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Mothman Facts

Mothman Facts
The Mothman is a winged man/creature that many believe to be real after reports began to surface about its existence in Point Pleasant, West Virginia in 1966. A newspaper report in the Point Pleasant Register titled "Couples See Man-Sized Bird...Creature...Something", made the sightings regional folklore. The first sighting of Mothman occurred on November 12th, 1966 when grave diggers saw the creature flying low above the tree line. On November 15th, 1966 two different couples saw the creature and reported it to police. When the Silver Bridge collapsed on December 15th, 1967, killing 46 people, the Mothman and bridge disaster became linked in folklore, giving rise to books and a movie called The Mothman Prophecies.
Interesting Mothman Facts:
Paranormal author Gray Baker wrote a book called The Silver Bridge in 1970 that linked the bridge collapse and the Mothman sightings.
John Keel wrote a book titled The Mothman Prophecies in 1975, which later became a Hollywood movie of the same name.
The two couples that saw the Mothman on November 15th, 1966 were Steve and Mary Mallette, and Roger and Linda Scarberry. They reported seeing a creature with eyes that 'glowed red' when hit by the headlights of their car. It was a 'large flying man with ten-foot wings' according to their accounts. The couples had been in the area where an old WW2 munitions plant existed called 'the TNT area'.
Many other people reported seeing the Mothman, with as many as 100 making reports. Many more supposedly saw it but did not report the sightings for fear of ridicule.
One theory was that the Mothman was really a sandhill crane. Sandhill cranes are a type of bird that can be almost as tall as a man and it has reddish coloring around its eyes. The wingspan can reach seven feet. Under the right circumstances it might have appeared to look like the Mothman that people had described. However the area where the Mothman sightings had been reported was not in the migration area of the sandhill crane.
Other theories stated that the Mothman was really a barred owl or an albino owl.
There were a number of hoaxes that followed the Mothman sightings. Constructions workers tied flashlights to balloons and tried to fool people after the original reports.
Regional folklore had teenagers saying their car roofs had been attacked when parked.
Many people believed that the Mothman sightings were connected to the Silver Bridge collapse, as sightings stopped after the tragedy took 46 lives.
The movie titled The Mothman Prophecies, starring Richard Gere, was based on the premise of the Mothman prophesizing the tragedy.
Rob Roach, a sculptor and artist created a 12 foot tall statue of the Mothman, which was unveiled in 2003 at the first Annual Mothman Festival in 2002. This festival is a weekend-long festival help every September on the 3rd weekend in Point Pleasant.
In 2005 The Mothman Museum and Research Center opened. It is run by Jeff Wamsley.
There are several books that have been written about the Mothman, as well as TV shows, movies, and even songs.


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