The crazy mixed-up meaning of Mothman

From its origins in 1966, Mothman has been viewed as a cryptid, an alien, a spirit, an angel, a demon and more. Originally thought of as a single entity, sightings basically ceased a year later, after the Silver Bridge collapse. The subsequent book by John Keel in 1975 boosted Mothman’s popularity again and expanded the tale in wild new directions. Since then, the Mothman legend continued to evolve in popular culture and lore.

I came across this video – a comedy sketch featuring Mothman as “the most confusing cryptid”. Why is Mothman confusing? Because it’s a mishmash of decades of stories that blended larger narratives about monsters, aliens and general paranormality. What began as a scary encounter with what was initially described as a really large bird, it lives on 60 years later as one of the most iconic Pop Cryptids.

In the video, “Daniel” transports Mothman in through his phone line and asks him, “What’s your deal?” because it’s all very confusing to him. Mothman lore portrays the creature as a mysterious red-eyed winged humanoid that chases people and eats dogs, a spooky man-moth that appears from another dimension as an omen of disaster. In modern popular culture, Mothman is also depicted more like a fantasy character, or a dark and menacing figure, or a sexy mystery guy. It’s no wonder we can’t decide if it’s threatening or not. Mothman is many things to many people.

I’ve been interested in the various faces and roles of Mothman for a while. This video showed that other people are noticing the same thing – how very confusing and flexible the concept of Mothman is.

What is a mothman?

Mothman has been depicted across its history in several distinctive ways. As noted, witnesses initially reported a frightening hybrid entity with birdlike features, possibly a mutant associated with pollution from an ammunitions dump. The inappropriate comic book name given by a journalist early on nudged and shaped its popular and media images over the next six decades. The two people who originally formed Mothman into the iconic figure it is today were Fortean writers Gray Barker, and John Keel. The latter wrote The Mothman Prophecies that was turned into a movie 27 years later. The high quality movie not only added to the lore but charged up the legend for another go-round, even bigger than before. Both authors’ writings built up the key articles of strangeness surrounding the legend that remain today, including UFOs, Indrid Cold, the connection to bridges, and foreshadowing of events. By the late 1970s, Mothman was a representation of “high strangeness” – a series of seemingly related, inexplicable happenings. The malleable entity, or ambiguous cryptid, featured in subsequent paranormal-themed media, video games, internet legends, and, importantly, a town festival. All of these added more twists to the Mothman biography.

Much of the lore mentioned in the video coalesced later and built up slowly. For example, the locals did not associate the creature with the Silver Bridge tragedy at first. They were also experiencing a UFO flap at that time. Keel was instrumental in eventually linking up all the points into that weird narrative when the sum became greater than the parts. People remembered seeing the Mothman near the bridge the night of the disaster, and the Mothman became inextricably attached to that tragic narrative. Later, Mothman was loosely connected to other tragedies, but the evidence for Mothman appearances in Chicago/Lake Michigan, Russia and other places associated with catastrophes is very poor and is likely entirely imagined, based on its modern reputation as a harbinger of doom.

Is Mothman a cryptid?

Whether Mothman qualifies as a cryptid or not is an evergreen argument on cryptid forums. The debate is never resolved. Many followers of old school cryptozoology reject Mothman as a cryptid because the entity is tightly tied to the paranormal and high strangeness aspects of its history, which disqualifies it from serious discussion as a possible undiscovered animal that can be scientifically classified. Yet, modern cryptid fans love Mothman, even to the point of fetishizing him/her/them/it. (I am completely bamboozled in using a pronoun here.)

The current fandom considers “cryptids” to be “any creature that some claim is real but has no supporting scientific evidence of existence.” In that aspect, Mothman clearly is a cryptid. I could argue that the original sighting of the creature in November 1966 in Point Pleasant, West Virginia (next year is its 60th anniversary) could have been considered an unknown animal – a very large and unusual bird. In fact, it was originally described as “The Bird”, a “bird-like” creature, or a “man-sized bird” in the original eyewitness accounts. It was also said to be light colored (flesh or gray), not black, which is a modern standard. However, musings on its origin very quickly got wrapped into UFO discussions and various other anomalous and esoteric concepts that Keel promoted.

Like it or not, Mothman is a cryptid because word definitions and culture changes to fit our needs. Unlike the dispute about Pluto being a planet, there is no official council that has the authority to rule on cryptid matters. The popular majority rules. Apparently, the world needed a spooky flying humanoid legend with a distinctive name.

Part of the study of mysterious creatures must include consideration of the social aspects, the folklore, the spread of sightings, and the evolution of the stories. Cryptozoology is based on stories about the unknown, which makes it inevitably prone to inclusion of strangeness. This brings me to Mothman’s place as a Pop Cryptid.

Mothman as Pop Cryptid

No one now cares if Mothman was initially a weird or out-of-place bird encounter. I have not seen any modern researchers pursuing the idea of catching or confirming an animal that would fit that description. Its origin as a bird-man-hybrid is almost entirely lost. (Instead, it’s firmly linked to moths, which were in no way part of its origin story.)

Mothman’s cultural cachet is its different meanings embraced by a diverse fandom of multiple ages and interests. Mothman is depicted as scary, sinister, sexy, secretive, supernatural, cute, cuddly, and queer. Its ambiguity allows communities to embrace the monster for their own needs.

It’s become one of the world’s most notable cryptids due, in no small part, to the fact that it was promoted as the spirit of Point Pleasant. The descendants of those who lived through the first flap and the tragedy of the bridge collapse, decided to honor the monstrous symbol by making it the town mascot. Shockingly, this paid off in spades, bringing visitors to the town from all over the world. More come each year, and it shows no signs of slowing.

Mothman is mainstream. Mothman themed merch is ubiquitous. Point Pleasant’s museum and festival was the template for other towns to adopt their own local cryptid, no matter how flimsy and fantastical its origin story was. The answer to what Mothman represented in 1966 hardly matters at all in comparison to what people use it to represent 2025.

Unifying?

Is Mothman a unifying cryptid (as concluded in the video)? Yes and no. As a cryptid, it remains divisive because of its esoteric connections and roles as a harbinger of doom, a magical entity, and an ultraterrestrial. You will still find those who reject it as worthy of any study because it’s just so outrageous. It is now viewed way more as a globe-hopping bad omen and fantasy creature than as a zoological organism. But it’s too popular to ignore. It has brought together a new younger audience who see it as fun and socially useful. That’s culturally important. That the Mothman has been able to pull so many wide-ranging audiences together under one large wingspan is remarkable. Many fans are clearly able to hold the complex lore in their head (or pick the version they like best) and even evolve new aspects all the time. That’s how story telling works.

My biggest disappointment related to Mothman is that there is no historical biography written about it. I desperately want a qualified history writer to pull all these crazy pieces together so we can see and experience the Mothman phenomenon in a thoughtful way. Yet no one has done this. It would be quite a daunting task to accomplish, collecting everything to be considered about the man, the moth, the legend.

I suspect that the Mothman fan club would have less interest than I do in having the complex threads untangled and in the open for inspection. They seem to appreciate the mysterious, ambiguous, playful, menacing, multifaceted Mothman in all his messiness.