Just after 7:30 a.m. on May 31st, 2020, at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. A commercial pilot and his copilot are taxiing their aircraft when something unusual catches their eye. A massive black humanlike figure with wings, and it ascends rapidly into the sky. this isn't an isolated incident. Over the past decade, dozens of similar sightings have been reported in and around Chicago, particularly near O'Hare.
Witnesses describe a winged humanoid with glowing red eyes and some witnesses describing a profound sense of dread. But this phenomenon isn't new. It shares similarities with a creature from events in the 1960s in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. A creature that we call the Mothman. And it was linked to a tragic bridge collapse. This is a study of strange. Welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Michael May. Today. The Mothman, the myth, the legend, joining me on this quest is Oliver Berger.
Hi, Oliver. How are you doing? Yeah. Yes. Of course. So when he files your taxes, does he use it? No, I don't. So, Oliver, I picked you. I was putting this episode together, and I was literally just around you, and we were talking about Chicago, and I was like, oh, I should have Oliver on this episode because we are going to be putting ourselves in Chicago. You're not from there, but you have a lot of life experience in Chicago.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you ended up in Chicago before you came back to L.A.. Yeah. And you've been here for 60 years. Since. Right? Yes. You look. You look great for your age. So while you were in Chicago, did you ever see the Mothman? Maybe they're getting mistaken for the Mothman. I don't I don't know, we will discuss that. Okay.
Yeah. Break in the case. So. so how we met is you're currently working out of a place I used to do a TV show at, so we've met, and and I just want to share this with the audience. So you write you you do a lot of different things. But one of the first things I noticed is that you were working on puppets when I first met you, and I was like, all right, whoever that guy is, he's okay with me. He's doing a lot of.
Nice. Yeah. Yes. And I'll provide links to whatever Oliver wants to share in the show notes so you can look him up. otherwise, we're going to dive into the Mothman. Now, Oliver. I should start with a very simple question, which is, do you know what the Mothman is? Are you aware of some of its history or series or anything else? Yeah. Yes. And most people don't. And that's what's been so interesting about the Chicago sightings, which I'll dive into a little bit. So let me back up to that.
So I'll, I'll give a little bit of history about the Mothman. And it all started in November of 1966, in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, where two young couples from Point Pleasant, Roger and Linda Scarboro, and Steve and Mary Mallett. I think it's how you say their name, said that they saw this large, man like creature with glowing red eyes flew down at them when they were driving their car on the outside of town. It had expansive wings. They said it was near like ten feet long.
The wing spread and it basically chased them away from this area that was near an abandoned munitions site known as the TNT area. And one of the descriptions that I feel no one ever mentions, and I found this looking back, the original at the original newspaper saying is they described it as having white wings and you never hear that anymore. Nowadays it's always like a dark. The Mothman is dark owl, completely black or white at different times, different styles. Yeah, exactly.
But it did pursue them for a short period of time before they drove away and the story got shared. And also what's most commonly what is not shared is often is a better way to say that is that there was this bit of like local hysteria when people read about this. They gathered like firearms, guns in went out to this area to find this creature, to like hunt it down.
Yeah. Yeah. It's, Well, it was very much a Scooby-Doo situation, and I think everybody kind of wanted it to be a Scooby-Doo situation. I think they wanted to show up and find somebody dressed in an outfit. You know, or something, and like, hey, why are you scaring the kids? But they never did. And sightings suddenly peaked. Like, suddenly a lot of people are seeing this strange creature, eyeballs in windows or things flying overhead. And this all led to a disaster December 15th, 1967.
When the Silver Bridge collapsed in the area during rush hour, resulting in 46 deaths. Some locals believe the Mothman sightings were an omen of this impending disaster, a harbinger of doom, and this whole story was popularized by journalist and writer John Keel in his 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies, which was later adapted into a film with Richard Geer, which is actually a really good movie. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, there you go.
And keel the writer of that I'll just quickly mention, because I think this is fascinating, people in the same genre as my podcast will know his name. He is the first one to coined the term Men in Black. So that's just a fun tidbit for him from Mr. Keel there. So there are theories around the initial Mothman sightings.
Some people speculate that because he was first seen by this old munitions area, even though it was completely abandoned there, like, oh, there could be chemicals or radiation or something that's causing hallucinations, things like that, and many other theories that are more on the skeptical side of the Mothman. Think it's could be, Pro pro versus anti or just trying to figure it out. So there's people that think it could be sandhill cranes or owls.
Sandhill cranes are very large birds, but they're very skinny. That's where a lot of people that don't believe it. Well here's the thing. I have some personal experience with sandhill cranes. And I had this before. I was aware of the Mothman story. Yes, yes, yes, you should have you should have been aware of my experience doing that. But anyway, so I grew up in Florida and at a period of time in the year, the sandhill cranes would come in and they would be there for certain.
What I can't remember, it's the summer, the winter, whatever. But they come in for a certain time of year. I grew up on a golf course, you know, like a golf course. I mean, it's Florida. That's the thing is, I think, you know, and the sandhill cranes were really interesting because at night and I had friends that lived in the neighborhood, so I'd walk or ride my bike or whatever at night.
And if you saw them, like on the golf course nearby, like by the street, I would think they were people sometimes. And so a lot of people are like, you can't be a sandhill cranes. They're too short and whatever. I'm like, no, if you see them at night and you can't quite judge distance and size and you see this weird thing moving, especially if it flaps its wings or whatever, you're like, oh, Jesus, fuck, what the hell is that? And that happened multiple times to me growing up.
So I do think there is some validity to thinking that could be cause for some of the sightings. Maybe not all of them, but it's some of them. Owls are also far larger than people realize. Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. Like I'm going to die, especially if their wings spread is out. They can get to five and a half six feet long and their eyes are more human in like where they are on their heads, basically. And if a light reflects off the eyes, they can look like they're glowing red.
So there is some validity to that too, that skeptics, deism, people that are more quote unquote pro Mothman think that it could be something supernatural that is trying to warn people, not necessarily attacking people, usually in the thoughts about Mothman. They're also have been these sightings across time, near, near and close to when some big disasters this happened, like Chernobyl and Fukushima and other bridge collapses.
There's these, like, random accounts of people seeing Mothman before they happen. I will say you can't confirm those accounts. That just typically happens in like articles. I'd be like, oh, people saw the Mothman before Fukushima. And it's like, okay, but who where is that? Where's that evidence? And it tends to be one of those like, internet things. So he caused it is what you're saying? Yeah, before we get into Chicago here, Chicago. See, I, I drifted into it.
It's just it's just I just wanted to sort of reiterate that people have this either zoological saying, like Bigfoot, it's just a creature. We've yet to to discover or this sort of parent natural parent natural. That's right. I host a show I taught a parent at. Yeah. Paranormal creature that, is sort of more interdimensional or something like that. All right, so Chicago, what does this have to do with the masked man? Well, about. Well, ten plus years ago, around 2011 is when it starts.
But suddenly a lot of sightings around Chicago of a mothman type of creature begins appearing. And usually around the O'Hare airport area. 2011 is kind of when they relatively start. Well, wait, wait. Hold on. You may not be aware of it. When did you leave Chicago? So that's about the time that the sightings start to dip. I think we're on to something. I, I think we're you're missing something here, Oliver. You're not seeing it from the perspective of people around you.
You're thinking about it from yourself. I think we're on to something. I think we figured out why the Mothman was in Chicago, and it's all due to you. Oh, man. Well, that's the end of the episode. We figured it out. Wow. I did not expect that. That is awesome. So anyway, so let's ignore that. That Oliver is the Mothman. Let's look at it from more of a. Yeah.
So in Chicago, I'm going to go over some of the specific encounters in history of when this started and rumors, like I've already mentioned about the Mothman in Chicago. First, first surfaced around 2011. And this is documented. There's three main researchers that have been compiling these stories. I'll provide links to all their work in the show notes. A lot of people that are skeptical of this don't believe these guys.
I actually think they're really fascinating people, and I like a lot of their work. Even though I am also a skeptic of of the Mothman, and there are now hundreds of sightings of the Mothman in Chicago, sort of informally, more formally, there's like 85 ish, like formal, like talk to a lot of reporters tried to share information. Some of them have snapped photos, just a lot of sightings. So a story where it kind of started is around October 13th, 2011. Where were you, Oliver?
On October 13th, 2011? Okay, so maybe it's not you. Haha. So on October 13th, 2011, there's a story from a gentleman who took a photo of this bat like man looking creature and he describes, oh shoot, Oliver, I made a mistake and I I'll, I'll leave this in October 13th is when he shared his story. But this allegedly happened on August 22nd, probably when you were in Chicago. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
So according to this man, he was traveling through the suburbs of Chicago, and he came across a local business with this tall sculpture of, like, a Native American on its roof. And he thought it was interesting. And he snapped a photo of this sculpture and then drove. Tom drove home again. I host a show. I can talk. He later noticed going through these photos that there's a winged creature off in the distance flying.
And that is the first sort of where the Chicago sightings sort of began is with this guy. When he's sharing this photo and sharing the story. In September, a woman was awakened, terrified because her roommate was screaming, and she went to go talk to her roommate. And her roommate said, there's something with red eyes looking through her window. Her third floor window, mind you, the roommate sort of. Yes, yes.
The to add to the story, though, is the roommate that did sort of come to the the the woman who was terrified down then left and threw another window, saw something that looked like a face with red eyes looking in. And yeah, this is what's fascinating about these stories, by the way, because I do not believe in the Mothman. I love these stories. I love these accounts.
But all the accounts I'm going to share today, and a lot of the accounts that anybody can look up on Reddit and YouTube and in some newspapers and other things I can link to, all the accounts seem very legitimate. I think people really did experience something or see something. It's just okay. Is it a, you know, a reflection from a brake light? Is it you know, you're drunk or whatever? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's I mean, hey, that's kind of why it fits.
Because a lot of people are like, why do they call it a mothman? It's like a person with, like, wings. It could be a bat, man. Maybe there's a, you know, a litigation issue. Yeah. Yeah, it could be the owl dude. Or, you know, the gargoyle man. Yeah, I know, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. So I do want to say that as much as they.
The common story here is that in 2011, some sightings around Chicago of this Mothman as creature start showing up, you can actually trace reports of a similar creature to much earlier in the area. And that is where you and I are going to do a scene. Oliver. So this is a a fictional recreation. I have to describe that a little better.
So this is a I'm using the real dialog from this gentleman, Gerald, who you're going to read who saw something in 1957, in the Chicago area that is very much akin to Mothman, where this interview is fictional, is he didn't actually do this, telling it to a reporter. He shared it in recent years to one of the the gentleman who's been investigating these Mothman sightings over email and phone calls. I've just changed it to a a sit down thing, just to be honest about what I'm doing. All right.
So, I'll read the descriptions and the reporter you'll read. Gerald, you're good to go. You feel good about this? And I. Absolutely. Before we dive into it, you're much smarter than I am. Do you know how to pronounce Gerald's last name? There you go. That's what I mean. I'm going to go with that. So when I'm wrong and I get emails about it, people complain about you. We. Yeah. To write, to rise, I'm going to say I'm going to go with you. Right. Okay. All right, here we go.
A reporter sits in Gerald terrorizes living room. Gerald is a lively 79 years old and enters the room holding a cup of coffee, which he hands to the reporter. Thank you. Gerald sits in a warm La-Z-Boy across from the reporter. So you were telling me about this creature? That. That was that. Are there any other details you can share? You're welcome, I guess I don't know, So. Bye. I love how.
So I love the idea that this something has been seen in the area before, like, the notoriety sort of started happening and where the, the mass media started looking at it. There are many other earlier accounts that some researchers have put together, which you can read about. I'll provide links in the show notes specifically on a singular 40 incom, which is a great site I've used in the past for other topics, but he has, put together basically a timeline of sightings,
which is really fun to go through. And you can link to news articles and interviews and all sorts of stuff like that. So yeah. So the Mothman may not have shown up in 2011 and may have been there the whole time. Okay. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And it. And also we'll get into some of the, the Chicago accounts here in a minute. But a lot of the sightings when this all sort of picked up starting in 2011, it kind of culminated. The peak of the sightings was in 2017.
There were like over 50 sightings that year that was reported. And a lot of them were from pilots. Like there are pilots. There's a story. I don't think I have it in my list I'm going to share. But there were pilots coming in, to land and they saw this, like, distant thing. We looked at O'Hare. Yeah. And they saw this distant thing. Looked like a man sort of off towards the end of the runway. And then suddenly the man just sort of lifted up and looked like it had wings and, like, flew away.
And it was a pilot and copilot that saw it. There's been a lot of other pilots and like security people and people working on the runways that have seen just weird things that are it looks like a giant, more human sized, shaped bird like creature. Oh, seriously, I that's that's so fascinating because one of the big questions, I literally have it written in my notes right here. Why the airport, Oliver? What are why tell me why the airport? Yeah. Midway. Right? Yeah. Oh, interesting.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. And honestly, it kind of. It kind of goes down each theory, right, of the people that think this is some kind of cryptid like, undiscovered creature. And it also fits into, like, maybe it's a large bird that's being misidentified because of distance and lighting and all the other things that go into sort of misjudging those, those details. And so it kind of fits into both of those. I would think. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. It does. It really does.
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Really? Oh, okay. Okay. Yes. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's one of the busiest airports in the country. I have been delayed in O'Hare more than in any other airport and I didn't really think about it till you pointed it out, but it seems it's most airports are outside of cities, so you kind of like, got to go outside of the metropolitan area where O'Hare seems like it's like in a more developed area, which is interesting.
like in even in my time out there, we saw a giant expansion of Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. I love your comment about the owls, because that is one of the series that a lot of these sightings are just misidentified owls. And if you're seeing a lot of owls in Chicago that is worth taking note of. So yeah. Interesting. Do you want to read a sighting? So I think you can just read whatever that first little thing is. that is pulled from Reddit. I forgot to write down the user.
I will try to look that up or provide a link to that so people can find it. One of my favorite aspects of this story, and I don't do a lot of cryptid stories on on my show, but I do think the Mothman is relatively fascinating. And I do think the fact that, like, Chicago had this huge splurge of Mothman, so to speak, sightings recent and recent history, that it's fascinating. But I there are so many accounts on Reddit that all are really interesting, including this one, and I like small ones.
Whenever people like described too much, often like, and it's you're either bullshitting or you totally did something like, that's not what it is. Yeah. Where it's like these kind of passive things, are really fascinating to me. And so that's one of them. There's another one from the Chicago subreddit, not from like a mothman subreddit. Which do you mind reading? The second one there. Very nice. Yeah, yeah. So, just another interesting. Oh. Do you really? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's.
Yeah. That is a great question. And I'm not a baseball fan, so I don't let me look at it. Cubs winning. 2016. I think 2017 was the peak, but there were still some sightings of 2016. I think the account you just read was later than that. I didn't write it down, but if memory serves, I think that was 2019. Yeah. Yes. Yes. So that's one of my series. And not just mine. There are many other people that think that too. And, so I sort of put that at the end of various things.
This could be it could be misidentification of owls or giant birds or, you know, just misjudging size and distance, which is super easy to do. And the other thing is mass hysteria, which I look back and I mentioned it with the first Mothman stories in 1966 where like, the town was like, rebel, rebel, rebel. Let's go get this thing. Well, of course, if the whole town is doing that, people are going to think they're seeing it.
And so I do think when, when these stories in Chicago started to get press, I do think it caused more sightings because people are now thinking about it. When you think about something like that, you think you see it, especially when things are at dark in the distance, like a lot of the photos that have come up of like, could this be the Mothman? They're really far away and they're like zoomed in. And when you're yes, you know, in digital photography you're getting weird pixel ization.
If you try to create it, if you use AI to like make it more high def and clean it up, well, AI is just creating information. It's not using what's really there. So it's making something look like a wing that may not have been a wing, and so on and so forth. could be something that's sweeping by the camera. absolutely. So I do think mass hysteria, that's one of my favorite theories for this, just because I think people get really into it and they are people really into it.
People are still sharing stories on Reddit, on the on these topics constantly, like, oh my God, I saw this thing. In fact, here there's a story, I came across researching this from a woman named Lady Jane Gray, a Laura Jane Grace. Excuse me. And Lady Jane. And this is just, on the Instagram. And I think this was within the last year, but she tells a story where she's just laying on her porch in Chicago at night, and this giant human shaped thing flew overhead.
And she said it sort of flew almost like a Superman pose. But then it also kind of flipped over on its back, and at one point it went like almost standing and was like stopped in the air for a bit and then left. Which is really weird. She also mentioned it had a tail. Not all sightings mentioned. Tails. A lot of people say it doesn't have a tail. Her sighting. She said she thought she saw something. It looked like a long tail on the creature. I'll also say this. Oh, okay. It does? Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah I do too, I do too. And I think people that don't think it's an owl or even like the sandhill cranes thing when I was researching this. And that's one of the theories that I've brought up a lot today. But there are people that are like vehemently against that. They're like, no, no, that's tiny heads or eyes or little, little.
Again, just because I have personal experience with seeing them multiple times, being like, oh Jesus, like your eyes and your brain, where humans, we fill in gaps of information. Yes. Oh, there there are, there's those big cranes and big owls and things like that. So, so I do think that's why, again, I think there's validity to just misidentification. I'm not saying it's every sighting, but I do think there's misidentification.
I do think cranes could be that, as well, especially when they have like six foot wide wingspan. It's like, you see that you're going to think that's bigger than it is, especially depending on the angle and stuff that you see it. Yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah. It makes sense. Yeah. Yeah it does. So here I'm going to share a story. This is not a quote verbatim story but it's one that I particularly liked just because I think it was kind of scary. And I like scary things in an eerie sort of way.
But there was a pilot that shared a story, where he was staying at the airport hotel before a flight out the next night, and he leaves and checks out of the hotel, gets in his shuttle. It's driving through the O'Hare, you know, whatever the maze, whatever you call it, to get to get into things. And as he's on the shuttle out of the window, he sees up on a railing on, like, this building next to him.
There's a railing that's up high, and there's a creature crouching on the railing, and it's like, put out its wings, so to speak. And even though it's crouching, the guy's like, you could tell it's this huge thing. He thinks it looks like, man height and the wings spread was just giant. And he said, the thing that was most shocking and scary are these like red eyes that seem to reflect.
And it looks like the creature was watching his shuttle as it drove by, and the eyes kind of followed him, and he was just super weirded out and didn't know what it was. And when he got off of the shuttle, he kept looking back in that direction to be like, oh God, is it following me? Is that whatever that thing is it it fly this way, I don't know, he didn't see it again after he drove by. But again, it's that quick kind of witness account.
It's that which I think I really do think this guy saw something, you know, it's like that little bit of thing with just the right amount of information. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is, it is. I'm going to share one more story. Please. It's a little longer. And this comes from Phantom in Monsters, a website. I'll provide links to it.
Run by Lorne Strickler, who was one of the main researchers behind the Chicago Mothman, who's been compiling interviews and talking to witnesses. And I'm going to read this. I've edited it very slightly, just for time. But it's still a little bit lengthy. But I'll read this guy's account, and this was from the Mukwonago, Wisconsin. So I wanted to share this because it also just shows that Midwest Lake area, even though it's not Chicago proper. Yes. All right. So here's his story.
I was sitting inside my car, which was parked facing north in the driveway at my home located between Eagle, Palmyra and Mukwonago, Wisconsin. I had been having an extended phone conversation with an old friend on the way home, and had not gone inside the house yet. And remember looking at the radio clock at approximately 10:45 p.m., I looked up briefly from the dash of my vehicle and momentarily noticed someone who was very, very, very tall and very dark.
Just standing in the rain about 5 to 10ft in front of the vehicle. I did a double take and was suddenly, suddenly thought, wait a minute, what the fuck was that? I was looking at a creature, for lack of a better term, that essentially looked like a seven foot bat reptile of some sort. The head was at the level of the roof of my minivan, or slightly more elevated than the roof, and it was standing perfectly still, just staring right at me.
Its eyes were large, and although they were dark like large black eyeballs, there was a glint of reflection in them, which allowed me to discern that they were, in fact, definitely its eyes slightly reflective, light skin or scales of some kind, not feathery or fur covered. I realized that it actually had huge wings, but they were wrapped around its body exactly as a bat wraps its wings around its body while sleeping upside down.
Except this thing was standing right side up, looking at me or almost through me. And let me just say, it definitely seemed ominous. My initial reaction was to tell my buddy on the phone that I was looking right at a giant bat dragon. I noticed that it seemed to very quickly move, although I did not see it unwrap its wings or walk per se. But there was simply what I will describe as a brief blur in the headlights, and it was gone. Well, that makes sense. I think it was yeah, get a wrap up.
It's the Midwest and stuff. It's got a layer, don't you know poofter. Yeah. All right, so. There are some during the day. In fact, that first photo that sort of started the whole thing in 2011, that was during the day. So that's kind of it's interesting. But again, it's really far in the distance. And that kind of. Yeah. Yeah. Most of them are. Yeah for sure. Yeah. That is very true. And if you even. that that is a good point.
And I do want to mention one thing too, that we haven't come back to, but there's a lot of thought that the, the original, quote unquote original, the OG Mothman from Point Pleasant, West Virginia, was this harbinger of doom or someone providing a warning creature, warning that there's a disaster coming. And so people brought that up with Chicago of like, if the Mothman is real and that is a thing, what is it trying to say about Chicago? I'll say the point, pleasant thing.
It was a year people started seeing Mothman. A year later, there's a disaster. Chicago, as we've now pointed out tonight, this has been going on a long time. So I am not one to jump into that bandwagon of like, oh, Chicago should be worried. But it is scary to think about that is for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Way to perfectly wrap up the episode. Oliver. And I'm keeping an open mind. I don't know what this thing is.
I think you're on to something by by mentioning how it could be a variety of things. And I'm definitely keeping an open mind that it might have been you the whole time as well, because that's. But that's my job as host of a study of strangers I have to keep, even when I'm skeptical. I have to keep an open mind and I'm always willing to learn something new. Mothman. so on that note, is there anything else you want to share? Do you want people to find you anywhere? What do you want?
What do you want, Oliver? Tell me. I'll make it happen. Yes, as you should. Well, thank you so much for joining me. This is, a fascinating topic. Very odd, very strange. And ends. And so am I. Thank you for being part of the strangeness Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a flight at O'Hare to catch. Thank you for listening to a study of strange. If you're interested in this topic of Mothman in Chicago. There's a lot of accounts.
There's a lot of information way too much to share in one episode of my show. So I'm providing as many links as I can think of in the show notes. Check those out. Very special thank you to Oliver Berger for being our special guest today. And hey, if you like this stuff, you know what? Check us out on Instagram at A Study of Strange. Until next time. Thank you and good night.