1

The Mothman: A Folkloric Perspective

Corey J. Chimko

The events of November 1966 through December 1967 in Point Pleasant, WV are well
known in Fortean circles. Since that time, the progenitor of that series of events, the so-
called Mothman, has grown into nothing less than an American folkloric icon.
Regardless of what actually happened in Point
Pleasant over forty years ago (and this article will not
seek to review those events),
1
the episode has since
grown into what might be called a folklore motif, cultural
meme or Fortean geography,
2
with many attendant
characteristics that were both reported at the time of the
events, as well as some that were either inferred or, some
would say, invented, by later investigators and
proponents of the case. Barring associated phenomena
such as UFOs and Men in Black, the characteristic
aspects of the Mothman mythos as it stands today include
1) the creatures large, glowing red eyes, described by
witness Linda Scarberry as two big eyes like automobile
reflectors
3
; 2) the creatures eerie cry or squeak,
described by witnesses Mary Malette and Virginia
Thomas as like a big mouse
4
and like a bad fan belt
5
,
respectively; 3) the creatures ability to fly, using the big
wings folded against its back,
6
and 4) the creatures role as a harbinger of disaster,
appearing on location days, weeks or months preceding a major calamity, in this case the
collapse of the Silver Bridge.
7

The story of the Mothman and the events surrounding its appearance have
continued to be popularized and studied (with varying degrees of adherence to scholarly
rigor) by authors such as John Keel in The Mothman Prophecies, Gray Barker in The
Silver Bridge, Loren Coleman in Mothman and Other Curious Encounters, and skeptic
Joe Nickell in The Mystery Chronicles.
8
The 2002 film based on Keels book injected a
number of other apparent sightings into the Mothman mythos, including appearances
prior to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the hurricane in Galveston, TX. Coleman,
who consulted on the film, insists however that there are no records of Mothman at
Chernobyl or Galveston or before any earthquakes, that Mothman encounters did not
happen in those locations, and that these factoids were nothing more than little tidbits
to support the storyline.
9
Nevertheless, to his chagrin and that of those in search of the
truth, these stories continue to be recounted as fact on the now innumerable websites,
blogs, and self-published (i.e. non-peer-reviewed) books dedicated to fortean topics.
Indeed, one could argue that the internet has become the most powerful engine for the
transmission of folklore ever invented.
But were the events of 1966-7 the genesis of the Mothman mythos? Can the
elements of this story be traced back further than the 1960s, earlier perhaps than even the
twentieth century? Keel asserts that winged beings are an essential part of the folklore of
every culture,
10
recounting a number of flying humanoid stories dating from the late
Fig. 1. A contemporary drawing of the Mothman.
2
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in America, including the 1877-80 Flying Man
of Coney Island sightings and the 1908 Letayuschiy chelovek [flying human being]
Gobilli River sighting.
11
Coleman adds the bizarre American flying machine-man
sightings in Louisville, KY (1880), Mount Vernon, IL (1897), Lincoln, NE (1922),
Chehalis and Longview, WA (1948), Houston, TX (1953) and Arlington, VA (1968-9),
as well as the international sightings in Cubeco, Portugal (1915), Kent, England (1963),
and Vietnam (1969).
12
As intriguing as these sightings are, the only thing they seem to
have in common with the West Virginia Mothman is that they are winged, flying,
humanoid-shaped beings, but they lack the other elements of the mythos.
13

Indeed, it precisely because it is so strange in terms of its content, duration, and
the fact that it seems to have incorporated a great many fortean stalwarts into the same
event, that the episode is one of the weirder and more memorable in fortean lore. It would
stand to reason, therefore, that it would be that much more difficult to find historical
precedents. But the paths of folklore and fortean research meet at strange intersections

A Bizarre Synchronicity

As a student of cryptozoology and Fortean
studies, I am drawn to the art and folklore
surrounding the myriad creatures reported by
the cultures of the world in all times and
places. I was recently perusing a volume of
the works of Henry Fuseli, (b. Johann
Heinrich Fssli - February 7, 1741 April 17,
1825), a Swiss-born British painter famous for
his depictions of the supernatural.
14
Among
his most famous works are his paintings
depicting fairy scenes from Shakespeares A
Midsummer Nights Dream. In the bottom
left-hand corner of one of these paintings,
titled Titania, Bottom and the Fairies,
15
a
most bizarre and to some, perhaps,
familiar, figure alights (Figs. 2 and 3).
According to Fuseli researcher
Frederick Antal, the small grotesque
figure dancing in the lower left corner
shows one of Callots dancers as a winged
insect. This strange figure in the
Midsummer Nights Dream excited so
great a fascination that Fuselis 19
th

Fig. 2. Henry Fuseli. Titania, Bottom and the Fairies (1793-4). Oil on
Canvas. 169 x 135cm. Kunsthaus Zrich, Vereinigung Zrcher
Kunstfreunde.
Fig. 3. Insect figure detail from Henry Fuseli. Titania, Bottom and the Fairies
(1793-4). Oil on Canvas. 169 x 135cm. Kunsthaus Zrich, Vereinigung Zrcher
Kunstfreunde.
3
century imitator, von Holst, later made a
separate etching of it (see Fig. 4), and
Goethe used this figure in the second part
of Faust in the presentation of Oberon and
Titanias Golden Wedding.
16

Although it may very well be that Fuseli
was inspired by Callot, it also must be said
that the figure is undoubtedly based on a
moth. The shape of the wings, as well as
the size and shape of the antennae make
this clear. Intriguingly, Fuseli has also
chosen to imbue the figure with large,
glowing red eyes. It is, in every sense, a
depiction of a Moth-Man. The subject
matter and appearance of the figure takes
on a greater significance with some
knowledge about Fuselis background and
his non-artistic pursuits.

Fuseli and the Moths

It turns out that Henry Fuseli was an avid and serious entomologist. A contemporary
wrote of Fuseli that he was unrivalled as an entomologist; and so indefatigable, that he
would rise at four oclock and walk several miles to watch the operations of spiders on a
hedge.
17
He was employed as a reviewer of entomological books,
18
and was intimately
involved in the production and procurement of a number of illustrated insect volumes;
19

writing on his personal procurement of some insect drawings, he states to an
acquaintance that those I wished most for, are the Papilio and the Moth.
20
Indeed, a
published volume of his correspondence
21
makes it clear that Fuseli was particularly
interested in moths, and collected a great many of them:

You will transmit to [a friend of John Knowles] my thanks and condolences on the
escape of his Atropos, though I cannot blame the Sphinx for seizing that opportunity for
French leave mine, apparently still in health, continues in the pupa. As Mr. R[ackett]
mentions the S. Stellatarum, I wish, that in his researches he would pay particular
attention to Gallium and Rubia, as the means of making us better acquainted with Sphinx
Galii and Lineata Linn.
22


The Atropos that Fuseli refers to is Sphinx atropos or Acherontia atropos
23
[Fig. 5].
Commonly known as the deaths head hawk moth for the marking on its thorax which
can variously look like a skull, skull and crossbones, or a deaths head, this moth is so
large that it is commonly mistaken for a hummingbird.
24
When irritated or palpated, it is
still more striking and unique from the fact of possessing a voice, or the power of uttering
a kind of shrill, plaintive, and mournful squeak, somewhat resembling that of a mouse.
25

Its range extends from northern Africa as far north as Russia, and it is commonly seen as
a migrant in many parts of Europe.
26
As one might expect, such a remarkable species has
Fig. 4. Etching by Theodor Mathias von Holst (1810-44) after Fuseli, 19
th
century.
4
not only been noticed, but over the centuries has acquired a significant amount of
folkloric significance.

The Folklore of the Deaths Head Hawk Moth

The time of year that the adult moth
emerges is late autumn, right around the
end of October, a time long associated
with the appearance of spirits.
27
Regarding
its species name, Acherontia atropos:
Acheron was the underworld river of pain
in Greek mythology, and according to
Vergil, the principal river of Tartarus,
from which the Styx and Cocytus both
sprang.
28
It was one of the rivers that
Charon, the ferryman of the underworld,
would ferry souls across.
29
Atropos, the eldest of the three fates, is she who chooses the
manner of each persons death, cutting their life thread; she who

Comes the blind Fury with th'abhorred shears,
And slits the thin spun life."
30


In Eastern Europe, the moths crepuscular habits and their penchant for entering
houses in such numbers that the wind from their wings was enough to blow out candles,
resulted in them being regarded with horror as an evil omen, a forerunner of war,
pestilence, famine, and death to man and beast.
31
In Poland, where it is called the
Deaths Head Phantom and Wandering Deaths Bird,
32
its high-pitched shriek was
thought to originate from a screaming, death-stricken child, and to the Creoles the dust
of its wings was said to be capable of causing blindness if it came in contact with the
eye.
33
In England, it was sometimes considered a familiar of witches, and whispers in
their ear the name of the person for whom the tomb is about to open.
34
As far back as
the fourteenth century in Italy and France, the moth was seen as a carrier of pestilence
and an omen of impending death, likely due to its appearance in Brittany during the
plague.
35

Even the larva of the deaths head hawk moth is surrounded with sinister
superstitions. Archaeologists have unearthed medical amulets or charms in the shape of
the larva of the deaths head hawk moth in Ireland (Fig. 6), where the practice among
the peasantry, when they find one of these latter grubs, is to insert it in the cleft of a
young ash sapling, which soon puts an end to
the caterpillar, whatever effect it may have on
the murrain-epidemic. Even to dream, you see
this caterpillar betokens ill-luck and
misfortune.
36
The charms were worn as
apotropaic curative agents according to the
idea of similia similibus curantur, or like
cures like, the basic tenet of homeopathic or
Fig. 5. Acherontia atropos, the Deaths Head Hawk Moth.
Fig. 6. Connoch, or Murrain Caterpillar Charm, found near Doneraile,
County Cork. (Wood-Martin: 77, Fig. 26)
5
sympathetic magic.
37
In Wiltshire, it was believed that
bringing the caterpillar of the moth into the house would
result in an imminent death.
38

The sinister associations harbored by this species
continue in mainstream culture today; in the 1991 film The
Silence of the Lambs, the pupa was left in the mouth of the
killers victims, and a full-grown adult was featured on
promotional material (Fig. 7).
Badenloch sums up the folkloric legacy of the moth
in eloquent fashion:

To [the] fertile imagination[], the grim features stamped
thereon represent the head of a perfect skeleton, its cry becomes
the moan of anguish, or grief, or of a child; the very brilliancy of
its eyes typifies the fiery element whence it came, for they
implicitly believe it to be a messenger of evil spirits.
39


* * *

It would seem that Fuseli was intimately acquainted not only with the scientific aspects of
A. atropos, but also with its folkloric aspects. Though he probably had a first-hand
familiarity with local superstition, it was also during his time that the first large
collections of local folklore and fairy legends began to be published in England.
40
Indeed,
moths appear in many of his works,
41
and Fuseli seems to have delighted in taking
advantage of the more mysterious and metamorphic qualities of this insect; according to
Lentzch, et.al., Fuseli uses figures from popular folklore as often as he uses literary
characters [] all his creatures have in common an adaptation of their folk original to
contemporary taste.
42

Antal also suggests that he may have been influenced by the works of Jacopo
Ligozzi (1547-1627), an Italian painter, designer, illustrator and miniaturist in whose
works a scientific interest in animals, botany and a love of the fantastic mixed.
43
Schiff,
et.al. echo their sentiments, asserting that Fuseli was one of the first artists to recognize
the enormous visual potential of English folk superstition, and that in post-
enlightenment Britain it became fashionable to acknowledge the existence of even the
most abstruse manifestations of the supernatural.
44
[Sounds like post-Roswell America!]
This milieu seems to have produced the first fine-art depiction of a bona-fide Moth-
man.
It was during Fuselis time, of course, that America gained independence from
Britain, and colonization was in full swing. It is not difficult to imagine those colonists
bringing their folklore, their books, and even their insects, with them.

Conclusions

And so it would seem that we have, in the works of Fuseli and the attendant
folklore on which they were based, an encapsulation and expression of the more or less
complete Mothman mythos, almost three hundred years before the events in Point
Fig. 7. Promotional poster for The Silence of
the Lambs, 1991, showing the A. atropos.
6
Pleasant.
45
The folklore which inspired him is more ancient still, and may not even have
been confined to the European continent.
People often take the existence of folklore for granted, as if it somehow trickles
down to us through the ether of time of its own accord. Of course, folklore, like anything
else, must be transmitted in some form by people, be it orally, in print, or in this case, in
art. Coleman has written on the evolution of the depiction of the Mothman in popular
culture, saying that

Mothmen didnt have hands with four fingers, toes with claws, well-defined rib-cages,
or leathery wings. Most of those details were not even seen or were described differently.
The diffuse imagery of Mothman has drifted into something with a head, arms, and
limbs, although few described it that way in the 1960s. [] The insect notion, the bat
man appearance, and the creey [sic] demon look are fantastic imagined images for
Mothman.
46


This of course is true, if you accept that the incidents in Point Pleasant constitute the
launching point for this particular fortean geography, but, as we have seen, they do not.
If we incorporate the depictions of Fuseli and the Pueblo
Indians into the history of Mothman art, there were indeed
Mothmen of varying physical appearances before the Point
Pleasant creature came on the scene.
Though I am certainly not arguing that the
witnesses of the 1966-7 events were hallucinating or that
they did not have real experiences, I am arguing that those
experiences do, in typical uncanny fortean fashion, seem to
fit into a larger body of experiences, folk beliefs, and
symbology that can be shown to go back at least as far as
the fourteenth century, and likely further back still.
And while we are on the subject of uncanny fortean
synchronicities, it might do well to comment on that of our
celebrity creatures name. Apparently the name
Mothman was a reporters takeoff on the then-current
Batman TV series.
47
But why then was he not called the
Bat-man or the Bird-man (which would have been
more in keeping with contemporary descriptions)? Instead
it was the appellation Mothman that stuck, and it goes without saying that if it had not, no
study such as the current one would have taken place, and the parallels between the
Mothman mythos and the folklore of the deaths head hawk moth would have remained
obscure.
Some researchers have argued that men like John Keel, Jim Moseley and Gray
Barker were responsible for the insertion of many aspects of the modern Mothman
mythos, including its association with the collapse of the Silver Bridge, and other, more
personal crises;
48
what Dixon calls the final narrative twist in Keels Gnostic tale of
impending doom.
49
Could it be that these men were aware of the folklore surrounding
moths and constructed certain aspects of the mythos along those lines? Perhaps. Perhaps
not. Perhaps subconsciously and/or unintentionally. If we accept the mythos is part of
some fundamental symbolic reality in which we all live, if the Mothman is of singular
Fig. 12. Robert Roachs Mothman statue in Point
Pleasant, WV.
7
interest not because of his anomalous character, but because his incorporation into
systematized bodies of knowledge has become emblematic of how people proceed to live
and cope with the notion of uncertainty,
50
then perhaps their involvement was not
wholly self-directed.
In the end, from the folkloric perspective, it doesnt really matter. I have always
argued that in terms of fortean mysteries, those that are solved will enter the realm of
science, while those that are not will enter the realm of folklore. Regardless of their
motives, men like Keel, Barker, Moseley, Fuseli and even the ancient Pueblo Indians are
both the inheritors and the agents of folkloric transmission. They received and perhaps
built upon that folklore, and their ideas are now all part of the Mothman mythos as it
moves forward. A mythos that, if we judge by its increasing appearance in popular
culture, shows no signs of abating.




Fig. 13. Post-1967 depictions of the Mothman in popular culture.
















8
Works Cited:

Antal, Frederick. 1956. Fuseli Studies. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Badenloch, L.N. 1899. True Tales of the Insects. London: Chapman & Hull.

Child, A.B. & Child, I.L. 1993. Religion and Magic in the Life of Traditional Peoples. Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice Hall.

Coleman, Loren. 2002. Mothman and Other Curious Encounters. New York: Paraview Press.

_____. 2007. Mothmans Fate, Cryptomundo. Posted 2007-09-08; retrieved 2010-07-14.
http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/mothman-fate/.

David, Gary. 2008. The Mothman Pottery Mound & The Sacred Datura, Viewzone.
http://www.viewzone.com/mothman.html. Posted 2009-01-23. Retrieved 2010-07-12.

Derbyshire, David. 2003. Found in Wales, folklores harbinger of death,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3311501/Found-in-Wales-folklores-harbinger-
of-death.html. Retrieved 07-12-2010.

Dixon, Deborah. 2007. A benevolent and sceptical inquiry: exploring Fortean Geographies with the
Mothman, Cultural Geographies 2007 (14): 189-210.

Frazer, J.G. 1922. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. New York: The MacMillan
Company.

Fuseli, Henry. 1795. Review of Archives of Entomology, Analytical Review XXI (May 1795): 523-4.

Goethe, Johan Wolfgang von. [1808]. 1980. Faust. Tr. Alice Raphael. Norwalk: The Easton Press.

Hibben, Frank. 1975. Kiva Art of the Anasazi Pottery Mound. Las Vegas: KC Publications.

Jones, Colin. n.d. How Not to Laugh in the French Enlightenment: The Saint-Aubin Livre de Caricatures.
Chicago: University of Chicago Modern France Workshop.
http://fcc.uchicago.edu/pdf/enlightenment.pdf. Retrieved 07-25-2010.

Kay, Paul T. 2005. Ancient Voicesmurals and pots speak. DATURA: A Poster Presentation for the 70
th

Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Salt Lake City.
http://paultkay.info/DATURA_05_08_2006.pdf. Retrieved 07-25-2010.

Keel, John. 1975. The Mothman Prophecies. New York: Tom Doherty Associates.

Law, L.A. 1900. Death and Burial Customs in Wiltshire, Folk-lore. Transactions of the Folk-lore
Society. XI:1 (March 1900): 344.

Lentzsch, Franziska et.al. 2005. Fuseli: The Wild Swiss. Zurich: Scheidegger & Spiess.

LeRose, Chris. 2001. The Collapse of the Silver Bridge, West Virginia Historical Society Quarterly
XV:4 (Oct 2001).

Linnaeus, Carolus. 1758. Systema naturae per regna tria naturae, secundum classes, ordines, genera,
species, cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis. 10
th
Ed. Holmiae: Laurentii Salvii.

Mauris, Patrick. 1996. Essai sur les papilloneries humaines. Paris.

9
Milton, John. 1897. [1637] Lycidas. ed. J. Phelps Fruit. Boston: Ginn & Company.

Nickell, Joe. 2002. Mothman Solved! Skeptical Inquirer March/April 2002: 20-21.

_____. 2004. The Mystery Chronicles: More Real-Life X-Files. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

Petrenko, Yuri B. 1973. Forerunner of the Flying Lady of Vietnam? Flying Saucer Review 19:2
(March/April 1973): 29-30.

Radford, Jonathan. n.d. Italian Hawk Moths. http://www.lifeinitaly.com/garden/hummingbird-moths.asp.
Retrieved 07-12-2010.

Sergent, Donnie Jr. & Wamsley, Jeff. 2002. Mothman: The Facts Behind the Legend. Point Pleasant, WV:
Mothman Lives Publishing.

Schaafsma, Polly. 1980. Indian Rock Art of the Southwest. Santa Fe/Albuquerque: School of American
Research/University of New Mexico Press.

Schiff, Gert et.al. 1975. Henry Fuseli 1741-1825. London: Tate Gallery.

Sherwood, John C. 2002. Gray Barkers Book of Bunk: Mothman, Saucers and MIB, Skeptical Inquirer
May/June 2002: 39-44.

Vergil (P. Vergilius Maro). 19 BCE. Aeneid. tr. John Dryden.

Weinglass, David H. (ed.) 1982. The Collected English Letters of Henry Fuseli. London: Kraus
International Publications.

Wolff, Neils L. 1971. Lepidoptera. Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard.

Wood-Martin, W.G. 1902. Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland: A Folklore Sketch: A Handbook of Irish
Pre-Christian Traditions. Vol. II. New York: Longmans, Green & Co.
10
Notes

1
For an excellent summary and presentation of primary sources, see Sergent & Wamsley.
2
See Dixon, 2007, esp. 195-207.
3
Quoted in Keel, 1975: 60.
4
Quoted in Keel, 1975: 60.
5
Quoted in Keel, 1975: 244.
6
Described by witness Roger Scarberry (Keel, 1975: 560).
7
See Keel, chapter 18 Something awful is going to happen (1975: 244-56). For an analysis of the
collapse of the Silver Bridge, see LeRose.
8
See also Nickell, 2002 and Sherwood, 2002.
9
Coleman, 2007.
10
1975: 27.
11
1975: 26-29. On the latter see also Petrenko, 1973 and Coleman, 2002: 31.
12
2002: 26-37.
13
The one exception being the Arlington, VA sighting, described as having large red-orange eyeballs.
(Quoted in Coleman, 2002: 31). Interestingly, this sighting, out of all of those mentioned above, is in
closest geographic and temporal proximity to the West Virginia Mothman sightings.
14
Readers may be most familiar with his painting The Nightmare, which depicts an incubus on the chest of
a sleeping woman, with the white head of a mare in the background.
15
Sometimes also referred to as Titania Awakes, Surrounded by Attendant Fairies, clinging rapturously to
Bottom, still wearing the Asss head.
16
1956: 103. See also Schiff, et.al.: 62-3. It is difficult to discern exactly which figure Antal is referring to
here, although in my opinion it is most likely XENIES, who spouts the lines With tiny sharply pointed
claws/As insects we appear/Satan, our dear papa/We lovingly revere. (Goethe: 167). It is interesting to
note also that the wedding occurs on Walpurgisnacht.
17
Letter from Miss Margaret Patrickson to Allan Cunningham, 14-Sep-1830, quoted in Weinglass: 532-3.
18
See Fuseli: 1795.
19
See Letter to Sydenham Edwards 14-Sep-1816, quoted in Weinglass: 419.
20
Letter to Robert Balmano 15-Oct-1807, quoted in Weinglass: 362. There is also some evidence that he
was in possession of parts of Jan Christian Sepps Beschouwing der wonderen Gods, in de minstgeachte
schepzelen : of Nederlandsche insecten, naar hunne aanmerkelyke huishouding, verwonderlyke
gedaantewisseling en andere wetenswaardige byzonderheden, volgens eigen ondervinding beschreeven,
naar 't leven naauwkeurig getekend, in't koper gebracht en gekleurd, a massive Dutch entomological
treatise with over 400 illustrated color plates. (See Weinglass: 483)
21
Weinglass, 1982.
22
Letter to John Knowles, quoted in Weinglass: 370.
23
See Linnaeus, 1758: I:490.
24
Its wingspan is around six inches, and is the second-largest insect in Europe. (Badenloch: 231)
25
Badenloch: 233.
26
Wolff, 1971.
27
Interestingly, it is also during this time that the initial events of 1966 took place, the Scarberrys and
Malettes sighting occurring on November 15
th
.
28
Aeneid VI: 297.
29
Vergil, Aeneid VI: 323.
30
Milton, Lycidas, l. 75.
31
Badenloch: 235.
32
Badenloch: 235.
33
Radford; Badenloch: 236.
34
Badenloch: 236.
35
Radford; Badenloch: 236.
36
Wood-Martin: 80.
37
See Frazer: 11-37; Child & Child: 138-9. On the caterpillar in Britain, see also Derbyshire.
38
Law: 344.
39
236.
11

40
Lentzsch, et.al.: 136.
41
See for example his works Queen Mab (1814), wherein [Queen Mab] balances in a dancing pose in a
carriage or sleigh drawn by fat moths in a state of metamorphosis [Lentzsch, et.al.: 124], and Puck basking
asleep by the Embers of a Country Chimney (c. 1793-1810).
42
126.
43
115, n.100.
44
12-13.
45
From a purely artistic perspective, it can also be shown that Moth-men figured in the art and religion of
fourteenth century Pueblo Indians in New Mexico (see Figs. 8 & 9, below). Though it is difficult to extract
their exact role and how it might have informed (or not) the modern Mothman mythos, Schaafsma has
stated that the subject matter consists of ceremonial and ritual themes into which elaborately attired
humans, birds, and abstract designs are incorporated. [] This is a highly meaningful art, full of graphic
portrayals and symbolic content. (251; See also Hibben) From a symbolic standpoint, there seems to be a
connection between these depictions and an American moth, the night flying hawk moth Manduca sexta.
(see Kay: 4ff. and David)

Figs. 8 & 9. Moth-Men murals from Pottery Mound near Las Lunas, NM, c. 1350. See Kay, 4ff. for more depictions.
Also of note in terms of art are the works of Charles Germain de Saint-Aubin, a contemporary of Fuselis
who illustrated a work called Essai de papilloneries humaines (Essay on the Human Antics of Butterflies
[or Moths]), in which butterflies and moths are shown playfully engaged in various forms of human
activity, though these seem to have little to do with folklore. (Jones: 9; see also Mauris)


Figs. 10 & 11. Ballet Champtre and Le Duel, from Essai de papilloneries humaines by Charles Germain de Saint-Aubin (c. 1750).
46
2007. Indeed, even Robert Roachs statue of the Mothman that stands in Point Pleasant today (Fig. 12)
bears little resemblance to the witnesses descriptions.
47
Nickell, 2002: 20.
48
See Keels comments on the litany of deaths, suicides, divorces, mental illness and other calamities
following the events of 1966-7 (265-6). For commentary, see Dixon: 196-202; Nickell, 2002: 20;
Sherwood.
49
202.
50
Dixon: 204.