Mothman
Modern urban legend
- 7 min read
- 4 chapters
Related on Lably
Through Bird, Heron and World War II
The creature was later popularized by John Keel in his 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies, which claimed that there were paranormal events related to the sightings and a connection to the collapse of the Silver Bridge. This came five years after Gray Barker's The Silver Bridge, a narrative that had earlier explored similar ideas but in a "heavily fictionalized" way. The Mothman Prophecies was adapted decades later into a 2002 film starring Richard Gere.
An annual festival in Point Pleasant is devoted to the Mothman legend.
History
On November 15, 1966, two young couples from Point Pleasant—Roger and Linda Scarberry, 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 munitions plant from World War II. Linda Scarberry described it as a "slender, muscular man" about seven feet (2.1 m) tall with white wings. However, she was unable to discern its face due to the hypnotic effect of its eyes. Distressed, the witnesses claimed they sped away at 100 miles per hour (160 km/h), reporting that the creature took flight and kept pace with their car, making a screeching sound during the pursuit. It followed them as far as Point Pleasant city limits.
Over the next few days, more witnesses came forward to submit similar sightings after local newspapers covered the initial report. 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 green heron. 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 a large American bird called a sandhill crane, which stands almost as tall as a human with a 7-foot (2.1 m) wingspan and reddish coloring around its eyes. He posited that 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 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 deaths of 46 people, the incident gave rise to a legend that connected the Mothman sightings to the bridge collapse.
According to the newspaper Svobodnaya Gruziya, published in the Eastern European nation of Georgia, Russian ufologists claim that Mothman sightings in Moscow presaged 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."
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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 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 asserts that these writings comprised children's books and sensationalized or undocumented reports that failed to quote identifiable persons. Brunvand found elements in common among many Mothman reports and much older folktales, suggesting that something real may have triggered the scares and become interwoven with existing folklore. He also records anecdotal tales of Mothman supposedly attacking the roofs of parked cars occupied by teenagers.
Conversely, Joe Nickell asserts that a number of hoaxes followed the publicity generated by the original reports, such as a group of construction workers who allegedly tied flashlights to helium balloons. Nickell attributes the Mothman stories to misidentifications of barred owls, suggesting that the Mothman's "glowing eyes" were actually the phenomenon of eyeshine, common in many animals, caused by reflections from 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 sandhill 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-foot (1.5 m) 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, self-described Fortean researcher Lon Strickler's online compilation of 55 sightings of Mothman in the city of Chicago during the course of 2017 represents "a selective sample". Gallo explains that "he's not sampling random people and asking if they saw the Mothman – he'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'."
More speculative hypotheses (such as those proposed by ufologists, paranormal authors, and cryptozoologists) suggest the Mothman could be an alien, a supernatural manifestation, or a previously unknown species of animal. However, the third hypothesis is considered highly unlikely, as according to the square-cube law, a creature with the 6–7-foot (1.8–2.1 m) height and 10-foot (3.0 m) 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 alleged phenomena.
Festival and statues
The Mothman legend has become a major source of tourism for Point Pleasant. The city held its first Annual Mothman Festival in 2002. The Mothman Festival began after brainstorming creative ways to attract visitors to Point Pleasant. The group organizing the event chose the Mothman to be the center of the festival due to its uniqueness, and as a way to celebrate its local legacy in the town.
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 (3.7 m) metallic statue of the creature, created by artist and sculptor Bob Roach, was unveiled in 2003. The Mothman Museum and Research Center opened in 2006. 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, among other representations in various media:
- Small Town Monsters has released two documentaries about Mothman, The Mothman of Point Pleasant in 2017 and The Mothman Legacy in 2020.
- 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.
- Hellier, a 2019 digital documentary series released on YouTube and Amazon Prime, includes a segment in the second season dedicated to the Mothman.
- Mothman appears in Fortnite as an outfit added in the 2025 Halloween "Fortnitemares" event.
- The 2018 video game Fallout 76 features the Mothman as a central figure in the Appalachian folklore of its post-apocalyptic setting, appearing as a variety of mutated creatures that can be either hostile or passive toward the player.