The Mothman Prophecies

-- They are not from Outer Space, there is no need for them to be. They have always been here. - John A. Keel --

Origin: Point Pleasant, West Virginia, USA

Description: Between 6 and 7 feet tall. A clumsy runner but adept at gliding. Very fast with bright red eyes and 10 foot wings. At first it was thought to be a bird man, until later sightings confirmed it to be more like a moth-man hence the name.

First Sighting: November 15, 1966

Proven to be: Unkown

The first spotting of Mothman was by a set of couples driving home one night in gloomy November. What they first thought to be a large man in the road turned to face them with inhumanely large red eyes. The driver of the vehicle panicked driving away from the strange man only for him to run and then fly after them. Ever since this initial sighting, Point Pleasant has been plagued by the Mothman. From stealing local dogs to causing minor disturbances, Mothman was a minor annoyance that plagued the people of Point Pleasant. This local nuisance was never seen as anything more than that until 1975.

Almost ten years exactly after the original sightings of Mothman, John Keel published his book called 'The Mothman Prophecies. This book outlined the stories of the locals from point pleasant and connected Mothman to his theories of UFOs and aliens in America. Keel also connects Mothman to the collapse of the silver bridge, saying that eyewitnesses spotted the creature near the bridge the night before. The silver bridge collapse was a local tragedy in which the main bridge leading out of Point Pleasant suddenly collapsed, killing 40 people.

The book currently has a rating of 3.5 on Goodreads and according to reviews actually features very little sightings or insights into Mothman. This book was the initial launch of Mothman into the international spotlight where he has remained during the digital cryptid renaissance. .

Much has been speculated about the Mothman since Keel's book, some believe that the sightings were nothing more than an overblown strange encounter that the city used as an advertising ploy. Others see this urban legend as a manifestation of the fears of small-town America during the height of the cold war. Scholar Johnathan Gritter discussed this Mothman theory in 2021. Although Gritter is not a cryptid believer, he thinks that there was something in Point Pleasant that people were seeing, something they couldn't identify or explain. But after the Silver bridge collapse, the small town moved on to more important matters. Now that the tragedy is several decades behind them, Point Pleasant has come to embraced Mothman not as a monster but as a local hero. Mothman is celebrated with a commemorative statue and within a museum which hosts a breadth of Mothman-related information and merchandise.