At the height of the Cold War, three years after the assassination of John F Kennedy, John Keel a famous ufologist recorded a series of strange sightings of a bizarre and creepy beast around Point Pleasant in West Virginia.
The first multiple witness sightings occurred on November 15th 1967 in Point Pleasant's abandoned WW2 TNT production and storage facility, West Virginia Ordnance Works, a weed-ridden plot full of enormous empty concrete igloos.
Two young couples reported seeing two glowing red lights:

They noticed two red lights in the shadows by an old generator plant near the factory gate. They stopped the car, and were startled to discover that the lights were actually the glowing red eyes of a large animal, “shaped like a man, but bigger, maybe six and a half or seven feet tall, with big wings folded against its back,” according to Roger Scarberry. Terrified, they drove toward Route 62, where the creature chased them at speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour.

Going down the exit road, they saw the creature standing on a nearby ridge. It spread its wings and flew alongside their car to the city limits. They drove to the Mason County courthouse to alert Deputy Millard Halstead, who later said “I’ve known these kids all their lives. They’d never been in any trouble and they were really scared that night. I took them seriously.” He followed Roger Scarberry’s car back to the secret ex-U.S. Federal bomb and missile factory, but found no sign of the strange creature. (Wikipedia)

After more multiple witness sightings it was dubbed "Mothman" by a newspaper reporter, since the "Batman" TV series was at the height of its popularity.

Sightings continued and fervor escalated over the following months, coinciding with a bewildering array of strange activity - including precognition of disaster, odd doom-filled prophecies, mutual nightmares, UFO sightings and encounters with bizarre "Men in Black."
The sightings abruptly stopped after the incredibly traumatic collapse of the Silver Bridge over the Ohio River on December 15th 1967, an event which saw many of the small towns inhabitants crushed and drowned. The bridge had fallen to pieces because of fatigue and an increase in traffic over the years. Days later, emergency services were still picking Christmas trees and corpses out of the river.

John Keel, the Ufologist and subsequent author of The Mothman Prophecies, continued to be haunted by strange phenomena even after this. Strange people would answer his home phone claiming to be him, he would be followed by men in black overcoats. He saw many many UFOs, and started receiving contact from the mysterious Indrid Cold.

His research on Mothman and beyond can be found in the 1976 The Mothman Prophecies here.

An example of his riveting, bizarre creative nonfiction:
Fingers of lightning tore holes in the black skies as an angry cloudburst drenched the surrealistic landscape. It was 3 A.M. on a cold, wet morning in late November 1967. and the little houses scattered along the dirt road winding through the hills of West Virginia were all dark. Some seemed unoccupied and in the final stages of decay. Others were unpainted, neglected, forlorn.

And one of his musings on his own increasingly bizarre experiences:
Once you have established a belief, the phenomenon adjusts its manifestations to support that belief and thereby escalate it.

The entire text is worth reading, for its great descriptions, for its raw and extensive original research and for its totally paranoid insights.

The question remains: if you are a skeptic like me, what is the explanation for these mass witnessed events, testified to by seemingly rational people? Is there a link between these paranormal events and historic events? Could a fear of apocalypse, much like our current fear, have caused an immense collective imagining? Another story sheds some light:

Beginning in April of 1986, a rumor tore through the ranks of what was then a little know nuclear power plant located in the southern tier of the Ukraine - Chernobyl. In the days preceding the tragic meltdown, four Chernobyl employees had reported seeing what they claimed was a large, dark, headless man with gigantic wings and fire-red eyes.

Much like the Point Pleasant Mothman witnesses, these Chernobyl employees began to share unsettling and strangely similar experiences.

Some had been having horrifying nightmares, while others received threatening phone calls. According to accounts, some of these employees even mentioned their bizarre experiences to their superiors at the facility, but without evidence or any clear cut indication of what the problem may be, there was very little these officials could do - even had they been willing to take action.

On April 26, 1986, during a routine test of Reactor 4, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was rocked by a massive explosion. Thirty people died that morning, followed by ten additional ten deaths due to radiation exposure. Over the next nine days the graphite of the reactor continued to burn, resulting in tremendous environmental damage and an untold number of radiation casualties over the next 17-years.

As the Soviet helicopters circled the smoldering plant, dropping over 500 pounds of clay, sand, lead, and other extinguishing chemicals on top of the flames, some of the surviving workers - who, at the sacrifice of their own lives, heroically struggled to prevent any further destruction - claimed to have witnessed what has been described as a "20-foot bird" gliding through the undulating tentacles of irradiated smoke, which continued to spew from the reactor.

And finally:


Images are looking towards the wreck of the World Trade Center on September 11th.