In December 2019, the 60-year-old David Ramos, a former Chicago policeman who is now retired, contacted The Singular Fortean Society. Ramos worked in the Chicago police from 1994 to 2009, and in 1971, when he was 12 years old, he saw with his own eyes a winged humanoid creature.
“When I was a kid and I was 12 years old, we lived in the old Park Riverview Park area. A local company of teenagers usually played on the north bank of the Chicago River. That day, some of the boys had fun throwing pieces of rubble concrete into the water and competing who would make the biggest splash. I was further from the river as I didn’t like being too close to the water.
At one point, I looked northward and i swear I saw there a skinny and very tall man dressed in something very black. He was about 200 feet (60 meters) from me. This man looked in my direction, and then threw up his arms, spreading his wings, and then he ran, flapped these wings and disappeared among the trees on the river bank. I looked at it, completely dumbfounded.
Then I stood up and ran to the other guys and began to ask them “Have you seen this guy?” I was not sure what I saw, I did not know what it was, maybe someone was involved in practical jokes or something like that. By the way, there always was something very creepy in that place by the river, spooky by the river, even in broad daylight. I tried to explain but [my friends] told me to shut up and didn’t pay any attention to me, [since] I was smaller and younger than them
I am now 60 years old, I am a retired policeman and live in Florida. I had never told anyone about what I saw before, and I am writing to you because I stumbled upon your article (about the MothMan) now.
That event shocked me greatly, I felt somehow very angry and immediately wanted to get home almost as soon as possible. I remember trying to look at his face when he looked at me and it seemed to me scary, like a mask for Halloween. This face was not like the face of a man, he had big eyes and this is probably all of the details that I remember.
I am still scared by this memory and I know that Mothman is usually considered a harbinger of tragedy. I tried to remember what bad things happened shortly after this incident. I just remembered that one of the older boys that we were with that day shot and killed a rival gang member shortly after that sighting. He was 16 at the time and went to jail at 17 for at least five years for murder.
Researcher Tobias Weiland of The Singular Fortean Society contacted David Ramos on the telephone and learned learned from him some more details of that event.
“It was an autumn day, an ordinary gray day in Chicago, but it was still daytime. The figure I saw had something like a black cloak, but in general it resembled a very tall man in a cloak and a hood. I could see his large eyes, which from afar they looked like huge yellowish-red glasses.
When he threw up his arms and spread his wings, these wings were just huge in size! He managed to take a few steps and flap his wings before hiding behind the trees. I never came to this place when I was a child, but I know that back then a service station was built there. When I worked as a policeman and drove in there to check a car, I always remembered that day and I was very scared. “
The place where Ramos saw a flying humanoid with reddish-yellow eyes is just a few miles from Lake Michigan. Starting from 2017, at least several dozens of reports came from this area about sightings of a strange black winged creature that looked like either a huge owl or a person with wings.
Most often, this creature was seen near water and in parks. Researchers of anomalous phenomena can still only speculate on what all these people saw. Either some rare huge bird, or really something paranormal.
