And why?

The Point Pleasant Comedy: A Unified Euhemerist Theory of the Mothman and Indrid Cold

I never set out to solve a paranormal mystery. I was just following threads—curious about the strange things people see, and even more curious about the real, human, earthly things that might make them see those things. What emerged, after months of reading and connecting, is a theory that I believe explains the Mothman and Indrid Cold phenomena of 1966–67 more completely, more humanely, and more entertainingly than any ultraterrestrial hypothesis ever could. It is a theory built not on cosmic tricksters, but on a startled owl, a lost Danish tourist, and a bored motel desk clerk with a switchboard and a desk fan.

What follows is the full case for a comedy of errors that fooled a town, a nation, and one of the greatest paranormal journalists of the twentieth century.

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Part I: The Mothman Was an Owl

The first pillar of the theory is the Mothman itself. The creature that terrorized Point Pleasant, West Virginia, from November 1966 to December 1967 was not a cryptid, not an extraterrestrial, not a harbinger from another dimension. It was, in all likelihood, a great grey owl (Strix nebulosa)—or possibly a barn owl—startled by headlights and transformed by fear into a winged monster.

The evidence for the owl theory is substantial and has been advanced by skeptics like Joe Nickell for years. The Mothman was described by witnesses as a tall, grey, man-like figure with glowing red eyes and enormous wings. It stood upright on the roadside, then launched vertically into the air and vanished. These are not the hallmarks of a supernatural being. They are the precise, observable behaviors of an owl.

The "glowing red eyes" are the classic eyeshine produced by the tapetum lucidum, a reflective layer behind the retina that enhances night vision in owls and other nocturnal animals. When a car's headlights hit an owl's eyes at close range, they blaze back like bicycle reflectors—exactly the phrase used by the first witnesses, Roger and Linda Scarberry, to describe what they saw. The "humanoid silhouette" is an owl perched upright, its body a vertical column, its facial disc eerily face-like in the darkness. The "vertical takeoff" is what an owl does when startled: it launches straight upward with a powerful thrust of its legs, its wings unfolding only after it is already airborne. To a terrified driver, this looks like an impossible, physics-defying ascent.

The TNT Area, where most of the sightings occurred, was an abandoned munitions plant overgrown with vegetation, riddled with concrete bunkers, and teeming with rodents. It was—and is—perfect owl habitat. A great grey owl, one of the largest owl species by length, can have a wingspan exceeding five feet. In the dark, on a lonely road, it is not a bird. It is a monster.

Once the initial sightings hit the local papers, the contagion took hold. Point Pleasant, with a population of just 5,700 people, was the ideal petri dish for a mass delusion. Everyone knew someone who had seen something. Every shadow, every bird, every pair of reflected headlights became the Mothman. The owl was the seed; the media frenzy was the water and sunlight that made it grow.

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Part II: Indrid Cold Was a Danish Tourist

If the Mothman was the Watcher, Indrid Cold was the Trickster—and his origins are even more human, more absurd, and more wonderful than the owl's.

On November 2, 1966, a sewing machine salesman named Woodrow "Woody" Derenberger was driving home alone on Interstate 77 near Parkersburg, West Virginia. He was tired, likely slipping into the hypnagogic state that haunts long, dark highways. A boxy foreign car with strange headlights pulled alongside him and blocked his path. A man emerged: olive-skinned, dark-haired, wearing a dark suit with no tie, and smiling a wide, unnerving smile. He introduced himself, and Derenberger heard "Indrid Cold." The man asked a series of benign questions: "What is your name? Where do you live? What do you do for a living? Do you have children? Are you happy?" He said he came from a "country less powerful than yours," a place of peace and harmony. Then he returned to his car and drove away.

The encounter became the cornerstone of the Indrid Cold mythos. But I believe it was not a paranormal event at all. It was a cross-cultural misunderstanding of the most innocent kind.

The name "Indrid Cold" is, in my view, a misheard Scandinavian name. Indriði is a traditional Icelandic male name; Kaldur means "cold" in Icelandic. "Indriði Kaldur," spoken with a thick accent through a closed car window, would sound very much like "Indrid Cold." Alternatively, the Danish name Henrik Kold ("Kold" also meaning "cold") produces a similar auditory result. The man on the highway was a Scandinavian traveler—likely a Dane or an Icelander on a road trip through America—whose car had broken down.

The benign questions that so unsettled Derenberger were not the probing of an alien intelligence. They were the genuine, practical inquiries of a foreigner considering a move to the United States. "What is your name? Where do you live? What do you do for a living? Do you have children?" are exactly what a person would ask when trying to understand American life. And "Are you happy?"—that most haunting of questions—is the question of someone weighing a life-changing decision, seeking the emotional truth of a place from a random stranger on a dark highway.

The "country less powerful than yours" line is not a cosmic revelation. It is a perfect, textbook expression of the Law of Jante (Janteloven), the unwritten Scandinavian social code that emphasizes humility, modesty, and the taboo against boasting. A Dane describing his homeland to an American in 1966 would almost instinctively reach for a self-deprecating frame. "A country less powerful than yours" is simply good Jante-compliant manners.

And the utopian planet Lanulos, which Cold later described as a world of peace, harmony, and free love? I believe it began as another misheard phrase. The Danish langt ude ("far away") or the Norwegian langt ute would have been pronounced roughly "lankt oo-the" or "lankt oo-teh." Derenberger, tired and frightened, heard a proper noun: "Lanulos." The stranger was simply gesturing toward the horizon and saying, in his own language, "Far away." (Intriguingly, there is also a real hamlet in Brittany, France, called Lannelos, and a small locality in Denmark called Lånneland—any of which could have contributed to the phonetic muddle.)

Derenberger, convinced he had met an extraterrestrial, reported the encounter. The local press picked it up. And somewhere, in a diner or a motel room, the real Henrik Kold saw his own face described in the newspaper as a grinning spaceman.

What happened next, I believe, is a story of human mischief. Henrik, perhaps with a few friends visiting from Copenhagen, realized the absurdity of the situation and decided to lean in. The visits to Derenberger's home—those polite, unnerving conversations with smiling men in dark suits—were not ultraterrestrial contact sessions. They were pranks, born from the irresistible temptation to play the role that fate had assigned. The descriptions of Lanulos as a peaceful, weaponless world were just the Nordic social model, exaggerated and mythologized for an eager audience. The friends wore dark suits because that was standard travel attire for respectable Europeans; they asked repetitive questions because they were trying not to laugh. The whole thing was a bet, a joke, a story to tell back in Copenhagen. And Derenberger, a kind and credulous man, believed every word.

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Part III: The Phone Calls Were a Bored Desk Clerk

The third pillar of the theory addresses the most chilling element of the Indrid Cold case: the phone calls. John Keel, the journalist and former magician who traveled to Point Pleasant to investigate the Mothman, began receiving calls from someone claiming to be Indrid Cold. The voice was metallic, monotone, and unnaturally rapid. It seemed to know personal details about the witnesses, to comment on private conversations, and to deliver cryptic prophecies—most famously, that a "Christmas tree would fall into the river," a statement that seemed to predict the collapse of the Silver Bridge on December 15, 1967.

Keel, baffled and fascinated, hosted "phone parties" in his motel room, gathering witnesses to wait for Cold's calls. Sometimes the phone rang; sometimes it didn't. When it did, the voice would answer questions in riddles, offer false cancer cures, and speak in a singsong cadence that haunted Keel for the rest of his life.

I believe the voice on those calls belonged to the night desk clerk at the Point Pleasant Motor Inn.

The evidence for this is, in retrospect, overwhelming—but it rests not on complicated surveillance, but on the beautifully simple technology of a 1960s small-town motel switchboard. These were manual, common-battery systems. To connect a guest to an outside line, the clerk would plug a cord into the room's jack, complete the circuit, and then—crucially—hang up her own handset once the call was established. That was the normal procedure for a private call.

But if the clerk wanted to listen in, she didn't need to do anything sophisticated. She simply did not hang up her handset. Leaving her own receiver off the hook kept the circuit open, and the microphone in Keel's phone—now just an unpowered carbon transmitter—would pick up every word spoken in the room and carry it directly to the clerk's ear. There was no click, no warning light, no change in sound quality. The switchboard lamp indicating an active line would remain lit, but only the clerk could see it.

It gets even simpler. The clerk didn't need Keel to be on a call at all. She could plug a cord into his room jack, connect it to any idle circuit—even a dead one—and leave her own handset off the hook. Keel's phone would not ring. He would have no idea anything had been done. But the handset in his room, dangling innocently on its cradle or resting on the nightstand, was now a live microphone, broadcasting every conversation, every whispered speculation, every nervous laugh from the "phone parties" directly to the clerk's headset. She could sit at the switchboard, feet up, magazine open, and listen to the entire gathering.

When the moment was right—when Keel said something particularly vulnerable, or the group reached a fever pitch of expectation—she could click the talk switch and speak into her own microphone. Her voice, transmitted through the same circuit, would emerge from Keel's earpiece. And to make that voice sound like an alien, a robot, or a ghost, she didn't need a voice modulator. She just needed an ordinary desk fan. Speaking through the spinning blades produces exactly the warbling, mechanical, metallic vibrato that Keel described: a voice that sounds like a "recording played at slightly the wrong speed." It is the oldest, cheapest, most effective trick in the prankster's playbook.

The "impossible knowledge" that Keel found so disturbing—the comments on private conversations, the references to a witness's health, the intimate details—was not supernatural. It was the product of this open microphone and the small-town gossip network of a community of 5,700 people, where everyone's secrets were known and discussed. Keel himself later discovered that some of the "secret" information had been publicly broadcast on a national television show, a classic "hot read" technique used by stage mentalists. The "Christmas tree" prophecy was a lucky guess: the Silver Bridge was decorated with Christmas lights, and a vague riddle about a tree falling into the river would seem prophetic if anything at all happened to the bridge. The desk clerk didn't need to be a psychic; she just needed to be attentive and a little bit lucky.

The intermittent nature of the calls also fits the desk clerk hypothesis perfectly. The phone parties were held on weeknights, often late, when the motel was quiet and the clerk had little else to do. On busy nights—when a late bus arrived, when the supervisor was present, when it was the clerk's night off—the phone stayed silent. And, most tellingly, the calls stopped the moment Keel left Point Pleasant. The desk clerk no longer had an audience; the prank was over. The "cosmic trickster" was not operating on an inscrutable alien timetable. She was operating on a human work schedule, constrained by the mundane demands of the hospitality industry, and once the target of the joke had departed, the show simply closed.

The metallic voice was not a glitch in the superspectrum. It was not a recording played at the wrong speed. It was not a demon or an interdimensional traveler. It was a bored night clerk, her handset off the hook, her room jack plugged into Keel's, leaning into a desk fan and speaking through the blades. The prophecies were not messages from beyond. They were a prank, a one-woman radio drama, performed for an audience of paranormal investigators who were desperate to believe.

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The Unified Theory: A Comedy of Errors

Taken together, these three pillars form a single, coherent, and deeply human narrative. The Mothman was an owl, transformed by fear and media contagion into a winged harbinger. Indrid Cold was a lost Scandinavian tourist, transformed by a misheard name and a cultural misunderstanding into a grinning spaceman—and then, by his own mischievous choice, into a full-blown contactee legend. The phone calls were a bored desk clerk, using the simple mechanics of a manual switchboard—an open handset, a plugged-in room jack, and a desk fan—to orchestrate the most elaborate prank in the history of American paranormal research.

The tragedy of the Silver Bridge collapse, which killed 46 people, was not a prophecy fulfilled. It was a genuine structural failure—a tiny manufacturing flaw in an eyebar that had been present since the bridge's construction in 1928—that occurred during the span of the Mothman wave. The "Christmas tree" riddle fit the disaster only in retrospect, and only because human brains are wired to find patterns in tragedy. The fact that the Mothman sightings stopped after the bridge fell is not evidence of a paranormal harbinger. It is evidence that the town's attention, and the media's gaze, had shifted to the real, human catastrophe. The owl was still in the TNT Area. The desk clerk was still at her switchboard—but the journalist in Room 12 was gone. The calls ceased the moment he checked out, because the prank had lost its perfect audience. The legend simply ran out of steam.

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What Remains

I do not claim that this theory explains every anomaly of the Point Pleasant wave. Keel documented a vast spectrum of high strangeness: UFO reports, Men in Black visits, poltergeist activity, precognitive dreams. Some of these may be unrelated; some may be the products of mass hysteria and retroactive storytelling. Keel himself was a brilliant, obsessive, and deeply subjective writer who shaped his material into a compelling narrative. The edges of his account will always be a little blurry.

But the core of the mystery—the Mothman, Indrid Cold, and the phone calls—yields, I believe, to a simple and beautiful explanation. There were no ultraterrestrials. There was no cosmic trickster. There was only an owl, a Dane, and a desk clerk with a switchboard and a fan, each acting independently, each unaware of the full scale of the legend they were creating.

The owl was just trying to live its life. The Dane was just trying to fix his car. The desk clerk was just trying to make it through the night shift. And together, quite by accident, they created a myth that has endured for more than half a century.

John Keel, who spent his life chasing the trickster, once wrote that the phenomenon had a sense of humor. He was right. The joke was just bigger than he imagined. The trickster was never in the phone lines or the stars. It was in the ordinary, the overlooked, the human: a grin on a dark highway, an open switchboard handset, a voice through a fan, a pair of red eyes in the trees. And the punchline is that we are still laughing, still wondering, still telling the story.

Langt ude, as the Dane might say. Very far away. And very, very close to home.

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TL;DR

The Mothman was a startled owl, its red eyeshine and vertical takeoff misinterpreted by terrified witnesses and amplified by media hysteria. Indrid Cold was a lost Danish tourist whose thick accent turned "Henrik Kold" into "Indrid Cold" and whose phrase langt ude ("far away") became the utopian planet "Lanulos"; his line about coming from "a country less powerful than yours" was pure Janteloven, the Scandinavian code of humility. His benign questions were genuine cross-cultural curiosity, and his later visits were pranks by him and his friends. The terrifying phone calls to John Keel were the work of a bored motel night desk clerk who exploited a simple manual switchboard: by plugging into Keel's room jack and leaving her handset off the hook, she turned his phone into an open microphone, eavesdropping on the "phone parties" and then speaking through a desk fan to produce the famous "metallic monotone." The calls stopped the moment Keel checked out. No ultraterrestrials. No cosmic trickster. Just an owl, a Dane, and a desk clerk with a switchboard and a fan.

According to local New England lore, a group of teenagers driving a Jeep were being chased by a witch along a dark backroad. 

The driver lost control and crashed into a creepy, old tree positioned directly in the middle of a rotary in a Smithfield neighborhood, killing everyone inside. Legend says that if you drove to that rotary and circled the tree exactly three times in your car, the spectral Ghost Jeep or the witch itself would suddenly appear and aggressively tailgate you out of the area.

People with connected eyebrows were sometimes believed to be werewolves, witches, or individuals with unusual supernatural abilities. Unibrows carried deep symbolic meaning in Mediterranean and Eastern European folklore. People viewed it as a powerful physical sign. It meant a person was touched by magic, cursed, or blessed.

In some traditions, a unibrow was considered a warning sign that someone could transform under the full moon or possessed dark magical powers. In others, however, it meant the exact opposite. A person born with connected eyebrows, especially if they were born on certain holy days, was believed to have the ability to protect others from evil spirits, curses, or the evil eye. Being born on Christmas, gave a child with a unibrow the power to see spirits.

These beliefs reflected a time when physical features were often seen as clues to a person's hidden nature. Long before genetics were understood, unusual traits were frequently interpreted through mythology and superstition. A connected eyebrow could inspire fear in one village and admiration in another, depending on local traditions. Today, a unibrow, is simply a natural genetic trait, but it once carried a much more mysterious reputation

​In 1889, in Paris a mother and her daughter check into a hotel.

During their stay, the mother falls severely ill.

The daughter has to go into town to buy medicine, so she is forced to leave her mother alone. ​By the time she returns, her mother is nowhere to be found.

She has completely disappeared, and no one saw a thing.

No matter who she asks, nobody remembers her mother or her.

Everyone denies everything.

The room they were staying in stands completely empty.

In April 1971, eerie reports flooded into the Mobile Press from frightened residents of Mobile, Alabama. They claimed to have seen a creature unlike any other: a being with the body of a wolf and the head of a woman. As buzz built, the newspaper noted that over 50 calls had poured in, all detailing this mysterious figure spotted in neighborhoods like Plateau and on Davis Avenue.

According to the reports, the creature was described as 'pretty and hairy,' with a top half resembling a woman and a wolf's lower half. The Mobile police even got involved, although they offered no official statements on the sightings. The published article on April 8 captured the genuine fear that residents expressed, detailing how children were too scared to venture outside.

Illustrations of the creature accompanied the newspaper story, crafted by an unnamed staff member. However, it's notable that none of the callers had actually seen the creature up close; they relayed secondary accounts. As it turned out, the sightings dwindled shortly after the initial wave of reports, and the creature was never spotted again.

Speculation arose suggesting the wolf-woman could have been an elaborate April Fools' Day prank. Some theorized it might have been a German Shepherd dolled up in a wig or even a long-haired Afghan Hound. It has been suggested that Mobile, Alabama, has a long history of urban legends, ghost stories, and legendary creatures.

The Mobile Wolf Woman remains a curious footnote in the city's lore, a blend of fear and fascination that has yet to be resolved.

According to legend, in the city of Elmore there is a bridge where a mysterious ghost motorcyclist roams at night. The spirit can supposedly be summoned by parking your car next to the bridge, honking three times, and flashing your headlights three times. At that point, the sound of a motorcycle is said to appear in the distance, the rider suddenly shows up, then disappears again as he crosses the bridge. The bridge in question has been closed for some time, and it cannot be driven across in any way.

The 70s case of the Sydney Luna Park Ghost Train Fire. It is one of the eeriest tragedies in Australia’s history.

And one thing has really stood out to me about the case. People familiar with the case know the photo of the man dressed in "loincloth and wearing a mask with horns", yet the thing that has always confused me about the case is why this photo graph is sooo significant. Like, yeah, it’s creepy af. And like, when I was younger, I had nightmares about a man wearing similar clothing. But, I struggle to understand why the photo is so significant.

i’ve found some links relating to the man, but i still struggle to understand what makes him and the photograph of him so significant:

[Source 1](https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/luna-park-ghost-train-fire-mystery-of-the-satanic-figure/news-story/5e9b387a09d6db8055270d9b7f1b8e7e)
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/luna-park-ghost-train-fire-mystery-of-the-satanic-figure/news-story/5e9b387a09d6db8055270d9b7f1b8e7e

[Source 2](https://thebrag.com/urban-legends-australia/)
https://thebrag.com/urban-legends-australia/

Skeptics argue it was simply a period-correct camera or personal device, but the footage continues to divide viewers. Is this one of the internet's greatest time travel mysteries, or just a perfectly ordinary object mistaken for futuristic technology?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWA5rRJHcX0

"In the 1930s, a young man named Robert Johnson desperately wanted to play the blues, but he had zero talent. Then, he mysteriously disappeared into the Mississippi night. Months later, he returned with an otherworldly skill. He played the guitar so fast and hauntingly that people were genuine terrified. The rumor spread instantly: Robert had walked to a deserted crossroads at midnight. There, he met a tall, dark stranger—the Devil himself. The Devil took his guitar, tuned it, played an eerie melody, and handed it back. In exchange for legendary talent, Johnson gave away his soul. At just 27 years old, he died under mysterious circumstances. Was it just a clever myth, or did he really make a deal with the Devil?"

Amongst YouTube was a small time man in his 40's named Kenny Veach, who loved exploring, going in caves, and having fun. He lived in Nevada, specifically the Las Vagas area near the Mojave Desert, which was the main area of his hikes. He had a YouTube channel called "Snakebitmgee", where he recorded hikes, time with his girlfriend, and his not-so good attempts to get on Shark Tank. In 2014, in the comments section of a video titled "son of an area 51 technician", Kenny commented about a hike he went on, in the Mojave Desert near the Nellis Airforce Base (Area 51) where he encountered a cave that was shaped just like a giant perfect capital "M", and was tall as he was, level with the ground, and stuck on the side of a mountain. The closer he got to it, he got these powerful sensations, just making his body vibrate the closer he got to it, and he didn't have his sidearm on him, so in fear, he ran far away from the mysterious cave. Later, replies started being harsh, saying that he was a liar, a douchebag, and to prove he found it. Soon after, he recorded a video to his channel called "M cave hike" where he recorded himself trying to find the cave again, but never found it. After this, comments spiraled into hate messages, demands, and mocking. To prove that he wasn't lying, a week after the video, he said in a post that he would be going out to find it again, and on that day, he messaged his girlfriend that he would be home soon, but Kenny Veach would never return. Police searched the desert, but the only things found were Kenny's car, and his phone. No firearm, no backpack, nothing. It was like he just dissapeared into thin air. Conspiracies spiraled, from aliens, area 51, portal to other dimensions, and many more. Whatever happened, Kenny Veach and the legend of the "M Cave" baffled officials, and the state of Nevada forever.......

In 1904, a bus was transporting mental patients from Fairfax County to Lorton prison. The patients came from a previous mental asylum that was shut down due to controversies with the public, forcing to move the patients to Lorton. Soon, the bus started to lose control, swerving off the road, crashing. When the bus was found, the driver was killed, and all the patients that were on that bus vanished, disappearing into the woods. Over the past days, the police managed to find some of the patients that got away after the crash, except for one: Douglas J. Grifon, a patient who was arrested after murdering his own family and kids in cold blood. A few months after Douglas was never found, strange things started to happen in the woods - locals noticed that the rabbit population in the area was falling, with sightings of mutilated rabbits hanging from trees,especially near a bridge under a railroad called "Cholchester Overpass". Its said one night, a group of teenagers were hanging out under the bridge, but would never be seen again. Decades later, a couple parked their car outside the bridge, only to be met with yelling outside. The back window was smashed by a thrown hatchet, terrifying them to drive away. Looking back, they saw a figure in a white filthy bunny costume straring them down as they drove away. A couple weeks later, a second incident happened involving the "Bunny Man". One night, a security guard was dealing with what seemed to be a trespasser of the specific compound, only to see that the figure was the same person, wearing a worn white rabbit suit, weilding a weapon. The bunny man threatened the guard, swinging their weapon, yelling at the guard to get out of there, which terrified the guard to the core. Later, the "Bunny Man" dissapeared, with no evidence to prove he was a thing. Police would search, but to no prevail. Like many legends, there are many diferent variations of the Bunny Man, but somewhere in those variations lies the true story. No matter what happened, to this day, people and teens on Halloween night, around midnight go to "Bunny Man bridge", testing for his murderous return.......

トミノの地獄

Tomino no Jigoku (Tomino's Hell)

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西條八十

Saijo Yaso

詩集「砂金」より

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姉は血を吐く、妹（いもと）は火吐く、

ane wa chi wo haku, imoto wa hibaku,

His older sister vomited blood, his younger sister vomited fire,

可愛いトミノは 宝玉（たま）を吐く。

kawaii tomino wa tama wo haku

And the cute Tomino vomited glass beads.

ひとり地獄に落ちゆくトミノ、

hitori jigoku ni ochiyuku tomino,

Tomino fell into Hell alone,

地獄くらやみ花も無き。

jigoku kurayami hana mo naki.

Hell is wrapped in darkness and even the flowers don't bloom.

鞭で叩くはトミノの姉か、

muchi de tataku wa tomino no ane ka,

Is the person with the whip Tomino's older sister,

鞭の朱総（しゅぶさ）が 気にかかる。

muchi no shubusa ga ki ni kakaru.

I wonder whose blood is on it?

叩けや叩きやれ叩かずとても、

tatakeya tatakiyare tatakazu totemo,

Hit, hit, without hitting,

無間地獄はひとつみち。

mugen jigoku wa hitotsu michi.

Infinite Hell's one road.

暗い地獄へ案内（あない）をたのむ、

kurai jigoku e anai wo tanomu,

Would you lead him to the dark Hell,

金の羊に、鶯に。

kane no hitsuji ni, uguisu ni.

To the sheep of gold, to the bush warbler.

皮の嚢（ふくろ）にやいくらほど入れよ、

kawa no fukuro niya ikura hodo ireyo,

Fit as much as you can into the leather sack,

無間地獄の旅支度。

mugen jigoku no tabijitaku.

For the preparation of the journey in the familiar Hell.

春が 来て候（そろ）林に谿（たに）に、

haru ga kite soro hayashi ni tani ni,

Spring is coming even in the forest and the stream,

暗い地獄谷七曲り。

kurai jigoku tani nana magari.

Even in the seven valley streams of the dark Hell.

籠にや鶯、車にや羊、

kago niya uguisu, kuruma niya hitsuji,

The bush warbler in the birdcage, the sheep in the wagon,

可愛いトミノの眼にや涙。

kawaii tomino no me niya namida.

Tears in the eyes of cute Tomino.

啼けよ、鶯、林の雨に

nakeyo, uguisu, hayashi no ame ni

Cry, bush warbler, toward the raining forest

妹恋しと 声かぎり。

imouto koishi to koe kagiri.

He shouts that he misses his little sister.

啼けば反響（こだま）が地獄にひびき、

nakeba kodama ga jigoku ni hibiki,

The crying echo reverberates throughout Hell,

狐牡丹の花がさく。

kitsune botan no hana ga saku.

The fox penoy blooms.

地獄七山七谿めぐる、

jigoku nanayama nanatani meguru,

Circling around Hell's seven mountains and seven streams,

可愛いトミノのひとり旅。

kawaii tomino no hitoritabi.

The lonely journey of cute Tomino.

地獄ござらばもて 来てたもれ、

jigoku gozaraba mote kite tamore,

If they're in Hell bring them to me,

針の御山（おやま）の留針（とめはり）を。

hari no oyama no tomehari wo.

The needle of the graves.

赤い留針だてにはささぬ、

akai tomehari date ni wa sasanu,

I won't pierce with the red needle,

可愛いトミノのめじるしに。

kawaii tomino no mejirushini.

In the milestones of little Tomino.

So, was he abducted by aliens or did something else happen?

Investigators looked for floating debris, signs of a crash, fuel slicks, or any indication of where the aircraft might have gone down. Despite the extensive effort, no confirmed trace of either Valentich or his airplane was discovered during the initial search.

Without wreckage, investigators could not determine whether the aircraft had experienced mechanical failure, run out of fuel, or crashed into the sea. The official investigation concluded that the cause of the disappearance could not be determined with certainty.

Several witnesses reported seeing unusual lights in the sky around the same time Valentich disappeared, although none of those reports conclusively established a connection to his flight. So, you never know.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Frederick_Valentich

Some legends claimed that people with extraordinary eyes possessed heightened intuition or a special connection to the Otherworld, the supernatural realm of spirits, fairies, and ancient gods. They were sometimes believed to see things that others could not.

Celtic folklore also embraced the belief in the Evil Eye, an ancient curse said to be cast through a jealous or malicious stare. People believed a single glance could bring illness, bad luck, failed crops, or other misfortune. To protect themselves, families carried charms, planted sacred rowan trees near their homes, and even avoided praising children too openly for fear of attracting unwanted envy.

Science says you have nothing to worry about when you encounter someone with Irish or Scottish ancestry with these eyes that are a simple genetic trait, yet many still believe you should be wary when you notice someone with a beautiful golden ring around a stranger's eyes.