Mothman is a winged, humanoid cryptid reportedly sighted around Point Pleasant, West Virginia, over a roughly thirteen-month period between November 1966 and December 1967.[1] Witnesses described a tall, grey figure with large wings and glowing red eyes, capable of following moving vehicles at high speed.[2] The sightings became closely associated in popular retellings with the collapse of the Silver Bridge in December 1967, and Mothman has since become one of America's best-known modern cryptids.
Sightings
Early reports
The earliest report now commonly cited as a Mothman sighting occurred on 12 November 1966, when five men digging a grave at a cemetery near Clendenin, West Virginia, said they saw a large humanoid figure fly low over the trees above them.[3]
The Scarberry–Mallette encounter
The best-known and first officially reported sighting occurred on the night of 15 November 1966, when two young couples — Roger and Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Mallette — reported encountering a large grey figure with glowing red eyes and a wingspan they estimated at around ten feet, near the abandoned West Virginia Ordnance Works (known locally as the "TNT area"), a former Second World War munitions plant north of Point Pleasant.[4] The couples reported the creature to Mason County Sheriff George Johnson, and the story ran the next day in the Point Pleasant Register under the headline "Couples See Man-Sized Bird ... Creature ... Something."[2] The report was quickly picked up by national press, and further sightings followed over the following weeks and months, with more than 100 separate encounters estimated to have been reported across the thirteen-month period.[1]
The TNT area itself sits adjacent to the McClintic Wildlife Management Area, a bird sanctuary — a detail later central to the leading sceptical explanation for the sightings (see Sceptical explanations, below).[5]
The Silver Bridge collapse
On 15 December 1967, the Silver Bridge — a suspension bridge carrying US Route 35 across the Ohio River between Point Pleasant and Gallipolis, Ohio — collapsed during rush-hour traffic, killing 46 people.[2] The collapse was subsequently attributed to the failure of a single eyebar in a suspension chain, compounded by the bridge carrying far heavier loads than it had originally been designed for and years of inadequate maintenance — a conventional structural engineering failure with no established connection to the Mothman reports.[2] Following the disaster, however, some townspeople began to claim they had seen Mothman on or near the bridge in the days before the collapse, framing the sightings as a possible omen; the Mothman reports in Point Pleasant ceased almost entirely after the bridge fell.[1]
Writer Gray Barker first publicly linked the Mothman sightings to the Silver Bridge disaster in 1970.[3] The connection was popularised more widely by researcher and writer John Keel in his 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies, which argued that the Mothman sightings, a wave of regional UFO reports, and the bridge collapse were all interconnected phenomena; Keel had investigated the sightings on the ground at the time, working alongside local Athens Messenger reporter Mary Hyre.[6] Keel's book also popularised claims that some Point Pleasant residents were subsequently harassed by so-called "Men in Black" figures warning them not to discuss their sightings.[4] The book was adapted into the 2002 film The Mothman Prophecies, directed by Mark Pellington and starring Richard Gere and Laura Linney.[6]
Sceptical explanations
Several conventional explanations have been proposed for the original sightings, none universally accepted as accounting for the full pattern of reports.
Wildlife biologist Robert L. Smith of West Virginia University proposed in December 1966 that witnesses had most likely seen a sandhill crane, a large bird standing nearly as tall as a person with a wingspan over seven feet.[7] This explanation has been widely disputed, including by researcher Joe Nickell, on the grounds that sandhill cranes are not native to West Virginia and have a long neck inconsistent with witness descriptions of a neckless creature.[8]
Nickell, a longtime investigator with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, has instead argued that the sightings most likely stemmed from misidentified owls — variously proposing barred, barn, or snowy owls — combined with genuine planes, deliberate hoaxes, and the effects of nighttime misperception.[7] Nickell notes that owls' eyeshine can appear to glow red when illuminated by a flashlight or headlights, potentially accounting for witness reports of glowing red eyes, and that the McClintic Wildlife Management Area adjoining the TNT area supports resident owl populations.[8] In support of the misperception element of this explanation, Nickell conducted an experiment for the television series MonsterQuest in which volunteers were driven past plywood cutouts fitted with bicycle reflectors for eyes along a dark road; none of the volunteers could accurately judge the cutouts' actual size, illustrating how difficult height and distance can be to judge at night.[9] Separately, in 1966 a snowy owl — a species well outside its normal range in the area — was shot near Point Pleasant and described in local newspapers as a "giant owl"; the mounted specimen is now displayed at the Mothman Museum.[10] Nickell has also documented specific hoaxes carried out amid the publicity, including a group of construction workers who reportedly tied red flashlights to helium balloons.[10]
Cultural legacy
Point Pleasant has embraced the legend as a significant part of its local identity and tourism. The town held its first annual Mothman Festival in 2002, and in 2003 unveiled a 12-foot stainless steel statue of the creature by sculptor Bob Roach.[10] The Mothman Museum and Research Center, run by local historian Jeff Wamsley, opened in 2005.[10]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "The Mothman: Complete Guide to the Legend, Sightings & Silver Bridge."Strange & Twisted.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 "The Mothman of West Virginia."Legends of America.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Mothman."West Virginia Explorer.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 "The Mothman Story of Point Pleasant, West Virginia."Duskflyer Vision Art & Productions.
- ↑ "Was Mothman a Hoax?."HubPages.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 "Mothman."EBSCO Research Starters.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 "The Mothman and the Crane: A Contemporary Perspective."Skeptical Inquirer.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 "Is the Mothman of West Virginia an Owl?."Audubon.
- ↑ "The Legend of Mothman."Historically Strange.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 "Mothman."Wikipedia.