Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Mothman. Seriously: Mothman

Yes, this is a short squib about Mothman, the legendary West Virginia winged monster. Normally, I would never write about such a topic on a weekday. On this website, weekdays are (usually) reserved for serious political subjects. Even on weekends, the Mothman legend is rather too silly for a blog of this sort.

(Truth be told, though, I've been fond of this particular piece of Americana since I was young.)

Ever since my visit to Point Pleasant earlier this year, I've devoted some more-or-less serious thought to Mothman lore, and...well, I think I've figured out the mystery.

Maybe. Perhaps.

I now suspect that Mothman was real, or "sort of" real. I don't think that a living creature was involved. Skeptics have long argued that the witnesses saw a large crane, but that explanation is unlikely for a number of reasons. For one thing, Mothman would "lift off" vertically, straight up into the air, and birds don't do that.

I believe that there is a perfectly reasonable NON-supernatural explanation for the red-eyed winged whatzit which was so frequently reported in West Virginia, near the Ohio River, during the 1966-67 period.

But...how to proceed? One possible course of action would be to do a whole bunch of really tough research in an effort to prove the theory. The result might be published in a book -- a book which would probably sell, oh, I dunno, maybe five thousand copies. Is the game worth the candle? I'm not sure.

Maybe it would be better to jot down a shorter precis of my theory here, even though final proof is lacking. I've even considered creating a short video which would explicate this theory. Putting together such a presentation would take a few days, necessitating a recess from blogging.

If the theory is published here on this blog, someone else will no doubt expand the idea into a book and take all the credit (not to mention the royalties from those five thousand-or-so sales.) Well, c'est la vie.

Proving this theory would be a lot easier if an "inside" source were to come forward.

It's a zillion-to-one shot, but maybe -- just maybe -- there's an old timer reading these words who could help flesh out this line of research. Please write to me if the following key words seem familiar, and if you know what I'm talking about:

STARS
TALON
ARROW
KNIFE
POPE
LANSDALE

Most of you will find that list infuriatingly cryptic. A very few may think that I'm being a little too obvious. If you are among those few, please write to the email address at the top of this page. I'm particularly interested in night-time lighting in 1966.

Yes, I understand that this post will strike most readers as very bizarre. No, I haven't gone all Charlie Sheen on you; there is method to this seeming madness. Eventually, all will be explained.

Oh -- and just in case you do recognize the key words listed above: I don't want to get anyone in trouble. The name's Cannon, not Assange.

7 comments:

Peter of Lone Tree said...

Received this from a learned source:

"A word is missing, and they’re out of order. (They’re also in the wrong language.)"

If you can fix, please do so.

Lea said...

http://www.ljmilitaria.com/usafsosaircontrolarrsarefs/593ef22c0.jpg

Anonymous said...

I don't really know anything, but is this what you're looking at?

MC-130 Combat Talon

Joseph Cannon said...

lea: Cute patch! And a nice catch. Come to think of it, wasn't there a pet dragon named Lockheed in the old X-Men comics?

adm.fookbar said...

too obvious, duderino. google can spin enough of that into something.

interesting idea though, re: fulton. i'd certainly buy it as plausible, and close enough to foggy bottom to be damned likely.

i'm on board.

Lea said...

Hmm. Don't know much about X-men (or history, or biology, or the french I took for that matter). But an intriguing idea, for sure. Look forward to hearing more, but will admit that I'll be a little sad if you manage to puncture the mythology with plain old nuts-and-bolts.

Rich said...

C-130s popping out of Pope AFB in late sixties? Col. Thigpen writes about their use as special ops vehicles -- they were also the exfiltrator-of-choice in the Son Tay prison disaster and Carter's Desert One mes.