The Mothman, whose name
was inspired by the Batman villain "Killer Moth",
was reportedly first sighted on November 12, 1966. A
group of five men were preparing a grave in a
cemetery near Clendenin, West Virginia when they
reportedly saw a "brown human shape with wings"
soaring from behind trees and flying over their
heads. The sighting was not made public until later,
and the first sighting reported in the media
occurred three days later. (Source:
SkepticWorld)
 On November 15, 1966,
two young, married couples from Point Pleasant,
David and Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary
Mallette, were traveling late at night in the
Scarberrys' car. They were passing the West Virginia
Ordnance Works, an abandoned World War II TNT
factory, about seven miles north from Point
Pleasant, in the 2,500 acre (10 km˛) McClintic
Wildlife Station, when they noticed two red lights
in the shadows by an old generator plant near the
factory gate. They stopped the car, and reportedly
discovered that the lights were the glowing red eyes
of a large animal, "shaped like a man, but bigger,
maybe six and a half or seven feet tall, with big
wings folded against its back", according to Roger
Scarberry. Terrified, they drove toward Route 62,
where the creature supposedly chased them at speeds
exceeding 100 miles per hour. However, as quoted in
Keel's The Mothman Prophecies, the Scarberrys,
despite driving more than 100 miles per hour,
claimed to have noticed a dead dog on the side of
the road, and in fact made such accurate note of its
location that they claimed to have gone back the
very next day and looked for it. Explanations for
how they were able to make so accurate a mental note
at a time of such great distress, or why they would
go back to look for the dead dog, are not included
in Keel's book.
A plaque on the Mothman
statue provides a version of the original legend:
"On a chilly, fall night in November 1966, two young
couples drove into the TNT area north of Point
Pleasant, West Virginia, when they realized they
were not alone." Driving down the exit road, they
saw the supposed creature standing on a nearby
ridge. It spread its wings and flew alongside the
vehicle up to the city limits. They drove to the
Mason County courthouse to alert Deputy Millard
Halstead, who later said, "I've known these kids all
their lives. They'd never been in any trouble and
they were really scared that night. I took them
seriously." He then followed Roger Scarberry's car
back to the secret ex-U.S. Federal bomb and missile
factory, but found no trace of the strange creature.
According to the book Alien Animals, by Janet and
Colin Bord, a poltergeist attack on the Scarberry
home occurred later that night, during which the
creature was seen several times.
The following night, on
November 16, several armed townspeople combed the
area around the TNT plant for signs of Mothman. Mr.
and Mrs. Raymond Wamsley, and Mrs. Marcella Bennett,
with her infant daughter Teena in tow, were in a car
en-route to visit their friends, Mr. and Mrs. Ralph
Thomas, who lived in a bungalow among the "igloos"
(concrete dome-shaped dynamite storage structures
erected during WW-II) near the TNT plant. The igloos
were now empty, some owned by the county, others by
companies intending to use them for storage. They
were heading back to their car when a figure
appeared behind their parked vehicle. Mrs. Bennett
said that it seemed like it had been lying down,
slowly rising up from the ground, large and gray,
with glowing red eyes. While Wamsley phoned the
police, the creature walked onto the porch and
peered in at them through the window.
On November 24, four
people allegedly saw the creature flying over the
TNT area.
On the morning of
November 25, Thomas Ury, who was driving along Route
62 just north of the TNT, claimed to have seen the
creature standing in a field, and then it spread its
wings and flew alongside his car as he sped toward
the Point Pleasant sheriff's office.
 
On November 26, Mrs.
Ruth Foster of Charleston, West Virginia reportedly
saw Mothman standing on her front lawn, but the
creature was gone by the time her brother-in-law
went out to investigate. Further, on the morning of
November 27, the creature allegedly pursued a young
woman near Mason, West Virginia, and was reported
again in St. Albans the same night, by two children.
A Mothman sighting was
again reported on January 11, 1967, and several
other times that same year. Fewer sightings of the
Mothman were reported after the collapse of the
Silver Bridge, when 46 people died. The Silver
Bridge, so named for its aluminum paint, was an
eyebar chain suspension bridge that connected the
cities of Point Pleasant, West Virginia and Kanauga,
Ohio over the Ohio River. The bridge was built in
1928, and it collapsed on December 15, 1967.
Investigation of the bridge wreckage pointed to the
failure of a single eye-bar in a suspension chain
due to a small manufacturing flaw. There are rumors
that the Mothman appears before upcoming disasters,
or that the Mothman causes disasters.
The word "Mothman" was
an invention by an Ohio newspaper copyeditor, after
the first news stories of the "Big Bird" sightings
appeared. [This has been disputed by some]
A large collection of
first-hand material about the Mothman is found in
John Keel's 1975 book
The Mothman Prophecies, in
which Keel lays out the chronology of the Mothman
and what he claims to be related parapsychological
events in the area, including UFO activity, Men in
Black encounters, poltergeist activity, Bigfoot and
black panther sightings, animal and human
mutilations, precognitions by witnesses, and the
December 15 1967 collapse of the Silver Bridge
spanning the Ohio River.
Keel's first
book was
the basis of a
2002 film, The Mothman Prophecies,
starring Richard Gere, Laura Linney, Debra Messing
and Will Patton, directed by Mark Pellington. A
companion book called The Eighth Tower, also
released in 1975, was derived from material edited
from The Mothman Prophecies by the publishers.
In the May-June 2002
issue of the Skeptical Inquirer, journalist John C.
Sherwood, a former business associate of UFO hoaxer
Gray Barker, published an analysis of private
letters between Keel and Barker during the period of
Keel's investigation. In the article, "Gray Barker's
Book of Bunk", Sherwood reported finding significant
differences between what Keel wrote at the time of
his investigation and what he wrote in his first
book about the Mothman reports, raising questions
about the book's accuracy. Even though Sherwood had
reported that Keel would not assist him in
clarifying the differences, a simple analysis of
Keel's earliest Mothman book, Strange Mutants: Demon
Dogs and Phantom Cats (1970) shows almost no
difference with what Keel wrote in The Mothman
Prophecies five years later.
Cryptozoologist Loren
Coleman, in conjunction with Sony/Screen Gems studio
and as noted in the documentary film by David
Grabias, "In Search of the Mothman," served as one
of the fictional movie's two publicity spokespersons
(Keel being the other, although Keel's involvement
was limited by health concerns).
Andy Colvin, a
photographer and documentary filmmaker who claims to
have seen the Mothman, has produced
two books and a
reality series on Mothman called The Mothman's
Photographer, featuring John Keel and almost 50
witnesses. Colvin's sister took a snapshot of him in
1973 that allegedly shows a Garuda in the
background.
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