Mothman-- West Virginia

Next to Bigfoot, the Mothman that terrorized Point Pleasant, West Virginia from 1965 to 67 is probably one of the most iconic American cryptids.  Initial sightings followed the typical "boogeyman" mold: a bizarre monster appears in the road suddenly to terrify motorists or chase horny teenagers in a local make-out spot and old munitions dump known as the TNT Area.

 

The Mothman is described as a gray,  sometimes brown, biped with  enormous wings and two red glowing eyes.  Some descriptions said that the beast didn't even have a head, and that its eyes sprouted directly out of its torso. Though the creature did not closely resemble a moth, its name was coined in reference to the Adam West Batman TV series, which was extremely popular at the time.

The numerous sightings gradually attracted more and more media attention, bringing tourists to the town, hoping to catch a glimpse of the monster. Eventually paranormal investigator John Keel arrived to study the being.  The results of his investigation became the book The Mothman Prophecies-- the basis for the 2002 Richard Gere film.  According to Keel's book, the Mothman's hauntings were accompanied by a plague of paranormal phenomena, including disembodied voices, poltergeists, visits from Men in Black (the actual, historical mysterious beings upon whom the movies were based) and encounters with an otherworldly being called Indrid Cold who seemed human, but always bore an enormous, unnerving grin.

Sightings of the Mothman came to an abrupt end near the end of 1967.  In December of that year, the Silver Bridge spanning the Ohio River near Point Pleasant collapsed, killling 46 people.  As time went on, many began to connect the Mothman to the disaster.  Did the creature somehow cause it?  Or, as Keel and others have speculated, was it perhaps a harbinger of the coming tragedy?  A being drawn to the impending fear and death? Or maybe it was even trying to warn the locals about  what was coming?

So what was the Mothman, exactly?  Some think it was an extraterrestrial, or even extradimensional being.  A creature living outside time and space.   

On the mundane side, it's possible that the creature was just an owl or other bird, which was turned into a "monster" by poor light conditions and mass hysteria.  The hypothesis I like best is that the Mothman was actually a misidentified Sandhill Crane (Grus canadensis).  These birds are huge-- nearly as tall as a human being-- with an enormous wingspan.  Seen at night by someone unfamiliar with, or not expectin it,  it isn't difficult to see how one of those birds could be "transformed" into a red-eyed winged monster.

Regardless of what it was, mundane or supernatural,  the Mothman has become a cultural phenomenon, turning up in cartoons, comics, video games, etc.  Point Pleasant itself has erected a statue of  the creature, and even boasts a small museum. 

Mothman statue in Point Pleasant, WV

references:

http://www.mothmanmuseum.com/

http://www.americanmonsters.com/site/2012/12/mothman-west-virginia-usa/

The Tuscumbia Green Space Penguins-- Missouri

On February 14, 1967, farmer Claude Edwards of Tuscumbia, Missouri stepped out of his house to find a giant, metallic gray-green mushroom standing in his field.  As he approached the object, he noticed several three-foot tall figures waddling around the structure.  Moving closer, he saw that the strange beings were the same dark olive green as the mushroom-shaped structure-- which Edwards was now convinced was some sort of space craft. The beings had large black eyes-- or possibly goggles.  Edwards wasn't quite sure.  They also had black coverings over their snouts-- though whether these were parts of their bodies, or some type of breathing apparatus isn't clear. 

He also saw that the mushroom-craft had a row of windows or lights along its base that oscillated in a myriad of colors.

Edwards watched the creatures trundle about under their craft for a while, swinging their arms all over.  Eventually he grabbed two rocks, intending to use them to punch a hole through the craft to prevent it taking off.  However before he could get too close he struck some sort of invisible force field around the penguins and their ship.  Edwards flung his rocks anyway.  One bounced off the invisible wall, while the second skidded over the top of the mushroom ship and landed on the ground behind it.  The farmer's aggressive behavior apparently startled the little green creatures enough that they retreated into the "stalk" of their craft and quietly floated up into the sky.

Edwards never gives a clear description of what the space penguins' arms looked like.  However, using his original sketch of the creatures as a guide, I've taken a little artistic license and given them flat, hand-less ribbon-like limbs.

source:
http://www.americanmonsters.com/site/2011/10/space-penguins-of-tuscumbia-missouri-usa/

The Crawfordsville Monster-- Indiana

This odd critter is classified among an obscure group of cryptids known as "atmospheric beasts".  These are beings that supposedly live high up in the atmosphere, within or above the clouds.  They come in many different forms-- jellyfish, ribbons, giant amoebae.  Some cryptozoologists even speculate that UFOs, rather than being spacecraft from other worlds, might actually be bizarre airborne life forms that either evolved here on Earth or migrated to our planet from elsewhere.

Sometimes when a meteor strikes Earth, it will be accompanied by an odd, slimy blob of tissue called "star jelly" which some believe may be the remains of atmospheric beasts struck by the falling stone.  There are cases, though, where the supposed star jelly turned out to be a colony of a perfectly natural terrestrial cyanobacteria called Nostoc or one of the many varieties of slime molds (colonial organisms which are fascinating in their own right).

On an interesting side note, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, wrote a short story, "The Horror of the Heights", which describes an aviators encounters with "air jungles" full of weird, translucent airborne monsters.

You can read the full story here

Anyway, about this Crawfordsville Monster.  In the early morning of September 5th, 1891, two ice delivery men, Marshal McIntyre and Bill Gray saw a bizarre creature diving and curling through the sky.  The Crawfordsville Journal later described it as:

about eighteen feet long and eight feet wide and moved rapidly through the air by means of several pairs of side fins. . . . It was pure white and had no definite shape or form, resembling somewhat a great white shroud fitted with propelling fins. There was no tail or head visible but there was one great flaming eye, and a sort of a wheezing plaintive sound was emitted from a mouth which was invisible. It flapped like a flag in the winds as it came on and frequently gave a great squirm as though suffering unutterable agony."

The creature was later seen by pastor G.W. Switzer, whose description was similar to the Journal's report.

Eventually, the nature of the monster was discovered when two witnesses, John Hornbeck and Abe Hernley followed it and discovered that it was..... nothing but a huge flock of kildeer. Apparently the shape of the massive cloud of birds that been misinterpreted due to the dim lighting and the fogginess of the early morning.

Like a lot of cryptids, the Crawfordsville Monster turned out to be a perfectly normal, known phenomenon distorted by human perception.  But even so, it still makes a pretty sweet creature.

For my interpretation, I wanted the body to have a bloby, amorphous quality like other atmospheric beasts, so I drew it with little wisps of goo trailing off it. I tried to show its fins moving in a synchronized wave like the lateral limbs of an anomalocarid.

Source:

http://www.lane-mchs.org/Crawfordsville%20monster.pdf