The Legend Of Mothman

Point Pleasant rests on the Ohio river at the mouth of the Kanawaha river. The primary economy has been what the typical river commerce can bring, grain and Bauxite being the two primary payloads traveling the Ohio. During WWII there was a major spurt in employment due to the West Virginia Ordnance Works (WVOW) plant being built an operated just north of town. The military facility provided 3500 jobs at it's peak capacity, but only panned out four years as the facility was closed during the post-war era.

After the plant's closing, the facility and the eight-thousand acres it sat on was parceled out to various public and private entities. It also became a popular 'parking' area and it was here that the legend of Mothman was birthed.

November 15 1966, two young married couples were at the lover's lane when they claim to have seen two glowing red eyes in the brambles near the car. When they turned the headlights on, a creature they described as six and a half to seven tall was standing not far off. They also described the creature as 'bird like' with two massive wings folded behind its back.

Freaked, they sped off towards town. The creature supposedly followed them at speeds upwards of one-hundred miles an hour, but veered off as the couples' car reached the edge of town.

Reaching the Sheriff's office, they explained what happened and what they saw. A deputy was Dispatched the WVOM, whereupon arriving at the scene of the intial sighting, the deputy claims that his radio first was first filled with static and then went dead, but no creature.

During the next thirteen months there were several sightings and run ins with this daunting figure that became known as the Mothman. Missing dogs, mutilated cattle, and sightings that included harassment. One incident involved the creature walking onto someone's porch as they phoned the Sheriff. Several others claimed to have been chased by the imposing creature at great speeds.

But there's more. Not only was there a number of Mothman run-ins, but the number of UFO sightings in that area were so numerous that the local newspaper discontinued any reporting of them. There were also reports of encounters with mysterious Men In Black (MIB) in the area. The MIB phenomenon is a common occurrence surrounding enhanced UFO sightings over the years.

After the collapse of the Silver Bridge, the sightings wanned into non-existence.

The height of the Christmas season, 1967. Friday evening and traffic was heavy. Workers going home, holiday well wishers on their way out, and last minute shoppers filled the Silver Bridge that spanned the Ohio between Point Pleasant, West Virginia and Gallia County Ohio. A traffic light went through its motions and rested on red.

Just over one minute past five o'clock p.m. December 17th, 1967, The Silver Bridge was in the Ohio River taking with it forty-six lives.

The Bridge

The Silver Bridge was built in 1928 and was a Rocker Tower suspension bridge. The two towers along the span of the bridge are designed to 'sway' under load. At the time of the the bridge's construction, that particular design had been around for roughly a century. The glaring difference in the Silver Bridge's construction and previous incarnations of the same design, lies in the engineering of the 'eyebars'. The redundancy of the eybar design was low compared to earlier bridges.

Redundancy in engineering is the replication of critical components to ensure stability, functionality, or safety of a system. If one component fails there are back ups to keep the project working. The Silver Bridge eyebars were made of a much stronger steel than the earlier systems, so instead of having six pieces of material stacked and woven to construct each eyebar, there were only two.

It should also be noted that in the span of the less than forty years from construction to collapse, the average weight of the automobile grew nearly three-hundred percent.

The Official Truth

As you may have guessed by now, the official finding was that there was a failure in a single eyebar. It was found that an eyebar on the Ohio side of the river had structural stress, most likely induced during manufacturing. Over the years of increasing load a crack formed. The crack was .1 of an inch deep when it finally broke in a brittle fashion at exactly five o'clock that fateful December evening.

Low redundancy being what it is, a chain reaction started. First, the opposing eyebar suffered a ductile break, the ensuing sway caused an eyebar across the span to slip from it's pin and the rest is a morbid history.

The First Alternate Truth?

November 10th, 1777 in the Revolutionary fort at Point Pleasant, a murder took place. Chief Cornstalk of the Shawnee nation had been allowed into the fort in his solitary attempt to gain a peace between the white settlers and the rival native nations.

There was an alleged skirmish near the river where several of the settlers were killed. This brought an angry group of citizens to Cornstalk's quarters where they murdered him. Legend has it that his last gasp contained a curse. A curse that he invoked to span two hundred years and cover the entire area in around Point Pleasant. One hundred and ninety years and more than several minor disasters later, the curse reached its catastrophic climax.

So some believe.

The Second Alternate Truth?

The Mothman was pissed. Quite simply mad. Somehow he (or maybe it was a Mothwoman?) was trapped in some parapsychological portal in the area of Point Pleasant. The heightened UFO activity and reported paranormal incidents all point to the months leading up to the bridge's demise, indicating that quite possibly he was trying to get home, but was barred by his discovery before he could have been found by his UFO flight crew.

The Mothman sightings died off shortly after the bridge collapse. And with the sightings went the UFOs, the disappearing dogs, and mutilated cattle.

Along with many river towns in America, Point Pleasant is dying. Holding onto whatever they can to get that last ray of sunshine. The scale of river economy is too huge of a burden for the small community to bear as payloads are trucked to larger cities that can sustain larger terminals. The smaller cities whither on the vine.

Point Pleasant's prestige of being the site of the first official battle during the American Revolutionary war could not sustain life for the town.

In 2002, a major motion picture starring Richard Gere was released. The film was based a book written by John Keel by the name of The Mothman Prophecies,
and some of the film was shot on location. The town, the county AND the state of West Virginia jumped all over that horse. Museums, statues, a new convention center, and an annual festival all dedicated to he fond and loving memories of the Mothman.

The second time I rode Apache Rose (well, actually the motorcycle has a mind of its own and allows me to hold onto the handle bars), into Point Pleasant, it was for the festival. The town was alive. Almost crowded. Everyone wanted to tell their tale of the Mothman or how close they got to that "Gere feller."

Well, almost everyone. It seems the employees over at the Cornstalk Memorial state park really didn't care for all that commotion about some made up creature. "Pffft! T'warnt nothin' but one of them big ol' Sandhill cranes," one park attendant told me as she was scornfully protecting her own legend.

I think she was jealous.

Yeah, I believe. And so should every person (even the state park employees) who lives in or near Point Pleasant. The Mothman is their only ray of hope for the time being.

Cryptid sightings have been part of human history since we began to record it. Dragons, Yeti, and strange sea faring monsters have all been reported. Whether or not the creatures truly exist is a matter that will always be disputed.

Author/Reviewer, Carrie White is blogging about Cryptid sightings. She is writing more than about the sightings as she takes us on journies where we are asked real questions about the possibilities of such creatures.

Read Carries' blog at Cryptic Sightings

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