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  The U.S. Department of Transportation conducted an analysis on the bridge collapse and said it happened because the number 13 eyebar pin had failed, causing the eyebar chain to drop. The eyebar downriver was unable to support the weight of the entire structure and the bridge collapsed.

  That is what happened to the Silver Bridge, but does it have anything to do with Mothman? It might. Just before the collapse, several

  people said they saw

  the Mothman near the

  Silver Bridge. Since

  then, the Mothman has

  been thought of as an

  omen of doom.

  Newspaper article on the

  Silver Bridge collapse on December

  15, 1967

  Contrary to popular belief, Mothman sightings did not stop after 1967. John Hipes, who grew up in Point Pleasant during the 1970s, saw a winged creature on a bridge on Route 2 at about 11 p.m. one night. He slowed down, trying not to spook what he thought was a deer. However, the figure he saw was no deer. It stood up as he and his wife approached, and they saw that it had wings (they estimated the wingspan at 12 to 16 feet.) It was over 5 feet tall. “There’s no way it was an owl,” Hipes said. “The body was too big. Very odd.”

  Mothman has been sighted in Ohio numerous times in recent years. A creature matching the description attacked unidentified persons in the woods near Columbus in 2003.

  An Ohio driver saw a creature that looked like the Mothman, but with no wings, in 2005. It was white or gray, man-sized, and bipedal.

  A resident from Monroe County saw a strange creature at 4 a.m. in November 2008. He described it as “a large creature crouched down on the road, with red glowing eyes and very large wings.” He swerved to avoid hitting it, and when he glanced back it had vanished.

  On September 14, 2009, a motorist observed a “solid black entity” in Stow. He said it had “no discernible head or facial features” and was 9 to 10 feet tall.

  A woman from Cincinnati named “Liz” saw the Mothman on January 14, 2009, while returning from a date. She said it was a “massive thing” as tall as a nearby shed and had two curved masses (probably wings) coming from its sides. A friend, “Allie”, heard a light tapping on her bedroom window at about the same time and saw two red, glowing objects (Mothman eyes?) move into a neighbor’s yard.

  A witness from Sciotodale saw the Mothman a few months later, on March 10, 2011. She said it was flying about 80 feet above her, was tan in color, and had a 12 to 15 foot wingspan. She estimated that it was flying around 20 miles per hour.

  To this day, no one really knows what Mothman is. Some say it is just a great horned owl, some say its a sandhill crane, but others think it could be an alien or something from another dimension. The residents of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, still remember the Mothman sightings from the ‘60s and hold the annual Mothman Festival each year. A 12 foot statue of the creature created by Bob Roach was unveiled in 2003. The Mothman Museum and Research Center, run by Jeff Wamsley, opened in 2005. The Mothman mystery continues, and probably will forever.

  The Mothman Statue in Point Pleasant

  The Van Meter Visitor

  112 years ago, the town of Van Meter, Iowa, was the hotspot for sightings of a strange, flying monster. Eventually named the Van Meter Visitor, the creature was described as having large wings, a beak, and a horn on its head that emitted a powerful light.

  The first witness was a local doctor named A. C. Olcott. One evening, while he was sleeping, he was awoken by a powerful flash. He jumped up, grabbed his shotgun, and ran out to see what had caused the blinding light. To his horror, he saw a huge creature with bat-like wings, a beak, and a glowing horn on its head descending from the sky. He fired without hesitation, causing the creature, which had landed, to lunge at him before it flew away. Olcott said the thing left a nauseating stench when it departed.

  Later the same night, a guard at the local credit union fired at the same creature. After that, another doctor saw the creature climbing a telephone pole and did the same thing Olcott had done; he grabbed his shotgun, and fired in the creature’s general direction. Resident Sidney Gregg arrived just before the monstrosity left and saw it hop away

  like a kangaroo. The entire community was almost in a state of panic the following morning. A series of three toed tracks were discovered in one of the areas where the monster had been seen the night before.

  The Van Meter Visitor shot out a blinding

  Light from a horn on its forehead That night, the residents of the town were waiting for the visitor to return again. The foremen at a brick factory, however, heard an odd sound coming from an old abandoned mine shaft, and the creature emerged while a crowd gathered. It was also accompanied by a smaller creature, probably a “baby visitor.” Multiple guns were fired, but the shots seemed to have no effect. The following morning, the Van Meter Visitor returned to the old mine shaft and was never seen again, or, at least, it hasn’t been seen since. Since two creatures emerged from the mine shaft at one time, its possible there could be a whole colony of “visitors” living in (or possibly under) Van Meter!

  Sketch of the Van Meter Visitor based on eyewitness descriptions, but, where’s the horn?

  Pterosaurs: Alive After 65 Million Years?

  A Pterosaur is an extinct creature that lived during the age of the dinosaurs. Pterosaurs were not dinosaurs; they were flying reptiles. Some were tiny, about the size of your hand, while others were as big as airplanes! Most people believe pterosaurs died out 65 million years ago with the dinosaurs and plesiosaurs, but

  they may all be wrong.

  Today, people report seeing

  giant, flying creatures whose

  description matches that of a

  living pterosaur!

  The

  pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus(named after the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl) was as tall as a giraffe

  with a wingspan the size of a small airplane

  Around 1970, a 12 year old boy in Hawaii saw a pterosaur soaring through the sky, about 100 feet above him. This is his story:

  “At first, I thought it was something manmade because I thought it could be some type of remote controlled pterodactyl glider. Its wingspan appeared to be about 30 feet across, if not more. It was light brown in color, with canvas-like skin and no feathers. When it passed in front of me, I realized it was a living creature because it flapped its wings several times. I watched it fly towards Olomana Mountain until it disappeared from sight. The total time of my sighting was 20 to 30 seconds. I doubt there was any model pterosaur that could appear or fly like that in the 1970s.”

  Sightings of Pterosaurs go back far beyond the 1970s.

  In the 1890s, cowboys in Arizona killed a giant flying creature with smooth skin, wings like a bat, and a face like an alligator. When fully stretched out, its wings covered the length of a barn. Some people think the creature killed is a Thunderbird, but birds don’t have smooth skin and bat-like wings, or alligator faces.

  A pterosaur’s beak could possibly be described as “looking like an alligator”

  There were quite a few pterosaur sightings in Texas starting in the 1970s. On January 11, 1976, two ranch hands in Poteet, which is just south of San Antonio, saw a five-foot tall, birdlike creature standing in the water of a stock tank. “He started flying,” Jesse Garcia said. “But I

  never saw him flap his wings, and he made no noise at all.” Libby and Deany Ford saw a “Big, black bird” around the same time. “It was as big as me and had a face like a bat.” Libby said. Later, as they looked through a book to find out what the creature was, they decided that it looked like a pterosaur.

  A few weeks later, on February 24, three elementary school teachers saw a huge shadow cast over the road. They looked up and saw an enormous “bird” flying over them. It had a 15 to 20 foot wingspan. “I could see the skeleton of the bird through the skin or feathers or whatever,” One of the witnesses, Patricia Bryant, said. David Rendon said “It just
glided. It didn’t fly. It was no higher than the telephone pole. It had a huge breast, different legs, huge wings, and a bony structure.”

  The three teachers looked through a book as soon as they got to the school and realized what they saw had looked like a living, breathing, flying reptile that was supposed to have been dead for 65 million years!

  On September 14, 1982, at 3:55 a.m., James Thompson, an ambulance technician, saw a “large birdlike object” while driving along Highway 100. It passed over the road about 150 feet in front of him. He stopped when he saw its strange looking tail. This is the full description:

  “I was expecting it to land like a model airplane, until it flapped its wings. It was a black or grayish color… It had a rough texture. It wasn’t feathers, it was a hide-type covering.”

  The creature’s body ended with a “fin”(probably a tail.) Its wingspan was somewhere in the 5 to 6 foot range. Thompson said it had indentations on the tops of its wings, and possibly the bottoms as well. There was a hump at the back of its head, possibly a crest, which some pterosaurs had, and it had “almost no neck at all.”

  Thompson, like witnesses before him, consulted a book to try to find out what he had seen. He had no trouble finding what he had seen in a book, but there was one problem. What he had seen was supposed to be extinct!

  Some pterosaurs, like Dimorphodon, had long tails

  What could be live pterosaurs have also been seen in other states of the

  continental U.S.

  In Ohio, pterosaurs have been seen several times. In 1967, for example, James Morgan and 4 others saw an animal resembling one of the flying reptiles fly past their homes near Middletown. It was dark in color, had no feathers, and had a 15 to 20 foot wingspan.

  Four young men exploring an abandoned barn, also near Middletown, saw a pterosaur in 1991. They said it was 6 feet 4 inches tall and had leathery skin with no feathers. It watched them for a short time, and then flew away. They were so frightened that they ran off without grabbing their bikes.

  In the summer of 2003, a man from Antwerp saw a long tailed pterosaur fly over the Maumee River. He said it was “huge, with a 4.5 foot tail, ten feet in total length.” The tail was long and skinny with a spade on the end. The next summer, he saw the same creature, or one that was very similar, near the same location.

  Another witness from Antwerp supported the man’s accounts with the story of her own sighting. She described it exactly as he had. She did add that its wingspan was about 10 feet, it was dark green in color, and had long, pointed teeth.

  A minister in Mount Vernon, Ohio, saw a pterosaur on October 9, 2005. He said it had no feathers; its skin was leathery. It was gray in color. The beak protruded from its face, and did not look like a separate part of the head. Its wings were similar to a bat’s. He also said it had a long tail with a diamond shape on the end. He said it was larger than a bald eagle.

  A motorist driving on State Route 309 saw a pterosaur-like creature on June 26, 2010. She said it had no feathers and she could see the bones in its wings.

  feathers and she could see the bones in its wings.

  year-old boy saw one in Utah one night (no date given.) That night, the boy, his brother, and his stepbrother were outside staring up into the night sky. His brother suddenly started yelling about a giant bird he had spotted, and the animals in a nearby barn started acting strangely. His stepbrother followed Dallin (the brother) and started yelling about the “bird”, too. What they were yelling about was standing behind a tree, and the boy could not see what they were yelling about and thought they were trying to trick him. He reluctantly followed them.

  “As I was reaching them, they said the giant bird had vanished.” He said. He really thought they were fooling him now, and he climbed back up to where they had been. He said the other two were still amazed at what they had seen, and he was still skeptical, until he looked up in the air and saw it, too. He watched it for a minute until it disappeared, as if into thin air. He began wondering what he had seen, and saw it again a few minutes later. It appeared soaring above them, and then disappeared again.

  In 2009, a young couple saw a pterosaur at 6 A.M. in Provo, Utah. They looked up into the sky and saw something they first thought was a plane. They then realized it was not a plane, because it made no noise. They saw a long, rounded beak and a giant body. They didn’t think it had feathers. They said it was dark in color, probably a grayish brown or black. It had big, bat-like wings. They said it was gliding and was the size of a small plane.

  A woman in Slidell, Louisiana, saw a strange flying creature on October 10, 2013. She was outside and heard a strange sound, like a loud crow call, and saw a creature about the size of a bird, but it had no feathers and had teeth in its beak. She said it also had a long neck and “looked prehistoric.” She quickly left, because she was afraid the creature might bite her.

  creature might bite her.

  February 29, 2008) saw a living pterosaur on the night between July 18 and 19, 2007. He saw a huge creature fly over a shed, somewhere in the United States. He saw it between 1:30 and 2:30 a.m. This is his encounter: “I was sitting in a chair, when this animal came flying over the shed and into the field and I almost lost it. The animal I saw had an 8 to 10 foot wingspan, the wings were bat-like, and the inside had a wavy type of look. The body was 5-6

  feet in length, the neck was 1-2 feet, the head was about 4

  feet long. There was a crest on the head about 2 feet in length, like that of a pteranodon. I don’t know how else to describe it.

  Our contact had a sighting similar to that three years ago in the daylight. He saw a long tail, I did not see one, and all the Pteranodon pictures I’ve seen show a short stubby tail. The animal I saw was stockier compared to pterosaur drawings I’ve seen. I only saw the silhouette of the animal and didn’t get to see any real details. It was only 20 feet away from me, our contact said the shed was 18 feet high, and it was flying probably 2 feet above that. The animal was gliding and

  made no sound. It headed towards a nearby pasture. I shone my flashlight in that direction, but did not see the animal, so it must have kept flying.”

  On Friday, September 4, 2009, a man saw a pterosaur

  Cryptozoologist Scott Norman may have seen a Pteranodon, like the one pictured above, in 2007 at the Cooney Reservoir in Southern Montana. He said it was the “biggest flying creature I’ve ever seen.” It was flying about 50 feet above him and he estimated that its wingspan was about 20 feet. He heard the sound of its wings flapping. Two other witnesses may have also seen the same creature.

  A man in New York saw a creature he described as a “dinosaur-flying-reptile.” The sighting occurred on a stretch of beach on Long Island. A number of other people also saw the animal, and one tried to get pictures of it. The witnesses at first thought it was a kite, but it did not move like a kite, and there was no string attached to it. The wingspan was 7 to 10 feet. It had a long beak and a point on the back of its head.

  One witness from Dallas, Texas said “I’m very much a believer that they do still exist” after sighting an apparent live pterosaur.

  On June 28th, 2013, an article appeared on the website Cryptozoologynews.com titled “Pterodactyl in the Corn Fields of Missouri.” A witness named Adrian, his son Anthony, and the rest of his family had been hearing weird noises in their corn field every night. “This sound gives me goosebumps.” He said. Anthony saw the creature and described it as 8 feet tall, with a “face like an alligator”, featherless, grey skin, and an 80 foot wingspan! His description sounds normal, except for the wings. I later learned that this report is fake. For more on that, see chapter 7.

  Jonathan Whitcomb is a Cryptozoologist from California who investigates reports of live pterosaurs. He has written several books on the subject, including Searching for Ropens and Live Pterosaurs in America. He also writes on his blog and at www.livepterosaur.com.

  These pictures could show pterosaurs shot down, if they are real, that is

&
nbsp; The bottom photo is widely acknowledged as a hoax Now, the big question is, could pterosaurs have survived to the present day? To the eyewitnesses, the answer is Yes! But, if you go ask a scientist or anyone else, they’ll probably say No! Quit wasting your time with stuff like that! We will never know unless someone can prove that pterosaurs are still alive, or the other way around. But, to some people, it does seem that these creatures, thought to have gone extinct millions of years ago, still soar in modern skies.

  4 Wolfmen and Werewolves

  It may be hard for some to believe this, and some people may not believe it at all, but creatures described as looking like “werewolves” are seen all over the United States, all the time. The creatures are described as bipedal, with big paws like a dog’s for feet,(in one case, a footprint was about 8 inches long), a muscular body, a tail, and they are about 7 feet tall. They would almost look like a human, except for the tail, dog paws and head. The heads of these creatures are commonly described as looking like a wolf or German shepherd head.

  The most famous of these creatures, which are commonly called werewolves, Dogman, manwolf, wolfman, etc, is the Beast of Bray Road. In the late 1980s and 1990s, people driving along Bray Road (which is located in Elkhorn, Wisconsin) reported seeing a creature they called a “werewolf.” (For more on the Beast of Bray Road, see later in this chapter.) Since then, witnesses from other parts of the U.S. have reported seeing the creatures. In this chapter I will recount those stories, so the reader can decide for him/herself if “Werewolves” roam old roads and forests in the United States.