What happened
On November 15, 1966, two young couples from Point Pleasant – Roger and Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Mallette – reported to the police that by the road next to the so-called TNT area, the site of a former World War II munitions plant, they had seen a large, dark figure with glowing red eyes. Linda described it as a slender, muscular “man” over 2 meters tall, with white wings. As they fled at about 160 km/h, they reportedly saw the being take to the air and keep pace with the car all the way to the city limits. The next day the local newspaper wrote of a “man-sized bird,” and in the following weeks reports multiplied. The press named the creature Mothman. The series of sightings is associated with the period up to December 1967, when the Silver Bridge over the Ohio River collapsed, killing 46 people.
Witnesses
Roger and Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Mallette; in the following weeks other residents of Mason County, including two volunteer firefighters.
Explanations and hypotheses
Biologist Robert L. Smith of West Virginia University suggested as early as 1966 that the witnesses had seen a sandhill crane – a bird nearly as tall as a person, with red skin around its eyes, which might have strayed from its migration route. Others pointed to herons, and Joe Nickell to a barred owl, whose eyes reflect headlights. The link to the bridge disaster was added by book authors, first Gray Barker and then John Keel in “The Mothman Prophecies” (1975). Today Point Pleasant holds an annual festival and has a Mothman museum.
Disputed A likely explanation exists, but some of the facts are still disputed.
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