The Van Meter Visitor.

Over 60 years before the Mothman terrorized Point Pleasant, a Midwestern town was beseiged by a different type of flying creature.

September 1903 saw the small town of Van Meter gripped by a peculiar terror. Over several nights, multiple credible witnesses reported encounters with an immense, winged entity haunting the skies above the town and its outskirts. This being would come to be called the Van Meter Visitor, its legend permanently woven into the fabric of the town's history.

The sightings began on a crisp September evening in 1903 and recurred over several nights, each encounter deepening the town's unease. According to contemporary newspaper accounts and later testimonies, multiple Van Meter residents described confronting a bizarre, airborne entity of considerable size.

Witnesses consistently reported a being that stood several feet tall with leathery, expansive wings that cast unsettling shadows across the moonlit streets. It moved through the air with an unnatural grace, and from its forehead protruded a luminous horn that cast a sickly, phosphorescent glow. The creature emitted guttural, clicking noises, and was accompanied by a foul odor reminiscent of spoiled meat and damp earth. It showed remarkable boldness, refusing to flee even when confronted directly. The growing alarm eventually drew in several of Van Meter's most prominent citizens, who organized armed patrols in an attempt to track the thing down.

A posse of grim-faced men, armed with rifles and lanterns, formed a grim hunt for the creature. Their search led them to the gaping mouth of an abandoned coal mine outside Van Meter, where the air grew thick with the smell of damp earth and old fear.

Shouts echoed as they cornered it near the entrance; gunfire cracked, sharp and sudden in the twilight. Some swore they saw a second shape— smaller, quicker—darting beside the larger one in the shadows. The Visitor escaped into the depths, uncaptured, untouchable. To this day, no tracks, no remains, nothing tangible has ever been found to prove what those men faced that evening.

Nobody knows exactly what the Van Meter Visitor was—that winged, phosphorescent creature whose nocturnal appearances in 1903 left a trail of sulfurous odors and perforated brickwork across the small Iowa town. Over the years, investigators and skeptics have proposed various theories to explain the phenomenon: Perhaps it was merely a sandhill crane with an unusual luminescence, its wingspan distorted by fear and poor lighting. Others maintain it was an elaborate hoax perpetrated by bored townsfolk, though no one ever confessed. Some suggest a known animal—a large bat or owl— was mistaken for something supernatural under the veil of night and whiskey. There are those who argue the accounts grew more fantastical with each retelling, gaining horns and beams of light that were never in the original testimony. And then there are those who insist, despite all logic, that it was something entirely outside known taxonomy—a true cryptid, fleeting and inexplicable. Today, the Visitor remains firmly woven into Iowa’s folklore, a curious footnote in the history of Van Meter that still occasionally draws nocturnal enthusiasts to its quiet streets.

Timeline

September 1903

Residents begin reporting sightings of a strange creature around Van Meter.

Following nights

Additional sightings are reported, and concern grows among local residents.

The search

A group of local men searches for the creature and encounters it near an abandoned coal mine.

After 1903

The story continues to be retold and becomes part of Van Meter folklore.

Today

The Van Meter Visitor remains one of Iowa's unexplained local stories. There is an annual Van Meter Visitor Festival held in Van Meter every September.