The mystery of Mothman, the red-eyed monster of Point Pleasant

POINT PLEASANT, W.Va. — Strange things started to happen here in November 1966.

Two young couples were driving late one Tuesday night when a vast and terrifying creature appeared in front of their car: humanoid but birdlike, 6 feet tall with 10-foot wings and bright red eyes. Petrified, they sped toward Point Pleasant at 100 miles per hour, but the creature kept pace.

The local newspaper soon reported a warning: “Winged, Red-Eyed ‘Thing’ Chases Point Couples Across Countryside.” In the coming weeks, others in town told of similar frights.

Was this a menacing, magical creature, locals wondered at the time, or merely a weather balloon escaped from the high school science club? Could it have been a sandhill crane, tall as the average man with bright red flesh near its eyes, perhaps made mutant in the chemical ooze of a nearby military munitions factory? Were the witnesses high — or just making things up?

Mothman, whatever he was, would be sighted by dozens of locals in the year that followed. Some say he appeared in the sky above the Ohio River on Dec. 15, 1967, just before the sudden collapse of the Silver Bridge, a tragedy that killed 46 people and left lasting scars on this modest Appalachian town.

For decades after the bridge collapse Mothman seemed to disappear, as Point Pleasant mourned its dead and worked its coal mines. The disaster devastated the economy, too: The bridge had poured traffic onto Point Pleasant’s streets, but now the debris blocked important shipping channels. By 1989, most of Main Street was vacant.

Then came 2002. Richard Gere and Laura Linney starred in “The Mothman Prophecies,” a movie about the legend. The film got mixed reviews, but helped trigger a Mothman revival in Point Pleasant. In 2003, the town threw its first Mothman Festival. In 2006, Jeff Wamsley opened the Mothman Museum, “and it’s just grown and grown and grown to where we are now,” Brittany Sayre, a lifetime Point resident, said recently from behind the counter at the museum.

In the shadows for more than a half century, Mothman is now everywhere — in a stainless steel statue near downtown, in graffiti on the walls of the public bathrooms, in a cardboard frame with a face cutout so tourists can take photos. He’s on pins, patches, wallets, knee socks, T-shirts, hats, headphones, keychains, pizza, sundaes, and cake pops. There’s a Mothman hot sauce (“pure liquid fire”), Mothman candles (smoke + spice + woods), Mothman wine (sweet, with black raspberry), and Mothman coffee (dark roast, 100 percent Arabica). And once a year in September, the Mothman Festival brings millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tourists, hobbyists, and cryptozoologists to this tiny town on the Ohio border, selling out hotels for miles on both sides of the state line.

Once the town’s tormenter, Mothman has become its mascot.

“When you’re traveling on the interstate, you’re probably not going to get off for a history museum, right?” said Chris Rizer, director of the town’s Main Street organization. “But you’ll get off for the Mothman.”

Sayre grew up in Point Pleasant hearing the legends. She went to church with Charlene Wood, who famously survived the bridge collapse by slamming her car into reverse at the last possible moment. Sayre’s nanny was close with Mary Hyre, the Athens Messenger journalist who covered the story in the ’60s. Her pawpaw was one of two National Guardsmen who reported seeing a creature while working near the old Army plant.

When she was little, Sayre spooked too easily to dwell much on the legend, or to go see the Gere movie. Now she is 30, and Mothman pays her salary. “We have businesses, we have visitors, there’s been a lot of revitalization,” Sayre said. “It’s really helped our little town’s economy.”

It might seem ironic, if not for the nuance of the legend. Among the many myths and claims, there is the theory of a benevolent Mothman. His appearances leading up to the bridge collapse didn’t portend evil, this story goes, but were meant as a warning: He was trying to help Point Pleasant.

Decades later, he’s done just that.

“In a strange sort of way,” Sayre said, “he saved us.”

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