by Joe Nickell
The Sightings
Detailed reports demonstrate that the original Mothman sightings were not hoaxes. They occurred on Tuesday night, November 15,1966, when two couples drove through the TNT area and saw a winged creature, “shaped like a man, but bigger,” with glowing red eyes. It walked on sturdy legs with a shuffling gait and, when it took flight and seemed to follow them, it “wasn’t even flapping its wings.” They said it “squeaked like a big mouse” (quoted in Keel 1975, 59-60).
Other reports soon flooded in, including one from two Point Pleasant firemen who visited the TNT area only three nights after the first sighting. They saw the “huge” creature but were positive that “[i]t was definitely a bird.” Many witnesses described it as headless, with shining red eyes set near the top of its body, although one woman spoke of its “funny little face” (Keel 1975, 64-65, 71).
Despite accounts of “glowing” eyes, one of the original eyewitnesses, Linda Scarberry, specifically stated that the effect was related to the car headlights. “There was no glowing about it until the lights hit it,” she said. (This statement is part of her handwritten account of the incident from 1966, reproduced in Sergent and Wamsley 2002, 36-59). Others echoed her statement. For example, one man, alerted by his dog, aimed his flashlight in the direction of his barn, “and it picked up two red circles, or eyes, which,” he said, “looked like bicycle reflectors” (Keel 1975, 56).
Eyeshine
The reflector-like nature of the creature’s eyes is revealing. As ornithologists well know, some birds’ eyes shine bright red at night when caught in a beam from auto headlights or a flashlight. “This ’eyeshine’ is not the iris color,” explains an authority, “but that of the vascular membrane—the tapetum—showing through the translucent pigment layer on the surface of the retina” (Gill 1994, 188).
Now, the TNT area, which I visited during both days and nights, is surrounded by the McClintic Wildlife Management Area—then as now a bird sanctuary! Owls, which exhibit crimson eyeshine, populate the area. Indeed, Steve Warner (2002), who works for West Virginia Munitions to produce .50-caliber ammunition in the TNT compound, told me there were “owls all over this place.” Interestingly, neither he nor a coworker, Duane Chatworthy (2002), had ever seen Mothman, although Warner pointed out he had lived in the region all his life.
Because of Mothman’s squeaky cry, “funny little face,” and other features, including its presence near barns and abandoned buildings, I identified it as the common barn owl (Nickell 2002). (See Figure 12-1.) One reader (Long 2002) insisted it was instead a great horned owl which, although it does not match certain features as well, does have the advantage of larger size. It seems likely that various owls and even other large birds have played Mothman on occasion.
I did some further research regarding eyeshine, learning that the barn owl’s was “weak” and the great horned owl’s only “medium.” However, the barred owl exhibits “strong” eyeshine (Walker 1974, 218-22) and—according to David McClung (2002), wildlife manager at McClintic—is common to the area; indeed, it is even more prevalent there than the barn owl. It is also larger than the barn owl, which it somewhat resembles, and is “only a little smaller than the Great Horned Owl” (Kaufman 1996, 317). (Mounted specimens of these and other owl species are profusely displayed in the West Virginia State Farm Museum near the McClintic preserve. Museum director Lloyd Akers generously allowed me special access to examine and photograph them.)
In light of the evidence, it seems very likely that the Mothman sightings were mostly caused by owls—probably more than one type. A man named Asa Henry shot and killed one, tentatively identified as a snowy owl, during the Mothman flap. Although only about two feet tall, a newspaper dubbed it a “giant owl” due to its wingspan of nearly five feet (Sergent and Wamsley 2002, 94, 99). In Point Pleasant I was able to view the mounted specimen and to speak with Mr. Henry’s grandson, David Pyles. Himself a taxidermist, Pyles (2002), who is “very skeptical of Mothman,” told me his grandfather had always maintained that the Mothman furor ended after he shot the bird.
FIGURE 12-1. Split-image drawing compress Mothaman (left) to common barn ow (illustration by joe Nickell).
“Bighoot”
Owls are very likely responsible for other birdman sightings. One of the these is the 1952 case of the Flatwoods Monster that supposedly arrived in Flatwoods, West Virginia, aboard a flying saucer. Loren Coleman, in his Mothman and Other Curious Encounters (2002), sees in that case “elements foreshadowing” the subsequent Mothman reports. However, as a Michigan Audubon Society publication concluded, my investigative report on the case (Nickell 2000) “convincingly demonstrates that the alleged flying saucer was really a meteor and the hissing creature from outer space was none other than a Barn Owl! Check it out, it’s a real scream!” (“Those Monster Owls” 2001).
Somewhat similarly, several 1976 sightings in Cornwall, England, featured a “big feathered bird man” that was first seen “hovering over a church tower”—a common nesting place for barn owls (Kaufman 1996, 306). Appropriately, the entity became known as “Owlman” (Coleman 2002, 34-36).
As to Mothman, “cryptozoologist” Mark A. Hall (1998) has opined that it may be a hitherto undiscovered species of giant owl. He has dubbed it “Bighoot” and cites evidence that it has long existed in the Point Pleasant area. I take this as an implicit concession that Mothman— of all the creatures known to science—most resembles an owl, except for size.
Here, then, is the question that separates the mystifiers from the skeptics: Is it more likely that there has long been a previously undiscovered giant species among the order strigiformes (owls), or that some people who suddenly encountered a “monster” at night misjudged its size? The latter possibility is supported by the principle of Occam’s razor, which holds that the simplest tenable explanation is to be preferred as most likely correct. The principle seems especially applicable to the case of Mothman.
REFERENCES
Chatworthy, Duane. 2002. Interview by author, 12 April.
Cline, Charlie. 2002. Interview by author, 12 April.
Coleman, Loren. 2002. Mothman and Other Curious Encounters. New York: Paraview Press.
Finley, Rush. 2002. Interview by author, 12 April.
Gill, Frank B. 1994. Ornithology. 2d ed. New York: W. H. Freeman.
Hall, Mark A. 1998. Bighoot—the giant owl. Wonders 5, no. 3 (September): 67- 79 (cited in Coleman 2002).
Kaufman, Kenn. 1996. Lives of North American Birds. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
Keel john A. [1975] 1991. The Mothman Prophecies. Reprinted New York: Tor.
Long, Chris. 2002. Letter to editor. Skeptical Inquirer 26, no. 4 (July/August): 66.
McClung, David. 2002. Interview by author, 13 April.
Nickell, Joe. 2000. The Flatwoods UFO monster. Skeptical Inquirer 24, no. 6 (November/December): 15-19.
———— . 2002. “Mothman” solved! Skeptical Inquirer 26, no. 2 (March/April): 20-21.
Pyles, David. 2002. Interview by author, 12 April.
Sergent, Dorrie, Jr., and Jeff Wamsley. 2002. Mothman: The Facts Behind the Legend. Point Pleasant, W. Va.: Mothman Lives Publishing.
Those monster owls. 2001. The Jack-Pine Warbler (March/April): 6.
Walker, Lewis Wayne. 1974. The Book of Owls. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Warner, Steve. 2002. Interview by author, 12 April.
13
Relics of the Headless Saint
For centuries, the site of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain has been a place of reputed miracles, including revelations and healings. Today, among its visitors are New Agers who consider the cathedral “a reservoir of powerful positive psychic energy”; some even claim to see apparitions of earlier pilgrims (Hauck 2000, 133-34).
On September 6, 1997, I made my own “pilgrimage” to the historic cathedral. 1 had been attending the Ninth EuroSkeptics Conference in the nearby seaport city of La Coruna (“The Crown”), and the cathedral
was the focus of one Saturday’s scheduled sightseeing trip—a secular pilgrimage in the company of scientists and other skeptics, including CSICOP’s chairman Paul Kurtz and executive director Barry Karr. Not only did I appreciate the cathedral’s Romanesque architecture, but I also began to delve into its history, steeped in centuries-old myths and pious legends.
Legends of St. James
The cathedral marks the site of the allegedly miraculous discovery of the remains of St. James the Greater, so named to distinguish him from the other apostle of that name. (There were various other Jameses in the Christian gospels as well, including one of Jesus’s brothers [Mark 6:3; Matthew 13:55]). James the Greater was a son of Zebedee. Jesus found this James and his brother John mending nets by Lake Genesareth (also known as the “Sea of Galilee”) and called them to his ministry. (This was just after he had similarly invited Simon and Andrew, promising to make them “fishers of men” [Mark 1:16-20].) In the early history of the church, James was the first disciple to be martyred (Acts 12:1-2): he was executed by King Herod Agrippa I in 44 C.E. According to one legend, his accuser repented as the execution was about to occur and was beheaded along with James (Jones 1994).
By the seventh century, another pious legend claimed that James had taken the gospel to Spain. Subsequently, still another legend told how Herod had forbidden the burial of James’s beheaded body. Therefore, on the night after the execution, several Christians secretly carried his remains to a ship. “Angels” then conducted the vessel “miraculously” to Spain, and the body was transported to the site of the present-day cathedral.
The apostle’s body lay undiscovered until the early ninth century (about 813 C.E.). Then, according to still another miracle tale, a pious friar was led to the site by a “star,” in much the same manner as the Wise Men were supposedly guided to the birthplace of Jesus in the New Testament (Matthew 2:1-12). The supernatural light revealed the burial place. The local bishop accepted the validity of the friar’s discovery and had a small basilica built over the supposed saint’s sepulcher. It was destroyed a century later in a Muslim raid, but in 1078 work was begun on the present cathedral, and was largely completed in 1128 (McBirnie 1973; Coulson 1958; El Camino 1990, 2-3, 36-37).
The alleged discovery came at an opportune time. After the Moors conquered Spain, only its northwest corner remained independent, and it was from there that the drive to reconquer the country for Christendom was launched (Encyclopedia Britannica 1960). The supposedly divine revelation of the relics seemed to endorse the quest, and Saint James (Santiago) “became the rallying figure for Christian opposition to the Moors” (Jones 1994, 144). Miracles began to occur at the site, resulting in “an extensive collection of stories” that were “designed to give courage to the warriors” fighting against the Moors. There were even stories of the saint appearing on the battlefield at crucial moments, and he was sometimes known as Santiago Matamoros (“St. James the Moorslayer”). The tales also encouraged the pilgrims who were beginning to wend their way to Compostela (EI Camino 1990, 3, 36-37; Cavendish 1989, 251).
Magical Relics
Medieval pilgrims were attracted to holy places, including churches that were home to powerful relics. In Catholicism, a relic is an object associated with a saint or martyr (a bone, piece of clothing, etc.). According to Kenneth L. Woodward’s Making Saints (1990, 63): “Just as the soul was totally present in every part of the body, so, it was popularly believed, the spirit of the saint was powerfully present in each relic. Thus, detached from the whole body and separated from the tomb, relics took on magical power of their own.” As well, mere proximity could be enough: “[T]he medieval pilgrim was satisfied if he could but gaze on the tomb of his cult-object” (Pick 1929, 101-2).
At the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, the relics of St. James were reputed to be working wonders, and various “prodigies, miracles and visions” multiplied there (El Camino 1990). Many made the pilgrimage to Santiago to be healed of an affliction (Gitlitz and Davidson 2000), but perhaps most did so for the experience itself and to be compensated with indulgences (remissions of punishment due a sinner) (EI Camino 1990, 4). “In the Middle Ages,” notes one reference work (Kennedy 1984, 93), “it was possible for the faithful to buy such pardon for their sins, and unscrupulous priests saw the selling of indulgences as an easy way of raising money.” (Abuse of indulgences was among the criticisms that led to the Protestant Reformation.)
Pilgrimages
There were many roads to Compostela, but one of three major medieval pilgrimage routes remains popular today, inviting not only religious supplicants but also historians, art lovers, adventurers, and others. It is a nearly 500-mile trek called the Santiago de Compostela Camino—or just Camino for short (meaning “the road” or “way”). Beginning in France, it winds across the Pyrenees, then traverses northern Spain westward to Santiago (Gitlitz and Davidson 2000; MacLaine 2000).
Among those who made pilgrimages to Compostela were such historic notables as St. Francis of Assisi and the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella. More recently, there was Shirley MacLaine. The acclaimed actress—sometimes disparaged as “the archetypal New Age nut case” for her belief in past lives, alternative medicine, and other fringe topics (Neville 2000)—wrote about her experiences along the pilgrims’ way in The Camino: A Journey oj the Spirit. Although the book was published in 2000, she actually made the trek in 1994, as shown by her compostelana (pilgrim certificate of Santiago de Compostela) reproduced inside the book’s covers.
Camino is not merely a record of MacLaine’s journeys (both inward and outward) but a veritable catalog of her mystical notions and fantasy experiences. Never religious, she says, she adopted a New Age mantra of “opting instead to seek spirituality.” On her trip she soon felt that she was being “visited by an angel named Ariel,” which, she wrote, “began to talk to me in my head,” telling her to “’Learn to have pleasure as you experience it.’” In the book she reflects on some of her alleged past-life memories or “revisitations”: as a geisha in Japan and as a dimly recalled inhabitant of India and again Russia. Later, when she is “not really dreaming,” she has an “intensely real” experience in which a monk appears to her, announcing, “I am John the Scot.” She is able to converse with him about the “science” of astrology, and about “karma” (supposedly the consequences of a person’s deeds that carry over and help shape his or her next reincarnation). They also discuss “ley lines” (imaginary connections between supposed sites of power, such as megaliths, ancient monuments, holy wells, temples, etc.) (Guiley 1991).
Occasionally reality intrudes. Once, seeking to relieve herself, MacLaine noted that she squatted over an anthill! Sometimes she is admirably observant:
In every village I was awed by the opulent richness of the churches, while the poor people who attended them gave every last penny they had to the collection plate. One priest sold holy candles to the peasants, which they lit, placed on the altar, and prayed over. When they left, the priest put them up for sale again. They had paid for the privilege of praying.
Midway through her narrative, MacLaine pauses to decide “whether to include the ensuing events” that promise to take the reader “off the Camino path and to the edge of reason.” Then she launches into another of her “dream-visions” in which John the Scot guides her on an odyssey to the legendary lost continents of Lemuria and Atlantis. There she learns that the latter was “an advanced colony of Lemurians” and that they in turn had received input from extraterrestrials who have been surveying Earth for millennia (MacLaine 2000, 187, 213).
Eventually, she arrives at the cathedral to pay her respects to Santiago de Compostela—Saint James—or as she describes him, “the saint with no head,” adding, “I felt the same way” (MacLaine 2000, 294). There, in a practice familiar to countless visitors, she climbed the stairs leading behind a Romanesque painted-stone statue of the seated apostle and, as directed by custom since the seventeenth century (Gitlitz and Davidson 2000, 344), hugg
ed the effigy (see Figures 13-1 to 13-3). She does not mention whether she then descended to the crypt to view the reliquary that supposedly contains the saint’s bones, but—after a priest ritualistically bathed her feet—she was soon out of the cathedral and on a flight to Madrid. She reflects on her odyssey of imagination and reality: “Perhaps all of it is simple. We came from the Divine; we create with that imaginative energy until we return to it. Lifetime after lifetime” (MacLaine 2000, 306).
Although the Camino pilgrimage has declined over the past few centuries, one reviewer predicted that MacLaine’s book “will change that” (Neville 2000). Even before MacLaine’s visit, though, the number of pilgrims had begun to multiply once again. Now, according to The International Directory of Haunted Places (Hauck 2000, 133-34), New-Age visitors to the cathedral consider it “a reservoir of powerful positive psychic energy.” Indeed, “[t]hey sense the spiritual energy and devotion to the divine that tens of thousands of pilgrims brought to this site, and sometimes they even report seeing the apparitions of those dedicated souls making their way through the city to the holy shrine.”
Investigation
The relics of St. James are the central focus of the shrine, and indeed its very raison d’etre—but are they genuine? If they are not, what does that say about all the reputed miracles there: the alleged revelations, healings, apparitions, and other supernatural and paranormal phenomena?
