War Liberal Mac Thomason sent along this careful debunking of the Mothman myth, courtesy of Joe Nickell, special to the Skeptical Inquirer (March-April 2002). Here’s a sample:
But what about the red-eyed ‘Mothman’ sightings? The creature at the old munitions area ‘had two big eyes like automobile reflectors,’ and others echoed that description, including one man who, alerted by his dog in the direction of his hay barn, spotted it with a flashlight (Keel 1975, 49, 52).
Revealingly, according to Frank B. Gill’s Ornithology (1994), ‘At night some birds’ eyes shine bright red in the beam of a flashlight or automobile headlights. This “eyeshine” is not the iris color but that of the vascular membrane — the tapetum — showing through the translucent pigment layer on the surface of the retina.’
I’m not going to give away the conclusion Mr. Nickell’s careful investigation leads him to (barn owl!), but I will note that he makes an interesting case for explaining how a group of otherwise reasonable people might confuse an 8-foot human in a trenchcoat for a…well, I’m not going to steal Mr. Nickell’s (barn owl!) thunder.
As the higher order Masons (supposedly) say, “Tyto alba, baby. Recognize.”
Above: Is this fearsome, monkey-faced barn nester — a creature rarely seen by humans (barn owl!), but one that’s known to exist, regardless (hence the photo) — the elusive “Mothman” of Point Pleasant, West Virginia? Well, Special Agent Dana Scully might make such an argument, sure. But then ask yourself: What would Fox Mulder say? Probably something along the lines of, “that’s an interesting theory, Scully. But if you’d take your head out of your ass for just a second, you’d realize that the chances aren’t particularly good that a dozen adults would each confuse a 20-inch bird for a 7-foot high Mothman — not even adult West Virginians. No matter how many cousins they’ve each humped.
Y’know, you can be such a dumbass sometimes, Scully. I mean, an owl. Jesus.”
Mr. Nickell’s piece — while compelling — nevertheless omits many important considerations that could have bolstered his case. For instance, my friend Delroy once took a picture of me with a Polaroid One-Steptrade;, and when the picture developed (a minute or two later; if you shake it, it develops faster!), we both noticed that my eyes were glowing red. Which was really strange, because Delroy swears to this day that my eyes weren’t red the instant before he snapped the shot…
Curioser and curioser…
Anyway, it hasn’t happened since, the eyeshine (we use digital cameras now, anyway), but I attribute my good fortune in that regard to the leeches I employed shortly after the incident to cleanse my blood of demons. Or it could’ve been the small hole I bored into my scalp with a wine key to allow the demons to escape, one or the other.
Let’s see Mr. Nickell account for that with a lot of fancy talk about tapetums and translucent pigment layers.
Speaking of which, you know what’s good? Roasted garlic cloves. They’re spreadable and taste kinda nutty.
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