Ryan Reynolds (0:00)

Hey there, Ryan Reynolds here. It's a new year and you know what that means. No, not the diet resolutions. A way for us all to try and do a little bit better than we did last year. And my resolution, unlike big wireless, is to not be a raging and raise the price of wireless on you every chance I get. Give it a try@mintmobile.com switch $45 upfront.

Brian Sigley (0:21)

Payment required equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first 3 month plan only taxes and fees. Extra Speed slower above 40 GB on unlimited. See mintmobile.com for details.

McLeod Andrews (0:36)

We all look to the skies in times of trouble, searching for signs, for answers, for hope. But what happens when something looks back? When sightings of a strange creature consume a small American town just before disaster strikes, people wonder if those haunting red eyes were watching them or warning them. Because sometimes the bearer of bad news isn't just a messenger. It may be something far more terrifying. And it's already too late to look away. Welcome to Sightings, the series that takes you inside the world's most mysterious supernatural events. Each week we bring you a thrilling story that puts you at the center of the action, followed by a discussion that dives into the accounts that inspired the story and our takes on them. I'm McLeod.

Brian Sigley (1:34)

And I'm Brian. And we're finally tackling one of the world's most perplexing supernatural mysteries. The Mothman sightings of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, in 1967.

McLeod Andrews (1:45)

So prepare yourself for eerie premonitions, strange lights in the sky, and a creature so terrifying that you're going to wish you had a bigger flyswatter. A much, much bigger one. All that and more on this episode of Sightings. Something strange had just happened on Merle Partridge's farm. He'd been sitting alone in his living room watching television when the picture started acting up. Static at first, just interference, but then something else. A high pitched whine that seemed to drill straight into his skull. The sound grew louder, higher, until he had to clamp his hands over his ears. His German shepherd, Bandit, started going crazy at the front door. Not just barking, but howling, like something was trying to tear his soul out. Before Merle could even reach for the TV controls, the screen exploded. Glass and tube powder showered across his living room floor and plunged the house into darkness. Even stranger, the entire house and surrounding environs went fully silent. No insects, no wind, anything. So Merle grabbed a flashlight and headed outside as Bandit raced ahead toward the well house at the edge of the property. The light beam caught the dog as he rounded the corner of the building. But as soon as he was out of view, the barking halted, like the dog had been stopped dead in its tracks. And that's when Merle saw them. Two red lights floating 15ft off the ground above the well house. Not electric lights nor reflectors. Instead, these had depth to them like burning coals, but colder somehow. Like eyes, almost. And they were looking right at him. Everything after that felt like a dream to Merle. An overwhelming urge to go back inside washed over him. His legs carried him back to the house while his mind screamed at him to look for Bandit. He walked straight upstairs, still fully dressed, and fell into the deepest sleep of his life. And when he woke up, Bandit was gone. Not in the house, not in the farm, not in the woods on the far side of the fences. It was like something had just plucked the dog right off the face of the earth. My name is Fred Devereaux, and I'm a reporter for the Athens Messenger, a regional paper with an office in my hometown, Point Pleasant, West Virginia. It's a quiet place right at the confluence of the Ohio and Kanawha rivers with a population of 6,000. The kind of place where nothing unusual happened. Where nothing happened, frankly. At least until Merle Partridge rushed into my office to recount his fantastical yarn. Granted, strange stories about mysterious lights and missing dogs weren't my cup of tea. I'd spent a dozen years in Pittsburgh writing for the Post Gazette, covering city council meetings and labor disputes, and I hadn't wanted to leave. But when mom had her stroke, there wasn't much choice. So I swallowed my pride, took a job under Mary hire at the messenger, and told myself it was temporary, just until mom got better. So that morning, watching Merle's hands shake as he recounted his story, I wrote it all down. Not because I believed him, but because that's what journalists did. We documented, we recorded. Even if Mary would probably kill the story the moment I handed it to her, which, of course, she did. But three days later, everything changed. And suddenly, Merle Partridge's missing dog became a whole lot more important. I was pulling a late shift at the police station, hoping to catch something newsworthy, when four kids burst through the door looking like they'd seen the devil himself. They were two young couples I didn't know. Roger and Linda Scarbry and Steve and Mary Mallet. And, God, they looked a mess. Linda was crying so hard she had black rivers down her cheeks, and Roger was shaking like a man with palsy. They said they'd been out near the old TNT area where they saw something standing by the road, at least 7ft tall and gray colored with huge wings folded against its back. It sounded impossible, frankly, and I was inclined to chalk it all up to hysteria. Until they mentioned the eyes. Bright red, glowing like reflectors, but with that same cold depth that Merle had talked about. And when they tried to drive away, the creature flew after them, chasing them down the road. Even though their story sounded, well, fanciful to say the least, Deputy Halstead decided he ought to check out the old TNT area for himself. And when he asked if anyone wanted to ride along, I didn't hesitate. This was either going to be the story of the century or the quickest way to prove it was all nonsense. The TNT area. This old tract of abandoned World War II munitions bunkers. It was pitch black that night, and I'm not being hyperbolic, it was truly the kind of dark that seemed to swallow our headlights whole. So as we drove slowly past the old concrete storage bunkers, I couldn't help thinking their rounded shapes looked like massive tombstones in the gloom. But when we realized we wouldn't see much of anything from the car, we grabbed our flashlights and split up on foot. I won't lie and say it wasn't creepy out there in that darkness, but I truly didn't expect to find anything at all except some abandoned beer cans. So imagine my surprise when I rounded a dark corner and my flashlight caught something crumpled in a heap in the distance. A dark shape about the size of a German shepherd. I immediately spun and called for Halstead, and I saw his flashlight beam waving as he ran my way. But when I turned my own beam back to where I'd seen the crumpled shape, I was shocked to discover that it had up and vanished. Had my eyes been playing tricks on me? Because I swore I'd seen it. Swore it now. Back in the cruiser, Halstead suggested maybe I'd fallen prey to some trick of the eye, and perhaps so had those kids. That or they'd seen some kind of giant bird. There were sometimes huge sandhill cranes in the area, after all, and in the dark, who knows? So Halstead reached for the radio to call in our findings. But as soon as he touched it, the car filled with a horrific sound unlike any I'd ever heard. Not static or interference, but a high pitched shriek that felt like it was trying to drill straight through my skull. And I don't know how else to explain it other than to say it felt alive. Of course, Halstead immediately yanked his hand back and the sound cut off instantly. We both looked around, trying to find the source of the fright, but saw nothing at all. So we drove back to the station in silence, neither of us willing or able to discuss what just happened. The next morning, I tried to convince Mary to run the story of the kids sighting, but she was hesitant. Point Pleasant was a serious town with serious problems, and the last thing we needed was to become known as a place that cried monster. But more calls started coming in. A couple outside Clendenin saw something huge flying between the trees. A farmer in Mason county spotted a gray figure with red eyes standing in his barn, and the sightings kept piling up until a couple days later, Halstead decided to call a press conference. I was there, taking notes as Halstead addressed the smattering of reporters and onlookers about the recent sightings. There was a buzz in the air. I could see it on the faces in the crowd. Because even if it was as yet unexplainable, whatever was happening here in Point Pleasant was undoubtedly exciting. So much so that even I was starting to get caught up in it. So when a reporter asked Halstead what everyone was supposed to call this mysterious thing, I spoke up without even thinking. I'd been reading a lot of Batman comics lately, and something about those wings and red eyes popped a name to the forefront of my mind. I suggested we call it Mothman. More sightings followed, including one from a quiet woman named Marcella Bennett, who claimed she'd seen the Mothman up close and personal the night before. She said she'd been visiting her sister when she saw it standing in the yard, and it startled her so much she fell to the ground. But all she could focus on were those red eyes burning into her soul. But before she could even snap out of it, the thing rose up from the ground like a helicopter, not even flapping its wings, and disappeared into the night. When I spoke to Marcella myself, the first thing I noticed about her was her own eyes. They were bloodshot, irritated, and red, almost like she'd been staring at the sun. And she wasn't the only one, either. Almost everyone who said they'd seen those cold, red eyes up close had the same condition. I still didn't believe it, though. Not any of it, because there had to be a rational explanation. There always was, be it a sandhill crane or cascading panic or something else that's so dead simple that you knock yourself on your head once you realize it was right in front of you all along. So after dinner, I drove out to the TNT area. With a flashlight, camera and sleeping bag, I'd hunker down for the night and prove once and for all that this was nothing more than a case of mass hysteria. Problem was, as soon as I got there, I immediately noticed the air felt heavy, electric. Wrong. Surely I wouldn't get swept up in all this hoopla, too. So I shrugged it off and made my way to a spot atop one of the bunkers and settled in. I turned off my flashlight and scanned the horizon until my night vision set in. But after a few hours, I started growing weary because I'd seen nothing at all. Nothing except for a few onlookers who'd read the news and wanted to catch a glimpse of this mothman for themselves. But they left quickly, and I soon found myself alone in the dark again. That is, until I heard it. A distant flutter like massive wings cutting through the air. Too afraid to turn on my flashlight, I scanned the darkness, trying to spot anything with my naked eyes. But there was nothing out there aside from that flutter, which sounded almost like it was coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once. Finally, I decided to turn on my flashlight. The beam scanned the horizon in front of me, revealing nothing unusual. But then I heard that flutter, this time directly behind me. So I spun, and my beam hit something solid. A massive gray shape hovered a dozen feet away from me, A shadowy mass flanked by huge wings that looked eerily static and unmoving. And I wish I could say I stuck around to glean more details, But I panicked and ran fast as I could back to my car, fumbling with my keys as something moved in the dark behind me. Soon my engine roared to life, and I peeled out of the TNT area as fast as I could. But I wasn't alone. In my rearview mirror, I saw that winged shape rise up over the trees, Moving like no living creature I'd ever seen. And then the thing started to chase me. I hit 90 miles per hour on that narrow road, but the thing kept up effortlessly, swooping back and forth over my car. No bird could fly like that. No crane. Then I saw those glowing red eyes right outside my window, keeping perfect pace with the car as it rose up and slammed into my roof with enough force to make everything shudder. But then, just as suddenly as it appeared, it was gone. I pulled over, shaking, and when I finally mustered the nerve to step out of my car, I found long gashes in the metal roof. If I didn't know better, I'd say they looked like claw marks, but bigger than any animal I'D ever seen before. And as I stood there alone in the dark on that remote road, I realized I had proof that the Mothman was impossibly real. And the honest truth is, I'd never been more terrified in my entire life. After my encounter at the TNT area, the Mothman sighting began to slow. But something else was happening in Point Pleasant, something that made me question whether the winged terror had been just the beginning of whatever darkness had descended on our town. In the weeks that followed my up close encounter with that creature, people began seeing something else in the skies over Point Pleasant. It started with occasional sightings of odd shimmers in the distance, but rapidly progressed. So much so that my desk at the messenger was soon flooded with accounts from reliable witnesses. The manager of the Ben Franklin store reported three glowing spheres hovering above his parking lot, and two police officers watched a bright light split into four parts, each shooting off in different directions at impossible speeds. I even saw them myself one evening while driving home. I was crossing the Silver Bridge, the massive steel behemoth that spanned the Ohio river from the center of town, and I noticed two brilliant lights swooping past the huge support towers. And I wasn't the only one. The car in front of me nearly slammed into the median at this sight. But it didn't stop at strange lights, because soon strange visitors started showing up in town. They looked almost normal at first glance, men in dark suits and hats, like insurance salesmen or government agents. But something was undeniably off about them. They moved wrong, spoke wrong. Their clothes never seemed to wrinkle, and their shoes, despite the winter mud and slush, stayed impossibly clean. One afternoon I spotted two of them interrogating Marcella Bennett outside the grocery store, and indeed they stood too close together, their movements mechanical and stiff. Later, Marcella told me that their skin had looked like plastic and their eyes never blinked. Not once. These men in Black, as we began calling them, turned up everywhere. They'd appear at witnesses homes unannounced, asking strange questions about the lights. They drove large, dark cars that always appeared spotlessly clean despite the winter weather and always silent despite their massive engines. And more than one witness reported seeing these vehicles simply vanish into thin air there one moment and gone the next. But nothing. Not the Mothman, not the lights in the sky, not even those plastic faced men in black could prepare me for the hitchhiker. I was working late at the messenger office one night, typing up yet another account of strange lights over the river, when the man walked in. He couldn't have been more than Five feet tall, with a peculiar bowl cut and thick glasses that magnified his eyes to an unsettling degree. And despite the freezing December weather, he wore only a thin blue shirt and matching pants. No coat, no hat, no protection against the bitter cold at all. He said he had hitchhiked down from Michigan and asked me for directions to a nearby town. But something about his voice made my skin crawl. It was too low, too measured, like someone trying to remember how human speech worked. And as he talked, he kept inching closer to my desk with these jerky, artificial movements. Then he spotted my pen and picked it up, turning it over and over in his hands like he'd never seen one before, suddenly letting out a shrieking, inhuman human laugh that left me chilled. Then he bolted from the office, and when I ran outside after him, I saw him climb into a massive black car that peeled away without a sound. That night I had trouble sleeping. Not because of the man, but because of the dreams. They started as fragmented visions of dark water, floating debris, and just this sense of overwhelming dread that followed me into my waking hours. But as the nights progressed, the dreams got worse and shifted into outright nightmares. I'd see presence drifting in black water, hear splashing and desperate gasps for air. Sometimes I'd even wake up choking, my lungs burning as if I'd actually been submerged in frigid water. I soon learned I wasn't alone in my experience because Mary Hire told me she was having similar dreams. Visions of chaos and water and death. Something was coming. It seemed like a storm building just over the horizon. Things came to a head in mid December. I'd just taken a sleeping pill, hoping to finally have one restful night's sleep. And indeed, I quickly drifted off into deep slumber. But soon enough, I'd have my most vivid nightmare yet. I was standing on the silver bridge in a snowstorm. But the snow wasn't white. It was black, like ash from some terrible fire. Below me, the Ohio river was full of thrashing bodies, their faces blue with cold as they fought against the current. Christmas presents drifted past them. A child's bicycle still wrapped in cheerful paper. A doll in a partially opened box, its plastic eyes staring lifelessly at the sky. I tried to help, tried to reach the drowning people below, but all I could do was watch as they slipped beneath the dark water, one by one. And before I could even process what was happening, I found myself right there in the river beside them, thrashing and gasping and trying to stay afloat as ice flooded my veins. I woke up screaming, drenched in Sweat. And as I looked around, trying to regain my bearings, I noticed movement outside my window. A shadow far too big to be normal. So I grabbed a flashlight and ran downstairs, barely able to breathe. And though the winter air hit me like a brick wall, I crunched across the snow in my bare feet, determined to find out what I'd seen. But my beam caught nothing but bare trees and desolate darkness. Frustrated, I turned to go back inside when I heard a subtle shift of weight above me. So I froze in place and turned slowly, raising the flashlight with trembling hands. And there he was. The Mothman. It was perched on my roof with massive wings folded against its back like some terrible angel. Those cold, red eyes stared down at me, but this time they held something I hadn't seen before. Not menace, but what I could only describe as sorrow. But before I could move or speak, it spread those impossible wings and shot straight up into the night sky, climbing faster than any living thing should be able to move. Within seconds, it had vanished, swallowed by the darkness above. But its eyes stayed with me, seared in my brain, like they were trying to tell me something. But what? The next day was December 15, 1967, and the Christmas shopping rush had downtown Point Pleasant packed with cars and pedestrians. As I walked among the festivities, taken in by the holiday cheer, I thought that maybe, just maybe, there was hope for some semblance of normal returning to this town. But I thought too soon, because a booming screech of twisting metal interrupted the calm. People screamed and pointed, and I turned to see the entire silver bridge swaying unsteadily. Then the support cables began to snap, one by one, each sending a shower of sparks into the icy water below. And then, with a roar that seemed to shake the whole world, the bridge began to collapse. I watched in horror as cars tumbled into the freezing river, their headlights still burning as they sank into the black water. It was just like my nightmare. The splashing, the gasping, the chaos. One woman surfaced near the bank, clawing desperately at the air before the current pulled her under. Somewhere, a child was screaming for their mother, and amid it all, freshly wrapped Christmas packages bobbed in the water, marking the sinister spots where entire families had gone under. I tried to help. We all did. But the water was so cold and dark, and by the time rescue crews arrived, it was too late for most of them. 46 people died that day, including two bodies that were never found, lost forever in those dark waters of the Ohio River. The official investigation blamed a faulty suspension chain, but those of us who lived through it, who saw the Mothman and had the dreams we knew there was more to it than metal fatigue. Had the creature been trying to warn us? Were the dreams some kind of prophecy we failed to understand? And how did the strange lights and mysterious visitors fit into everything? Even now, I still can't make sense of it all, and I'm not sure I ever will. All I know is the Mothman hasn't been seen again in Point Pleasant since the disaster. At least not yet. Because there's always more tragedies waiting in this world. Perhaps that sounds morbid, I know, but I'm a reporter. I've seen more tragedy and mystery than I could possibly recount. But I'll tell you one thing I know for certain. If I ever see those cold, red eyes again, I'll pay closer attention to what they're trying to tell me.