The Mothman Prophecies by John A. Keel Page A

explanation. His sister-in-law Gwendoline decided to call the local air force base at Palmero. She spoke to an officer there and he seemed quite interested in her story and asked several questions. An hour later the family received a long-distance phone call from another air force base (none of them could remember the name of the base or the names of the officers when I interviewed them several months later). Each one of them was interviewed at great length by “three or four officers.” They were told that their conversation was being taped, and the questions followed a pattern which suggested the officers were filling out detailed forms on the other end of the line. However, all of them were disappointed to find the air force would not give them any information or answer their own questions.
    Something extraordinary seems to have happened that night. Instead of simply filing a report through normal channels, the officer at the Palmero base may have called Wright-Patterson in Ohio immediately. Officers from Project Blue Book then called the Christiansens for additional details. However, it is puzzling that “three or four different officers” would participate in the questioning. Incidently, these witnesses are above average in income and intelligence and their overall reliability is unquestioned.
    Later that evening as Mrs. Martino, who was spending the night at the Christiansens, was preparing for bed she suddenly heard a loud radio signal … a series of dots and dashes. She knew her brother-in-law had a portable CB (Citizen’s Band) radio and she assumed he had accidentally left it turned on. He and his wife were already in bed and asleep but she didn’t understand the radio and didn’t want to tamper with it. She continued to hear the signals as she entered their bedroom and awakened them. They were unable to hear the signals  … and the radio was turned off and in its case.
    The signals faded and Mrs. Martino went to bed baffled. A beautiful, lithe divorcee, Mrs. Martino had not had any unusual psychic experiences before.
    VI.
    Roger and Linda Scarberry were living in a house trailer at the time of their Mothman sighting. In the week that followed they were suddenly plagued by strange sounds around the trailer late at night. Beeps and loud garbled noises like a speeded-up phonograph record. They could not locate the source of the sounds outside or inside the trailer. Worried and frightened, they finally moved out of the trailer and settled in the basement apartment in the home of Linda’s parents, Parke and Mabel McDaniel.
    VII.
    On November 24, four people, two adults and two children, were driving past the TNT area when they saw a giant flying creature with red eyes. Their report added to the growing chaos. Now thousands of people were pouring into the old munitions site nightly, some traveling from hundreds of miles away. Television crews and newsmen from other states hovered around the old generator plant, hoping to glimpse the monster. Some visitors divided their time between the TNT area and Woodrow Derenberger’s farm in Mineral Wells.
    Mothman was not to be outsmarted, however. He staged his appearances with clever showmanship, popping up in unexpected places in front of witnesses who had previously been skeptical.
    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.
    â€œIt 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 about seventy-five.”
    Mr. Ury sped into Point Pleasant and went straight to the sheriff’s office thoroughly