My great aunt lives in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. When I was a kid, my family took vacations to stay for a week or two in her large house which sat on thirty acres of land. The home has a very picturesque and rural southern design: three stories with a large screened-in sitting room, an in-ground pool, tire swing, fields to the front bordered by a stream with a small footbridge, and a steep hill in the back that led into the dense woods. You really can’t get much more quaint and small town than Point Pleasant, WV. Its people are salt-of-the-Earth and kind. Everyone knows everyone else, and life moves a bit slower. But even as a child, before I knew about the town’s history, it felt off. It always felt like something was watching.
The history of Point Pleasant is so much more than a flying cryptid with glowing red eyes. Long before the Mothman, the Ohio River valley residents believed the land to be haunted due to the Chief Cornstalk curse. Cornstalk was the leader of the Shawnee nation during the 1700s and tried to keep his people neutral before and during the Revolutionary War. He made a diplomatic journey to Fort Randolph in Point Pleasant, but was detained by the fort commander when his party arrived.
When a fort militiaman was killed by unknown Native Americans, angry soldiers came for vengeance. Cornstalk’s captors tried to stop them, but in the end he, his son, and two others in his group were brutally murdered in blind retaliation. The legend goes that Cornstalk cursed the land with his dying breath, “I came to the fort as your friend and you murdered me. You have murdered by my side, my young son. For this, may the curse of the Great Spirit rest upon this land. May it be blighted by nature. May it even be blighted in its hopes. May the strength of its peoples be paralyzed by the stain of our blood.”
Ufologist and author of The Mothman Prophecies, John Keel, had been spending a lot of time in Point Pleasant and the Ohio River valley around 1966 due to multiple reportings of strange lights in the sky. Keel teamed up with local news reporter, Mary Hyre, when interviewing witnesses or chasing down unexplained phenomena. They, along with many local residents, would frequently witness strange lights bobbing up and down over the hills seemingly with a penchant for ancient Native American mounds. Even to veteran tugboat operators along the Ohio River, these lights became just a normal part of the skyscape.
Along with the lights people witnessed came weird telephone calls. Sometimes static, beeping, or even metallic voices rapidly speaking what sounded like a foreign language. One family in particular seemed to be haunted after these lights started nightly fly-overs of their home. Cabinet doors slammed in the middle of the night. Loud metallic sounds rang out as if a pan were falling from a great height. A phantom baby cried somewhere within the house. The shadow of a man sometimes stood over the bed of the teenage daughter.
It wasn’t until November 16, 1966 that paranormal activities made national headlines for Point Pleasant. An abandoned World War II munitions factory, known locally as the TNT plant, was a local hang for teenagers. Late on November 15, two young couples drove to their usual spot looking for something to do as they drove around the empty roads of the facility. When they pulled up to the main building, they were struck by these two bright red circles looking back at them.
They stared in shock as the thing moved and seemed to be a large animal. One of them described, “it was shaped like a man but bigger. Maybe six and a half or seven feet tall. And it had big wings folded on its back.” The thing turned slowly and shuffled towards an open door of the facility on manlike legs. Only then were they snapped back to their senses and the driver spun onto the exit road and sped away. To their horror, the thing was following them. It was flying over their car and it wasn’t flapping its wings. The creature followed them to the city limits and then vanished. They drove straight to the county courthouse and frantically relayed the event to the sheriff deputy who knew them and believed their fear.
This sighting wasn’t the first and it was far from the last; over one hundred sightings were reported before the end. Reportings of a tall manlike creature with massive wings and horrible glowing red eyes plagued the town for the next year. Stories such as an experienced hunting dog barking wildly at something unnatural in the trees before giving chase and never returning, glowing red eyes peering into windows late at night or watching people from afar, and a giant manlike bird flying over the local airfield.
Several people contracted conjunctivitis after these close encounters with bright unknown lights or the terrifying cryptid. When leaving church one Sunday afternoon, Connie Carpenter claimed to see a broad, tall, gray manlike creature staring at her with hypnotic red eyes from a field. It unfolded its huge wings and without flapping them, lifted straight-up like a helicopter and glided over her car. Unlike other accounts, this sighting took place during the middle of the day. Soon after, her eyes were red, oozing, and swollen shut.
After the lights, UFOs, and the Mothman sightings followed the mysterious Men in Black. Men with olive complexions, ill-fitting suits, odd haircuts, and unblinking eyes began asking households strange questions in the guise of census takers. They were spotted all over town driving in black cadillacs taking seemingly random pictures of people and threatening witnesses to keep their mouths shut. Before my great aunt moved into the big house I loved as a child, she was Mary Hyre’s next door neighbor. Mary would tell her about these strange men stalking and threatening her; she was obviously distraught and feared for her life. Their message was clear, they didn’t want Mary to report these sightings in the newspaper anymore.
Thirteen months after the first Mothman sighting at the TNT area, a horrible tragedy struck the Ohio River valley. December 15, 1967 the Silver Bridge over the Ohio River was packed bumper to bumper with Christmas shoppers. The bridge began to sway and a sickening groan was heard – the bridge was collapsing. Steel screeched and cars plummeted into the freezing water. Everyone nearby heard the awful sound followed by the heart breaking screams for help. Forty-six people died that night in the river.
Rumors spread that the Mothman was a harbinger of the catastrophe; some believing it was there to warn and others believing it was the cause. After the bridge collapsed, everything stopped. There were no more sightings of UFOs, the Mothman, or Men in Black.
When I was old enough to learn this dark history, you bet your ass I begged my mom to take me out to the TNT plant. My friend and I climbed under the chain link fence adorned with a “No Trespassing” sign that we willfully ignored and crept towards the rusted bones of the old factory. We peaked inside the empty building, carefully stepped in, and admired it as an old piece of WWII history slowly being reclaimed by nature.
Suddenly, a clang rang out. We sprinted away with the adrenaline any teenager might feel when trespassing on what was supposedly the Mothman’s home. Reason took ahold again. I turned around to see three harmless deer bounding away across the field in the opposite direction. The TNT area is now the McClintic Wildlife Management Area. But, who can say for sure what remains lurking in the trees and hills of Point Pleasant, West Virginia?
Check out our episode on the Mothman on Phone It In:
Listen to “Ep. 07: The Mothman” on Spreaker.Rooster stars in the history/spooky/society and culture/current events/everything show, Phone It In. She also covers the broad, daunting topic of ‘general history’ on History Lesson. Follow her on Twitter @SoBroRooster
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