Tornado tore through a Missouri city, children claimed people with ‘butterfly wings’ saved them. But reality might be far more gruesome

In 2011, an EF5 tornado tore through the city of Joplin, Missouri. The brutal weather event left devastation in its wake with 161 deaths and over 1,000 injuries caused. But after the storm had passed children began telling stories of mysterious figures with “butterfly wings” that appeared in the storm to help.

After the 200mph winds had passed the people of Joplin had a lot of grieving and rebuilding to do. While the adults began dealing with the aftermath, the children were talking, and what they were saying was almost too incredible to be believed. Numerous kids spoke of glowing figures appearing during the tornado. They had what were described as “butterfly wings” and in some cases these figures even shielded the children from harm according to medium.com.

Witnesses claimed that they also saw the butterfly wing people taking people up into the light. The wildest part is that multiple children all told similar stories and in many cases these kids had supposedly not even spoken to each other beforehand making it difficult to argue that this was an elaborate hoax.

Who, or what, were the butterfly people in Joplin?

The fantastical claims have caught the imagination of the public numerous times over the years with many sharing their own theories on what the winged figures could have possibly been or whether they were real at all. Was it some kind of hallucination? An army of mothmen? Some believe that the winged people were angels. These apparent angels arrived to protect the people of Joplin or take them to the next life.

That’s certainly one theory, but there is an alternative explanation, one that is far more gruesome and horrific in every way.

On Reddit, one theory floating around is that the butterfly people were actually the bodies of people who had died in the tornado. What the children saw were their bodies being tossed around by the high speed winds. As for the supposed wings, the theory is that what the children interpreted as wings, could have actually been skin, organs, or other body parts that had been ripped out by the tornado. With these parts flailing about it could have been perceived in the mind of a child as wings.

It’s definitely a lot more horrific than the first theory, whether or not it’s more believable depends on who you ask. The final possibility could be that it was a psychological phenomena. The winged humans might simply have been a hallucination in response to trauma. Whatever the case, there is no agreed upon explanation for what the children supposedly saw that day and perhaps there never will.