Down the rabbit hole
Mothman · Mertztown, Pennsylvania · 2015
6 documents · 1 independent account
6 documents tell this story. They trace back to 1 independent account.
The route
- One encounter the reported sighting this case is about
- 6 documents that tell it, as we collected them
- 1 independent account behind those documents
- 5 copies reprints or cross-posts of the same text: not extra witnesses
Copies are not confirmations: thirty papers printing one story is still one account.
Each shape is one document; open it to go to where we found it. The same graph as a list is below.
Why these records are connected
- 5 copies: the copy detector found the same words in a later document, so it sits in the same row as the account it copies.
Every document, as a list
- Account 1 6 documents
- Earliest found Reddit post Reddit post · Sep 20, 2015
- Reprint Mothman sighting. Reddit post · Dec 31, 2015
- Reprint Other Other · Apr 22, 2020
- Reprint Other Other · May 7, 2023
- Reprint Other Other · Jun 27, 2023
- Reprint Other Other · Apr 11, 2024
How to read this
- Time runs left to right by publication date. Very long empty stretches are cut short (the axis shows how many years were skipped); undated documents sit in their own column.
- One row per independent account. A reprint, re-upload or cross-post carries the same text, so it stays in its account's row and never counts as a second witness.
- Earliest found (ringed) is the earliest document we hold for that account. It is not proof of the first telling: an earlier one may exist that we haven't collected.
- Arrows run from a document to a source it names. A dashed shape is a source a document cites that we haven't found yet; its link searches a public archive for it, and a hit there is a lead, not a confirmation.
About the numbers
- Only documents we've collected are counted; retellings elsewhere on the web aren't counted yet.
- Documents are matched by shared text and by the sources they name, by plain rules with no model in the loop. A match can be wrong; tell us.
Where next
- Back to the case
its summary, sources and discussion - Back to the map
opened on this case - Mothman · Ravenswood, West Virginia · 2010
Another trail, same creature: 4 documents · 1 independent account - Water Monster · Cape Lookout, North Carolina · 1947
The next-deepest trail: 6 documents · 1 independent account
Every rabbit hole → · How we tell copies from independent accounts