Mothman

Witnesses describe a figure between six and seven feet tall, broad through the chest and shoulders, with a build more human than avian but proportioned wrong in ways most struggle to describe. The body is gray to dark brown, dense and muscular. Some accounts describe the surface as smooth, others as having a textured or slightly feathered quality. No two reports agree fully, and the Bureau treats the inconsistency as data, not error. The wings are the first thing most witnesses report. They are said to be moth-like, not feathered. Folded tight against the back when the creature is still, extending to spans of ten to fifteen feet in flight. Linda Scarberry described them as white and leathery. Others recall them as gray or brown. Witnesses consistently note that the wings do not flap like a bird's, rather the creature lifts and glides, sometimes with no visible wing movement at all. The eyes are one thing that remains consistent. Luminous, deep red, set wide in the upper body with many witnesses place them in the chest or shoulder region rather than a distinct head. Newell Partridge compared them to bicycle reflectors. Others describe them as closer to automobile lights: steady, bright, and tracking. Several accounts note an inability to look away once eye contact is made. Linda Scarberry reported a hypnotic quality that made it difficult to register any other feature of the face. No visible arms have been reliably documented. The head, when reported at all, appears retracted or sunken into the shoulders. The overall silhouette, standing still, reads as a man who got larger and then lost some of the details that make a thing recognizably human.

“We were digging. That's all. Working the grave like any other day. I looked up because all of a sudden something cast a shadow. It was brown. Shaped like a man, but it was in the trees before I could get a better look at it. That thing moved from one to the next like it weighed nothing. We all saw it. Watched it for close to a minute before it cleared the trees and went toward the river. Nobody said much after. You don't talk about a thing like that while you're standing in a hole you dug for somebody else.”