Folklore, Spirits, and Urban Legends of WV.

Mothman.

When you think of West Virginia. Do you think of Bridge Day? Coal mines? Or do you think of something else? That's right! I finally got to Mothman. The most well known folklore being. Who was seen in Europe as well as America.

The Mothman is a creature reportedly seen in the Point Pleasant area from November 12, 1966, to December 15, 1967. The first newspaper report was published in the Point Pleasant Register dated November 16, 1966, titled "Couples See Man-Sized Bird ... Creature ... Something". The national press soon picked up the reports and helped spread the story across the United States.

On November 12, 1966, five men who were digging a grave at a cemetery near Clendenin, West Virginia, claimed to have seen a man-like figure fly low from the trees over their heads. This is often identified as the first known sighting of what became known as the Mothman. Even though Native American tribes have also seen him in the past.

Shortly thereafter, on November 15, 1966, two young couples from Point Pleasant, Roger and Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Mallette, told police they saw a large grey creature whose eyes "glowed red" when the car's headlights picked it up. They described it as a "large flying man with ten-foot wings", following their car while they were driving in an area outside of town known as "the TNT area", the site of a former World War II munitions plant.

During the next few days, other people reported similar sightings. Two volunteer firemen who saw it said it was a "large bird with red eyes". Mason County Sheriff George Johnson commented that he believed the sightings were due to an unusually large heron he termed a "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", and blamed buzzing noises from his television set and the disappearance of his German Shepherd dog on the creature. Wildlife biologist Dr. Robert L. Smith at West Virginia University told reporters that descriptions and sightings all fit the sandhill crane, a large American crane almost as high as a man with a seven-foot wingspan featuring circles of reddish coloring around the eyes, and that the bird may have wandered out of its migration route. This particular crane was unrecognized at first because it was not native to this region.

After 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. Several people claimed they saw Mothman land on the bridge before it collapsed. There is much debate about whether he was trying to warn people or if he caused the damage.

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

In 2016 a channel called WCHS-TV published a photo that seemed to be of Mothman sent to them by an anonymous man.

Point Pleasant held its first Annual Mothman Festival in 2002 and 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 and is run by Jeff Wamsley. The Festival is a weekend-long event held on the 3rd weekend of every September. There is a variety of events that go on during the festival such as guest speakers, vendor exhibits, a mothman pancake eating contest, and hayride tours focusing on the notable areas of Point Pleasant.

When I was in marching band we would go to competitions and Point Pleasant's band would be there. Some of us would always make jokes about Moth Man showing up.