Friday's Internet Edition, September 29, 2006.
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| Roane County High teacher George Dudding is featured in a new book about Mothman. The article first appeared in this newspaper. |
Some "Men in Black" were keeping tabs on him from a nearby table.
"There were two or three of them that followed me around (town) for a while and then they came in and watched me," Dudding, a Roane County High School math teacher, said. "I felt like I'd gone back in time."
Dudding was in Point Pleasant for the fifth annual Mothman Festival, an event centered around several reported sightings of a mysterious flying creature — half human and half bird with glowing red eyes — during 1966-67. The "Men in Black" he saw Saturday were among several people who had dressed for the festival in black suits, thin black ties and dark glasses. One of the new "Men in Black" was a girl, Dudding said.
The experience brought back memories for Dudding, who was a sophomore at Point Pleasant High School in 1966 and saw the real "Men in Black," believed to be government investigators, around town. In fact, he had seen them inside the very same restaurant where the present-day trio was lurking.
"Back then, one of the waitresses came up to me and said, ‘don't look now, but there's some of them back there (in a booth). It's those government guys snooping around asking questions,'" Dudding said.
Dudding noted that some people had speculated that the original "Men in Black" had come from another planet to encourage those who had sighted Mothman to keep quiet.
"I don't quite buy that part of the story," he said.
The Mothman fans who followed Dudding during the festival — the first time he had set foot in the downtown area since his high school days — had just discovered that he was a minor celebrity of sorts. Dudding had found out himself that same day.
"I was at Mothman Park on Main Street and there were a number of vendors and tents set up," he explained. "I came upon this one booth and saw a stack of these books that were just out. I picked one up and as soon as I opened it up, there it was."
The book was "Mothman… Behind the Red Eyes," written by Jeff Wamsley. It dedicates two and one half pages to a reprint of an article, a photo and illustrations that first appeared in this newspaper on Feb. 14, 2002. The article focused on a high school history textbook passed down to Dudding by an older student, Steve Mallette, one of the first people to report seeing Mothman. The textbook also contains a crude sketch of Mothman, likely drawn by Mallette, a supposed eyewitness.
Dudding showed the clerk his photo in the new book. The conversation caught the attention of Donnie Sergent Jr., who had teamed up with Wamsley to write an earlier Mothman book.
"He talked to me for a while and said he wanted to get with me later," Dudding said.
That's when the 2006 version of the "Men in Black" became interested in Dudding and eventually followed him into the restaurant, which had been depicted in a popular movie, "The Mothman Prophecies." As in 1966, they did not interrupt his meal or conversation with the waitress, ironically a woman who had worked there since Dudding was a 16-year-old.
Dudding was invited by some of the festival-goers to stay that night and visit the area where Mothman was first seen, in hopes of a sighting of their own. He had to decline, but plans to return next year to take in more of the activities that also include guest lectures, tours and musical performances.
While the mystery of Mothman may never be solved, Dudding has his own ideas about the phenomenon that attracted visitors to the festival from as far away as Indonesia.
"Something was seen, definitely," he said. "It did shake those people up, and a number of those people were fairly reliable. I thought it might have been a man in some kind of suit wearing a rocket pack the military was experimenting with. The red eyes could have been infrared goggles."
Maybe those "Men in Black" should have talked to Dudding after all.
Published September 21, 2006