Mothman

History

On November 15, 1966, two young couples from Point Pleasant—Roger and Linda Scarberry, and Steve and Mary Mallette—told police they had seen a large black creature whose eyes "glowed red", standing at the side of the road near "the TNT area", the site of a former World War II munitions plant. Linda Scarberry described it as a 'slender, muscular man' about seven feet tall with white wings. However, she was unable to discern its face due to the hypnotic effect of its eyes. Distressed, the witnesses sped away, reporting that the creature flew after their car, making a screeching sound. It pursued them as far as Point Pleasant city limits.

Over the next few days, more people reported similar sightings after local newspapers covered it. Two volunteer firemen who saw it said it was a "large bird with red eyes". Mason County Sheriff George Johnson believed the sightings were due to an unusually large shitepoke. Contractor Newell Partridge told Johnson that when he aimed a flashlight at a creature in a nearby field, its eyes glowed "like bicycle reflectors". Additionally, he blamed buzzing noises from his television set and the disappearance of his German Shepherd, Bandit, on the creature. Wildlife biologist Robert L. Smith at West Virginia University told reporters that descriptions and sightings fit the sandhill crane, a large American crane almost as tall as a man with a seven-foot wingspan and reddish coloring around its eyes. The bird may have wandered out of its migration route, and therefore was unrecognized at first because it was not native to this region.

Due to the popularity of the Batman TV series at the time, the fictional superhero Batman and his rogues gallery were prominently featured in the public eye. While the villain Killer Moth did not appear in the show, the comic book influence of both him and Batman is believed by some to have influenced the coinage of the name "Mothman" in the local newspapers.

Following the December 15, 1967, collapse of the Silver Bridge and the death of 46 people, the incident gave rise to the legend and connected the Mothman sightings to the bridge collapse.

According to Georgian newspaper Svobodnaya Gruziya, Russian UFOlogists claim that Mothman sightings in Moscow foreshadowed the 1999 Russian apartment bombings.

In 2016, WCHS-TV published a photo purported to be of Mothman taken by an anonymous man while driving on Route 2 in Mason County. Science writer Sharon Hill proposed that the photo showed "a bird, perhaps an owl, carrying a frog or snake away" and wrote that "there is zero reason to suspect it is the Mothman as described in legend. There are too many far more reasonable explanations."

Analysis

Folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand notes that Mothman has been widely covered in popular press, with some claiming sightings connected with UFOs, and others suggesting that a military storage site was Mothman's "home". Brunvand notes that the recountings of the 1966–67 Mothman reports usually state that at least 100 people saw Mothman with many more "afraid to report their sightings." However, he points out that these written sources for such stories consisted of children's books or sensationalized or undocumented accounts that fail to quote identifiable persons. Brunvand found elements in common among many Mothman reports and much older folk tales, suggesting that something real may have triggered the scares and became woven with existing folklore. He also records anecdotal tales of Mothman supposedly attacking the roofs of parked cars occupied by teenagers.

Conversely, Joe Nickell says that a number of hoaxes followed the publicity generated by the original reports, such as a group of construction workers who tied flashlights to helium balloons. Nickell attributes the Mothman stories to sightings of barred owls, suggesting that the Mothman's "glowing eyes" were actually red-eye effect caused from the reflection of light from flashlights or other bright light sources.

Benjamin Radford points out that the only report of glowing "red eyes" was secondhand, that of Shirley Hensley quoting her father. However, John Keel relays the story of witness Connie Carpenter, who allegedly saw Mothman in broad daylight on November 27, 1966 and described it as having glowing red eyes.

One of the prevailing hypotheses associated with the Mothman at the time of the original sightings was that it was a misidentified sandhill crane, due primarily to the size of the bird as well as the "reddish flesh" around the crane's eyes. Daniel A. Reed examined the migration patterns and historically reported sightings of Sand Hill Cranes in the area of Point Pleasant, West Virginia and proposed that, in cases where eyeshine was not noted, it was statistically more likely that witnesses were seeing and misidentifying a Great Blue Heron instead. In 1966, a snowy owl was shot by Ace Henry at Point Pleasant, and it was described in local newspapers as a "giant owl" because of its nearly five feet wingspan. It's been claimed that it may have been the origin of the Mothman sightings. The bird is still displayed as a mounted specimen at the Mothman Museum.

According to University of Chicago psychologist David A. Gallo, "55 sightings of Mothman in Chicago during 2017" published on the website of self-described Fortean researcher Lon Strickler are "a selective sample". Gallo explains that "he's not sampling random people and asking if they saw the Mothmanhe's just counting the number of people that voluntarily came forward to report a sighting." According to Gallo, "people more likely to visit a paranormal-centric website like Strickler's might also be more inclined to believe in, and therefore witness the existence of, a 'Mothman'."

Some pseudoscience adherents (such as ufologists, paranormal authors, and cryptozoologists) suggest the Mothman could be an alien, a supernatural manifestation, or a previously unknown species of animal. However, the latter is highly unlikely, as according to the square-cube law, a creature with the 6-7 foot height and 10-foot wingspan, as described by Roger Scarberry would not be able to fly. In his 1975 book, Keel claimed that Point Pleasant residents experienced precognitions including premonitions of the collapse of the Silver Bridge, UFO sightings, visits from inhuman or threatening men in black, and other phenomena.

Festival and statues

Main article: Mothman Festival

According to the event organizer Jeff Wamsley, the average attendance for the Mothman Festival is an estimated 10–12 thousand people per year. A 12-foot-tall metallic statue of the creature, created by artist and sculptor Bob Roach, was unveiled in 2003. The Mothman Museum and Research Center opened in 2005. The festival is held on the third weekend of every September, hosting guest speakers, vendor exhibits, pancake-eating contests, and hayride tours of locally notable areas.

In popular culture

While the 1975 book and 2002 film The Mothman Prophecies may be the best known media regarding the legend, several low-budget and independently-made narrative films and documentary projects have since been released.

• Small Town Monsters has released two documentaries about Mothman, The Mothman of Point Pleasant in 2017 and The Mothman Legacy in 2020.
• Hellier, a 2019 digital documentary series released on YouTube and Amazon Prime, includes a segment in the second season dedicated to the Mothman.
• The Point Pleasant Tapes is a found footage film, co-written and directed by Jesse P. Pollack, Mike Vaccaro, and Dan Jones, and filmed with 1980s period-correct cameras in the same West Virginia area of the sightings. The completed film made its festival debut on October 19, 2024.
• Mothman appears in Fortnite as an outfit added in the 2025 Halloween "Fortnitemares" event.

References

References

1. (November 16, 1966). "Couples See Man-Sized Bird...Creature...Something". WestVA.Net, Mark Turner.
2. ''[[Skeptical Inquirer]]'', Volume 33 (Pennsylvania State University, Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. 2009)
3. Gray Barker, ''The Silver Bridge'' (Saucerian Books, 1970). Reprinted in 2008 entitled ''The Silver Bridge: The Classic Mothman Tale'' (BookSurge Publishing). {{ISBN. 1-4392-0427-6
4. Keel, John A. ''The Mothman Prophecies'' (2002). {{ISBN. 0-7653-4197-2 (Originally published in 1975 by Saturday Review Press)
5. Meehan, Paul (2009). ''Cinema of the Psychic Realm: A Critical Survey'', p. 130. McFarland & Company, Inc. {{ISBN. 978-0-7864-3966-9
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13. "The Collapse of the Silver Bridge". West Virginia Division of Culture and History.
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25. ''The Mothman Prophecies'', page 17
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33. [[Jerome Clark. Clark, Jerome]] (2000). ''Extraordinary Encounters: An Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrials and Otherworldly Beings''. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-Clio, {{ISBN. 1-57607-249-5, pp. 178–179.
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36. "Mothman Statue, Point Pleasant, West Virginia".
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39. Lewis, Brandon. (June 6, 2017). "Ohio film company releases 'Mothman of Point Pleasant' documentary".
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41. (January 22, 2019). "Hellier Release News".
42. Patterson, Jessica; Dejarnett, Blake. (October 10, 2025). "West Virginia's Mothman makes Halloween Fortnite appearance".