Mothman revealed?
Forteans remember the Mothman saga that began in November 1966 when two couples claimed they encountered a frightening winged entity while joyriding late one night through an abandoned munitions factory outside Point Pleasant, WestVirginia. More than 100 people claimed to have seen Mothman during a 13-month period culminating in the collapse of the Silver Bridge on 15 December 1967, killing 47 people. Paranormal investigator and journalist John Keel chronicled this period of ‘high strangeness’ that also included a UFO flap and appearances of MIB in his book The Mothman Prophecies. Keel theorised Mothman was a harbinger of disaster, believing its eerie presence was a portent of the bridge’s collapse.
Now an on-line blogger calling herself ‘The Appalachian Lady’ has come forward, claiming the real cause of the Silver Bridge collapse was a curse placed by Chief Cornstalk:
“I was the white man’s friend. Many times I have saved the white man and his people from harm. I never made war with you except to protect our land. I refused at the peril of my own people to join your enemies in the red coats. I came to this fort as your friend, and you have murdered my young son, who harmed no one, and you have murdered me when I came only to save you. For this, may the curse of the Great Spirit rest upon this land and its inhabitants. May it be blighted by nature, and may it be blighted in its hopes. May the strength of its people be paralyzed by the stain of our blood.”
The Appalachian Lady recalls her Shawnee grandmother telling her that the Ohio RiverValley around Point Pleasant was the home to many Native American tribes including the Shawnee, whose leader (in the late 1700s) was Chief Kite-ug-gua, which translates as Cornstalk. According to the Appalachian Lady, Chief Cornstalk’s curse on the land and its people summoned the wrath of the Great Spirit which lived atop the hills and mountains. The Thunderbird was a servant of the Great Spirit and is depicted on rock drawings that still exist today. These petroglyphs depict a “large bird-like creature with saucer-like eyes.”
“So the Mothman wasn’t a new thing at all,” says The Appalachian Lady. “It was actually something known to Native Americans for hundreds if not thousands of years, long before the Mothman ever appeared.” According to legend, it could cause wind and the sound of thunder with its wings and create lightning by blinking its huge eyes. Shapeshifting can be found throughout Native American myth and folklore and the Thunderbird was no exception. The Appalachian Lady says it could change its appearance to that of a man by pulling back its beak and removing its feathers. “It was a very dangerous and wrathful spirit, and its power could be summoned through the Great Spirit to avenge the Native Americans against their enemies”, she added.
Pennsylvania writer Robert Lyman claims that Thunderbirds are not a thing of the past but are still with us today, living in the heavily forested Allegheny Plateau of north-central Pennsylvania. When interviewed in 1973, Lyman said that they live in the southern edge of the Black Forest, north of the Susquehenna River between Pine Creek and Kettle Creek.
In 1969 the wife of Clinton County sheriff John Boyle saw an enormous bird land in the middle of Pine Creek that their cabin overlooked. The witness said that when it rose to fly “its wingspread appeared to be as wide as the streambed, which I would say was about 75 feet.”
I think it’s interesting – if not downright comical – that the subject of The Mothman Prophecies could have been the Thunderbird. For years forteans have been obsessed with the search for a photograph depicting the Thunderbird. Ivan T Sanderson claimed he once possessed a photocopy of the picture, but lost it when he lent it to someone, and Keel himself insisted he had seen it, saying it resembled a pterodactyl. Was forteana having a laugh at the expense of its own investigators? Sources: On The Path Of The Immortals by Thomas Horn and Cris Putnam (Defender Publishing. 2015. pp. 264265); Unexplained! By Jerome Clark (Visible Ink Press. 1999. p. 511) Greg May Orlando, Florida