I’ve been investigating paranormal encounters since I was very young. Also, I frequently had incidents as I was very psychic. The story that follows was from an account made by a neighbor. I was part of the group that gathered, but I did not personally witness either the Mothman or Bigfoot. However, I was present the night the newspaper reporters showed up, they took a picture of the gathered group, which ended up on the front page of the local newspaper, and I was there near the front.

THE MONSTER SIGHTING ~ Part I

The Sighting by David was re-written, at his request, by me, Bill Thompson, lifelong friend and neighbor, when we were growing up until I went to college in 1964.

The first sighting occurred in late October or early November 1965. A friend, Al Lesko, picked Dave up in his Falcon. They went to Avalon Park to play basketball. They were playing HORSE, around 6:15 or 6:20

on a Sunday night when they saw someone running down the driveway from the picnic shelter. Al recognized him and asked him to stop. It was Denny Arnold, and he didn’t want to stop, but he did, after 2 or 3 more calls. Denny thought they were aliens! He was scared and wanted to get out of the area ASAP!

Denny told us what he saw that scared him. He came down to the park from his home on top of the hill above the park, known as Erdner Hill

or Avalon Heights. The park is a relatively narrow valley with a small stream running through its edges. He walked to the picnic shelter, entered it, and looked towards the parking lot next to the pool and basketball court. His eyes fell on two “things” he thought were a boy and girl on their way to the shelter to make out.

He quickly realized they didn’t look human! They were very tall and marched in unison. Their faces “looked like pipes stacked on top of each other.” (I interpret that as meaning stacked horizontally) They were a shiny black color all over, from head to toe. Scared, he ran behind

some piles of dirt, left by crews laying new sewer pipes. After 10 minutes or so, he started to get up to look around, then heard the two unknowns marching right past him. Denny thought they were looking for him.

They decided something was to his story and offered to drive him home. Denny wanted to go to the police, even though he was always in trouble with them. So they went to his home and talked to this mother and older brother, David, who had been in the Air Force as a mechanic for eight years. They asked his mother to call the police then returned to the park.

I went with Al and two others in his car while Denny rode in his brother’s Corvette. They laid tires and sped along the highway, noticing another

car following them and keeping up. Finally, they turned into the park and drove to the shelter. When they stopped there, they found out it was a police car that was following them, along with two others! Avalon, Bellevue, and Ben Avon were there!

The police got out with flashlights and looked around the immediate area but never ventured into the shelter. They looked for footprints but found none. (Dave thought that was a joke!) The police asked Denny what was going on. He described what he saw to the police. The police said he must be crazy or seeing things, and decided it was a wild goose chase and started to leave. Two cars had left, and the third was beginning to go when they heard a sound. Dave says it “sounded like a flying saucer taking off.”

The cop said it must have been a fan belt on a car on the road above the park, New Brighton Road. But Dave said no vehicles had passed by, or they would have seen their headlights. The cop then said it must have been a jet, but Denny’s brother disagreed, having been a mechanic in the Air Force and very familiar with their sounds. The cop got upset and angry over that suggestion, dismissed the whole thing, and left.

They were wondering what to do next because no one believed them! After Dave Arnold drove away in his car, they heard dogs barking on New Brighton Road, above the park. They got into Al’s car and went to where the noise they’d heard originated. They stopped at a house and asked the resident if his dogs were barking. He had heard nothing. They drove a little further up the road to where dogs were still barking.

The next house, where dogs were still barking, belonged to a black man who had a dog and a chicken coup in the rear. He said his dog never barked unless something was bothering him or something unusual happened. His dog had barked the previous Friday night, and he reported it to the police. He said he had tied up his dog hat night instead of on the wire run he had for it. He said he went and got his gun.

(Not sure if it was a rifle or shotgun.) He came back to the door to check on the coop and saw something huge, dashing away from the chicken coop into the woods. He fired a warning shot over its head, but it kept going. He inspected the cage, found the door lock, ripped off its hinges, and lay on the ground. Six of his eight chickens were missing. One was lying there with its head pulled off its body. Looking around, he found a footprint in his yard. It looked like a size 20 or bigger like it was wearing socks!

They then drove to New Brighton Road to Shannopin Drive, turned right, and drove to the Country Club. They went down the golf course road to look down into Avalon Park and saw the light in the park. There shouldn’t have been a light down there! It made them more nervous and suspicious. They drove around some more, then finally decided to call it a night.

They all had school the next day. Dave went to a trade school, and the other two went to high school. They planned to meet at Avalon High School the next night at 6:30 PM. They were to each bring a weapon of some kind! Dave told his parents the story, but they didn’t believe him. They told him to stay away from the park, to be on the safe side.

Dave, Denny, and Al met at the school as planned, around 6:30 PM. Dave carried a hammer but didn’t remember what the others brought with them. They walked down to the park. It was not far from the school. They saw someone, and it turned out to be Mr. Downey, a county detective, turning away people trying to enter the park. They walked past the entrance, where he was turning people away, up along New Brighton Road.

They cut back down a rather steep hill above the pool and some swings outside the pool. They watched the guard as he patrolled the park without him knowing they were there. Finally, they noticed he didn’t go past the picnic shelter. After they got tired of following him, they went about halfway up the hill to the back of the park. It was very dark, and they wondered what they would do if they encountered an alien!

Then, a car came up the hill (On New Brighton Road), and a guy jumped out. They went up to him and asked him what he was doing. He said he would check on traps he had set in the park! I think he was trying to trap fur-bearing animals, although there wasn’t much more than raccoons in the area, as far as I know). They told him Denny’s story, and he said to wait there; he’d be right back.

He got into his car, and his wife was driving. He left and came back a few minutes later. He brought back a revolver and a rifle and asked if they knew how to use either one. Denny said he did, and the man gave him the pistol. Dave still had his trusty hammer! Ha! Ha! (His words). Over the hill, they went! It was very steep, thick with shrubs, bushes, and trees. Very hard going!

At the bottom, the guy checked his traps, at least 10 of them. Something had tripped all of them! It looked like something big had ripped them apart! There was no sign anything had been caught, which was unusual. The guy thought it might have something to do with what Denny had seen.

Then, suddenly, they saw the light from the detective’s flashlight! They hid, hoping he wouldn’t see them. After around 10 minutes, he left.

The guy then re-set what raps were left. Some survived the destruction. Then, they all climbed back up to the road. The guy left( with his wife in their car?) Dave, Al, and Denny walked down the road, deciding to call it a night. They saw a red light cross the road very quickly, then back again as they walked. No two of them saw it simultaneously, but they all saw it. They could tell it was not a taillight from a car. So, they decided to try the next night again.

Tuesday night:

Dave and Al walked down to the park and saw the County Detective at the Park entrance again.

Wednesday night:

I decided it was too cold and rainy to go to the park.

Thursday night:

The weather cleared up somewhat but was still cool. Dave decided to sit on “the wall.” (The Wall was a famous landmark, the wall around the grade school, next to the high school. It was a popular place where kids would meet other kids, and boys would meet girls from the area. The grade school got torn down after officials condemned it because it was structurally unsound.) Al and Denny were not there, but everyone talked about the MONSTER IN THE PARK!

Some guys came to Dave and started talking about it with him. They decided to walk to the park for something to do. They walked there, but Dave doesn’t remember who, or how many, were with him. They walked through the park to the shelter, then out again, across New Brighton Road to a ballpark parking lot, and met two others coming down to see the monsters! Their names might have been Grandstaff (sp?) and King?). Dave repeated the story as he knew it, then they went to the park. The detective was no longer there.

Many girls were hanging out, hoping to see the monster! Dave repeated the whole story for them. The girls walked back to the shelter while the boys went up the road to come down the hill to try and scare the girls, but the girls heard them coming. They canvassed the area while they were there but saw nothing unusual.

Then, as they started to walk back to the bridge near the Park entrance, they saw red lights behind them around the shelter. The lights were jumping in and out of the bushes. Dave looked up and saw a pencil shape in the sky, “through the full moon .” It looked like the pointed end of a pencil. He looked for wires that might have interfered with his view, but there were none. He asked some of the group if they thought it was unusual, but they didn’t care!

They went to the bridge near the Park entrance, which crossed the stream as it exited the park, and stood on the bridge sidewalk, looking into the park. They had fun talking about the monster and trying to scare each other, staring, all the time, into the garden, paying particular attention to the basketball court. The wind was blowing, and the trees were making shadows on the court that appeared like people moving around the court like they were skating or playing basketball.

While watching the court, they noticed something climbing down the side of Erdner Hill. It crossed over a footbridge over the stream, then across the parking lot. It went behind the pool concession stand, where they lost it for a few seconds. They all looked in wonder at each other! They were all nervous now but kept looking for it. Finally, someone shouted, There it is!” It was climbing the far hillside (a very steep hillside!), about midway

down the swimming pool, along with a flagpole.

To Dave, it looked like a giant bear! A friend of Dave’s, Donnie Lampo, drove into the nearby parking lot. Dave stopped him and told him what was going on, but he didn’t believe him! Dave opened the car door and was ready to pull Donnie out and take his car! Dave was hoping to catch the creature in the car’s headlights.

Eventually, Donnie did drive on up New Brighton Road and caught the creature in the headlights! Stunned by the lights for a few seconds, it stood near a speed limit sign before turning and going back down the hill. Dave returned later to measure the road sign and found it 10 to 12 feet tall. He estimates the creature was two feet taller than the sign!

Dave and two others ran towards the concessions stand after returning to the parking lot. They came to within 10 feet of the creature! Dave was running “full steam” but couldn’t keep up with it! (He ran the 220-yard dash in high school and still couldn’t keep up!) He estimates it ran 300 yards in 3 seconds! What he saw was something tall, shinny, in all black clothing (?) (his question mark), with a head, two arms, and legs. They stopped running.

Then they heard the girl’s screams coming from the bridge. Dave began to think there were two creatures. That one had distracted them while the other went after the girls, so they returned to the bridge, where they found the girls were just scared for them. After a few minutes, they decided to leave. They advised the girls to go straight home.

Dave told the other two guys to go to the police station and ask them to come down and investigate the latest developments while he waited for the police to show up. (The police station was located right across the street from the grade school. All were not far from the park.) Dave waited for 20 minutes, but the police didn’t show. He decided to go to the police station himself. He reported what he saw and pointed out that he had never been in trouble with the police.

Dave asked if anyone else had stopped in to report what happened, and a lady said some girls, crying and scared, did. Dave insisted they send a car to investigate and said he had “to threaten her” before she tried to call someone. Dave went to the top of a hill overlooking the park and watched until a Bellevue Police car arrived. He went to the park to talk to the officer. He was an “old guy” who smoked a pipe. (now deceased). Dave asked where Avalon’s police were. He said they were on another call. Dave says, “Yeah, right! Eating at Perkin’s!”

The officer remained in his car, lighting, and puffing on his pipe. He said Dave saw a deer or a horse. There were horses on a nearby farm and deer in the woods around the park, but Dave knew they were not what he saw! Dave “yelled at the officer to do his job and drive (into) the park and check it out.” The officer drove to the basketball court, where Dave caught up.

The officer asked if there were any footprints. Dave told him he thought the ground was too frozen for prints (it was about 30 degrees Fahrenheit outside), and besides, the driveway was gravel. Dave told him to check out the woods by the shelter. The officer drove to the shelter house and got out. He showed his flashlight around and asked again about footprints. Then he declared Dave musty be a prankster and told him to go home. He got home around 8:30 or 9:30 PM. Dave started thinking: Maybe the “Monsters” let him go because they didn’t want to start something? He wondered if they were now watching him and might get him later? It was in the back of his mind for several months after that.

Friday afternoon:

Dave went down to the park after school to find many guys, as usual, playing basketball. They talked about the monster as the whole school and borough had heard about it by then. Al and Denny were upset by all of the publicity. So all the guys decided they would come back at 6 PM to go through the woods, find, and capture the monster! They were going to bring guns, knives, bows and arrows, and anything else they could muster. Dave wanted them to do it but didn’t want anyone hurt.

He decided to stop at the police station on his way home for supper, around 5 PM, and report it all to the police. He went back down to the park around 6 PM and found a considerable crowd gathered! The police were also there, chasing them out of the park! The police had confiscated many weapons, primarily knives, and a bow and arrows. The crowd gathered on New Brighton Road and the bridge. Dave looked into the sky, hoping to see aliens. Instead, he saw some bright objects hovering and others moving strangely! He pointed them out to several people, but again, no one cared!

A reporter from the local paper, The Suburban Life, sent a photographer to take pictures. She asked if anyone had seen the monster. Everyone pointed at Dave! She interviewed him, but the reporter wrote the story as fiction, as Dave saw it. The crowd stayed until around 7:30 when Dave left. He went to the wall to sit.

That night, there was a school dance, and someone told him Diane was waiting for him there. He went to the dance and joined Diane at a table

there. Her controlling, bossy girlfriend upset him, so he left and went back to the wall.

The police came over and asked him to come over to the station. There, an officer told him to go into the Chief’s office. The Chief, George Cain, was a friend from our church (and a friend of my father’s from their school days). He tried to convince Dave he saw a horse, bear, or deer, but Dave remained adamant about what he saw. The Chief asked him to stop spreading rumors. He went back to the wall for a short time, then went home.

Months later:

Dave tried to write this story. He thought it sounded childish. He wanted someone to re-write it for him, and I am now that someone, doing the best I can with it, based on what he wrote, which was just an outline.

The Chief called him into his office several times, trying to convince him he didn’t see what he saw and not talk about it. Eventually, Chief Cain retired, and Mr. Downey, the former county detective, took over.

Dave heard a segment on the Bill Burns News at noontime show on KDKA TV, the local CBS station. He also heard there were sightings of RED BIRDS, at about the same time reports of red lights were seen, although they were on Rt. 22/30, quite away from the park.

The-Monster-Story-Part-I-The-Sighting-Rotated-02202020_0011-1

MONSTER SIGHTING, Part II – The year 1973:

Dave was working at the Port Authority Transit garage in Ross Township. He was there about a year when they hired Bill Carney. At the time, Bill was a volunteer Avalon Borough fireman. He was around Dave’s age. The guys liked to swap stories about ghosts and UFOs, etc. Dave had told his story to the guys, but Carney’s story was new.

He said he was riding around Ben Avon Heights. (Above the Park, past Shannopin Country Club, which is also in Ben Avon Heights), Doug Furnier and Mercury Morris (Yes, THAT Mercury Morris played for the Super Bowl Miami Dolphins!). He went to school at Avonworth High School; a district formed out of Ben AVON and Emsworth boroughs.

It was sometime in November of 1965, while Morris was home on break from college. Suddenly, the whole dark sky turned bright! They saw a UFO, a round or oval shape, hovering over them, then it descended into Avalon Park. Carney looked at Morris, who was Black, and he “looked white as a ghost!” They all saw it and were all scared!

They tried to follow it but lost it. Morris and Carney told the police and mayor about it the police dismissed them. After that, they didn’t mention it anymore for fear of ridicule. Eventually, Bill Carney became Chief of the Avalon Volunteer Fire Department. He became influential and knew VIPs, but they told him to continue investigating it when he mentioned the incident! They implied that there was more to it than was let on. “Most were sworn to secrecy about (the) incident at the time it happened in 1965”.

Conclusion:

Both Carney’s story and Dave’s happened at about the same time. Lights and UFOs were involved in both tales. Authorities told both of them not to discuss it and saw things as if they were delusional.

Janet’s Comments & Questions:

1) These sightings pre-dated the West Virginia sightings by about a year. Is the author mistaken about the year the Avalon sighting in Pittsburgh happened?

2) It seems there were at least two creatures seen that fall, Mothman and Bigfoot. I’m not sure when Bigfoot sightings started to get famous. I’ll have to research that more.

3) I enjoyed reading about my hometown. The descriptions of the people and neighborhood are very accurate.

4) This account was written back when it happened in 1965 and was kept private due to the ridicule factor until my brother, and I talked about it, and he told me that David had seen it.

5) For years, I thought I had made this all up until the book came out, followed by the movie with Richard Gere.

6) Coincidentally, I once worked at the Avalon Motel, the same place Richard Gere and the other actors, directors, and crew stayed at when they made the film. I wasn’t there at the same time as I was only at the motel working as a maid for about a year when I was 18.

7) Since the bridge collapsed in West Virginia, why were they filming in Pittsburgh? The Avalon Motel is in a suburb of Pittsburgh.

8) The Avalon Motel was torn down around 2019 because it was falling over the hillside.

Mothman

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For other uses, see Mothman (disambiguation).

Artist’s impression of the Mothman
Other name(s)	Winged Man, Bird Man
Country	United States
Region	Point Pleasant, West Virginia

Mothman-Wikipedia

In West Virginia folklore, the Mothman is a humanoid creature reportedly seen in the Point Pleasant area from November 15, 1966, to December 15, 1967. The first newspaper report was published in the Point Pleasant Register, dated November 16, 1966, titled “Couples See Man-Sized Bird … Creature … Something”.^[1] The national press soon picked up the reports and helped spread the story across the United States.

The Mothman was introduced to a wider audience by Gray Barker in 1970,^[2][3] and was later popularized by John Keel in his 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies,^[4] claiming that there were supernatural events related to the sightings and a connection to the collapse of the Silver Bridge. The book was later adapted into a 2002 film, starring Richard Gere.^[5]

An annual festival in Point Pleasant is devoted to the Mothman legend.^[6]

History

On November 15, 1966, two young couples from Point Pleasant—Roger and Linda Scarberry, and Steve and Mary Mallette—told police they saw a large grey creature whose eyes “glowed red” when the car’s headlights picked it up. They described it as a “large flying man with ten-foot wings”, following their car while they were driving in an area outside of town known as “the TNT area“, the site of a former World War II munitions plant.^[7]^[8]

During the next few days, other people reported similar sightings. Two volunteer firemen who saw it said it was a “large bird with red eyes”. Mason County Sheriff George Johnson commented that he believed the sightings were due to an unusually large heron he termed a “shitepoke”. Contractor Newell Partridge told Johnson that when he aimed a flashlight at a creature in a nearby field, its eyes glowed “like bicycle reflectors”. Additionally, he blamed buzzing noises from his television set and the disappearance of his German Shepherd dog on the creature.^[9] Wildlife biologist Robert L. Smith at West Virginia University told reporters that descriptions and sightings all fit the sandhill crane, a large American crane almost as tall as a man with a seven-foot wingspan featuring circles of reddish coloring around the eyes. The bird may have wandered out of its migration route, and therefore was unrecognized at first because it was not native to this region.^[9]^[10]

Due to the popularity of the Batman TV series at the time, the fictional superhero Batman and his rogue’s gallery were prominently featured in the public eye. While the villain Killer Moth did not appear in the show, the comic book influence of both him and Batman is believed by some to have influenced the coinage of the name “Mothman” in the local newspapers.^[11]^[12]

Following the December 15, 1967, collapse of the Silver Bridge and the death of 46 people,^[13] the incident gave rise to the legend and connected the Mothman sightings to the bridge collapse.^[9]^[14]^[15]

The Mothman Prophecies (2002) is a major motion picture, loosely based on the 1975 book of the same name by John Keel.

According to Georgian newspaper Svobodnaya Gruziya, Russian UFOlogists claim that Mothman’s sightings in Moscow foreshadowed the 1999 Russian apartment bombings.^[16]

In 2016, WCHS-TV published a photo purported to be of Mothman taken by an anonymous man while driving on Route 2 in Mason County.^[17] Science writer Sharon A. Hill proposed that the photo showed “a bird, perhaps an owl, carrying a frog or snake away” and wrote that “there is zero reasons to suspect it is the Mothman as described in the legend. There are too many far more reasonable explanations.”^[10][18]

Analysis

Folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand notes that Mothman has been widely covered in the popular press, some claiming sightings connected with UFOs, and others claiming that a military storage site was Mothman’s “home”. Brunvand notes that recountings of the 1966–67 Mothman reports usually state that at least 100 people saw Mothman with much more “afraid to report their sightings” but observed that written sources for such stories consisted of children’s books or sensationalized or undocumented accounts that fail to quote identifiable persons. Brunvand found elements in common among many Mothman reports and much older folk tales, suggesting that something real may have triggered the scares and became woven with existing folklore. He also records anecdotal tales of Mothman supposedly attacking the roofs of parked cars occupied by teenagers.^[19]

Conversely, Joe Nickell says that a number of hoaxes followed the publicity generated by the original reports, such as a group of construction workers who tied flashlights to helium balloons. Nickell attributes the Mothman stories to sightings of barn owls, suggesting that the Mothman’s “glowing eyes” were actually red-eye effect caused by the reflection of light from flashlights or other bright light sources.^[18][7] Benjamin Radford points out that the only report of glowing “red eyes,” was secondhand, that of Shirley Hensley quoting her father.^[20]

According to University of Chicago psychologist David A. Gallo, 55 sightings of Mothman in Chicago during 2017 published on the website of self-described Fortean researcher Lon Strickler are “a selective sample”. Gallo explains that “he’s not sampling random people and asking if they saw the Mothman – he’s just counting the number of people that voluntarily came forward to report a sighting.” According to Gallo, “people more likely to visit a paranormal-centric website like Strickler’s might also be more inclined to believe in, and therefore witness the existence of, a ‘Mothman’.”^[21]

Some pseudoscience adherents (such as ufologists, paranormal authors, and cryptozoologists) claim that Mothman was an alien, a supernatural manifestation, or a previously unknown species of animal. In his 1975 book, Keel claimed that the Point Pleasant residents experienced precognitions including premonitions of the collapse of the Silver Bridge, UFO sightings, visits from inhuman or threatening men in black, and other phenomena.^[22]

Festival and statues

Point Pleasant held its first Annual Mothman Festival in 2002. The Mothman Festival began after brainstorming creative ways for people to visit Point Pleasant. The group organizing the event chose the Mothman to be the center of the festival due to its uniqueness, and as a way to celebrate its local legacy in the town.^[23]

According to the event organizer Jeff Wamsley, the average attendance for the Mothman is an estimated 10–12 thousand people per year.^[23] A 12-foot-tall metallic statue of the creature, created by artist and sculptor Bob Roach, was unveiled in 2003. The Mothman Museum and Research Center opened in 2005.^[24]^[25]^[26] The festival is held on the third weekend of every September, hosting guest speakers, vendor exhibits, pancake-eating contests, and hayride tours of locally notable areas.^[14]

References

^ “Couples See Man-Sized Bird…Creature…Something”. Point Pleasant Register. Point Pleasant, WV: WestVA.Net, Mark Turner. November 16, 1966. Archived from the original on October 11, 2007. Retrieved January 27, 2012.
^ Skeptical Inquirer, Volume 33 (Pennsylvania State University, Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. 2009)
^ Gray Barker, The Silver Bridge (Saucerian Books, 1970). Reprinted in 2008 entitled The Silver Bridge: The Classic Mothman Tale (BookSurge Publishing). ISBN 1-4392-0427-6
^ Keel, John A. The Mothman Prophecies (2007). ISBN 0-7653-4197-2 (Originally published in 1975 by Saturday Review Press)
^ Meehan, Paul (2009). Cinema of the Psychic Realm: A Critical Survey, p. 130. McFarland & Company, Inc. ISBN 978-0-7864-3966-9
^ “Mothman Festival”.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Nickell, Joe (2004). The Mystery Chronicles: More Real-Life X-Files. University Press of Kentucky. pp. 93–. ISBN 978-0-8131-2318-9. Retrieved August 21, 2011.
^ “Munitions Risk Closes Part of Wildlife Area Again”. Retrieved February 8, 2012.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c Associated Press (December 1, 1966). “Monster Bird With Red Eyes May Be Crane”. Gettysburg Times. Retrieved August 21, 2011.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Palma, Bethania. “Mothman About Town”. Snopes.com. Snopes. Retrieved January 18, 2017.
^ Cassandra Eason (2008). Fabulous Creatures, Mythical Monsters, and Animal Power Symbols: A Handbook. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 15–. ISBN 978-0-275-99425-9.
^ Richard Moreno (August 6, 2013). Myths and Mysteries of Illinois: True Stories of the Unsolved and Unexplained. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 142–. ISBN 978-1-4930-0231-3.
^ LeRose, Chris. “The Collapse of the Silver Bridge”. West Virginia Historical Society Quarterly. West Virginia Division of Culture and History. Retrieved September 24, 2014.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Associated Press (January 19, 2008). “Mothman’ still a frighteningly big draw for tourists”. Toronto Star. Retrieved August 21, 2011.
^ “Eight People Say They Saw ‘Creature'”. Williamson Daily News. Williamson, WV. United Press International. November 18, 1966. Retrieved August 22, 2011.
^ Lobkov, Denis (May 23, 2002). Призраки катастроф. Zheltaya Gazeta via Svobodnaya Gruziya (in Russian). (English translation of the article.)
^ Pierson, Fallon (November 21, 2016). “Man photographs creature that resembles legendary Mothman” of Point Pleasant”. WCHS-TV news. WCHS. Retrieved January 18, 2017.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Elbein, Asher (October 26, 2018). “Is the Mothman of West Virginia an Owl?”. Audubon.org. Archived from the original on October 27, 2018. Retrieved October 30, 2018.
^ Brunvand, Jan Harold (1994). The Baby Train and Other Lusty Urban Legends. W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 98–. ISBN 978-0-393-31208-9.
^ Radford, Benjamin (May–June 2020). “Investigating Mothman’s Red Eyeshine”. Skeptical Inquirer. 44: 29–31.
^ Terry, Josh (January 17, 2018). “People Keep Seeing the Mothman in Chicago”. Vice.
^ Clark, Jerome (2000). Extraordinary Encounters: An Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrials and Otherworldly Beings. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-Clio, ISBN 1-57607-249-5, pp. 178–179.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b “Mothman Festival returns Sept. 21–22”. www.mydailyregister.com – The Point Pleasant Register. September 6, 2019. Retrieved October 7, 2020.
^ Mothman Statue
^ Moran, Mark; Sceurman, Mark; Lake, Matt (2008). Weird U.S. The ODDyssey Continues – Your Travel Guide to America’s Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets, p. 260. New York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. ISBN 978-1-4027-4544-7
^ “Legend of the Mothman” plaque on the base of the statue

External links

Media related to Mothman at Wikimedia Commons
Dunning, Brian (June 23, 2009). “Skeptoid #159: The Mothman Cometh”. Skeptoid.

Categories:

MOTHMAN! THE ENIGMA OF POINT PLEASANT

https://www.americanhauntingsink.com/moth?rq=mothman

“Mothman”, as the strange creature came to be called, is perhaps one of the strangest creatures to ever grace the annals of weirdness in America. Even though this mysterious and unsolved case has nothing to do with ghosts, it would be remiss of me to not include it in a section of the website about the unexplained.

The weird events connected to the Mothman began on November 12, 1966, near Clendenin, West Virginia. Five men were in the local cemetery that day, preparing a grave for burial when something that looked like a “brown human being” lifted off from some nearby trees and flew over their heads. The men were baffled. It did not appear to be a bird, but more like a man with wings. A few days later, more sightings would take place, electrifying the entire region.

Late in the evening of November 15, two young married couples had a very strange encounter as they drove past an abandoned TNT plant near Point Pleasant, West Virginia. The couples spotted two large eyes that were attached to something that was “shaped like a man, but bigger, maybe six or seven feet tall. And it had big wings folded against its back”. When the creature moved toward the plant door, the couple panicked and sped away. Moments later, they saw the same creature on a hillside near the road. It spread its wings and rose into the air, following with their car, which by now was traveling at over 100 miles per hour. “That bird kept right up with us,” said one of the group. They told Deputy Sheriff Millard Halstead that it followed them down Highway 62 and right to the Point Pleasant city limits. And they would not be the only ones to report the creature that night. Another group of four witnesses claimed to see the “bird” three different times!

Another sighting had more bizarre results. At about 10:30 on that same evening, Newell Partridge, a local building contractor who lived in Salem (about 90 miles from Point Pleasant), was watching television when the screen suddenly went dark. He stated that a weird pattern filled the screen and then he heard loud, whining sounds from outside that raised in pitch and then ceased. “It sounded like a generator winding up” he later stated. Partridge’s dog, Bandit, began to howl out on the front porch and Newell went out to see what was going on.

When he walked outside, he saw Bandit facing the hay barn, about 150 yards from the house. Puzzled, Partridge turned a flashlight in that direction and spotted two red circles that looked like eyes or “bicycle reflectors”. They moving red orbs were certainly not animal’s eyes, he believed, and the sight of them frightened him. Bandit, an experienced hunting dog and protective of his territory shot off across the yard in pursuit of the glowing eyes. Partridge called for him to stop, but the animal paid no attention. His owner turned and went back into the house for his gun, but then was too scared to go back outside again. He slept that night with his gun propped up next to the bed. The next morning, he realized that Bandit had disappeared. The dog had still not shown up two days later when Partridge read in the newspaper about the sightings in Point Pleasant that night.

One statement that he read in the newspaper chilled him to the bone. Roger Scarberry, one member of the group who spotted the strange “bird” at the TNT plant, said that as they entered the city limits of Point Pleasant, they saw the body of a large dog lying on the side of the road. A few minutes later, on the way back out of town, the dog was gone. They even stopped to look for the body, knowing they had passed it just a few minutes before. Newell Partridge immediately thought of Bandit, who was never seen again.

On November 16, a press conference was held in the county courthouse and the couples from the TNT plant sighting repeated their story. Deputy Halstead, who had known the couples all of their lives, took them very seriously. “They’ve never been in any trouble,” he told investigators and had no reason to doubt their stories. Many of the reporters who were present for the weird recounting felt the same way. The news of the strange sightings spread around the world. The press dubbed the odd flying creature “Mothman”, after a character from the popular Batman television series of the day.

The remote and abandoned TNT plant became the lair of the Mothman in the months ahead and it could not have picked a better place to hide in. The area was made up of several hundred acres of woods and large concrete domes where high explosives were stored during World War II. A network of tunnels honeycombed the area and made it possible for the creature to move about without being seen. In addition to the manmade labyrinth, the area was also comprised of the McClintic Wildlife Station, a heavily forested animal preserve filled with woods, artificial ponds, and steep ridges and hills. Much of the property was almost inaccessible and without a doubt, Mothman could have hidden for weeks or months and remained totally unseen. The only people who ever wandered there were hunters and fishermen and the local teenagers, who used the rutted dirt roads of the preserve as “lover’s lanes”.

Very few homes could be found in the region, but one dwelling belonged to the Ralph Thomas family. On November 16, they spotted a “funny red light” in the sky that moved and hovered above the TNT plant. “It wasn’t an airplane”, Mrs. Marcella Bennett (a friend of the Thomas family) said, “but we couldn’t figure out what it was.” Mrs. Bennett drove to Thomas’s house a few minutes later and got out of the car with her baby. Suddenly, a figure stirred near the automobile. “It seemed as though it had been lying down,” she later recalled. “It rose up slowly from the ground. A big gray thing. Bigger than a man with terrible glowing eyes.”

Mrs. Bennett was so horrified that she dropped her little girl! She quickly recovered, picked up her child, and ran to the house. The family locked everyone inside but hysteria gripped them as the creature shuffled onto the porch and peered into the windows. The police were summoned, but the Mothman had vanished by the time the authorities had arrived.

Mrs. Bennett would not recover from the incident for months and was in fact so distraught that she sought medical attention to deal with her anxieties. She was tormented by frightening dreams and later told investigators that she believed the creature had visited her own home too. She said that she could often hear keening sounds (like a woman screaming) near her isolated home on the edge of Point Pleasant.

Many would come to believe that the sightings of Mothman, as well as UFO sightings and encounters with “men in black” in the area, were all related. For nearly a year, strange happenings continued in the area. Researchers, investigators, and “monster hunters” descended on the area but none so famous as author John Keel, who has written extensively about Mothman and other unexplained anomalies. He has written for many years about UFOs but dismisses the standard “extraterrestrial” theories of the mainstream UFO movement. For this reason, he has been a controversial figure for decades. According to Keel, man has had a long history of interaction with the supernatural. He believes that the intervention of mysterious strangers in the lives of historic personages like Thomas Jefferson and Malcolm X provides evidence of the continuing presence of the “gods of old”. The manifestation of these elder gods comes in the form of UFOs and aliens, monsters, demons, angels, and even ghosts. He has remained a colorful character to many and yet remains respected in the field for his research and fascinating writings.

Keel became the major chronicler of the Mothman case and wrote that at least 100 people personally witnessed the creature between November 1966 and November 1967. According to their reports, the creature stood between five and seven feet tall, was wider than a man, and shuffled on human-like legs. Its eyes were set near the top of the shoulders and had bat-like wings that glided, rather than flapped when it flew. Strangely though, it was able to ascend straight up “like a helicopter”. Witnesses also described its murky skin as being either gray or brown and it emitted a humming sound when it flew. The Mothman was apparently incapable of speech and gave off a screeching sound. Mrs. Bennett stated that it sounded like a “woman screaming”.

John Keel arrived in Point Pleasant in December 1966 and immediately began collecting reports of Mothman sightings and even UFO reports from before the creature was seen. He also compiled evidence that suggested a problem with televisions and phones that began in the fall of 1966. Lights had been seen in the skies, particularly around the TNT plant, and cars that passed along the nearby road sometimes stalled without explanation. He and his fellow researchers also uncovered a number of short-lived poltergeist cases in the Ohio Valley area. Locked doors opened and closed by themselves, strange thumps were heard inside and outside of homes, and often, inexplicable voices were heard. The James Lilley family, who lived just south of the TNT plant, were so bothered by the bizarre events that they finally sold their home and moved to another neighborhood. Keel was convinced that the intense period of activity was all connected.

And stranger things still took place….. A reporter named Mary Hyre, who was the Point Pleasant correspondent for the Athens, Ohio newspaper the Messenger, also wrote extensively about the local sightings. In fact, after one very active weekend, she was deluged with over 500 phone calls from people who saw strange lights in the skies. One night in January 1967, she was working late in her office in the county courthouse and a man walked in the door. He was very short and had strange eyes that were covered with thick glasses. He also had long, black hair that was cut squarely “like a bowl haircut”. Hyre said that he spoke in a low, halting voice and he asked for directions to Welsh, West Virginia. She thought that he had some sort of speech impediment and for some reason, he terrified her. “He kept getting closer and closer to me, “ she said, “ and his funny eyes were staring at me almost hypnotically.”

Alarmed, she summoned the newspaper’s circulation manager to her office, and together, they spoke to the strange little man. She said that at one point in the discussion, she answered the telephone when it rang and she noticed the little man pick up a pen from her desk. He looked at it in amazement, “as if he had never seen a pen before.” Then, he grabbed the pen, laughed loudly, and ran out of the building.

Several weeks later, Hyre was crossing the street near her office and saw the same man on the street. He appeared to be startled when he realized that she was watching him, turned away quickly, and ran for a large black car that suddenly came around the corner. The little man climbed in and it quickly drove away.

The Silver Bridge (Photo Courtesy of William Wright)

By this time, most of the sightings had come to an end and Mothman had faded away into the strange “twilight zone” from which he had come… but the story of Point Pleasant had not yet ended. At around 5:00 in the evening on December 15, 1967, the 700-foot bridge linking Point Pleasant to Ohio suddenly collapsed while filled with rush hour traffic. Dozens of vehicles plunged into the dark waters of the Ohio River and 46 people were killed. Two of those were never found and the other 44 are buried together in the town cemetery of Gallipolis, Ohio.

On that same tragic night, the James Lilley family (who still lived near the TNT plant at that time) counted more than 12 eerie lights that flashed above their home and vanished into the forest.

The collapse of the Silver Bridge made headlines all over the country and Mary Hyre went days without sleep as reporters and television crews from everywhere descended on the town. The local citizens were stunned with horror and disbelief and the tragedy is still being felt today.

During Christmas week, a short, dark-skinned man entered the office of Mary Hyre. He was dressed in a black suit, with a black-tie, and she said that he looked vaguely Oriental. He had high cheekbones, narrow eyes, and an unidentified accent. He was not interested in the bridge disaster, she said but wanted to know about local UFO sightings. Hyre was too busy to talk with him and she handed her a file of related press clipping instead. He was not interested in them and insisted on speaking with her. She finally dismissed him from her office.

That same night, an identically described man visited the homes of several witnesses in the area who had reported seeing the lights in the sky. He made all of them very uneasy and uncomfortable and while he claimed to be a reporter from Cambridge, Ohio, he inadvertently admitted that he did not know where Columbus, Ohio was even though the two towns are just a few miles apart.

So who was Mothman and what was behind the strange events in Point Pleasant?

Whatever the creature may have been, it seems clear that Mothman was no hoax. There were simply too many credible witnesses who saw “something”. It was suggested at the time that the creature may have been a sandhill crane, which while they are not native to the area, could have migrated south from Canada. That was one explanation anyway, although it was one that was rejected by Mothman witnesses, who stated that what they saw looked nothing like a crane.

But there could have been a logical explanation for some of the sightings. Even John Keel (who believed the creature was genuine) suspected that a few of the cases involved people who were spooked by recent reports and saw owls flying along deserted roads at night. Even so, Mothman remains hard to easily dismiss. The case is filled with an impressive number of multiple-witness sightings by individuals that were deemed reliable, even by law enforcement officials.

But if Mothman was real… and he truly was some unidentified creature that cannot be explained, what was behind the UFO sightings, the poltergeist reports, the strange lights, sounds, the “men in black” and most horrifying, the collapse of the Silver Bridge?

John Keel believes that Point Pleasant was a “window” area, a place that was marked by long periods of strange sightings, monster reports, and the coming and going of unusual persons. He states that it may be wrong to blame the collapse of the bridge on the local UFO sightings, but the intense activity in the area at the time does suggest some sort of connection. Others have pointed to another supernatural link to the strange happenings, blaming the events on the legendary Cornstalk Curse that was placed on Point Pleasant in the 1770s. (Click Here to Discover the details about the Cornstalk Curse)

And if such things can happen in West Virginia, then why not elsewhere in the country? Can these “window” areas explain other phantom attackers, mysterious creatures, mad gassers, and more that have been reported all over America? Perhaps they can, but to consider this, we have to consider an even more chilling question… where will the next “window” area be? It might be of benefit to study your local sightings and weird events a little more carefully in the future!

Richard Gere Slept Here

Review of Avalon Motor Inn

Reviewed June 12, 2016, via mobile

The owner was down to earth and was straightforward about it being older and a no-frills sort of place and then I glanced at a few pictures on the wall and saw a man with silvery hair who I thought was quite fetching and looked familiar. The owner told me that it was Richard Gere. It totally looked like him I just didn’t want to be that girl if it wasn’t.

He filmed “The Mothman” there and stayed in Room 22 in the movie. I motioned with my eyes but knew it was better I was on the first floor. I paid the $49 dollars and proceeded to my room. Please make sure you have your ID and your license plate number. The room was old-fashioned and quaint.

I slept like Rip Van Winkle and was ready for the road this morning! Thanks, Richard Gere for leaving your mark on the Avalon. The film was most likely on Rhonda Sheer’s “Up All Night” and made for this awesome story.

Date of stay: June 2016

https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g52574-d1636789-r381821714-Avalon_Motor_Inn-Eighty_Four_Pennsylvania.html

NOTE: The Avalon Motel is no more. The hillside was claiming the back end of the motel so it was torn down. I worked there when I was 18-19, so I have a lot of fond memories.