Chicago Mothman

At Astonishing Legends, it’s not secret that we’re more than a little obsessed with the Mothman. Years after our coverage of the Mothman sightings in West Virginia, and decades after the original sighting, something (or some moth) very similar was seen flying around Chicago. Known as the “Chicago Mothman”, it was sighted and photographed in 2016.

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Mothman sightings in America have largely been far and few between. The most infamous sightings occurred during 1966-7 in Point Pleasant, WV and is likely the Mothman you're most familiar with. 

Reportings began surfacing of a mothman-like creature starting around 2011 and reaching a fever pitch in 2017, when there were over 50 reported sightings of the Chicago Mothman. Many of the sightings were in parks, close to bodies of water, and near the Chicago O'Hare airport.

One of my favorite sighting stories is not from the air, but rather the ground. The Chicago mothman was seen on the ground, near Chicago O'Hare International Airport by a United States Postal Worker, who was walking back to her car after finishing her day at the sorting facility nearby the airport. 

She noticed a strange, large silhouette at the corner of the parking lot but wasn't too concerned at first. However, when she unlocked her car and the lights flashed on it revealed an impossibly huge creature with glowing red eyes and wings. She said that it then began emitting an "unsettling chirping sound". She stood frozen, until it let out a screech and began to charge her and her far. She opened the door, got in, and started driving as fast as she could. Though she was rattled, she knew she'd lost the creature when she saw the same silhouette soaring above.

Is it the same Mothman? Or, is it part of the same species, perhaps a relative of the most infamous Mothman from the 1960s? Or, as some skeptics would say...was it just a bird stuck in a bag? Others say it could even be a drone in a costume, meant to resemble the alleged description of the mothman.

Sightings still trickle in, like the truck driver who said he saw the creature when picking up a cargo shipment at the airport. According to the witness, “it looked like a person with wings that were stretched out and flapping”.

One major difference is there was no huge emergency or accident that was congruent with the Mothman’s sightrings. Most folks believe Mothman’s presence was a forewarning about the imminent Silver Bridge collapse. But, Chicago had no major emergencies between 2011-2017 that were out of the ordinary.

Thanks to the_autumn_gloaming for this blogstonishing suggestion!

The above image comes from Tim Bertelink and depicts Mothman (not specifically Chicago mothman). This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.