The moth man cometh
With its winged aliens and ghastly premonitions, can The Mothman Prophecies call itself a true story? Paranormal expert Bob Rickard reports
Friday February 22, 2002
The Guardian
Imagine driving through the night to discover that you are not where you thought you were; in fact you are hundreds of miles away with no recollection of how you got there. Imagine knocking at the first house you see, only to be greeted by an armed and angry man; you've never seen him before but he accuses you of harassing him on many previous visits. Imagine being drawn into a community frightened by strange encounters with a giant winged humanoid with eyes like saucers, where people have disturbing and accurate precognition of disasters. Imagine that you are alone in your motel room and an inhuman voice on the phone seems to utter your unspoken thoughts. You might think you are going mad. This is the predicament of John Klein (Richard Gere) in The Mothman Prophecies, a new movie from Arlington Road director Mark Pelling ton. It claims to be based on a true story, but what are we to make of it?
During the early 1960s, investigators were drawn to the Ohio river valley in West Virginia by reports of UFO sightings. Even more bizarre were the associated sightings of huge, winged humanoid creatures which some thought might be alien visitors. Loren Coleman's recent study Mothman and Other Curious Encounters (Paraview, 2002) lists 26 such sightings over 1966-67, corresponding to the period that the original Mothman scared the residents of Point Pleasant, a small town on the West Virginia side of the river, linked to Ohio by the Silver bridge, a prominent landmark. One of those investigators was John Alva Keel, a veteran newspaper and radio reporter with a wide-ranging interest in the occult and UFOs. Richard Hatem's film script is loosely based on the events described in Keel's 1975 book the original Mothman Prophecies.
The incident that characterises the Mothman phenomenon occurred at midnight on November 15 1966, on a derelict munitions complex, north of Point Pleasant. It was, by all accounts, a wooded wilderness, perfect for courting couples. On this occasion, two couples (in the same car) became aware of a huge, dark, man-like shape with glowing, red eyes in the shadow of a building. One of the witnesses said later: "It had big wings folded against its back." The eyes were compelling and hypnotic: "For a minute we could only stare at it. I couldn't take my eyes off it."
When the creature lurched towards them, the teenagers fled. Whatever it was rose straight up, bat-wings unfurled, and glided after them as they drove back to town. At some point it turned back. The terrified youths blurted their story to a deputy, who knew them well. Later, witnesses told of being visited by men they took to be government agents, who warned them not to tell what they had seen. Not until Keel showed up, a few days later, did any of the witnesses feel anyone would take them seriously.
In the film, Klein is modelled on Keel, the investigative reporter. He is a Washington Post journalist who ends up in Point Pleasant with no recollection of how he got there. Ufologists refer to these lapses in consciousness as "missing time" and it has been a feature of many accounts claiming abduction by aliens.
Where Keel recorded a full cast of characters - witnesses, frightened and confused by their other-worldly experiences of Mothman and other "paranormal" experiences - Pellington's film telescopes a whole range of strange phenomena on to a few main characters. While this intensifies the story, it does not ring true to life. However, as Klein investigates, the weirdness seems to toy with him almost as though it were, itself, a living thing or process, leading him on and then confounding him. This is an experience that any investigator into strange phenomena will recognise with a shiver.
In reality, the Silver bridge collapsed, spectacularly, a year later, just before Christmas 1967. It fed directly into town and a traffic light, stuck on red, caused a line of vehicles to back up across the bridge. It is believed that metal fatigue caused one of the rigid suspension chains to shear and the structure, including one massive tower, collapsed in minutes, falling 100 feet to the icy water below. Forty-six people died; two of them were never found.
When the real John Keel learned of the calamity, he made the book out of his notes, spun around the idea that the red-eyed demon and other happenings were not separate phenomena but all interconnected somehow as omens of the coming catastrophe. Keel had a distinctive theory that powerful "ultraterrestrial" beings control our perception of reality, but his 1975 book is remembered as the first to reveal the problems facing an investigator when he loses detachment and becomes personally involved in the unfolding drama.
Director Pellington was attracted to this human dilemma; he told me that previous scripts of Keel's book were too literal. He was more interested in the psychological predicament of the witnesses than in making a film about UFOs or an alien creature and so rational or materialistic explanations are glossed over. In the film, Klein is tormented by the death of his wife from a brain tumour. Before she died, she had visions of a sinister shape with glowing red eyes, but even the pragmatic reporter cannot accept that all the witnesses are afflicted with similar tumours.
If not by coincidence or pathology, then, can we explain what happened at Point Pleasant by appeal to "mass hysteria"? History is rich in examples - from medieval dancing manias to Orson Welles's 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast - and psychiatrists might recognise in the Mothman story familiar elements: the fugues, the hypnotic compulsions, the fears of persecution, the psychotic illusions of voices from inanimate objects. Others have sought explanation in the idea of a secret military mind-control experiment, a curse by the area's last Shawnee chieftain or, as Coleman suggests, a misperceived or unidentified animal. But despite regular reinvestigation, the mystery of what happened remains unsolved 35 years later.
Whatever the commercial success of the film, it is an intelligent and creative exploration of the slippery, dream-like world of those who "get too close". This is not just another buff of the X Files formula and there are no UFOs or computer-generated monsters here. Producer Gary Lucchesi called their approach Hitchcockian: "It's what happens when sane, reasonable people are faced with the unbelievable." Every witness sees something different and yet these variations are interconnected. This variance - or adaptation - is what confounds rationalists and sceptics about accounts of the paranormal.
The author is founder-editor of Fortean Times (www.forteantimes.com). The Mothman Prophecies is released on March 1.
With its winged aliens and ghastly premonitions, can The Mothman Prophecies call itself a true story? Paranormal expert Bob Rickard reports
Friday February 22, 2002
The Guardian
Imagine driving through the night to discover that you are not where you thought you were; in fact you are hundreds of miles away with no recollection of how you got there. Imagine knocking at the first house you see, only to be greeted by an armed and angry man; you've never seen him before but he accuses you of harassing him on many previous visits. Imagine being drawn into a community frightened by strange encounters with a giant winged humanoid with eyes like saucers, where people have disturbing and accurate precognition of disasters. Imagine that you are alone in your motel room and an inhuman voice on the phone seems to utter your unspoken thoughts. You might think you are going mad. This is the predicament of John Klein (Richard Gere) in The Mothman Prophecies, a new movie from Arlington Road director Mark Pelling ton. It claims to be based on a true story, but what are we to make of it?
During the early 1960s, investigators were drawn to the Ohio river valley in West Virginia by reports of UFO sightings. Even more bizarre were the associated sightings of huge, winged humanoid creatures which some thought might be alien visitors. Loren Coleman's recent study Mothman and Other Curious Encounters (Paraview, 2002) lists 26 such sightings over 1966-67, corresponding to the period that the original Mothman scared the residents of Point Pleasant, a small town on the West Virginia side of the river, linked to Ohio by the Silver bridge, a prominent landmark. One of those investigators was John Alva Keel, a veteran newspaper and radio reporter with a wide-ranging interest in the occult and UFOs. Richard Hatem's film script is loosely based on the events described in Keel's 1975 book the original Mothman Prophecies.
The incident that characterises the Mothman phenomenon occurred at midnight on November 15 1966, on a derelict munitions complex, north of Point Pleasant. It was, by all accounts, a wooded wilderness, perfect for courting couples. On this occasion, two couples (in the same car) became aware of a huge, dark, man-like shape with glowing, red eyes in the shadow of a building. One of the witnesses said later: "It had big wings folded against its back." The eyes were compelling and hypnotic: "For a minute we could only stare at it. I couldn't take my eyes off it."
When the creature lurched towards them, the teenagers fled. Whatever it was rose straight up, bat-wings unfurled, and glided after them as they drove back to town. At some point it turned back. The terrified youths blurted their story to a deputy, who knew them well. Later, witnesses told of being visited by men they took to be government agents, who warned them not to tell what they had seen. Not until Keel showed up, a few days later, did any of the witnesses feel anyone would take them seriously.
In the film, Klein is modelled on Keel, the investigative reporter. He is a Washington Post journalist who ends up in Point Pleasant with no recollection of how he got there. Ufologists refer to these lapses in consciousness as "missing time" and it has been a feature of many accounts claiming abduction by aliens.
Where Keel recorded a full cast of characters - witnesses, frightened and confused by their other-worldly experiences of Mothman and other "paranormal" experiences - Pellington's film telescopes a whole range of strange phenomena on to a few main characters. While this intensifies the story, it does not ring true to life. However, as Klein investigates, the weirdness seems to toy with him almost as though it were, itself, a living thing or process, leading him on and then confounding him. This is an experience that any investigator into strange phenomena will recognise with a shiver.
In reality, the Silver bridge collapsed, spectacularly, a year later, just before Christmas 1967. It fed directly into town and a traffic light, stuck on red, caused a line of vehicles to back up across the bridge. It is believed that metal fatigue caused one of the rigid suspension chains to shear and the structure, including one massive tower, collapsed in minutes, falling 100 feet to the icy water below. Forty-six people died; two of them were never found.
When the real John Keel learned of the calamity, he made the book out of his notes, spun around the idea that the red-eyed demon and other happenings were not separate phenomena but all interconnected somehow as omens of the coming catastrophe. Keel had a distinctive theory that powerful "ultraterrestrial" beings control our perception of reality, but his 1975 book is remembered as the first to reveal the problems facing an investigator when he loses detachment and becomes personally involved in the unfolding drama.
Director Pellington was attracted to this human dilemma; he told me that previous scripts of Keel's book were too literal. He was more interested in the psychological predicament of the witnesses than in making a film about UFOs or an alien creature and so rational or materialistic explanations are glossed over. In the film, Klein is tormented by the death of his wife from a brain tumour. Before she died, she had visions of a sinister shape with glowing red eyes, but even the pragmatic reporter cannot accept that all the witnesses are afflicted with similar tumours.
If not by coincidence or pathology, then, can we explain what happened at Point Pleasant by appeal to "mass hysteria"? History is rich in examples - from medieval dancing manias to Orson Welles's 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast - and psychiatrists might recognise in the Mothman story familiar elements: the fugues, the hypnotic compulsions, the fears of persecution, the psychotic illusions of voices from inanimate objects. Others have sought explanation in the idea of a secret military mind-control experiment, a curse by the area's last Shawnee chieftain or, as Coleman suggests, a misperceived or unidentified animal. But despite regular reinvestigation, the mystery of what happened remains unsolved 35 years later.
Whatever the commercial success of the film, it is an intelligent and creative exploration of the slippery, dream-like world of those who "get too close". This is not just another buff of the X Files formula and there are no UFOs or computer-generated monsters here. Producer Gary Lucchesi called their approach Hitchcockian: "It's what happens when sane, reasonable people are faced with the unbelievable." Every witness sees something different and yet these variations are interconnected. This variance - or adaptation - is what confounds rationalists and sceptics about accounts of the paranormal.
The author is founder-editor of Fortean Times (www.forteantimes.com). The Mothman Prophecies is released on March 1.
