A statue commemorating the first Mothman
sighting near Point Pleasant, WV

photo by Fokket

Quite possibly one of the worlds best know cryptids, the Mothman has been seen on and off across the United States for the past 40 plus years. Just recently a witness came forward and contacted About.com’s Paranormal Phenomena Guide Stephen Wagner with the details of an encounter near the Ft. Worth suburb of Mansfield, Texas.

In the fall of 2007 the witness was driving with her daughter along FM 157 between Mansfield and Venus, Texas around dusk when something caught her eye. At first she thought she was seeing a plastic bag caught in the wind, but as the object neared she saw it was no bag. It appeared to have a “human-like form with wings attached”. The witness reported the creature made no noise as it glided towards her car. Filled with fear she instinctively rolled up her window. When her daughter didn’t say anything, the witness began to think she was seeing things. Finally after driving a few miles she asked her daughter if she had seen the creature. The daughter replied that she had. They then sheepishly opened the inside cover of the sun roof to see if the creature, which had disappeared from sight, had landed on the roof, which luckily it had not.

Mothman in Texas

[UPDATED See below.] For a few brief seconds of the 2001 IMAX film “Great North” a dark figure is seen on the far side of a river. The figure, which went unnoticed for 9 years, seems to startle part of caribou heard that the crew was filming crossing the river. While the figure is currently unidentifiable in copies of the film available online, big foot researchers are currently attempting to track down the filmmakers in the hopes of being able to find a print of the film at the full IMAX quality for further analysis. If they are able to find a high quality version of film, the researchers should be able to tell whether or not the film crew inadvertently documented the existence of an undocumented North American hominid. Until that happens we are left to ponder over lower resolution versions of the clip, like this one taken from Youtube:

While there is definitely no way to make any identification of the figure, the clip is more that clear enough to peak my interest in finding out exactly what was filmed. What do you think?

For anyone interested, the full documentary is available on Hulu to anyone in the US.

UPDATE: It turns out that the figure in the video was a crew member that was positioned to direct the caribou heard.

In search of Great North camera crew [via Chris Holly's Paranormal World & GhostTheory]

If you have even a passing interest in cryptozoology or the unknown, Loren Coleman’s newly opened International Cryptozoology Museum has the perfect addition for your Christmas Tree. Constructed of glass and resin the bigfoot and yeti ornaments are available in the Portland, Maine museum’s gift shop along with other cryptozoology related fare. Unfortunately, it appears that the ornaments are not available for order online. For those of you that are able to get to the museum to pick up an ornament, I definitely think this is a must have addition to any Christmas tree.

Bigfoot & Yeti Ornaments [via Boing Boing]