More Point Pleasant

Mothman arrived in Point Pleasant in November 1966 in classic style, scaring couples in parked cars and eating farmers' dogs. He was described as seven feet tall with a barrel chest and a piercing shriek. His most memorable features were his ten-foot batlike wings and his huge, red, glowing eyes. He hung around for over a year, building an impressive roster of over 100 fear-struck locals who claimed to have encountered him. Some people thought that Mothman was a mutant, spawned from local chemical and weapons dumps. Some thought that he was the "the curse of Chief Cornstalk," a Shawnee leader who had been treacherously murdered in Point Pleasant in 1777, and who had finally gotten around to exacting his revenge. Things got ugly on December 15, 1967, when the Silver Bridge, which connected Point Pleasant to neighboring Kanauga, Ohio, suddenly collapsed into the Ohio River, killing 46 people trapped in rush-hour traffic. Some claimed that the catastrophe was triggered by a sonic boom from Mothman's wings. Others believed that Mothman had been sent to warn the people of Point Pleasant, although his message was obviously lost in translation. Whatever the connection may have been, Mothman disappeared after the bridge fell down.