MEF:
Were you able to make out any structure to it or was it just a beam of light?
JD:
It had structure. It was in the shape of a funnel upside down. An upside-down triangle … It was really, really weird and when I got to work I told everybody and it was all over the news.
MEF:
A bunch of people saw it. What did the news say it was?
JD:
They called it “a strange light in the sky over Connecticut.” And, you know, by the morning, NASA said it was something else. They claimed it was some kind of rocket or satellite. But we definitely can’t see a rocket from Florida.
MEF:
They said it was a rocket from Florida?
JD:
They didn’t say, but the only place I know of that launches rocket is in Florida. And they tried to make up stories that it was a rocket and other stories said that it was a satellite, but it was clearly neither one because it just disappeared. The light faded but the aura was gone. It faded very fast.
MEF:
What do you think it was?
JD:
I believe that it could have been some type of aircraft.
MEF:
You say that you have been a believer in the UFO phenomena?
JD:
Oh, yeah. Anytime I see a strange light in the sky I stop and I’m like, “What’s that?” (laughing) And my husband makes fun of me.
MEF:
Well, what did he think when you saw this?
JD:
When I noticed this, I was like, “Come here, come here! You have to look at this,” and he was like, “Oh God…” And then he looked up and said, “Whoa, what is that?” And he was stuck there for a couple minutes looking at it.
MEF:
Is he a believer now?
JD:
No, he believes the same as I do: We believe that we were not created by God or Jesus. We believe that we were created by an alien. That’s who placed us on this earth to provide, and that’s what we believe. But as far as lights in the sky, my husband is not really one of those who really look. I am.
MEF:
So he believes that human origin may have been extraterrestrial but he’s not looking up in the sky thinking that everything he sees is a flying saucer?
JD:
That’s right. I like looking up at the sky, though.
MEF:
Now, what inspired your views and beliefs?
JD:
It started from somewhere … with our technology and our knowledge, there are some people who are smarter than others, there are people who can see into the future, there are people who are great builders or artists. I mean, it’s hard to believe that some can be better than others. They have to be that way for a reason, for a purpose.
MEF:
But where did you get the idea of extraterrestrial creation?
JD:
That’s just a conversation that my husband and I have had and it’s something that we just decided and believe because nobody has ever seen this “God.” Who made Adam and Eve? There’s never an answer for that. And the universe is so big it’s hard to believe that we’re the only life forms.
MEF:
So did seeing this thing in the sky change anything for you?
JD:
No, because I’ve always been a believer.
MEF:
And you don’t believe what NASA said it was?
JD:
No, I don’t.
MEF:
Are they just trying to cover something up?
JD:
That’s what I believe, yes.
MEF:
Have you seen anything since then?
JD:
Possibly … Could have … Well, yes, I actually have. About a year and a half ago, my children and I were coming back from the movies and it was about six or seven in the evening. We were coming over 72, the new expressway, and we saw a huge fireball coming across the sky, way in the distance. It was pretty far away. We tried to get it on video but the cell phone made it look like the size of a little peanut. But I saw it, my stepdaughter saw it, and my daughter saw it. We were hanging out of the car looking at it. To this day I don’t know what it was. My mom said it probably could have been a meteor, but there was no coverage on it. The news didn’t say that a meteor had passed over. There was nothing. This was definitely weird because it was bright orange and it was falling to earth, not traveling across the sky. My kids and I still talk about it to this day.
COLLEEN S.
(28, Married, Senior Relocation Accounting Analyst)
MEF:
You say that you had an experience that you cannot explain when you were a child?
CS:
Yes, I was about 9 years old.
MEF:
And what happened?
CS:
I was playing with a bunch of the neighborhood friends. We were playing what we called “War.” Basically, the girls played against the little boys in the neighborhood. We each [team] had a “home base” and our home base ended up being at my house at the shed, which was off the side of the house. Our parents often didn’t like it because there was a lawnmower and tools, but we did it anyway. And the guys in the neighborhood ended up invading my lawn and trying to capture one of the girls, so we were running away, laughing, giggling, and screaming. I ended up running around the house, toward the shed in the opposite direction and looking behind me every few feet to see if anyone was chasing me. Probably the last two or three yards I was looking behind me while running. It was a clear path ahead of me so I knew I could look behind me and I was looking to make sure no one was behind me. Right before I stopped to turn and go into the shed, I turned my head around and there was this huge … and, the only way I can describe it was it looked like a moth but magnified times ten. It must have been about six feet tall and about the same across … Just a moth, magnified with two tiny red, dead center red eyes. It was enough to stop me dead in my tracks and all I could do was scream. I screamed for my mom, I got so scared. I went from running to a dead stop; I was terrified. I turned around and ran away and when I looked back behind me it was gone. I ran inside and told my mother and she was like, “Oh, it’s okay, don’t worry about it,” but I was petrified. Scared wouldn’t describe it.
MEF:
Do you have any idea what it could have been?
CS:
No. Nothing. I’m not one to believe in these things. I don’t believe in Bigfoot, I don’t believe in the Loch Ness monster. I don’t know … any other way to say what it could have been besides other accounts of the Mothman and seeing pictures drawn and I look at them and say, “Oh my God, that’s what I saw.” I’m not trying to discredit myself or anything like that, but I’m not one to believe in superstitious things, but there is no other way … I don’t know how to explain it. I don’t know.
MEF:
Now you say that on the date this occurred that something else happened that you were not aware of.
CS:
Yeah, I was not aware of it. It might not have been that day, but it was definitely that week.
MEF:
And what happened?
CS:
I don’t want to go into too much detail because I don’t know how this could … I don’t want to get in trouble for mentioning this because I don’t know if it ever … I don’t even think it was mentioned in the paper. One of the girls that we played with was captured by one of the guys and ended up being … we’ll say … molested, or pretty much raped by her brother’s friends. They were part of the “guys.” It was childhood guys against the girls, but they were slightly older.
MEF:
And when did you find out about that?
CS:
I didn’t know. She had told me that something bad happened. The timeline is very blurred. Probably, if I had to guess, two weeks later when it was being investigated. The police officer came to my house to ask questions and that wa
s when I started putting things together as to what happened. I’m probably being very obscure because I don’t know to what extent…
MEF:
I understand. You say that you don’t believe in Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster or anything like that, but did seeing this thing have any kind of effect on your beliefs?
CS:
It definitely taught me to judge certain aspects; just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. To a certain extent, I would say not really, I don’t know, but I think there are definitely things that we cannot explain. I’m more likely to believe in ghosts and paranormal activity and UFOs. It would be naïve to think that we were the only living things in this universe. But as far as mythical creatures like Bigfoot, I’m … I know it’s crazy to say, because the Mothman is along the same lines, but there’s no logical explanation for it. There is not a single one. I don’t remember a whole lot from my childhood but I remember that single event. I remember moving, which we did, from that neighborhood pretty soon after that happened, and I don’t have any other way to explain it.
MEF:
So seeing this thing was kind of a turning point; you moved out of the neighborhood and things changed for you.
CS:
Yeah. A lot. After that all went down. It wasn’t just bing-bang-boom but in the years following that incident we moved, I went to middle school and high school after that but with different friends. When I say we moved, we actually stayed in the same town but moved a couple miles away to a different area and different street. I would say it was kind of a precursor to…
MEF:
Some people speculate that the Mothman is a warning of things that are about to happen.
CS:
I do believe that, I do believe that. One thing that I can say that is different from the drawings I’ve seen is that it did not look like a man. It looked just like a moth but magnified. I was a 9year-old girl and it completely towered over me. It was like a black moth but with two beady red eyes and just huge, and I remember thinking, “Why don’t I feel the air from the wings? Why don’t I feel the push, it was so big?” To say that it could have been a bat that was magnified by sunlight when it flew out, I mean … it couldn’t.
MEF:
You said that you had no way to explain it or describe it until you heard about the Mothman…
CS:
Yeah, when I was older I heard about that. I told my mom when it happened but she was just, “Oh, it’s okay, it was just this or that.”
MEF:
Do you still feel scared when you think about it?
CS:
Yeah. It gives me the creeps. It sends a chill down your spine. I mean, I wasn’t in danger, I didn’t fear for my life. I didn’t think this thing would hurt me but, let’s put it this way, I wouldn’t walk around it nonchalantly and there was no way I was going to try to challenge it in anyway but it was just there. It wasn’t trying to hurt me but … it was just there. It was one of those things that sat in the back of my mind until I saw that Richard Gere movie, The Mothman Prophecies, when they really started talking about it, and I was like, “Oh, my God.” It was definitely a precursor of what came, and it is clear as day in my mind. I can see it.
Notes
CHAPTER 1
1. Where Evil Lurks, directed by David Haycox, performed by Anthony Call and Kelly Cherie Levander, New Dominion Studios, 2007, http://www.4shared.com/video/w83Jn5Pk/a_haunting_s04e06_-_where_evil.html.
2. David W. Moore, “Three in Four Americans Believe in Paranormal,” Gallup Poll News Service, June 16, 2005, home.sandiego.edu/~baber/logic/gallup.html.
3. Zeeya Merali. “Splitting Time from Space—New Quantum Theory Topples Einstein’s Spacetime,” Scientific American, November 24, 2009, www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=splitting-time-from-space.
4. George P. Hansen, The Trickster and the Paranormal (Philadelphia, PA: Xlibris, 2001), 430.
5. “How Many North Americans Attend Religious Services (and How Many Lie about Going)?” ReligiousTolerance.org, www.religioustolerance.org/rel_rate.htm.
CHAPTER 2
1. Bill Ellis, Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults: Legends We Live (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001), 40.
2. Paul S. Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 2.
3. Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 16.
4. Laura K. Leuter, “The Legend of the Jersey Devil,” The Devil Hunters: The Official Researchers of The Jersey Devil, 2004, njdevilhunters.com/legend5.html.
5. Owen Davies, The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 23.
6. Davies, The Haunted, 25.
7. Judith Richardson, Possessions: The History and Uses of Haunting in the Hudson Valley (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 78.
8. Richardson, Possessions, 79.
9. Lesley Pratt Bannatyne, Halloween: An American Holiday, an American Tradition (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing Company, 1990), 2.
10. John B. Kachuba, Ghosthunters: On the Trail of Mediums, Dowsers, Spirit Seekers, and Other Investigators of America’s Paranormal World (Franklin Lakes, NJ: New Page Books, 2007), 199.
11. Hilary Evans and Robert E. Bartholomew, Outbreak!: The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behavior (San Antonio, TX: Anomalist Books, 2009).
12. Terence Hines, Pseudoscience and the Paranormal (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003), 235.
13. Kendall R. Phillips, Projected Fears: Horror Films and American Culture (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2005), 58.
14. Hines, Pseudoscience and the Paranormal, 273.
15. Jeff Meldrum, Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science (New York: Forge, 2006), 64.
16. Patterson–Gimlin film, directed by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin, 1967, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol8ifMrFN9U.
17. Joshua Blu Buhs, Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 126.
18. Donnie Sergent and Jeff Wamsley, Mothman: The Facts behind the Legend (Point Pleasant, WV: Mothman Lives Pub., 2002).
19. John Keel, The Mothman Prophecies (New York: Tor, 2002), 86.
20. Keel, The Mothman Prophecies, 7.
21. Phillips, Projected Fears, 104.
22. Jay Anson, The Amityville Horror (New York: Pocket Star Books, 1991), 291–92.
CHAPTER 3
1. Fox News: Bigfoot Fake, directed by Fox News, performed by Megyn Kelly, New York City, 2008, www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ubBss7tlAQ&feature=related.
2. Ker Than, “Bigfoot Hoax: ‘Body’ Is Rubber Suit,” National Geographic News, August 20, 2008, news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/08/080820-bigfoot-body.html.
3. George P. Hansen, The Trickster and the Paranormal (Philadelphia, PA: Xlibris, 2001), 89.
4. “The Ghostly Drummer of Tedworth,” Museum of Hoaxes, www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/archive/permalink/the_ghostly_drummer_of_tedworth.
5. “The Hoaxes of Benjamin Franklin,” Museum of Hoaxes, www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/archive/permalink/benjamin_franklin.
6. “The Great Moon Hoax of 1835,” Museum of Hoaxes, www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/archive/permalink/the_great_moon_hoax.
7. “The Great Moon Hoax of 1835,” Museum of Hoaxes.
8. Owen Davies, The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 201.
9. Ghostwatch, directed by Lessley Manning, performed by Michael Parkinson and Sarah Greene, BBC, 1992, video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6073447872198040913.
10. “Crop Circle Makers in Their Own Words: Doug Bower,” www.ufologie.net, June 30, 2006, www.ufologie.net/htm/cropbower01.htm.
11. Robert L. Snow, Deadly Cults: The Crimes of True Believers (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), 154–55.
12. Carl Sagan, The Demon-haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (New York: Random House, 1996), 227.
13. Sagan, The Demon-haunted World, 240.
14. Nin
a Bernstein, “On Welfare and Not Psychic? New York Provides Training.” The New York Times, January 28, 2000.
15. Don Dahler and Glenn Silber, “Psychic Hoaxes,” ABC News, July 21, 2006, abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=2218064&page=1.
16. Dahler and Silber, “Psychic Hoaxes.”
17. CNN, “Bigfoot Hoaxers Say It Was Just ‘A Big Joke,’” CNN.com, August 21, 2008, edition.cnn.com/2008/US/08/21/bigfoot.hoax/.
18. David Brakke, “Monks, Priests, and Magicians: Demons of Monastic Self-Differentiation in Late Ancient Egypt,” PDF, Indiana University.
19. Bob Young, “Loveable Trickster Created a Monster with Bigfoot Hoax,” The Seattle Times, December 5, 2002, community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20021205&slug=raywallaceobit05m.
20. Malcolm McGrath, Demons of the Modern World (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2002), 57.
21. McGrath, Demons of the Modern World, 57.
22. McGrath, Demons of the Modern World, 62.
23. Hansen, The Trickster and the Paranormal, 260.
24. M. Scott Peck, Glimpses of the Devil: A Psychiatrist’s Personal Accounts of Possession, Exorcism, and Redemption (New York: Free Press, 2005), 38.
25. Peck, Glimpses of the Devil, 234.
26. John Briggs and F. David Peat, Seven Life Lessons of Chaos: Timeless Wisdom from the Science of Change (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1999), 9.
27. Hansen, The Trickster and the Paranormal, 31.
28. Hansen, The Trickster and the Paranormal, 270.
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