The Mothman Prophecies (19 page)

“I think we'd better leave,” Mrs. McDaniel said nervously. They drove off quickly.

Five minutes later, as I sat alone in my car, the reddish glow flared up again on the ridge. For the first time, it changed color from red to a glaring white and rose slowly upward, bobbing like a Yo-Yo toward the river in the west. Apparently some boatmen on the river saw the object also, for a bright searchlight suddenly shot up from behind the hills, aimed directly at the luminous thing. When the searchlight appeared, the object halted in mid-flight, dropped downward, and went out. The searchlight continued to scan the sky.

The next day I talked with Mrs. McDaniel and told her what I had seen.

“Too bad you didn't stick around,” I remarked.

“We were pretty scared,” she began. “We … oh, you'll probably think we were being silly.”

“Did that blue light frighten you?”

“It wasn't the light,” she said hesitantly. “We saw that. And then we saw a tall man in the field. We all saw him climb over the fence and cross behind our car. We thought it was you coming back. Then your flashlight went on way out in the field and we knew it wasn't you. We ran the windows up and locked the doors and waited for you to come back.”

I had certainly not seen anyone else in that field. Had their eyes been playing tricks? Or were there phantoms on that hilltop?

That weekend I drove into Ohio to check out some of the many weird events happening there. One of my all-time favorites happened in the little village of Duncan Falls. Here is the verbatim entry from my journal:

Sometime in late October 1966 (witness does not remember exact date) Mr. Leonard “Shy” Elmore, 72, of Duncan Falls, Ohio, was taking a stroll around 4
A.M.
when he encountered a strange “building” which frightened him badly. Like many elderly people, Mr. Elmore does not sleep well and often takes long walks late at night. On this particular morning, he was walking along a road two blocks from his home when he saw a strange “L-shaped building that looked like a galvanized iron shed” sitting in the middle of a large field. Since he had never noticed this “shed” before he walked closer to take a better look. Something about it frightened him … later he could not explain why it had scared him … and he turned and started to hurry away. Although it was dark and he could see no windows or doors in the “shed,” he claims that he distinctly heard a normal male voice come from it. “Don't run … don't run,” the voice called. “I didn't 'sactly run,” Mr. Elmore told me, “but I walked pretty fast.”

He hurried home and got his rifle and returned to the site. To his astonishment, the “shed” was gone. This incident upset him very much and, according to his wife, he was a nervous wreck for several days afterwards. He decided to call the sheriff and report what he'd seen. The sheriff promised to come out and take a look … but never did. Mr. Elmore told me his story in a direct manner without embellishments or wandering speculations.

No Men in Black came around to bother Mr. Elmore. I was the first reporter to talk to him. When he showed me the field I was perturbed to find that it was right next to the Duncan Falls Elementary School. An unusual number of sightings and Fortean
*
events seem to be concentrated around schools and the largest percentage of witnesses consists of children between the ages of seven and eighteen. Another statistical oddity is that the majority of the adults who claim their autos were pursued by UFOs or monsters are schoolteachers, especially teachers specializing in abnormal children—the very bright or the mentally deficient. This is why I was so interested in the West Virginia “census takers” who were mainly concerned with the numbers and ages of the children living in the Ohio valley.

12:

Games Nonpeople Play

I.

“Woodrow Derenberger is pregnant!”

The word flashed up and down the Ohio valley, and many people took the absurd rumor seriously. The space people had selected Woody for a unique experiment, so the story went, and he had gone into hiding to nurture his rapidly swelling stomach. He would soon be giving birth to a very special baby; part earthling, part extraterrestrial. The child was slated to grow into a great leader.

The events of 1966–67 had fractured everyone's sense of credulity. Almost anything now seemed possible. A pregnant man was no more absurd than the winged behemoth, or the gigantic illuminated forms that cruised up and down the Ohio nightly. A fantastic new world was taking shape, populated by spacemen who drove Cadillacs and Volkswagens, psychiatrists who heard bodiless voices in the night, and things that ate dogs and cattle while everyone was looking in the wrong direction.

Like everyone else, I was caught up in the games, mystery piling upon mystery. Someone somewhere obviously knew every move I was making, or so it seemed. I became very secretive, not even telling my closest friends where I was going or where I had been. Nevertheless, something seemed to be following me. I would drop in unannounced on a remote farm and soon after I settled down to chat with the residents their phone would ring and there would be no one on the line, or a series of loud beeps would ring out. The farmer would act astonished.

“We've
never
had a call like that before!”

The phone would ring repeatedly until I left.

This happened several different times in several different places.

I used a system of “spot checks,” visiting homes in flap areas and talking with people who had never reported anything. Mrs. Hyre accompanied me on a number of these spot checks and was amazed at how much had been going on. Her name and face were familiar to everyone in the area and her reputation as a fair, objective reporter was impeccable. People automatically loosened up when they saw her and talked freely. In the hills surrounding Point Pleasant we heard many stories about footsteps on the roof, strange metallic clangings (the most common being the sound of a car door slamming outside the house when there were no cars in sight). One family showed us how the flap covering the entrance to their attic had been mysteriously moved. It was a hole in the ceiling of a bedroom and could only be reached with a high ladder. Others complained of “Gypsies” marching across their property late at night; men in bright reflective clothing and women in ankle-length dresses, all with long hair and dark Oriental faces. (This was well before the hippie explosion of the late 1960s.)

North of Gallipolis, Ohio, I impulsively stopped at an isolated farmhouse one afternoon and when I knocked at the door a grim-faced man answered with a shotgun in his hands. I started to show my credentials and explain who I was but he cut me short.

“I know who you are,” he growled. “We don't want anything to do with you. Get out of here.”

Puzzled, I reported back to Mary and suggested that she visit the farm to see if she could find out the reason for the man's strange behavior.

The next day we went back. I remained in the car while she talked with him for several minutes. Finally they both came out to the car laughing.

“You're not going to believe this,” the farmer began apologetically, “but ten minutes before you arrived here yesterday I got a phone call. It sounded like a neighbor of mine and he said he was calling to warn me about a crazy man … a real dangerous type … with a beard … that had just been to see him. Said I shouldn't have anything to do with him. Ten minutes later you showed up. After you left, I called him back. He was out in the fields. Had been all day. His wife had to go get him. He said he hadn't made that call.”

I looked sternly at Mary.

“Is this some kind of a put-on?”

“Absolutely not,” she answered, turning to the farmer. “Tell him the rest of it.”

“Well, about a week ago something scared my cows real bad,” he continued. “You know, we ain't told anyone about this, Mrs. Hyre. You aren't going to put it in the paper, are you?”

“Not if you don't want us to.”

“Come on. Let me show you something.”

He led us into the field behind his barn. There was a thirty-foot circle of scorched earth on the hillside. I had seen several of these “fairy circles” before.

“That night our cows really acted up,” he went on. “They stampeded. They were so scared they went right through the fence over there.” He pointed toward a stretch of wire fence that had obviously just been repaired. “It's an electric fence. Now you know that it takes a lot to make cows charge through an electric fence. Anyway, when I heard the ruckus I ran outside and I saw my cows scattering down the road. And there was a big red and white glowing thing sitting right in the field. I've got to say that it scared me half to death. I ran back in my house to get my gun. Didn't take me more than a minute. But when I got outside again the thing was gone. This circle was all that was left. It took the rest of the night to round up my cows.”

“Were any of them lost or missing?” I asked.

“No.” He paused. “But Herk—that's Hercules—my big old collie dog ran off that night and we ain't seen him since.”

Mary had been with me when I had checked into other missing dog incidents. She gave me a meaningful glance and he caught it.

“Say, you don't think that thing took old Herk, do you?”

“No. It was probably just some kind of electrical phenomenon,” I answered gently. “Herk will probably come back.”

“I hope so. We sure loved that dog.” He looked thoughtful. “Electrical, huh. Let me show you something else.”

He led us into his barn and showed us a brand-new circuit box.

“I had to have this put in the next day so I could run my milker. The old box was completely burned out. In fact, it was melted … like somebody had put a welding torch to it.”

“See, it must have been some kind of electrical thing,” I said lamely. I knew Ivan Sanderson had investigated an almost identical incident in New Jersey only weeks before. But in that case the cows had been in their stalls in the barn and were found dead.

“Has anyone else been around to talk to you about this?”

“No … I haven't told anyone. Just some fellows from the electric company who turned up the next day. They fussed around with the transformer on the pole by the road. I tried to talk with them but they didn't have much to say.”

“Did you know them?”

“Never saw them before. Come to think of it, they didn't have a regular electric truck. Just a panel truck”

“Would you recognize them if you saw them again?”

“Sure would. They was foreigners. You know, Japs or something. Like I said, they weren't very friendly.”

“How were they dressed?”

“Oh, you know … ordinary coveralls. I did notice their shoes, though. They had on funny shoes with very thick rubber soles. Guess when you work around electricity you need insulation.”

Mary shuddered perceptibly.

“Say, do you know these fellows?” he asked.

“Well, I saw a man with thick-soled shoes like that once,” Mary began. I cut in sharply, thanking the man, promising to keep him out of the papers, and reminding Mary that we had an appointment elsewhere.

Back in the car, Mary could no longer curb her natural curiosity.

“What do you make of all this, John?”

“The more I find out, the more confusing it becomes.”

“That's the way I fed. That phone call … sounds like someone didn't want you to talk to him.”

“It could work the other way, too,” I suggested. “Maybe this whole thing was set up so I
would
talk to him. I just picked his farm out at random. If he had just turned me away with a smile I would never have bothered him again. But when he came to the door with a gun…”

“But how did they know you were going to stop there? How could anyone have possibly known?”

“That's the real question. How could anyone have known?”

II.

A few days before leaving New York I called Gray Barker in Clarksburg and he agreed to meet me the following Tuesday in Point Pleasant. As soon as he hung up, I dialed Woodrow Derenberger's unlisted number and spoke to his wife.

“When are you coming to see us again?” she asked.

“I expect to be in West Virginia next week,” I replied.

“I know. I hear you're having a secret meeting with Gray Barker on Tuesday.”

I was stunned.

“I'm meeting with Gray,” I admitted, “but it's not very secret. I didn't know about it myself until a couple of minutes ago, so how on earth did you know?”

There was a pause.

“Charlie Cutler over in Ohio told us about it a couple of days ago,” she finally said.

“And how did he know about it?”

“I—I don't know. I suppose he heard it somewhere.”

When you enter the unreal world of the contactees, predictions, prophecies, and a mysterious invasion of your privacy become commonplace. Contactees seem to develop heightened perceptions, ESP, and precognition. The changes occur almost overnight. In their meetings with the entities they are served up platters of propaganda along with rumors and nonsense which they accept and repeat as fact. Many of the choicest tidbits in UFO lore were not actual events but were put into circulation by contactees who placed their complete trust in their contacters. The entities spun wild tales about crashed saucers being confiscated by the U.S. Air Force, farmers shooting and wounding spacemen, and so forth. Contactees repeated the stories to wild-eyed UFO enthusiasts and so they spread in ever-widening circles until they appeared in articles and books.

Derenberger never claimed psychic powers. He said he received telepathic messages from Indrid Cold giving him specific information. Others such as Ted Owens and Uri Geller have also claimed that their psychic abilities came from space intelligencies. Mr. Owens has racked up an impressive record predicting the outcomes of football games. Mr. Geller, an Israeli psychic, became world famous after his alleged contact with a flying saucer on a desert in the Middle East. Both men have been examined and tested by armies of scientists and parapsychologists.