Therefore, anywhere that gets a visit from this thing is DOOOOMED!!!ZOMG!!!11!. One is a meme running through the Mothman literature that the creature is a harbinger of disaster it was said to have appeared before the 1985 Mexico City earthquake and the Chernobyl disaster. There are a couple of odd developments stemming from this weirdness. Predictably, when their loose partnership fell apart, it was Keel's mass market book The Mothman Prophecies and not Barker's self-published The Silver Bridge that would go on to generate the most impact (and dollars).
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Barker's habit of "drunk dialing" Keel's motel room at odd hours to mumble incoherent messages was subsequently re-imagined by Keel as a series of "mysterious phone calls" from mysterious, extradimensional beings. Keel later revamped and polished the story into a first-person narrative that cast him in the role of a "journalist", liberally salted with his own paranoid fantasies about UFOs, men in black conspiracies, and other paranormal weirdness. Barker drafted a few sample chapters that featured Keel as a "mysterious character" and fabricated a mythical connection between Mothman and the tragic but unrelated collapse of a local bridge. The two men discussed the idea of jointly authoring a "nonfiction" (wink wink) book on the subject, and Keel agreed to share his notes. Keel took up residence at a Point Pleasant motel to gather details and interview locals. Both recognized the Mothman reports coming out of West Virginia as the basis for a potentially profitable enterprise. Keel was demonstrably better at his craft, having sold articles to Science Digest, Saga and Playboy, while Barker labored mostly on the fringes cranking out a mimeographed newsletter he called Saucer News. Keel and Barker Įnter two UFOlogist writers who specialized in spinning woo into cash: John Keel and Gray Barker.
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The creature was dubbed "Mothman" (a nod to Batman's enemy "Killer Moth" in the then-popular TV series Batman) by a local newscaster, and the national press spread the story across the country. A press conference was held in the county courthouse where the teens were encouraged to repeat their story for reporters. But rational explanations quickly took a back seat to sensational media coverage. Others blamed the hysteria on sightings of various types of owls with large wingspans that were common to the area. A wildlife biologist guessed that a sandhill crane - a bird with a seven foot wingspan and reddish coloring around the eyes - may have wandered out of its migration route. The press picked up the Sheriff's report prompting widespread hysteria and a number of pranks one local man blasted an owl to bits with his shotgun after being frightened by its "glowing eyes" and a gang of construction workers tied flashlights to a balloon in hopes of inciting a UFO scare.Ī few nights later, members of the local fire department investigated the warehouse area and reported observing a large creature which they definitely identified as a bird. There, they told the local Sheriff, "a bird as big as a man" chased their car, its eyes reflecting the glow of their headlights. The grounds of an abandoned warehouse that had been used to store munitions in the 1940s was one of the more popular hangouts. The initial report came from two 18 year-old married couples in a 1957 Chevy who'd been cruising woodsy spots where bored local kids gathered to drink, make out, and raise Hell (think American Graffiti with wedding rings).