Giant Freakish Winged Humanoid Entities Live in the Woods of W. Virginia - One Family's Story of Terror

SOMETHING ABOUT THIS STORY REALLY CREEPED ME OUT! AND IT TAKES A LOT FOR ME TO FEEL THAT WAY OVER JUST READING A THIRD PERSON ACCT.

Posted by Lon Strickler… Taken from the Phantoms and Monsters site…here and here,

In recognition of the 15th Annual Mothman Festival, I am offering a previously posted & unedited account…which generated a lot of response from the readers:
I received this account from a friend (‘DR’) who had previously shared her paranormal experiences with me. The following remarkable narrative may very well add credence to the Mothman phenomena and, frankly, I have no reason not to believe the story. I have not edited the original text except for a few minor errors. I realize that the allegory is a bit hard to follow at certain spots, but I wanted to save the integrity of the writer’s thoughts and emotion. This narrative was originally posted a few years ago and resulted in quite a bit of feedback. Mothman author/researcher Andy Colvin also received a similar account, a few weeks after it was sent to me. He later referenced the account during a radio interview. For those who have not read this narrative, I would encourage your comments and input:

In 1967, two weeks before the collapse of the Silver Bridge in Point Pleasant, WV, a phone call came to our house south of Lancaster, Ohio. It was from dad’s friends in southwestern W.Va. Someone else in our house answered the phone because my dad was busy watching the evening news, so he yelled to answered it to ask them what they wanted. The answer was that they had some trouble over in W.Va. and needed dad to come down. He asked what the trouble was and the person on the other end said it was a big bird. Well, we’d just seen a piece on this on the news and the anchor who reported it laughed about it. Dad laughed and said that was a good one and to tell the person this and then hang up.

A short time after the phone rang again. This was when long distance cost an arm and a leg so dad asked what was going on and again it was that they had this big bird that had done a lot of damage and they needed help to hunt it down.

He took the phone call then and we all heard him saying, “All of my guns and all of my ammunition?? What the heck is going on down there?” There were a couple of okays and then I heard him ask why this man’s daughter needed to talk to me.

It was explained to me that this youngest girl had what they thought was an imaginary friend but asking to talk with me was a good sign that she was coming out of this mentally and emotionally and I was to play along. It was supposed to be for her own good. I was nine years old and she was maybe a few months behind me. I got on the phone and she asked if this was (my name) and I said yes. I asked what her name was and she said what it was. I’d met her once before and she was very introverted and really didn’t mix with us. She showed us rocks and bugs but didn’t really get involved in getting to know us.

That’s why I was shocked that this girl asked for me by name. I told her she had a good memory and she said it wasn’t her memory that she got my name from! I thought, OK, she’s a bit touched as they say, LOL.

I asked where she got my name in order to ask for me and she said it was her friend who was a man – but wasn’t a man. I said, “Okay, who is this friend and what does he want with me?”

She began to relate that in the course of talking one day he told her my name and said he wanted her to contact me and ask me to come down there to talk to him. I said I’d have to talk to my parents first.

I got off the phone and dad wanted to know what was up with this girl. I said there was no way she knew my name. He asked where she got it then. I told him and he got a little alarmed and called their house to ask some questions about this man that ‘wasn’t a man’ and who he might be.

They assured him that it wasn’t anyone near them as they were out on a quiet country road with only a few neighbors. She said this friend of her’s wasn’t one of them. They’d checked the woods where she said she’d met with him and never found any footprints or signs that anyone had been there with her.

So, because this was urgent we packed up quick and headed down there from central Ohio.

We waited in line to cross the Silver Bridge across from Point Pleasant. A cross member on the top of this bridge on our side of the river was swinging back and forth as it was not attached on one end. The bridge clanged and made all sorts of racket when a car was crossing it. I was told to sit back and rest my eyes because the sunlight was very bright that day and I was getting hot. I felt my eyes get heavy – like I was slipping right into a comfortable rest. The next thing I knew I heard screaming and found myself horizontal above my brothers clawing at the window screaming to be let out that the bridge was going to go into the river. Dad got me calmed down and asked when this was going to happen. I had to rest, I was exhausted. So, I sat back slipped once again and again….found myself across my brothers with my siblings holding my legs and ankles to keep me from going out the window. I realized I was screaming again and clawing at the window. I asked what was going on and they all said I’d been OK and then suddenly lunged for the window to claw my way out while screaming hard. Mom said to beat me for it and so did my siblings. Dad on the other hand told them to hush while he walked me through what I was seeing when I woke up doing this.

I was in a vehicle and it was falling off that bridge into the river below and I saw every inch of the fall to the water and below the water even. I was horrified when it was slow enough for me to see all of this clearly. Dad asked if we’d get across OK that day and when we were supposed to go back home. I searched my mind and saw it was OK to cross.

He had me tell him what would cause the bridge to fall and then show it to him on the other side once we got there. When he saw what I’d seen in my mind on the Ohio side before we got to the W.Va. side he was utterly horrified.

Structurally that bridge should not have been in use at all. I won’t go into that part but to say that I got it absolutely right on each and every count.

He was quiet all the way there except occasionally he would ask me when this would happen. I remember looking in my mind and telling him it would happen in about two weeks.

Two weeks to the day we were sitting watching the TV when a news alert came across to say it had fallen into the river. Mom got a calendar right away and checked it to make sure how long it had been. She cried a bit and then asked me to come over to her. She thanked me for saving all their lives. I’d forgotten all about what happened two weeks prior because it was traumatic not just for my visions but for what happened at the people’s house!

I hope this helps others, Lon, but I can’t have identifying information come back to me about this for certain reasons. I will continue. We drove a long time before arriving and dad went in to talk to these people as we set up our tent to sleep outside.

The man came out and said to put it away because we wouldn’t want to be sleeping out there with the troubles they had down there. It didn’t make sense to any of us how a big bird could be scaring these people that bad but they were scared badly. While the adults got the low down we kids went up into the woods to take care of the imaginary friend thing.

The older kids checked everything out to make sure there was no one and nothing to harm us when they left. We were not far into the woods and it was not all that thick with growth. The driveway was pretty wide and it was a sunny day.

They all left and I put my younger brother with her brother about 15 ft. from us at the edge of the woods. We all grew up in the woods so there was nothing any of us didn’t know how to deal with if confronted with it. We were well practiced.

I just wanted to get this over with but the girl was being timid. She said I’d think she was nuts. I laughed and said that sometimes people don’t understand but they need to give it time to sink in. I gained her confidence and so she opened up.

She said “he” would scare me if I saw him straight on. I said there wasn’t much that scared me anymore with three brothers that challenged my life at every turn. She looked worried and said he was special and didn’t look like us. Well, I thought he was disfigured or something but no that wasn’t it either. I said that sooner or later if I was to talk to this man I’d have to see him in order to understand what he wanted to tell me.

I was thinking that maybe there was some wildlife around there that she wasn’t familiar with that she couldn’t see clearly so it had scared her. No, she said that wasn’t it either. She said I had to promise not to look unless he said it was OK.

I said I didn’t want to be close to him then if I needed to take off in a hurry. She said I couldn’t do that because it would upset him. I let out a Ha! and she just gave me a look and said this was very important to her because he’d been very nice to her and been a good friend when she had no others.

Okay, so I appeased her a bit and said I’d play along and be extra nice so I could get this over with. She kept saying not to be alarmed and said she had been the first time she saw him. She said he was very big. I was thinking she must have lost it bad.

I saw movement and there was something looking like a very tall spindly marionette up next to these skinny tall trees. I asked her how she and her siblings had accomplished that. I was laughing but she was looking at me like she had no idea what I was talking about. Then it walked out from the trees without any visible support!

I was like okay, there’s got to be a sensible explanation to this so I asked if I could move forward after awhile to get a better look. I told her I could take this. Well, she asked him and said he said it was OK.

Before that though he wanted to talk to my mind, she said. I thought, oh my God, she’s really in La La Land, poor girl, stuck in the sticks of W.Va. and she’s lost it!

Well that thing moved again as if shifting from side to side in a standing position. That was human like. I begin to hear this man’s voice in my mind and it’s conversing with me. It’s all like ‘happy to talk to me finally’ and ‘so excited by my coming to see him’ …I thought I’d caught this girl’s insanity and hit myself at the side of my head to shake this voice out of my head.

She asked what was wrong. I told her! She said that was normal. I had news for her but not yet! I had been ordered to see what this was about.

This voice seems to be rifling through all my memories like wildfire and then downloading high quality video….like being there in my mind about that bridge falling and other things in the future. I thought my mind was playing tricks on me so I tried to maintain my balance mentally by reminding myself that I was just playing along and this would all play out to be an elaborate hoax.

I inched closer and closer to the edge of this driveway and then a drop off where the bulldozer had shoved the dirt for it.

Movement caught my eyes and I looked down to see these big orange bird feet! I thought, oh my God what is that doing in the woods! I took a very slow, very meticulous look up the legs attached to these feet and they looked stork-like. The feet shifted by one picking up and then the other doing it. It was human like in movement but also bird like. I let my eyes go very slowly up the legs, to the body, ick! and then the chest, also ick! because I could count the ribs!

There appeared to be scant feathers on it’s skin which was greyish. It was a mix of this bright green color and greyish brown. The more I looked the worse it got but I gritted my teeth and kept my thinking to a minimum.

I looked at these wings folded behind it’s back but yet out a bit to the sides. I could see through them a bit but they looked leathery and stretchy. I looked at the shoulders which in truth were topped with sharp bumps which I realized were from the wings being folded behind it’s body. I inadvertently got a good look at it’s head and a wave of revulsion hit me and I said I was going to just back up slowly to get a better look from a distance.

I think it picked up that I was scared of it. I heard it in my mind again and it was upset that I was scared of it.

I explained with my mind, crazy as that sounds, just thinking I’d seen some people who were disfigured in my time and this was scary too. I’d just have to get used to it. I did want to get out of there with my life unscathed. This was nuts. This thing wanted to chat with me and I wanted to go to the bathroom really bad.

I told the girl this and she said we’d have to go to the house. He told her, and I heard it too, that he knew I was scared and he was very upset. Then, he got into a part of my mind that showed what I went through at home and somewhere else, a big building in a big city that I didn’t remember except in bits. He was livid at me seeing the entire breadth of whatever that was about. I told them both out loud that this wasn’t right for this girl or I to be talking to him.

He said his kind didn’t want any of them mixing with us because it was dangerous for them. He’d shown me where they were from, and it wasn’t this planet. I was feeling dizzy and my brother saw me stagger a bit. I said I had to go and this girl had to help me down to the house, so we were going to leave now and she and I were about to be in big trouble because I wasn’t allowed to keep such a secret.

I got out of the woods OK and got up against their garage and wet my pants. Then I felt like I was losing control of my body and was shaking all over. My brother went and got dad. I told him to stay close to the garage because it was out there somewhere and it was huge. He thought I was nuts but I told him sternly that this man that wasn’t a man but was a huge creature with wings and big orange feet. He laughed and I said “I wasn’t laughing and we had to get into the house.”

We all got into the house and the girl was livid with me for saying I wasn’t supposed to tell and now he was angry with her. My head hurt really bad.

The adults got their guns out. Phone calls were made and in short order men with guns in pickups and cars came flying into their driveway.

Dad wouldn’t allow me to tell mom or that woman what I’d seen…no one. I wanted to cry but felt stunned, shocked, very hard. They got me cleaned up and we all sat trying to be quiet. We tried to listen to what was going on.

That was an awful experience. The men went into the woods leaving the women with guns. They soon came back as it was almost dark.

We began to see these huge stick looking figures darting past the picture window out front and then the back windows, and the kitchen door and windows. There was more than one of them.

All the guns got loaded and we were put into the middle of the house. There was clawing at the roof, siding and windows. This went on for hours and I finally just went to sleep. I was hot and probably in shock so I just went to sleep.

Everything eventually went quiet and it stayed that way for hours. I woke up needing to go to the bathroom. There was a window so someone had to stand there with a gun as I went.

Something came to the window and began to claw at it. By then I didn’t know what this was or why it was happening. I was given a magazine and put my whole mind on it and read. When I did this all stopped outside. I got tired and quit doing that while wondering what was going on and it began all over again.

We could all hear the tin being torn off the roof. I went back to sleep and everything was quiet the rest of what was left of the night.

The next day we packed up and started home. Dad asked before we got to the bridge if we’d be OK crossing it. I looked in my mind and saw it was OK. They wanted to know this over and over again. I was sure.

On the Ohio side of the river my brothers and sisters began to talk about what was going on. Something big swooped down at the car and began to claw at it. This happened off and on all the way home. We could hear this thing holding on to the top of the car!!

Once home I was sent to my room and told to go to sleep. Well, I didn’t. I was listening to what they were saying downstairs. One of my brothers ran downstairs and said there was noise on the roof. Dad told them to go outside and look to see what it was.

My brother returned pale looking and said it was a huge bird like thing with glowing red eyes. Dad said that wasn’t funny. My brother said he knew it wasn’t but this was true. Dad went out and sure enough he came back to say yes it was true.

They were all upset and I was up under the roof that was being torn off. My family was watching shingles coming through the air and landing on the ground out back and front. They got the guns out and I was told to lay down and go to sleep. It was OK for awhile but then it started again.

My brother came to me and said to look out my window. He told me to look at these little red glowing lights outside. They were eyes. I could see huge spindly wings out there walking around on the ground. It was like they were on their elbows. It was really creepy.

Dad took a gun out and then I heard him yell to me saying they were going to hurt him if I didn’t say he never hurt me. I said I wasn’t allowed to tell lies and he asked me nicely to be nice for him. So, I did.

I told them I was OK and I was with my siblings who were older and took care of me. He was scared and we could see several of them out there near him. We saw him back slowly into the door.
I felt they were in my mind asking what I wanted most in life. I remember thinking I just wanted to run around and have fun like other kids did.

I went to sleep and it was quiet until about 2 am. I woke up to the sound of my older brother’s voice asking what we were doing outside with these things and what were they. How did I get outside? My younger brother was behind me and we were running through what I thought was a tunnel on the lawn. I woke up more and saw it was these things lined up with their wings arched over like a tunnel and we’d been running through them!

I was horrified and our older brother saw this. He said dad had sent him out and dad was hanging out the window telling us quietly that it was OK, we weren’t in trouble but we should come in because it’s really late.

I looked at my brothers and asked what was wrong with dad. The older brother said dad was really scared to come outside because those things wanted to hurt him.

I asked how he could tell! He laughed a little and said he’d never seen him like this before and said he’d woke him up and “asked” him to go out and get us back in the house. We both dropped our jaws and said, “He asked you?”

We went inside and went right to bed before we got beat for it. We never did and the next day it was like no one wanted to talk about it.

My younger brother kept asking what those things were and wasn’t it funny that dad was so scared of them. My head hurt. I was diagnosed with traumatic childhood amnesia in 1983 but I have a photographic memory.

Okay, so I had no memory of these things until some years later. It was difficult to wrap my head around all of this, still is.

Earlier this year, end of Feb. 2011 I started to again hear the voice of this thing in my mind. It showed me ripples in a pond. I didn’t know what that was supposed to be for and I was busy working so I pushed it out of my mind.

My mind was being pulled to Middletown, Ohio on the map. I thought OK, what’s this about, spit it out, I’m pretty busy these days. No explanation.

This continued and still is happening even now. I was looking at other things about archaeology and up comes information about the thunderbird, dragons, snakes, and how it applies to Native American culture. I’m Shawnee and a direct descendant of Tecumseh. I’ve still got this unknown ‘man’ in my mind and he seems to want to chat but I’m thinking these things eat people and people have been known to disappear after seeing these things. I’m thinking I was lucky and blessed to be alive after seeing it that close twice!

So, Lon, if you would, say a prayer for me. I’m still very busy with work, photography for home inspections and craft work I have at home. Still from time to time this voice is in my mind.

This thing wants to be friends with me but there seems to be something important he wants to convey to me.

I just keep shoving it out of my head. I’m not so sure this thing isn’t evil. I mean it did kill a big dog over in W.Va. in 1967. It or they tore it into tiny bits and there wasn’t much left of it.

If you’d like to turn this into a report I’m sure it would take a lot of work to take out anything that would ID me in any way. I want people to be helped by knowing that these things are real. I can’t explain what they are about but I know they are real. Thanks. DR

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NOTE: Around the same time DR forwarded this account, I had received 3 very interesting Mothman-like encounter reports from the Cincinnati metro area. Lon

The Mothman Prophecies

Your articles about strange occurrences in West Virginia. The Mothman encounters stirred memories of an incident that took place when I was a girl.

The strange incident took place near Powellton, WV in December 1934 – I was 8 years old. At the time, my father worked for Elkhorn-Piney Coal. He and the other miners from our area would take a train to the mine each day.

The day before Christmas Eve my father mentioned an unusual sighting he and the others on the train had while traveling back home that evening. As they looked out towards the east they noticed a very large bird flying above the trees. My father was a very conservative man and didn’t believe in any nonsense but this large bird really caught his attention. He described it as a freakish sized owl very dark in color. It also seemed to look at the train as it flew over the trees. Nobody on the train could figure out what it was. The mere fact that my father even mentioned it suggested that it must have been an extraordinary sight.

My father was scheduled off from work for 3 days during the Christmas holiday. On December 27th, he was getting ready for work but said he felt poorly. My mother was concerned because he had a high fever and awful chills. She insisted he stay home and telephoned the doctor. My father was reluctant on staying home and put up a good argument but my mother was not going to back down. She put him to bed and waited for the doctor.

Well, we waited for hours until the telephone rang. The operator told my mother that the doctor was at McDunn – there had been a horrible train explosion. She couldn’t talk but said that the doctor’s wife asked her to contact us. My mother was pale when she told my father what had happened. I remember they both started praying and crying. For years both of them thought the large bird was an angel sent by God as a warning and that my father’s life was saved for a reason.

My father never went back to the mine. It turned out that he had contracted polio though he was very lucky since he survived it with only a slight limp. We soon moved away to a small town in Kentucky where my father found the calling and become a Pentecostal preacher. He told his story of survival to anyone who would listen until the day he died. Thank you sir, Emma

NOTE: the disaster that Emma was referring to was the Locomotive Boiler Explosion at McDunn. On December 27, 1934, a boiler in a locomotive hauling mine workers at McDunn in Fayette County, WV, exploded, resulting in the death of eighteen miners. Interesting story…Lon

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The witness from Communion With The Mothman wanted to answer inquiries from the readers:

Lon…I saw the comments to my post and wanted to respond without them knowing who I am. If it’s OK with you I’ll give you the responses and maybe you can post them.

First of all, the one said “..wait a minute. It was December when this happened…seems a bit odd to be camping at that time of the year.” My response is that it was unseasonably warm and we were coming from an area that was hours away to the north. We also were used to camping in all kinds of weather and enjoyed doing this. In the 1960’s a lot of people did this all year long. The other two remarked that the post was hard to follow, jumping around a lot. If they would tell me what they needed to know perhaps I could answer that for them.

The first time I talked to a neurologist about my childhood and how bad it really was, they wanted to know how I and the others had survived it all. I’ve had traumatic childhood amnesia most of my life and most of that “wasn’t” caused by my home life. This is what my doctors told me. They knew what I’m just now dealing with in the form of memories that are resurfacing. People don’t understand when they read something for fun. They don’t understand that this did happen. This creature is real and there’s more than one of them. Lon, thanks for being understanding