Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Cryptic Cocktail Party, a show where we have a few drinks, share a few laughs, take a dive into the unknown. I'm your host Dave and I'm joined once again by the most beautiful boy in the world, Colby Clark. How's it going buddy? Oh, that's very sweet of you. I'm doing good. How are you? I'm doing all right. The glasses were a nice touch though. I wish you would have kept them. You looked handsome. Right? I know. And they're not, they're zeros.
You know? I don't know what that means. There's no prescription. Yeah. They just help with looking at screens for a long period of time. Oh, they're like the, those blue light glasses or something like that. And my, my sexual attraction is a heightened to dad level and it matches my, my pun output. Hold on. Your sexual attraction or your sexual attractiveness? Right. Right. I didn't, yeah. I didn't know where you were going with that first.
I was like, you put on the glasses and your sexual attraction to what Colby? It heightens to what? When I put on the glasses. No one cared before I put on the glasses. All right. I become a sexual Superman. I don't like that. I hate that. Uh, yeah. But how you doing buddy? I'm doing good. I'm doing good. Yeah. Um, yeah. Yeah. Just got a little fur baby. Yeah. You got a new little kitten. You don't have a name for it though. Yeah. We got it. We got to name them.
Should we, should we leave it up to the audience? Should I put it out there? Absolutely. Listen up cryptid lovers. I need you to name this beast. Well, it's just, it's an all black cat, right? Just a little baby. Yeah. Yeah. Bad ass. Yeah. So if anything, I need, I need something edgy, but cool, but you know, like it's, it's gotta hit all the, all the, uh, check all the boxes for me, you know? Gotcha. Gotcha. So anyone listening, if you have a good name for a black kitten, let us know.
I will make Colby choose one of them. I'll, uh, I'll put like, I'll find like the top ones and then put a poll or something out. We'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. Done. Done. We'll figure it out. Just like us trying to figure out murder at the end of the world. It'll be fine. And, and life. Yeah. All right, Colby. How are you Dave? Uh, I'm fine. Uh, I'm good. As I told you before, we've recorded, started recording, I'm getting really bad, really big back into like dinosaurs.
Just, you know, this is a bunch of dinosaur documentaries out there and they're all phenomenal. The one on Apple TV narrated by David Attenborough is my favorite because I love that man. He he's not, he's rarely on screen during his documentaries, but for like the prehistoric planet on Apple TV, they show him at the beginning. And for some reason this man always looks like he was late to the recording of the episode. Like I know he's like 180 years old, but like his hair's all disheveled.
Like it looks like he just like threw on a suit jacket, didn't put a tie, like, you know, he's just like, and just was like, Oh fuck, fuck, fuck. And just runs in. I was going to ask if he was as soothing to look at as his voices to listen to. No, but he, he, in a word, he, he looks like someone who is very distressed about the environment as cause he is, you know what I mean? But like he looks like he's in a constant state of panic. His face doesn't show it, but like his hair's all disheveled.
Like he's, oh, he looks like, he looks like a cool grudge. Yeah. He, he knows way more than either of us ever will. He's been doing it for like 80 years. I mean, exactly. He's seen the rise and the fall of many species. And he's just over it. He's like, you know what? I'll get there when I get there. All right. That's, that's a hundred percent true. That's probably exactly what's going on. But it was wild. Yeah. So that's, that's what I've been up to.
Just, you know, you got nice velociraptors were small and covered in feathers. I found out that mammals did exist during the time of the dinosaurs. Didn't know that. Oh shit. Yeah. Well, the sea was more terrifying back then than it is now. And it's pretty already fucking terrifying. But yeah, no, I mean, it makes sense logically, but more terrifying than the sea now is just unfathomable. Yeah. I think that's one of my, one of my deepest fears is open water. Oh yeah.
It's not, I, if I, I don't like water where I can't see and or touch the bottom. Fuck that dude. Exactly. No, exactly. I'll go on a boat. I used to go tubing as a kid. And now I like if someone's like, Hey, you want to go tubing or like knee boarding or something like that? Like, Nope. I, if I fall off and something touches my foot, I'm just gonna, I'm going to give up. I'm just gonna exhale and just sink to the bottom. I'm done. You can catch me on the beach. Having a yin. Oh, all right, Colby.
So if you remember last week, we discussed some of the history of point pleasant. We had Lord Dunmore's war, battle of point pleasant in chief corn stock who cursed the land and all its inhabitants. And as he was being actively murdered by the American settlers, you know, curse the land and the people there ever since. You remember all that? Oh, how could I forget? It's terrifying. Yeah. The curse wasn't good.
It involves or people claim it was involved from everything's from like floods to fires, explosions, tornadoes, mine collapses. And of course the infamous silver bridge collapse that happened on December 15th, 14th, uh, 14th, 1967. I mean, it made my mind collapse. That's for sure. Uh, and that sadly, uh, claimed the lives of 46 people.
But in the year leading up to the collapse, a lot of strange happenings were going on at point pleasant and the surrounding area that may or may not also be another unfortunate bright byproducts of a corn stocks curse. And one of those is the arrival of the moth man who from 1966 to 1967 terrorized the community and not only point pleasant, but the surrounding areas. Okay. All right. So it was a precursor, the curse. It was, it was the or it was, yeah, yeah, that's right.
Yeah. It was the, I was going to say origin story, but precursor for the curse works way better. It was a pre precursor. It was, I, yeah, I appreciated it. Uh, this was not rehearsed. No, according to John keel, the author of the moth man prophecies, there were over a hundred sightings of the moth man that occurred in point pleasant. So I figured what we would do today is just go over the more well known ones and the ones that I think are like the best because known as time for all that shit.
And a lot of them were just like, I saw it's eyes in the woods and then that's it kind of thing. So yeah, you ready? You ready to dive in? Yeah. Given the nitty gritty. All right. Now the official first sighting of the moth man, or at least the first reported to the police and then picked up by the media happened on Tuesday, November 15th between 1130 and midnight in an area of point pleasant known as the TNT area.
Uh, and for those of you wondering what the TNT area is, I'm just going to give a short little brief history lesson. Cause I know how much you love those Colby. You like to learn. Yeah. Uh, I'm imagining, uh, the road runner and the coyote and, um, uh, Ka-boom like right now. Are you thinking of like the Acme company? Cause this is not that. Oh, okay.
Okay. Uh, see during world common misconception during world war two, uh, the Americans built dozens of munitions plants all across the country, kind of like pop up restaurants, but for instruments of war, uh, and point pleasant was chosen as the site, uh, for, uh, TNT manufacturing. Uh, and it also stored a lot of munitions there from 1942 to 1945.
Uh, once the war was over, the government just kind of, uh, abandoned it kind of like, like a Walmart and, uh, they started using it for chemical waste storage before giving it back to the state and is now known as the McClintic wildlife management area. So it's like a wildlife reserve, which is, holy smokes.
Yeah. It's kind of fucked up considering the site where the TNT area sits was named one of the, one of the 10 most polluted sites in the entire country in 1983 and is considered a super fun site that's still undergoing cleanup to this day, as far as I'm aware. And it's also a leaking toxic waste into the groundwater of point pleasant. So not ideal. You know, who else knows about all this? Who? Dave Attenborough. I mean, he's passed.
Uh, Oh, did you know, did you know that there's a super fun site in Dover? Really? Yeah. Yes, actually that, that does ring a bell. Yeah. The old landfill is on Toland road. Uh, it was apparently it was like seeping chemical waste and arsenic into the groundwater.
And then also in Placetown, Placetown, New Hampshire, uh, there's a place there called, um, I forget what it's called, but it was like a waste oil storage and recycling plant and is currently number 19 on the list of most hazardous places in the U S. Damn. Yeah. New Hampshire apparently is Fox. You look concerned. Man, there's, and there's gotta be some pretty hazardous places. Yeah. In the U S. Number 19 on that list. Yeah. But anyways, we're 18 next year.
We're, uh, we're going off topic a little bit. Uh, again, November 15th, 1966, uh, two couples, Linda and Roger Scarberry and Mary and Steven Mallette, Maletti. I don't say Malette. Uh, we're joy riding around the TNT area in, uh, Roger Scarberry's 1957 Chevy. Uh, and back then, and maybe, I don't know, it might still be now, but the TNT area back then was like a place where kids would go like a lover's lane type deal. Uh, or they would just go around to like race their cars.
Cause it's just like a fucking winding track of just dirt roads, you know? So they would go, they would fucking make out race cars. I mean, it is often referred to as point pleasure, but it also seems like a great place to like just absorb all sorts of like rare and exotic cancers into your body considering how fucking toxic the area is. But anyways, uh, as the couples were driving down past the old generator building, they noticed two large red glowing eyes.
Steve was the first to notice and to the rest of the group was like, yo, you guys fucking, you fucking seeing this shit? And that's when they noticed just what those eyes were like attached to. They saw what they described as a six to seven foot tall manlike figure with a pale gray complexion and wings folded behind its back. Uh, the creature either unaware they were there in the moment or noticed it noticing them decided to duck around the corner of the generator building.
But according to the witnesses, it didn't run, uh, but kind of like penguin walked out of sight, like just kind of hobbled along, which it was kind of cute. Cute. Yeah, it's cute. Uh, the couples didn't seem to think so though. And they fucking high tailed it out of there as they were, uh, as they were barreling down route 62, they saw the creature again by a large billboard as they rounded the corner.
And this is where they said they saw it spread its 10 foot wide wings, uh, which they described almost as like angelic, like it was like feathery kind of wings. And then it just fucking shot straight up into the air. Didn't flap its wings or anything, just unfurled and fucking just up. Not cool. Uh, this made everyone in the car obviously. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. This, uh, this made everyone in the car freak the fuck out. They're all yelling at Roger to drive faster and he got his car up to speeds.
They said of almost a hundred miles per hour. Uh, but this thing was just gliding right along with them, just like right over the back end of their car. They even said that they could hear the wings hitting the top of the car as it flew back and forth over the top. Um, and this thing was so big that they could see its shadow casting down over the car. That's pretty big. It's not ideal. Yeah. It's pretty fucking terrified. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So the moth man is not a moth.
No, no. So, uh, the moth man got its name because, uh, one of the, like a reporter or someone writing an article about them during the time, uh, it was really big fan of like Batman, but you couldn't call it Batman because of Batman. So he thought of the next best winged creature, I guess, and called the moth man. That's how the moth man got its name. The moth man didn't like introduce himself as such. He's like, Hey everybody.
Uh, I just like to say, uh, I like to be referred to as, uh, but I'm getting a very like demonic like, but I'm sure the Jersey devil was already around. So like, well that's taken. Yeah. And he had the wings of a bat. So it's not like, yeah, yeah, that's cool as fuck. What the Jersey devil or the moth man or both the, well, yeah, but no, just like the wings band, just picturing the wings band, just like unfurling and then like not flapping them, but just fucking shooting straight up in the air.
I will lose my shit. I don't think I'd be okay. Hell yeah. And you want to hear something worse about this is that the entire time it was doing this behind their car and over their car, it was making this high pitched like squeaking sound like the sound of like a mass mouse or a rat just like caught in a trap. So damn, I went for it right now just to entertain me. I want you to make the sound that you think it was making. I don't know if I can go that high, but I'm envisioning.
Do you hear the bulb, the bubbling gargling? That was good. That was added. I didn't even mean to do that, but I feel like gargling would be part of it. That's actually pretty close to the exact sound that I had assumed it was going to make. That's good. Right. Killed it. Hell yeah. They were only able to get free from the Mothman when they reached the edge of Point Pleasant proper. The TNT area is like seven miles outside of downtown or something like that.
In the police statements, they believe that the thing may be afraid of lights, which is pretty much the opposite of a moth. But once in town, they stopped at the local Dairyland to come up with the game plan. I don't know what Dairyland is. I tried to look it up. It's either like a malt shop and or an insurance company. I don't know. Dairy Queen. It could have been maybe. But they stopped there to come up with like figure out what they were going to do next.
Linda said they should go to the police while Steve and Roger, Steve Roger, Captain America. I just don't worry about it. It's just in my head. I just saw it written down. I was like, Steve and Roger, Steve and Roger, Steve Rogers, Captain America. They decided that they should go. So you're hiding stuff in here for me to. Okay, there's Easter eggs. All right. I wasn't sure. As I was reading it, I guess. But yeah, they know that I know I'll prepare.
They decided that they should go back and make sure that this thing was still there before going to the cops because they assumed the police would just laugh at them, which I mean, it's kind of a safe assumption given like the year and the state that this took place in. Sure. So as they turned around, they noticed a dead dog on the side of the road.
The mothman jumped out as they passed the dead dog, went over the top of the car and over to the field on the side of the road, which promptly made them go, fuck this. And they just drove over to a diner and called the police. Deputy Halstead responded and took their statements. Obviously he didn't believe them because fucking who would. But he knew the kids. He knew that they weren't like delinquents or anything like that.
So he and the couple drove back out to the TNT area, but weren't able to find anything. And even the dead dog was missing when they returned. So pretty weird. But yeah, so that's the first sighting. How are you feeling about the mothman right now? I'm feeling like it's it's pretty scary, pretty badass, pretty pretty like kind of typical, you know, like like cryptic sighting though, you know, like like these are usually the timeline events, you know, there's something scary happens.
Somebody takes it in and something dies. Right. Like there's something dead around. And then it's either, you know, we pose the questions, do we go to the police or not go to the police? And then. Here we are. You said so much stuff, but at the same time, nothing. It's a debate tactic that like politicians use, like you said a lot of things, but I don't really know what you said. It's the glittering generalities that I'm going for in life. You know, it's it's a skill. Oh, good. Oh, oh, shit.
Well, what's a little wrap up? You know, just your spark notes. Yeah, no minutes in. That's good. Well, so it's wild about that story is that there may be a connection between it and an encounter that happened to a man named Merle Partridge not long before this, just over 90 miles away. Name Merle Partridge. Yeah, it's not a bad name. But yes, so this happened to a man named Merle Partridge and he lives in Salem, West Virginia, which is about 90 miles away from Point Pleasant.
Merle Partridge, who for some reason goes by Newell Partridge and some of the sources I looked at, and I don't know why. But either way, he was relaxing at home watching TV when suddenly his TV started going like haywire. The image shifted to what he described as a herringbone pattern and it started emitting a high pitched sound that just kept getting louder and louder.
He said that the sound reminded him of like a generator turning on and then like winding up, which I don't know what that sounds like. He said it was so loud that he had to get up and turn his TV off because it was hurting their ears. Now at the same time, you ready for this? His dog, a German shepherd named Bandit, was out on the porch and just started going apeshit, howling and barking like crazy in the direction of the pump house that he had out in the field.
It was almost like the dog could sense something was out in the fields that surrounded the home but you couldn't see it. Merle stepped out onto the porch to see what the fuss was all about and that's when Bandit just took off into the field in the direction of that shed. Merle hollered for Bandit to come back but by now the dog was already out of sight. That's when Merle noticed red glowing lights circling around where the shed and the dog were.
He said the lights hung around for a minute or two, then they disappeared. He continued calling out for Bandit but sadly the dog never returned and they never saw it again. Oh Bandit. Bandit's a badass though, are you kidding me? Red at it? That's fucking right. But the reason why it's connected to that story is that the dead dog on the side of the road could have been Bandit. I don't want to think that Mothman would kill a dog because he has no reason to.
But you said that there was no dead dog after they had told the cops and the cops had came and taken statements, right? Was that? Yeah. So we don't know. Well no, because they didn't find the dog. So it might not be a dog. It's just a dog. It's West Virginia in the 60s. It's probably just dead dogs. Sure. I don't know why I think this is. I keep talking about West Virginia like it's a fucking like it's a third world country. It's just dead dogs and the water's all poisoned. It's funny.
I was going to just go along with it, but now that you're questioning it, like why are there dead dogs everywhere in West Virginia at this time period? You know? I don't know. Anyways, the next the next sighting that we're going to go over is it's not funny. It's kind of. So the next the next night on November 16th, Raymond Wamsley, his wife, Kathy and Raymond's sister, Marcella Bennett and Marcella's infant daughter were going to visit some friends who live just outside the TNT area.
Once it started to get a little late, Ray, Kathy and Marcella decided it was time to go and head home. So they went out the front door. Well, as they were approaching the car, they must have startled the moth man who I don't know if he was crouching down behind the car or if he was like napping on the ground behind, you know, like after you turn a car off and it's warm, like cats will go underneath it and like sleep under there. Maybe that's a city thing with stray cats.
But yeah, I don't know if that's what the point was, but if reading the paper or something. But apparently they startled them because the moth man slowly rose up from behind the car like a fucking nightmare jack in the box. Marcello said, Marcello said that it that's what happens to him when he gets startled. He slowly rises. You know, you know, shocked or anything. It's just like, fuck, excuse me. Yeah. You know, when you're startled, you just react slowly to things as a thing, right?
Yeah. Marcello said that quote, it rose up slowly from the ground, a big gray thing bigger than the man with terrible glowing red eyes. End quote. And as the mothman stood there and I don't know how true this is, but one source said that it tilted its head to the side and I like, I think it was like new metal guitar players. Like, come on. You know how like new metal. Yes. No, I pictured it. Yeah. So absolutely.
So as the mothman stood there, tilting its head to the side and just kind of observing, almost more curious than threatening, like it wasn't like trying to like scare. I don't think it was trying to scare her. Marcella tried to run, but she was so overcome with fear and shock that she just kind of froze almost like she was like hypnotized. When she finally made the move to start running, she turned around and immediately fell right on top of her infant daughter that she was holding in her hands.
Oh no. It's not funny. That was a real reaction. I just, I heard it as I was saying it and it sounded sarcastic. This seemed to like kind of break her out of her hypnotic spell and she scooped up her daughter and booked it into the house with Raymond slamming a door behind her. Now luckily the child was unharmed. It was totally fine. Let's get to quote Jack's Brooks article on the sighting from his, uh, from his article.
The fall had quote badly fucked up, fucked Marcella up and quote, uh, she had, uh, she had scraped knees, bruises, her face got a little bloody. It also said that she suffered a burn from a cigarette. So I don't know if she was holding this cigarette while also holding her infant child while also trying to flee from the mothman. It sounds about that, that time era. Yeah. They, they didn't say anything about the, the bud heavy that was spilled on our head either, but it was there for sure.
The, uh, the family immediately called the cops as the mothman started stalking around on the porch. This is where it gets kind of creepy. Uh, he was stalking around on the porch, peering in through the windows, just like watching the family. And he was also prodding at the door. I don't know if he was trying to get in, but I think he was trying to figure out how like doors worked or something. I don't know. Nightmarish.
But the time that the police arrived, they had their guns drawn, just ready to fucking fuck mothman up. Strapped, stay strapped. But by this time he had already fucked off, presumably to go terrorize someone else at this point. Um, figure out a window. Yeah. So things like this continued on for like 13 months. People reported seeing the mothman in and around the area of the old TNT plant, uh, flying over roads and houses all around town and not just reports of mothman.
There are some seriously fucking weird shit going on at point pleasant at this time. You got poltergeist activity, demonic entities, strange men dressed in all black that were questioning witnesses and reporters, which we'll talk about on the next episode. Uh, people were getting really bad pink eye from looking into the mothman's eyes. So I'm sure the pharmacist in town wasn't having like a great time. Uh, oh yeah.
So when you look into the eyes of the mothman, apparently you get something, I forget the exact name, but it's a, it's a form of conjunctivitis and it's the same kinds you get when your eyes are exposed. I think it like UV radiated. Like if you look in the sun long enough, you'll get conjunctivitis. So it's like that kind of, it's not good. I don't know if you've ever had conjunctivitis or pink eye, but it's not fun. Right. It's a nightmare. It's like a psychic feces straight to the eye.
Yeah. You don't even have to touch you. You shits in your eyes. So yeah. So for a year, the residents normally had to deal with this, you know, like normal everyday life bullshit. Now they got to worry about demons, aliens and monsters. But all this came to a head on December 15th, 1967. It was around 5pm rush hour. People were getting off to get off of work, heading to go do some Christmas shopping or just heading out for the evening. It was a Friday night, you know, so they're just going out.
But whatever the reason for people's commute that day, it's safe to say that there was an unusually like heavy amount of traffic that day. And the silver bridge was loaded. The entire length of the bridge was loaded with traffic. Now unbeknownst to not only the people on the bridge, but the people in charge of maintaining the bridge, it was suffering from a faulty eye bar that had begun eroding over time.
And due to where this eye bar was located, it was missed time and time again by those who were responsible for like catching such a fault in the construction. So with all this extra weight, the faulty eye bar gave out creating a chain reaction and the bridge started to give way. Eyewitnesses remember the bridge starting to, quote, fold like a deck of cards.
And from the point of like the critical failure of that I-beam, it took less than 20 seconds for the 1460 foot suspension portion of the bridge to collapse completely into the Ohio River, taking along with it 32 vehicles and claiming the lives of 46 people, two of which their bodies still have never been found. I'm safe to assume it was probably, probably swept away by the river or the moth man or the moth man. So the opportunity. I don't think he was trying to go after people.
We'll, we'll, we'll. Right. Well, don't worry. We'll get to what the moth man might be, what his intentions were. Not on this episode, but we'll get there. So was this accident caused by the moth man? People did claim they saw the moth man perch atop of it just a few days prior. Others claim they saw men in black climbing around on it, possibly to sabotage it for some unknown reason.
Or it's just, you know, this could have just been another unfortunate disaster that, you know, America's infrastructure as much as we love it, not the best, but after this incident, the moth man sightings just kind of ended.
I don't know if the moth man vanished or, you know, like the town and its people are probably in such a state of mourning and grief that stories of incitings of like winged men just didn't seem to matter as much anymore after like such a huge tragedy and like a real tragedy too. Like this is something that happened. You know, people seeing the moth man, that's whatever you might have, you might have not, but I don't know. But no one can really say.
There was a bridge there and now there's not a bridge there. We can say definitively that something happened to the bridge. I'm glad you're here to put things in perspective. You know, if there's one thing I could do for this podcast, it's, you know, just point out the facts here, folks. No, and it's greatly appreciated. I'd be lost without you.
And that's as we're going to leave off on this episode and we'll continue on next week with the stories of some other weird stuff that happened during the moth man drain over Point Pleasant, specifically the men in black and if time allotted, injured Colt. We're definitely talking about injured Colt though. He's a fucking weird dude. So yeah, Colby, so those are some of the sightings and the unfortunate end of the moth man sightings in Point Pleasant. What do you think? How are you feeling?
What do you just give me something? Well worth the wait, I will tell you. You know, I feel like that the slow burn of episode one was, you know, really ramping up for something, something good. Yeah. And fuck a, you know, winged beast shooting straight up in the sky. That's all I needed. That's all I needed. It was just destroying, maybe destroying bridges in people's lives. Damn, damn. Super cool. Big corn curses the earth, the land and moth man. It's cool as fuck. It's corn stock. It's fine.
Corn. Damn. What did I call him? Big corn. That's what I said, right? You said big corn. Yeah, it's not. It's corn stock. Corn stock. Got it. Oh shit. All right, man. Well, yeah, next week's going to get his name right. Next week's going to be weirder. I promise you. It's going to be like uncomfortably weird. Cool. Yeah. So look forward to that. Colby, is there anything you want to plug before we scoot on out of here? I mean, you know, the band's doing good.
You know, we got some songs that we've been nailing down with a new drummer. Check us out, Lanterns. Yeah, we got to change that. That's Spotify name. I just realized that that's like the last piece of the puzzle. But yeah, we're going to start playing out soon. Yeah. So it's Lanterns Last Light on Spotify. Check out their single they have out now called Mitochondria. Ah ha ha. What's he called? Ah ha ha. Maki Hiki, come on. That's what it is. Then follow them on Instagram.
It's lanterns 207, but there's no vowels. So it's LNTNRS 207, I believe, on Instagram. Yeah, we said I will not take a vowel. Alex, is that the host of? Nope. That's Jeopardy. Damn it. Thanks a lot, William Brady. Pat Sajak is Wheel of Fortune. That's what you're thinking of. I don't think he's hosting. I don't know. He's like 180 years old. He's as old as David Attenborough at this point, I feel like. Yeah. Oh shit. Can we just start comparing people's names?
He's like father time at this point. I love it. It's great. All right. If you want to follow us on Instagram, Crypto Cocktail, follow us on TikTok, Crypto Cocktail Party. If you like what you're hearing and want to support the show, just head on over to patreon.com slash Crypto Cocktail Party. That's five dollars a month and you will get things when I get to them. But with that, Colby, do you want to say goodbye to everyone? Bye Crypto lovers and listeners. Love you.