What may well have been the most notorious of all “scares” involving reptilian beings, involved a combined “invasion” of pterodactylin-hominoid “Mothmen” and “Men In Black”. These creatures have been referred to as Mothmen, Winged Dracos, and Winged Serpents, depending on the source involved. They reportedly terrorized a particular area in West Virginia, according to John A. Keel, in the mid-1960’s. Keel is convinced that these malevolent entities were involved in the tragic “silver bridge” disaster in which several UFO witnesses perished, based on certain strange circumstances surrounding the event. In his book ‘THE MOTHMEN PROPHECIES’ (Signet Books., N.Y.) Keel reveals the following:
“The moment I met Mrs. Hyre’s niece Connie Carpenter in 1966, I knew she was telling the truth because her eyes were reddened, watery, and almost swollen shut. I had seen these symptoms many times in my treks around the country investigating UFO reports. Witnesses who were unlucky enough to have a close encounter with an unidentified flying object, usually a dazzlingly brilliant aerial light, are exposed to actinic rays…ultraviolet rays…which can cause ‘eyeburn,’ medically known as KLIEG CONJUNCTIVITIS. These are the same kind of rays that tan your hide at the beach. If you lie in the bright sun without protecting your eyes you can get conjunctivitis. Whatever they are, UFOs radiate intense actinic rays. There are now thousands of cases in which witnesses suffered eye-burns and temporary eye damage…even temporary blindness…after viewing a strange flying light in the night sky.
“…What puzzled me about Connie’s case, however, was that she had not seen a splendid luminous flying saucer. She had seen a giant ‘winged man’ in broad daylight.
“According to her story, Connie, a shy, sensitive eighteen- year-old, was driving home from church at 10:30 A.M. on Sunday, November 27, 1966, when, as she passed the deserted greens of Mason County Golf Course outside New Haven, West Virginia, she suddenly saw a huge gray figure. It was shaped like a man, she said, but much larger. It was at least SEVEN FEET TALL and very broad. The thing that attracted her attention was not its size but its eyes. IT HAD, SHE SAID, LARGE, ROUND, FIERCELY GLOWING RED EYES THAT FOCUSED ON HER WITH HYPNOTIC EFFECT.
“‘It’s a wonder I didn’t run off the road and have a wreck,’ she commented later.
“As she slowed, her eyes fixed on the apparition, a pair of wings unfolded from its back. They seemed to have a span of about ten feet. It was definitely not an ordinary bird but a MAN-SHAPED THING which rose slowly off the ground, straight up like a helicopter, silently. Its wings did not flap in flight. It headed straight toward Connie’s car, its horrible eyes fixed to her face, then it swooped low over her head as she shoved the accelerator to the floor-boards in utter hysteria.
“OVER ONE HUNDRED PEOPLE WOULD SEE THIS BIZARRE CREATURE THAT WINTER.
“Connie’s conjunctivitis lasted over two weeks, apparently caused by those glowing red eyes. At the time of my first visit to Point Pleasant in 1966 I did not relate the winged weirdo to flying saucers. Later events not only proved that a relationship existed, but that relationship also is a vital clue to the whole mystery.
“Max’s Kansas City is a famous watering hole for New York’s hip crowd. In the summer of 1967 an oddball character wandered into that restaurant noted for its oddball clientele. He was tall and awkward, dressed in an ill-fitting black suit that seemed out of style. His chin came to a sharp point and his eyes bulged slightly like ‘thyroid eyes.’ He sat down in a booth and gestured to the waitress with his long, tapering fingers.
“‘Something to eat,’ he mumbled. The waitress handed him a menu. He stared at it uncomprehendingly, apparently unable to read. ‘Food,’ he said almost pleadingly.
“‘How about a steak?’ she offered.
“‘Good.’
“She brought him a steak with all the trimmings. He stared at it for a long moment and then picked up his knife and fork, glancing around at the other diners. It was obvious he did not know how to handle the implements! The waitress watched him as he fumbled helplessly. Finally she showed him how to cut the steak and spear it with the fork. He sawed away at the meat. Clearly he really was hungry.
“‘Where are you from?’ she asked gently.
“‘Not from here.’
“‘Where?’
“‘Another world.’
“Boy, another put-on artist, she thought to herself. The other waitresses gathered in a corner and watched him as he fumbled with his food, a stranger in a strange land.
“A large white car with a faulty muffler wheezed and rattled up the back street in New Haven, West Virginia, where Connie Carpenter lived, and Jack Brown knocked at her door.
“‘I’m a–a friend of Mary Hyre’s.’
“His strange demeanor and disjointed questions distressed her and disturbed her husband, Keith, and her brother Larry. It quickly became obvious that he was not particularly interested in Connie’s sighting of the man-bird the year before. He seemed more concerned with Mrs. Hyre and my own relationship with her (we were professional friends, nothing more).
“‘What do you think–if–what would Mary Hyre do–if someone told her to stop writing about UFOs?’ he asked.
“‘She’d probably tell them to drop dead.’ Connie replied.
“Most of the questions were stupid, even unintelligible.
After a rambling conversation he drove off into the night in his noisy car. Connie called her aunt immediately, puzzled and upset by the visit. He was such a very odd man, she noted, and he wouldn’t speak at all if you weren’t looking directly into his dark, hypnotic eyes. Connie, Keith and Larry not only noticed his long-fingered hands, but there was also something very peculiar about his ears. They couldn’t say exactly what. But there was something…
“Another kind of Man in Black haunted Brooklyn, New York, in 1877-80. He had wings and performed aerial acrobatics over the heads of the crowds of sunbathers at Coney Island. A Mr. W. H. Smith first reported these strange flights in a letter to the NEW YORK SUN, September 18, 1877. The creature was not a bird, but a ‘winged human(oid) form.’
“This flying ‘man’ became a local sensation and, according to the NEW YORK TIMES, September 12, 1880, ‘many reputable persons’ saw him as he was ‘engaged in flying toward New Jersey.’ He maneuvered at an altitude of about one thousand feet, sporting ‘BATS WINGS’ and making swimminglike movements. Witnesses claimed to have seen his face clearly. He ‘WORE A CRUEL AND DETERMINED EXPRESSION.’ The entire figure was black, standing out sharply against the clear blue sky…
“North American Indians have extensive legends about the Thunderbird, a huge bird said to carry off children and old people. It was accompanied by loud noises, hums, buzzes and, apparently rumbles from the infrasonic and ultrasonic levels. Known as PIASA to the Indians of the Dakotas, it was supposed to have terrifying red eyes and a long tail… a monstrous demon with… bat’s wings, and a body closely in human form.
“…In May 1961, a New York pilot was buzzed by a ‘damned big bird, bigger than an eagle. For a moment I doubted my sanity because it looked more like a pterodactyl out of the prehistoric past.’ The thing had swooped at his plane as he cruised up the Hudson River valley.
“Far away, in the Ohio River valley, another startled pair had an even more breathtaking experience. A woman prominent in civic affairs in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, was driving on Route 2 along the Ohio River with her elderly father. As they passed through a sector on the edge of the park known as the Chief Cornstalk Hunting Grounds, a tall manlike figure suddenly appeared on the road in front of them.
“‘I slowed down,’ she told me years later, ‘and as we got closer we could see that it was much larger than a man. A big gray figure. It stood in the middle of the road. Then a pair of wings unfolded from its back and they practically filled the whole road. It almost looked like a small airplane. Then it took off straight up…disappeared out of sight in seconds. We were both terrified. I stepped on the gas and raced out of there.
“…A businessman in Arlington, Virginia, wrote to me recently, describing an experience he and three friends had in the winter of 1969-69. They were at a farm near Haymarket when they heard a strange rushing sound near a small lake. Intrigued, they set out with flashlights and a couple of dogs to investigate. Suddenly the dogs howled, turned tail, and ran.
There, standing by a tree was a huge dark shadow between eight and twelve feet tall. The quartet scurried back to their car, turned on their lights, and swung toward the shadow. ‘All we saw,’ he reported, ‘was this huge thing with large red-orange eyeballs and winglike arms. We couldn’t get out of there fast enough.'”
Keel goes on to relate the experience of Woodrow Derenberger, who experienced a weird encounter on November 4th (1966?) while driving on Route 7 outside of Parkersburg “when he suddenly felt a tingling sensation in his forehead.” Then thoughts from a being that identified itself as Indrid Cold from the planet ‘Lanulos’ “began to spring full-blown in his mind.” According to Keel:
“Two weeks later, though Woody wasn’t aware of it at the time, two salesmen visited Mineral Wells and went from house to house with their wares. They weren’t very interested in making sales. At one house they offered bibles. At another, hardware. At a third they were ‘Mormon missionaries from Salem, Oregon’ (a UFO wave was taking place in Salem at that time). One man was tall, blond, and looked like a Scandinavian. His partner was short and slight, with pointed features and a dark olive complexion. They asked questions about Woody and were particularly interested in opinions on the validity of his alleged contact…”
“High explosives were manufactured in Point Pleasant during World War II. Seven miles outside of town part of the 2,500-acre McClintic Wildlife Station, an animal preserve and bird sanctuary, was ripped up. MILES OF UNDERGROUND TUNNELS WERE DUG, linking camouflaged buildings and factories. One hundred ‘igloos’ were scattered across the fields and woods–huge concrete domes with heavy steel doors where the finished explosives could be safely stored. Dirt and grass covered the domes so from the air the whole area had a harmless, pastoral appearance. A few scattered buildings linked by improvised dirt roads with no suggestion of all the activity going on below ground. It looked like nothing more than what it was supposed to be, a haven for birds and animals in the Ohio River valley. “After the war most of the explosives were carted away. The factories were dismantled. THE ENTRANCES AND EXITS OF THE TUNNELS WERE PLUGGED WITH THICK CONCRETE SLABS. Some of the igloos were given to the Mason County government as possible storage vaults. They still stand empty. Others were sold to the Trojan-U.S. Powder Co. and the LFC Chemical Co. Some were leased to American Cyanamid.
“…At 11:30 P.M. on the night of November 15, 1966, two young couples from Point Pleasant, Mr. and Mrs. Roger Scarberry and Mr. and Mrs. Steve Mallette, were driving through the TNT area in the Scarberry’s 1957 Chevy. They were looking for friends but no one seemed to be out that night. All of the twisting back roads were deserted. The few homes scattered among the igloos were dark.
“Roger, then a strapping blond eighteen-year-old, was driving. They aimlessly made the circuit of the roads around the igloos, returning to the old generator plant near the unlocked gate. As they pulled alongside the plant, Linda Scarberry gasped. They all looked into the blackness and saw two bright red circles. They were about two inches in diameter and six inches apart. Roger slammed on his brakes.
“‘What is it?’ Mary Mallette, a strikingly attractive brunette, cried from the back seat.
“The lights bobbed away from the building and the startled foursome saw they were attached to some huge animal.
“‘IT WAS SHAPED LIKE A MAN BUT BIGGER,’ Roger said later.
‘MAYBE SIX AND A HALF OR SEVEN FEET TALL. AND IT HAD BIG WINGS FOLDED AGAINST ITS BACK.’
“‘But it was those eyes that got us,’ Linda declared. ‘It had two big eyes like automobile reflectors.’
“‘They were hypnotic,’ Roger continued. ‘For a minute we could only stare at it. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.’
“It was grayish in color and walked on sturdy manlike legs. IT TURNED SLOWLY AND SHUFFLED TOWARD THE DOOR OF THE GENERATOR PLANT WHICH WAS AJAR AND HANGING ON ITS HINGES.
“‘Let’s get out of here!’ Steve yelled.
“Roger stepped on the gas and they shot through the gates, spun onto the exit road, and headed for Route 62…”
“At 7:15 A.M. on November 25, a young shoe salesman named Thomas Ury was driving along Route 62 just north of the TNT area when he noticed a tall, gray manlike figure standing in a field by the road. ‘Suddenly it spread a pair of wings,’ Ury said, ‘and took off straight up, like a helicopter.
“‘It veered over my convertible and began going in circles three telephone poles high.’
“He stepped on the gas as the creature zoomed down over his vehicle. ‘It kept flying right over my car even though I was doing seventy-five.’
“Mr. Ury sped into Point Pleasant and went straight to the sheriff’s office thoroughly panicked. ‘I never saw anything like it,’ he confided to Mrs. Hyre later. ‘I was so scared I just couldn’t go to work that day. The thing had a wingspan every bit of ten feet. It could be a bird, but I certainly never saw one like it. I was afraid it was going to come right down right on top of me.’
“The old familiar symptom, unreasonable terror, took hold of him. ‘I’ve never had that feeling before. A weird kind of fear,’ he said. ‘That fear gripped you and held you. Somehow, be best way to explain it would be to say that the whole thing just wasn’t right. I know that may not make sense, but that’s the only way I can put into words what I felt.’
John Keel related still other incidents of encounters with these fearful pterodactylin hominoids…
“‘Look at that crazy character coming downwind in that plane,’ Eddie Adkins commented. He and four other men were standing on the field of the Gallipolis, Ohio, airport, just across the river from Point Pleasant on Sunday, December 4, 1966. “At 3 P.M. that afternoon a large winged form came cruising majestically along the Ohio River, just behind the airport. The pilots later estimated that it was about three hundred feet in the air and was traveling about seventy miles an hour. As it drew closer they realized it was not a plane but was some kind of enormous bird with an unusually long neck. It seemed to be turning its head from side to side as if it were taking in the scenery (Note: Scientists believe that saurian-reptilian pterodactyls used their heads and neck as a ‘rudder’ while in flight, moving them from side to side, constantly readjusting in order to remain aloft – Branton). The wings were not flapping. “‘MY GOD! IT’S SOMETHING PREHISTORIC!’ one of the men cried.
“Everett Wedge grabbed his camera and sprinted to his small plane. By the time he was airborne the giant creature had vanished somewhere down river.”
John Keel personally investigated the TNT area and claimed that in one area an irrational “fear” gripped him. He would step out of the large circle and the sensation would cease. He again entered it and soon the induced atmosphere of fear and terror would almost overcome him until he was forced to leave it. Could this have been the site of an underground lair? Remember, the entire area is honeycombed with tunnels which have for years been sealed off to the public. Keel related other accounts of encounters where witnesses saw these pterodactylin ‘mothmen’, one of which entered one of the old buildings that led to the tunnels. Investigators followed the creature into the dome but the winged reptile seemed to have vanished. Keel related other incidents involving the ‘Men In Black’ (who seemed to have a definite connection with the so-called ‘mothmen’) Referring to the investigations of a fellow researcher by the name of Dan Drisin, he reveals:
“…During his second visit to Point Pleasant Dan uncovered some Mothmen witnesses I had missed. And he also came across some more baffling Men-In-Black-type reports. People up in the back hills has been seeing mysterious unmarked panel trucks which sometimes parked for hours in remote spots. There seemed to be several of these trucks in the area and the rumor was that they belonged to the air force. Men in neat coveralls were seen monkeying with telephone and power lines but no one questioned them.
“A woman living alone on an isolated island north of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, had two curious encounters with the same kind of beings. She had moved to a tiny one-room cabin on Keats Island in October 1967 and was soon seeing UFO lights nightly. On January 29, 1968, following a close sighting of ‘a long dark body with dim red and yellow lights at both ends,’ she was surprised by two visitors. Both wore ‘neat, dark coveralls’ and claimed to be employees of the hydroelectric company. They offered to help her put up a stovepipe. The younger of the two climbed on the roof of her cabin while the other handed him the pipes. ‘I could hear the man on the ground directing him and the one on the roof would answer, “Yes, Master”.’
“After the pipe was installed, the pair joined her for tea. They seemed ‘a little stiff.’ When they left she wondered how they had known she was there because ‘the cabin couldn’t be seen from the road (and) the stove was out when they arrived, so there was no smoke from the chimney.’
“On May 2, she again encountered two men. ‘One was the ‘boss’ Hydro man in his neat coveralls,’ she reported (CANADIAN UFO REPORT, #13, 1972-73). ‘The other was different, younger and about 19-20. As I entered the path, the boss man indicated with his hand for the young man to get behind him. They got well off the path and waited for me, the young man a little behind his boss. The fellow stared at me as if I were some kind of freak…’
“This time she didn’t invite them for tea. One odd thing she noticed during both meetings was their slow, careful way of walking. They looked at their feet and stepped uncertainly. “The next day a jeep came along the road, containing four men inspecting lines… ‘carelessly dressed, workaday men, none in coveralls. The boss wasn’t obviously so. They expressed no surprise at seeing me there, no concern or any particular interest. I told them two of their men had already been around the day before, inspecting the lines. They assured me yesterday’s men weren’t Hydro men, that somebody had been “pulling my leg.”‘
“Somebody was also pulling a lot of legs in cosmopolitan Long Island. In West Virginia I had heard some stories about three men who looked ‘like Indians’ and were accompanied by a fourth man, more normal-looking and very shabbily dressed in contrast to the other three. So I was nonplused when I heard identical descriptions from people on Long Island.
“An elderly woman who lived alone in a house near the summit of Mount Misery, the highest point on Long Island, had received a visit from this quartet in early April 1967, immediately after a severe rainstorm.
“‘They had high cheekbones and very red faces, like a bad sunburn,’ she told me. ‘They were very polite but they said my land belonged to their tribe and they were going to get it back. What frightened me was their feet. They didn’t have a car…they must have walked up that muddy hill…but their shoes were spotlessly clean. There was no trace of mud or water where they walked in my house.’
“That same week another visitor came to Mount Misery. This was a woman with striking white hair who claimed to represent a local newspaper. She carried a book ‘like a big ledger’ and asked the witness a number of personal questions about her family background. When I later checked with the newspaper I found they employed no one of that description.
“The local Mount Misery expert was Miss Jane P. Paro, a radio personality then with station WBAB in Babylon, New York. Miss Paro is a dark-haired, dark-eyed young lady with a soft, haunting voice. At that time she conducted an interview show, largely devoted to the historical psychic lore of the region. Soon after she reported some UFO sightings around Mount Misery she began to receive all manner of crank calls, both at the station and on her UNLISTED home phone. METALLIC VOICES ordered her to meet them on ‘the Mount’ (she didn’t go).
“…Mount Misery is a heavily wooded hill with a few narrow dirt roads slicing through it and a number of large mansions set back among the trees. The late Henry Stimson, secretary of war during World War II, maintained a lavish estate on the summit. For decades the Mount was known as a haunted place, THE SITE OF A NUMBER OF MYSTERIOUS DEATHS AND DISAPPEARANCES. In the spring of 1967, young couples necking on the back roads began to see low- flying UFOs, particularly around a field that was used as a junkyard for old cars. Others claimed to see a giant hairy monster with gleaming red eyes…”