Hunt for the Chicago Mothman

– WARNING: CLASSIFIED INFORMATION–

What follows is the only recoverable document from the hard drive of a severely damaged laptop, found atop the Willis Tower. How it got up there is unknown. Be warned, this is part of an ongoing investigation.

Phase I: Stakeout 

The so-called empirical method has its limits, and the five ho-hum senses of touch, scent, sight, and the rest can’t always be trusted, especially when dealing with something as esoteric and quasi-occult as Chicago’s cryptozoological underbelly. For being one of the few to realize this, the greater academic community calls me a quack, a nut-job, a pseudo-scientist. I think ‘speculative journalist’ is more fitting, or perhaps–if we can eschew false modesty–I may fall into the category of ‘bold equerry to undiscovered truth.’ For there are mysteries yet to be solved, and if the dean of liberal arts and sciences at my former institution lacks the critical insight to see past his dogmas, then it's up to me to animate the unintelligible on my own. 

Since June, there have been sightings of a massive creature swooping from rooftop to rooftop, all across the city. Reliable reports claim it to be a hairy biped, about eight-feet long, with two large wings. Some call it the Lake Michigan Man-Bat, the Flapping Phantom, or the Winged Terror of Terrace Place. I call it the Mothman, and I’m on a mission to find incontestable proof that the unreal is, in fact, real. 

Friday, October 27, 8AM.

I choose my bike based on capabilities, foremost being competence on all terrain. Who knows what deranged obstacles I'll be forced over? Grabbing my mountain bike, I head out – but within a block my tire gives up, whooshing in protest.

Chicago used to be the world's leading manufacturer of glass, but with the city's industrial decline most of it has shattered and found a new use as secondary paving in the middle of the street, where it gets picked up by tires, to be removed by mechanics, who throw them in the garbage, so that the city waste trucks can distribute them back into the street. This will not be my first setback. I switch to my touring bike, hoping it'll prove more flat-resistant.


Friday, October 27, 1PM.

My hunt resumed, I head for outfitting at Blackstone Bikes in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood, on the South Side. They supply the racks and mounts, I complete the project with twelve-hundred lumens of stunning flash lighting in the front, and a rear-facing cross-bow to ward off attacks from the rear. 

Appropriately equipped, my plan involves a directional push: from South to North, I'll follow a route composed of confirmed potential sightings and likely hang-zones. Once spotted, I'll use my lights to momentarily blind the creature so that I can get all the photographic evidence needed to embarrass the dean and all his crony doubters. 

Friday, October 27, 4PM.

 Any hunter will tell you, it's a bad idea to stand out in the wild. Better to mimic something in the quarry's natural habitat: lull it into complacency. But what is the Mothman's home ecology? My guess is that this creature is no more of this world than the stars are. Giant airborne monsters are not natural, this I'm sure of. The Mothman almost certainly comes from BEYOND, and the specific date of my hunt, Hallow's Eve weekend, is no accident. My tactic will be to impersonate something from the Mothman's ghoulish origin, and to this end Halloween works towards my advantage, for this is the one night of the year when all the denizens of our nightmares come out to freely mingle with the living. 

Friday, October 27, 7PM to Midnight. 

Critical Mass.

 For decades Chicago's cyclists have been meeting outside city hall on the last Friday of the month to re-claim the streets from our automobilish oppressors. Typical Masses see upwards of a thousand riders commandeering several city blocks at a time. 

When the dead join the living, the spectacle enthralls some mortals and causes others to flee in madness from their still-running cars, providing excellent cover... or bait. 

As the stampede rages on, my disguise has the fiends fooled, and I continue amongst the demonic cavalcade unnoticed. Looking through the ghosts, my trained eye seeks out the errant flap of a wing that might alert me to the Mothman's presence.

In the draft of a ghost-rider upon an extremely rare and arcane 'Facile High Wheel' from 1886, I sense a hush fall over the city. The night grows colder and I see my breath. The Mothman is near, I feel it. 

I envision tomorrow's headlines, "Fantastic Former Writing and Rhetoric Teacher Shuts Dummie Dean Down with Unassailable Affirmation of the Mothman!" (I'll let the editor pair it down, but not by much) And no sooner do I have my camera out and my flashbulbs ready when travesty happens. Sonya Wheel Walker, my nemesis, jumps out of an alley to the head of the procession, twirling her idiotic light sabers. "Away you creatures of the night!" the witch-hunter screams, eliciting chaos in the ranks of undead cyclists with her erratic charges and feints. 

"You're not even supposed to be here! This is a biker thing!" I yell back at her, but my protests come too late. The Mass disperses under half-heard grumblings from the specters, amounting to the universal end-of-an-event maxim: "Well, I was getting pretty tired anyway." 

Laugh it up, Wheel Walker. You just cost me the Pulitzer. 

With the evening ruined, my hunt will have to wait until tomorrow, when I begin Phase II. 

Phase II: Daybreak 

Though my eyes crave sleep, the active mind is a lumpy pillow, so I spend the darkest hours re-examining my leads. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps there is a chance–a small one, of course–that I might have gotten something a little wrong. My research does beg answers from some stoic questions. What if the Mothman is really a Mothwoman? How well do we, the cryptoid hunters, really know the Moth(wo)man's lifestyle? Hell, it could be diurnal. 

Saturday, October 28, Early in the AM.

I wait for the rosy fingertips of dawn, then head to the Northwest corner of the city, to a spot of woods behind Lane Tech High School known by locals as, "The Garden."

This could be an ideal spot for a Moth-creature to roost: quiet, near the river, easy access to a food source that nobody will miss (annoying high schoolers). I have my camera out, kneeling low to the ground, with my guard up – then suddenly a rustle above me causes a reflexive click of my shudder:

The Mothwoman! With haste I check my view screen... no, this is no monster, but a man. A flying man, but mortal still. Another rustle spins me around to catch another soaring stuntster:

Soon they're coming from all directions:

"The Garden is a sacred place, what is it that a man doth chase?" says a voice behind me. He's tall, dressed all in black, skinny and strong. "I am the keeper of these ramps, for the lads and little scamps. For over three generations my predecessors and me / have maintained this site for the good of the BMX community." I ask him if he's seen the Great Moth, and he shakes his head, "I assure you, the only demons here are the ones chilling, drinking beer." –Well rhymed, poet warrior.
  Foiled again, I remount my steed and head off to another lead.

Saturday, October 28, 11AM

The urban legends of Chicago are important, taken as a catalogue of the city's collective apprehensions, a student of anthropology could write a graduate thesis on the implications carried by the visual and oral traditions of our subconscious made manifest...

...And the dean would probably poop on that too. I've no time for the idle nay-saying of lesser men, so pushing past the seedling doubts planted by my former employer, I move to a more deliberate aspect of Phase II: discovering the creature's resting holes.

Through years of clandestine study under the auspices of planning for my classes, I've developed a precognition for the types of places a paranormal being may equate to a snuggery.

On the far end of Palmer Square Park, I reconnoiter a certain sign of the Mothwoman:

These carved symbols on this haunted tree are surely the workings of a cursed mind. I'm close, this time it's for sure. I can almost taste the bile in the dean's throat as he passes me the papers to approve my status as fully-tenured professor – which I will decline, of course. Why waste my talents on anything less than Ivy-league? The hunt continues with a new sense of urgency, anticipating my future accolades.

Sunday, October 29, 3PM.

...Still hunting...

Phase III: Contact

Monday/Tuesday, October 30/31, Midnightish

I regret my silence these past few days, but I'm on the verge of a major breakthrough!

I found the Mothwoman's primary hunting spot, outside the bar district of Milwaukee Avenue. Just moments ago I ducked a swoop the the beast itself!

Here, I snapped a shot just after its near-fatal attack. The motorist on the side of the image pulled over (in the bike lane, but given the circumstances it's excusable), and you can see the white glaze of panic on his face:

 In the blank space on the upper third of the shot, between the light and the silhouette of a tree, the Mothwoman can clearly be seen:

This is proof! But I'll need something more. My attempts to record the motorist's take on the event ended in abject failure; he lost total composure and crumpled to a sobbing pile of disappointment, continuing to block the bike lane, unable to pull himself together enough to move his now-useless SUV – much less carry on a coherent interview.

Ah, but the creature left me clues! There's a trail of blood, dripped from the Mothwoman's teeth or talons, leading, surely, to the monster's den.

Destiny's trumpets sing out, calling, siren like, for one such as I to claim my place among the heroes of independent thought: Copernicus, Galileo, Joan of Arc, Jay Leno. Do I run headlong into the arms of jubilee? Or do I remain in my current state, hunting part-time adjunct instructor positions at for-profit suburban colleges? My choice is clear, so now I must leave this narrative in my wake, for it may be my final testimony, a beam of light in the dark veil of ignorance enclosing our society.

Trust me, the truth is out there, and when I come back with it the world will know that reality is far more than what we perceive.

– The document cuts out here. Nothing more is known about the whereabouts of its author, nor have any of the claims made thus far been verified. –