Mothman

A legendary cryptid, best known in the vicinity of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. It is described as a large humanoid creature with giant moth-like wings and glaring red eyes. It had a tendency to fly directly at automobiles, badly frightening drivers as it dove into their headlights, then swooped away. 

The creature's most active period was just over a year, from mid-November 1966 to mid-December 1967, with its final appearances said to coincide with the mysteriously prophesied collapse of the Silver Bridge, a disaster which claimed the lives of 46 people.

Mothman was probably a sandhill crane, with a heavy dose of public hysteria. 

An excellent book on the subject is "The Mothman Prophecies" by John Keel. It should be noted that this is not really nonfiction; many of the facts of the Mothman incidents are accurately depicted, or as accurately as you can get with a book like this. Keel believed in the Mothman 100%, and believed that it and its controllers were from another world -- not really aliens, but what Keel called "ultraterrestrials." Nevertheless, I don't believe most of Keel's conclusions are reliable -- they are what Keel wanted to believe, and there's no actual proof that the Mothman or the sinister Indrid Cold existed, or that they caused the Silver Bridge collapse. Still, this book is noteworthy and essential reading, because it is one of the most terrifying works of semi-nonfiction ever written. 

Mothman sightings are not confined just to the United States. In October 1992, over the Niddrie Burn area of Edinburgh, Scotland. At approximately two o'clock in the morning, a woman awoke to a bright white light shining through her bedroom window. Unable to wake her husband, she rose from her bed and walked over to the window to investigate. Peering out into the night, she saw, standing under a tree at the end of her garden, what she described as a 'giant bird', the size of a human male. Frightened by what she had seen, the witness again attempted to wake her husband, but to no avail. She later said that he appeared to be in some kind of a trance. Returning to bed, the woman then witnessed a bright light enter the room and travel around the wall until it reached its starting point, where it vanished. The witness remained awake until dawn, when she fell asleep.