Free The Mothman Prophecies by John A. Keel Page A

“Maybe six and a half or seven feet tall. And it had big wings folded against its back.”
    â€œBut it was those eyes that got us,” Linda declared. “It had two big eyes like automobile reflectors.”
    â€œThey were hypnotic,” Roger continued. “For a minute we could only stare at it. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.”
    It was grayish in color and walked on sturdy manlike legs. It turned slowly and shuffled toward the door of the generator plant which was ajar and hanging off its hinges.
    â€œLet’s get out of here!” Steve yelled.
    Roger stepped on the gas and they shot through the gates, spun onto the exit road, and headed for Route 62. Suddenly they saw it, or another one like it, standing on a small hill near the road. As they hurtled past it, it spread its batlike wings and took off straight up into the air.
    â€œMy God! It’s following us!” The couple in the back seat cried. Roger swung onto 62 on two wheels.
    â€œWe were doing one hundred miles an hour,” Roger said, “and that bird kept right up with us. It wasn’t even flapping its wings.”
    â€œI could hear it making a sound,” Mrs. Mallette added. “It squeaked like a big mouse.”
    â€œIt followed us right to the city limits,” Roger went on. “Funny thing, we noticed a dead dog by the side of the road there. A big dog. But when we came back a few minutes later, the dog was gone.”
    Panic-stricken, the red eyes still burning in their minds, they went directly to the Mason County courthouse, charged into the sheriff’s office, and blurted out their story to Deputy Millard Halstead.
    â€œI’ve known these kids all their lives,” Halstead told me later. “They’d never been in any trouble and they were really scared that night. I took them seriously.”
    He hopped into a patrol car and followed Roger’s car back to the TNT area. At the edge of town they looked for the dog’s body. It was gone.
    Back at the power plant there was no sign of the red-eyed specter. Halstead switched on his police radio and a very loud signal blasted out of the speaker, drowning out the voice of the police dispatcher in Point Pleasant.
    It was a loud garble, like a record or tape recording being played at very high speed.
    Deputy Halstead, an experienced cop, looked taken aback but said nothing. He switched the radio off quickly and peered uncomfortably into the darkness, reluctant to really search the old building. But he was convinced.
    The next morning Sheriff George Johnson called a press conference. Local reporters interviewed the four witnesses. Mrs. Mary Hyre sent the story out on the AP wire and that evening the “Bird” was the chief topic at supper tables throughout the Ohio valley. Some anonymous copy editor gave it a name, spun off from the Batman comic character who was then the subject of a popular TV series. He tagged the creature Mothman.
    II.
    November 16, 1966. Three years to the day since John Flaxton and his companions had seen the ambling winged monster in Kent, England. Long lines of cars circled the TNT area slowly. Men bristling with guns surrounded the old power plant, poking into every bush. There wasn’t much to do in Point Pleasant, a town of six thousand people, twenty-two churches, and no barrooms, so Mothman was almost a welcome addition.
    A large red light moved around in the sky directly above the TNT area that night but few of the monster-hunters paid any attention to it. * One carload of people was watching it, however. Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Wamsley and Mrs. Marcella Bennett and her baby daughter, Teena, studied it, puzzled.
    â€œIt wasn’t an airplane. We couldn’t figure out what it was,” Mrs. Bennett said.
    She and the Wamsleys were probably the only people in the crowd who were not looking for the red-eyed creature. They were on their way to visit the Ralph Thomases who lived in a neat