A Missouri woman encounters a huge winged humanoid while driving near Joplin. Could this winged cryptid be associated with the Joplin 'Butterfly People?'

I recently received the following account:

"Hi Mr. Strickler,

My name is BB and I am writing to you from the southwest part of Missouri in the Ozarks.

I’m writing to report a flying humanoid sighting. I actually feel guilty for just now reaching out, as my sighting was almost a year ago in June 2019.

The sighting took place in Joplin, Missouri as I was driving from Springfield, MO to Kansas City, MO.

Normally when I make this drive I go straight up Highway 13 through Bolivar and Clinton. However, on this night there were tornado warnings and my step father told me to go through Joplin instead.

The approximate time was somewhere between 7-8 pm. It was not yet dark. It usually gets dark between 8:30-9 this time of year. While the tornadoes weren’t going to be in my route, there were scattered thunderstorms. At the time of my sighting it was in between one storm and just before another. I mention this for a couple of reasons:

1. Because I think there’s some correlation between the electric charges of a thunderstorm and the ability to see this creature - I have no idea why I suspect this. And, 2. To acknowledge that while it was not dark, it was gray due to the storm.

At the time of my sighting I was driving a 2005 Chevy Blazer. The one that’s 2 door with the s10 body style. I mention this because I use my vehicle as a way to measure this creature.

I was driving down the highway going a little slower than the limit of 70 due to the wetness of the road. If I were to guess I’d say 50 or 55 mph. I did not see the creature until he was pretty much right over me (I say “he” because that’s the feeling I got).

The creature was flying over me perpendicular to my direction and over to my right into the wooded area next to the highway. He was so close on top over my vehicle that I could close up see the texture of his wings through my drivers window and sunroof. The sunroof was closed obviously but I had the shade pulled back so it was just glass for me to look through.

I do not remember any feet or arms and I did not see the head. The only part of the anatomy I saw besides the wings was a small quadrant of the torso region. I’m guessing it was somewhere above the navel (if there were even a navel) and before the pectoral region as I did not see anything like human nipples.

The wingspan of this creature had to be between 12-16 feet. I mean I’m not great with measurements but the creature easily could have had the tip of one wing down on the ground in front of my car and the other tip on the ground behind my car-providing it had been in park and he were not flying. And remember, this is tip to tip perpendicular to me not parallel.

My point is, it was like my car was entirely enveloped in his wings even though it was for a split second. I did not hear any noise.
This does seem kind of weird to me considering I don’t remember seeing more of his body.

But, what I find the most interesting is the apparent control the creature seemed to have over my state of mind. As this was happening I was not scared, I was so completely calm. Now not calm as in soothed or comforted but calm as if I were just looking at a field of cows or something instead of a huge creature that’s supposedly not supposed to exist in our dimension.

Similarly, I mentioned I didn’t see his head, but an image of his head appeared into my mind as if he was planting it there. So I know I saw the wings with my real and sober eyes but his head I believe I only saw in my mind shortly after he passed over, and via some kind of control or telepathy.

Anyway, I remained unaffected by my sighting until I had gotten about 30-50 miles more down the road.

That’s when the “holy sh*ts” and “what the f*cks” started. Pardon my language - I’m going to assume you’ve heard it before.

So I called my boyfriend and told him what happened and I texted my friend Kelly to tell her as well. Both of them had no issue believing me because I somehow tend to be a magnet for strange experiences and plenty of times there have been witnesses with me.

I am a contactee. But apart from the aliens I had seen and recorded during my 2013 encounter, I have only seen a “glimmer man” as far as humanoid or cryptid beings is concerned...until this encounter last year.

Further down the road I pulled over. I wanted to see if anyone in the area had seen anything like I just had. But, I didn’t want to describe it in my google search as to not manipulate the results. So I just googled “cryptid sightings near Joplin, Mo”

Interestingly the search yielded a bunch of articles about children seeing what they described as “butterfly” people who protected them from the rubble during the devastating 2011 tornado which demolished the Joplin area.

Sketches were done following the children’s descriptions but they didn’t seem to match exactly what I saw. But, on the 2nd or 3rd page of Google there was another sketch apparently drawn by a person back in 2003 who’s description matched as best I could tell-from what I saw. To my memory I think the sketch had a less leathery look to the body but what grabbed me was the way they drew the head because it matched the image of the head that I believe the creature gave to me telepathically.

I want to point out one distinction in this creature’s defense-I was never terrified, even after the encounter when I realized what happened. I got absolutely zero “evil” or “demonic” feelings associated by him and I have been proven over time to be able to really trust my intuition involving the supernatural. I wanted to mention this because the sightings I’ve heard about talk about people screaming like lunatics and being traumatized to their core or calling it a demon. Perhaps they are seeing something different than I did or perhaps they just haven’t had to cope with other paranormal or worldview shattering experiences before and are thusly, more threatened.

It didn’t occur to me to reach out when this happened as I have never reached out with my experiences until this year. I think it’s because I’ve had so many strange things happen to be recently that they are starting to outnumber my normal experiences and are increasingly harder to ignore.

I’ve heard of your work from many platforms but was just now relistening to some episodes of Expanded Perspectives and the episode from 2017 when they interviewed you came on and I thought it must be time to share.

By the way Joplin I think Is like 8 or 9 hours to Chicago. I could be mistaken but I’ve never driven from Joplin to Chicago.

Thank you for safeguarding everyone’s encounters and maybe I’ll get to hear back from you!

All the best, BB"

NOTE: Here is an article about the Joplin 'Butterfly People' the witness referred to - The butterfly people of Joplin