Earlier Mothman Reports
- Possibly the earliest report comes from a prominent West Virginia woman who preferred to maintain her anonymity. According to John Keel, the woman was driving through the Chief Cornstalk Hunting Grounds with her aged father late one night in the early 1960s when she noticed what appeared to be a man standing in the middle of the road some distance ahead. As she neared the figure she quickly realized that it was much too large to be a man. Whatever it was, it suddenly unfolded from its back two huge wings which nearly spanned the entire road. The woman described it as looking "almost...like a small airplane." Before she could make any sense of the situation the thing took off, straight up, and disappeared.
Artist's conception of the creature that menaced a group of teenagers in Kent, England in 1963. From the book The Field Guide to Extraterrestrials by Patrick Huyghe. Illustration by Harry Trumbore |
- On the night of November 16, 1963, nearly three years to the day before the Mothman "flap" erupted in the Ohio River Valley, four teenagers, including one John Flaxton and another by the name of Mervyn Hutchinson, were walking down a dark counry lane in Hythe, Kent, England, when Flaxton pointed out an unusually bright star which seemed to be dropping from the night sky. It soon appeared that the red and yellow colored "star" was heading straight for them and the group began to feel uneasy. Luckily the light stopped, briefly hovered over some trees, and then disappeared behind them. The four took this opportunity to take flight.
As they ran they readily became aware that an oval-shaped object was keeping pace with them about 250 feet away. The object appeared to be about 15-20 feet across, gave off a golden light (though it was clearly a solid object), and floated about ten feet above the ground. When they stopped, the light stopped. When they ran, it continued its pursuit. At one point the object slipped behind some trees and seconds later a black figure that was generally human in shape lurched out and headed in the group's direction. While the being appeared to have no head whatsoever, it was the proud owner of a pair of huge bat-like wings and, according to Hutchinson, a pair of webbed feet to match. Needless to say the group turned tail and ran for their lives, not looking back until they had covered a great deal of ground. When they stopped, the strange creature was, thankfully, nowhere to be seen.
Investigators who examined the area a full week later found a great deal of flattened vegetation in addition to enormous footprints two feet long, nine inches across, and an inch deep.