Buried in 47 pages of black marker and bureaucratic cowardice, a single unredacted job title confirms the federal government has been on Mothman’s payroll — or vice versa — for over fifty years.

The federal government has, for decades, employed a dedicated point-of-contact for Mothman. That sentence should have ended my career the last three times I tried to publish something like it. This time, I have the paperwork. A Freedom of Information Act request filed eighteen months ago by independent researcher Donna Czepak has yielded a partially declassified FBI internal memo confirming the continuous existence of a salaried federal position formally titled ‘Avian Anomaly Consultant (Non-Standard)’ — a role that has been staffed without interruption since November 1967, the same month a large, winged, red-eyed entity began terrorizing the bridge-going public of Point Pleasant, West Virginia.

The memo, dated internally to a fiscal year review cycle that the Bureau declined to specify, references the position in the context of a routine HR continuity audit. Most of the document is redacted to the point of being decorative — whole pages reduced to a single visible preposition — but page eleven contains a breakthrough. Under a section header reading ‘Legacy Specialist Roles,’ the ‘Avian Anomaly Consultant (Non-Standard)’ appears in unredacted plain text, accompanied by confirmation that the role carries full federal pension benefits, has never been vacant, and falls under a budget line described only as ‘Ongoing Observational Infrastructure.’ There is a six-digit annual salary figure. It, too, is redacted. Of course it is.

Community Notice

What The Government Calls It vs. What We All Know It Is

Let’s be precise about the timeline, because precision is the only weapon I have left after eighteen months of stonewalling. The Silver Bridge collapsed on December 15, 1967, killing 46 people. Mothman sightings in the area began in November 1966 and peaked through 1967. The ‘Avian Anomaly Consultant (Non-Standard)’ position, per the memo’s own language, was ‘established and first occupied’ in the autumn of 1967 — before the bridge collapse, after the sightings began. The FBI did not create this role in hindsight. They created it while Mothman was actively on the wing. Someone in a J. Edgar Hoover-era office building made a staffing decision that has now outlasted the careers, retirements, and in several cases the natural lifespans of everyone else in that building.

I filed that FOIA as a long shot. When I got the response I just sat in my car in the post office parking lot for about forty minutes. The pension line is what got me. This isn’t a task force. It’s not a working group. It’s a career.

— Donna Czepak, Independent FOIA Researcher and Original Requester

WTC reached out to three former FBI employees for comment. Two declined immediately. The third, a retired administrative specialist who asked to be identified only as ‘Herm from Accounting,’ confirmed that he was aware of the position during his tenure in the late 1980s, described the role as ‘not something you asked about,’ and then asked us how we got this number. Herm, for what it’s worth, sounded genuinely unsettled. Not by us. By the existence of the memo itself. ‘That should not have come out,’ he said, before hanging up. We called back. Disconnected. We tried again. Different number. Also disconnected. Malcolm Shaw’s phone then autocorrected the word ‘Mothman’ to ‘Mothman’ for the first time in recorded history, which I’m choosing to read as a sign.

That should not have come out.

— ‘Herm from Accounting,’ Retired FBI Administrative Specialist, Former Employee ID Unverified

The Unbroken Chain: Six Decades, At Least Four Humans

The most chilling implication of the memo isn’t the position’s existence — it’s the phrase ‘unbroken chain of occupants.’ The FBI did not allow this role to go vacant. Not during government shutdowns. Not during hiring freezes. Not during any of the approximately eleven separate national crises that occurred between 1967 and now. Someone has always been in that office, or at least on that payroll, specifically designated to interface with — observe? track? negotiate with? — a cryptid that the government officially does not acknowledge exists. The memo does not describe what the Avian Anomaly Consultant actually does. It describes what they cost. And apparently, whatever they do, it’s worth doing continuously for fifty-seven years.

Czepak has filed two follow-up FOIA requests: one seeking the job description for the ‘Avian Anomaly Consultant (Non-Standard)’ role, and one requesting a list of names of individuals who have held the position since 1967. She expects, she told WTC, to receive ‘either nothing, or something so redacted it constitutes nothing, within the next two to four business years.’ The FBI’s public affairs office did not respond to our request for comment. Their voicemail, however, picked up on the first ring, which it has never done before. We left a message. We’re still waiting. We’ll keep waiting. We’ve been doing this long enough to know that the waiting is part of the story.