Indrid Cold: the frozen smile linking Mothman, Ellen DeGeneres and the Joker

Indrid Cold: the frozen smile linking Mothman, Ellen DeGeneres and the Joker

In October 1966, two boys from New Jersey saw a grinning man who never blinked. A month later, Woodrow Derenberger described at a press conference a being who identified himself as Cold and spoke to him by telepathy. That rigid smile, without the Duchenne reflex, became an archetype: Mothman, the Joker, the man from The Purge. The question hanging in the air is an uncomfortable one: what lies behind a grimace that fails to activate the muscles of empathy?

The origin: from Point Pleasant to the press conference

The legend of Indrid Cold was born in 1966. On October 16, two boys —Marin Munov and James Yanchitis— saw a grinning man watching them without moving a muscle. On November 2, Derenberger claimed that a flying object blocked his path on Interstate 77 and that a six-foot man with an olive complexion and a shiny blue coat approached him and spoke without opening his mouth. "Don't be afraid," he told him. "We come from a country that is not as powerful as yours." The press of the era pounced on the story. Derenberger even said he traveled to the planet Lanulos.

Cold's smile —the grinning man— was not a normal smile. It was a fixed grimace, with no involvement of the eyes. TikTok didn't exist in 1966, but the archetype had already been sown.

The smile that never reaches the eyes: Duchenne and the absence of empathy

In primates, baring the teeth is a threat or a sign of submission. In humans, a genuine smile contracts the orbicularis oculi muscles around the eyes. A fake one does not. That difference —the Duchenne reflex— is what separates a smile from a mask. Cold's grimace, Ellen DeGeneres's in certain photos, that of the Joker impersonator arrested at the San Fermín festival in Spain with a fine of up to 6,000 euros, that of the characters in The Purge or Robert Blake's in Lynch's Lost Highway all share that trait: the mouth smiles, the gaze does not.

Some maintain that this expression betrays people who have done "very bad things." Others point to something more prosaic: dissociation, media pressure, years of faking a public image. The line between a learned gesture and a genuine void is blurry.

From Hollywood to a Sumerian tablet: the myth gets recycled

The leap into the present came from a social media post linking Ellen DeGeneres to satanic rituals in 1999, citing the Epstein files. There is no evidence. The actress has been accused of "illuminati" parties and "strange things," but none of that has been confirmed. DeGeneres's smile, before and after her most media-famous period, has become a meme and an object of conspiratorial cult.

It doesn't end there. The discussion mentions a Sumerian tablet —of dubious authenticity— that would describe seven clues for identifying non-human beings wearing human appearance. One of them: rigid smiles. The Indian Juan, Castaneda's interlocutor, spoke of "allies" who walk among us and, when seen, do not show their energy body. The myth reinvents itself with each generation.

The San Fermín Joker and the smile as a crime

In 2023, a man was arrested at the San Fermín festival in Spain dressed as the Joker. The fine could reach 6,000 euros. His painted smile was a provocation. The story connects with the archetype: the smile as defiance, as a mask, as a threat. In Mexico, there were jokes about cuts of meat bathed in gold eaten by national team players. In the P Diddy case, there was talk of parties with bodies drenched in liquor. Surrealism is nothing new.

The icy smile also appears in politics: Hillary Clinton, Lady Bird Johnson, Ted Bundy. The list is heterogeneous. What unites them all is the feeling that there is something behind it that is not being shown.

The sun, the cycles and collective dementia

One of the flimsiest theories floating around is that the sun, having gone off the rails, is distorting behavior. Earthquakes, volcanoes, abrupt weather changes. The grotesque smile would be a symptom. There is no scientific evidence to back this up, but it fits with the feeling that the world has become more absurd.

The conversation drifts toward dissociative identity, toward a lack of heart, toward the social drift that forces normal people to put on a cement face. The frozen smile stops being a paranormal phenomenon and becomes a symptom of the times.

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In the end, the question is not whether Indrid Cold exists. The question is why we need him to exist. The smile that never reaches the eyes reminds us that empathy can be faked. And that, in 2026, is scarier than any mothman.