by Aaron Mahnke
Meanwhile, large man-bird creatures are still occasionally sighted, and oftentimes very far from Point Pleasant. Creatures matching the Mothman description have been spotted in Singapore, Argentina, England, Mexico, and Brazil, among other places. Most witnesses describe the same glowing red eyes, human-like body, and enormous wings.
In April 1986, there were similar sightings in a small Russian town located in a river valley just north of a wildlife preserve. Witnesses claimed to see a large creature they described as a tall, headless man with enormous wings and eyes that glowed with a bright red light. All of those details, from the location to the physical description, sound eerily like the Point Pleasant incident.
These sightings in the Russian town went on for over two weeks, and locals began to refer to it by name. They called it the “black bird.” And just as odd as the sightings themselves are the reports of eyewitnesses having nightmares later. What those dreams entailed, no one really knows.
We don’t know because there’s no one left in town to ask about those dreams, or the sightings of the “black bird” creature. You see, all fourteen thousand residents were relocated about thirty years ago, shortly after a reactor at their nuclear power plant tragically failed.
The city, you see, was Chernobyl.
WE LIVE IN a crowded world. As of this episode, the U.S. Census Bureau puts the number of human lives on our pale blue dot of a planet at about 7.3 billion. I’m not sure I need to unpack that for you; that’s simply a lot of people.
And because of that, there are very few places where we can go to be truly alone. Our cities are congested. Our highways and parking lots seem to be overflowing. It boggles the mind thinking about just how many people are around us on a daily basis. Which is why our homes offer a bit of peace and escape. At home, we feel as if we’re in control. It’s a personal space where strangers aren’t allowed in without invitation, where we can let down our guard and feel safe.
Our dwelling places have been a refuge for us ever since humans gave up the nomadic, hunter-gatherer life and settled in one location. Still, multiple religions throughout history have taught us to believe that, while we might think we are alone, there is another world behind the thin veil of reality.
Heaven, the otherworld, the afterlife…we can call it whatever we want, but humans—for the most part, at least—have always believed it’s there, waiting for us. It was in the mid-nineteenth century, though, that some people in the United States and Europe began to propose new ideas about it.
They claimed that, rather than being passive, this otherworld was active and thriving. And if we understood how, we could even interact with it. We could even communicate with it. Some people took hope in this. Some fought against it. Regardless, this new belief spread.
Few people, though, expected the darker side of this new vision. They celebrated the hope that came from discovering a new door and relished their chance to open it and walk through. But just because we can doesn’t mean we should.
Some doors, you see, are closed for a reason.
OUTSIDE FORCES
In 1848, something odd was going on at the home of John and Margaret Fox, who lived in Hydesville, New York. They were a poor family, but their fortunes changed when their two youngest daughters, Kate and Margaret, started to communicate with an unseen entity in their home through a series of clicks and knocks.
When word got out about what they could do, the girls—twelve and fifteen years old at the time—were asked to bring their abilities to the stage in Rochester, New York. And that was the moment that launched their career. Kate and Margaret toured the country performing group séances in front of sellout crowds. They inspired a whole slew of imitators, and the girls made a good living at it for close to forty years.
The Fox sisters came on the scene at a time when there was a growing interest in forces outside of our own existence. While spiritualism itself is said to have blossomed in upstate New York, some people think we can thank Franz Mesmer for getting it started.
Mesmer was a German physician who started out investigating the healing power of magnets but moved on to believe that inside and outside forces influenced our human experience. He focused on the healing powers of his theory but never found success in the medical field. Later researchers transitioned his work into a field they called “neuro-hypnosis” or “nervous sleep,” which eventually simply became known as “hypnosis.”
Today, when we think of mesmerism or of being mesmerized, we think of hypnosis. But it was the spiritualist movement that found the most hope in this idea. It took their beliefs in something that sounded insane—communicating with the dead and learning from them—and put it in the realm of science. At least, that’s what they thought.
In 1888, forty years after their careers began, the Fox sisters confessed to their trickery. Both of them, it seems, could rotate their ankles and bend their toes in a way that produced audible clicks. Each séance they performed had been an act, nothing more. But the world of spiritualism that they brought to the forefront of popular culture didn’t just go away. It had already taken root, and despite their confession, it showed no sign of stopping.
Spiritualism received a mixed reception. In some ways, these were teachings in contradiction to the accepted theology of a very large portion of Christianity, and some spoke out about that. In other ways, though, spiritualism seemed to confirm what most churches already taught: that even after death, we maintain our personalities and live on in another manner. For those who had lost loved ones or who had a deep curiosity about the afterlife, séances offered a chance to say goodbye, to say hello, or just to learn.
Popular figures lined up on both sides of the fence. In the 1920s, magician and performer Harry Houdini was a vocal opponent and actively sought to disprove anyone who claimed to be in communication with the world beyond the veil. John Nevil Maskelyne, another stage magician and the inventor of the pay toilet, actually sat in on séances and pointed out the trickery as it happened.
But not everyone saw it as a farce. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator and author of the Sherlock Holmes novels, was an avid supporter of spiritualism. He even belonged to a London organization known as the Ghost Club, rooted in a deep belief in the supernatural and the otherworldly. Other members included Charles Dickens, W. B. Yeats, and Charles Babbage, one of the fathers of the programmable computer.
There were others, though, who took things too far. Thomas Bradford was one of those people. In 1920, he placed an ad in a Detroit newspaper seeking others who were as curious about the afterlife as he was. He was looking for a partner, someone to converse with, to support each other and to further each other’s knowledge of life after death.
When Ruth Doran replied, the two struck up a partnership and friendship. Their goal was to become of one mind, they said, to be attuned to each other in a way that death could not break. And then, in February 1921, Bradford and Doran took their research to the next level.
Bradford locked his apartment door, turned on his heater, blew out the pilot light, and then waited patiently for the room to fill with gas. He died of asphyxiation shortly after, with the plan to reach out to his partner from beyond the grave and confirm their beliefs. So Ruth waited.
She never heard from him again.
THE GUESTS
When his wife passed away, Presbyterian minister Eliakim Phelps found himself alone at the age of fifty-nine. His children had all grown up and moved out, and so he looked for a change in his life that would bring him some semblance of happiness. He found that change in a younger woman, and soon the two were married.
His new bride was in her mid-forties and came into the marriage with three children under the age of sixteen. Shortly after, though, Mr. and Mrs. Phelps welcomed another son into their lives, and then in November 1847, the family purchased a home in Stratford, Connecticut. It was a unique and sprawling mansion built just twenty-two years prior by a retired sea captain, but it had sat unoccupied in the years since his death i
n 1845.
It was a large house, too. Those who visited there said that the layout had more than a passing resemblance to a ship, something one might expect from a home built for a sailor. The main hallway was an unbelievable seventy feet long, and there were five bedrooms on the second floor, with two more on the third. It provided all the space a family of six might need, and then some.
They moved into the mansion in February 1848, and for the first two years, life there was uneventful. But on March 10, 1850, all of that changed. They’d gone to church that morning, as you might expect from a minister and his family. Upon leaving, Eliakim Phelps locked the doors because no one would be home. Even the maid was off for the day.
When they returned home later that morning, the front door of the house was standing wide open. Phelps stepped inside carefully and noticed that more doors had been opened inside the home. Furniture had been toppled, dishes lay broken on the floor, and everyday objects like books and decorations were scattered about. They’d clearly been robbed.
The nursery was found in chaos as well, with furniture tossed on the bed. In a panic, Phelps checked the downstairs closet where they kept the valuable family silver and discovered it was still there, untouched. Even his gold pocket watch was right where he had left it. Which brought up a question: if they had been robbed, what valuables had actually been taken?
Concerned, Phelps suggested that the entire family travel upstairs together to continue their inspection. They looked inside each room, one by one, searching for signs of the same chaos and vandalism, but every room they checked seemed to be untouched. If someone had broken in, perhaps they had been frightened off before having a chance to come upstairs.
The last room they checked was that of Mr. and Mrs. Phelps. The space was clean and tidy and the bed was still neatly made, but in the center of it was Mrs. Phelps’s nightgown. It had been laid out in the shape of a person, with sleeves crossed over its front the way a corpse’s arms are crossed over its chest. Even a pair of stockings had been added to the arrangement, giving it the appearance of feet. And there, on the nearby wall, was a series of indecipherable scribbles, something that looked and felt evil to the core.
As hard as it is to believe, though, the family brushed these events off as a simple prank, some random act of vandalism and nothing more. Even harder to believe, when it came time to return to church that day for the afternoon schedule, the entire family willingly did so. Everyone, that is, except Mr. Phelps.
He stayed behind, relocked the doors and windows, and then took a seat in one of the upstairs rooms with his pistol in hand to wait for the vandals to return. But when nothing unusual happened for over an hour, Phelps quietly slipped out of the room to inspect the rest of the house.
Downstairs, he slowly pushed open the door to the dining room, and then froze. Nearly a dozen figures stood in the room. Some stood tall, holding Bibles. Others were bowed low to the floor. All of them, though, seemed focused on the shape of a small, otherworldly creature above their heads. Phelps stared at it for a moment before realizing it was a small statue hanging from the ceiling by a string.
It was a lot to take in, I suppose. That might explain why it took Phelps so long to notice the other oddities in the room. The women who were gathered around the figure weren’t moving. They weren’t even real. Each one, it turned out, was nothing more than clothing taken from a room upstairs.
They were life-sized rag dolls. Someone—or something—had gathered the clothes, pinned them together into human shapes, and then stuffed each of them with rags.
All without Phelps hearing a thing.
THE HARD-KNOCK LIFE
Eliakim Phelps took the blame for the figures. No, he hadn’t created them. And no, he didn’t tell people that he had. He fully admitted that they were peculiar—otherworldly, even. He didn’t know how to explain their appearance, but he believed that he had unintentionally played a part in it all.
He blamed the events of the week before. On March 4, a friend had visited the Phelps home. It had been a typical visit. After dinner with the family, both men retired to the study for drinks and deeper conversation. And, with this being 1850, the spiritualist movement was fresh on this visitor’s mind. It’s hard to say what they talked about. Maybe the Fox sisters came up. Maybe they discussed stories of reported hauntings or unusual activity written about in newspapers. What we do know, though, is that the conversation eventually turned to séances.
The word “séance” is French, and it simply means “session” or “sitting.” In the spiritualist movement, though, a séance was something more: it was an attempt to communicate with the spirit world, to reach out through the thin curtain between life and death and feel in the dark for something tangible, something real. A séance was, and is, an act of hope.
For Phelps and his visitor, though, it was a curiosity, and they decided right then and there to try one. Maybe it was the scotch they’d been sharing, or the late hour. It’s hard to say for sure what drives people to do things that are out of character for them, but it happens nonetheless.
The two men were said to have conducted their own short, amateur séance right there in the study, and according to Phelps’s own admission, it appeared to have been successful, albeit underwhelming. After calling out for a response from the spirit world, the men reportedly heard a distant knocking. (Back then they called it “rapping,” but, please, don’t confuse that with the work of Jay-Z.)
It’s most likely the men forgot about that evening altogether. But after the March 10 incident with the life-sized dolls, things in the Phelps household only became more outlandish. Things were escalating, it seems, and it was happening in the presence of multiple witnesses. Phelps himself was a skeptic, and so to help him document these experiences, he often brought in equally skeptical colleagues.
Later reports detail how the activity in the house grew more and more unnatural. Objects would appear from thin air and move slowly across a room. Some of these objects would even land softly, as if being set down by a guiding hand. Food would appear during meals, sometimes dropping right onto the table.
Even heavy objects such as the fireplace tools were said to have moved around the room on their own. At one point, Phelps called on another minister, the Reverend John Mitchell, to help him investigate further. The two men locked themselves in the parlor and waited, knowing it would be impossible for someone—one of the children, they assumed—to sneak in and toss objects through the air.
While inside the room that night, it’s reported that the men witnessed dozens of items appear in the air and then fall to the floor. Many of those items turned out to be clothing from upstairs, as if they had been falling through a hole in the ceiling. Clothing, mind you, like those used to create the life-sized figures that Phelps had seen weeks before.
The stories caught the attention of other members of the Phelps family. Once Eliakim was paid a visit by his adult son Austin—a theology professor—and Phelps’s own brother Abner, one of the most prominent medical doctors in Boston at the time. While there, the two men heard knocking at the front door. When they opened it, no one was there. Of course they assumed it was a prank. In a house full of children, that was the logical explanation.
So they then systematically inspected all of the rooms in the house, looking for the person responsible for the noise. Doors were checked, children were isolated and watched. In the end, their search came to a frustrating conclusion that evening when both men heard the knocking once more, this time while they were standing on either side of the door.
Granted, flying skirts and invisible knocking were things most families might be able to work around. There didn’t seem to be anything malicious or dangerous about the activity, so throughout all of this, Phelps acted without urgency. In many ways, it seems that he was more of a curious observer than a concerned homeowner.
But that was all about to change.
EVICTION NOTICE
The physical attacks began as pinche
s and slaps sometime during April 1850. One reporter, who had come to the Phelps home to discuss their experiences, actually witnessed some of those attacks. No one, from what they could tell, had faked it.
It became more life-threatening when Mrs. Phelps awoke in the middle of the night to find a pillow being pressed over her face and something wrapped around her throat. She survived, but it became clear that day that the spirit, if that’s what it really was, was far from benign. And then it turned its sights on their young son, Henry.
Henry was just eleven at the time, and although no one is sure why, he became the primary focus for the attacks doled out by the unseen force in the house. Rocks were thrown at him on multiple occasions. He was sometimes seen to be levitated up toward the ceiling, and a newspaper reporter once witnessed the child being picked up and thrown across a room. All by an unseen force.
Henry occasionally went missing, too, much to the concern of his parents. The first time it happened, he was found up in a tree outside, bound with rope and unaware of how he got there. Another time he was found inside one of the home’s closets, resting on a shelf too high for the boy to have climbed himself. There was a noose around his neck.
Henry suffered more than anyone else in the Phelps household that year. He was pushed into a cistern of water, the clothing he had on was torn apart, and on one occasion a fire was ignited beneath his bed, threatening to burn him alive. Thankfully, he managed to escape most of these attacks unharmed, but the danger was very real.
As the attacks on Henry continued, Phelps grew more and more frustrated. He began to shout out to whoever was responsible, speaking to empty rooms and demanding that the activity stop. It never did, though, and on more than one occasion, mysterious notes would appear—rough handwriting on scraps of paper—with messages for the homeowner. The notes themselves are now lost, but Phelps reported that their contents were beyond disturbing.