New 'Flying White Sting Ray' Sighting - Hebron, Kentucky - 1/25/2012
I received this new sighting report today 1/26/2012:
I am a sophomore who lives in Hebron, KY very close to the Ohio River. On January 25, 2012 around 9:00 pm I was in the car (my mom was driving) going home. It was dark and we were driving like normal. Then she stepped on the brake because a white stingray flying creature about 1 - 2 feet across swooped down and flew about 4 or 5 feet in front of the car about 5 feet off the ground. Two cars driving in the opposite direction also hit the brakes for it. Right after we saw it I thought it looked very strange but I thought I was just over exaggerating until my mom seemed to be startled by its weird stingray appearance. I then got the idea it might have been something different. It definitely was not a bird because it didn't really flap its wings. It looked like it was swimming underwater. Plus, It didn't seem to have a head from my perspective! I looked up what it could possibly be and found reports of the exact same thing (only bigger) a few years ago. The similarities are astonishing.
NOTE: this is an area, southwest of the Cincinnati, Ohio metro area, where several *Mothman-like sightings (links provided) have been made. Below are the previous 'flying manta ray' reports forwarded to me...Lon
*Mothman Sightings - Cincinnati, Ohio Area
The Mothman Comes Home
Communion With The Mothman
Messenger, Harbinger or Omen?
Monsters of West Virginia: Mysterious Creatures in the Mountain State
NOTE: several reports posted at 'Phantoms and Monsters' are included in Rosemary's upcoming book 'Monsters of West Virginia'! Pre-order now!
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The following sightings were previously reported to me and posted in August-September 2010:
Ray-Shaped Cryptid Sightings in WV Ohio River Valley Revealed
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| The Mothman Prophecies: Mothman witness artwork |
This is a very interesting report. I've been researching ghost, monster and cryptid reports in West Virginia for a few years now. Wrote a wee slim book on the topic. We now have a growing body of reports and stories about an odd "ray-shaped" cryptid in the area. For my book, I collected a story (which at the time I thought was an excellent story but very unlikely--just too weird to credit much beyond its campfire value) about a man who encountered a huge ray-shaped thing straddling the road ahead of him. Initially it was visible only as two reddish-orange spots that he mistook for bicycle reflectors in the fog. When he honked his horn, the "reflectors" blinked at him, then the whole body lifted up off the road and sort of glided down over the hill to disappear into the fog-filled valley below.
There is a sighting reported in Bob Tweet's excellent "West Virginia UFO's: Close Encounters in the Mountain State" in which a boy in a car spots a white "furry" shape gliding along beside the car. It was described as being four feet across with no discernible limbs or separate head.
More recently, a woman and her daughter reported the "Horton Horror" near Horton WV. This was also a manta-shaped Something that glided along over or near their car.
There's an old story about something in the fog at Foggy Bottom (I believe this particular "Foggy Bottom" is an area near Wheeling, WV--since developed) in which a dog is lifted up above the fog and is whisked off--sitting on the top of something that glides away. Dog is never seen again. That story is presented as a sort of UFO encounter, but I think it fits the pattern forming for these other stories.
There are now at least three stories/sightings from near Point Pleasant and others up the Ohio Valley. Strange.
I have no idea what is going on, what people may or may not be seeing, but I think there are enough reports now to say that this represents SOME kind of phenomenon. Folks, we have an emerging Monster tradition! All fresh and relatively new! Something that is most definitely not another manifestation of "Mothman", but a phenomenon in its own right!
Hey! I'm excited! It's not everyday you get to watch a paranormal or cryptozoological pattern form almost right in front of your eyes!
Kurt McCoy
(author "White Things: West Virginia's Weird White Monsters" and self-confessed monster aficionado)
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Winged Manta Ray Shaped Cryptid - Near Ashton, WV - 12/3/2004
I received the following email in reference to my post The Mothman Cometh: John Keel's Reports on August 13th. Much of this was included in a piece written by Chris Holly, but there have been a few changes. Note...click images for larger version:
Hi Lon, thanks for responding so quickly. Here are my drawings and report:
Date: Dec. 3, 2004
Time:6:00 - 7:00pm
Weather Conditions: clear and already dark. Moon hadn't risen yet
Location: Traveling south on Rt.2 in WV from Point Pleasant to Huntington WV. Near Ashton WV (see map)
A friend and I were traveling on Rt. 2 towards Huntington WV. I was on my way to set up my booth for an art show and my mind was occupied with the booth set up and show logistics. We had just gone over the railroad tracks outside of Ashton WV and were on a long straight stretch of road. There was distant oncoming traffic and the headlights were on. There were no cars behind us in sight. I was in the passenger seat and my friend was driving. I noticed a sudden movement in the sky over the Ohio River to my right in front of the car. It was a greyish, smooth, winged shape. the shape swooped in a figure 8 in front of the windshield and then was suddenly gone to the left of us. It didn't fly out of sight, it was just gone. This happened very quickly, but as I am a visual artist, it was impressed into my memory banks!
Size: Bigger than the car. The wingspread was wider than the 2 lane road we were on. The wings seemed to stretch wider somehow as it did the figure 8 swoop. It was never more than 25 feet away from us as it flew towards the windshield. We thought it was going to crash into the windshield! At one point during the swoop it was only about 5 feet off of the pavement.
Color: Grey, translucent like a jellyfish. As it banked and swooped I could see many angles of it and somehow it looked more transparent as it turned some parts to us. I immediately thought it was like a manta ray. The body was flattish like a manta ray or a bat. The wings were long and smooth and sort of pointed at the tip. I saw no texture or roughness on it, only smooth surface.
Characteristics: Only body and wings- no head, eyes, tail, or feet. It did not look humanoid in any way. On the other hand, it wasn't a bird either. It moved more like something in the ocean would move - Did not flap the wings like a bird, or flutter them like a bat, but stretched them instead. My friend (who alas passed away a year ago) said to him the wings looked ragged like there were pieces coming off of them.
He also said he got a good look at the underneath and it looked grey and smooth. This absolutely was not a machine! It was articulated like a living creature and seemed like something organic.
As I look back on this sighting, I wonder if it was something playing with us - It happened so quickly that the only scary part was when we thought it was going to crash into the windshield. It was so beautiful and strange! It reminded me of a sea creature more than anything else, maybe our air is like water to them.
The only other time in my life I have ever seen anything remotely similar was in 2000 in Clay Co. WV, driving along a one lane road along the Elk River (a river was present in both instance -I just realized) In that case, I was alone and for about a mile as I drove, I kept noticing a shimmer in front of the car about 15 feet ahead of the car. This was late morning in the summer. It preceeded the car at the same distance for several minutes, then I noticed a shadow on the road too, large and shaped sort of like a bird. I looked up out of the windshield and there was a large crow flying above me. But what I first saw in front of the car was not a shadow, it was a disturbance in the air in front of my car that looked like a heat mirage sort of but was very close. This was a curvy country road right by the river. I had never seen heat mirages on that road before or since. At the time I thought that it was just sort of weird, then very close to that time I had a very lucid dream that I was in my car flying over the river right near the place where I saw the shadow.
As an artist, my mind is open to many possibilities and explanations - I think the unseen world is just a small vibrational frequency away. As a child I was fascinated by fairies and nature spirits and spent a lot of time alone outdoors.
NOTE: though there have been several variations in describing the 'Mothman', this particular description is unique and most likely represents another cryptid or non-terrestrial entity. As well as the Mothman sightings, the area along the Ohio River (southern Ohio and southwest West Virginia) has had a large number of other paranormal events including UFOs, large apparitions and hauntings, native and folklore based creatures, etc...Lon
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Labels: bizarre, cryptozoology, flying cryptids, flying ray-shaped cryptid, Kentucky, mothman, Ohio, Rosemary Ellen Guiley, west virginia
posted by Lon Strickler at 1:27 PM
8 Comments:
That's creepy. I live 10 minutes from Hebron.
Lon,
There´s a verse in a song of my era that goes, ``...my memory has just been sold...``, and goes to illustrating how I felt reading this report. You see, I opened a discussion with a well known ufo investigator about a certain creature I´d seen when I was around 16. I didn´t want to talk about it openly as it seemed just too weird. He had mentioned that he and a large group of people investigating reports of ufos in a large swamp in southern Louisiana, had seen this big black thing come from the area of a mound. His description was the same as my own yet the one my younger brother and I saw was smaller and see-thru.
I and my younger brother came upon one of these while in the woods one day. It was near a small earthen mound. Just as we´d stepped past a big tree about 12-15 ft. from this mound, all sound was swallowed up. We weren´t far apart but even with both of us screaming we barely heard each other. Stepping past the tree again and the sounds were normal again. Standing in the void again we both looked in the direction of that mound at the same time with horror. I saw his arm come up to point as I myself was pointing at the same place looking at him! He asked me what I was pointing at. I said it felt like something big and black was coming at us fast but I couldn´t see anything with my eyes. It was a bright sunny day and the woods were brightly lit because there wasn´t much underbrush at all. We walked away instead of running so we could see it if it followed us. We could then see it moving but it was see-thru! There were these little red beady eyes that were glowing and suddenly my brother took off running and was half way up a steep hill before I got around the low ridge. At seeing him up there I yelled at him to stop and wait for me. He said hurry or he was out of there. We were used to being in the woods from the time we could walk. There was nothing until that day that we didn´t know about the woods. I had to stop not far up the base of that steep hill as I was just plain out of breath and energy. He yelled to me to ask if I could see that. I made him point to where he was talking about. He did and said it was very close to me. I told him, ``Dammit! I thought it was my eyes watering!`` He said to get out of there and began to sound freaked. He could see the eyes and by then so could I. It kept moving to and fro in the air like it was trying to get a rise out of me. I finally got tired of that and turned to it and told it to bug off and leave me alone. That seemed to excite it and I saw this mouth of it´s open. There were all these little pointy teeth in it! This was weirder than weird. My brother yelled, ``Oh my God! It´s got teeth!`` and took off. I yelled until I got him to stop and come back. I told him to watch my back and have some rocks handy. We were deadly shots with rocks. I grabbed some myself and began to go up the hill. This thing followed at a short distance like a stray dog would. It seemed like a dog that just wanted attention. We got to the top and my brother was going to throw his rocks at it and take off running. I urged him not to and so we got out of the woods at a good speed without running. I´d told him to notice that it could´ve hurt us at any time but hadn´t so we should keep it that way.
con´t.....
con´t from previous....
Whatever that thing was it followed us clear home and kept coming to the windows as we´d move to different rooms. It was in the shape of a manta ray and just as the former report, it looked more like it was moving through water than air. The surface of it was perfectly smooth. I took time to get a very good look at it top and bottom. It wasn´t a bird of any kind that I´d ever seen or anything else for that matter. The old farmer who´d owned that land was of the first white settlers to come to that area. They owned the entire valley along with this forested region. There were indians living back there in a large cave when they got there. They left them living there for years and in doing so made friends with them and was told their history on this land. That small mound was there when those indians came there. That was about seven generations back of early 1800s. So it was there a very long time. The indians warned this family not to go around this mound but wouldn´t say why other than they would not go near it themselves. The farmer´s brother decided to see what it was about and after he came running at full bore out of there one day his brother asked what happened. He would only say that no one would believe him and if they did, their church would never let him come into it anymore. That´s all he would say and he never went near that mound again. They noticed over the years that whenever the indians went around it they took a very wide berth and walked the ridge quite some distance from it. There has always been a river near where we saw this thing first.
The ufo investigator and the large group with him told how the one they all saw was huge and came from behind a large earthen mound. It touched something primal in their minds just as the one we saw did to our´s. We recognised right away that this wasn´t our own response and so we set it aside to be able to deal with this thing. That may have been it´s only weapon, not by instilling fear but by reaching into our minds. Indians had been in this guy´s area of investigation in the past. It wasn´t known if they feared or even saw this creature. He described this creature the same way I did in every detail except that his was all black. I believe my brother and I saw our´s all black for an instant before it became see-through. Maybe it´s some sort of chameleon type alien or possibly a life form natural to this planet.
Some may be fearful to speak up about seeing such a creature as this. My own reason and that of this ufo investigator was that we wanted to see if anyone in the public who didn´t know us, would report on something like it. Well, here it is! We were discussing this around 2003. Thanks.
Hello My name is dawn. I find all of these reports to be more than enough to be proof of something that we can not quite understand as being carnal human beings. The recent events or sightings and stalking by this "mothman" or "flying manta rays" is not what sold the paranormal or misunderstood paranormal activity that has been reported. The reports from Pleasant Point West Virginia is enough for me. At this time in our American History it was unheard of to report seeing such things, for fear of being called a liar or worse insane. At this time hundreds of people began to report sightings of not only the Mothman but the UfO reports that started only twelve days before the first sightings of the Mothman. A man named,Berger had an encounter with a being not of the human genome. This man spoke to Berger with nothing but a smile on his face, while speaking his mouth never moved; thus, speaking telepathically to Berger. Throughout Berger's experience with this being, it haunted him most of his life, loosing all of his friends, some family, and eventually his own wife and children. This man did not ask for this to happen to him. He ended up disappearing into the sunset maybe trying to find some normality in life after his friend Indrid Cold visiting him so often. I am a God fearing Christian and I believe that my God is just who He is the one and only God for me. I believe that the Bible only tells us what we are supposed to know and what God wants us to know. He gave me a mind to use and to keep open minded. It would be ridiculous to believe that we are the only one's occupying this entire universe. One day we will know for sure. The government can only cover up so much and for so long. I pray that the people effected by these instances can find peace and understanding in the situations that they have been through.I also want to acknowledge that the credibility of the people that reported these sighting were good, honest, hardworking citizen. Many of these people were also Christian's. I feel that the truth has to be told, the fear of our world crumbling because of the truth is ridiculous. Everyone already knows and most believe. They may not say it out loud or in papers, but they do. I myself saw a UFO at the age of 7. I am now 32 and still remember it vividly and still wonder were the my jellies shoes ended up after if flew out of them running. I believe that God has many other things yet to be revealed to us. Thank you for letting me post.
Dawn´s right. It is difficult for us to get our heads around these happenings that we´ve somehow been fortunate or unfortunate to have experienced. It would be nice if scientists would gather these reports and even talk with those they´ve happened to. It´s the scientists who know what to ask and how to ask it. Why aren´t they showing interest? There are too many on the net who love to use our experiences to write fiction with it. They do us much damage as well as those we love. Our friends, family, and others who know us, see these fiction pieces and then turn around to tell us, ``See!! It´s all fiction!!`` It´s not right that we come online to try and get through these experiences so that we can get some help, some comfort. Then, these writers come along and take our anguish turning it into entertainment and a tool to be used against us!! Just sayin...
I would more soon believe that the von Trapp's from 'Sound of Music' fame fled Austria to escape the tatzelwurm than what the US government is telling us about UFO's. This 'manta ray' thing from West Virginia is absolutely mind-blowing! I am finding myself becoming a 'debunker' - always looking for a logical explanation for an anomoly but in my heart of hearts I yearn that such creatures do exist.
There was something else I remembered about the see-thru manta ray thing back in our woods. The best way to see it wasn´t straight on but by turning my head away from it a little.
Read my comments on the cryptid rays from West Virginia and Kentucky in the new issue of FORTEAN TIMES.
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