"A fascinating account of a "winged weirdie” was given to me several months ago by the witness to the event. The name of the witness is on file, and available to serious researchers. We will refer to the gentleman as Mr. Hanks, because of his request for anonymity.
On a beautiful autumn afternoon in 1956, Hanks and his family were returning home from an outing. The family had unloaded their car, and gone into the house, while Hanks readied some equipment he needed at work, in his pickup truck. As he was going about this, he noticed what he at first thought was a kite, about 3 blocks away from his home. As he watched, the kite drew closer, and Hanks assumed that it had gotten away from whoever was flying it. As this object fluttered to within about a block of his position, Hanks realized that it was not a kite, but a human-like form, with wings. As the thing came closer, Hanks was able to see the creature's face, which he described as "very frightening, almost demonic." "It's eyes were very large, blue in color, and watery. They were shaped and placed on his face almost like horse's eyes. The skin on his face was like tan leather. It was very wrinkled, and seemed to overlap in folds. I had a good look at his face-he was only about 25 feet away, and hovering maybe 15 feet above the ground. He was between eight and nine feet tall."
As Hanks watched, the creature wobbled, and almost fell to the street below. After recovering, the creature flew toward Hanks, and passed directly overhead. Interestingly, as Hanks watched the creature approaching closer, he tried to move, and found he couldn't. He was experiencing some sort of paralysis. As the creature passed overhead, Hanks was able to observe the wings of the thing. He described them as like polished aluminium, with a grid-like appearance on the top side. The underside of the wings each had 4 or 5 colored lights about four inches in diameter-the lights closest to his body on either side glowed blue, then a yellow, then an orange, and finally a red light out toward each wingtip. The wing was at least fifteen feet long, from tip to tip, according to Hanks. He indicated that the wings appeared to be about two feet wide next to the creature's body, and three feet wide at the tip. When asked how the wing was attached, Hanks said that, "It was fastened to him by a shoulder harness, which seemed to have a breast plate of some sort with dials on it. He seemed to touch and move these dials, but his hands, if that's what they were, looked more like white dove's wings, all opened up." Hanks went on to say that as the creature passed overhead, he heard a sound like air hissing from what he thought was the rear of the wing. As he watched, the creature moved off into the distance, and disappeared behind a group of trees about 2 blocks away.
After the creature was out of sight, Hanks was able to move again. He said that the entire event lasted somewhere between eight and ten minutes. According to Hanks, for the next 23 years, he was continually bothered by nightmares in which this creature would reappear. He became, in his own words, "a workaholic- I wouldn't sleep any more than I absolutely had to, and worked constantly so I wouldn't have time to think about it." Finally, over a period of three years, Hanks was able to overcome this obsession by forcing himself to write out the story, and then destroy it. Evidently this served as a suitable catharsis, because Hanks concluded by saying, "I still don't understand it, but it doesn't matter any more."
Source: Journal of the Fortean Research, April 1986, Vol. 1. Issue 1, pgs 3-4
NOTE: I believe the location was Falls City, Nebraska. Lon
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The Mothman Prophecies: A True Story
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