Loren Coleman - Mothman: Evil Incarnate

W hen a reporter in the mainstream media pays attention to what are normally fringe reports of strange flying creatures, you can be sure that something really is going on. Such was the case on July 29, 2017, when the Chicago Tribune ran a Ted Slowik column entitled "Chicago's 'Mothman' stories are good paranormal entertainment."

It was written with that slight edge of ridicule and humor that reporters often use to give themselves an out, just in case anyone might think they are taking the accounts too seriously. Slowik wrote: "When I heard about recent alleged sightings of 'Mothman' in Chicago, I reacted with a healthy dose of skepticism."

But deep down, the Chicago Tribune column acknowledged the encounters were something to be confronted openly, with more than a grain of salt. The eyewitness reports seemed to be straightforward accounts that, as a whole, could indicate something was happening.

In fact, the 2017 Mothman sightings in Chicago represent the biggest concentration of Mothman sighting since the events in West Virginia 50 years ago. Is it a coincidence that Chicago is seeing its highest murder rate in decades?

The sightings in the Chicago area all began in the spring of 2017. The primary researcher was Lou Strickler of Hanover, Pennsylvania, who heads the Phantoms and Monsters website (phantomsandmonsters.com). He has documented scores of experiences, accounts, and sightings in the Chicago area beginning in March and continuing beyond August 2017. Everything from a seven-foot-tall, red-eyed bat to "black shapes" have been reported as "Mothman."

Here is a brief overview of some of the cases from the Chicago area.

March 2017

One of the earliest sightings, as often happens, was revealed later, but for the sake of this chronology, I will mention it first.

On March 22, 2017, a local Chicago truck driver named Billy Bantz was making a delivery when he noticed something weird in the sky. "It looked like a flying Batmobile," he reported to Strickler. "I was sitting in my semitrailer at around noon. I saw this object coming from Route 55 and Cicero. I saw it gliding, and, not too fast. No sound. I saw that it was not a drone, and the size of a large car. It climbed higher and turned twiceI can tell you that it glided just like a bird. It went almost straight up and I lost it in the clouds."

Bantz says that this incident has affected his life. "The more I speak of this," he said, "the worse my luck becomes. My mom died three weeks ago. I am not sure what to think at this point." So, the underlying evil of this "Mothman" revealed itself almost immediately.

April 2017

The first encounter of record in the media was on April 7, 2017. It came from an unnamed witness who saw a seven-foot-tall, manlike bird in Oz Park, in the North Side-Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. The observer claimed to be jogging with a dog in the park at night, when his pet became spooked by something, and the birds in the park suddenly went silent.