“The Mothman Prophecies” movie is based on the book by John Keel, an investigator of the paranormal, who died in 2009.  Open minded and level headed, he wrote “The Mothman Prophecies” in 1975. It is directed by Mark Pellington, stars Richard Gere as John Klein, a journalist for the Washington Post, and Laura Linney as Sgt Connie Parker.  The setting is Point Pleasant in rural West Virgina.

Gere first encounters the Mothman when he and his wife are driving home on a dark to a rural West Virgina road, after having just looked at their new house.  His wife Mary (Deborah Messing) is driving.  She suddenly slams on the brakes, crashes the car and is killed as a result of the accident. 

He had thought he saw a shadow but that was all.  In the hospital, before Mary dies, she utters “You didn’t see it, did you?”  He finds a notebook with sketches of a winged mothlike looking man she had drawn. 

He sets out to solve the cause of the accident and to investigate the creature of her drawings.  He meets the local people and law officer (Linney) and perplexing paranormal events occur including the connection of the Mothman to forebodings of catastrophies.

“The Mothman Prophecies” has a strong reality base because of so many people having claimed to have seen the Mothman creature, but it is not established as extraterrestrial nor is its identity ever established nor his purpose, either.  We are left to surmise.

The collapse of the Silver Bridge in West Virginia in 1967, though, was an actual occurrence.  It is somehow tied into Klein’s contact with the creature which has become associated with foreboding and disaster in local folklore.

The entire series of the creature’s visitations is perplexing. In the movie, we eventually come to suspect it was attempting to warn about the imminent collapse of the bridge. 

Why it would be concerned we are never given a clue.  Why it appeared in the first place before the bridge collapsed, and after the collapse disappeared is not explained at all. 

It also has been associated with warnings about other disasters and airplane crashes. The movie is open ended and on the edge of truth and fantasy.  Because of that it did not achieve real success. 

There were too many questions left unexplained.  Yet that, in itself does lend it credence because that is what all of the UFO stories have in common-none have a really provable answer.

The Mothman creature was described by locals who claimed to have encountered it as about six to seven feet high, a wingspan of approximately ten feet, grey or bluish fur or skin, and large glaring red eyes.  It flew at a100 miles per hour according to some, and some saw claws on it. 

The Partridge family in Parkersburg, West Virginia claimed to have had the first encounter with the Mothman which they blamed for the disappearance of their dog.

During this time period of events, a Woodrow Derenberger claimed to have been contacted by people from the planet Lanulos located in another galaxy.  His description of the alien bears no resemblance to the Mothman but people connected the two entities and occurrences because of their proximity in time and space. 

The story of Indrid Cold is separate from the movie because in the movie the alien is suspected of being up to no good.  But from the description of the encounter by Woodrow Derenberger, it appears to be neutral, an extraterrestrial with no bad intentions and the positive goal of establishing trade with the planet Earth. 

He describes it as looking human with dark skin and elongated eyes, dressed in jacket and blue pants.  It communicated with him telepathically. 

On subsequent meetings he was informed Cold came from a planet Lanulos and Derenberger was given a ride in a Lanulan space ship to the home planet which resembled Earth.John Keel was very interested in Derenberger’s account and kept in touch with him, doing several interviews. 

Based on interviews with Derenberger and the Partridge family of Parkersburg, West Virginia, it seems like there definitely were appearances of a paranormal nature. 

If the two entities were two different creatures, there is no apparent connection between the two.  Or even between them and the bridge collapse, for that matter.  What comes to my mind is the Betty and Barney Hill story of alien abduction in 1961. 

Betty Hill when asked what the aliens are up to has replied, “We’re their shopping mall,” ties in with Derenberger’s statement that the aliens are interested in establishing interstellar trade.

In both cases of the contactees and their claims of being given rides in flying saucers, they all returned to tell the tale, evidently unharmed. They may have experienced some periods of unconsciousness and the human mind is notoriously known by psychologists to fill in blank spaces to make a complete picture or memory.

 Since the contacts were within a few years of each other it is possible that the aliens were looking over our planet and its inhabitants.  As for Mothman, sometimes psychic forces are stirred up when there are strong magnetic currents such as are generated by the flying saucers and human minds when receiving these signals and sensations are confused and the brain misinterprets them.  Some of the experiences may have been embellished because the contactees’ minds were confused. 

I personally think there was some truth in those sightings but without enough evidence, we can only decide for ourselves which people are reliable and which stories are more likely to be true.