11/16/2021
MOTHMAN ATTACKS!
On the night of November 15, 1966, 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 couples 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 along 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 members 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 p.m. 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 a loud, whining sound from outside. 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." 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 same 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 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 apparently 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 the Thomas 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 often heard a keening sound --- 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, which occurred over the course of the months that followed, were all related. For over a year, strange happenings continued in the area. Researchers, investigators, and “monster hunters” descended on the area, and it was said 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.”
The Mothman was probably last seen in late November 1967, but the story of weird happenings in Point Pleasant had not yet ended. At around 5:00 p.m. on December 15, 1967, the 700-foot Silver 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.
The collapse of the Silver Bridge made headlines all over the country. The local citizens were stunned with horror and disbelief, and for many, the tragedy is still being felt today. There were many people – perhaps most people in the area – who believed that the Mothman sightings, the bizarre events, and the reports of strange lights were somehow connected to the collapse of the bridge. Some saw the earlier events as a warning or premonition of the deadly accident to come. Others believed that the Mothman was directly responsible for the horror. A few even insist that the creature was seen near the bridge just minutes before the collapse occurred.
So, who – or what – was the 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.” But what he was – and why the region was and still is, plagued by strange anomalies – remains a mystery.
