The Mothman of Point Pleasant, West Virginia is one of the country's most notorious cryptic creatures. A similar, but much less known, winged creature haunts the shores of Lake Michigan.

Alternately described as a 'bat-like humanoid' or 'winged man,' a strange creature has been spotted in the skies above Chicago and along the Lake Michigan shore more than a dozen times over the last six years.

A recent sighting occurred in Calumet Park near the Illinois/Indiana border:

May 5, 2017 - 8PM - Calumet Park, Chicago, IL - Law enforcement officer and his son - witnessed by others in the park - Flying humanoid about 6 feet in height per witness' estimates. Blackish/grayish in color and had an enormous pair of wings that must have been 8 to 10 feet in width.

A Google Map is tracking all of the Lake Michigan Mothman sightings.

The West Virginia Mothman

Legend has it that a mysterious winged creature menaced the community of Point Pleasant, West Virginia for a year between the winter of 1966 and 1967. The sightings culminated in the collapse of the Sliver Bridge, a span across the Ohio River at Point Pleasant.

The tales were collected into a novel called the Mothman Prophesies by John Keel, a much better book than the movie that followed.

Keel, a ufologist, looked outside of the Earth of some of the clues to the origin of the Mothman and included on of his favorite subjects, "Men in Black" who were also reportedly seen around Point Pleasant during the year of the Mothman craze.

Chicago and UFOs

UFO and ufology has been associated with the Mothman. Interestingly, Chicago which now has a slew of Mothman sightings also have one of the best known UFO incidents in history, the 2006 O'Hare Airport incident.

UFOSightingsToday.com describes the incident like this:

Witnesses claim that they saw an object, a craft in the shape of a metallic disc, like the spaceships usually depicted in movies and cartoons, hovering above gate C-17 of the airport. The time of the incident has been quoted around quarter past 4 in the evening when a ramp employee at the Chicago O’Hare Airport spotted an unknown and unexplainable object that was hovering over gate C-17. The employee described the object to be spinning continuously and instantly notified both the pilot and co-pilot of the flight.

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