Man Reports ‘Mothman’ Sighting on Condominium Rooftop in Chicago
The following report was received by Unsolved Mysteries after the release of their Mothman episode (Vol. 4, Ep. 5; The Mothman Revisited) and later sent to investigators Lon Strickler (Phantoms & Monsters) and Tobias Wayland (The Singular Fortean Society), both of whom were featured in the episode.
In the report, a man claims to have seen a winged humanoid from the window of his fourth floor Chicago apartment.
According to the initial report:
OMG! I have seen mothman seven times! I live at [address redacted] on the 4th floor and my bedroom window looks over at the big black building on Lake Michigan! My roommate has called me crazy every time I told him I thought it was an alien with wings!
Strickler and Wayland were both able to contact the witness, Ryan, who provided additional information about his sighting.
Although the report originally sent to Unsolved Mysteries mentions seven sightings, Ryan told Wayland that he had only seen Mothman once.
When asked about the discrepancy, he responded that it “must be a typo.”
Ryan’s sighting came one night in early July of this year.
“I know it wasn’t on the 4th of July,” he said. “The 4th of July around here is an absolute nightmare. Everyone’s shooting things off, even in the alleyways, so I close the windows. I don’t even look out the windows at that time. So, I know it wasn’t on the 4th of July.”
The night, in fact, was unusually quiet.
“It was just a really quiet night,” Ryan explained. “I mean, the weather was nice. It wasn’t cold, it was hot, it was still, it wasn’t raining. It was very quiet. I’m in uptown and there’s always something. It was just a really quiet, calm night. No ruckus or anything outside. Nothing. No gunshots. I mean, it was just a quiet, nice, still evening.”
He had gone to bed at around 8 p.m. due to the early morning hours he keeps for his job when, at around 8:30 p.m., he looked out of his bedroom window, which faces north. It was getting dark outside, but something caught Ryan’s attention at the Park Tower condominium building about a block away.
Two bright, laser-like red lights were projecting from the roof. As he looked closer, he saw, backlit by the rooftop lights, a humanoid figure; the lights appeared to be its eyes. Ryan said that he watched the creature as it unfurled its wings and took off from the roof towards Lake Michigan.
Notably, Park Tower has decorative LED lighting that adorns its roof, and in early July it would have been set to display red, white, and blue in honor of Independence Day.
However, explained Ryan, what he saw was something very different.
“It wasn’t [the building’s display] because [the figure] was on the ledge, it wasn’t on the top. And I know it was a figure. I just thought it was a man, like with weird eyes or something. And then the minute I saw his wings come out from behind him, I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ And I took off,” he told Wayland. “I’ve lived in this building for 10 years, so I know [the view of] that building, and I know from living in the city that every building in Chicago puts different lights on top of their building or on their facade.”
He described the winged humanoid as dark in color and very tall, likely well over six feet in height. The shape and structure of its wings were indiscernible.
“I’m six-three and I think, if I were going to be standing up on that building, I think it would be taller than me, but I really don’t know how much bigger because of the distance,” Ryan said.
