By Natalie Pearce
Much has been told about the creature named the ‘Mothman’.
Sighted just outside of Point Pleasant in West Virginia in 1966, the Mothman was first seen by a group of workers, describing the creature as huge, with massive wings and red eyes. It was only 3 days later in the same area, 4 youths travelling home by car saw a creature which flew alongside them, keeping up with the 100mph+ that the car had accelerated to to get away.
The occupants drove straight to the local Sheriff to report the incident as they were so frightened by what they had witnessed. This is when the Mothman name was first given. The next day, the victims gave a press conference which led to many others coming forward with claims of similar encounters.
The press coined the phrase ‘Mothman’, however witnesses describe it more like an Owl, with large dark wings and a humanoid like torso, walking on two legs. The majority of sightings come from what is known as the TNT area, which is the old West Virginia Ordinance Works.
Dating back to WW2, the munitions plant is surrounded by forest with large ‘igloo’ domes that were used to house gun powder. It is claimed that this may be where Mothman resides.
Witnesses report that if you get close to the creature, a terrible fear and dread comes over you that can last for years. It has been described by some as feeling like you are looking at “pure evil”.
Newell Partridge, also a Virginia resident recalls odd patterns moving around on his TV followed by some unusual sounds outside his house. Upon investigating with his flash light, two red eyes looked at him from the darkness; he described them like bike reflectors. Newell’s dog also disappeared that same evening and was never seen again.
The sightings in 1966 lasted around 14 months and hundreds of records were made to Police and media. Witnesses claimed they were visited by ‘men in black’ who warned them not to discuss what they had seen, leading to speculation of a mass cover up of whatever was happening in the area.
People report that the sightings of Mothman normally indicate that something awful and tragic is about to occur. Sadly, in the case of the Mothman sightings at Point Pleasant, this assumption came to be true when 46 people were killed and 8 were injured when the Silver Bridge collapsed at rush hour on December 15th, 1967.
A single eye bar at the top of the bridge gave way, leading to catastrophic bridge failure sending the cars and passengers into the ice cold river below.
In September 1978, a group of miners in Freidburg, Germany saw a tall, winged creature with piercing red eyes. At first they thought it was a person with a long trench coat, however once they looked at it more closely it became obvious this was no human being. The creature let out a huge blood curdling scream which sent the miners running in fear of their lives.
An hour after the sighting, miners felt an earthquake that caused parts of the mine to collapse. If it wasn’t for them fleeing from the Mothman creature, most would have been deep inside the mine and almost surely would have died.
Sightings were also reported by witnesses just before the planes hit the twin towers in New York on September 11th 2001, before the Fukushima earthquake that caused the nuclear incident in Japan, and prior to the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine. In all of these cases, some of the people who reported these incidents were purportedly visited by the ‘men in black’.
The sightings prior to Chernobyl were given the name of the ‘Chernobyl Blackbird’ by locals. Witnesses in this case reported having terrible nightmares in the days leading up to the disaster and when the sightings started.
Even as far back as 1926, South-Eastern China was plagued with sightings of a strange man like figure with wings who was nicknamed the “Man Dragon”. Locals frequently saw this figure hovering above the Xiaon Te Dam. Shortly after, the dam collapsed releasing 40 billion gallons of water into local farmland and villages resulting in the deaths of approximately 15,000 people.
In 2007, on 27 June in Minneapolis, several reports were made over the following 4 weeks of sightings of a creature “with wings as big as a Ford”. Reports even featured on a local radio show on Coast to Coast AM. Sadly, on 1 August, just over a month after the first sighting, the i-35 West Bridge collapsed during rush hour killing 13 and injuring 145 people. Terrifyingly, all the reports made were in very close proximity of the bridge.
So is the Mothman really linked somehow to warning us of impending tragedy? You have to ask yourself this question given the evidence there is out there. If so, then why then does the creature not make more of an effort to caution us?
And what links the creature to the men in black?
We have more questions than answers.
The Mothman legend still lives on in daily life in Point Pleasant. A huge statue commemorates the local legend and brings tourists from far and wide to try and get a sighting.
There is a Mothman museum and every September, locals hold a festival to celebrate the winged giant. Whilst sightings have diminished over the years, below are some of the images captured of the elusive Mothman.
