"Mothman Roundtable" w/ Steve Berg & W. Dave Keith

Summary

Bigfoot Collectors Club – “Mothman Roundtable” w/ Steve Berg & W. Dave Keith

Date: November 12, 2025
Hosts: Michael McMillan & Riley Bray
Guests: Steve Berg (High Strangeness podcast), W. Dave Keith (Taco the Town podcast, artist)

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Episode Overview

This special 350th episode and 8-year anniversary of Bigfoot Collectors Club is a roundtable deep-dive into one of the most iconic figures in cryptozoology and High Strangeness: the Mothman. Hosts Michael and Riley are joined by actor/podcaster Steve Berg and artist/podcaster W. Dave Keith to revisit the Mothman story, its lore, infamous sightings, associated Men in Black encounters, and cultural impact—from the original events in 1966–67 Point Pleasant, West Virginia to present-day musings about what Mothman represents.

The discussion is upbeat, speculative, and full of inside jokes, but also takes a closer look at multiple theories and the phenomena’s social context, blending personal anecdotes, cryptid nostalgia, skepticism, and genuine wonder.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

Setting the Mood & Guest Introductions

• The hosts and guests immediately revisit their recent adventures at Kansas Paracon and ghost-hunting at the Eldridge Hotel (04:00–06:00), setting a relaxed, nostalgic, “clubhouse” tone.
• W. Dave Keith plugs his new illustrated “map” of Lawrence, Kansas, which includes local landmarks and cryptid easter eggs (06:36–09:07).

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What Does the Mothman Mean? (12:39–19:32)

• Steve Berg: “To me, the Mothman symbolizes a bunch of weird stuff. It’s a confluence of all the greatest hits of the high strange world. …The Mothman of the cryptid is super cool, but it’s the least interesting thing about the book. Everything that happened around it—that is the really high strange, weird stuff” (15:55).
• Dave Keith: Recalls encountering Mothman in childhood cryptid books—far scarier and more fascinating than Bigfoot or Loch Ness Monster. The real fear came from the associated Men in Black and “electronic communication weirdness” in the Keel book (17:20).
• Riley Bray: Quips, “For me the Mothman is the hot goth of the cryptid world … a little afraid but kind of drawn in,” also fixated on the shiny, jacked Point Pleasant Mothman statue (18:48, 19:11).
• Michael: “There is sort of an inherent horniness when it comes to Mothman, and I even feel like it’s in the book itself” (19:32). Discusses the pulpy, noir, and occasionally uncomfortable tone Keel’s writing style adds to the lore.

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Lore, Sightings, and Context (27:02–40:22)

Pre-1960s Lore & Historical Context

• Birdman Sightings: “Mothman”/flying humanoid lore dates back to at least 1914, then known as “the Birdman,” with waves of similar sightings through the ‘40s (27:45).
• Curse of Cornstalk: Chief Cornstalk and the legend of his curse on Point Pleasant following the Shawnee’s violent expulsion in the 1770s, shaping the region’s sense of doom (29:07–31:16).
• Pollution: WWII TNT plant created toxic environmental conditions—potential cryptid mutation or just local “bad vibes” (31:23–32:13).

Point Pleasant Today

• Steve’s Visit: Recounts his own “pilgrimage” to Point Pleasant, describing it as a must-see, beautiful region where the cryptid festival and museum are crucial for the town’s survival (32:18–34:41).
• Local Economy: “It is kept that town alive where a lot of towns around it have died. It is the industry of the town, which is beautiful. I love when these towns celebrate their folklore” (34:23).
• Unexpected Mafia Connection: A failed early ‘90s film adaptation was supposedly derailed by Pittsburgh mob interests fearing exposure from film crews (34:48–35:39).

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Mothman’s Appearance and Iconography (36:15–40:27)

• Description Discrepancies: The “official” Mothman look (black, moth-like, big red eyes) doesn't perfectly fit witness descriptions, often gray, headless, “all legs, all wings, no head.” (38:42–39:12)
• Name Origin: The name “Mothman” was likely a catchy riff on ‘60s Batman mania, not actual witness testimony (39:38–40:22).

Steve Berg: "No one described it ever looking like a moth… The reporter was like ‘Mothman’ because it makes it splashier, like the Kenneth Arnold ‘flying saucer’ thing—it sounded sexy." (39:38)

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Men in Black, Indrid Cold, and High Strangeness Flap (40:57–52:06)

Indrid Cold & Woody Derenberger Story

• Telepathic contact with man “Indrid Cold,” smiling, human-like, “slicked back hair,” led to years of contact and even (alleged) trips to Saturn (Woody’s book Visitor from Lanulos).
• MIBs, pranksters, and potential government psyops: Keel’s paranoia and the possible overlayering of genuine high strangeness and hoaxes or manipulations (via Gray Barker and James Mosley) (47:52–49:25).

Steve Berg: "They would get high and get drunk and prank John Keel all the time ... Keel was so paranoid, he was such a perfect person to do it to." (48:58)

Witness Testimony

• Despite above skepticism, many original witnesses have given consistent personal, on-camera testimony—even decades later (55:10, 67:24).

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Famous Sightings & High Strangeness Phenomena (53:53–68:48)

Notable Eyewitness Reports

• Bob Bosworth: “It wasn’t like the eyes were illuminated from behind… no discernible neck, more like a robin.”
• Scarberry & Mallett Couples: Chased by gray, winged being in their Chevy Bel Air, which “never flapped its wings;” glided after the car at 100 mph (57:17–59:25).
• Faye DeWitt: Mothman paces car, jumps on the hood at TNT plant, shows 10 ft wingspan, glides away (64:42–67:24).

Aggression & Motive

• Generally non-hostile, more “trickster” than predator—scares people, buzzes cars, disrupts, but rarely attacks (besides devouring a stray dog or chasing one witness to her home) (67:34–68:48).
• Debate whether it is a “harbinger of doom” or unfairly blamed for the Silver Bridge disaster (68:48).

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The Silver Bridge Collapse & Aftermath (69:22–72:35)

• Timeline: Mothman flap runs late ’66–late ’67; after December 15, 1967 Silver Bridge collapse (claimed 46 lives), attention abruptly shifts from the strange to the tragic.
• Eyewitnesses heard a “boom” before collapse; rumors (unconfirmed) that someone saw Mothman atop the bridge.
• The bridge collapse is seen in hindsight as the capstone to the “curse” or Mothman’s warning.

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Conspiracy, Social Context, and Modern Sightings (72:44–83:32)

• Sociopolitical factors: Labor unrest, industrial exploitation, and rumors of psychological operations that might have fed high-strangeness reports.
• Cultural conflation: As with other “flap zones” (like Bigfoot’s origin), a mix of genuine weirdness, hoaxes, opportunism, and narrative layering.
• Chicago Mothman: Steve highlights recent and ongoing flying humanoid sightings reported in the Midwest by truckers, researched by Tobias Wayland (75:38).

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Theories & Speculation

Alien/interdimensional scout, mutated bird, military experiment, or trickster entity?

• Riley: “I want to write it off as … a mutant bird, but it doesn’t really track ... Is this some sort of psyop? A suit someone’s wearing?... It does feel inextricably linked to the larger paranormal context. It doesn’t seem like a singular cryptid; it’s part of a big soup” (76:41–77:32).
• Steve: Favors John Keel’s “super spectrum” theory—UFOs and related phenomena manifest differently for different people/cultures; the Mothman is another mask of the wider, weirder phenomenon, not strictly “aliens from another planet.” (83:26)
• Michael: “Flying humanoids are also unidentified flying objects... Mothman is a UFO.”
• Notable moments:
  • Mary Hire recognized as the true chronicler and “patron saint” of the phenomenon for recording firsthand accounts (62:01–63:33).
  • Many different UFO occupant appearances reported in the ’60s, challenging the “gray alien” orthodoxy (85:55–86:59).

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• Steve Berg: “The Mothman to me symbolizes, like, this harbinger of… where he goes, a bunch of weird stuff is going to happen.” (17:02)
• W. Dave Keith: "The phone stuff is the scariest. Like, Mothman isn’t really even as scary as the Men in Black and the electronic communications, the strange noises… that stuff just really scared me as a child..." (17:20)
• Michael McMillan: “If Bigfoot is Mario, I think Mothman is Waluigi. He’s the weirdest quadrant out of our four corners of the unknown.” (26:48)
• Riley Bray: “For me, the Mothman is the hot goth of the cryptid world.” (18:48)
• Riley Bray: “[Mothman] feels inextricably linked to the larger paranormal context... It doesn’t seem like a singular cryptid; it’s part of a big old soup.” (77:32)
• Steve Berg: “[Keel] wrote a smut book… He wasn’t afraid, if it paid he would write it.” (20:34)

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Key Timestamps of Major Segments

• 12:39 – Michael gives a dramatic recap of the 1966-67 Mothman/Humanoid flap
• 15:55 – Roundtable: “What does the Mothman mean to you?”
• 29:07 – Chief Cornstalk’s Curse and Point Pleasant’s “bad luck history”
• 32:18 – Steve’s visit to Point Pleasant and museum
• 38:42 – Mothman’s disputed description: headless, gray, not moth-like
• 40:57 – Indrid Cold/Woody Derenberger, Men in Black, and Barker/Mosley pranking
• 53:53 – Detailed witness stories (dogs, families, cars, fear)
• 68:48 – The Silver Bridge collapse: disaster, aftermath, myth
• 75:38 – Modern “Chicago Mothman” reports
• 82:55 – Theories: military, interdimensional, cryptid, or all of the above?

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Closing & Plugs (87:31–end)

• Dave Keith: Instagram @wdavekeith; commissions open for cryptid/“unusual weirdo” art.
• Steve Berg: Host of “Hi, Strangeness” podcast; “Weird, Here To Help” advice podcast.
• Michael McMillan: Plugs recent podcast appearances & upcoming live events.
• Riley Bray: Announces ongoing “Peace Drone” ambient music web project: peacedrone.net.

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Summary

BCC's first-ever “Mothman Roundtable” is a warm, funny, and comprehensive reexamination of Mothman lore—spanning from historical “Birdman” sightings to the complex weave of paranoia, pranks, trauma, and genuine high strangeness in the Point Pleasant saga. The hosts and guests freely move between skepticism and wonder, honoring the original witnesses, speculating on paranormal “flap zones,” and ultimately agreeing that the mystery at the heart of the Mothman remains unsolved—and perhaps, that’s what keeps us all in the Clubhouse.

Final Quote:
Steve Berg: “We solved it! …We solved it.” (87:33)

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Listen for:

• Deep cuts on lore & local history
• Multiple firsthand stories
• Speculation with humor and respect
• Contemporary cryptid culture
• Creative nostalgia for ’60s pulp and the paranormal

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(End of Summary)

Transcript

[Ad Host]

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[Steve Berg]

It's Bigfoot Collectors Club with Michael and Riley. I know a story of highest rangeness or two.

[Michael McMillan]

Let's do this. Hello, everybody and welcome to a very special episode of Bigfoot Collectors Club. I'm your host, Michael McMillan. I forgot to mention, this is a show where we talk to amazing guests about their personal paranormal history and share stories of high strangers. But I'm very excited today because it is our 350th episode. Here to celebrate with us is. With me, as always, is the bartender.

[Riley Bray]

Of Beats serving them up cold, Riley Bray.

[Michael McMillan]

That's right. Welcome, Riley, to BCC's 350th episode.

[Riley Bray]

Welcome. I heard a little bit of Mikey Tentos there in the intro. You were so excited.

[Michael McMillan]

Hey, man, Mikey, 10 toes. He's 10 toes down. He's ready to go, man.

[Riley Bray]

Keep the thing, the thing.

[Michael McMillan]

I'm keeping the main thing, the main thing today. This is nice because this anniversary episode coincides with our eight year anniversary. So it's all lined up and we're recording on the heels of a full moon. I'm very excited to be here with Riley and two of our closest BCC buds. Before we bring them in, I want to remind everybody that if you're looking for a holiday gift for you or that special club scout in your life, look no further than the BCC merch shop on 4th wall. A link to that, it will be in our show notes and on our Instagram at Bigfoot Collectors Club. All right, we have two guests. You can see both of them in our Legend Quest Kansas Micro series. And in our Ghost Quest, the Eldritch Hotel Paranormal Investigation playing right now on YouTube. From high strangeness podcast, it's actor Steve Berg. And from Taco the Town podcast, we have artist W. Dave Keith back with us. Hello, boys. Hello.

[Steve Berg]

Finest of evenings to you gentlemen.

[Michael McMillan]

Now, if this is. If this is someone's first episode, and maybe it will be, can you just say, hey, this Is Steve. Hey, this is Dave. So we know who's talking here.

[W. Dave Keith]

Hey, this is Dave.

[Michael McMillan]

Hey, Dave.

[Steve Berg]

Hi, I'm Steve. You're gonna hear some funny S's. Yeah, I have a lisp. Okay.

[Michael McMillan]

Hey, guess what? I have sibling S's too. So y' all can off.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah, yeah. Everyone's already. Everyone's coming at me already.

[Michael McMillan]

Man, myself with all these lisp police.

[W. Dave Keith]

Out there these days. Ye.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah.

[Steve Berg]

Thank you. Thank you.

[Michael McMillan]

I was talking to Kate on the phone last night and she was like, have you had some wine? And I'm like, yes, but that's not the point. It's not the wine that's causing it. I'm tired. That's why I'm.

[Steve Berg]

Wine makes me better.

[Michael McMillan]

Yes. Boys, it's so great to see both of you. And Riley of you, of course, but it's nice to have the.

[Ad Host Female]

The.

[Michael McMillan]

The Lawrence Gang back together. We were all at Paracon KC earlier this summer. We did our ghost quest at the Aldrich Hotel. We. We drove around and did legend tripping in Kansas and Missouri. I'm so happy to see you boys. How's everybody doing? How's your. How's your fall been since we've last all met up?

[Steve Berg]

Dave, you go first.

[Michael McMillan]

I've been good.

[W. Dave Keith]

And I just want to say those videos turned out amazing. Your editing on those videos, those were great. Those were top notch editing. I thought they turned out really good. I was surprised to see some of them because I wasn't there for some of it. So it was a.

[Michael McMillan]

That's right. You had to leave.

[W. Dave Keith]

Yeah, it was a. It was a good watch. And I've been good. I actually was in Lawrence yesterday and I had some Pizza Shuttle. Oh, and I thought of you guys eating Pizza Shuttle at the Eldridge.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah, like Wild Savages, man.

[Michael McMillan]

You know the thing that I didn't know because we ordered Pizza Shuttle during our paranormal investigation.

[Steve Berg]

Yes.

[Michael McMillan]

So I did not go to ku, Dave. Steve, you both went to ku. Is Pizza shuttle delivery only or can you go to a pizza shuttle restaurant?

[Steve Berg]

You can. There's not really a place to sit down though, right?

[W. Dave Keith]

Yeah, it's very bare bones. It's more about like, hey, we'll come bring it to you. Or you. There's the walk in special. That's like a $7 pizza and a. And a Coke.

[Michael McMillan]

Wow.

[W. Dave Keith]

And they still have that? I think when we were in college, Steve was probably a $4 special.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah, it was very. It was much cheaper. When you said seven, immediately I was like, that's expensive. I mean, like yeah.

[W. Dave Keith]

Oh yeah. But I just, yeah, I did the walk in special and I had to wait like 20 minutes. But yeah, it's more of a. They bring it to you and they don't bring it to you in a shuttle like a, like a shuttle shaped car, which is very disappointing.

[Steve Berg]

They should, they don't. If you don't have an imagination because whenever, usually the state I'm in, when I call pizza shuttle to me it looks like, it looks like the challeng know. Well. Wow.

[Riley Bray]

That is a rough night.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah, exactly.

[Michael McMillan]

Oh, Dave, where did you have your pizza shuttle?

[W. Dave Keith]

Well, I was, I, I had it.

[Riley Bray]

At the pizza shuttle special.

[Michael McMillan]

Oh, you did the walk up. Okay. Okay, got it.

[W. Dave Keith]

Bare bones location. Yeah.

[Steve Berg]

Did they look at you weird?

[W. Dave Keith]

No, there were other people there having it there.

[Ad Host]

Were there.

[Michael McMillan]

So yeah. Well, all right. Well I'm glad that you're keeping the spirit of Lawrence alive while we're not there. We appreciate that and no problem. Speaking of Lawrence, you have a new painting that people can, can purchase. It's a map of Lawrence, Kansas.

[W. Dave Keith]

Yeah, I spent a long time on that. Yeah, it's a very detailed map of the city or how, you know, I see the city. And I also have some notes from like when I went to college there. Some like Rest in Peace their studio stuff that isn't there anymore. So. But yeah, it's, I, I spent a long time on it, had to get very detailed with it. I think I started working on that back man, beginning of spring. So it, it took me a while to do. But yeah, that's kind of why I was in Lawrence. I was shopping my poster around town to see if anybody wanted to buy it for their store.

[Michael McMillan]

So I love it. And these, these map paintings that you've been doing of local Kansas City towns or area Kansas City area towns. They kind of of those posters you would see in pizza parlors in the 80s. It would kind of have like an overview of the town that you lived in and sort of a cartoony style. So I, there's a very nostalgic quality about these as well.

[W. Dave Keith]

That's the vibe I was going for. So hopefully it, it will become one of those posters that's up in a bar for the next 20 years or so.

[Riley Bray]

So is Pizza Shuttle on the map?

[W. Dave Keith]

It is. It made the cut. It made the cut.

[Steve Berg]

Good.

[Michael McMillan]

Is there a little Steve Berg eating a pizza next to the pizza shell?

[Steve Berg]

Yeah, in very bad shape where he's hallucinating actual shuttle coming to deliver.

[W. Dave Keith]

I had to like pick and choose which mass street businesses to put on there because there are very many popular places along Massachusetts street, which is the main street. So I kind of had to pick and choose which places. Of course, I put the replay on there. The famous spot where Steven and Mike did their techno dancing on the floor.

[Steve Berg]

One take.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, one take, baby. And we couldn't use the original music that guy was playing. And I've slipped in Tanya's theme by. Actually, it might have been dungeon. Tanya's theme is in the episode. Yeah. But I think that song that I put in in the dance break was the dungeon song that you. Which is one of my all time favorite cosmic tracks.

[Steve Berg]

So.

[Riley Bray]

Thank you. Thank you.

[Steve Berg]

Great.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. So where can people. I mean, we'll plug this at the end of the episode again. But if people want to order some art from you, Dave. How can they do that?

[W. Dave Keith]

Just on my Instagram, usually at W. Dave.

[Ad Host]

Keith.

[Michael McMillan]

K E I T H. Slide into those dms.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

Okay, so before we get into the reason that we're all here is does anybody have any paranormal, personal paranormal updates? Has anybody had any spooky stuff happen since we were all together? Anything? No. I'm getting a lot of shaking. Shaking.

[Steve Berg]

No, no. I wish I. I keep. I'm begging for it.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah.

[Steve Berg]

I'm looking for an interaction with the fae before the year's out. Okay.

[Michael McMillan]

How in. In which method are you going about making that happen for yourself, Steve?

[Steve Berg]

Just talking about it on your show podcast. That's manifesting, putting it out there to the world. I should leave some cheese out, you know, cheese. They like dairy.

[Michael McMillan]

You know what I did the other day actually on Salwin? I made an altar and put up photos of loved ones and animals that have passed. I lit a bunch of candles. I put out objects that I associate with those people and those animals. And then just to be nice, I have this like. I have this concrete, like leprechaun. He's kind of like an old timey looking thing. It's not like a garden gnome. It's like a garden statue that sits out on my flower bed. And I had some leftover birthday cake because my birthday was that week. And I. I cut off a little bit of cake and I came out and I set it out next to the fairy statue as a tribute to the fae.

[Steve Berg]

Yes, Michael. Yeah. You're doing everything right. You're doing everything right.

[Michael McMillan]

I'm. I'm inviting some magic into my. My, My final harvest.

[W. Dave Keith]

Was it gone the next day? Did some.

[Michael McMillan]

No, no.

[Ad Host]

This.

[Michael McMillan]

The sad part is just me going out in the morning be like, okay. And taking it back.

[Riley Bray]

Cleaning up some cake.

[Michael McMillan]

Cleaning up some cake.

[Steve Berg]

That's the whole thing. It's like, you know, I'm a big stickler on face food wastage. So if I leave like, you know, a hunk of brie out, which I like Brie for the Fae and they don't eat it after like a day or two, it's like I can then eat it myself. Right? Or is that like technically, like.

[Riley Bray]

I mean, it depends if it was in like direct sunlight or not.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah, I feel like I got a strong. I got a cast iron.

[Riley Bray]

You got a good constitution.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah, I got a good constitution. I want to let that cheese go to waste. Or is that taking from the fa.

[Michael McMillan]

I. I just also love the idea of like see, being like setting it out and then going to bed and be like, I'm getting hungry.

[Steve Berg]

I am peckish.

[Michael McMillan]

Sticking back out some brie outside. You see a little, A little gnome, not, you know, nibbling on it and you get in a little tug of war with the gnome. Yeah, it's mine.

[Steve Berg]

Give it back.

[Michael McMillan]

And then you're cursed. This is how you're like, this is your night. This is your night before Christmas. Or your Christmas carol, I should say.

[Steve Berg]

That's exactly right.

[Michael McMillan]

All right, everybody, so what I wanted to do is something a little bit different. Okay, we're going to focus on a very popular today. We're going to just sit and talk about a very popular subject of high strangeness. And I think what I'm going to do is I'm just going to roll right into this and the listeners are going to figure out what we're doing as we go along. How's that sound? Now, Riley, this won't last for long, but I'm not going to put you on the spot. But maybe you want a little bit of music rolling in with me here.

[Riley Bray]

Just like a little. Set the mood up top.

[Michael McMillan]

Just a little. Set the mood up top. Okay.

[Riley Bray]

Okay.

[W. Dave Keith]

Maybe some wind chimes.

[Steve Berg]

He knows. He knows.

[Riley Bray]

Oh, you know about those wind chimes.

[Michael McMillan]

I like those. I like those wind chimes. All right, here we go. It began in early November 1966 in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Multiple eyewitnesses began reporting encounters with a tall, gray, red eyed winged humanoid known as the Mothman. The sightings gained attention throughout the month of November. And by December, local reporter Mary Hire, paranormal investigator John Keel, and science fiction author and ufologist Gray Barker, himself a resident of West Virginia, were collecting reports. December of that year saw a huge flap of flying Saucer accounts, which for some created a link between UFOs and the Mothman. By January, eyewitnesses including John Kale and John Keel and Mary Hire began reporting strange run ins with men in black who would appear for reasons unknown, to harass individuals who had crossed paths with the Mothman. UFOs and Mothman sightings continued throughout 1967, with another big uptick in sightings taking place in November of 1967. The year of high strangeness came to a tragic end when the Silver Bridge linking Point Pleasant and Gallipolis collapsed into the Ohio river on Friday, December 15, killing dozens of residents a mere 10 days before Christmas. With the focus now strictly on the Silver Bridge incident, interest in The Mothman and UFOs were quickly cast aside for collective grief. However, rumors persisted for decades that the bridge collapse may have been foretold or even caused by the entity known as the Mothman. Now, 59 years later, I have gathered some of the brightest minds with a burning interest in high strangeness to join Riley and me to re examine the case and speak loosely, generally, cordially and comically about the strange flying cryptid and its peripheral phenomena Club. Scouts of all timelines, please welcome High Strange's host Steve Berg and paranormal artist W. David Keith for our inaugural roundtable discussion of the Mothman. That's right, this is the first gentleman BCC roundtable discussion. And we I have for you placed in the center of this table a Mothman. Let's get into this cryptid. Let's get into the lore, let's get into the history, let's get into the story. Now, we have not done the Mothman since our first year. We've only given about a 15 minute high strangeness segment to this. And this does beg probably a deep dive series, which we're not gonna, we're not gonna do for y' all tonight. And we did read the book over in the BCC Bigfoot Book Club over on the other side a few years ago. But let's just kick it off with this. I want to know, what does the Mothman mean to you? Let's start with Steve.

[Steve Berg]

I have maybe so my take. I love that book. It is truly one of my favorite books in general. I think it is such a page burner, especially in terms of like a, you know, a lot of like books about like high strange and stuff like that. They're, I love a lot of them, but they can be kind of dry. It's John Keel at his diamond rock hard peak of his writing career. I Think. And it is such a page burner. And like, the thing about Keel, he's one of my favorite authors in this field, if not my favorite author. He never shied away, turned down a good story. So it's like one of these things, you know, it's. The provenance for a lot of this stuff is shaky, and a lot of. Even Keel's thoughts about all these events from when he was a little older is very interesting too. But what the Mothman means to me mostly is a symbol of a bunch of weird stuff. It's a confluence of, like, all the greatest hits of the high strange world. So while I think the Mothman of the Cryptid is super cool, it's the least interesting thing about the book.

[Michael McMillan]

Oh, wow.

[Steve Berg]

Everything that happened to me around it, that is the really high, strange, weird stuff. Okay, so the Mothman to me symbolizes like, this harbinger of, like, where he goes. A bunch of weird stuff is going to happen. And I think that is so interesting.

[Michael McMillan]

What about you, Dave? That's great. Steve. What about you, Dave?

[W. Dave Keith]

He's one of the first. I mean, he is one of the first Cryptids I fell in love with as a child, reading those books in the library as, like, second grader. As a second grader, just, you know, there was the Bigfoot chapter. Okay, that's cool. I know about Bigfoot. For some reason, I already knew about him. And then you, like, start reading about Loch Ness Monster and you're like, oh, yeah, Loch Ness Monster. That's cool. Not very scary, but it's still cool. And then you get to the Mothman chapter and you're like, what is this? And then it talks about Men in Black and you're like, what is a Man in Black? What is this? And then it starts talking about the. The weird tinny electronic noises coming through the phones. Yeah, and that stuff is the scariest stuff. Like, Mothman isn't really even as scary as the Men in Black and the. The electronic communications, the strange noises that. That happen to the people, the Mothman. So that stuff just really scared me as a child, and I was like, I gotta. I gotta get into this stuff. This is great stuff. So, yeah, just from an early age, he was. He was one of my favorite, favorite Cryptids, for sure.

[Michael McMillan]

Where you.

[Riley Bray]

All the phone stuff in that book was like my favorite part of the book. Like, all the weird. The weird tones over the phones and the tapping of the lines and all that stuff.

[Steve Berg]

I was.

[Riley Bray]

I was. I was very into that part. For me, the Mothman is Like, the hot goth of the cryptic world. You know, you're like. But you're, like, a little afraid, but, like, you're kind of like. But I. I also. I can't. I can't get that statue out of my head whenever the Mothman is brought up.

[Michael McMillan]

That's just shiny silver one that's in.

[Riley Bray]

The shiny, jacked, just like caked Mothman, you know, like, so a little bit. I always, I guess, picture that when Mothman is discussed. But it's nice that you guys are grounding this back in the fact that it is part of this whole crazy, vintage 60s, paranoid, like, awesome story. And that book. I did love that book. It's fun.

[Michael McMillan]

It's great. I mean, there is sort of an inherent horniness when it comes to Mothman, and I even feel like it's in the book itself.

[Riley Bray]

Oh, it definitely is. The descriptions of women by John Keel are, like, buddies.

[Steve Berg]

And I. Yeah, he's a man of the mid-60s. Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

I wonder if that was a publishing director. Like. Like, hey, I'll make it, like, because pulpy. Make it a little bit more pulpy, because that's the audience that they're gonna sell this to. So I. I wonder if the editor of the book went through and was like, hey, you got to put a little bit more sex in here. So he would just describe, like, Mary Hire's body when he meets her, you know, and how her, like, polyester dress hugged her. Her hourglass form, you know? Yeah, there. That uncomfortable stuff in there. But I do. But as. Because we judged that when we reviewed it on the. On the other side. But now looking back, I'm like, I bet the editors were like, john, this is too much. This is too nerdy. You gotta put some sex in this book somewhere.

[Steve Berg]

Well, you know what? John Keel, early in his career, wrote a smut book.

[Michael McMillan]

Oh, that's right.

[Riley Bray]

There you go.

[Steve Berg]

He wrote a smoke book. And I think he worked for Playboy, like, you know, So, I mean, like, he was like, he was. He wasn't afraid if it paid, he would write it, you know? Yeah. But totally, I. It that. I think that is one of the appeals to it is that book is pulpy as hell. I totally think that's one of the. It makes it really fun. And there's, like, a noir aspect to it almost.

[Michael McMillan]

Oh, 100 and I. The. There's so much paranoia in it. It feels like a paranoid thriller, you know, which is essentially what they made when they finally made a movie. There's not a lot of the book. There's not even a lot of what the accounts were in that film, but it captures the. The. That paranoia really well. And it captures the spookiest thing about the whole thing, which is that phone call scene where it's like chapstick. Yeah. A branded content scene, too, which is amazing.

[W. Dave Keith]

But I just remember being. I remember being really disappointed in the movie just because I thought it was gonna take place in the 60s and I thought it was gonna be it in Richard Gear.

[Riley Bray]

I don't know.

[W. Dave Keith]

He just. Yeah, he didn't do it for me.

[Steve Berg]

So I just.

[W. Dave Keith]

I was disappointed in the movie. I liked some aspects of what had some very creepy parts, but I was also like, there's so much more in the book. There's so much more in the book. And if you just would have placed this in the 60s, it would have it. I would have liked it a lot more.

[Michael McMillan]

Oh, sure.

[W. Dave Keith]

I always wanted to be more accurate.

[Steve Berg]

You know, like, Paul Giamatti playing keel would have been, like, good, you know? Yeah. Philip Seymour Hoffman playing keel.

[Michael McMillan]

I mean, that would have been great.

[W. Dave Keith]

Sam Rockwell.

[Michael McMillan]

Sam Rockwell could still play it today.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

You know, I. I think they should remake the book and. And put it in the era and heighten it a little bit, you know, and really play stylistically and play with that. Play with that pulpy nature of it.

[Steve Berg]

I bet somebody owns the rights. Yeah, for sure. It'd be such a. Such a great movie to make, I think.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. Okay, we gotta take a break. When we come back, we're gonna. We're gonna dive deeper into Mothman. Hey, club scouts. The old adage, you are what you.

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[Michael McMillan]

All right, gentlemen, let's get this round table going. Okay? I wanted to say too that the Mothman, to me, I feel like, I feel like Bigfoot is the mascot of Cryptids. I think alien grays are the mascot of UFOs. And then, you know, and then You've got, like, your classic spooky ghost as the, you know, the mascot of the paranormal. But I think that the Mothman is the official mascot of high strangeness. I think that he is the oddball. You know, he's the. Like, if. If Bigfoot is Mario, I think Mothman is Waluigi. You know, he's.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

Like, he's the weird. He's the weirdest quadrant out of our, like, four corners of the unknown, you know, so there's some stuff that I. Diving back into some of this history. There's some stuff that I didn't necessarily know but. But make sense. And the first is that there were Mothman sightings in Point Pleasant well before the 1960s. There are accounts of a flying humanoid that was black. Like, we think of the Mothman like a black entity with wings, like a bat entity with, like, a human head. That was seen in 1914. And they would call it the Birdman.

[W. Dave Keith]

Yeah, the Big Bird or the big Black Bird or something.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, yeah. And the Birdman was seen on and off throughout the years until the 1940s. And then those sightings kind of dissipated. But they're all sorts of. And as we look at the lore of Mothman at times, some of the eyewitness accounts in the 60s, you're getting the classic Mothman with the glowing red eyes. But then you're also getting sightings of people saying they're seeing these giant birds. In fact, there's one that took place. Yeah. There's some, like, Thunderbird sightings as well, which is really, really weird. There's four pilots who I think in December of. Let me look here. I have it somewhere in the notes, but there were four pilots that saw a giant bird the size of an airplane. And that, to me, like, that's not Mothman, but it's all happening around the same time, which is very, very strange. I think that was in December of. Of. Of 1966. And it wasn't happening in Point Pleasant, but it was in the West Virginia, Ohio area. And, of course, there's all of this backstory of the curse of Point Pleasant called Cornstalk's Curse. You guys know about this?

[W. Dave Keith]

I don't know, Chief Cornstalk.

[Steve Berg]

I do. Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

So. So, Steve, do you want to talk about it? Can you talk about it off the cuff? If not, I've got notes.

[Steve Berg]

No, no. Probably the Cornstalk. I don't feel like I have at the top of my head. I'm, you know, familiar with it from the book. But so.

[Michael McMillan]

So basically, what happened was the town is settled in.

[Ad Host Female]

In 1777, but the Shawnee are there.

[Michael McMillan]

And Chief Cornstalk, who's the chief of.

[Ad Host Female]

The Shawnee nation there, they get.

[Michael McMillan]

They. They get into a fight with the militia. There's a huge battle called the Battle of Point Pleasant. A lot of people die, and basically the indigenous people are kicked out of the land. Chief Cornstalk is real, like, goes to another place to hang out with his sons, and a few months later, he's like, I'm gonna go treaty with the settlers in. In an act of diplomacy and see if we can, like, work out a deal here. So he and his sons went down to the fort that was at Point Pleasant at the time, and they were immediately murdered. They were captured and murdered.

[Riley Bray]

Oh, whoa.

[Michael McMillan]

And so there is this rumor or an old legend that his. His dying words were that he was going to curse Point Pleasant, the land of Point Pleasant, forever. Now, I think that's probably not true. His descendants don't think that that's true. I also think it's pretty shitty to be. For white people to be like, we murdered you, and now we're gonna blame you for every bad thing that ever happens to our town. So it's a pretty shitty thing. But in terms of local lore, like, the town flooded really badly in the 50s, I believe, or the. For maybe early. Actually, I think it was the 1930s. The Ohio river flooded, and, like, half of Point Pleasant was underwater. And, you know, they were seeing, like, a lot of bad things happen there. And a lot of the locals would be like, well, it's because of what we did, you know, 200 years or 150 years earlier.

[W. Dave Keith]

That's not in the Bridgewater Triangle, is it?

[Michael McMillan]

No, Bridgewater's way up North.

[Steve Berg]

Massachusetts. Yeah.

[W. Dave Keith]

Okay.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, that's in Mass. Okay. But, yeah, so then the. I guess some of the other prehistories In World War II, there was the TNT plant. So they made. They were making TNT and bomb parts in Point Pleasant during World War II. There was a lot of military around, and then that later becomes the setting for a lot of these Mothman sightings. But that TNT factory polluted the fuck out of the river, the marshlands and all. All sorts of chemicals got dumped into the groundwater and the river there, which is also super, super sad and creepy, man.

[Riley Bray]

It's really adding to the irony of the name of this place.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah.

[Riley Bray]

Massacre Ecological Destruction.

[Steve Berg]

Point Pleasant. Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. So have I, I guess. Steve, have you ever been to Point Dave? You've never been there.

[Steve Berg]

Oh, yeah. I got. I got a. I got a. A tour from Steve Ward, who's, like, kind of like the great guy and like, a historian. And it was amazing. Like, he took us into the TNT area where a bunch of famous sightings were. Went to the injured cold, like, you know, incident, which is basically just like a highway now, you know, But.

[Michael McMillan]

But we got out and saw a couple of those.

[Ad Host]

Right.

[Steve Berg]

You know, Exactly. But you. You know, it's like. It is one of these things. I'm like, when you do go to these places, whether it's genuine or not, it's. That is not even the point. It's like. But being in these places of, like, significant folklore to me is like. It's a rush. I love it. I love it. I will say going to Point Pleasant is absolutely worth it. It is. If you're into this stuff, it is one of those places you have to check off your list. It is also. It's really beautiful there. And I do want to mention about 55 minutes away from there is where the Flatwoods monster.

[Ad Host]

Yeah.

[Steve Berg]

Happened really close. It's really close. I mean, you can do both those in a day. Although you probably wouldn't hold you. Probably. But, like. Yeah, it's totally worth going to, man. It's. It's also really gorgeous.

[Michael McMillan]

What was your. Yeah, what was your. What time of year were you there? And what was the vibe of the town when you got there? Was it what you thought it would be or, like, stepping out of your car? What did you think?

[Steve Berg]

I was like, I love this, but it was really quiet. It was like, a couple weeks before the festivals. I went, like, in. I don't know, it's probably like, June of, like, 22, I think, just like, a few years ago. And it was great. The museum is absolutely unbelievably great. It's huge. And there's so much, like, ephemera of the time. And there's a lot of stuff from the movie, which wasn't really what I was into. I was into, like, the old, you know, articles, clippings, like, Mary hires typewriter and, like, that kind of stuff. To me, I'm like, oh, these are, like, special objects, you know, like, and it's. It's. It's great. It's just in the town. Totally. Like. Like, and this is the truth. Like, it is the industry of the town.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah.

[Steve Berg]

Like, it is. It is kept that town alive where, like, a lot of towns around it have just kind of died. And, like, it really is, like, a huge part of their economy.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah.

[Steve Berg]

Which is. Which is beautiful. That's why I think. I love when these towns, like, celebrate their folklore.

[Riley Bray]

A beautiful thing. Yeah. The Cryptid Economic Index.

[W. Dave Keith]

Yeah.

[Riley Bray]

It is keeping small towns alive.

[Steve Berg]

There is also there. There is. I don't want to get off. No, no.

[Michael McMillan]

This is what the round table's for.

[Steve Berg]

But I realized I had this guy on my show named Matthew. Matthew. Oh, God. Tanum. Now I can't remember his last name. Sorry. If you're listening. But he made this documentary about. So in the early 90s, there was like a software company, a video game company that made a moot, Tried to make a movie out of the Mothman prophecies. Like way before it was independent. But they had like $10 million to make it. But they went there and they were so harassed by the Pittsburgh Mafia. Like, there was a huge mafia problem, like in this, I guess in a lot of places in West Virginia, because they were doing whatever, running stuff. I think they're putting illegal gambling machines and restaurants. But, like, this production literally got ran out of town because this mafia is like, we don't want you photographing stuff here.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah.

[Steve Berg]

And it, like, this really happened, this town. There's a lot of weird history about this town that's almost just as interesting. That is too.

[Riley Bray]

It's like weird. Like mob town, Right.

[W. Dave Keith]

Wait, is Mothman in the mob?

[Steve Berg]

Yes.

[Michael McMillan]

Is it mob man, Mafia man?

[Steve Berg]

He's just a hitman. Whoever.

[W. Dave Keith]

It's Mafia.

[Michael McMillan]

Mothman. It's Mothman. Yeah.

[Steve Berg]

I think this guy's documentary.

[W. Dave Keith]

Leave him alone.

[Steve Berg]

He looks a little weird.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. The Mothman stuff. The thing that I is interesting is like, is there an agreed upon look for the Mothman? Because I feel like the.

[Riley Bray]

The.

[Michael McMillan]

The toy version that we have is like, he looks very mothy. You know, he's black with the big red eyes and like the moth ears. But when you hear the descriptions, what people describe this thing as being is like a 7 foot tall gray being with wings that would fold up kind of behind its back.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

And had red eyes. But those eyes seemed to be red when they were reflecting light because there was an eyewitness named Bob Bosworth, who mid November, when all the stuff was going on, he and his buddy were out on a moonlight full moon motorcycle ride. And some of the big sightings had already happened. The town was already talking about it. And they pulled over, they were like, let's go out to the TNT factory. And they pulled over and they looked up and on top of the building was this giant creature with red eyes. And they Went into the. Into one of the abandoned buildings, went up to one of the second or third floors. And they saw this thing lurking around amongst the, like, broken window panes and catwalks. And they said it was sitting in the dark. And when it was in the dark and not in the moonlight, it. You couldn't see its eyes. So it wasn't like the eyes were illuminated from behind. And this thing didn't attack them. It didn't bother them. They said that they could hear the crunching of glass, broken glass, as it shuffled along, they said, just effortlessly along this catwalk. And then it went into the dark, and they heard just the sound of wings opening and like, a whoosh and the thing went away. But it's interesting to hear that the original version of this thing is gray, not in. In 66. It's gray, not black, by the way.

[Steve Berg]

That'S my favorite, I think, incident with the Mothman. And during that time period, that is, to me, the scariest one. Yeah, it's so creepy.

[Michael McMillan]

It's. There's something about being close and watching it, like, lumber around, you know, that it feels very weird. And that feels animalistic to me as well.

[Ad Host Female]

That.

[Michael McMillan]

That feels kind of big bird like, to me.

[W. Dave Keith]

They talk about it. They talk about it having human, like, legs. They said it's all legs, all wings and no head, really.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah, yeah.

[W. Dave Keith]

The head is not prominent. It's all about the eyes. And no one has ever really described its head or neck.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah. Like a face. Yeah. Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

That's good. I'm glad you brought that up, because Bob Bosworth said in that sighting that he was like. You know, because everyone in town was like, it's a sandhill crane. They're just seeing a sandhill crane. Well, sandhill cranes have these long necks.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

They have the height, they have the color, and they also have, like, a splash of red across their faces. So people are like, maybe that's what they're seeing. But Bob Bosworth was like, no, this had more like a robin head where, like, the head just sort of melded into the shoulders. There was no discernible neck to this thing. Well, so the statue itself is kind of not accurate, the one that they have in. In town one.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah, totally. And, like, the. The thing is, I believe Keel mentions this in the book, or he mentions it in another book, but this is a direct quote from Kelly's. Like, the reason it was named Mothman is because the show, TV show Batman, and Batman was huge at the time. And so no one described it ever. Looking Like a moth to my knowledge. And. And the newspaper guy was like Mothman because it makes it splash your head. Like, kind of like the Kenneth Arnold thing with flying saucers. Kenneth Arnold never described things like saucers, but he said it skipped along a saucer and the journalist was like flying saucers because it sounded sexy.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Steve Berg]

So a lot of brands names is exactly. A lot of these things are branded because it sells more papers. So I think that's interesting too. Like.

[Michael McMillan]

And you know what? That reporter was right. That's exactly what.

[Steve Berg]

We're still talking about it.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah.

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[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, so going back just a little bit, the one of the things that we kind of skipped over is the Indri Cold and Woody Darenberger moment that happens on. So the night in the sightings actually begin in 66 on November 1st. And there are. There was a National Guardsman who said that he saw it up in a tree. And there's words of this. Rumors start going around at the 1st of November that the Birdman is back or that there's a Birdman in Point Pleasant. Then weirdly, on November 2nd, Woody Darren Burger, who's what, 50 miles away? It's not right on top of Point Pleasant. I can't remember which to.

[Steve Berg]

It's close. It's like right by the Ohio. Yeah, I can't. I know what you're talking. Yeah, it's not far, but.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, keep talking. Sorry.

[Steve Berg]

No. Well, there's a lot to say about Woody Darren Berger. And you know, it's.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, he was going from Marietta, Ohio to Mineral Wells, West Virginia, so that he was not far from Point Pleasant. But basically his story is he's. He's driving home and there is a glowing craft in the middle of the road and standing in front of it is this human looking guy. And Woody's car stops, his truck stops. The guy comes over to the window. He said he looked totally human. He looked totally normal. And it's slick back hair, slick back hair, big smile, big smile. And he introduced himself to Woody telepathically as a guy named Indrid Cold and that he, you know, wanted to get to know the area basically. And so Woody has this weird interaction on the side of the road with this injured, cold figure and then goes home. And then over the course of the next few years, says that he continues to be visited by and even goes on the craft of this injured, cold figure. But this is another, like, weird seminal case of high strangeness that is happening, literally, as the Mothman stuff is kicking off.

[Steve Berg]

Yep, yep.

[Michael McMillan]

And he's a big role in the Mothman prophecies too.

[Steve Berg]

Huge. Well, in fact, I mean, like, when I first read the book as a kid, or not a kid, but like a young, young man, Edgar Cole was my favorite part. He was like the star of the book for me because I found it so. Him so disturbing, you know, the whole case. It's like middle of the road, hops off, and he's this smiling the way he was. He seems so happy and bright and friendly. Was. It's like, off putting to me.

[W. Dave Keith]

Yeah, I know.

[Riley Bray]

That's, like, scarier than, like, trying to be scary.

[Steve Berg]

Right, Right. It really disturbed me. But what's interesting is, you know, like, I don't know if. How much you want to. I don't want to, like, yeah, the case. But, like, you know, John Keel, like, you know, he had a real problem with Woody. Darren Berger, like, he's like. He's like. He's like, I maybe think there's something to the original thing or like that I believe maybe happened because of all the other stuff that was happening. But he's like, all the other stuff, he's like, it's not true.

[Michael McMillan]

When we get into Visitors of Lanulos, which is Woody's book, where he's talking about going to Saturn with all of these hot aliens, like, yeah. That feels like Woody is capitalizing on whatever's happening to him, you know?

[Steve Berg]

Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

But people would come, and people would come to his house, too. People would come and gawk at the house. But there were some people that would say they would see UFOs and flying saucers hovering over Woody's house.

[Steve Berg]

Right.

[Michael McMillan]

Which is really for sure.

[W. Dave Keith]

Well, weren't there people that day when he. When Indrid Cold met with him on the side of the highway? There were people driving by, just, like, passing by, and they. They interviewed people and they said, oh, yeah, I didn't even think anything of it. I remember a guy talking to him on the side of his car. It's like. But there was a UFO there too, right?

[Steve Berg]

Yeah. What about the ball light?

[W. Dave Keith]

Yeah, yeah. What about the glowing craft that he was, like, parked next to, you know.

[Michael McMillan]

Earlier that night there was another truck driver who saw injured, like, standing on the road next to the craft. And he said he just kept driving. He didn't want to stop and talk.

[W. Dave Keith]

Yeah, you know, I wouldn't have stopped. No.

[Michael McMillan]

Are you kidding me?

[Steve Berg]

Well, there's a lot of. So there's this guy named Tanner Boyle. He is an amazing writer and he kind of takes a skeptical, almost like left wing parapolitical view of a lot of these cases. And he had wrote this amazing, like 10 part sub stack about Indrid Cold and like this whole scenario. Kind of wishing. I won't go too far down the rabbit hole in this, but it's just a little teaser. Is that Union Carbide was this, like, chemical company that did a lot of, like, work with the defense. Different defense companies, I think, probably building like, you know, chemical weapons. And they were on strike. Woody. Darren Berger was supposed to be on strike, but he took a job. Like selling vacuums.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah.

[Steve Berg]

And so there was all this anger and strife going on and there was a ton of government people coming in trying to break up strikes. And his whole thing is that, like, they were using this paranormal stuff to freak people out. And so just like, you know, like, who knows if it's true. But it is also interesting that, like, Woody Danvers. This is true. Was invited to NASA to, like Cape Canaveral to me.

[Michael McMillan]

Really?

[Steve Berg]

People. And yes. And which I didn't know until I read this, so. And he was like, well, they might have been like, messing with him at NASA, like in like. So I don't know if that. I mean, like, like, I don't know how I feel about any of that. But like, he was. He did go to NASA. So either that's like NASA people were like, whoa, we have to talk to this guy who keeps on talking to aliens.

[Michael McMillan]

Well, this is also. You have to remember this. This is also leading up to the moon landing. Right. So, yeah, NASA's probably just also looking to do some fun PR stuff. Because if you think about it, if you're in the mid-60s and you need to find a person who, quote, unquote, made contact, and it's not Betty and Barney Hill who were traumatized by it. You don't have a. Other than like, maybe Kenneth Arnold, who I'm not even sure is Kenneth arnold alive in 66. I'm not sure.

[Steve Berg]

I mean, that would. That would have been like almost nearly 20 years after his sightings. Yeah, but he was. I think he was still alive. But like, I.

[Michael McMillan]

Well, I'm not sure when he went to NASA either. It could have been even after the moon landing. But I could see them being like. Because he was. You know, he made headlines. I could see them being like, woody's coming to NASA. Let's get a photo op. Like a man who met aliens.

[Riley Bray]

Flying saucer man.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, exactly.

[Steve Berg]

Exactly.

[W. Dave Keith]

What if the guy that had. That had the attic had the, like.

[Steve Berg]

No, no, that's Albert K. Bender.

[Michael McMillan]

That's Albert K. Bender.

[W. Dave Keith]

That was Bender.

[Michael McMillan]

Okay.

[Ad Host Female]

Who.

[Michael McMillan]

Who knew Gray Barker.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

Because here's the other stuff that I think. I also think that Gray Barker was up to some shenanigans during this entire.

[Steve Berg]

Potentially.

[Michael McMillan]

I think there was some. I think some of the Men in Black case. I've said it on the show before, but I think some of the Men in Black stuff was actually Gray Barker's friends or people in his social circle coming to town and just being punks and just doing, like, doing, like, early version of Ali G Punk, you know, like. Like, well, like, you know, candid camera comedy. Just pranking people, you know?

[Steve Berg]

Well, there is it. So my meta humor stuff, I think you nailed it because Gray Barker and a man named James Mosley, who had the famous, like, newsletter saucer smear, who was a known prankster and also hired Men in Black to. With John Keel at. Sorry, Mess around with John Keel. Okay, I forget. I don't know. You're good. But so. So James Mosley and Gray Barker, this is the thing that is known about. And John Keel talks about they. But John Keel didn't know for a long time it was them. They would get high and get drunk and sit at, like, one of their houses and prank John Keel all the time.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah.

[Steve Berg]

So I think it's a good chance in the month, man process. It's Gray Barker and mostly high as a kite smoking weed. Like, I hate to. I hate to take that. That lore and like. But, like, this is the thing. John Keel admits that. That he's like, I didn't know it was them for a long time. And James Mosley in his book talks about. He's like, our favorite thing to do was to have some cocktails, smoke a J, and mess with John Keel.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah.

[Steve Berg]

Because Keel was so paranoid. He was, like, such a perfect person to do.

[Michael McMillan]

I bet it would be so fun. He'd be like, get off my. Who is this? Get off my phone. Who's calling me at this hour? Like, I bet he gave them the best reaction. Sure.

[Steve Berg]

Absolutely. Absolutely. So I. I feel like. Like that, you know, I want everything to be high Strange. But I'm like, that is the most likely thing, no doubt, because Gray Barker.

[Michael McMillan]

Also with Albert K. Bender, like, you don't have the Men in Black without Gray Barker. I think that. That he's behind a lot of that early Men in Black lore. You know, he was a showman.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah.

[W. Dave Keith]

He wasn't one of the. Didn't one of the men in Black, like, try to assault or like, it tried to rough up Mary Hire. Right.

[Michael McMillan]

They just came into.

[W. Dave Keith]

There were two, like, tried to grab her arm. And when she.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. Came into the. They came into the newspaper office and they were like, being. Being weird with her.

[W. Dave Keith]

And that's the one that, like, grabbed the pen and acted like he didn't know what a pen was and never seen a pen before.

[Steve Berg]

Right.

[Michael McMillan]

Yes, yes. And all of that stuff. And she described them. The. The people in West Virginia at the time were describing them as looking Asian, I believe. Like, they were like, they look like foreign people, you know, which also then makes me wonder, like, is Albert K. Bender and James Mosley, are they putting on, like, offensive stage makeup and, like, Fu Manchu mustaches and walking around freaking people out?

[W. Dave Keith]

That's what always scared me when I read it as a kid was that they had, like. You could see the veins of their.

[Michael McMillan]

Neck or you could see white wires sticking out.

[W. Dave Keith]

Yeah. The cuffs of their. Their clothes.

[Steve Berg]

I was like, that's really weird.

[W. Dave Keith]

It would go under the skin. It's like that. That was creepy. Pale complexions and.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah. Sometimes it looks like they had lipstick on.

[W. Dave Keith]

Right, right.

[Michael McMillan]

Like pancake makeup. Like, they're pale and they're trying to add color to their face. But those weren't the MIB that were hanging around at this time in Point Pleasant. They describe them as, like, way more human looking, but just like, who are these people? You know, and act. Their behavior was strange. That was the thing that threw everybody off. But I think this is sort of like YouTube humor before there's YouTube. You know what I mean? This is just this. These are like young, creative stoners entertaining themselves and fucking with their friend. Because it was also Barker who told Keel to get down to West Virginia where they were having all these mothman sightings. And we haven't even talked about the UFO stuff that was going on at the time, too.

[Steve Berg]

No. Well, the UFO stuff is some of the. If you believe what Keel's saying, it's probably some of the most compelling stuff, to be honest. Like, I think, like, the ufo, the little green lights that he was interacting with, you know, with his flashlight and Stuff.

[Michael McMillan]

And, well, there's the. There's also the. The Merle Partridge UFO sighting, which is like, almost like a fairy light story. So this is in mid November, this is around the 12th or 13th. He lives in Point Pleasant. He's watching TV with his wife in their house, and their dog is barking its head off out on the front porch. And the TV starts acting fuzzy and weird, you know, because it's an old antenna analog set. And they said suddenly the TV like, like, popped and stopped working. The dog was barking. So Merle goes out on his patio to see what the hell is going on. And the dog takes off from the patio and runs towards this old pump house, this tiny little house. And he sees these, like a spiral, almost a cluster of little red lights that are spiraling around one another kind of like, you know, in sort of a double helix kind of formation, kind of like bugs. But they're these bright red lights and they. They end up, you know, vanishing, going away, flying off. I can't remember what they do, but they're. They're smaller. They're like orbs. But his dog never came back. He couldn't find his dog. He called for his dog. His dog never came back. And then there was like three or four days later, somebody thought they saw the Mothman eating a dead dog on the side of the road. And Merle parts are just like, that was my dog. I know that was my dog.

[W. Dave Keith]

Right?

[Michael McMillan]

Because it was. All this red light thing was happening in the middle of the. All these Mothman sightings.

[W. Dave Keith]

What do you guys think of all of the instances we're kind of talking about it now, but where there was a UFO sighting the same night or within minutes or hours of the Mothman appearing or people seeing the Mothman. Do you think. What is the connection there? Do you think they are connected?

[Michael McMillan]

Steve, please.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah, well, I mean, like, look, okay. It's so hard to say. So like, if, if, if I think if that there. What happened, if we're to believe what happened and it is all genuine, because it's all anecdotal, I can't say if this stuff happened or not.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah.

[Steve Berg]

And. But like, if it, if it did and we're seeing UFOs in conjunction with Mothman, I absolutely do think they're connected. Kind of like the, the, you know, at Bigfoot and UFO story that we covered on this show. I mean, if we're to believe that story, and I kind of do because there's so many witnesses, like police, you know, like, I would say they're I, I, I, the, the, the odds that the people seeing a Bigfoot in a landed like flying saucer, like, I mean, come on.

[Michael McMillan]

But the other.

[Steve Berg]

Buy a lottery ticket, you know.

[Michael McMillan]

But the thing that we do have to remember is like, sure, a lot of this stuff ended up in John Keel's book, in his words. But these witnesses have been interviewed and been put on tape. A lot of them were still alive up until recently. Some are still alive, you're right. Like Marcella Bennett is a great example. Like she's been interviewed on camera and she said that night me and my brother and his wife and my 3 year old daughter Tina. This is like again, this is all, this is all kind of happening in the, the week and a half leading up to Thanksgiving. She was like, we were gonna go to the TNT factory. We went over to my sister's house and then we started talking to her or you know, for, for an hour and a half or so. And then we went back to, we went back home. But as they were driving home, her brother was like, look, there is a UFO in the sky. And they get home and she's getting her daughter out of the car. And she said she was looking at the ground. She had her hand on the, the car door and she glanced down and she saw a pair of feet and her eyes just tilted up and she said she looked up the long body of this gray creature with glowing red eyes. And she grabbed her daughter and ran into the house, tripped, fell on her daughter. Oh, and, and her brother was screaming at her to get in the house. They got in the house and this thing was banging on their door like. So there are, it's not all just Gray Barker and John Keel. Like there are people who recount, like Bob Bosworth, he told that story about being in the TNT factory in his own words. You can hear tapes of him talking about that. He's on documentaries. The other great one, of course is the, that I think we have to mention because of, of the case itself is like the, the big one that kicked it all off was the.

[Steve Berg]

The.

[Michael McMillan]

Sighting that took place at the TNT factory with Steve and Mary Millette and Roger and Linda Scarberry. The two married couples.

[Steve Berg]

Yep.

[Michael McMillan]

So they're driving around in Roger Scarberry's new 57 Chevy Bel Air that he had just bought.

[Ad Host]

They're cruising.

[Steve Berg]

That's a hot ride.

[Michael McMillan]

So it's like a couple young couples, you know, in, with, in their 57 Chevy. And they said that they saw a man on the side of the road and they were like, what's going on with him? And they start to slow down, and they say that he's about 7ft tall. He was light gray from head to toe. And then they saw that there were wings folded up against his back or its back, like angel wings folded up. And they watched as it ran in a, like, hobbled manner into the trees towards the old power plant property where the. The TNT factory was. So they are like, what the hell was that? They circle back around, and suddenly this thing is. Oh, they see it now next to a billboard on Route 62. And they watch as the wings come out and the thing just flies straight up into the air. Now everybody says about the Mothman, he never was flapping his wings. He would just glide up into the air, like, which I love. Yeah, totally. That there wasn't like, he wasn't. He would never, like, lift off by flapping his wings. People said that he would take off like a helicopter, but his wings would be still. He would just go straight up like he was gliding into the air. And then this thing starts chasing their car and. But they. They start going 100 miles per hour back to town, and this thing is buzzing the top of their car, and they're all screaming and freaking out. And this is the story that ends up in the movie in a. In a very truncated version with Deborah Messing, where it flew towards their car. And they could see it's the red eyes coming at them through.

[Steve Berg]

Terrible special effect, too.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. So bad.

[Steve Berg]

Not a good.

[Michael McMillan]

So they went to the sheriff and they were like, we just got. And they were kind of like. They didn't want to tell the sheriff how fast they were driving, so they were, like, a little nervous about it. But that is when the, The. The. The craze really kicked off. That was on November 15th. And the. The next day, there's like, monster posse showing up at the TNT factory. There's so many people showing up with guns. They're asking. They're like, we got two questions. One, can we shoot it? And two, if there's more than one of them, can we shoot all? Can we shoot both of them?

[Steve Berg]

This is like a Christmas for these guys.

[Michael McMillan]

Yes. And the National Guard had to. To come over. There was also because there was a National Guard base in town as well. That's why there's so many National Guardman stor eyewitnesses in this. But the National Guard had to come and, like, be like, you guys cannot be poking around the old TNT factory with guns, man.

[Steve Berg]

Can we kill it?

[Michael McMillan]

But a lot of UFOs were also seen over the TNT factory during those months.

[W. Dave Keith]

Did you get to go into those little. What are those little domes called? The.

[Michael McMillan]

The dynamite?

[Steve Berg]

Yeah, the. Oh, there is a name for the igloos. They are, like, little. They're igloos. I was in there with Josh Cutchen, and he brought his trombone in there and plays trombone there. Yeah. Almost blew my ears out. But I hear it's kind of a.

[W. Dave Keith]

Crazy audio effect when you're.

[Steve Berg]

It is. Well, yeah, it sounds like you're, like, in this crazy. Like, it's. It's. And one of them's blown up because, like, back in the day, one exploded.

[W. Dave Keith]

Yeah, that's what's. Yeah, that's what I heard. And I guess there's like a hundred of them scattered on that property.

[Steve Berg]

There's a ton. But, like, you know, Michael was saying there was like, you know, they were dumping stuff in there, and it has, like. There's, like a. It's like, very swampy. There's, like, kind of like a body of water, and you're like. You're like. That is toxic. Oh, my gosh as hell. And, like, even being there, you're like. Yeah. I don't know, maybe they would say.

[Michael McMillan]

That sometimes the water in the river or, like, in the marshlands would just be like a pink sludge.

[Steve Berg]

Oh, yeah.

[Ad Host Female]

And they.

[Michael McMillan]

They tested. They tested the water, like, back in the 60s and 70s, and they were like, oh, it's so chemically polluted. There's so much stuff in here. So some people think that the Mothman was like a mutated sandhill crane.

[Riley Bray]

There was, like, just a up bird.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, Like a real up bird. Yeah.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah.

[Riley Bray]

Wow.

[Steve Berg]

I mean, maybe, like, that's. That would be. Who knows, man? Yeah, it's nasty.

[Michael McMillan]

I love. I think the. One of the real heroes of the story, though, is we've. We've mentioned, but not really got into. Is Mary Hire. Agreed.

[Steve Berg]

She's my favorite.

[Michael McMillan]

Mary H. Had a column, I think that was called, like, where the Rivers Meet. Like, she sort of had this local column, and she was really the one that. That everyone turned to to start reporting their stories. They wouldn't go to the police. They would go to Mary Hire and say, I saw the Mothman. And she was kind of like Linda S. Godfrey, where she became the. The network for this. And she was in, you know, working closely with John Keel and a bit with Gray Barker. But I just love that this, like, local reporter, female reporter is such a big part of this case. And we have a Lot of this lore and these eyewitness accounts recorded because of Mary Hire pre John Keel, because his book doesn't come out till 1975. And she's writing about these sightings every week in the paper, which is really.

[Steve Berg]

Died, like I like, shortly after she.

[Michael McMillan]

Got sick and died in 1970. And then Keel's book comes out in 75. But. But Gray Barker. There's like. There's a telegram of like, Gray Barker, like, sending word. And I think also what's her name from the. From the couples. Linda Scarberry. She also wrote. John Keel was like, I'm writing to tell you that. That Mary's sick. Like, John and Mary were pretty close.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

And it's really sad when you see some of the written letters in the telegrams that they were like, Gray Barker was like, I'm. I'm sending, you know, to tell you that. Writing to tell you that Mary Hires died. I don't know much information. Call this guy.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

So.

[Ad Host Female]

Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

So then the book comes out in 1975. So he. It took him, what, nine, eight years to complete that book.

[Steve Berg]

Well, it was, it was. It was actually table scraps from Operation Trojan Horse. It wasn't never even supposed to. It was just collected stories he had. He did. Because I think his publisher at the time was like, it doesn't really make a good story. Which is hilarious because it was like by far his most famous book. Yeah, but it really was. I think it was supposed to be a couple chapters in Operation Creation, Trojan Horse. Then years later, his publisher was like, listen, you need to put something out. So he's like, all right, how about this? And he kind of cobbled it together, and it ended up becoming his biggest movie by far. Yeah. Never listen to your publisher. Yeah.

[Riley Bray]

You just gotta let it go.

[Steve Berg]

Just let it go, baby. Do your.

[Michael McMillan]

The other. There's one more sighting that I want to talk about. And then, Steve, we can. We can kick it back over to you about your conspiracy theories about the.

[Riley Bray]

The case.

[Michael McMillan]

There's the Fay DeWitt sighting. Faye DeWitt Laporte. She's driving with her brothers and sister. And they're all younger at the time, like teenagers, and they're driving along out by the TNT area. And her brother's like, don't look out the window. And she's like, what do you mean, don't look out the window? He's like, do not look out the window. And she's like, what do you mean, don't look out the window? What's out there? And he's like, don't look out the window. She looks out the window, of course, and the Mothman is right next to her in the passenger side window. And she said that she was like, I don't know if it was flying or if it was running along next to the car, but it was just keeping up with us. And this thing was staring at them running or flying next to the car. And she said we were speeding down the road. Her younger brothers and sisters were. Sister were crying and screaming in the back seat. Her brother was like, get down, everybody get down. And he's like driving alongside the straight country road. And she was like, there's a turn coming up where they were like, okay, we're going to turn left. And then the, the. This creature is just going to go towards the TNT plant. She's like, we took a hard left and this thing never missed a beat. It stayed lock step with us, right aligned with our window.

[Steve Berg]

So crazy.

[Michael McMillan]

And then they took another right turn and then it. Oh, it ended up darting off after they turned, but they watched it. By this point, they're at the TNT factory. And she said that, oh, they stopped the car. This is what happens. They turn and they kind of hit an area where they can't drive. And this thing got on the hood of their car and was staring at them through the windshield.

[Riley Bray]

I remember that.

[Michael McMillan]

Oh, and it jumps on the. And then it jumped down off the hood of the car and. And she said it jumped. She didn't. She never saw wings at this point. Jumped up to the roof of the TNT factory. Her brother's like, this gets out of the car and starts throwing like rocks and bricks at it. She's like, get back in the car, don't do that. And she said it was up there just staring down at them as her brother was hurling at it. And she said it got something he threw. Got real close to its foot. And at that point she said it just opened up a huge wings. She said it was about 10 foot wingspan. And then it just glided off into the night. Like, okay, I've had enough with y'.

[Riley Bray]

All. Wow.

[Michael McMillan]

It's just.

[W. Dave Keith]

That's.

[Michael McMillan]

That woman is on in multiple interviews and multiple documentaries telling this story.

[Steve Berg]

It's crazy.

[Michael McMillan]

So you're like, what is. What the. Is that?

[W. Dave Keith]

In all the cases, in all the cases and stories, the only one where it really was aggressive and acted like it was going to hurt someone was the one where it ran up to the door of the house and chased the woman. Other than the time it was seen eating a Dead dog on the side of the highway.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah, but they got to eat though. That's just good meat going to waste. Yeah.

[W. Dave Keith]

But like for the most part it's just kind of an annoyance. You know, it's never really been super aggressive or hurt anybody. It's just kind of like bugging kids on highways.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. Buzzing cars, but not scaring people.

[Steve Berg]

It's a trickster.

[W. Dave Keith]

Yeah. Just hanging out on the side of roads, hanging out in trees and on billboards on the top of the TNT building and. But yet there's never really any cases of it like, you know, actually slashing somebody. But the one where it does chase the woman and her child into the house, that. That's pretty aggressive. But there are really no stories of it being, you know, an evil being, that an evil entity that is attacking people. It's more attacking cars.

[Steve Berg]

Right.

[W. Dave Keith]

Or messing with cars, flying next to cars, flying on top of cars.

[Steve Berg]

People assigned the whole. You know, because of the Silver Bridge, the whole harbinger of doom right on it. Which is a pretty heavy load to have on your shoulders.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah.

[Steve Berg]

I mean that's throwing a lot of blame on one. You know, it's like the bridge.

[W. Dave Keith]

I'm just a mothman. I'm not a harbinger of.

[Steve Berg]

Dude.

[W. Dave Keith]

That's like classic cars and.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah, that's.

[Michael McMillan]

My brother's in the. Where'd you get your car? My brother's in the mo.

[Steve Berg]

That's just an infrastructure issue, man. Like. No, I love the. I love. That is such a great story too. Oh my God.

[Michael McMillan]

Let's talk about the Silver Bridge collapse. I kind of forgot that it wasn't the immediate December. It's a year later that these sightings happen. November, December of 66. Men in Black start showing up in January 67. And then throughout the spring they. There are tons of. In 67 is really when the UFO flap really begins. People start seeing way more UFOs. People are seeing like full on fucking nuts and bolt crafts hovering silently over their lawns. It's like a whole. It's like the Hudson Valley triangle type stuff. They're not black triangles, but people are seeing all sorts of craft. And then a year goes by. In November there are more Mothman sightings again about same. Almost a year to the day they start there's uptick happens. And then on December 15, 1967, the bridge collapses. On Friday evening as all these cars. They said that everyone would go over to Gallipolis to buy stuff because the sales tax. They either didn't have sales tax. There or it was a lot cheaper. And that same night, the traffic light that controlled the bridge traffic was out. So there were way more cars on the bridge than there should have been. And there were semi trucks driving over it, and they. And the bridge collapsed. And there was like, one pin that was rusted that came that they decided they were like. They pinpointed that that caused a chain reaction for the whole bridge to collapse. And cars just dropped into the. The frozen waters of the river. And there was, like, eyewitnesses who said the river was just full of cars and Christmas presents. It's like the most sad, most depressing thing you've ever heard.

[Riley Bray]

Fuel. Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

The weird thing, because there's always high strangeness surrounding this stuff is a lot of people say that they heard a big explosion before the bridge collapse. You're like, I heard a big boom, and then I heard the bridge fall. So people were like, did. Was it really a pin? What caught? Why did I hear a big boom before this happened? You know, so there's people that say.

[W. Dave Keith]

They saw the Mothman on the edge of the bridge or something of the bridge. They said it was cited that night right before the. The bridge collapse happened.

[Michael McMillan]

But that was. That. That stuff is also one of those things. You're like, I heard the Mothman was up there, but there's no specific eyewitness that has ever come forward to be like, I saw it.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

But when the bridge collapsed, they were like, at that point, all the UFO and Mothman stuff, everyone just were like, we're not talking about that anymore. We have, like, a real problem. And that all just kind of was immediately forgotten about. So a lot of people are like, the Mothman went away right after the bridge collapsed. But it was just like, no, they had bigger things to worry about.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah, their attention was not on that anymore. They didn't have time to worry about. Yeah, exactly.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. So I don't know. So what do you think, Steve, with the. Like you said you thought that you had some conspiracy theories tied to this.

[Steve Berg]

Well, I kind of. We kind of went over a few of the most. You know, just talking about how the big strike was happening, and the strike affected, like, thousands of people along in the Ohio River Valley. And it was like a real serious thing. And it was because it was like this company, Union Carbide, was connected to, you know, the defense Military. Military industrial complex. They had people coming in to try to break up the strike. And it's like. I mean, there's just so many. It was such an interesting time In America too, it's 1967, the summer of love. And. But quickly the summer of love ends because the Vietnam War starts ramping up. There's a bunch of discontent in the streets all over America. And it kind of just mirrors what was happening in society, what was happening in Point Pleasant. Like, it was just like, it was like paranormal anarchy. Or were they being messed with? You know, like, I don't know, like I, I really do. Like, I feel like there's something genuine that was happening there, but I don't doubt that it was being conflated and maybe used a little bit to create more paranoia in the town, in the, in the spreading areas.

[Michael McMillan]

I mean, I think that, I think when things like this happen, and it's definitely happening over the course of like a year, it attracts storytellers, it attracts people who want to shape the narrative for whatever purpose. Whether they're writing a book or they want to prank some friends or they, or they're bored teenagers who want to have a story to tell or they.

[Steve Berg]

Want to be a part of the story. I think you're right.

[Michael McMillan]

Or there's some like evil Chemical Corporation can take advantage of it to break up a strike, like, who knows, you know what I mean? But it seems like the paranormal sometimes acts as this sort of flame to, to narrative moths that just come, come to it and they're like, I'm going to help. And then everything ends up, like you said, conflating what's really going on and masking or confusing people or getting in the way. The Bigfoot, the Bigfoot origin stuff in Northern California is very much the same way where you had pranksters on top of people who were taking it seriously all coming to the same location and stepping on each other's toes. No pun intended.

[Steve Berg]

Exactly right.

[Michael McMillan]

So I don't know.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah, I think you're right. I think you are 100 right. You, you have to take that in consideration when you have this like, like a geographical place that is having these like, events, whether they're real or not, there is always going to be people latching on, wanting to be a part of the story that just happens. I, I think there's, you'd probably be hard pressed, justified, like flap zone. That wasn't like half bs, you know, like, and that's not saying that there's not something genuine that actually is happening too. But like, you know, there is always going to be conflation, confusion and I think, you know, potentially some disingenuous stories.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah.

[W. Dave Keith]

What do you think of the, the Newer Mothman sightings in Chicago.

[Steve Berg]

I mean, they're interesting. You know, a guy I know, Tobias Whalen, he's kind of like the, you know, the Chicago Mothman guy, and he, he, he was on the Unsolved Mysteries episode that they did. You know, he was kind of like the ingenue of that. Not on your new. But you know what I mean? Anyways, but like, he, he, he has research and he gets a lot of sightings still from the Chicagoland area. Chicago.

[Michael McMillan]

Wow. Yeah, a lot. All up and down Illinois and is. And in Wisconsin, a lot of truck, A lot of truck drivers seeing this thing just fly straight up out of a ditch on the side of the road. A lot of people, A lot of truck drivers seeing this stuff. But, yeah, it bleeds over in Wisconsin. It's not just, it wasn't just, you know, relegated to the Chicago area. Riley, what do you think about all this stuff as we're diving back into it? Because, like, where are you at with Mothman in this stuff?

[Riley Bray]

I mean, I want to write it off as like a aggressive, messed up mutant bird, but, like, it doesn't really track.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah.

[Riley Bray]

It doesn't quite, like, cover everything.

[Steve Berg]

It is, it's just.

[Riley Bray]

And then it's like, is this some sort of like, psyop, like, you know, some sort of suit someone's wearing?

[Michael McMillan]

Ultra thing happening?

[Riley Bray]

Yeah, like, or like, I don't know, like, part of me is like, is this just like somebody, like, messing around in a costume? But the fact that it, like, and just like flies away is like. No, it's not that. Like, No, I don't, I don't know. I don't know what to make of it. It does feel like, inextricably linked to the larger paranormal context. Like, it doesn't seem like a sort of singular cryptid. It seems like it's, it's a, you know, it's, it's, it's part of a big old soup.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah.

[Riley Bray]

So I, I, I don't, I don't know. I don't, I don't know what to make of the Mothman. I love the Mothman, though.

[Steve Berg]

I'll say that there is one of my favorite incidents that I, for some reason find the most compelling part of the book is the. There's a moment, and it's fairly early on in the book, I think, where John Keel, Mary Hire, I think like a, and like one or two other people are on this hill where people have seen. It was, it was actually a lot of stuff happened. He called. What did he Call it. It's a. Like a makeout area, whatever. Like.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, like a lover's lane.

[Steve Berg]

Lover's lane. That's what the term he always used. Which there's a lot of theories about lover lovers lane scenarios. I could go.

[Michael McMillan]

A lot of small town monsters make themselves known to lovers lane.

[Steve Berg]

Well, you know. Yeah. And they'll helm. Right.

[Riley Bray]

There's cryptids too.

[Steve Berg]

Absolutely.

[W. Dave Keith]

In more ways than one.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah. Well, some people think the paranormal is attracted to sexual energy.

[Michael McMillan]

Well, sure, that makes Crawley and sex magic. We're getting into.

[Steve Berg]

Absolutely. But that moment where Keel is on the hill and they see these green lights that are moving around and being all crazy and Keel starts doing Morse code with his flashlight, like telling it to move left, telling it to like drop down, and it does. It's like interacting with John Keel flashlight. I for some reason feel like that moment is true. I really do. Just because I feel like Mary. That he would have to convince Mary hire and other people to be like, hey, let's all like pretend like this really happened. Like, I don't feel like that is. And that that's where I always kind of go back to when I think about this whole case in this whole time period, is that like, I believe that moment. I believe that moment happened to John Keel and I believe, you know, there was witnesses around. And if that's true, well, then I have to be open to the idea of everything else potentially being true.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah.

[Steve Berg]

So I. I'm not like a. Like, I wouldn't say I'm a skeptic about this. I think like kind of Riley was saying, like, I think there was some half is true and like half is probably not.

[W. Dave Keith]

There's some type of military connection because a lot of the Mothman sightings run military property or had connection to in that area. So I feel like there's some sort of. Back then there was some sort of military connection to it.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. I think the army still owns the land back there. That power plant area.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

Another just tiny little detail that Keel made note of was that a lot of people, eyewitnesses would feel pressure in their ears when they were witnessing these things, which I just thought was a weird little, little touch. Oh, and there was also the woman who saw it on the road and stared into its eyes and she got conjunctivitis. Her name was Connie Carpenter, which happens.

[Steve Berg]

With UFO sightings all the time.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, yeah, she saw it in broad daylight too. There's her and this other guy who were like two of the only people to see it. In broad daylight, another guy or what.

[W. Dave Keith]

Is conductive eyes puffy.

[Michael McMillan]

It's like basically you scorched your bacterial in infection.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah.

[W. Dave Keith]

Oh man.

[Michael McMillan]

It's like pink eye, when you get pink eye. So, yeah. So I don't know. I think the thing that I came back to looking at this again this week is I think for years and the years that we've been doing the show, I've kind of put Moth man into the like, like other dimensional entity category. And I think a lot of that is colored by the Richard Gere movie because that's sort of the explanation in, in it, in that, in that film is that it's like something from a different dimensional dimension. I'm kind of going back now to the alien hypothesis. I mean, unless UFOs are also from another dimension, which is totally possible, but there was an eyewitness who saw claims that they saw a giant bird walk into a UFO during this time period. So this to me starts to feel, looking back at it now feels a lot like it has a lot in common with the Bigfoot UFO invasion of Pennsylvania in 1972. It feels like one of those which also lasted about a year over the course of 72 and 73. And there were, there were kind of like your basic Bigfoot stuff in there. But then there's also a lot of high strangeness in that as well. I don't know, maybe the government was putting chemicals in everybody's water supply. I, I don't, I don't know. You know what I mean?

[Steve Berg]

That doesn't explain people seeing the same thing though. Like, you know, it's like, like, well, I, I, I, well, I mean, it'd be hard to deciding the ideas and. Yeah, you're writing things and you're right. No, that's almost like hypnosis. Yeah.

[Ad Host]

Yeah.

[Riley Bray]

Like a shared hallucination. Yeah, hypnosis. Yeah, it could, but Yeah, I mean, it does, it feels like a suit kind of to me too. Right. Like an alien in a suit or, or like maybe some, you know, weird military super soldier leaking radiation from the winged suit or something. But just like those, those wings that come out and then to the, the takeoff method feels very like.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah.

[Riley Bray]

I don't know.

[W. Dave Keith]

I was thinking it was, it does, it sounds like it's like an alien scout. You know, it's like the, the Grays are sending out their flying scout to scout the area.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah.

[W. Dave Keith]

And he's like this like suit that he can fly around in.

[Michael McMillan]

I like an Imperial Probe. When they send out the probe.

[Steve Berg]

Star Wars Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[W. Dave Keith]

And he flies back to the ship and. But it's like, why wouldn't the aliens just fly over?

[Steve Berg]

Yeah.

[W. Dave Keith]

Or just send the Mothman out to get a closer look.

[Steve Berg]

I think. Yeah, I. I think, you know, to me, the Mothman is like, you know, just another mask representation of the greater phenomena. Like, I'm. I'm definitely not an alien person. I don't think aliens have ever been to Earth. Alien from another planet. But I feel like UFOs represent something far weirder and more complex. That doesn't mean it's interdimensional either. I think it's probably something. Something more natural that blips in and out every once in a while. I'm kind of a John Keel guy. We're John Keel. That's his whole thing. The super spectrum is that this stuff is kind of of the same thing and shows itself in different ways to different people, depending on where people's culture and evolutionary tract. And I. I like that idea because there, it just seems like, you know, I guess when I think of aliens, I'm like, there's just. No, none of it seems. Seems anything like aliens from another planet to me. No, other than that they come in craft.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. And. And I think we also have to make note that, like, flying humanoids are also unidentified flying objects. So by nature, they are like. Like, the Mothman is a ufo. And it also makes you wonder if, like, is this Mothman, like, is it a. Is it how the craft might be presenting itself, you know, completely. Could it be like an orb that is holographically projecting the shape of this creature?

[Steve Berg]

Yeah, it all comes back to orbs.

[W. Dave Keith]

Yeah.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah. Which would.

[Michael McMillan]

Which would explain why it just flies, you know, but then why would you even need a wing? But who knows? Like, this. This is why it's weird. This is why it's high strangeness. There's a story.

[W. Dave Keith]

Did you.

[Michael McMillan]

Did you hear the story about the guy who was an English. I think it was a school teacher, Lawrence Gray, who said he woke up in the middle of the night and it was standing in his bedroom. And he said, yeah, it was standing next to its bed. And he was like, it was evil. It was like the devil was in my room and he was staring at it with his red eyes. And then it evaporated. It just vanished. It's great, but he's like, I can see it on camera in this one of the docs that I watch. He was like, when I talk about it, I feel it in my body and I Rem. I can tell. I can see it as clear as day is when the night that it happened. And it doesn't quite feel like it's a night terror situation because he. When he woke up, he was looking out his window first, and then he looked back to the other side of the room, and it was standing there next to his bed.

[Steve Berg]

Well, Ian, what was so great about 1967 and 66, this era going all the way up to the mid-70s, is that in terms of UFOs and the occupants that were being seen coming off these UFOs, we are talking about hundreds of different occupants. It was. This is well before the gray alien had homogenized and made, you know, which.

[Michael McMillan]

Means hundreds of different types of. Hundreds aliens and stuff.

[Steve Berg]

Hundreds of different types of aliens. Like, you know, there'd be a purple fuzzball. There'd be like a guy who looks slightly like a human kind of off tons of different crap.

[Michael McMillan]

Naked dudes with beards.

[Steve Berg]

Absolutely. So it's like when people say, oh, they're aliens from another planet, I'm like, like, well, so then there's like 500 different species visiting us. Like, it. Like none of it tracks to me, but I feel like people were. We were. I feel like in that era, they were auditioning the UFO and the alien and the gray won the part. And so the gray got the part in the 80s and the 90s. And then, I mean, you never really hear about grays anymore. They kind of went away. And so now I think we're in back in the auditioning phase of the next alien. Who's gonna.

[Michael McMillan]

I think tall grays are really a bit big thing now. Like, the Vegas were tall. They were like tall grays. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Steve Berg]

I just don't hear in many, like, humanoid alien stories anymore.

[W. Dave Keith]

Yeah, nobody sees the past Kagula aliens anymore.

[Steve Berg]

No, no. Was a one and done.

[Michael McMillan]

You know, it's all. It's all drones now and orbs. That's like what it is.

[Steve Berg]

Very boring. Ufology is very boring.

[Michael McMillan]

Super boring. All right. Well, did we do it to the bottom of it?

[Riley Bray]

We solved it, guys.

[Steve Berg]

We've solved it. We solved it.

[Michael McMillan]

Took a look at them. Case closed. Yeah, I love it. Well, great. Inaugural roundtable, gentlemen, I appreciate you.

[Steve Berg]

Thanks for having me.

[Michael McMillan]

Where can people find you? Buy your wares, listen to your podcast. Dave, why don't you kick off?

[W. Dave Keith]

Well, I'm at W. Dave Keith on Instagram, and I'm. I'm on a hiatus from eating tacos. Right. On Taco the Town. So we have too many tacos in a while. I had way too many for about seven years, and I had to take.

[Michael McMillan]

A break, so fair enough.

[W. Dave Keith]

Which I never thought I would say. I feel embarrassed saying that, but I had to take a break. So Taco the Town. I mean, we got a lot of episodes. You can listen to some Michael's a guest on, so feel free to listen to those. We might get back to it one of these days. But other than that, my art's on my Instagram at W. Dave, Keith and. Yeah, no, that's where you can find me.

[Michael McMillan]

I'm just gonna make sure everybody knows who weren't at Paracon. Kc. Dave does really great cryptid paintings.

[Steve Berg]

His stuff sold out, like, in a minute too.

[Michael McMillan]

In a. In a minute at the show.

[Riley Bray]

I know the owner of the applesauce original. Did you get first? That's before we even. Doors open. I said that.

[Steve Berg]

That's mine. Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

So, Dave, I don't. I don't know what you have in stock or what you're working on, but I just want to remind everybody the holidays are coming up and if you want.

[W. Dave Keith]

Anybody wants an applesauce or any other cryptids. Yeah, I do. Cryptid. Cryptid legends. So I can do any alien or.

[Michael McMillan]

They're fantastic.

[W. Dave Keith]

They're normal.

[Steve Berg]

So good.

[W. Dave Keith]

What is it? What was it? What did I call the. The weirdos.

[Michael McMillan]

Oh, I could look if I find in my picture.

[W. Dave Keith]

But yeah, I had a.

[Michael McMillan]

Unusual weirdos. Unusual stuff like that.

[W. Dave Keith]

And that's what the. Like a Spring Hill Jack was.

[Michael McMillan]

You had a mad gasser of mattoon painting.

[Ad Host Female]

Come on.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, Dave knows all this. He's familiar with cuts on there.

[W. Dave Keith]

So, yeah, I can do. I can do originals and I can ship them anywhere.

[Riley Bray]

So.

[Michael McMillan]

Great, great.

[Riley Bray]

Buy an original painting from Dave. Do it.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, slide into those dms. Get some art from Dave. Steve, what about you?

[Steve Berg]

You can find me. I have a podcast called hi Strangeness. H I comma Strangeness. Like I'm saying hello to it. And then I have another podcast called Weird here to help where we take. We give people advice on their weird problems. Cool.

[Michael McMillan]

I love it. What do you just want to close this out and collector's corner plug away with. With the boys. Riley, take it home.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah, take it home. They. We're with our boys.

[Michael McMillan]

We're with our boys. So I got a couple things to plug too. I was recently on an episode of Mega with Holly, Holly Laurent and Greg Hess. I play a religious UFO guy. Very fun episode. I think that's out now. Upcoming dates, November 30th, the Dynasty typewriter. I'm going to be joining Marcy Jarrow for her birthday show where she's combining her three podcasts, A Funny Feeling with Betsy Ellis, for Losers with Jessica Jardine and 90 Day Bay with Nicole Byer. I'm gonna be on the stage monitoring the chat comments because Dynasty Typewriter does live streaming. So if you're not in LA, you can go to dynastytyperator.com to get tickets for November 30th and you can watch it up for like a week or two after the live show. Dynasty Typewriter is like a very good venue. Their streaming is like a plus quality streaming. So yeah, so there's that happening November 30th, Marcy's birthday show. Please come if you're in LA or please stream if you're at home. It should be, should be a blast.

[Steve Berg]

Cool.

[Riley Bray]

Hell yeah.

[Ad Host]

My turn.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah.

[Riley Bray]

Peace. Drone.net Baby, it's my website. You gotta go to it. You gotta launch up one of them ambient modules and relax. I'm really excited about it. It's at the website. It hit 30 days and right on day 30 it had had 3, 000 individual users and I was like I'm.

[Michael McMillan]

Gonna do a kick ass ass.

[Riley Bray]

Like this is so people are going to it and using it. There's, there's ambient generative wind chimes. There's a virtual Tambora. There's some really useful audio plugins that I've been building. I'm learning you guys. I'm a certified Apple developer now. No way. Oh dude. Yeah, I'm making, I'm making software out here, you guys. It's really fun. It's a whole new thing for me and I'm having a blast. It's super nerdy, but it's really fun and I'm sort of just developing it all live. Like I'm updating the website as I go and I'm just like making stuff and putting it out there and you know, sometimes maybe it's not going to work on your phone, but it might work on your phone next week. I like that's part of the fun. This is a live, living little thing that I'm crafting out in the open. So go to peace drone.net, check it out. You might find, find something you enjoy there. I love that.

[Michael McMillan]

That's so great.

[Steve Berg]

Love that.

[Michael McMillan]

We should also announce here, remind everybody, find us on supercast.com for three bonus episodes every month. Ad free episodes and cosmic tracks from the bartender of Beats himself, Riley Bray.

[Steve Berg]

And I.

[Michael McMillan]

And I want to let everybody know this episode is going to conclude our 2025 season here on the main feed. The show is not going dark. We're going to be having episode drops every week through the end of the year, with the exception of maybe Christmas and New Year's week. But we're doing a holiday hiatus. But we'll have episodes that you have not heard before or you haven't heard on Bigfoot Collectors Club with me and Riley on the BCC main feed from next week through Christmas. But if you want new content and you want new stuff, we will be keeping the supercast channels fresh. So come join us over [e-mail] and don't miss any new BCC for the rest of 2025.

[Steve Berg]

Don't do it. Don't.

[Michael McMillan]

All right, I think that's about it. Thanks, everybody. Thanks again to Steve Berg w. Dave, Keith.

[W. Dave Keith]

Thanks for having me.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah, thanks, boys. This is so fun. Always great.

[W. Dave Keith]

Was this kind of like our friends giving.

[Michael McMillan]

It's a little. I think it was like our friends giving day, but kind of of was, you know. That's funny. You know, Riley, maybe we should donate somewhere again this year. What do you think?

[Riley Bray]

I definitely think we should do that.

[Michael McMillan]

All right, well, stay tuned to our socials and listen next week and we'll give you more information about that until. Yes. Do you have something?

[Riley Bray]

No, I said that's great.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, let's do it.

[Ad Host Female]

Until then, good night.

[Michael McMillan]

Say it together, everybody. And go.

[Steve Berg]

That wasn't bad.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah.

[Ad Host]

Pretty good.

[Steve Berg]

Pretty good.

[Ad Host]

Pretty good.

[Steve Berg]

Pretty good.

[Riley Bray]

Little kind of barbershop. Kind of.

[Steve Berg]

Yeah, it was harmonized well. The Layers.

[Michael McMillan]

Bigfoot Collectors Club is executive.

[Ad Host Female]

Produced by Riley Bray and Michael McMillan and engineered and edited by Riley Bray.

[Michael McMillan]

Our theme song is Come Alone by.

[Ad Host Female]

Suneaters courtesy of Lotus pool Records for.

[Michael McMillan]

Ad free listening and bonus episodes every month.

[Ad Host Female]

Join BCC Clubhouse on bcc.supercast.com Want to.

[Michael McMillan]

See us watch video episodes and exclusive.

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