Beginning in November of 1966 and lasting for about a year, sightings of a large (man-sized), winged creature terrified the citizens
of a community called Point Pleasant in West Virginia. The monster was sighted by several different persons, who also reported other
physical manifestations of the beastie; and the events seemed to culminate in the collapse of the Silver Bridge spanning the nearby
Ohio river, which killed 46 people.
The first encounter took place on November 12, 1966. Five men were working in a local cemetary when they spotted a large, brown
creature, that reportedly flew above their heads after launching itself from a nearby stand of trees. Three days later, a pair of
young couples were driving past an abandoned munitions plant (left over from World War II) when they spied a thing that was shaped like
a man, but looked to be seven feet tall or more, and had large eyes and what appeared to be wings folded on its back. They fled the
scene, only to encounter the monster again, this time having it following them as they sped along the highway trying to escape.
So many other sightings took place that week, that on the 16th a press conference was held; and the purported witnesses were held in
such esteem locally that their stories were taken seriously. The press dubbed the creature The Mothman (presumably after a weird
villain on the then-current Batman TV series) and a legend was born.
A young writer named John Keel came to the Point Pleasant area in December and started gathering information about the strange goings-
on, which by this time also included UFO sightings and even visits from Men In Black. In 1975 his book about the
events, The Mothman Prophecies, was published, which brought the story to a larger audience (especially UFO enthusiasts and
those generally interested in unexplained phenomena). In 2002 a (fiction) film was adapted from the book, with Richard Geer playing
Keel (or at least, one half of his personality).
So widespread were the sightings of the creature - or at least, his eyes or shadow, or the sound of his unearthly cry heard - that many
consider the Mothman to have been a genuine phenomenon. However, the sightings in Point Pleasant lasted only about a year, and then
abruptly stopped, which only further confounds those who would try to find explanations for the events, rational or otherwise. Even
after all sorts of quasi-metaphysical and extraterrestrial explanations have been stripped away, one has to wonder whether the original witnesses
simply saw an unusally large owl, and others simply became spooked and hallucinated monstrous happenings... or maybe there really was
an unholy monster stalking a small West Virginia town.
The first encounter took place on November 12, 1966. Five men were working in a local cemetary when they spotted a large, brown
creature, that reportedly flew above their heads after launching itself from a nearby stand of trees. Three days later, a pair of
young couples were driving past an abandoned munitions plant (left over from World War II) when they spied a thing that was shaped like
a man, but looked to be seven feet tall or more, and had large eyes and what appeared to be wings folded on its back. They fled the
scene, only to encounter the monster again, this time having it following them as they sped along the highway trying to escape.