A new self-help guide from relationship therapists and structural engineers wants you to love your Mothman, just maybe from a safer emotional distance

If you’ve found yourself ignoring a third consecutive 3 a.m. wingbeat outside your bedroom window because you already KNOW it’s about the I-77 overpass, you are not alone. Twenty-one witnesses across four counties have reported what crisis counselors are now calling Chronic Prophetic Fatigue — the specific exhaustion of living alongside a Mothman who has, bless his enormous heart, absolutely nothing to talk about except load-bearing stress fractures. The good news: help has arrived. The complicated news: it comes in a 340-page spiral-bound workbook co-authored by a licensed relationship therapist and a civil engineer who, by her own admission, ‘became a believer on page twelve.’

The guide, titled ‘Red Eyes, Red Flags: Communicating Limits With Your Omen,’ was released quietly last Tuesday and has already sold out at three independent bookstores in West Virginia, which is either encouraging or deeply on-brand for West Virginia, depending on your perspective. The core premise is straightforward: Mothman’s warnings are almost certainly valid, the authors concede, but your inability to eat a hot meal or maintain a romantic relationship because a nine-foot winged entity keeps crash-landing on your car hood to show you stress fracture diagrams is also a real and pressing concern. Both things, they insist, can be true.

Community Notice

We’re not saying don’t listen to Mothman. We are saying that ‘I hear you, and I will contact the Department of Transportation on Monday’ is a complete sentence, and it is okay to then go inside and lock the door.

— Dr. Pamela Osei, Licensed Relationship Therapist and co-author, ‘Red Eyes, Red Flags’

The Five Stages of a Mothman Boundary Conversation

The workbook’s most talked-about section walks readers through what the authors call the WINGS framework: Welcome the warning, Indicate your limits, Note a follow-up action, Give yourself an exit, and Sustain the relationship long-term. That last step is, admittedly, the controversial one. Several readers have pushed back on the idea that one should be sustaining a long-term relationship with Mothman at all, to which Dr. Osei told WTC News, ‘If he keeps showing up, that ship has sailed. Work with what you have.’ Her co-author, structural engineer Marcus Bellweather, added seventeen appendices on how to actually report a compromised bridge to state authorities, which he describes as ‘the most practical contribution I could make to the paranormal self-help genre.’

Of the 21 witnesses WTC News spoke with for this story, 17 described their Mothman encounters as having started normally — glowing red eyes, general harbinger vibes, the usual — before pivoting hard into what one witness from Gallipolis called ‘basically a one-creature infrastructure advocacy campaign.’ He estimates Mothman has warned him about the same bridge eleven distinct times since March. ‘I reported it. I called the county. I emailed a state senator,’ he told me, visibly tired. ‘He still came back. I think he wants me to go in person.’ The county has since scheduled an inspection. Mothman has not, as of press time, acknowledged this progress.

From an engineering standpoint, I cannot stress enough that the creature’s assessments have been structurally sound every single time. That does complicate the ‘set limits’ messaging somewhat. We’ve had very long conversations about this.

— Marcus Bellweather, P.E., Structural Engineer and co-author, ‘Red Eyes, Red Flags’

Look, I’ve covered cryptid encounters for six years, and I will be the first to tell you that most of them resolve themselves through simple avoidance or a strongly worded cease-and-desist that nobody ever actually sends. The Mothman infrastructure situation is different, and it’s different because he is, frustratingly, correct. Setting limits with an entity who is technically trying to save your life and the lives of your fellow motorists requires a specific kind of emotional maturity that I respect deeply and that I personally do not have. But for those of you who do — or who are willing to do the workbook exercises, which include a guided meditation and a structural load capacity quiz — ‘Red Eyes, Red Flags’ is available wherever fine paranormal self-help is sold. Check the bridges on your commute first. Just to be safe. He’d want you to.