The Tape Library - Archive of the Paranormal & the Unexplained - The Terrifying Case of The English Mothman | The Hythe Mothman

Episode Date: April 9, 2024

Was this the original Mothman? This is the story of The Hythe Mothman. 10% off with the code TAPE at Manta Sleep - http://tinyurl.com/yw5xkd9b In tonights episode we look at Englands own encounter with the mothman, before the winged beast began to terrorise Point Pleasant 3 years later. Do you have a supernatural story to share? Drop me an email at [e-mail] You can check out The Tape Library in audio form on all of your favourite podcast providers. Tiktok - https://www.tiktok.com/@thetapelibrary Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/people/The-Tape-Library/100094332411836/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thetapelibrary Archive of the Paranormal, the strange and the unexplained. The Tape Library brings you the creepiest stories, to keep you horror junkies up all night. True scary stories of ghosts, cryptids, UFOs and true crime. Additional footage and audio from Artgrid, Evanto, Singularity, Midjourney and Pexels & Scott Arc. All other footage used under fair use. CHAPTERS: 00:00 Point Pleasant 04:13 Intro 06:16 The Hythe Mothman 11:51 The Other Witnesses 16:50 The Saltwood Ghosts 24:03 Thank You Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It was November 15th, 1966, in Salem, West Virginia. It was a cold Tuesday night, not a cloud was in the sky, as the Partridge family settled in for a night on their farm. Merle, his wife and their six children, warmed themselves by the fire, and were looking forward to a night in front of the television. Their three-year-old German Shepherd dog bandit, laid on the porch, guarding his loving family. everything was normal until around 10.30pm when the television started to act a little strangely.

The movie Wild and Wonderful was playing on screen when the signal appeared to start breaking up. Just a few interruptions at first before the entire screen was filled with a kind of herringbone pattern and started to emit a horrible, high-pitched noise that hurt the family's ears. Bandit stayed outside, but began to howl intensely, presumably due to the high pitch of the noise. It grew to such a degree that's out of nowhere, the television exploded, showering the family with broken glass as it did, but despite the noise stopping, Bandit continued to howl, obviously shocked and confused by what had just happened, got an uneasy feeling, and decided to head outside with his flashlight to see him.

see what was bothering the dog so much. As he stepped out onto the porch, however, bandit bolted for the nearby tree line. Merle shouted for his normally obedient dog to come back, but it ignored him. He began to venture closer to the trees, and that's when he saw it. Two glowing red lights in the tree line, large and circular in shape. Initially it was reported that they appeared to be eyes, but Merle later revealed that he didn't feel like there was anything biological about them. Whatever it was in those trees, it scared Merle enough to run back inside the farmhouse and grab his gun. But when he returned, there was nothing. No trace of the lights, no trace of Bandit.

In the morning he would find Bandit's paw prints in the area. They appeared to be running around in a circle, before just stopping. not demonstrating any evidence that he ran off in a different direction. That same night, just a couple of hours later, two young couples were driving over 100 miles away, just outside a point pleasant. When they claimed to see a strange figure standing in the middle of the road, it was large around seven feet tall, but what was most disturbing to them was its large glowing red eyes. They began to drive away as quickly as they could.

When they saw in their mirror, the figure had hovered up in the air and appeared to be gliding towards them at an incredible speed. It had wings. While the couples were able to finally escape, they claimed that during the chase they saw on the side of the road the remains of what appeared to be a large dog. This would be the first officially reported sighting of one of the most infamous cryptids, the point pleasant mothman.

A story that melded together a whole host of strange paranormal events, and one I hope we will get into in the future. While history is filled with similar tales of winged men, interestingly an event took place three years previous to the mothman sightings that bears a striking resemblance to the beloved winged beast. a rarely spoken about tale that seems to suggest that Mothman was possibly spotted on the other side of the Atlantic. Welcome to the tape library. After how much you all enjoyed the story of Sam the Sandown Clown,

I thought I'd bring you another tale of high strangeness from our little island. Much like Sam, there is so little information to go on here. What there is has been pieced together from a handful of newspaper clipping. and the legendary John Kiel's book, Strange Creatures from Time and Space. Because of that, this might be a little bit of a shorter one, but I don't want to pad out these episodes just for the sake of it, and I think it's too good a story to not cover. This is a story again, much like Sam,

that seems to encompass several areas of the paranormal, so yet again we're getting into the area of ghosts and UFOs, on top of the whole cryptid weirdness. I really like this one, and I hope you will too. I'm hoping to be launching something new later this month, or next that you weirdos out there who enjoy falling asleep to creepy tales, they're going to love. But I'm not quite ready to announce that yet, but speaking of sleep, I'm thrilled to welcome back our sponsors, Manta Sleep. I spoke about these guys a few episodes ago and I'm still really enjoying their products. I mentioned before that I've never been a huge fan of sleep masks, but as someone who has experienced pretty awful insomnia in the past, I'm always getting to be.

game for trying something new. These are the only sleep masks that I've tried. They have genuinely made a difference to my quality of sleep. They are fully adjustable too to offer total blackout. I've been using their pro mask as my go-to when I'm struggling to nod off. If you want to check them out, the link will be in the description. Use the code taper checkout and you'll not only get 10% off, but also help support the channel. So thanks once again to Man to Sleep, and now without further ado. Let's get into tonight's story. So get yourself a warm drink, dim the lights and get comfortable. This is the strange tale of the Hife Mothman and the Saltwood Ghosts.

November 16th, 1963. Almost exactly three years before the sighting that would kickstart the Mothman phenomena in West Virginia, a very similar event took place, chillingly taking place at the same time of year, with the same number of young people involved. as though history would later repeat itself. 17-year-old John Flaxton, his friend Mervyn Hutchinson, and their two girlfriends who I don't believe have ever been named, were walking back from a dance late on that fateful night.

They were alone as they strolled down a quiet country road that runs along Sandlin Park in Hife, a small town on the south coast of England. John was the first to notice and pointed out to his friends. The lack of light pollution meant the stars in the night sky were extremely visible, casting a beautiful overhead view for the scenes, but John's attention was drawn to what he first thought was a shooting star. It was brighter than he would have expected,

and one of his friends pointed out it wasn't just that it was brighter. It was that it was closer than all the other stars. Very close. They watched as the light moved across the sun. above them. Their intrigue quickly grew to concern as they realized the light in the sky was getting closer and closer to them before it suddenly seemed to come to a stop, hovering just in front of them a little further down the road. A bright golden oval shape, it is light so bright it was impossible to see if there was a source behind it.

Then after what felt like several minutes, but was likely only a few seconds, the light dropped down behind some trees in the park. John described a strange feeling washed over him. He suddenly felt cold all over. The initial fascination had turned very quickly to fear, although what they were afraid of, they couldn't tell you exactly. Just an overwhelming feeling that whatever they had just seen was something that shouldn't be. All four decided they wanted to get away from the situation as quickly as possible and began to run.

As soon as they did, the light quickly bobbed back out from behind the trees, as though it was reacting to them in some way. The light was now around 200 feet away from them, but the teens noticed something strange. When they ran, it began to follow them quickly. But if they stopped, the light stopped too. Was it toying with them? Or simply mirroring their actions? The four of them stopped in place and watched as the light hovered, before once again lowering behind some trees,

like it needed them to be still, before it could continue on with what it was trying to do. The light vanished and all four would stand there for a moment, with just the eerie silence of the night. night and their own heavy breathing, when suddenly, from the direction the light had vanished in, they heard the sound of a twig snapping, then the sound of a branch breaking, followed by the unmistakable sound of large footsteps. There, in the treeline, a large darkened figure emerged from where the light had been moments

before, Mervyn stated to the police later that evening, that it was the size of a person. But as it stepped out from the tree line, they noticed some odd details about this person. For one, it didn't appear to have a head, or at least no neck that would make a head protrude and appear more obvious. He said its feet looked strange, that they were possibly webbed. But even more alarmingly, It appeared to have wings, large bat-like wings that were sticking out from its back and hunched over its shoulders. The teenagers didn't wait to see what the figure wanted. They began to run again, running faster than any of them had ever run before.

Once far enough away, they got in contact with the police, who, surprisingly, considering this was four teenagers, claiming to have seen glowing lights in the sky. and a large part bat, part man creature, took them seriously. The police said that the fear they saw on the faces of these kids was something that told them, that even if they were mistaken in what they had seen, they had genuinely seen something that night, and whatever that something was had shaken them to their core. All four teenagers were apparently interviewed separately, and seemingly described the events and what they saw in a virtually identical manner.

Word quickly got out in the sleepy area of Kent about what has happened in the four teenagers. A few different newspapers picked up the story, although the angle they took on it was a little different to what was being described by the witnesses. But we'll get into that in a bit. One week later on November the 21st, 17-year-old Keith Croucher, was walking alone. It was early evening but the sun had long set. He was cutting across some fields near Sandling estate, not too far from the initial sighting

to get back home. As he approached a football pitch that was located there however, he noticed the strange aura of light bouncing off the low clouds in the night sky. Initially he just thought someone must be training on the pitch and they have lit it up. as he moved closer and over the embankment that ran alongside the full pitch. He saw something he couldn't believe. There, in the centre of the pitch, was a solid oval-shaped light, surrounded by what he described as a golden mist. Yet again the light appeared so bright that if there was anything behind it creating the illumination. It was impossible to tell,

Croucher, stopped and watched the light, slowly gliding across the pitch, before disappearing into the darkened nearby trees and vanishing from sight. A couple of days later, late at night, as the 23rd turned into the 24th, a man named John McGoldrick and a friend had convinced each other to do a little investigation. The pair had become fascinated by what Flaxton and his friends had reported seeing, and after some egging on of one another, decided to head out to the woods in the area where the initial sighting took place, to see if they would experience anything for themselves. While they didn't witness any glowing lights or mothed-winged men that night, they did potentially find the location where Flaxton and his friends heard the

breaking branches as the mothman stepped out from the trees. McGoldrick claims to have found an area of the woods that appeared to have been crushed by something large, saying that he saw a vast expanse of bracken that had been flattened. Next to this area, they apparently found three well-defined footprints. They were large, measuring some two feet long and nine inches across. McGoldrick reported his findings, and two reporters from a local paper requested they take them out to the site of the footprints a couple of weeks later on December 11th. McGoldrick's unnamed friend came along for the trip. The reporter's doing so with a decent amount of skepticism

and not really expecting to find anything more than some tracks that the men may have faked. While they did get close to the location, they never would make it as far as seeing if the footprints were still there, and they were walking through the woods, and suddenly the entire area was illuminated by a large glowing light, several hundred feet through the tree,

in front of them. All four men, not expecting to see something like this, were stunned. Frustratingly, they were too scared to venture closer, instead choosing to stop where they were and observed the light for half an hour before it vanished. They described the light as pulsing. While I say it was frustrating, I feel like this is one of the more relatable accounts I have heard since covering these kinds of stories on this channel, I can see myself plucking up the courage to go out and investigate something like this if I'd heard similar reports, but much like McGoldrick and his companions. I don't think I would be surprised that if I were to witness something firsthand,

it would stop me in my tracks, and maybe not make me wish to go further. These are the events laid out by John Keel in his book, Creatures from Time and Space, and effectively ends the story of the Kentish Morse. Mothman. If this event has any connections with the point pleasant case, we obviously have no way of knowing. Kier was spoken out about many such stories throughout history and in fact jumping back over to West Virginia. A woman claims to have seen something similar as far back as 1960. The reason I like to think of this case as the original Mothman is the combination of the Mothman creature and the apparent UFO phenomena surrounding it.

I think it makes a nice little prologue to the events that took place in Point Pleasant a few years later and has a greater connection to what was reported there than many of the other examples of apparent sightings of winged men over the years. However, while this ends kills versions of what happened in Hyaths, as I mentioned previously, the local press at the time took a different approach. We were still three years away from the start of Mothman becoming a named entity. And to explain what the locals in Haif actually believed was going on, well, we'll need to put our ghost hunting hats on.

There are some discrepancies with other reports made of the events outside of Kiel's writings. An article about the original witnesses suggests that Mervyn Hutchinson actually described the figure as carrying a lantern, which potentially explains the lights like and that it wore a red cloak. Although, I'm unsure of this as an addition to, or instead of the wings that were also described, he also apparently said according to this later article, that they couldn't see ahead, not the figure literally didn't have one. It also disputes how the events ended. Instead of running away, the teens apparently watched the figure, shuffle up onto a nearby

by a railway bridge before disappearing. Also in other articles, they apparently described the ball as a red ball of fire rather than a white oval shape. Which of these stories is closest to the actual report given to the police is unclear, but the initial description I gave earlier in the video appears to be the most widely accepted version of events. Not that we can totally discredit the other articles,

but it seems to go against what is reported in most other versions. Another adds an additional report to the experience of John Magoldrick. It states that when they returned to the area at the later date, they were driving along Sandling Road, couldn't see anything. They decided to head to Sandling Quarry to see if they could find something there. They pulled up and turned off their lights, when one of the people in the car claimed to see a figure standing at the side of the road. Creeply, no one else could see it. A motorcyclist driving through this area around the same time also reported seeing a strange glowing light. Hife is something of a hotbed for ghostly stories.

Saltwood Castle is located right by Sandling Station and has its fair share of strange sightings and ghost stories. Due to this and the fact that well a mothman just wasn't a known thing back then. This led to the locals believing that what these teens were witnessing was in fact some sort of ghost. Furthermore, the local rector, Reverend Eric Stanton, decreed that he would get to the bottom of the apparent hauntings of this town, once and for all. The Reverend was quoted in one of the original articles on the subject,

stating that, several young people in the village have come to see me, saying they have seen a ghost. There are rumours that a black magic circle meets in a secret hideout in the village, and that they are responsible. I have no proof yet that they are working in Saltwood, but I am determined to get to the bottom of this business. The 1960s were, of course, a time in the US and the UK

when the sudden influx of counterculture movements have brought about a newfound paranoia of hidden groups messing with the occult and magical practices. What is even more interesting, no, is that this article goes on to seemingly blame the events on a very specific ghost. The article posted in the Daily Mirror went on to explain that the ghost was that of William Tornay Tornay. Yes, seemingly he has the same middle and last name. He was a very real and very deceased, rich landowner in the area, who was known to be

something of a reclusive individual and rather eccentric. He had purchased a tiny island situated in a lake in nearby Brockhill Park, and upon his death in 1903, requested to be buried there in what the papers of the time described as an extraordinary funeral. While his headstone is long gone, many still claim to have seen the figure of William, standing on the island in the park, late at night. And his former home, shortly after his death, was imaginatively referred to as the haunted house, by the locals in the village. To add further to this strange story, Tornay was said to have had a curse placed upon him,

and his father, mother, and brother had all passed away under various circumstances, on the month that he too died. But quite why the Reverend or the press linked this event to the Mothman sightings is unclear, I can only assume they decide to blame an apparent haunting that was already taking place in the area to this other strange phenomena being witnessed.

But the strange sightings and apparent concerns of a ghost wandering the streets of Haifth were apparently a very real concern for the residence in the winter of 1963, with at least one woman claiming she was locking and barring her doors and windows as soon as it got dark. If Reverend Stanton ever got to the bottom

of what was going on with his ghost and the Mothman is unclear, but he was quote, I am quoted in one final article in late November as saying, I don't think it's proper to reject these stories of a ghost, all the while they are disturbing the village. I intend to continue my own personal investigations into a reasonable explanation is found. I haven't seen anything because I am not a psychic person.

I think you have to be to experience these things. The area quickly became surrounded by two warring groups of investigators. A UFO investigator, but the name of Mr Strickland, was the first on the scene, and he discovered further tales from locals about seeing strange lights flying around the area, with one dog walker claiming to see a small golf ball-shaped light that crossed in front of him on Sandling Road, before disappearing in the direction of the sea. This was a few weeks before the event with the Mothman. Additionally, groups of ghost hunters, started flocking to the area, especially focused on Saltwood Castle, but as far as I know,

they did not encounter anything of note. There have been numerous sightings of a strange winged man across Kent in the decades that would follow, but then there has been similar sightings all across the world. Seemingly no serious attempts have ever been made to get to the bottom of what really happened on that cold November night, with one of the few investigations coming in the 1970s from a euphologist, who in a claim that might be even more crazy than a seven-foot-tall mothman, claimed that the teens had been simply spooked by a crow being illuminated by the flashing electrics of a passing train. But if these teenagers really did see a part man, part bat like creature at night, was it the same creature that apparently terrorized, Point Pleasant, just a few years later?

Or, if they are real at all, are there many similar creatures hidden all over the world? That's all for this entry into the tape library. As always, please, please let me know what you think of this one. I'd originally worried there wasn't enough to this story to do a full episode on it. But the more I got into the research, the more I realised just quite how fun this strange story is. We have the connections to the Point Pleasant Muffman, unidentified flying object. black magic, the ghost of an eccentric rich guy buried in a park, and a priest trying to solve the whole thing. You can't ask for much more from a case of high strangeness, in my opinion.

As always, if you've enjoyed this episode, then please click the like button and subscribe if you want to see more. What I'm planning next is an episode quite a few of you have requested again. At this point, I've only dipped my toe into the research, but... Oh my, it's going to be another wild one. Thank you for sticking with me until the end. Until next time. Pleasant dreams.