the mothman a folkloric perspective

8/10/2019 The Mothman a Folkloric Perspective

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The Mothman: A Folkloric Perspective

Corey J. Chimko

The events of November 1966 through December 1967 in Point Pleasant, WV are well

known in Fortean circles. Since that time, the progenitor of that series of events, the so-called Mothman, has grown into nothing less than an American folkloric icon.

Regardless of what actually happened in Point

Pleasant over forty years ago (and this article will not

seek to review those events),1the episode has since

grown into what might be called a folklore motif, cultural

meme or Fortean geography,2with many attendant

characteristics that were both reported at the time of theevents, as well as some that were either inferred or, some

would say, invented, by later investigators and

proponents of the case. Barring associated phenomena

such as UFOs and Men in Black, the characteristicaspects of the Mothman mythos as it stands today include

1) the creatures large, glowing red eyes, described bywitness Linda Scarberry as two big eyes like automobile

reflectors3; 2) the creatures eerie cry or squeak,

described by witnesses Mary Malette and Virginia

Thomas as like a big mouse4and like a bad fan belt

5,

respectively; 3) the creatures ability to fly, using the big

wings folded against its back,6 and 4) the creatures role as a harbinger of disaster,

appearing on location days, weeks or months preceding a major calamity, in this case thecollapse of the Silver Bridge.7

The story of the Mothman and the events surrounding its appearance havecontinued to be popularized and studied (with varying degrees of adherence to scholarlyrigor) by authors such as John Keel in The Mothman Prophecies, Gray Barker in TheSilver Bridge, Loren Coleman inMothman and Other Curious Encounters, and skeptic

Joe Nickell in The Mystery Chronicles.8The 2002 film based on Keels book injected a

number of other apparent sightings into the Mothman mythos, including appearancesprior to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the hurricane in Galveston, TX. Coleman,

who consulted on the film, insists however that there are no records of Mothman at

Chernobyl or Galveston or before any earthquakes, that Mothman encounters did nothappen in those locations, and that these factoids were nothing more than little tidbits

to support the storyline.9Nevertheless, to his chagrin and that of those in search of the

truth, these stories continue to be recounted as fact on the now innumerable websites,blogs, and self-published (i.e. non-peer-reviewed) books dedicated to fortean topics.

Indeed, one could argue that the internet has become the most powerful engine for the

transmission of folklore ever invented.But were the events of 1966-7 the genesis of the Mothman mythos? Can the

elements of this story be traced back further than the 1960s, earlier perhaps than even the

twentieth century? Keel asserts that winged beings are an essential part of the folklore of

every culture,10

recounting a number of flying humanoid stories dating from the late

Fig. 1. A contemporary drawing of the Mothman.


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nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in America, including the 1877-80 Flying Man

of Coney Island sightings and the 1908Letayuschiy chelovek[flying human being]Gobilli River sighting.11Coleman adds the bizarre American flying machine-man

sightings in Louisville, KY (1880), Mount Vernon, IL (1897), Lincoln, NE (1922),

Chehalis and Longview, WA (1948), Houston, TX (1953) and Arlington, VA (1968-9),

as well as the international sightings in Cubeco, Portugal (1915), Kent, England (1963),and Vietnam (1969).12

As intriguing as these sightings are, the only thing they seem to

have in common with the West Virginia Mothman is that they are winged, flying,humanoid-shaped beings, but they lack the other elements of the mythos.13

Indeed, it precisely because it is so strange in terms of its content, duration, and

the fact that it seems to have incorporated a great many fortean stalwarts into the sameevent, that the episode is one of the weirder and more memorable in fortean lore. It would

stand to reason, therefore, that it would be that much more difficult to find historical

precedents. But the paths of folklore and fortean research meet at strange intersections

A Bizarre Synchronicity

As a student of cryptozoology and Forteanstudies, I am drawn to the art and folklore

surrounding the myriad creatures reported by

the cultures of the world in all times andplaces. I was recently perusing a volume of

the works of Henry Fuseli, (b. Johann

Heinrich Fssli - February 7, 1741 April 17,

1825), a Swiss-born British painter famous forhis depictions of the supernatural.14Among

his most famous works are his paintings

depicting fairy scenes from ShakespearesA

Midsummer Nights Dream. In the bottom

left-hand corner of one of these paintings,

titled Titania, Bottom and the Fairies,15

a

most bizarre and to some, perhaps,familiar, figure alights (Figs. 2 and 3).

According to Fuseli researcher

Frederick Antal, the small grotesquefigure dancing in the lower left corner

shows one of Callots dancers as a winged

insect. This strange figure in the

Midsummer Nights Dream excited sogreat a fascination that Fuselis 19th

Fig. 2. Henry Fuseli. Titania, Bottom and the Fairies(1793-4). Oil onCanvas. 169 x 135cm. Kunsthaus Zrich, Vereinigung ZrcherKunstfreunde.

Fig. 3. Insect figure detail from Henry Fuseli. Titania, Bottom and the Fairies(1793-4). Oil on Canvas. 169 x 135cm. Kunsthaus Zrich, Vereinigung ZrcherKunstfreunde.


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century imitator, von Holst, later made a

separate etching of it (see Fig. 4), andGoethe used this figure in the second part

of Faust in the presentation of Oberon and

Titanias Golden Wedding.16

Although it may very well be that Fuseliwas inspired by Callot, it also must be said

that the figure is undoubtedly based on amoth. The shape of the wings, as well as

the size and shape of the antennae make

this clear. Intriguingly, Fuseli has alsochosen to imbue the figure with large,

glowing red eyes. It is, in every sense, a

depiction of a Moth-Man. The subject

matter and appearance of the figure takeson a greater significance with some

knowledge about Fuselis background andhis non-artistic pursuits.

Fuseli and the Moths

It turns out that Henry Fuseli was an avid and serious entomologist. A contemporary

wrote of Fuseli that he was unrivalled as an entomologist; and so indefatigable, that he

would rise at four oclock and walk several miles to watch the operations of spiders on a

hedge.17

He was employed as a reviewer of entomological books,18

and was intimatelyinvolved in the production and procurement of a number of illustrated insect volumes; 19

writing on his personal procurement of some insect drawings, he states to an

acquaintance that those I wished most for, are the Papilioand theMoth.20

Indeed, apublished volume of his correspondence21makes it clear that Fuseli was particularly

interested in moths, and collected a great many of them:

You will transmit to [a friend of John Knowles] my thanks and condolences on the

escape of hisAtropos, though I cannot blame the Sphinxfor seizing that opportunity for

French leave mine, apparently still in health, continues in the pupa. As Mr. R[ackett]

mentions the S. Stellatarum, I wish, that in his researches he would pay particular

attention to GalliumandRubia, as the means of making us better acquainted with Sphinx

GaliiandLineata Linn.22

TheAtroposthat Fuseli refers to is Sphinx atropos orAcherontia atropos23

[Fig. 5].Commonly known as the deaths head hawk moth for the marking on its thorax which

can variously look like a skull, skull and crossbones, or a deaths head, this moth is so

large that it is commonly mistaken for a hummingbird.24

When irritated or palpated, it isstill more striking and unique from the fact of possessing a voice, or the power of uttering

a kind of shrill, plaintive, and mournful squeak, somewhat resembling that of a mouse.25

Its range extends from northern Africa as far north as Russia, and it is commonly seen asa migrant in many parts of Europe.26As one might expect, such a remarkable species has

Fig. 4. Etching by Theodor Mathias von Holst (1810-44) after Fuseli, 19thcentury.


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not only been noticed, but over the centuries has acquired a significant amount of

folkloric significance.

The Folklore of the Deaths Head Hawk Moth

The time of year that the adult mothemerges is late autumn, right around the

end of October, a time long associatedwith the appearance of spirits.27Regarding

its species name,Acherontia atropos:

Acheron was the underworld river of painin Greek mythology, and according to

Vergil, the principal river of Tartarus,

from which the Styx and Cocytus both

sprang.28

It was one of the rivers thatCharon, the ferryman of the underworld,

would ferry souls across.

29

Atropos, the eldest of the three fates, is she who chooses themanner of each persons death, cutting their life thread; she who

Comes the blind Fury with th'abhorred shears,

And slits the thin spun life."30

In Eastern Europe, the moths crepuscular habits and their penchant for enteringhouses in such numbers that the wind from their wings was enough to blow out candles,

resulted in them being regarded with horror as an evil omen, a forerunner of war,

pestilence, famine, and death to man and beast.31

In Poland, where it is called theDeaths Head Phantom and Wandering Deaths Bird,32its high-pitched shriek was

thought to originate from a screaming, death-stricken child, and to the Creoles the dust

of its wings was said to be capable of causing blindness if it came in contact with theeye.

33In England, it was sometimes considered a familiar of witches, and whispers in

their ear the name of the person for whom the tomb is about to open.34 As far back as

the fourteenth century in Italy and France, the moth was seen as a carrier of pestilence

and an omen of impending death, likely due to its appearance in Brittany during theplague.35

Even the larva of the deaths head hawk moth is surrounded with sinister

superstitions. Archaeologists have unearthed medical amulets or charms in the shape ofthe larva of the deaths head hawk moth in Ireland (Fig. 6), where the practice among

the peasantry, when they find one of these latter grubs, is to insert it in the cleft of a

young ash sapling, which soon puts an end to

the caterpillar, whatever effect it may have onthe murrain-epidemic. Even to dream, you see

this caterpillar betokens ill-luck and

misfortune.36

The charms were worn asapotropaic curative agents according to the

idea of similia similibus curantur, or like

cures like, the basic tenet of homeopathic or

Fig. 5.Acherontia atropos, the Deaths Head Hawk Moth.

Fig. 6. Connoch, or Murrain Caterpillar Charm, found near Doneraile,

County Cork. (Wood-Martin: 77, Fig. 26)


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sympathetic magic.37

In Wiltshire, it was believed that

bringing the caterpillar of the moth into the house wouldresult in an imminent death.38

The sinister associations harbored by this species

continue in mainstream culture today; in the 1991 film The

Silence of the Lambs, the pupa was left in the mouth of thekillers victims, and a full-grown adult was featured on

promotional material (Fig. 7).Badenloch sums up the folkloric legacy of the moth

in eloquent fashion:

To [the] fertile imagination[], the grim features stamped

thereon represent the head of a perfect skeleton, its cry becomes

the moan of anguish, or grief, or of a child; the very brilliancy of

its eyes typifies the fiery element whence it came, for they

implicitly believe it to be a messenger of evil spirits.39

* * *

It would seem that Fuseli was intimately acquainted not only with the scientific aspects of

A. atropos, but also with its folkloric aspects. Though he probably had a first-hand

familiarity with local superstition, it was also during his time that the first largecollections of local folklore and fairy legends began to be published in England.40Indeed,

moths appear in many of his works,41

and Fuseli seems to have delighted in taking

advantage of the more mysterious and metamorphic qualities of this insect; according toLentzch, et.al., Fuseli uses figures from popular folklore as often as he uses literary

characters [] all his creatures have in common an adaptation of their folk original to

contemporary taste.42

Antal also suggests that he may have been influenced by the works of JacopoLigozzi (1547-1627), an Italian painter, designer, illustrator and miniaturist in whose

works a scientific interest in animals, botany and a love of the fantastic mixed.43

Schiff,

et.al. echo their sentiments, asserting that Fuseli was one of the first artists to recognizethe enormous visual potential of English folk superstition, and that in post-

enlightenment Britain it became fashionable to acknowledge the existence of even the

most abstruse manifestations of the supernatural.44

[Sounds like post-Roswell America!]This milieu seems to have produced the first fine-art depiction of a bona-fide Moth-

man.

It was during Fuselis time, of course, that America gained independence fromBritain, and colonization was in full swing. It is not difficult to imagine those colonists

bringing their folklore, their books, and even their insects, with them.

Conclusions

And so it would seem that we have, in the works of Fuseli and the attendant

folklore on which they were based, an encapsulation and expression of the more or lesscomplete Mothman mythos, almost three hundred years before the events in Point

Fig. 7. Promotional poster for The Silence of

the Lambs, 1991, showing theA. atropos.


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Pleasant.45

The folklore which inspired him is more ancient still, and may not even have

been confined to the European continent.People often take the existence of folklore for granted, as if it somehow trickles

down to us through the ether of time of its own accord. Of course, folklore, like anything

else, must be transmitted in some form by people, be it orally, in print, or in this case, in

art. Coleman has written on the evolution of the depiction of the Mothman in popularculture, saying that

Mothmen didnt have hands with four fingers, toes with claws, well-defined rib-cages,

or leathery wings. Most of those details were not even seen or were described differently.

The diffuse imagery of Mothman has drifted into something with a head, arms, and

limbs, although few described it that way in the 1960s. [] The insect notion, the bat

man appearance, and the creey [sic] demon look are fantastic imagined images for

Mothman.46

This of course is true, if you accept that the incidents in Point Pleasant constitute thelaunching point for this particular fortean geography, but, as we have seen, they do not.

If we incorporate the depictions of Fuseli and the PuebloIndians into the history of Mothman art, there were indeedMothmen of varying physical appearances before the Point

Pleasant creature came on the scene.

Though I am certainly not arguing that thewitnesses of the 1966-7 events were hallucinating or that

they did not have real experiences, I amarguing that those

experiences do, in typical uncanny fortean fashion, seem to

fit into a larger body of experiences, folk beliefs, andsymbology that can be shown to go back at least as far as

the fourteenth century, and likely further back still.

And while we are on the subject of uncanny forteansynchronicities, it might do well to comment on that of our

celebrity creatures name. Apparently the name

Mothman was a reporters takeoff on the then-currentBatman TV series.47But why then was he not called the

Bat-man or the Bird-man (which would have been

more in keeping with contemporary descriptions)? Instead

it was the appellation Mothman that stuck, and it goes without saying that if it had not, nostudy such as the current one would have taken place, and the parallels between the

Mothman mythos and the folklore of the deaths head hawk moth would have remained

obscure.Some researchers have argued that men like John Keel, Jim Moseley and Gray

Barker were responsible for the insertion of many aspects of the modern Mothman

mythos, including its association with the collapse of the Silver Bridge, and other, morepersonal crises;48what Dixon calls the final narrative twist in Keels Gnostic tale of

impending doom.49

Could it be that these men were aware of the folklore surrounding

moths and constructed certain aspects of the mythos along those lines? Perhaps. Perhapsnot. Perhaps subconsciously and/or unintentionally. If we accept the mythos is part of

some fundamental symbolic reality in which we all live, if the Mothman is of singular

Fig. 12. Robert Roachs Mothman statue in Point

Pleasant, WV.


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interest not because of his anomalous character, but because his incorporation into

systematized bodies of knowledge has become emblematic of how people proceed to liveand cope with the notion of uncertainty,50then perhaps their involvement was not

wholly self-directed.

In the end, from the folkloric perspective, it doesnt really matter. I have always

argued that in terms of fortean mysteries, those that are solved will enter the realm ofscience, while those that are not will enter the realm of folklore. Regardless of their

motives, men like Keel, Barker, Moseley, Fuseli and even the ancient Pueblo Indians areboth the inheritors and the agents of folkloric transmission. They received and perhaps

built upon that folklore, and their ideas are now all part of the Mothman mythos as it

moves forward. A mythos that, if we judge by its increasing appearance in popularculture, shows no signs of abating.

Fig. 13. Post-1967 depictions of the Mothman in popular culture.


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Works Cited:

Antal, Frederick. 1956. Fuseli Studies. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Badenloch, L.N. 1899. True Tales of the Insects. London: Chapman & Hull.

Child, A.B. & Child, I.L. 1993.Religion and Magic in the Life of Traditional Peoples. Englewood Cliffs,

NJ: Prentice Hall.

Coleman, Loren. 2002.Mothman and Other Curious Encounters. New York: Paraview Press.

_____. 2007. Mothmans Fate, Cryptomundo. Posted 2007-09-08; retrieved 2010-07-14.

http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/mothman-fate/.

David, Gary. 2008. The Mothman Pottery Mound & The Sacred Datura, Viewzone.

http://www.viewzone.com/mothman.html. Posted 2009-01-23. Retrieved 2010-07-12.

Derbyshire, David. 2003. Found in Wales, folklores harbinger of death,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3311501/Found-in-Wales-folklores-harbinger-

of-death.html. Retrieved 07-12-2010.

Dixon, Deborah. 2007. A benevolent and sceptical inquiry: exploring Fortean Geographies with the

Mothman, Cultural Geographies2007 (14): 189-210.

Frazer, J.G. 1922. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. New York: The MacMillan

Company.

Fuseli, Henry. 1795. Review of Archives of Entomology,Analytical ReviewXXI (May 1795): 523-4.

Goethe, Johan Wolfgang von. [1808]. 1980. Faust. Tr. Alice Raphael. Norwalk: The Easton Press.

Hibben, Frank. 1975. Kiva Art of the Anasazi Pottery Mound. Las Vegas: KC Publications.

Jones, Colin. n.d.How Not to Laugh in the French Enlightenment: The Saint-Aubin Livre de Caricatures.Chicago: University of Chicago Modern France Workshop.

http://fcc.uchicago.edu/pdf/enlightenment.pdf. Retrieved 07-25-2010.

Kay, Paul T. 2005.Ancient Voicesmurals and pots speak. DATURA: A Poster Presentation for the 70th

Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Salt Lake City.

http://paultkay.info/DATURA_05_08_2006.pdf. Retrieved 07-25-2010.

Keel, John. 1975. The Mothman Prophecies. New York: Tom Doherty Associates.

Law, L.A. 1900. Death and Burial Customs in Wiltshire, Folk-lore. Transactions of the Folk-lore

Society. XI:1 (March 1900): 344.

Lentzsch, Franziska et.al. 2005. Fuseli: The Wild Swiss. Zurich: Scheidegger & Spiess.

LeRose, Chris. 2001. The Collapse of the Silver Bridge, West Virginia Historical Society Quarterly

XV:4 (Oct 2001).

Linnaeus, Carolus. 1758. Systema naturae per regna tria naturae, secundum classes, ordines, genera,

species, cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis. 10th

Ed. Holmiae: Laurentii Salvii.

Mauris, Patrick. 1996.Essai sur les papilloneries humaines. Paris.


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Milton, John. 1897. [1637]Lycidas. ed. J. Phelps Fruit. Boston: Ginn & Company.

Nickell, Joe. 2002. Mothman Solved! Skeptical InquirerMarch/April 2002: 20-21.

_____. 2004. The Mystery Chronicles: More Real-Life X-Files. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

Petrenko, Yuri B. 1973. Forerunner of the Flying Lady of Vietnam? Flying Saucer Review19:2

(March/April 1973): 29-30.

Radford, Jonathan. n.d. Italian Hawk Moths. http://www.lifeinitaly.com/garden/hummingbird-moths.asp.

Retrieved 07-12-2010.

Sergent, Donnie Jr. & Wamsley, Jeff. 2002.Mothman: The Facts Behind the Legend. Point Pleasant, WV:

Mothman Lives Publishing.

Schaafsma, Polly. 1980. Indian Rock Art of the Southwest. Santa Fe/Albuquerque: School of American

Research/University of New Mexico Press.

Schiff, Gert et.al. 1975.Henry Fuseli 1741-1825. London: Tate Gallery.

Sherwood, John C. 2002. Gray Barkers Book of Bunk: Mothman, Saucers and MIB, Skeptical InquirerMay/June 2002: 39-44.

Vergil (P. Vergilius Maro). 19 BCE.Aeneid. tr. John Dryden.

Weinglass, David H. (ed.) 1982. The Collected English Letters of Henry Fuseli. London: Kraus

International Publications.

Wolff, Neils L. 1971.Lepidoptera. Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard.

Wood-Martin, W.G. 1902. Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland: A Folklore Sketch: A Handbook of Irish

Pre-Christian Traditions. Vol. II. New York: Longmans, Green & Co.


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Notes

1For an excellent summary and presentation of primary sources, see Sergent & Wamsley.

2See Dixon, 2007, esp. 195-207.

3Quoted in Keel, 1975: 60.

4Quoted in Keel, 1975: 60.

5

Quoted in Keel, 1975: 244.6Described by witness Roger Scarberry (Keel, 1975: 560).

7See Keel, chapter 18 Something awful is going to happen (1975: 244-56). For an analysis of the

collapse of the Silver Bridge, see LeRose.8See also Nickell, 2002 and Sherwood, 2002.

9Coleman, 2007.

101975: 27.11

1975: 26-29. On the latter see also Petrenko, 1973 and Coleman, 2002: 31.12

2002: 26-37.13

The one exception being the Arlington, VA sighting, described as having large red-orange eyeballs.

(Quoted in Coleman, 2002: 31). Interestingly, this sighting, out of all of those mentioned above, is in

closest geographic and temporal proximity to the West Virginia Mothman sightings.14

Readers may be most familiar with his painting The Nightmare, which depicts an incubus on the chest of

a sleeping woman, with the white head of a mare in the background.15Sometimes also referred to as Titania Awakes, Surrounded by Attendant Fairies, clinging rapturously to

Bottom, still wearing the Asss head.16

1956: 103. See also Schiff, et.al.: 62-3. It is difficult to discern exactly which figure Antal is referring to

here, although in my opinion it is most likely XENIES, who spouts the lines With tiny sharply pointed

claws/As insects we appear/Satan, our dear papa/We lovingly revere. (Goethe: 167). It is interesting to

note also that the wedding occurs on Walpurgisnacht.17

Letter from Miss Margaret Patrickson to Allan Cunningham, 14-Sep-1830, quoted in Weinglass: 532-3.18

See Fuseli: 1795.19

See Letter to Sydenham Edwards 14-Sep-1816, quoted in Weinglass: 419.20

Letter to Robert Balmano 15-Oct-1807, quoted in Weinglass: 362. There is also some evidence that he

was in possession of parts of Jan Christian SeppsBeschouwing der wonderen Gods, in de minstgeachte

schepzelen : of Nederlandsche insecten, naar hunne aanmerkelyke huishouding, verwonderlyke

gedaantewisseling en andere wetenswaardige byzonderheden, volgens eigen ondervinding beschreeven,

naar 't leven naauwkeurig getekend, in't koper gebracht en gekleurd, a massive Dutch entomologicaltreatise with over 400 illustrated color plates. (See Weinglass: 483)21

Weinglass, 1982.22

Letter to John Knowles, quoted in Weinglass: 370.23

See Linnaeus, 1758: I:490.24

Its wingspan is around six inches, and is the second-largest insect in Europe. (Badenloch: 231)25

Badenloch: 233.26

Wolff, 1971.27

Interestingly, it is also during this time that the initial events of 1966 took place, the Scarberrys and

Malettes sighting occurring on November 15th

.28

AeneidVI: 297.29

Vergil,AeneidVI: 323.30

Milton,Lycidas, l. 75.

31Badenloch: 235.32Badenloch: 235.33

Radford; Badenloch: 236.34

Badenloch: 236.35

Radford; Badenloch: 236.36

Wood-Martin: 80.37

See Frazer: 11-37; Child & Child: 138-9. On the caterpillar in Britain, see also Derbyshire.38

Law: 344.39

236.


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40Lentzsch, et.al.: 136.

41See for example his works Queen Mab(1814), wherein [Queen Mab] balances in a dancing pose in a

carriage or sleigh drawn by fat moths in a state of metamorphosis [Lentzsch, et.al.: 124], and Puck basking

asleep by the Embers of a Country Chimney(c. 1793-1810).42

126.43

115, n.100.4412-13.45

From a purely artistic perspective, it can also be shown that Moth-men figured in the art and religion of

fourteenth century Pueblo Indians in New Mexico (see Figs. 8 & 9, below). Though it is difficult to extract

their exact role and how it might have informed (or not) the modern Mothman mythos, Schaafsma has

stated that the subject matter consists of ceremonial and ritual themes into which elaborately attired

humans, birds, and abstract designs are incorporated. [] This is a highly meaningful art, full of graphic

portrayals and symbolic content. (251; See also Hibben) From a symbolic standpoint, there seems to be a

connection between these depictions and an American moth, the night flying hawk mothManduca sexta.

(see Kay: 4ff. and David)

Figs. 8 & 9. Moth-Men murals from Pottery Mound near Las Lunas, NM, c. 1350. See Kay, 4ff. for more depictions.

Also of note in terms of art are the works of Charles Germain de Saint-Aubin, a contemporary of Fuselis

who illustrated a work calledEssai de papilloneries humaines(Essay on the Human Antics of Butterflies

[or Moths]), in which butterflies and moths are shown playfully engaged in various forms of human

activity, though these seem to have little to do with folklore. (Jones: 9; see also Mauris)

Figs. 10 & 11.Ballet Champtre andLe Duel, fromEssai de papilloneries humainesby Charles Germain de Saint-Aubin (c. 1750).46

2007. Indeed, even Robert Roachs statue of the Mothman that stands in Point Pleasant today (Fig. 12)

bears little resemblance to the witnesses descriptions.47

Nickell, 2002: 20.48

See Keels comments on the litany of deaths, suicides, divorces, mental illness and other calamities

following the events of 1966-7 (265-6). For commentary, see Dixon: 196-202; Nickell, 2002: 20;

Sherwood.49

202.50

Dixon: 204.

the mothman a folkloric perspective

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