Winged Humanoids

It’s hard to see details of an object that is flying in the sky. It is difficult to determine if it is a typical crow-sized bird close by or a monstrously large thing far away. Yet, there exist many claims of winged humanoids. They are not birds, witnesses say, but man-birds, or man-bats. In this piece, I’m skimming the surface of the several infamous reports of large humanoid figures with wings.

In terms of zoological cryptids, there aren’t many options we can consider as explanations. Flying things can only get so big. Flying mammals get no larger than flying foxes, which are not close to human size. It takes an incredible amount of energy to get a body airborne, especially a muscular human form, as some have described these “winged weirdos”. Birds, and ancient pterosaurs which were the largest flying creatures ever, have a lighter skeletal structure, and used wind to give them lift.

The logical associated categories to this topic is that of giant birds or claims of prehistoric survivors. But I’m sticking to the human-like winged figures because it challenges the boundaries of zoology-based cryptozoology, and it has become incredibly popular in terms of culturally-relevant cryptids.

Mothman

What hasn’t been said about Mothman? Probably nothing new. But all of it hasn’t been distilled into one place. (Mothman could sure use a comprehensive biography!)

Mothman is an enigma that frightened the first witnesses in 1966. Disputed as a proper “cryptid” because it is so deeply associated with paranormal and “high strangeness” themes, only in the early days was it potentially explained as a crane or owl.

John Keel, the Fortean writer, transformed the Mothman of Point Pleasant, WV into the spooky superstar it eventually became, by publishing The Mothman Prophecies. The story woven around the emblematic winged humanoid included UFOs, otherworldly beings, unusual physical and mental phenomena, and eventually a tragedy in the collapse of the Silver bridge in Point Pleasant, West Virginia at the end of 1967.

Note: The Mothman was not originally described by witnesses as having moth features, but was clearly said to be bird-like.

The movie from 2002, loosely based on Keel’s book, not only re-popularized the legend, but also added manufactured pieces to it that people now accept as genuine. The Internet culture, particularly the LGBTQ and cosplay communities, have embraced Mothman as an icon. The town of Point Pleasant itself hosts a popular statue of a muscular, man-like, insectoid creature at a prominent place in town, a local museum for Mothman memorabilia, and an extremely popular town festival. The outrageous success of the festival was the impetus for dozens of other cryptid town festivals worldwide.

These photos appeared in local WV news in November 2016, close to the day of the 50th anniversary of the first Mothman witnesses coming forward. They appear to show a bird-sized creature possibly carrying something with its feet. But the media wanted to believe that it was the Mothman returning for a visit.

In 2011, another Mothman flap, fueled by the media (and astoundingly uncritical paranormal websites), took off in the Chicago area. The incidents failed to carry the spooky seriousness of the original.

Mothman became the poster cryptid for the commodification of a town monster (no matter the associated tragedy). Its popularity translated to online forums, art/craft sites, and merchandise sales, making it the perfect Pop Cryptid. The question of what the Mothman phenomenon was is now secondary to its commercialization. No one currently seems to focus on a naturalistic explanation because the character of Mothman and the lore has blown past the bounds of mystery solving. The mystery is the sole point.

Owlman

In Cornwall, England, the Mawnan churchyard was the location for two sightings of an Owlman. In April 1976, two young sisters described a feathered birdman hovering around the church steeple. Three months later, a different pair of young girls, camping nearby, also saw a bird man, the size of a full-grown human. Similar to the Mothman accounts, the creature was said to rise “straight up”. These encounters were reported to the local press. Two years later, two other incidents were reported of bird-men around the Mawnan churchyard.

Janet and Colin Bord actively collected and wrote about these kinds of strange events, mostly in the UK. Their angle was to portray the incidents as related to earth energies or ancient sacred sites that somehow allowed the manifestation of strange creatures and happenings. They were helped along by others who injected ideas of magic and supernatural ideas into the tales.

When we are dealing with human-bird hybrid creatures, it’s difficult to continue serious discussion in a zoological sense. Thus, the winged humanoid themes have veered into the category of “zooform” phenomenon – supernatural entities in a superficially animal form.

A more folkloric version of a giant owl man comes from Canada, related over a century before that of Cornwall. The first written account of a winged man with tiny features, but huge luminous eyes appeared in Sault St. Marie, 1811. Newspapers reported farmers and girls encountering the creature. The stories of an owl man in Canada may have been influenced by Native tales of giant owls, or shamans that could change into owls.

Batsquatch

“While there are many tales of Batsquatch, they are all a bit hazy on the details,” says the website for Rogue’s Batsquatch Hazy IPA (beer). The Batsquatch is a hairy flying humanoid from the Pacific Northwest typically described as big and muscular with yellow eyes, sharp teeth, tufted ears, clawed feet and bright blue fur. So, yeah, we’ve definitely taken an extreme left turn out of zoology with this one that sounds more like a comic villain or cartoon character than anything else.

As many of these tales go, we begin with a teen driving at night in an isolated area. Brian Canfield, 18, had an encounter near Tacoma, Washington, in 1994. Reported in the News Tribune, it kicked off the Batsquatch legend. The engine in his pickup truck failed while driving around 9:30 PM. Illuminated in the headlights, he saw a monstrous figure land on the dusty road ahead. It didn’t approach and ultimately flapped away. Then the engine miraculously restarted. Upon reaching home and telling his parents, they could see he was upset. They drove back to the location but found nothing. According to researcher Linda Godfrey (American Monsters), Canfield said he coined the name Batsquatch, a drawing of which accompanied his initial newspaper interview.

After this, other people claimed they saw a similar or smaller creature in the west and even in the Midwestern US. I’ve seen it mentioned as showing up at Mt Shasta and Mt Rainier. These stories, however, aren’t coming from sources I can readily find. They seem to be showing up on monster TV shows, or websites without attribution. A particularly retro take seems entirely manufactured – that of the bat creatures being ejected from their home around Mt St Helens when the volcano erupted in 1980. From the Pacific Sentinel:

…with ash clouds still drifting through the air, stories began to emerge of a strange winged beast seen flying around the eruption site. Witnesses described an apelike body with large, leathery wings and a pair of glowing red eyes.

The above is an unsourced claim. And non-credible. I cannot find any document that tells of this legend. It appears to have been manufactured after Canfield’s incident. (If anyone has a source that exists prior to the 1994 coining of the term, please let me know.) Later reports claimed Batsquatch looked like winged vampires from modern movies. Batsquatch is now a darling of the Pop Cryptid world – right where he belongs.

Conclusion

Flying humanoid stories exist around the world. I can’t even begin to describe the numerous terrifying and gruesome ones that are known from Asia. So I’ll leave to your own research if so inclined.

Janet and Colin Bord logged some episodes that predated Mothman:

• 1877, Brooklyn and 1880 Long Island, New York
• A man with wings in Vladivostok, Russia, 1908
• A pair of human-like birds in Pelotas, Brazil in the early 1950s.
• A man with bat wings flying around Houston, Texas in 1953, called the Houston Batman
• A man-shaped thing sprouted wings and flew off after being sighted in West Virginia in 1960 or 1961.

And, one that postdated: Three US Marines saw a glowing, flying bird-woman in the summer of 1969 while stationed in Vietnam. There have since been many more. I doubt we will ever be free of them in some form. The idea of a flying magical human or animal hybrid seems innate to human cultures.

George Eberhart, cryptid librarian extraordinaire, deliberately excluded angels from his Mysterious Creatures double volume encyclopedia, so I didn’t include them here either. Yet, if some people are considering flying humanoids as demons, how can we exclude the angels? However, people who report winged humanoids are doing so in, at least, a semi-objective context. That is, in terms of weird encounters, not religious ones. But, really, we can’t know anything for sure about what people really saw.

Flying humanoids don’t make any sense. So, for believers, the only logically illogical turn is towards a non-natural explanation.

This post is part 4 of the 12 days of Cryptids.

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