The Mothman Cometh: High Strangeness in the Midwest

Hi there, I'm K-Town, and on this edition of Mysterious Radio. We don't have it in audiobook, but anybody who wants a signed copy can order one directly through our website at singular4dn.com. Awesome. I appreciate your time, and I'm going to tell you right out the gate. I don't know who designed your, whatever your book cover. It is amazing. amazing. I mean, it just really caught my eye. I mean, who, who done that for you? Did you do that? No, I wish I was that talented. That was my, my wife, Emily, and she is, yeah. And she is my partner at the Singular Fortean Society. And so, you know, we investigate weird stuff together and she just happens to have a background in like photography and design and she's an artist. And so, So, yeah, she did all of the layout and the art for the book and everything. So, I mean, she is literally the reason why I am not just some, you know, guy ranting on the Internet, you know, in in green text on a black background somewhere on some blog. Yeah, well, that's awesome. I mean, really, seriously, just tell her how amazed I am at that. That is killer. Let's go and talk about you a little bit before we jump into your book here. And so how did you and your wife both get started investigating, you know, like strange and weird things happening? Sure. So, you know, honestly, my experiences with the paranormal started when I was very young and, you know, I had some really ongoing encounters that were sort of difficult to pin down or categorize. And, you know, it was a lot of sort of nighttime visitation and seeing shadow people and some weird stuff like that. And that led me on the road to wanting to know more about those experiences because it was very isolating. You know, I couldn't really tell my parents about it. And so I didn't really know where to go, who to talk to. Right. And, you know, this is pre-internet, of course. I turned 40 last year. And so when I was a little kid, the only recourse I had was to go to the local library. And so that's what I did. And I found books by guys like John Keel and Brad Steiger. And I just read everything I could get my hands on. And it was a great relief, you know, because finally I found these stories from other people who were having similarly strange experiences. And it helped me sort of contextualize everything. And, you know, when I grew up, I wanted to be able to do that for people. I wanted to be able to help them with their experiences, help them through their experiences. And I wanted to be able to present their experiences to do my part to erode the societal stigma around them and, you know, to encourage other people to come forward, to be comfortable with coming forward. And so when I was in my late 20s, I volunteered as a field investigator for the Mutual UFO Network. And that was my introduction to investigation. So I started out investigating UFOs and there were some very interesting cases in there. And after several years of that, I decided that I wanted to go my own way and I wanted to devote myself to investigating things sort of on my own. And so I did that and I met my wife, Emily, in 2015. And I'll never forget this. On our first date, I was so nervous. And one of the things that I decided that I was going to do at that point was just right off the bat, I was going to be like, hey, look, I'm into some weird stuff. You know, like I like to investigate UFOs and ghosts and monsters and stuff. And I'm not ashamed of it. I'm not going to hide it. So just leave right now if you want or make your peace. That's right. And right away, she was like, that is so cool. And she told me about this phenomenon that I had never even heard of. She was like, that's so cool. Have you heard of the Paulding light? And I was like, no, I have not. Please continue. And so, yeah, she told me about this cool ghost light that we've since visited. It's in the upper peninsula of Michigan. So we live in Wisconsin. So we can just drive straight up through the state and you'll hit the UP eventually. And it's this cool ghost light and you can totally go see it. And it just looks like sort of a faraway light. You know, you go park in this dead end and it shows up pretty regularly. And yeah, I mean, it's, well, I guess the rest is history, you know, as far as us getting together. And I think it was about 2000, late 2015, early 2016, when we started toying around with the idea of forming our own organization. So, you know, my my degree is in English. So I have a writing background and Emily has dual degrees in photography and design. design. And so we thought, you know, putting those skill sets together, we might be able to really create something, you know, something that could really help people, something that would speak to people interested in this stuff. And so we sort of set out with the idea to build a community and to inform people as best we could, you know, regarding paranormal phenomena. So we kind of take a journalistic approach to investigation. You know, we do a lot of, you know, paranormal news stories and feature articles and things like that. And, you know, it really came into its own sort of at the very beginning of 2017. And, well, the Singular Fortean Society, I may have failed to mention the actual name. But, yeah, it really came into its own at the beginning of 2017. I think we really at that point had decided exactly what we wanted to do and sort of who we wanted to be as an organization or a society rather, really. And things have been great, you know, since since. That is awesome. Well, you can't leave us hanging. I have to know, Tobias, did you guys walk down and try to see what the light was? Or did you say, no, we just we're done. We just want to see it from here. Right. Well, it's so far away. Basically, you pull into this dead end in the middle of nowhere in the UP and past this little barrier, you know, like one of those crash barriers. There are these old abandoned railroad tracks and like way, way, way down them. You know, that's where this light is. And I don't think that you can actually really get to it as far as, you know, like just going down there and trying to walk all the way to it because it seems it looks so, so, so far away. and so we're we're standing out there and it kind of comes and goes right and if you know you've never been to the up um in summertime when we were up there i think it was late july early august uh the mosquitoes are as big as your hand and there are so many of them and so we're standing out there just getting devoured by mosquitoes. And, you know, it didn't even really occur to me because we got there and we saw it. And it looked kind of really far away. And it doesn't look super impressive, really, like once you actually see it. And it never really occurred to me at the time to actually try to, you know, run after it. Because like I said, it looked so far away. And Emily was there with her camera. So she had all her camera equipment. She was, you know, taking a video of it. And, you know, I was just like, I saw it. That's awesome. I want to be done getting bit by mosquitoes right now. You know, so Ghost Light achieved. And and we just took off after that. You say this is a culmination of like two years of research. You know, we've taken the time to try to really drill down and get some firsthand reports about what people are seeing. Now, you know, this is kind of migrated from Point Pleasant, West Virginia to you say the Midwest, but I've heard in the Chicago area. But what what area specifically are you referring to? So, you know, I use the term Midwest to sort of describe the area. It's really about a couple hundred mile radius around Lake Michigan. And now certainly the vast majority at this point, well, maybe vast majority is a little hyperbolic. Certainly a majority of the reports we've received so far have come from the greater Chicago area. But we've also received reports from Wisconsin and Indiana. And there have even been one or two from Michigan. So it's really every state bordering Lake Michigan. But of course, Chicago gets the most attention, you know, because it's, you know, it's a huge city. There's a ton of people there. And that's where a lot of the reports have come from. And so it's sort of almost taken on a life of its own in the city itself, where, you know, now there are a ton of people interested in it and people talking about it. So let's go ahead and start with how you got pulled in that direction anyway. I mean, did you start getting people reaching out to you and saying, hey, you need to come, you know, check this out? We've we're seeing something flying around or people are, you know, experiencing, you know, some kind of contact with some big thing that's looks like a bird or something. Right. So it was spring of 2017 when I saw a trio of sighting reports of winged humanoids come through the mutual UFO case management system. And at that point, you know, I saw these reports and I thought, OK, well, that might make a nice article for the Singular Fortean Society. And so there wasn't a lot of information out about them at that time. And anybody who's familiar with MUFON knows that they don't really divulge the results of their investigations often or certainly not very readily. And so, you know, I saw these reports come through and I saw the very little info that MUFON had released about them so far. And I was like, well, you know, I think this will make a nice one-off article. I don't really think anything's going to come of it, but it's something people would be interested in reading about. And, you know, so I wrote that article and then I started seeing other reports coming in to other people. I saw them come into Lon Strickler over at Phantoms and Monsters and Manuel Navarrete over at UFO Clearinghouse. And so at this point, I'm not actively investigating these sightings. I'm actually covering it journalistically. And I reached out to both Lon and Manuel individually, hoping to interview them. And I was like, well, these reports keep coming in. Why don't I talk to these guys since they seem to be getting the majority of them at this point? And so I interviewed both of those guys individually. And, you know, they were both very, very forthright, very, very forthcoming with the results of their investigation so far, which frankly hadn't led to a lot. really at that point, all they could really determine was that something seemed to be happening. You know, people were, were seeing something and it wasn't too long after that, as I got to know them a little bit better that, you know, I was introduced more formally because we actually had mutual friends in common, people that we knew through the paranormal. And so they asked if I, you know, would like to aid in this investigation. And we started getting our own reports through the Senior Affordian Society. So just to give people sort of an idea of how this would work, and sort of still does, really, because they never really stopped, is, you know, Lon's all the way out in Pennsylvania. And, you know, so he couldn't really do on-site investigation for this but he does have a pretty big internet presence so he would get a lot of reports sent directly to him Now Manuel lives in Chicago and Emily and I are just up in Madison Wisconsin So, you know, we're only two hours north of Chicago. So, you know, Manuel would get sighting reports sent to him directly through UFO Clearinghouse and he would go check those out on site. And, you know, if Lon got a particularly interesting sighting, you know, where the witness was sort of receptive to having us come speak with them or, you know, something similar, then, you know, Emily and I would go and check those out in addition to the sighting reports that we received ourselves. um and so i guess to to answer the the other part of that question too yeah i mean emily has been with me every step of the way uh as far as you know going and and doing like any of the on-site investigations um you know certainly she does you know all of our photography uh so you know if we go on site and do an investigation somewhere she will take photos video um just record everything and uh and and really most of the stuff you see on the the website as far as design and and everything like that is her too uh at one point even she had uh taken some of the oh there were uh two witnesses actually who separately had submitted the sort of silhouettes of of what they had seen like they weren't very artistic people so they um you know just were like well, we can, we can provide silhouettes sort of, of, of, of what we had seen. And so he did. And, you know, and Emily would do stuff like take, uh, those silhouettes and clean them up and, and, and make them, you know, look while being faithful to what the witness had provided, sort of put them like sort of contextualize them using what the witness had described, you know, just to give people a better idea of what people were saying that they had seen. So, um, that has been really invaluable, you know, frankly, um, having, you know, my, my, my, my partner be my wife or my wife be my partner, I guess, either way has, I mean, it's, it's working with your best friend, you know, and, and, and you just, you can't ask for, for more than that. Um, but, uh, yeah, I mean, we, we've been doing this together since the very beginning. You know, I think the only time there's been twice where i've gone to chicago by myself um but both of those times were specifically uh to shoot uh one of them was to shoot the series premiere of expedition x for discovery channel and the other one was to shoot a um german public television documentary they wanted to do one on on Mothman for some reason. But that's it. Otherwise, yeah, she's she's gone on every onsite investigation we've we've done. During your time, did you guys get any videos or pictures at all from any of the witnesses? Sure. Like there were a couple as far as photos. Now, let's see. There was one from 2011 and that was submitted to to manuel and it was taken uh i want to say it was pulaski road in chicago um let's see here so this guy had basically been i think he was at the currency exchange actually And there's a statue there of a lot like a large statue of a Native American. And the guy wanted to take some photos of it. And so, you know, he had taken a couple of photos of it. He took three specifically, he said, just sort of in rapid succession. And in the middle one, there was this, you know, flying creature or something. It sort of looked like, you know, maybe a man in a wingsuit or a huge bat or something. It looks sort of like it had these membranous wings. And, you know, when we really dug into that photo, though, and this is actually where, you know, Emily had really broken this one wide open. Because one of the things she does as a hobby is she raises butterflies. You know, she's really into pollinators and gardening and all this stuff. And so, you know, she raises monarch butterflies and swallowtail butterflies. And she's really into them. And so when we really dug into this photo, you know, we were able to determine, well, based actually on another photo that we received later, that it was probably actually a, and this is going to sound silly, but it was probably actually a question mark butterfly, which is a type of butterfly. um you know we were able to to compare it to you know other photographs of of butterflies even you know some that Emily had taken and probably due to uh forced perspective um you know it it this thing looks like it's something big far away but it's probably something small relatively close And, you know, like like I said, the guy took three pictures and this thing only shows up in the second one. And so it just seemed really likely to us at that point after comparing it and everything else that. Yeah, I mean, it was probably that a butterfly flew in front of his camera because he didn't notice it at the time. Of course, he only noticed it after he looked at the photos later. After he. OK, so I was going to ask you if you spoke with him, you know, did he say he saw something huge and took a picture of it? But that would explain, you know, him not seeing it, seeing it when he was taking the picture. So. Right. And there was now there was another one that a woman took outside of a Best Buy. This was in Chicago. And that one was a little more interesting. it's far from definitive unfortunately now what she said is that her and her husband were leaving the store and they saw what they described as this huge bat fly over them and so she gets her cell phone out and it's you know according to her testimony it was going very quickly and so by the time she got her phone out and was able to take a picture it was it was some distance away. And so what you have in this photograph is, you know, sort of this blurry black object that's relatively far away. It could be a lot of things. I think what's compelling about it to me is, you know, obviously if it was just a picture by itself, it would be nothing. You know, like I said, it could be literally anything. But if you take it with the, you know, witness testimony, I think that it stands a good chance of actually having been something unidentified that flew over them, whatever that that may be. He was there with her. I mean, were they describing the same thing or was his description different from hers? Or what did he say? Now, he I don't believe he was interviewed, actually. I believe it was the just the the the wife. And so as far as I know, and, uh, and I, you know, honestly, I'd have to go back and, and, and check my notes, but as far as I know, um, she was the only one interviewed or if he was interviewed, it was basically to say, yeah, I saw what my, my, uh, wife saw. Um, and so, you know, it's, uh, like, like I said, it's far from definitive, unfortunately, but, uh, you know, it's, it's, it's not nothing at the same time. And the, the, uh, third thing that, you know, I had seen, uh, come in, I actually saw this, I believe I had seen it posted to, it was a social media site. I want to say it was probably posted to Reddit or something. And there was a guy in, let me see if I can find the name of this city real quick, rantool illinois and i'm not sure if i'm saying that right but uh this gentleman had uh taken a video on his his home security camera and uh the video was taken on see it was june 25th 2018 and we have this this video up in the article on our our website too um and i all of these these photographs are freely available. You know, you can find them on singularfortian.com. Obviously they're, the photographs are in the book as well. But he, he noticed this, you know, sort of large flying creature on his, his security camera. And, and you can look at it in, in the video and it's certainly something, and it's certainly something flying and it definitely looks to be of a pretty good size. It's difficult to judge. Again, you know, we have that weird forced perspective that kind of makes it very difficult to judge where the creature is in coordination, like with the camera, like how far away it is. But it certainly looks to be a sizable, you know, flying creature, uh, flying in front of this, this streetlight. And, you know, I, I had Emily take a look at it because again, she's, when it comes to, uh, photographs and videos and stuff, she is, uh, she's a little, uh, you know, better versed in, in that technology than I am. And, uh, she, you know, she took a look at it and her determination really was that it's really, it's almost too difficult to judge how far away it is to be able to make a real firm determination as to its, its size. And so, you know, basically what, what she said is that, you know, it's possible that the, the creature shadow is being cast somewhere that, you know, we can't see like between, because there's this vehicle there too. And so it's possible that it's, it's shadows being cast somewhere. We, we can't see because one of the things that sort of stands out about the video is you might expect its shadow to block some of the light from this street lamp, you know, that's shining on this car parked in his driveway. But it's also possible that instead of doing that, like its shadow is cast somewhere else. And so, you know, ultimately it's just another one of those where you look at it and you go, wow, that's weird, but you can't really prove anything with it, unfortunately. So really overall, as far as, you know, video and photographic evidence, like there hasn't been a lot of really good, compelling evidence. The only other photograph that comes to mind immediately was one taken, well, actually this was a video, sorry, taken in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. And this would have been in, I want to say May of 2018. There was a gentleman who was bicycling to work and he saw as he was bicycling to work, this gentleman and woman standing on the sidewalk and the gentleman was pointing at something in the sky. And so, you know, this guy bicycling to work, he is curious. He looks up to see what they're pointing at. And he sees what he had described to me as either a like giant bat or a man in a wingsuit. And, you know, he's wearing a bicycle helmet and he has a GoPro camera on there. And so he decides for as long as he can until he's going to be late for work, is going to follow this thing and get as much footage of it as he can. And, you know, he does. And he was very forthcoming with it. You know, I spoke to him and he offered to send me the actual SD card that the footage was on. And he absolutely did. And unfortunately, that SD card was damaged when he shipped it to us. but he was able then to, you know, send us a, a, a different version. And, um, you know, like the fact is we got some good stills out of it, um, that clearly showed what he was talking about and we blew them up and, you know, it, it was a bird. It absolutely was. I think it was a really big bird. It was probably like a great blue heron or something, but it had the distinct, sort of silhouette of a large bird. And so I think that when it comes to the photographs honestly and this is something that has really helped a lot honestly When you look at most of the photos, certainly all of the previously mentioned ones, except for the Rantoul, Illinois video. Everything else was taken during the day. It was something seen from relatively far away for a relatively short period of time. In one case, the witness didn't even see it with their eyes at the time, didn't even notice it. And all of those cases lack the paranormal elements that we see in the most compelling cases. So, you know, they're not reporting any other, you know, incidents of anomalous phenomena. Like there's no associated, you know, psychic activity or, you know, UFO sightings or any, you know, any of the aspects of hauntings people sometimes report, you know, before or after these experiences. And so what those really did and what they did for the investigation was allow me to put together a profile of sightings that more than likely were caused by the misidentification of large birds. Now, again, like that doesn't rule out, you know, every single sighting. Like there's a lots of really, really compelling paranormal sightings as a part of this investigation where people have seen some really, really, really weird stuff. And I don't know, frankly, that a lot of the really weird paranormal stuff could even be photographed. I don't know if it's even, you know, physically possible that somebody would be able to photograph it. But I want to ask you this real quick. Okay. So you think that the majority of these daytime sightings, the daytime sightings may be confused with, you know, people may be seeing a very large bird. So what kind of bird have you looked at that? You know, what kind of large bird would be flying around in that area that people may mistake it as a mothman sighting? Yeah, definitely. So, I mean, that was something that I did pursue as a line of research, you know, once I sort of all the pieces started falling together there. And, you know, it turns out that the number of herons like living in and around Lake Michigan, like especially sort of in that Chicago area, because Chicago is it's all built on wetlands, you know, like it's all. it's it's all wetlands over there really everything around Lake Michigan is for the most part and um so there were already great blue herons that that that lived up there and you know for anybody who doesn't know great blue herons stand about four feet tall and they have like a seven foot wingspan so they're huge birds and when they fly they they you know have these long necks but when they're flying, they actually pull their head back. And so their heads, even when they're like with their shoulders. And so the silhouette of this thing can look like either a really skinny person or, you know, a giant bat or something, frankly, because you wouldn't think that if you weren't familiar with them necessarily, you wouldn't think that it was something like a heron because you would expect to see, you know, what you would see on the ground, which is this long neck dinosaur looking bird. And so what we know is that the population of herons living in these areas has increased due to the destruction of their natural wetland habitats. And also that, you know, migratory birds are coming north earlier and staying north much longer than they used to due to factors like climate change. And so the destruction of these birds' habitats has really led them to exist in numbers in these urban areas that we hadn't seen before. And so having more of them around, more of them flying around, you know, it made a lot of sense to me that people who weren't used to seeing them, because why would they be, you know, even though they lived there, it was so up until relatively recently, it would have been fairly rare to just see them, you know, flying around everywhere. Yeah, of course, people are going to misidentify this giant dinosaur crazy looking bird uh as as something more mysterious you know yeah yeah uh i totally get it you know i'm saying if they just catch a glimpse of it or something it may seem like weird you know and they may associate that with with mothman especially you know if they're familiar with the phenomena so that could very well be the case um okay so let me ask you Have you looked at whether or not there is or there are distinct differences in the characteristics of the mothman being reported in Point Pleasant and the one people are seeing in the Lake Michigan and the Chicago area? Sure. So, I mean, if we just kind of put all of the reports that are probably, you know, misidentified birds and stuff or could be misidentified birds aside, you know, we're still left with a lot of really compelling cases. And there's a good deal of variation, really, when it comes to the descriptions, you know, given by people. You know, some of them are the more, you know, traditional or I guess I really should say some of them are really consistent with what people were reporting in Point Pleasant, you know, back in that 66 to 67 flap where, you know, you've got this, you know, weird humanoid feathered being or bird like. but, you know, with no real visible head and glowing red eyes. Some people have described something much more bat-like. And, you know, honestly, when you look at some of those, the Point Pleasant reports too, I mean, there was some variation there, you know, where you would have people use, you know, uh, bat-like or bird-like, uh, to, to, to try to describe this thing, which I think is normal. I think you're always going to have some variation, uh, just due to human perception. Um, you know, we all sort of see things and describe things differently. And then you've got people who are, you know, struggling to describe something that I don't think they really have the words to describe. You know, they're seeing something that is so far outside of their experience, like something so alien to them that, you know, a lot of people really, really struggle to be able to put that into words, to be able to say what they saw. And so they just try to compare it to anything that they can, you know, just grasp it in any descriptor that makes even any sense. And so we did get a lot of people, you know, describing something fairly consistent with the Point Pleasant sightings. But, you know, like I said, we have had some variation, too. And so there were people who rather than, you know, something similar to Point Pleasant would describe like an emaciated, you know, much more bat-like figure. We had a couple of people who had come forward with sightings of, which for lack of a better term, really sounded like a Bigfoot with large membranous wings, like a Bigfoot with, you know, like bat wings. But those were the main three, really. You know, so you've got sort of the squat, but, you know, still huge, you know, no real visible like neck, glowing red eyed, you know, point pleasant sort of mothman. And then you had the like emaciated, more bat-like being, and then you've got the, you know, the winged Sasquatch, as it were. And yeah, those, I mean, those were really the main ones. There were a little or I should say there were a few outliers, one that that comes to mind. In April of 2017, this would have been right around the time as the original MUFON reports came out. There was a gentleman in McGuanagoe, Wisconsin, who was returning home one night and he's driving home. And for anybody who doesn't know or isn't familiar with that area, McGowanago is a very rural community, about 40 or so minutes outside of Milwaukee. There's really not a lot there. You know, like I said, just just picture of a fairly rural community. And so this guy was driving home and he's talking on the phone with his friend and he pulls into the gravel driveway for his house and, you know, turns around, backs his van in like he always does. So it's facing the street and he's talking on the phone with his friend and it's pretty late at night. And at the time he's staying with his parents. And so he decides he wants to finish his phone call outside. You know, he doesn't want to go inside and wake his parents up or anything. And so, um, you know, he's talking on the phone and the only light out here is this, uh, like lamp post that they have at the end of their driveway, you know? So it's not like, it's not like a city streetlight or anything. It's, it's literally this, you know, like four or five foot tall lamp post. And, um, you know, it shed enough light where as he was having his conversation, he was able to see the outline of this figure in, in front of him. And, you know, so he's curious naturally, and he decides he's going to turn the headlights on of the car to see, you know, who's standing in front of his car. And when he does, he, uh, said he saw this, this creature that looked like, I believe he described, he described it as a looking like a bat dragon. And the reason he did was because this thing, it had these large membranous wings. So, you know, it had these bat wings and it had them sort of wrapped around itself. Like if you picture a bat hanging upside down, how they'll wrap their wings around themselves, only it was standing up. And he said it had this sort of scaly skin. and you know he he could really tell that it was scaly too because he could see uh it had been misting out all day and he could see that it uh it was wet he could see the the light reflecting off of it and everything and so it seemed um you know scaly like like snake skin right you know where it just looks wet no matter what and um and so he's looking at this thing and he starts describing it to his friend uh his friend actually said later that uh that he was silent for a few seconds before before he actually started saying anything and um you know he's looking at this thing and and uh apparently it's looking at him and then it just sort of like uh he described it as it's sort of blurring slightly and and just disappears like just vanishes um and so that was probably the only description of something exactly like that, you know, that, that, that we had received, although there, you know, there, there, there were others that, that could have been something very similar. Um, you know, there were a couple of reports out of Rockford from 2010 where, uh, these teenagers driving out, um, you know, in the, the cornfields and stuff, because they lived not necessarily in Rockford, but in some of the satellite communities. And there's not a whole heck of a lot to do out there. I mean, I grew up in a relatively small farming community. And as soon as we were old enough to drive, that's all we did was drive around out in the country. And so this is two different sets of teenagers who describe something fairly similar to each other that could potentially be something similar to what the McGonagall witness had seen and that was um this this you know being that had jumped out in in front of their their cars again in separate incidents uh but they described it as being uh pitch black uh you know uh literally one of them described it as being, uh, like black as tar. Actually, uh, I, I believe the, the term he, he really used to describe it was the flying tar man. Wow. And, um, but, but otherwise, you know, it had the, the, you know, sort of, uh, a member of swing, uh, member of swings and, uh, and, and, and fit the, the general size description of, you know, a good seven or eight feet tall. Um, so, you know, Like I said, it can be tough because certainly there are differences in how people describe things, but it's not impossible for some of these people to be describing the same thing experienced differently, if that makes sense. Those are some interesting reports there. I love hearing those. What about physical evidence? I mean, where it landed, what it knocked over, or maybe even sounds it made? Sure. I mean, people often report a screeching sound. Now, that isn't always reported. What's interesting about that, though, is people have reported that screeching sound with some of the sightings that could be, you know, the misidentified birds. But they've also reported it in sightings that really, according to the witness's testimony, couldn't possibly be. So that's always been really interesting. As far as like physical evidence, you know, Emily and I were down in Woodstock, Illinois. This would have been early 2019. There was a gentleman who lived there who was returning home from Walgreens, of all things. And this is so typical of these sightings, too. It's literally people just going about their business, doing mundane, everyday activities when they just run headlong into the impossible. And so this guy, he's running an errand. He had to go to Walgreens. Wasn't even that far away from where he lived. And he's driving home. And he was driving past the Dewfield Pond conservation area out there. And he, out of the entrance to this, you know, to the Dufiel Pond, he said he saw this large, hairy humanoid with, you know, these giant gargoyle wings. um and he said you know it crossed the street in a few steps and since it was dark outside he really only saw it as it it entered his his headlights um and then it was gone you know it crossed the street and it it went towards what uh what is the mchenry county uh fairgrounds and uh so you know we were put in contact with him and uh emily and i went down there And we met him and we met his wife and they were wonderful people. And they were willing to go and take us out to, you know, where he had his sighting. And so we went out to the Dufield Pond, you know, conservation area. And we're looking around and you could tell out there that there was some wildlife. And, and although it was closed at that time, um, people, there were probably some people I think who were, who walked their dog out there or, you know, would walk their dogs and stuff out there. But, you know, we saw, uh, you know, uh, what was either, uh, like sandhill crane or, or heron tracks. And we saw, you know, some booted footprints and dog prints and stuff. And so we're looking around and at this point, you know, like we as we were looking around, we were getting close to the entrance, you know, sort of where he saw his or really from the area out of which this thing would have had to come when he saw it, you know, during his sighting. And we're looking around because, of course, you know, I want to see if there are any tracks or anything. And I saw this print in the ice and it caught my eye immediately because it looked like it had, you know, fully articulated toes in this footprint, which seemed really unusual because, you know, there was snow on the ground. uh you know it was it was it was still winter really um and so that that struck me as as very odd it looked like a very uh elongated wide um you know humid or humanoid footprint you know because again you can see all of the toes and everything and so uh you know we we got some some photographs of it but it was it was all by itself you know there weren't any other prints around it uh there wasn't you know like there there wasn't another print like a little further on or anything like that it was literally just this one solitary footprint in ice um and of course excuse me like why i found that so compelling was because of his description of this this creature this whatever he saw you know because unlike you know uh the the sort of traditional uh mothman description that that people often give you know he had basically described something that sounded an awful lot like a winged sasquatch and so here we are with what looks to be this this you know giant humanoid footprint all by itself in in in the ice right where this thing would have come out of so that was um that yeah that was that was unusual and it was one of the rare pieces of actual like physical evidence that that that we ever found. OK, being that, you know, you spent so much time, Tobias, researching this, you and your wife, you know, just taking a lot of witness reports and looking at a lot of evidence and what little, you know, photographic evidence people have of this creature. Do you think there is a real humanoid creature flying around somewhere out there? Oh, I definitely think that there is something paranormal happening. I don't, given the evidence that we have, think that the paranormal sightings, that is to say the sightings that aren't easily explained by misidentified birds, I don't think the really weird sightings are indicative of any kind of undiscovered biological species. That doesn't really add up to me for a number of reasons. It seems weird. Like we, we, for instance, like if, if you start considering it as an undiscovered biological species, all of a sudden you have to start thinking, okay, well, is there a large enough population for breeding? Where do they live? What do they eat? And, you know, there aren't any, any answers for that stuff. You know, I, especially in a, in, in area as developed as, uh, uh, Chicago, you know, like there were sightings in other, uh, you know, more rural areas, less developed areas. And, uh, I mean, you want to talk undiscovered species out there. Um, I still think it's unlikely, but I would, I would entertain it. But, you know, you start talking about the Chicago area and an undiscovered biological species just doesn't make a lot of sense. You know, like they're just, there, there's no good way to describe its ecology under those circumstances. But given the amount of corresponding and correlative anomalous phenomena that happens in these same areas, we've received everything from UFO sightings to other strange humanoids to shadow people. and all manner of weird phenomena reported either in the same geographic areas or even sometimes as part of the sighting itself, you know, where people will see, you know, or will experience, you know, some sort of weird haunting phenomenon. I actually had a woman right here in Madison, Wisconsin, tell me about how their apartment seemed haunted right around the time that her mother had a sighting of this flying humanoid. And her sighting was certainly no misidentified bird. Like what? What started happening to her? Well, she had told me that prior to the sighting, they had heard a baby crying in their apartment, and they couldn't explain it. They knew their neighbors. They didn't have a baby. There wasn't any baby that their neighbors had that could have explained this. and they just, they, they couldn't make sense of it, you know? Um, and there was another incident where, uh, she said that, um, her, her, uh, aunts and uncle actually lived in the same apartment building. And so she was, you know, she was over at, at, at, at their place, uh, in, in the same building. I think it was me. I could have even been right upstairs. And, uh, and this candle just lights itself on fire and you know it almost burns their their building down frankly like if it if it would have gone unnoticed it probably would have been a very big deal um and so it's interesting you know that you have people reporting this weird stuff uh you know prior to, or in some cases just after a Mothman sighting, I had a woman I spoke to out in Maryland, like this wasn't part of the Lake Michigan Mothman investigation, but it certainly seems because we get reports from all over the place that it was, you know, part of the same phenomenon probably, but, you know, out in Maryland. And she talked about how after her son and her had seen this weird flying humanoid while driving home one night, their radio kept turning itself on. Now, they hadn't had any issues with this radio before or since. But after their sighting, for whatever reason, it just suddenly started turning itself on. And she'd turn it off. And then sometime later, it would turn itself on again. And so, you know, if if there wasn't a flying humanoid or a Mothman sighting involved, I think, you know, a lot of people would look at that and go, oh, that's weird that, you know, that sounds like a haunting. That sounds like something that happens when a house is haunted or something. But it's just you put it together with these these mothman sightings. And it makes me think that, you know, rather than any undiscovered biological species, what we're dealing with is something far, far stranger, like something much more paranormal than that. I totally I totally agree. I believe people are seeing something. I don't believe all of all the sightings are legitimate sightings. You know, it's very plausible that they would mix it up or confuse it with some kind of very large bird. But something something all of them aren't. I would say this. Not all of them are, you know, big birds. You know, just totally agree. Absolutely. Yeah. Awesome. Well, you've done a fantastic job. Now, Tobias, go ahead and take a moment to tell my listeners where they can find out more information about you or anything else you're up to. Sure. So, you know, if you're interested in what Emily and I do, you can look up the Singular Fortean Society. And so that's, you know, singular and then Fortean, which is F-O-R-T-E-A-N Society. And so that's actually named after the famous collector of weird news stories in the early 20th century, Charles Fort. And so you can find our website at singularfortian.com. You can also find us on social media, you know, on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or Tumblr. And if you are interested enough in what we do to want to be a part of it, then I would encourage you to look us up on patreon.com slash singularfortian. Very good, Tobias. Many blessings to you. I really appreciate your time. Hey, thank you so much. This was great.