Any rational human being will certainly find it hard to believe that a certain half-man half-moth exists and has been going around petrifying the little town of Point Pleasant in West Virginia. However, according to eyewitnesses, this is exactly what they saw in the sky, and it has been re-occurring since 1966 and was seen last in 2017. The sightings of the Mothman has made Point Pleasant a good destination for lovers of strange things. Consequently, the city erected a huge statue of the Mothman alongside a Mothman museum and festival in celebration of the strange being.
The Truth About Mothman
The initially reported sign of the Mothman came on the 12th of November 1966 when five gravediggers who were busy digging a grave in the cemetery saw something strange gliding in the sky from one tree to the other. According to the men, it was like a brown human being flying over their heads. Subsequently, the sightings became known as the Mothman, a mysterious and elusive being that has remained as mystifying as on the first night that it was first sighted by a few frightened men. However, the town it once terrorized celebrates the mystery of the Mothman to date.
Three days after its first appearance, the Mothman appeared to two couple in a closeby Point Pleasant, West Virginia. According to the couples, they suddenly noticed something standing before their car and behold it was a six or seven feet winged creature.
Reports from eyewitnesses Steve Mallett and Roger Scarberry to the local tabloid called The Point Pleasant Register said that the beast-like creature’s eyes were bright red in color and about six inches apart, the two wings spanned up to ten feet and it appeared to have the propensity to avoid any car’s bright headlight in the same way as a moth would. The witnesses also revealed that the strange being was capable of flying at a speed faster than 100 miles in an hour, though it seemed to be clumsy with his feet when it comes to running. They noticed this as the beast came after their moving car, chasing it to the outskirt of the town.
Being well aware of how ridiculous this must have sounded to a small local Appalachian community tabloid during the 1960s Roger Scaberry maintained his stand that the apparition of the Mothman couldn’t just be dismissed as a figment of his imagination. He told the paper that if he were to be the only witness, perhaps he wouldn’t have mentioned it, but then there were four of them in the vehicle when the beast besieged them.
Another West Virginia resident Newell Partridge reported a sighting which told the tale of a bizarre pattern that appeared on his TV screen one evening. According to him, this appearance was followed by a strange noise outside, and when he beamed a flashlight towards the sound, what he saw looking back at him were two red eyes with close resemblance to bicycle reflectors. This particular tale remains popular in the Mothman mythos, especially since Newell Partridge’s dog disappeared that same night, probably to the grips o the gruesome beast.
However, an associate professor at West Virginia University completely dismissed the notion of a flying beast, according to Dr. Robert L. Smith from the wildlife biology department of the university, the sightings were probably a sand-hill crane that is almost as tall as the average man and comes with reddish flesh around the eyes.
Another Point Pleasant legend is of the belief that the Mothman sightings might just be the antics of some committed prankster, though National Press published the story across the entire nation causing a great sensation.
Known author John Keel published a book titled The Mothman Prophecies in 1975, the book which was a combination of the Mothman sightings, other disasters, and supernatural events inspired a movie of the same name in 2002. In his publication, Keel connected the Mothman sightings to the Silver Bridge which collapsed on the 15th of December 1967, killing 46 people. However, the official reason for the collapse was attributed to failed welding.
Till now, the sightings of the Mothman remains an unresolved mystery, it is possible that the witnesses did see a bizarre moth-like being as huge as a human being, or it just might be that it was a figment of their imagination.