Dec 29 2006
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Mothman Phone Home
“May I help you?”
John Keel’s Mothman Prophecies is a classic of fortean and UFO literature. If you don’t think so, we can step outside.
Keel weaves the strange events of 1966-67 in Point Pleasant, West Virginia into a chilling tale which ended in a predicted disaster. Mothman was seen by over 100 witnesses, who usually described the entity as a six foot tall humanoid with a wingspan of ten feet, While no head was ever reported, witnesses said that it had two glowing red “eyes’ between its shoulders. Like the legendary Springheel Jack, it only appeared at night and often chased people right to their doorsteps. It would also chase cars, never seeming to lose interest even if the terrified witnesses drove at over 100 mph. UFOs were also observed by many residents.
Keel became involved on a personal level after beginning his investigations. Another person claiming to be Keel roamed the countryside interviewing witnesses. On one occasion, a mysterious caller phoned Keel in his hotel room and asked him to pick something out of a drawer without looking at it. The voice guessed what it was before Keel opened his hand. While Keel is well-known for embellishing his stories, the weirdness and sense of doom that gripped the small town for two years was noted by many residents. On December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge, a steel girder structure connecting Point Pleasant with Kanaugua, Ohio collapsed, killing 46. After the disaster, the Mothman sightings stopped.
Way back in 1993, I was reading “zines” like a fiend because along with two selfless friends of mine, I was publishing one at the time. In the “New Phenomenon Monitor,” published in Ohio, there was a number printed which the writer said had been around since the late 1960s and connected the caller to the Mothman hisself. I called the number and got a Voice. It was eerie and mechanical. What I heard was a long fax-machine-like tone followed by “TIME 034600…ENTER COMMAND.” With no other ideas, I punched a couple of digits and was treated to another seemingly meaningless string of integers followed by the “ENTER COMMAND” command. The numbers didn’t seem to advance with time, they just seemed random.
My buddy Adam Gorightly called the number recently, but only got a voice mail asking him to leave his number and a message. He said he was Indrid Cold calling for Mothman. The area code and prefix are indeed for Point Pleasant. Perhaps if we all start calling, the Voice will return, or perhaps we’ll just be annoying whatever tortured soul had the number reassigned to them. If so, I’ll have to take this post down!
Mothman’s phone number is 304-675-5352.
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December 29th, 2006 at 7:13 am
Hi, let me share three points…
The first descriptions of the Mothman emphasized both angelic and avian properties more than human ones.
The “glowing” red eyes were all said to be due to reflected light, from car headlights and street lamps more often than not, and were not, as popular myth would have you believe, from any self-luminous nature of the eyes themselves.
Finally, be careful of this “Indrid Cold” telephone number business. Having been very involved as part of the Sony/Screen Gems publicity effort for the 2002 Mark Pellington-directed movie, I was told by the California studio’s pr folks that they were setting up an automatic WVA-based number for publicity reasons.
With the Mothman, buyer beware.
Loren Coleman
December 29th, 2006 at 3:05 pm
Loren,
Good to see you on the site!
As long as you like the book, we can stay in here and continue with our beers.
The phone number was published in 1992 or ‘93, which predates the film by alnost a decade. They may have taken over the number, though. If so, harassment would seem in order.
December 29th, 2006 at 10:45 pm
I just called that silly number again and this time all it did was ring and ring and ring…I’ll get that darn Mothman yet!
A couple days ago I interviewed Andrew Colvin, The Mothman Photographer, on my web radio show. He had some interesting insights into the whole Mothman phenomenon. Andrew sees The Mothman as sort of a guardian angel and protector over his life, who has inspired him artistically and creatively.Talking to Andrew, I can’t disagree that his life has been somehow enhanced by his Mothman experiences.
January 3rd, 2007 at 8:03 pm
to Adam, if Mothman is an angel then I would rather go alone. (EW yuck)
to Greg, WHA?! I mean… Fascinating.
Speaking of cryptic phone calls I have been getting rude phone calls in the middle of the night from what my caller ID calls the “U.S. Government” at “(913) 684-0000″, attempts to call this number at various hours give me a message saying that the number is out of service. But I have recieved multiple menacing calls from it over the last few weeks, usually at 0430 in the morning (waking up the baby)
Any thoughts?
Jess
January 4th, 2007 at 12:29 am
Jess,
Either you have said something of interest, or there’s a problem from the other end (possibly a faulty automated system?)
The area code and number you provide originate in Leavenworth, Kansas. The only thing I can recall that is there is the military prison! Look into it.
January 5th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
I know this isn’t a cryptid site, but has anyone seen this event?
Could this be the new residence of Mothman?
January 5th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
DingoDog99,
Yes, Loren Coleman covered it on UFOmystic’s sister site, Cryptomundo, here:
Weird Wisconsin: Man Bat
January 5th, 2007 at 11:46 pm
I guess they would be sued by Marvel or Sony or whoever owns the copyright now if they called it by the obvious name.
January 12th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
[...] According to Greg Bishop at UFOMystic, a number was circulating a few years back which some said had been around since the late 1960s and connected the caller directly to Mothman (named Indrid Cold in the story). He says that when he dialed the number several years ago, an eerie recorded voice asked him to enter odd number strings. Others have reported dialing the number and hearing what sounded like electrical hisses and pops. When I called, it just continued ringing. However, the number itself is actually a Point Pleasant number and appears in a few mentions around the web independently of Bishop’s blog - so who knows? [...]
July 10th, 2007 at 11:07 am
Jess,
I just started getting those exact same phone calls on my cell phone from that exact same number… Did you ever figure out anything about it?
September 5th, 2007 at 8:44 am
I too started getting those. I believe they are coming from Leavenworth Prison in Kansas, although I have no clue why I would be getting them - that would also make sense about the number being from the US Government. The area code is from Kansas and I received a fax that said something about prison but I could not read it. Im getting blank faxes from that number but now phone calls.
September 5th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
Lefty,
Good to see people are going through the archives here. Perhaps there is some sort of glitch in the military prison phone system, or someone is trying to create a fake phone call trail?
September 5th, 2007 at 9:09 pm
Damn, is this synchronicity or what? Recently, I’ve been thinking of the Mothman…for a few reasons. In January, I’ll be starting a book on The Mothman to be co-written by Mothman experiencer, Andy Colvin. In fact, weekend after next they’ll be having the annual Mothman festival in WV and I was considering attending, to meet up there with Andy.
Secondly, I just had Allen Greenfield on my show, Untamed Dimensions, and we got talking about his involvement with Gray Barker, Jim Moseley and John Keel back in the golden era of UFO research. Greenfield mentioned that at one point during this period he received some strange phone calls from a mechanical sounding voice. A couple years later he was talking to Gray Barker, and Barker admitted that it was he and Moseley who concocted this hoax, using some type of gizmo they constructed, which was probably the same source as Keel’s legendary weirdo phone calls as chronicled in The Mothman Prophecies. Or so it now appears…
So, anyway, I got thinking tonight about the Mothman phone # mentioned in this blog, and went back to this entry to retrieve the number, ‘cause I got an intuition I should try calling it again. That’s when I saw your post from tonight, Greg, which is certainly synchronous. I wonder if there is anything special about Sept. 5?
So I tried the number again. It just rang and rang…
September 5th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
I did a quick websearch for strange happenings on Sept 5, and turned this up form the Jeff Rense site:
The Crawfordsville Sky Monster
In September, 1891, a very unusual story came out of the small town of Crawfordsville, Indiana. At about 2 a.m. on the morning of September 5, two men hitching a wagon saw a “horrible apparition” appear in the sky. About 100 feet in the air hovered a bizarre creature–somewhat like a serpent, with no visible head. It was about 20 feet in length and had several pairs of wings. Reverend G.W. Switzer, a Methodist preacher, and his wife also saw the bizarre creature. It appeared again the following day in the evening. Hundreds of residents of Crawfordsville watched the creature as it flew about and “squirmed as if in agony”. It hovered at an altitude of about 300 feet and was heard to make a “wheezing, plaintive sound”. After this second appearance, the Crawfordsville Monster vanished, and it has not been seen since. The case has been investigated only by Charles Fort, who wrote of it in Lo!, and Vincent H. Gaddis, who recounted the story in Mysterious Fires and Lights. The biggest problem in identifying the monster, in addition to its utterly bizarre appearance, is the fact that no one is really sure whether or not it is actually a cryptid, or, as some claim, some sort of strange UFO display.
September 7th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
Adam,
I’m glad someone is writing books!
Did Moseley and Barker know where Keel was going to be before he did? Maybe there were a limited amount of hotels in Point Pleasant in the late 1960s and they guessed right when they were going to call. Perhaps that’s why Keel is not very fond of Moseley.
September 10th, 2007 at 8:30 am
I can’t answer that question about knowing where Keel would be before Keel did…But it now seems a distinct possibility that some of those strange phone calls might have been the concoction of Barker and Moseley.