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HomeShop at BookSurgeJuvenile FictionScience Fiction, Fantasy, MagicThe Mothman's Photographer III: Meetings with Remarkable Witnesses Touched by Interdimensional Entities, Archetypal Avatars, and the Eerie Phenomenon Known Infamously as "Mothman" |
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This Book Is Like A Visit With An 'Old Friend' Oct 18, 2010
By Walter B. Bosley
I first met Andy Colvin on the Radio Misterioso Show when he was the guest this past summer. It was one of those nights when I knew I didn't want to miss being there, based on what little I heard from Greg Bishop. All I knew was that Andy had done some fairly extensive work on the Mothman topic and, having spent early childhood in Mineral Wells, West Virginia, during some of the actual events (and having returned there for a couple of years in the mid 1970s), I was quite intrigued.
For me, the Mothman saga mostly means Indrid Cold. In the decade following the events centered around (but by no means limited to) Point Pleasant, Indrid Cold was very much a bogeyman used by the adults to keep the kids coming home by sundown. I was just young enough to know I never wanted to be caught in the woods after dark, for the ever present shadow of Indrid Cold stood over the area where we lived, allegedly within visual distance of where Woody Dernberger first encountered the strange man from Lanulos. I recall my dad and the other adults speaking of Woody in amused terms, yet the conversation always seemed to meander into a strange place, primarily a mood of silent regard for things indescribable. This, of course, made it all the more memorable to my imaginative young mind.
`Mister Cold', as the elder adults referred to him (with eyes agleam and a cautionary tone), was more mysterious than The Shadow. He was an outline, a murky figure who was not a monster but who did not belong here. Indrid Cold was the only figure of terror in my life who also fascinated me, probably because there was no real description of him and the idea of being taken to Lanulos, a place where people lived naked (which naturally included women...)( I was 12 ) was not in itself like the fiery pit of Hell. What was potentially spooky about Mister Cold was the common childhood fear of being abducted which, in spite of the harmless analysis of a fate among naked ladies on another planet, brought with it something my young mind could not put a word on but I felt was not so benevolent.
Mister Cold became much scarier after we returned to California and I got older and read more about him and Mothman. Indrid Cold started to take shape with the more hard to explain experiences I began to have myself. With every strange dream and every startling step through the veil of reality, my curiosity to understand the unknown led me to the literature of the fantastic accounts of others who spoke of `people' from alternate dimensions. As I learned more details about what I had always been taught were happy little folk like leprechauns and fairies, I began to see how the lore had been distorted, mostly to minimize that helpless feeling most adults do not wish to entertain. The `others', whom some call The Gentry, were not originally just harmless little Christmas pixies. They were quite frightening and they often abducted children in their cold arms, secreting them away to a dark and horrible underworld, as implied by the one poem that scared me my entire childhood, The Erl King. That was when I began to see Mister Cold as something a tad more sinister than an extraterrestrial Santa Claus. How close had I come on many twilight evenings to being stolen away by his `pale daughters'?
After many years of high strangeness that invaded my life, I developed a healthy respect for Indrid Cold as a sort of gatekeeper or messenger from some other side. You might not want to meet Mister Cold, but if you did you knew it was his choice. My impression of Cold had expanded, yet I still had no clearer picture of him many years later. That is, until I saw the film of John Keel's book, The Mothman Prophecies. Many people are lukewarm on this film, many simply do not like it at all. For me, it is far too personal to my life to care what others think of it. I found this film to tell its story with just the same measure of mystical dread and wonder as I experienced the saga in childhood and youth. The film did two things for me: It captured the indescribable essence of Mister Cold and it provided me with the most definable glimpse yet of what he really may be. I now think I know where Indrid Cold comes from, and the best way I can tell you is to suggest you watch the scenes with Alan Bates when Richard Gere's `John Keel' character goes to him for his closer glimpse.
And yet, still I fail to put a face on Indrid Cold.
Why do I gravitate to the bogeyman of the lore when the very intriguing Mothman is far more prevalent? I guess it's because the giant bird creature is a little more obviously an attention getter, but Indrid Cold is the one who watches from afar and selects his moment to follow up on things. Mister Cold is the one who knocks on your door late at night, or taps you gently on the shoulder when you're alone in the woods. Mister Cold is not the shocking Mothman with the big wings and the blazing red eyes; he is instead the soft spoken man on the bench next to you in the park at sunset, whose face you can't quite recall but whose words you never forget. You may wonder where Mothman comes from, but you wonder who sent Indrid Cold, and somehow that has always been a bit creepier to me.
Perhaps Mister Cold ushers Mothman into this world like some falconer of the gods. As scary as Mothman and Mister Cold can be, could they be hunting something darker than themselves?
Now, some years after the film of Keel's book, I have encountered the next level of examination of the topic. As familiar as I think I am with the lore, the works of Andy Colvin pull back yet another veil in the mystery school of the Americas that is the Mothman saga. Until I had met Andy and read his work, I had no idea of the scope of this shared experience. Mothman gets around, it would seem. Others have seen him, coming away with the same questions, and questions they never dreamed of have taken root in their psyches. I am not so sure I'd want to encounter Mothman. I don't know if I have never met or felt the presence of Indrid Cold. Perhaps Andy knows the answer to that.
I do know one thing. After reading Andy's extensive and poetic look at the Mothman phenomena, I am reminded of a popular figure of speech made so in the spirit of wishful thinking. Only now, it's not so comforting as it used to seem...`We are not alone...'
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