MOTHMAN FLUTTERINGS

I started a new blog; only to archive my own UFO and related experiences. More on what the blog is, and why, at Saucer Sightings. One entry was a memory that was so real, yet how could it be? Here’s a little bit:

I look up at the ceiling, and it opens up, opening from the center, two halves moving back to expose the nighttime sky, which is beautiful, full of inky blue and shimmering stars. I think this is a pretty neat trick. A giant eagle flies down from above; the eagle is so large, it fills the sky, fills the open ceiling. It comes down straight at me. I don’t like this too much. I’m not exactly frightened, but it’s not comfortable. The eagle takes me up into a silver disk type thing.

I found this image in a couple of places on-line, including the Coast to Coast site, where a listener had sent in this info about the illustration:

Cleveland Press (a now defunct newspaper) printed back in late 1950’s. This was from the “True Life Adventures” (non-fictional) put out by Disney.

I like the fact that Disney put this in the non-fiction, “True Life Adventure” category…

Researcher Stan Gordon (whose site you should visit if you haven’t already) has a lot of interesting articles on his site; here’s one on a sighting in West Virginia of a possible Thunderbird:
Was This A Close Encounter With A Thunderbird?

I’ve been having fun, and just seeing where this takes me, playing in e-book world. You can download, for free, an e-book of UFO-Mary.

Also available is McMinnville, Oregon UFO: Festivals and Hoaxes.

Visit my e-book storefront on Lulu.com for more.

A comment left here on Mothman Flutterings by “llk36″ asked if I was familiar with Pazuzu, the god of Assyrian and Babylonian mythology. According to Wikipedia Pazuzu is an evil god, although he does act as a protector at times:

Pazuzu was said to be invoked in amulets which combat the powers of the malicious goddess, and hated rival, Lamashtu, who was believed to cause harm to mother and child during childbirth. Although Pazuzu is, himself, an evil spirit, he drives away other evil spirits, thus protecting humans against plagues and misfortunes. ~ (Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pazuzu)

Lamashtu bears a resemblance to the deity Lilith.

I don’t remember if Andrew Colvin mentions Pazuzu in Mothman Photographer’s II, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he had. I’ll ask him at his forum on Yahoo: Mothmans_photographer.

Pazuzu reminded of Mothman in some ways. I wonder if both Pazuzu and Lamashtu aren’t depicted somewhat simplistically here; (as Lilith often is) (for that matter, so is Mothman at times.)

llk36, who left the comment also mentions that Pazuzu was depicted in The Exorcist. I’ve seen that movie a couple of times; vaguely recall that winged statue and the shot of the bright red yellow light; it was over 30 years since I’ve seen the movie. I guess I completely missed or forget this part:

Pazuzu first appeared in William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist in 1971.[1] The novel is about a young girl, Regan MacNeil, possessed by a demon. The demon is later revealed to be Pazuzu, the demon whose statue was found in northern Iraq by Father Merrin.

I just assumed it was the plain ol’ devil Devil, lol. All the same I suppose.
Here’s why I remember that shot of the statue and light:

Two years after the novel was published, Pazuzu debuted on the silver screen in The Exorcist. The film was adapted from Blatty’s novel, who wrote the screenplay for the film himself. In the beginning of the film, Father Merrin seeks Pazuzu in Iraq, where he finds a ruined statue of the demon.

More from Wikipedia:

Pazuzu is also a figure in Dungeons and Dragons: In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy roleplaying game, Pazuzu is a powerful demon prince, called the Prince of the Lower Aerial Kingdoms. He rules the skies above all layers of the Abyss. He is sometimes known as Pazrael or Pazuzeus.

Well, after surfing images and info on Pazuzu, I’m feeling a bit creeped out and unwholesome. And I don’t get a “mothman hit” from it, although there are some parallels.

One last thing; according to llk36, Walt Disney died the same day of the first reported Mothman sighting, which was Dec 15 1966. I don’t know why that would be relevant, except, that it just does, being Disney, as well as Mothman being a messenger of death. It also seems to me Colvin mentions this in Mothman’s Photographer II but that’s something else I’ll have to ask.

I was browsing through Ebay a few moments ago, and came across a book titled “White Things: West Virginia’s Weird Monsters” by Kurt McCoy. Chapter 8 is titled “The Ghost of Mothman.” It’s 118 pages.

This drawing of a shadow person on the Coast to Coast site has a Mothman type feel to it. Glowing red eyes, black/shadow, night time, bedroom visitation . . . I’m not suggesting shadow entities and Mothman are the same but there is a similarity there that reminded me of Mothman encounters.

I wrote this for American Chronicle, where it appeared in November of 2007. The show MonsterQuest had just aired on episode on thunderbird sightings, and this is what I wrote, inspired by the uber-skeptic mindset:

What is it about those who pathologically debunk just for the hell of it? . . .

We were watching Monster Quest: Birdzilla! last night, when my husband “George” said to me, “Why do some people have this obsessive need to debunk, just for the hell of debunking?”

In particular, George was referring to the segment on the giant bird kite. Disputing the idea there are giant birds (Thunderbirds, dinosaurs, cryptids, condors or wayward monkey eating crowned eagles) a “master kite builder” built a giant black bird kite to show the rest of us we can be fooled.

The kite was very cool. Very cool. As someone who loves kite flying myself, I was enchanted by the kite. It would be great to fly a kite like that! It’d take twenty people, but it looked like great fun.

Before the master kite builder segment, there were the usual witnesses to giant birds, including some interesting footage of a very large bird indeed taken in the 1970s.

Aside from the obvious anti-anomalous perspective — no such thing as giant birds, especially those grabbing up little children — was that tired chronic skeptic refrain about size. We can’t judge things correctly in the sky because … well, we just can’t. Without a reference point, we don’t know how big it is and all the usual excuses.

Except, in the case of the 1970s footage, there were reference points.

Back to Mr. Kite Builder. They go out, fly the kite, and it’s huge. Big black very cool looking bird kite. No reference points, as in trees or buildings; just the black bird agasint the blue sky. Then they asked passersby to estimate how big the bird kite was. The word here is estimate.

And they did, and since they were estimating, responses varied. This, to the pathological debunkers, “proved” that we can’t possibly know what we’re seeing as far as size goes.

Two points seemed to fly right over their heads. (heh) One, all who estimated were in the same ballpark. (Except for one guy, who George laughed at and said “He probably exaggerates about everything.” ) The other point, that was glaringly obvious, was that the bird kite was big. Really, really big. How exactly big? Who knows; unless one can fly and manage to whip out a tape measure while the thing’s flying around, impossible to say. But the obvious fact is that, looking up, that is one big bird up there, and a perfectly reasonable thing to say it was, say, “bigger than a crow.” Or an eagle. Or really, anything most of us in the U.S. has ever seen.

Which should be enough for anyone.

But it’s not enough for those with the pathological need to debunk, who debunk even when there’s no need.

It’s an interesting study in human nature and response to the unusual; observing and musing on why these chronic minded types do what they do. It woudln’t matter much except that it’s often presented disingenuously and so distracts from the real stuff.

By doing mildly interesting things like flying giant bird kites around, no matter how cool they are, the fact of witnesses accounts, of stories, lore, myth and legend, petroglyphs, film footage, and the obvious thing right in front of you (it’s big, damn it) are questioned. In fact, one could say that the reality of the seeming unreality is questioned. Our experiences are questioned. Not only are these things questioned (which isn’t neccesarly a bad thing in itself) but diluted, and reguritated back to us as “nonsense” or “misinterpretations.”

The magicians pulling one over on us aren’t those with tales of the weird, they’re the Pelicanists, the chronic skeptics, the pathological debunkers who pull all kinds of stunts to distract us from what some of us can’t acknowledge.

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Thanksgiving Prayer
Thanksgiving is over, but this is so good and so here it is, a poem by William Burroughs. I’m posting it here because turkey is a winged thing, after all, one we sacrifice, literally, in some sort of act of cultural transubstantian. . . . thanks to Andrew Colvin, for the link, and Adam Gorightly, who posted it on his blog where I found it. Speaking of Colvin, good news — his book Mothman Photographer’s III should be available on amazon.com Christmas Day.