The Myth of Chernobyl’s Black Bird

Mothman has cultural influence as a omen of disaster. Sources on the Internet have used the Mothman framing of sighting a weird thing before a tragedy to spread stories about events worldwide including a manufactured story about a black bird seen before the Chernobyl meltdown. Flying harbinger of doom Mothman is one of the world’s most popular “cryptids”. The weird bird-man thing with red eyes is known across the globe because of the media content created about it. Mothman, the legend, was born in Point Pleasant, West Virginia in late 1966 when several people saw what the Point Pleasant Register called a “man-sized bird, creature, something”. To be clear, it was known as “The Bird” at first, with the name “Mothman” bestowed to sensationalize an already strange story. The name bore little to no relationship to the initial sightings. However, as also happens with creative visual interpretations, the name influenced what people envisioned the creature to be. Even more influential was the…