MOTHMAN

Back in 1966, Point Pleasant, West Virginia—located at the confluence of the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers—was a sleepy town of a couple thousand people. But it was rocked by an unidentifiable visitor on November 12, 1966, when gravediggers at a cemetery in Clendenin, West Virginia, about 80 miles from Point Pleasant, claimed to see a man with wings lift off from a tree and fly over their heads. Three days later, two young couples were driving together near an abandoned World War II TNT plant about five miles north of Point Pleasant when they saw a “large flying man with 10-foot wings,” and eyes that “glowed red.” They tried to flee the unidentified animal, speeding down the road at a reported 100 miles per hour, but the creature followed them back to Point Pleasant city limits. They were so spooked by their experience that they went directly to the police. Newspapers dubbed the creature Mothman. The national press picked up the story, and Mothman became a sensation.
Over the following week, there were at least 8 more reported sightings in and around Point Pleasant of a man-like bird with large wings. One such account came from volunteer firefighters Captain Paul Yoder and Benjamin Enochs. According to the Gettysburg Times, Yoder and Enochs claimed to have seen a “very large bird with large red eyes.”
Others refuted the sightings, believing that residents of Point Pleasant were actually seeing a sandhill crane that had wandered out of its normal migration route. “There were hundreds of eyewitnesses,” says Jeff Wamsley, owner of Point Pleasant’s Mothman Museum. Born and raised in town, Wamsley was only five years old when the Mothman showed up and began terrorizing his neighbors.
Over the following year, the oddities continued. Reports of UFOs and suspicious men in black began streaming in to the Point Pleasant authorities. And the Mothman sightings continued.
Then, ten days before Christmas in 1967, tragedy struck. While the Silver Bridge that connected Point Pleasant to Gallipolis, Ohio was teeming with rush-hour traffic, the bridge collapsed, killing 46 people. Reportedly, some claimed to have seen the Mothman at the bridge shortly before its collapse and believed its presence was a harbinger of doom.
“The fact that the UFO sightings, men in black presence, and the Silver Bridge disaster all happened during the Mothman sightings intrigues many people,” says Wamsley. “It’s a fascinating turn of events for a small town like Point Pleasant.”
For his part, Wamsley does believe that the people of Point Pleasant encountered something out of the ordinary. “I just don’t believe that many people could have made up the same story,” says Wamsley, “but what it was they saw, I don’t believe will ever be truly explained or solved.”