Nothing is Scary Anymore Except Real Life Part 1: The Mothman

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  I’m doing a little something different this month. In honor of the Halloween season, I’m going to present a 3 part series about visits I’ve made to supposedly haunted or otherwise creepy places to hopefully answer this question: Is anything even scary anymore? I want to believe in the unbelievable. I want to believe that those orbs in the photo are ghosts and not flecks of dust. I want to believe that the mysterious lights over my town are UFO’s and not some douche testing the drone he bought instead of buying his kids new shoes. I want to believe but my skepticism is strong. Shall I waver? We shall see.

Point Pleasant, WV is not a misleading name. Sitting at the confluence of the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers and surrounded by wooded hills, Point Pleasant looks like it could be cast in a movie about a football team with a can-do spirit who wins the state championship even though half the team has been mangled in an accident involving a pick up truck and a tractor. It’s that pretty.

 

Downtown PP

I dug the All-American downtown with its shops and haunted hotel. It was perfect weather for a stroll down the river walk or for a visit to Fort Randolph (which is neither original nor in its original place so F that noise). I could have done all of those things but I didn’t.

After all, this here is Mothman country.

The legend of the Mothman started in November 1966 when a number of citizens began spotting a humanoid creature with wings and glowing red eyes. Dozens and dozens of people reported sightings of the Mothman as well as sightings of UFO’s, and Men in Black. Some folks said it was just a really big bird but come on my dude.

So why was I in the Mothman’s hometown? Great question, faithful reader: I was there for work. How exciting! I was working at Marshall University about an hour southwest along the Ohio River. My coworkers and I decided it would be cheaper and make more logistical sense to fly into Columbus, Ohio rather than the regional airport. Also, the regional airport is the same one the Marshall football team crashed trying to land at so no thanks.

Columbus is a super short flight from Chicago. You might spend more time in security than in the air. Though the weather in Chicago and Columbus was fine, a big storm was creeping up around Indianapolis. Our pilot got on the intercom while taxiing to the runway. I was certain he was about to tell us we were going back to the terminal. Instead, he slapped on a cowboy hat and gave us the pilot equivalent of Han Solo jumping to light speed while escaping from Tatooine.

Arriving just before the rolling black storm clouds of death drenched Columbus, I met up with my coworkers and hopped into our rental truck. There are a couple ways to get to Marshall and one of those ways is to go through Point Pleasant. On the way I was able to regale everyone with the story of the Mothman. My dude Chu had seen the Mothman Prophecies so he had an idea but everyone else was clueless.

The storms cleared up as we approached the Ohio River. The country is beautiful as long as you don’t mind nuclear cooling towers every now and again. To get to Point Pleasant from Ohio you need to cross 2 bridges: 1 over the Ohio River and 1 over the Kanawha River.

Point Pleasant has embraced its Mothman history with a statue and the world’s only Mothman Museum. It was not difficult to find the museum and statue. Everything is along the riverwalk. I had seen pictures of the Mothman statue before and I thought it was kind of cheesy but in person it’s actually quite rad. It’s all polished metal and the glowing red eyes look more like jewels than bicycle reflectors. It was built when the Mothman Prophecies was released. It was definitely built as bait for those tourism dollars but I ain’t gonna hate on a poor, small town finding new ways to stay afloat.

The Mothman Museum is adjacent to the statue. You want a Mothman t-shirt? They got you. Patches? Hat? Coffee mug? Shot glass? Yes on all accounts. If you thought I would leave there without dropping at least $20, you my friend, are a dumb asshole.

So we visited the home of the Mothman, saw the newspaper clippings, heard the stories and…well… that’s it. I sure as shit was not expecting to see the actual Mothman but I thought I would feel something creepy or scary. True, we didn’t go out to the TNT area which was a hot bed of sightings and it was daylight, but still, I was only excited in a kitsch kind of way.

The only time I got a little scared was when we crossed the bridge back over the Kanawha River.

 The Mothman never hurt anyone. Traumatize maybe, but in actual physical harm nothing at all. The possibly fake Mothman sightings coincided with the very real collapse of the Silver Bridge in December 1967. 43 people died when the bridge collapsed during rush hour. Some people claimed to see the Mothman near the bridge just prior to the collapse. Whether they think he caused the collapse or was warning about the collapse, the sightings stopped and Point Pleasant attempted to recover from the tragedy.

As we crossed the bridge, even though it wasn’t a rebuilt Silver Bridge, I began to worry not about a flying cryptid but of a slight malfunction maybe a 10^th of an inch wide that caused the Silver Bridge to collapse. That’s all it took to send 43 people to their deaths.

I’ve been scared by the idea of the Mothman but I’m more scared of phone calls with blocked identities. The only Men In Black I’m scared of are the IRS. I can’t be scared of Mothmen when there are real men whose only job is to inspect bridges that end up crumbling. Random death is the worst kind of death.

I would like to think the Mothman is real. There is a luxury in fantasizing about a mysterious beast roaming your neighborhood. It allows you to stop worrying about all the real shit because hey, why worry about the phone bill when you have a red eyed monster posted up in your trees?

Dear reader, I’m sorry to say that my skepticism was not reduced by my visit to Point Pleasant. However, if you think I’m not going to come back for the annual Mothman Festival sometime soon, you are also a dumb asshole.