MOTHMAN FLUTTERINGS

Mike Clelland at hidden experience writes about an interesting dream about an owl, and a hummingbird. Aside from the normal owl-as-symbol-of-esoterica, there seems to be a bit of synchronicity going on with birds in general and windshields. (Visit here to listen to the recent conversation Mike and I had about birds and general weirdness.)

Blog entry from red pill junkie at The Daily Grail about his “mothman moments,” with a nice mention about my article in Darklore II — thank you rp! A “Mothman Moment” at the Sauna.

And a bit of synchronicity for myself; if you read the comments left at his blog, you’ll where he mentions listening to the interiview with Tim Binnall and the “Paranormal Pastor,” who warns against getting too obsessed about the darker side of esoterica. I was just again thinking about that today; I’ve had an idea for some months now about a project — maybe a blog, site, or a book, not sure where I wanted to go — about the “dark side” of one aspect of Forteana. Then thought better of it. I have enough going on and there’s enough dark side stuff on its own to occupy any student of high strangeness.

Lesley, who runs several blogs, like The Debris Field and Beyond the Dial (among others) also writes for UFO Magazine (print) as well as their blog, and a column at Tim Binnall’s Binnall of America: Gray Matters.

Her column this week for Gray Matters is about Mothman. More accurately, a Mothman image. . .

On the Coast to Coast site, is a short entry by “Hal” who shares his photograph of the Mothman statue in Pr. Pleasant, along with his dream of Mothman, and how it was connected to a family incident a few days later.

I’m always interested in images that resonate within me, images that remind me of Mothman. I’ve never seen Mothman of course but for some reason, it seems I share some kind of long distance interest with the Mothman story.

I saw this on the Coast to Coast site; a listener sent in a vivid photograph of the “black angel” that reminded me immediately of Mothman. You can see the photo here.

I followed the link provided and found this; a history of the black angel images in Iowa cemeteries, by paranormal writer Troy Taylor.

A few interesting points that struck me as parallels to Mothman: one of the cemeteries was built on old Native American burial grounds, the Mormons, who have an alien-ET motif in their sacred story, one of the people who commissioned one of the black angels wanted to honor the “visions” her mother had before she died. These visions or dreams were not the usual, mundane dreams but very special, according to a family member:

These supernatural “visitations” were no mere dreams. According to Mrs. Dodge, they were realistic and overwhelming visions about which her daughter Anne stated: “We realized this was no dream, no ordinary occurrence, but an apparition such as appeared to those saints of olden times, who were spiritual seers, holy enough to penetrate the fleshly veil and view spiritual things hidden from the worldly minded.”

I’m not suggesting the black angel statue in Iowa, and these visitations, were Mothman, or, vice versa. But they do share vivid commonalities. And, if one is “legend tripping,” which was the inspiration for the Coast to Coast listener who sent in his photo, the comparisons are not a stretch or pointless exercise. They’re insights into symbols, story, lore, myths, synchronicities, etc. Andrew Colvin discusses this quite a bit in The Mothman’s Photographer.

A phenomena I’ve noticed that occurs frequently since I’ve been exploring Mothman is synchronicity. With most things paranormal, Fortean and UFO, synchronicity plays a large role. But it seems more so, more immediate and more vivid, concerning Mothman.

For example, the other day I kept running into fluttering things; leaves swirling up in my face for no clear reason, light objects fluttering, flitting or flying by me. I had the visceral impression something was sending me a message through these images. This morning I had the same thought as I was driving to work; thinking of the images all around me, and what they might have to say. Listening to the images, instead of using words.

I posted this on my blog Trickster Northwest, but am reposting it here, since it has to do with omens and animals. It’s not Mothman related, or even too esoteric. . .still, there was an overall oddness to the day and the number of animal encounters seemed to be sending us a strong message.

We drove out to the coast today to visit family. On the way out (from Eugene, took Highway 20) we first saw what we thought was a hawk in the road. A bit unusual to see a hawk just standing there in the road; as we got close, it swooped up towards the car. By then we saw it was a turkey vulture, not a hawk.

A little bit later, we saw a coyote run across the road. “Or chupacabra” my husband joked. We have coyotes in the area of course, but rarely see them. In fact, I don’t recall ever seeing one in the daytime; did see one once at night years ago on the McKenzie highway.

When we arrived at my mother’s, we found her sick in bed with a bad cold. One of her dogs was behaving in a way I’d never seen her behave before; she was very protective of mom, barking, growling, standing in the bedroom doorway not letting us pass, etc.

On the way back, we saw more turkey vultures in the same spot, nibbling away at a nutria corpse.

Just a few yards further on, we came this close to hitting a deer. It just ran across the road right in front of us! Literally two seconds sooner and we would have hit it. Thankfully Jim has good reflexes; he slammed on the brakes and the deer bounded off into the fields across the way.

Arriving at the teeny town of Alpine, we do a double take: there’s a woman walking her pet skunk!

Close to Junction City, a car with a horse trailer comes out of a driveway in the other lane, and another car with horse trailer (and with horses) comes out right behind him — swerving madly into our lane! Which meant we had to swerve to avoid getting hit with car, trailers and horses. (Idiot!)

Another odd thing, though not related to animals: the ocean was “booming.” I’ve never heard it boom like that so persistently. . . at first, a few blocks away from the ocean, I thought it was thunder. We have been experiencing thunderstorms in the area. Others told me it wasn’t thunder, but the ocean, but I wasn’t convinced. Later, when we walked down to the beach, we could hear the booming even louder, and it was obvious the sound was most definitely the ocean, not thunder.

What is the significance of all these animal meetings today? None of the things are unusual, but to have them all happen in the same day — a clear message from the four legged ones to be sure. One thing that stands out is a message of close calls . . .hmmm.

Now I just have to figure out what it means.

Image source:

http://pdphoto.org/index.php

I didn’t fully realize at the time why that my title for this blog — Mothman Flutterings — was more fitting than I consciously thought. “Flutterings” — small nebulous tuggings coming up from my subconscious that whisper “Mothman.” Mothman seems to be some kind of symbol to me in a vague way; relating to it poetically, or paranormally poetically, or something. This is all very rambling, I know.

Anyway, in some odd connection to all this, the other day I just “felt” a strangeness surrounding me. Not bad, or negative, but off. I was walking the few blocks to a store in my neighborhood, and a car started to follow me; or so I thought at first. It seemed like it; the car was moving slowly, and wherever I went, the car went. I turned and the driver was a woman, and she didn’t seem to notice me in the least. Nothing strange about the car, either. No Men in Black stuff. As I turned to walk across the gravel part of the sidewalk (such as it is) she kind of drove up onto it, which was a little odd. But again, she didn’t seem to be at all interested in me, so . . . I indulged in that nagging paranormal feeling and kept walking. She drove off.

A few moments later, another car cut across this gravel “sidewalk” that I was walking across. This time the driver was a man. He did glance at me, but was intent on getting to where he was going, which, I assumed, was the busy street he was angling towards. Then he kind of backs up a bit, and seems to follow me, parking just as I walk by. He then gets out and walks to the same store I’m headed towards. A little odd, since he could have kept driving a few more yards and parked closer, but what did I care. His car wasn’t black either; just a kind of an older car. He glanced at me again, and this time, I thought that was strange, he seemed almost mad, or something. He was short, dark complected, had a moustache, and appeared to be in his late fifties, early sixities. I got the vibe he was thinking I had something to do with his parking there.

Later that night, we heard, several times, low flying aircraft and helicopters, unusual for our area.

All this time I’m having that “Mothman tugging at me” feeling, which makes no sense, I know.

Don’t get excited, I’m not suggesting for one minute I was being followed by MIBS or black helicopters. While low flying planes rattling our windows is uncommon, it isn’t unheard of. It was just the overall tone of the day that reminded me that sometimes the most mundane things also act as little nudges towards the shimmery boundaries of “reality.” Maybe that’s what all this “Mothman fluttering” is about, at least in some ways.