The Mothman of Point Pleasant
For thirteen months, residents reported a tall winged figure with glowing red eyes near an old munitions works. The sightings ended with the Silver Bridge collapse, and John Keel's book made the creature an omen.
- Date
- November 1966 – December 1967
- Place
- Point Pleasant, West Virginia, USA
- Witnesses
- Dozens of residents
- Status
- Conventionally explained
What happened
On the night of 15 November 1966, two young couples driving near the abandoned TNT area north of town reported a grey, winged figure with red eyes that rose and followed their car at high speed toward town. The local newspaper's report gave it the name Mothman. Through the following year, dozens of residents reported the creature, along with strange lights, visits from odd men in dark suits and dead animals. On 15 December 1967 the Silver Bridge across the Ohio River collapsed during rush hour, killing 46 people, and the sightings stopped.
The being
Six to seven feet tall, grey or brown, with large wings folded against the body, and glowing red eyes that several witnesses placed in the chest or shoulders rather than in a distinct head. It did not flap, and it kept pace with cars at over 100 miles an hour. XenoAtlas catalogues the creature as the Mothmanoid.
Aftermath
John Keel's The Mothman Prophecies (1975) tied the sightings, the men in black and the bridge into a single supernatural narrative, and the 2002 film adaptation made the creature famous. Point Pleasant has a Mothman museum, a steel statue and an annual festival.
Explanations
The bridge failed because of a single corroded eyebar, a known engineering cause. The creature is most often attributed to sandhill cranes, which are large, grey, red-marked around the eyes and were reported in the area, or to barred owls, seen at night by people primed by the first reports. The men in black and lights belong to the wider folklore of the period.
Beings described
Sources
- Mothman
- John Keel, The Mothman Prophecies (1975)