Andrew Colvin - The Mothman’s Photographer, Vol. 2: Meetings With Remarkable Witnesses Touched by Paranormal Phenomena, UFOs, and the Prophecies of West Virginia’s Infamous Mothman

The 17 shows that Andrew Colvin did on Vyzygoths Grassy Knoll represent the longest thematic interview series Ive ever done. This is ironic because, before we did the first show, I was just hoping we could do a decent hour and be done with it.

Once we got started, though, I realized Andrew had some kind of story to tell. One that gave rise to countlessand I mean countlessother stories deserving of extensive research for the truths waiting to be revealed There are literally not enough hours in an individuals life to fully track down the leads and stories Andrew offered listeners.

As best I remember, this whole saga sprang from a conversation that my wife and I had with her parents in late 2005. My mother-in-law had asked me if I knew anything about the Mothman, a movie about which she had just seen. (I havent seen the movie or read Keels book.) She went on to mention that Mothman was connected in some way with the December 1967 collapse of the Silver Bridge that connected Kanauga, Ohio, and Point Pleasant, West Virginia.

Ah, now that rang a bell! About 25 years earlier, I had read something of the event as it pertained to a lawsuit filed by the family of one of the 46 people who died in the tragedy. The case was explicated in a communications law book I obtained for a graduate journalism program. I had been accepted to Ohio University in the summer of 1979. OU is in Athens, not that far from the site of the collapse. During that summer semester, I would spend many of my weekends around the Kanauga-Point Pleasant area.

Soon after arriving in Athens, I was reunited with a number of fellow high school classmates from Teaneck, New Jersey, who, for whatever reasons, had gravitated to Athens in the early seventies. Before we even finished our first beer together, they advised me that I was a member of their softball team. Throughout the next eight weeks, we traveled to towns along the Ohio River that hosted cash-prize, high-arc softball tournaments.

More interesting, though, is that a principal in the lawsuit I studied was author Joe Eszterhas, then a reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer . Eszterhas, who had been a student at OU, was found by a jury to have published reckless and calculated falsehoods about a member of the plaintiffs family. Therefore, Forest City Publishing Company, which owned the Plain Dealer, lost the suit (Cantrell v. Forest City Pub. Co.).

What was laughable in all of this was the contempt the Commlaw professor displayed for Eszterhas, whom she referred to as the Ohio University non-graduate. It became his title of ignobility. I think it was a case of the professor doth protest too much since Eszterhas had gone on to make it as a screenwriter proving that a pedigree from OU wasnt essential for success. By the way, I share one distinction with Eszterhas: I didnt graduate from OU, either. But I did make some money playing softball.

This anecdote may seem a digression, and it is, but its just a minor example of the kind of phenomena that occurred in each of Andrews interviews: the creation of a stream of synchronicitiesand perhaps some coincidences as wellthat, in turn, led to endless other branches just as alluring and mysterious. Although Andrew focuses on Mothman and the Garuda, my major interest was his research into myriad events, clandestine projects, prominent places, personages, institutions, corporations, organizations, and agencies.

Among all that Andrew and I discussed, what I found most compelling were the usual suspects he brought up those very same individuals who I had come to identify as the Illuminists, who have ruled this nation for over a century. Owing to the constraints placed on Andrew by both work and family, we understood that our time was short and that the protracted series must come to an end. Therefore, in our last three hours, Andrew, with a palpable urgency in his voice, shared with the listeners nearly the whole of his research notes on topics that, regrettably, wed likely never have the chance to cover.

He was understandably driven to get this all out. Though I couldnt help but want to linger awhile on certain topics, he pressed on, unfurling a dizzying number of provocative facts that left us much to contemplate and much to remember him by. For me, this informational concatenation was the equivalent of a fireworks finale. When it was over and I bid Andrew goodbye, I felt the very same way I had as a child, on so many Fourths of July: saddened and rendered inanimate by the sudden silence and emptiness in the wake of such sound and fury.

What made the void left by Andrew a bit more difficult, however, is that I couldnt console myself with the thought we could do it all over again, come another year. I mean could I ever get that lucky again?

-Keith Hansen, aka Vyz

July 2, 2007

What is the use of looking outside? All you see is objects! Turn around and look within. Shall I then see the subject instead? If you did, you would be looking at an object. An object is such in whatever direction you look. Shall I not see myself? You cannot see what is not there! What then, shall I see? Perhaps you may see the absence of yourself, which is what is looking. It has been called the Void.

-Wei Wu Wei

Vyz at Grassy Knoll (GK): Welcome to the Grassy Knoll. This is going to be round two with Andrew Colvin. Were dealing with the Mothman, and Colvin is a documentary filmmaker who has produced The Mothmans Photographer . I want to open up with something that we found very interesting I had asked Andrew for an outline, which I do with a lot of guests He had sent me something prior that did not contain the notes of the show. These were some ancillary things he sent me. Im waiting for the second email to come through [with the notes]. It doesnt come through. We were ready to go, just minutes ago, and Im saying, Well, I didnt get it. He said, Well gee, I sent it to you Why dont you [explain this, Andy]? Tell them what was in that email.

Andy Colvin (AC): Well, knowing what we know about the data-mining scandal thats happening right now with the NSA, with both international spying and domestic spying, my email was probably intercepted The father of a childhood friend I interviewed in my documentary worked on that NSA eavesdropping project. It was operational by 68. They were listening to domestic traffic in fact all traffic by that time. If you go to James Bamfords Puzzle Palace book, you can find out more about it. They actually do the intercepting in West Virginia, at a Naval facility there. They simply download the satellite information that ATT is normally beaming around.

GK: The other interesting thing is that everything you sent [before] has come into the regular inbox [yet] this particular piece that came late and of which we are speaking came into the junk box. I dont know how things work as far as how MSN [goes] but Im wondering if somebody got their little paws on it and put some kind of imprint on it such that, when it came in, my Hotmail did not see it (as it did the other ones). Im not trying to get paranoid or neurotic, but that doesnt necessarily make me wrong, does it?

AC: No, there were a lot of code words in that email I sent. Its got practically every conspiracy word in existence

GK: All the basic food groups are in this one, right?

AC: There are so many threads to the Mothman story. Its truly an enigma inside of an enigma, and then some. You and I were talking yesterday (after the first hour) about how difficult it is to tell which parts of it are mind control operations or government covert ops versus something thats genuinely supernatural. I vacillate back and forth on certain parts of it all the time.

GK: I have to tell the listeners: were not being gratuitous and trying to make this bigger than it is. Andrew is right. After the hour, we spoke a little bit. This thing does have tentacles. Theres no two ways about it. Even if there is some kind of MK-Ultra thing attached to it (or some kind of suggestive technology thats being used), somehow, someway, something [else] is definitely going on What I want to ask you though, and it may not be that important is: is there anything out there that gives the most accurate depiction of what the Mothman looks like?

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