesmen were no match for the advanced weaponry and organizational tactics of the colonial military. The Indians were driven back into the untamed lands of modern Ohio, and the Americans erected a fort in the area they had won the decisive victory. Today,

that area is known as Point Pleasant, West Virginia. As time healed the wounds of violence, Chief Cornstalk and the Colonials made peace with one another. He proved to be a loyal ally, informing the Americans of a scheme by the British to incite the Indian tribes to violence against the settlers. Many of the tribes, though, listened to the British and began to plan for a massive attack on that same fort from three years earlier. Cornstalk, trying to make his intentions of peace clear, went to the fort with a small caravan to negotiate with the Americans and ensure no fighting would break out. He expressed his fear that he would be forced to allow the other tribes to fight if they wished, to protect the political structure of the Confederacy.

They took him hostage, intending to stall any Indian attack, but they would not go so far as to endanger the life of their leader. Though hostage, cornstalk and his company were treated well and comfortably. This peaceful state of affairs would soon come to an end, though. One day, two American soldiers left their post to hunt for deer in the nearby woods.

The Indians ambushed them, brutally killing the one while the other narrowly escaped. In a fit of rage, an indirect defiance of orders, other soldiers burst into the chief's quarters and tending to kill he and his men as revenge. At the last, Chief Cornstalkles shot eight times before he fell to the floor. But as he lay dying above the soil of what would soon become point pleasant, he gazed at his murderers and uttered this infamous curse.

I was the border man's friend. Many times I've saved him and his people from harm. I never warred with you, but only to protect our wigwams and lands. I refused to join your pale-faced enemies with the red coats. I came to the fort as your friend, and you murdered me. You've murdered, by my side, my young son. For this, may the curse of the great spirit rest upon this land. May it be blighted by nature.

May it even be blighted in its hopes. May the strength of its peoples be paralyzed by the stain of our blood. Almost 200 years later, a black Chevrolet rolled out of town to her remote lover's lane. In it, two young couples looked forward to some peace and quiet together after a night of joyriding. As they rolled into the spot that sat next to an abandoned power plant, the headlights pulled back the dark curtain of night and struck two large objects in the near distance. Glowing red, too close together to be the headlights of another car, they inched the car closer to the strange object, inexplicably filled with fear and

dread to uncover the truth of what it could be. In shock, they found the two red lights with the two massive eyes atop a gray, man-like creature with wings. As the creature was fully revealed, slowly moved around the corner of the power plant, out of sight. With stomach still churning with fear, the girls in the car screamed as the tires squealed, lurching onto the highway, speeding back to town. Screaming for the driver to go faster, they noticed the wings unfold as the creature began flying back and forth above the car, red eyes glaring down on them like the sun, inescapable. Finally a straight section of road appeared, and the black Chevrolet became a rocket in the dark,

going over a hundred miles per hour back to what they thought was safety. But the creature was still there, unfazed by the speed, battering the roof with its wings, and hurting the car like a desperate animal. As city lights appeared, the being stopped, disappearing into the night. The group was exhausted with fear. Perhaps it was the rush of relief that comes after fear, or perhaps it was fear of ridicule that outweighed the fear of seeing the devil again. Whatever it was, they turned around and drove back to where they last saw it.

If they were going to tell anyone about this, they had to make sure this thing was real and was there, wanting to be proven crazy, wanting to be shown that they had seen nothing more than a trick of the night, a mirage of darkness. Instead, they found horror. There off the roadside a dog lay. It had been mauled.

As the grotesque scene burned the mind, the monster, the thing, the devil himself, jumped out of the field behind the dog, over the car and into the opposite field. The mothman had come to Point Pleasant West Virginia. In 13 months, a bridge in town would collapse, killing 46 people. Well, welcome to this episode of the Haunted Cosmos podcast. I am your host, Ben Garrett, joined by my good friend. friend and pastor, Mr. Brian Savay. Good to be here, everybody. It's good to be here. It is good to be here. It is. This is something

we like to do. As you began to speak about Chief Corn Flakes, I'm sorry, that was just, I'm Native American so I can say it. That's true. Oji Boy. I was filled with joy. I mean, first of all, that guy kind of seems like a king. He kind of seems like a Chad. In many ways. I have never warred with your people. I have been your friend. And you killed. And also, he was shot eight times at that point. And it took all eight. And he's doing this soliloquy of cursing. He's just riddled

with lead. He's a Swiss cheese man. My guy. So, Brian, what are we talking about tonight? Well, we're talking about this Mothman flap from Point Pleasant West Virginia in the mid-late 60s. And it's one of those stories that is just, I think, fascinating. And shows quite a few of the themes.

that we hope to unfold here on haunted cosmos of this strange world that we live in and the demonic and spiritual forces that are absolutely real and just out of sight often and kind of unveiling the thin veneer of materialism that our culture has trying to explain away everything strange and unusual and mysterious with you know just bald scientific materialist answers, and we say no. Yeah. I mean, those answers are kind of unsatisfying. Yeah. I think that we all know that there's something else going on. I mean, hearing this over 100 sightings in a 13-month period. Yeah. Many of them very compelling, many of them by witnesses who were quite reliable in every other area of their life. And so something strange

happened here in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. And I hope we can, you know, shed some light on that. Yeah, I also think it lends credibility because it was localized. It wasn't that people all over the world for 13 months were seeing this thing. I mean, that would maybe be credible in a different way. But the fact that it's one town, it's one people, I think that it's pretty compelling to me. So one of the themes that we're going to get into, and we alluded to it in the intro, was the idea of cursing. So there's the situation where a pagan, you know, horribly pagan Indian chief is murdered and enrage by some men that were supposed to be protecting him and keeping, you know, maintaining peace.

It broke their trust. Yeah. And this pagan goes in and curses them in response. And we're going to get more into it. So I don't want to give everything away now. But that is a major theme. I think I'm pretty convinced that curses do carry weight. Yeah. I think that's clear in scripture. If blessings carry weight, then so do curses.

Yep. Just look at Balaam. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And you know what? Tell us about Bailam. Well, you know, Balam is this prophet in Israel who is essentially commanded by the pagans to go and curse the people of God. And he's kind of shady guy. Supposedly, he's being tempted here to be a hireling, to take money and bribe to go curse God's people. And every time he goes, it's actually a hilarious story. I mean, it's got a talking. It's amazing. The donkey rebukes. Have I not been a good donkey?

Just go read it at some point if you have a minute. And what's great about this story is that Balaam keeps trying to curse the people of God. And he's like, look, I can only say what God actually tells me to say. And his number is 22, by the way. And he keeps trying. And then he ends up blessing the people of God and cursing the enemies. And they're like, well, let's go somewhere else. And isn't the king of Moab's?

Isn't it Baylach? Yeah, I'm pretty sure you've got, yeah, Balak son of Zippor. And in numbers. This poor guy, 22. He's see Israel's just, he's moving heaven and earth. Destroying the Amirites. And the Moabites are so afraid because of what they're seeing the Israelites do to the Amarites.

And so he's like, look, I've got a plan. But here's the point. The power of a curse. And again, we're just going to touch on it now. We'll get more into it later. But here's the point. that guy, I mean, he's king of this successful kingdom, Moab. He's not an idiot. He's not going to do all this stuff if something like a curse hasn't worked for him in the past. or work for his father. So there's at least something there.

Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting because so often what we want to do when we hear stories in the ancient world or even biblical stories of curses, we superimpose our materialist worldview. And when I say materialist guys, I don't mean like they like buying stuff. I mean the view that all there is is material things. Right. The world is just stuff. Not consumerist. Yeah, there's no spiritual element to the world. no non-physical elements of the world. And so, you know, we just superimposed this worldview and we go, ah, curses, those are just superstition. Yeah. And the point of the story in Numbers 22 is actually not that curses are meaningless.

It's that it's actually presupposes the power. Right. Of calling down the wrath of God on a people. Yes. You know, I even think of in the Gospels when, Jesus, the sons of thunder, they say, hey, Jesus, do you want us to... Cool band name, I call it. Yeah, band name call it.

Do you want us to call down lightning and fire from heaven on these unbelievers here, these insolent people in Jesus? Jesus doesn't say that that can't be done. Yeah, he just says, no. He says, calm down. Not right now, to paraphrase. Yeah, just very interesting topic. And we can get into the mechanics of it with the Old Testament.

era versus now this new kind of new earth age. But the point is that there's something there. So I also think one of the major themes is going to be the idea of elemental spirits. Paul mentions this in Colossians too, that we wouldn't be, you know, we wouldn't be swayed to turn away from right doctrine by elemental spirits. Can you describe what that is? What is he talking about when he mentions elemental spirits? And how do they differ from what we would think of is like, oh, you're run-of-the-mill demon. You know, to answer that question, Ben, I actually saved, I saw a post on Facebook some time ago from non-tenant, who's the co-author of It's Good to Be a Man with Michael Foster.

And it was so fascinating to me the way that he phrased this, that it really got my wheels turning on thinking about the classifications between things like, are there just demons, are there different hierarchies of angelic beings? Are there things like spiritual beings that maybe are more in the fairy world? Are there, you know, what kind of world do we live in? What does the scripture say? What do the scriptures say even about things like ghosts and human spirits? And Non posted this just fascinating little, I don't know, it wasn't a threat.

It was on Facebook. Yeah, it was a couple paragraphs. Update, I guess. Let me quote him. And we'll, if I can, I think I have the link to the post still. So I'll put it in the description if we still have that. But he said, quote, Scripture refers to ghosts in several places.

Isaiah 819, 19, 193, 294, in conjunction with 1st Samuel 28, 11 to 19. And my insertion here, that's the story of Samuel, you know, when Saul calls up. Yeah, Samuel's ghost. Yeah, with the Witch of Endora. The medium, yeah. So, continuing, he says, these indicate clearly that communication with ghosts is possible. Matthew 1426, Mark 649, Luke 24, 37, to 39, speak of seeing ghosts, and treat this implicitly there's a possibility.

Acts 1215 takes for granted the reality of crisis apparitions, a phenomenon experienced by about 30% of people, according to research by David Hufford, where the spirit of someone recently deceased appears to them for a little while. In CF, Acts 238, for how Luke uses angel as synonymous with spirit. This tells us that it is at least possible for the living to interact with the spirit of the dead. However, this does not mean that all haunting-type phenomena are human spirits, even when they're legitimately supernatural.

There are a wide variety of spiritual beings out there, some of which we know nothing about, aside from that they exist. Many of the wicked ones seem to take delight in the fact that being spiritual, they can appear to people in various ways in order to mess with them. Consequently, in cases of legitimate hauntings, it is at least as likely that we are dealing with some other spiritual entity as a human spirit. I would argue that we can rule out fallen gods. Psalm 8.5, Psalm 82, 1, and 6.

And in most cases, probably also elemental spirits. Colossians 2 8 and 20, Psalm 104, Psalm 148, 1 through 4, 7 through 8, Job 38, 11 to 12, Jeremiah 33, 20 to 21. These manifest differently. For instance, and this is where it goes from, like, this is already, like, fairly fringe stuff. He takes it up to 11. And he just, Nond takes it immediately to 11. He says, big, for instance, Bigfoot and Mothman are presumably elemental. Oh, yes.

And he just, he just cold says that. And then no explanation. And then he moves on. And then he moves on. He says, typical hauntings are more likely to be unclean slash bastard spirits, dead giants. Again, he just says dead giants. Dead giants as if it's, of course. Duh.

Like those encountered in the Gospels or some other kind of spirit entirely, like those mentioned in Isaiah 13. In that case, the night demon called Lilith is often associated rightly or wrongly with the Mara or night hag, euphemistically referred to by doctors as sleep paralysis. We're going to talk about it. Yeah, we would also... That's synonymous with a succubus. Yeah, we're going to get there. Yeah, we're going to get there.

Okay. All right. We also, he says, shouldn't rule out psychic phenomena. We know very little about human spiritual abilities, how they work. For instance, poltergeist phenomena seem to be invariably associated with a living human, usually a teenage girl rather than other spiritual entities. I've also heard anecdotal evidence that certain traumatic or significant events can leave a sort of echo, which can be seen or heard by people with a sensitivity to the spirit world.

Too long didn't read. Ghosts can be real, but it's not wise to assume that they're always human spirits. Also, this should go without saying, but don't go seeking out spirits. The ones likely to answer such invitations are the ones you definitely don't want. Yeah. And I would just point out, I think he referenced this passage where Paul is interacting with the medium or with the girl who has the, um, Oh, whose parents were using her for profit. Yes. Let me look that passage of it. And she can prophes. Yeah, she prophesize, uh, in Acts chapter 16. So it's just a slave girl. She has a demonic spirit who is helping her predicting the future. Yeah. In some way.

And it's profitable for her family. So Paul gets annoyed and just in annoyance casts the demon out. Yes. And all of a sudden they've lost their livelihood, which indicates, again, materialist veneer. What we do with stories like this often is we assume there's charlatans on the level of the 19th century mesmerous and people who did seances and, you know, how they just fake stuff with their feet. Yeah, they're clicking ankles and all that stuff. And that stuff is a lot of it's fraud, totally. And has been debunked and can be debunked.

However, that is not what the story says in acts. Yes. There was a demon in this girl who was causing her to be able to do things in a supernatural way. And so that was a long answer to your question. But I think one of the mistakes that we hope to correct in a podcast like this is to avoid a ditch on either side of the road. We have a ditch of this materialist. Everything's fraud. Everything's fake.

It's all just atoms in motion. That's biblically facet. That is completely incorrect. The other ditch would be, and you have to be careful of a ditch like this, is to be obsessed with the spirit world and become sinfully flirting with things like witchcraft and mediumship and these things which the first ditch will say aren't real. No, the problem with them isn't that they're fake. It's that they are real. Yeah.

So elemental spirits, and this is an interesting question. I think that there's no definitive, we know for sure kind of answer. No doubt. No doubt. But I think there is something that we might consider an elemental spirit, which would be some sort of non-material being. And whether that is some classification of angelic being that is fallen or, you know, let's say fallen and attempting to mislead people or, you know, like a lot of the stories we're going to talk about, I think can be attributed to this sort of phenomena,

demons, tricking people, hating humans, attempting to mislead them in a false religion, a false worship, false gods, that sort of thing. Or maybe some other category of spiritual being that we're just less aware of that are referenced in scripture, but not necessarily explicated fully. Yeah. I think the ancient understanding of elemental spirits, as Paul is using the term, and he's talking to, he's not talking to Jews who are well-versy, and the Torah and Pentateuch.

Because a lot of people will say, oh, he's referring to the angels that helped give the Old Testament law to Moses. So really, he's using that term to represent the law and how you shouldn't be, like basically a diss on the Judaizers. Which is a big theme of Colossians.

Yes, yes, it is. And so credit where it's due. But that seems to me like it's ignoring the immediate context, which is that he's talking to pagans, well, to newly born Christians who probably don't know all of the inside jokes, so to speak, of a Jew who can basically recite the entire Pentateuch from memory.

Yeah. But anyway, so it would largely be thought of as a spirit of the air, earth, water, fire, and it would be multiple spirits that are part of a class. And Paul doesn't want you to be deceived by them. Exactly. So that would indicate that they are, that it's something that is actually. with a will. Yep.

It's not just a thing that's there. At least that's my takeaway from it. I think what we can say is that it's at least a possible interpretation of that passage that Paul is referencing some kind of demonic or spiritual in some sense beings. Because again, intent on misleading. The people that he's talking to, that he's writing the letter to, that's what they would immediately jump to. Yeah.

So he's, and, you know, Peter said that Paul sometimes is hard to understand, but he's not trying to be vague. And so when we're talking about, and I don't want to get ahead of you, since you're the master of this outline today. Yeah, I'm the captain. Look at me. I'm the captain. But when we're talking about something like a curse, a curse is it's not necessarily like a magic spell. That's not we're pausing.

It's not like a magic spell. What it is, it's a calling upon some powers to do something for you. right so when when we're talking about it this is why numbers 22 is so instructive what balaam was supposed to do was to call down curses from god on the israelites yes that's what the king wanted him to do the problem was balak hadn't really read the promises to abraham that actually those who bless you i will bless those who curse you i will curse you i will curse you you can't get god to curse them it's just it's not it's not going to happen no no no god already pronounced the curse of the covenant that if they broke it they would reap the curse

of the covenant. But you can't get the Amarites or the Moabites to come and call down. Just two reasons it won't work. One, God's not going to listen to you. Wrong direction. Number two, if you try to call on your gods, they are the equivalent of, you know, like matchsticks before the strong man. Like, Christ is not, God is not going to be scared of their gods.

Right. See Elijah and the prophets of bail. Precisely. Precisely. So that hopefully gives you a teaser where we're headed theologically with the Mothman events. But moving on, Brian, I want to ask you, do you think that it's strange? Do you think that it so's doubt that this curse was laid down in the 1700s? And then it was so long after that, you know, 200 years later that these things started happening. was it 200 years later?

Did anything happen before the widely publicized Mothman events that could make us think there was actually a lingering threat for a long time that slowly and occasionally revealed itself? Yeah, I know that there were other occurrences in the region that made people, I mean, there's a reason that people remember this moment in history of the cornstalk curs and go back to it. And they say, maybe there was something to that beyond just this 1960s. and point plus.

I know there were some natural disasters. Yeah, so there was flooding. You know, the land was, in their eyes at least, the land actually had been blighted. There was a lot of things that happened that they attribute to the curse. But were there any other entities that were encountered that would make us think like,

oh, maybe this is a prelude to the mothman. Well, I mean, we might talk about something like the Flatwoods monster. Tell me about it. Well, the Flatwoods monster is not too, distant from the mothman encounters of the 60th. That's right. Just about 14 years earlier in the early 50s in September of 1952, September 12th,

14 years before the mothman events, a group of three young boys were playing in the woods when they saw a strange object fall from the sky and crash land in their neighbor's farm. They found one of the boy's mothers, Kathleen May, and with National Guardsman Gene Lemon, the five of them went to investigate the area. So as they approached the area,

Gene Lemon's dog darted out of sight, just ran away. And they could hear him suddenly come to a stop, and then he started barking. Like barking, like angry, attack dog barking, barking, they got louder and louder. Before they realized, the dog was running back to them. And when they could see him,

he had his tail tucked tightly between, if you've ever seen a dog that's just encountered. Just horrifying. Something that it's like, I can take this. Never mind, I cannot. Right. Tail between legs runs back. So at the top of a nearby hill,

the group was amazed to see a large ball of fire that was pulsating close to them on the right. Scanning the hill, they quickly found the object that the boys had initially seen. But Lemon noticed something else just beside it, two small lights that looked like eyes. Note that. That's a theme in the Mothman's like.

He quickly moved his front of the same. Yes, yes. He quickly moved his flashlight in that direction, and all at once, this massive and strange entity allegedly glided towards them before suddenly veering off course to hide from their gaze. And as you might do, the group fled in panic. I don't know, maybe Nogne would have rushed at it. He would have been like that.

What are you? Air? Are you an elemental spirit? Fire? You sound like Captain Planet. So they called the sheriff, and he and Gene Lemon returned to the site that night to find a strong. strong, sickening odor of burnt metal.

And you see this in a lot of these sightings where witnesses will immediately, they'll say, like, what do we do? And they'll call in the sheriff or the police. And the result is that many of these sightings have police reports attached to them. Yes. The police. And then what? And what were you smoking that night?

This is, hey, what was that guy who he was a cop in New Mexico and he was trying to give a guy speeding ticket and saw a UFO? Do you know what I'm talking about? I do think I know which one you're not remember this guy's name. But it's really interesting because that all, it's the same thing all the time. When credible events like this take place, credible witnesses. Where he's like, oh, well, I've got to call somebody. And so they all come down there and investigate.

And eventually what I'm getting to is that this report's the same as that one and many others. You eventually reading the report like, we don't know. Yes. We just don't really know what happened. You often have strange smells that are. associated with a broad variety of supernatural activity, things like demonic, everything from alien encounter, you know, I'm going to say quote unquote alien encounters. Yeah, we'll get into that. To demonic possession, you see things like metallic and sulfurous smells and, you know,

these are associated. So anyway, they call the sheriff, they go back with Gene, and Gene and the sheriff described this strong, sickening smell. Kathleen May would later describe the entity that they had seen as a dark green or maybe a metallic black that could reflect the green of the grass. So it might have just been metallic and black reflecting a green from the ground. It had a large non-human head with red glowing eyes. It was reported to have stood far above Gene Lemon, who was the tallest member of the group. And now it would later be discovered that that night and the night after was absolutely saturated with independent multiple sightings of a similar entity by many people.

all throughout Braxton County, West Virginia. Which is very close. It borders the county that Point Pleasant is in. For example, on that same night that Kathleen May had this encounter, George and Edith Snatowski, great name. Just a great name. Wow. We're driving north of what's called Strange Creek when their car,

whose battery was completely new, just immediately and inexplicably dies. So they're stranded on the side of the road. It's late at night. It's probably cold. This is not a fun situation. It's September, so it is cold, actually, in West Virginia. Upon coming to a stop, they noticed a horrible and nauseating smell.

It was so strong and curious that George actually left the car to try and find the source, thinking maybe someone needs help at the very worst. Or there's an animal or something that they may have hit and he didn't notice and caused some of these problems. As he looked down the sloping hill that's right off the road's shoulder to his right, He saw this orb. It was a dark orb that was moving slowly back and forth below, kind of on a switchback that's underneath him.

And it gave off a soft, violent purple light. And he inch closer. He felt the urge to inch closer. And as he did, he became overwhelmed with a feeling that he described as the sensation of thousands of needle-like vibrations in his skin. So imagine it's like acupuncture, but multiply it by a hundred needles and they're all moving really slowly

and really fast on your skin. This made him sick. It actually made him physically sick. So he began to move back to the car as one would. And just as he gained his footing, Edith screamed behind him that something had appeared, and so he turned to see what was behind him. And what he saw was a massive figure

with a bloated, almost metallic body and long arms that was gliding rapidly towards him, as if it's trying to grab him. He claimed the being was at least eight feet tall with glowing red eyes. And he slammed the car door, shut and turned the key, and the monster glided the other way out of sight.

So there's obvious similarities to Mothman. Two of them, the most obvious being the size, but it's enormous. Yep. And the glowing red eyes. But it's also very different in some key ways. where the Mothman report seemed to be more organic. And this one's almost like Android-like.

There's metallic aspects. It seems like it's reflective. So, like, this is, obviously, this is very speculative. But I like to have fun with it. Yeah, let's hear it. My immediate thought is like, oh, this is a practice run for the Mothman. This is one of your least hinged things. I'm here for it.

There's like a dress rehearsal, you know, where he's like, all right, I'm coming in soon. We're about to destroy these people's. spirits, it's going to be great, but I want to make sure I'm frightening. So I got to figure out what I'm going to do. How am I going to present myself? How am I going to, how am I going to control how they perceive me, which is a huge theme in all of these things. Yeah. That a spiritual being like this, if it is this, can control how it's perceived by people. And so this is almost, you know, like it trying to learn how it should be perceived to inspire the utmost terror. Wow. Your thoughts. Okay. So there's, there's, there's,

two possibilities here. One is that, well, there's more than two. Yeah, I mean, obviously. One of them is that the cornstalk curse is really not related to this at all. It's just people trying to tell us, you know, whatever. Yeah. And that this is just completely unrelated. On that side of things, I think there's the possibility that what we begin to see coming out of the 40s, 50s, and into the 60s especially is a demonic playbook being pulled out. where they say, you know, they have a council of demons. Think you've got like a wormwood style.

Yeah. You know, where he's going up and the screw tape letters is kind of happening. And you picture them, they're going, how are we going to deceive these modern Americans? And they begin to unfold this variety of sightings that instead of being purely crypted sort of sightings, like, you know, just an unknown animal. they're going to start doing some technological adjacent sightings

that people will be tempted to attribute to extraterrestrial activity of some sort. And so I think you begin to see these, you know, like Sandown Clown, all the way back to Roswell, to these sightings just begin to explode in this time period. Through the Vietnam War, there's an extreme amount of sites. sightings associated with Vietnam War by soldiers of UFO activity and things like that. And so my hypothesis here, and I'm connecting a lot of things right now that will be future episodes as well. Yeah. My hypothesis is that what we've been witnessing for the last hundred years is the unfolding of a playbook,

which is why the mothman, as we'll see, which is not really an Android-type being. No. It's a strange mothy sort of. Much more crypted-like. Yeah, it's more cryptid-like. Yeah. But it does things that defy the laws of physics and, you know, et cetera. Mothman is associated with aliens.

Yes. And like, suppose that aliens. So my theory here is that when we get to the flatwoods monster, we get to the moth man, when we get to this almost prescience of the moth man, going up to the Silver Bridge collapse. Yeah. That we are seeing the same playbook.

from the book of Acts 16, the demonic future telling, prophesying, portents of doom, deceiving elemental spirits of the world, I think it's a playbook. Yep. So to me,

what you're looking at the flatwood monster is just quite obviously, a demon who is attempting to sow the seed of, what if I'm from Saturn? Yes. Omicron, Percy I. On top of the general,

all right, I'm going to try to connect some dots based off that. Let's connect it. Let's operate under the, the assumption that it's an elemental spirit of the earth. Let's hear it. Let's also operate under the assumption that Chief Cornstalk's curse meant absolutely nothing. Okay. It was just a waste of his last breath. Right. He should have just said, I love you, son, and then died. Yeah. Let's say that. There is a lot of evidence from other stories, things like the Bell Witch, where these evil

entities, these evil spirits have the ability to know a lot of things about what they're specializing in. They're not omniscient. They don't know everything. It's like they have to learn, but they have the capability to absorb a ton of information. So take the Bell Witch, for example, which if you don't know what that is, look up the Astonishing Legends episode. It's really good.

But the Bell Witch was focused on tormenting a religious family. So her focus was religion. She knew swathes of scripture and could recite scripture from inside the walls of this house. Like it was no big deal. So even if Chief Cornstalk's curse meant nothing, there could be an elemental spirit of earth that's evil, wanting to deceive people who sees that and says, I'm going to use that.

I'm going to try to give these people something that they can attach all these events to, that even though it actually didn't have any power, it actually isn't the thing calling this down, it's going to inspire more fear and more dread and guilt, because they're going to feel guilty about what the white man did to this Indian. I think that that is at least an interesting idea to explore, but really it connects to the truth. And this is true for Mothman. This is true for most cryptids,

but especially Mothman and Bigfoot, every single person comes away and they say, I felt an immense sense of dread and fear. And so it's not just this message of materialism that they're bringing. Like a lot of people will say, oh, well, Bigfoot is trying to deceive people into thinking evolution is true.

and that it's like a missing link. Yeah. The problem is that if you talk to people who say they encountered Bigfoot, they say that they walk away with an unreasonable amount of fear from the event. Like they wouldn't think that if they came upon another crazy beast, they escaped like a moose or something. Like a supernatural dread. It's a supernatural dread.

Yep. One of the best proof cases of this for the Mothman, at least, for me, comes from an account given by a Mr. Lawrence Gray. Yeah. So he's a local school teacher in Point Pleasant. He's a mild-mannered man. He's a humble and meek man. He's a church-going man.

One night, during these events, during this 13-month stretch, he's woken in the middle of the night at 3 a.m. by something. The human mind is capable of sensing many things, even in sleep. A lot of times we'll say that we have five senses. The truth is, we have many more. They're just not as physical. Gray's mind was not restful enough yet in his sleep to miss this glaring feeling that he had of being watched by something.

He just sensed in his mind that he was not alone, and he stirred enough to open his eyes, and what he saw were two glowing red eyes staring back at him. Here's the key, and this is a big connection. He was unable to move. He was unable to break the stare of this monster. He was unable to speak. Gray describes the presence he felt as 100% evil.

And again, this is a man who's been catechized by the Christian faith. Though unable to speak, he did believe that whatever this devil was, was able to peer into his mind and almost read his thoughts. He felt completely consumed by the evil presence. So in his mind, because he had cognitive function, he began to call upon the blood of Christ with all of his might, claiming the name of Christ over and over and over again, were calling to mind the victory that Christ had won over this type of evil.

And the open shame that he had put wretches like this too. And according to him, it worked. It wasn't immediate, but like an ice, like ice melting on a hot sidewalk. The creatures kind of faded away. And then once he was completely gone, Lawrence was able to move again. Wow. So this is an example of a moth man being the dreaded monster in a sleep paralysis episode. Wow.

Which is very strange to me. It's very strange. And sleep paralysis, again, these are things that we'll touch on in future episodes, but universally evil. Yeah. Universally evil. And so I just want to drive that point home that this thing is every person who encountered it, they're left with a sense of dread.

Yeah. And they're like, no, no, no, this thing is not here to, like, help us. Yeah. This is a evil thing that we're dealing with today. Mm. And Lawrence Gray is such a good example of a story. here in, you know, in the midst of this, more than 100 sightings in this, what was it, 13 month period?

Almost to the day. Almost the day, 13 months. 13 month period in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Let me make sure that we're not losing the details here and all these threads. Let's pull some of them together here because this is what we're saying happened. Yeah. In Point Pleasant, West Virginia. And we're measuring that 13 months from the incident with the Chevrolet that we read in the

intro. Yeah, that was the first encounter. The two, there is. the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce claims that there was an encounter before that. Yes. I think they did it for clout. Really? Anyway.

But back. Hey, good for them. Good for them. Listen, and the page is gone from the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce website. I was there before it looked up again. It's gone. It's coincidental.

Absolute conspiracy. No, so we have this encounter between the two couples going out to the T&T area, which the TNT area was this military complex where they were storing munitions. Yep. And it was, you know, so there were these. concrete domes covered in earth meant to during World War II to hide from the munitions from aerial surveillance. Very creepy area. And they have this creepy sighting of the moth man there in their 1957 Chevy flee at more than 100 miles an hour. The moth man pursuing them allegedly.

They see this dog dead on the side of the road. And later, when they bring the sheriff back, the dog is gone. And it's just, there's all these threads that connect. But what we're saying is that, the hypothesis here, is that this is a demonic strategy, a spiritual demonic strategy to deceive people and draw them away from Christ. And it's just one among many thousands of different plays that have been run on humanity. And one of the reasons that I think that that hypothesis is such a strong hypothesis for this event rather than just nobody really saw anything. They made it all up is because of the investigations of a guy named John Keel. Yeah. John Keel was an investigator who he was born in 1930. He was a journalist, influential

ufologist. He wrote the book on the Mothman incident. Yes. The Mothman prophecies. He was involved almost from the very beginning. Yeah. He was involved in Project Blue Book, which was a government-sponsored UFO. We're going to talk about John Keel more in other episodes. But one of the things that John Keel found in his investigation into this incident was that he was convinced that he was being manipulated by what he considered like an omniscient being or power of some sort. Through all of these contactees, people had had contact with UFOs and things like that, some of them are crazy cooks. Some of them, though, apparently had real encounters with what I would say are demons.

And they kept giving him these cryptic warnings surrounding this area of Point Pleasant West Virginia. With the mothman being cited and we're going to get in some UFO sightings and things related to this. And John Keel came to

the point where he was utterly convinced that this omniscient or whatever power was telling him that in December there was going to be an explosion or a disaster at this site that he had he he they thought they were telling them yeah and uh so he was ready like that night he was looking at the tv it was supposed to happen during this presidential tree lighting ceremony for christmas and all of a sudden there's a breaking report that comes on the tv that tell

in john keel tells him the silver bridge has collapsed yeah the silver bridge uh collapsed killed more than 40 people. It killed 43 people. 43 people on December 15th, 1967. The bridge all of a sudden collapsed. It had this design which is now no longer used

where they had these steel eye bars, these long plates instead of the cable, steel cable style bridge. And one of the joints failed. A three millimeter crack is all it took. It failed.

Plunged 60 vehicles, 60 or 70 plus vehicles into the water, 44 degree water in December. Ice cold water. Killed almost everybody who went 40, you know, 40 plus of the people of the 60 people who went in the water died. And the idea now that's been associated with this

is like Act 16, with this fort future-telling demonic spirit, the moth man and all of the related UFO activity were warnings that this event was going to take place. Yeah. were some sort of spiritual mental warning. And John Keel felt like they were telling him just enough that he would know something was going to happen, but be unable to prevent it.

Yeah. And so when you look at this whole story, you see that, again, these beings hate people and they're messing with them and trying to give them enough of a reasonable hypothesis that they can attribute it to some sort of worldview that would preclude the Christian God, would preclude the reality of the Christian faith,

and provide those two birds with one stone where they hate and destroy people, and then at the same time, where they can fool and take captive and deceive people to believe a false gospel, a false worldview. And, you know, just this complete connection of demonic strategy being played out. There's a, so another, another way to look at this is all of the string of events,

there's multiple events over a set period of time witnessed by hundreds of people, hundreds of people that lead to this cataclysm. Yeah. It's really akin to, to God judging Egypt and the Exodus, where you go through a number of different events and plagues, and they don't all look the same, but they're all interrelated. And then it leads to this big thing. And the conclusion would be that sin can't create, it can only deceive. So the demons running this playbook are trying to copy something that they've already seen before.

Yeah. But they aren't as good at it. And I've even thought that you have in Point Pleasant an area that was founded by Christians, the American part of it when the Indians were gone. It was founded by Christians. It was largely Christian for the majority of its history. And then around the turn of the century in the 1900s, the potency of the Christian faith started to wane from everywhere in America. It wasn't just here.

But here is it happened too. It's almost as if the people lost their faith chops. Yeah. And the demons saw like a chink in the armor. Yeah. And it's like, let's go there. Let's attack there. Because now they don't have the same wisdom they did before.

So if we run these plays, they're not going to turn to God like Lawrence Gray did. they're going to turn to these strange things like, oh, he was a, the mothman was a prophet trying to help. Or maybe it's still evil, but they just have no idea what to do with it. So they're almost like, we're at the mercy of this thing. They're left at the mercy of these spiritual beings, these ultra-terrestrials or extraterrestrials. Even, you know, it's interesting you bring up like the plagues

and how a lot of the time these, and the plagues were God judging Egypt. We also see examples where the spiritual effects or the effects of either overt paganism and demon worship or apostasy lead to the physical degradation of people where you have the throw off restraint and then you reap the whirlwind in the body with diseases. And one of the associating marks and characteristics of the mothman encounters that's absolutely fascinating and very strange is that many of the people who saw this creature, this big bright, glowing red eyes actually ended up with something called actinic conjunctivitis.

Big word. It's very similar to pink eye. Yeah. Conjunctivitis can be caused by bacterial infection. It can also be caused by seeing welders, the welding, the light from the welding torch, or the sun at high altitudes. So these people had these puffy, red weeping eyes

and they would for like several weeks after witnessing the moth as if these red eyes were shooting out actinic rays and burning people's eyes

and then the people have big puffy red eyes it's like the mothman wants his victims to look like him or something like I will destroy this reminds me actually of the story of Merle Partridge yeah

Murrell Partridge it was one of the encounters that took place during this flap during this Mothman encounter. Merle Partridge was a family man. He had six kids. And late one evening, him and his family were watching television. And

they saw all of a sudden this strange noise, high-pitched noise, started coming out of their TV. And the TV just broke in this herringbone, like, static sort of pattern. So he's like, what the heck? I'm already done. I was already being done. So, of course, what does Merle do?

He goes outside. Like every horror movie. He's just absolutely, I think his name's Newell, but he also went by Merle. So I'm going to call him Merle. Merle's better. Merle goes outside with his big German shepherd named Bandit. And he's trying to figure out what's going on. Like is this sound coming from outside?

What's happening? And he sees this two big glowing bright orbs, like a couple hundred yards away over by the pump house on his property. And all of a sudden, Bandet, his dog, just starts barking. in charges at this. Yeah. Glowing red eyes. And I mean, we're talking like 100 plus yards away.

And they look like, he said they were glowing like bicycle reflectors. And Merle was a guy who was, he'd hunted in this region, grew up there, hunted at night during the day. He knew what eye shine looked like from animals. And he was like, it was not that. Yeah. These had a light coming out of them. Not just reflectivity of other light. And his dog runs off at it, barking furiously.

and then these eyes start like ascending up into the air and doing weird things. And then his dog takes off. And he loves this dog bandit. But at this point, I think he's gotten a shotgun. So here's this big hunter guy, familiar with this region. His beloved dog bandit is running off at this thing. And instead of going and trying to get his dog, he is struck with just an absolute elemental terror. Yeah.

Cannot move off the porch. Stans there for a minute, goes back in his house, never sees the dog again. Now, guess when this was, Ben? I know that you know. So guessing was the wrong thing. Just tell the people. Bandit the dog disappears on the self-same night that the 1957 Chevy with the two couples is fleeing the TNC area from the moth man.

And what do they see on the side of the road, Ben? A dead dog. A dead dog. When they come back with the sheriff later, that dog is gone. Dog's gone. Bandit's never seen again. I think we might know what happened to band. Ooh, that gets...

I think the mob man, ed him. I think you ed them up. I think you ed them up. You know something else that's interesting about the Chevrolet incident? Lay it on me. So they've conveniently lost all the pictures of this that they supposedly took, or the police department just won't release them. Man, lack.

But they were taking pictures of the car, and they saw... massive claw marks on the trunk of the mural. No. I hadn't heard that. They didn't scratched the paint off. And it looked like massive talons or something. Isn't that nuts? That is so nuts. But I hope what you should take away from this is that it's not just some sort of mass hysteria event.

Where a few people see this thing that they call them off, man. It's like this flying winged humanoid. And all of a sudden, everyone just kind of gets a little bit razzled, and they start seeing it too. and they're just seeing things. No, these are different things that are happening, those glowing red orbs that looked different than the mothman's eyes, according to people. I've even heard reports saying that they were rotating,

almost like they were moving independently of each other and they would get further apart and closer together. Very strange. For that reason, I'm out. For that reason, I'm out. But anyway, no, the point is just to show that this isn't just mass hysteria. It's not just people thinking they're seeing one same thing.

It's people experiencing, a myriad of different things with one grounding through threat. And you get this physical effect too. Physical effect, the actinic conjunctivitis in some of the victims. Which is crazy to me. Which is absolutely insane. I've heard reports that you can only get bad cases from that

with really intense UV radiation. Yeah. So you can get it from like a welder's light, but it's not quite as bad. then like a high altitude from UV rays from the sun. So you'd need something that can produce its own UV radiation. If you were to get a bad case like the people in Point Pleasant. Oh, man, there's just, Ben, there's so many stories.

It's like this demon that's radiating. Do you remember the one where John Keel goes to the old, I can't remember what it's an old abandoned building? They're searching out by where the TNT area. Isn't it just the TNT building? Like the old power plant? Yeah, they go there and then they're searching it. They don't see the mothman.

all of a sudden, they hear a crash and they look back. And one of the, I think it's Mary Millette, but I can't remember her name. She says, the eyes, I see the eyes. So John Keel, who is just absolutely fearless. Yeah. Runs back into the building. This is like midnight. Okay.

He goes in there and he's like, searches the building, can't see it. He comes back. He's kind of stim and he's like, well, that was weird. Maybe she had a psychic vision of the eyes or whatever is what he says. And then they say, well, we saw somebody fleeing, running out, some figure running away from the building. And right then there was like a feeling of like air pressure change. And supposedly only some of them heard this loud sound or air pressure change. And then what I think Mary Millett is her name.

Her ears starts bleeding. Oh my gosh. Okay. So then they leave. They all leave. He's like, okay, go home. John Keel's like midnight. Mothman's run.

demons running around and John Keel's like, I'm going to go back by myself. So he drives out. All of a sudden when he's driving, he just out of nowhere feels this intense fear. Again, this fear. Yeah. And he pulls over.

This guy is insane. He pulls over. He gets out of the car. He walks back because he knows the landmark because the fear all of a sudden left. And he says he found that there was this region of like a couple hundred. yards where he could enter it and he knew he was there where this fear hit him.

Wow. And then he'd leave the other side and it would go away. And the fear was so intense that he considered just, he was the fear, the zone of the fear zone or whatever was like between him and his car and he was like, I'm just going to stay here until the sun comes up. He ended up not like he, he steeled himself and went back through. But this phenomenon, what you're talking about with this flap is like this intense array of strange phenomena.

And then all of a sudden, the aliens start getting me. The aliens show up. You know what? Before I talk about the alien, because you just told me one of your favorite stories. I got to say one of mine that I actually didn't put in the show notes. Let's hear it. None of this is in the show notes at this point.

Yeah, but we're just riffing. We're just trading Mothman stories right now. Like a campfire. Nothing like it. We should light the table on fire. We should light up some pipes. That would be so sick. That would be great.

I have something. No, I don't have any of my truck. Dang. Oh, well. So there's two hunters that are hunting out near the TNT area, which the T&T area, the abandoned power plant, saw the same area. Yeah.

And they're doing their thing. This is well into the Mothman event. So this is about eight months into it, where the whole town has experienced a level of dread that's collective enough to where people commented noticing that the town was a sadder place to be. It was like a dower place to be. And it grew more and more dour until the silver bridge collapse. But anyway, these hunters are out hunting.

They're near the T&T area. They're doing their thing. Neither of them had ever had any encounters with the mothman. They had heard about the stories, obviously, but they were a little bit skeptical. And they had experienced nothing themselves. When just, I love how small and subtle it is. It's the middle of the day, and they're bird hunting.

And they look up on the telephone pole and they see him. The mothman. Middle of the day. Middle of the day? They see the moth, man. They see the eyes. What in the world? And to me, stuff like that is terrifying.

That is terrifying. It's like, have you ever seen John Comptor's Halloween? Like the original Halloween movie? I am, I'm too scared. You know what? I don't watch horror movie. The scariest movie I've ever watched this movie, Elf. Absolutely.

And I was terrified. Really scary movie. I mean, you shouldn't watch Halloween. But I've seen it before, and I enjoyed it. And part of what makes it so scary is that, that you're seeing Michael Myers just peeking out from behind bushes in the middle of the day. I love how you're like, it's a terrible movie. You shouldn't see it. I enjoy it.

I did. It's totally. It's horrible. I wouldn't recommend it to people now. I love bad things. Anyway, keep going. Yeah, it's the middle of the day, though. You're right. It's the middle of the day, Alfred.

That's even scary. Not very subtle. That's a deep cut reference to the dark night for any of you people out there that like the dark night. Actually, wonderful films. So anyway, it's just, it's crazy to me how you can have so many different variations. Yeah. Like it's not just at night. It's not just in the middle of the night. Yeah. It's not just when it's dark outside and a barn owl can be playing tricks with your eyes. Get out of here. Get out of. Oh, it's a crane. It's a, it's a crane. Yeah, it's a sandhill crane.

It's a sandhill crane. Sandhill crane's like four feet, three feet tall. Not dead. Get out of here. Do they have glowing red eyes like bicycle reflectors that give you actinic conjunctivitis? I don't think so. I actually went to school to study Sandhill cranes and they don't have those eyes. Did you really? You have a PhD? How many PhDs do you have? Three. Three in Sandhill cranes. Yes. Expert guys. Yes.

And trust me, it wasn't a San Hill Crane. I have two PhDs in the Moth Mawrame. I may as well have three PhDs in San Hul Crane. I mean, let's be honest. Because you don't have to be a rocket surgeon to know that it was not a bird. It's a bird. Anyway, it's just crazy to me how subtle it is. And so they see him, they're horrified.

Yeah. It's middle of the day. And like, imagine the sun is out and it's the middle of the day and you're just having a good time with your friend. And you see this weird thing that otherwise might, be kind of goofy. Yeah. And you feel horrified. Yeah.

And you wish that you were dead. Like we're just away from there. Eight foot tall, mouse brown, gray, moth-looking, winged creature with glowing red eyes. It doesn't sound scary. And by the way, the reports of this thing say that also what it would do is just like it would look at you and then it would like open its wings and then just ascend into the air.

Yeah. Without flapping its wing. It's like these wings don't need them. No. They're just for scaring you. I have a harness on connected to a pulley. On a UFO. Yeah.

Speaking of UFOs. Yeah, speaking of UFOs. Okay, so before you tell the story. Yeah. So so far, this is why I'm like, if people are making this up, they were smoking something. Oh, yeah. Because the stories are like there was a giant mothy creature. Fuzzy.

First time I ever heard of the moth man, my aunt Chrissy, just like the late 90s. I'm probably in like fourth, fifth, sixth grade in Montana. and my aunt Chrissy is like tempting to scare us as much as possible she's like the moth man's gonna get you and I was like what is the moth man didn't even know but when I thought about something that could be a moth man

I didn't sleep that night anyway the stories are of I got tickled the first time I heard the name I was like that doesn't sound scary moths aren't scary but then actually you think about it if you see a close up clip of a moth's face they actually are they're horrifying creatures so anyway the stories are like

moth people So if you're going to get on the train of making stuff up. Yep. What kind of story you're going to tell? Probably some kind of moth creature story. Yes. Yes. But instead.

Instead, we get things that like we've been alluding to up to now, they aren't directly related to the mothman. It's not just that everyone saw the mothman. It's that a lot of people saw a lot of different things. Tell us about Woody. We're going to close out with this tonight. Yeah. It was 7.30 p.m. on a normal Wednesday in Parkersburg, West Virginia, close to Point Pleasant.

Woodrow Darrenberger. And close to where Chief Cornstock died. That's right. Very close to where Chief Cornstalk died. Woodrow Darrenberger, which is again an incredible name. So good. Was on his way home after a long day at work. Woodrow was nobody special. Average guy, he would describe himself as a perfectly ordinary Appalachian man.

Wasn't he a sewing machine salesman? Yes. I think, yeah, he wasn't a sewing machine salesman. So about as ordinary as they come, he had very little care for things outside of his family, his church, and his job, as most good men do. Unfortunately for him, all of that was going to change in just a few moments. He's on Route 77, almost home,

and he had indeed a very strange experience. He noticed a flashed flight outside of his truck, and he turned, he turned his head just in time to notice what he described as a crack that was passing him by flying just above the road, so not very high in the air, just above the road

and coming to a stop some way ahead of him. The wrinkle is the craft was blocking the roadway where it stopped, so he was going to have to either turn around or approach this thing. And whatever it was,

it was shaped like a kerosene lamp chimney. So spherical and cylindrical. Those are two exclusive things. When I say spherical, I mean only, He's cylindrical. Sillendrical. The craft, by the way, he had just been passed by a car.

Yes. Driving at a high rate of speed. Yes. And it almost was like this craft was chasing it. Yes, yes. That's weird. Small detail, so I'm glad you included. Let's see it.

Continue. Anyway, that's stuff that I miss. So those stationary, the craft was still hovering about a foot off the surface of the road. When all of a sudden it opened up and something walked out. Now, at this point, Darren Berker's car stopped. He is stopped in front of this thing and he's just sort of observing to figure out if he's going to turn around

or try to go around it. And that's when he sees a being exit the craft. And whatever this being was seemed alive and conscious. Yeah, like a physical being. So not a ghost, not a... Yeah, physical being.

The word I'm looking for is sentient. Sentient. It was sent him. And it walked right up to the truck window of Mr. Derenberg. I want you to imagine yourself in Derenberger's shoes for a moment. It's dark. You're driving home after a long day at work. Life is relatively normal,

though you've been hearing weird stuff coming out of Point Pleasant, your neighboring town. You're like that. And you're like that. Pots smokers. Yeah, a bunch of idiots. But rub it them pot smokers again. All of a sudden, a flying cigar passed you on the road, going at a high rate of speed, maybe chasing another car, ditches the chase and just stops in front of you. You're stopped and and you're like, whoa, what's going on? And this thing gets out of the thing. And you're you're like, this thing is not getting my sewing machines. Yeah, this thing gets out of the thing. Your first thought is protect the sewing machines at all cost.

And it just walks up to your window and you're just kind of stuck. Yeah. He would report that he just felt like he couldn't really move. Derenberger described the being as looking actually like any other man. It was very humanoid, very little to distinguish him in a crowd. He seemed like Darenberger himself, ordinary. Six feet tall, middle-aged, somewhat tan with dark brown hair and a glossy. blue coat, but there was actually one thing that he noted that just sort of ticked him off

to maybe this isn't totally normal. So creepy to me. Apart from him exiting a hovering craft. Yeah. There was a smile on his face. An almost uncanny inhuman smile that seemed physically impossible. Think of the Joker. It was like being pulled across his face.

Hi, I'm not here to hurt you. Exactly. Don't be afraid. I'm smiling just like a normal person. Whatever image you have in your mind, it's not as scary. This is a normal person. This is a normal person. It's like Jim Carrey and the Grinch.

Okay. Yes. And then, fixed and unmoving, even as Woodrow heard this being begin to speak, his mouth remained closed. Okay. This man, I'll just call him a man. Yeah, because he looks like a man. This thing, man thing, man thing.

Telepathically asks Woodrow to roll his wiseries. window down so that they could have a chat. And Woodrow complied because he felt he couldn't do otherwise. In the interview, when Woody's given the interview, the interviewer asked him, if he can speak telepathically, why do you have to roll down the window?

He was like, it was raining. Rain streaked window. He was like he wanted to see him. It's almost as if being able to see clearly gave him a little bit more power to communicate and even hold sway over Woodrow. So he rolls down the window. He looks to this man in the eye and

telepathically, the man says his name, injured cold, and he insisted that he meant no harm. Despite assurances to the contrary, Woodrow couldn't shake the feeling that whoever or whatever he was communicating with was evil. He had a sense of dread. He claims to have been constantly frightened during the exchange and fixated on this uncanny smile. He seemed so fair. So why did he feel so foul. The correspondence lasted no more than ten minutes and most of that time was spent just listening in his mind.

To Indrid Cold attempt to convince him that though he wasn't human he wasn't much different than one and he was truly there for no nefarious reason. But he didn't give him any real reason that he was there. And then as Indrid Cold walked back to the craft

Woodrow heard that same voice in his head. We will see you again. We will see you. We will see you again. This proved true if Darenberger is to be believed. He encountered, according to him, injured cold many times. His family professing to have also seen the creature. His wife remained resolute in her judgment.

The man was terrifying, though she, like Darenberger at first, couldn't really pin down why. Eventually, Woodrow would stop being so public about the visits he had with him, and they apparently eventually came to a stop. In fact, Woodrow would become anxious and paranoid after they stopped. But he never blamed the paranoia on cold anymore. He actually grew to be fond of injured cold. He blamed it instead on those men that would come to visit his home

after Indrid Cole did and try to persuade him to stop meeting with hold and instead tell them all that he knew. He called them the men in black, and he was more frightened of them than anyone else. Finally, Woodrow would seek medical help at the insistence of his wife,

thinking he's probably delusional at best and schizophrenic at worst. But his doctor would say he was completely normal. A clean bill of mental and physical health was all he left with. The doctor, though? He soon had a visitor. Late one night, a knock came at the door,

and the doctor opened it to find a peculiar man greeting him with a smile. He said his name was injured cold. Continue the story with us next time. in part two of The Moth Man with Haunted Cosmos. Did you know that patrons get access to bonus stories that didn't make it into the main episode, as well as early access to half of the season of Haunted Cosmos at a time? Support the show and get access to all kinds of great perks at patreon.com slash haunted cosmos.

Want more Hunted Cosmos? Then make your way over to Patreon, where you can get early access to our content as well as exclusive content in regular dusty tombs and monthly live streams with Brian and myself. So go to patreon.com slash haunted cosmos and sign up now.