Male Speaker

From UFOs to ghosts and psychic powers, history is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don’t want you to know. Here are the facts: Nowadays, Point Pleasant, West Virginia is a picturesque town of around 5,000 people at the confluence of the Kanawha and Ohio Rivers. But for three months between 1966 and 1967 it was ground zero for a series of bizarre unsettling phenomenon culminating in the collapse of the silver bridge and the death of 46 people. This tragedy and the events preceding it birthed the legendary story of the mothman.

From November to January, more than 100 people reported seeing a human-sized winged creature with glowing red eyes around Point Pleasant. The story received national attention when journalist John Keel published The Mothman Prophecies, an account of his investigation into the phenomenon. But what exactly is it? Biologists are certain an animal of this size couldn’t exist without being discovered centuries ago. Oddly enough, the conspiracy theorists tend to agree, but here’s where it gets crazy. Most of these theorists don’t think the mothman is an animal at all. They believe the mothman is only one of several paranormal events that occurred in this time period, including UFO sightings.

Their evidence for these beliefs hinges upon the accounts of firsthand witnesses. There is no physical evidence such as footprints or video footage of the events, but a conspiracy theorist couldn’t ask for a better setting. Home to a top secret military compound, 1:41 rumors of hauntings, and allegedly plagued by high amounts of UFO activity, Point Pleasant has nearly everything a good spook story requires. To some, the mothman is only the tip of the iceberg. During his time in the town, Keel encountered more than mothman witnesses. He also allegedly received information about another worldly entity named Indrid Cold.

As the date of the bridge collapse approached, the paranormal activity increased. After the collapse, it disappeared or did it? Theorists believe the mothman may be part of a larger extraterrestrial expedition, an extradimensional crossover, or even a warning from beyond the grave. To many people, Point Pleasant is also a vortex of paranormal activity including hauntings. For example, before the mothman incident began, Point Pleasant was already known for the Haunted Lowe Hotel.

Many also believed that the mothman arrived in Point Pleasant to warn townspeople of the bridge’s collapse, which remains the greatest bridge disaster in U.S. history, and although mothman reports in West Virginia petered out after the bridge’s collapse, witnesses round the world swear they see the creature before similar disasters. It’s also intriguing to note that the first mothman sightings occurred near an abandoned TNT plant. Skeptics believe that mothman witnesses may be describing a barn owl distorted in their memory by the gripping fear they experienced during the sighting. An abandoned plant would be a good habitat for a barn owl.

So what really happened at Point Pleasant? Numerous investigators have visited the area, scoured the rivers and terrain and interrogated the witnesses. Every investigative team has the same conclusions that the witnesses believe this story that no proof exists, and that there is given the current evidence, no way to conclusively prove that a mothman ever existed, or that any person received another worldly warning of the silver bridge’s collapse before it occurred unless of course, there’s something they don’t want you to know.