Original subtitles

- Fear is a funny thing.

Where it begins and where it ends is never a certainty.

Fear can form seemingly out of nowhere

and then disappear just as quickly

and we might never really know why.

Some fears develop over days, weeks, or years,

sown from the time we're young,

eventually bursting forth from the seeds

that were planted when we were children.

But where did the seeds come from?

Who first planted them?

Were they simply groomed over centuries,

or are they unique to each generation?

A story is a powerful thing,

it can move us in unexpected ways.

It can inspire hope or create a sense of longing.

A story can manifest sadness or depression,

laughter or tears.

And yes, a story can instill fear.

The question we might begin to ask ourselves

is not who put the fear there orwhy,

but what if the stories

that instilled it to begin withare true,

not simply fables, but somethingmore,

something primal and ageless.

A something whose very survivaldepends

on our telling of tales.

- Well, when the Silver Bridge collapsed

in December of 1967, everybody'sattention immediately went

to the recovery effort, the rescue effort.

People weren't really interested in lookin' for UFOs

or Mothman, even though they did.

But it was such a horrible tragedy

that the local population was grieving

and mourning the loss of, you know,

family members and friends and things like that.

So the attention went from the weird stuff in the sky

or the Mothman sightings to recovering bodies and cars

from the Ohio River.

- You know Main Street used to be very hustle and bustle.

And after the bridge fell in the'60s,

that kind of broke off that connection

and so a lot of businesses started to close

and it became kind of a ghost town

until basically the museum and the festival took off.

And then, you know, during the Mothman Festival

you can't hardly move there's so many people.

You'd bring in like eight to 10,000 people to a town

with a population of less than 5,000.

- Between the years of 1966 and1967,

sightings of a red-eyed monster, dubbed the Mothman,

helped put the town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia

on the map.

However, it was the collapse ofa bridge

spanning the Ohio River in December of 1967

that brought the town to a tragic sort of prominence.

Since that time,

this sleepy hamlet on the banks of the mighty Ohio

and the Kanawha Rivers has adopted a strange fame

bolstered by their mostrenowned resident, the Mothman.

Now over 50 years

since the Silver Bridge tumbled into the icy waters

and took with it 47 lives,

Point Pleasant has begun to rebuild.

- Life here in Point Pleasant is laid back.

I mean, you know, it's not yourhustle bustle of a big city

and I think that's why a lot of people choose to stay here.

- My dad is is Jeff Wamsley,

the owner of the Mothman Museum.

So basically from my young adulthood up,

Mothman pretty much surrounds a lot of my life.

- You know, it's just a little Main Street town

that just happens to have a monster in it's history

and it's a nice calling card.

- Mothman became something they fell in love with

and then it was the town they really fell in love with.

And I ultimately believeMothman is what gets them here,

but it's Point Pleasant that brings them back every time.

- West Virginia is a jewel in the rough, I always thought,

because you know the landscape and the beauty.

You've got all kinds of different areas

like the mountains, the streams, the river towns,

the ski lodges, all kinds of different things

and I think they've done a pretty good job

as far as capitalizing on the tourism aspect.

- West Virginia is rolling hills and beautiful creeks

and green pastures and football Friday night.

- Isolated, at times boring.

It's very beautiful.

Not much happens,

which allows being tuned into certain things

and also noticing things maybe

that people in other areas may not notice.

It's a quiet, placid kind of upbringing.

Very beautiful, beautifulmountains and trees and streams.

So that part is of course, excellent.

- Point Pleasant sits on the edge

of what is known as Appalachia.

The Appalachian Mountains are arange

that stretches from Canada, all the way down to Alabama.

Rugged and rural, with a landscape defined by jutting rocks

and dense forestry.

The mountains are an essential part

of the Eastern United States.

Appalachia derives its name from the local inhabitants,

as well as the mountains.

It's a cultural statement

as much as it is a geographicalone.

A culture informed

by the people who journeyed through these lands

and who settled these lands,

not to mention the lands themselves,

from Scotch-Irish immigrants to the First Nations tribes

who occasionally traveled

through what is now known as West Virginia.

These places are still alive with a history

that is passed down from generation to generation.

- The Scots-Irish settled West Virginia.

So about 250,000 of them

got on a boat

and came over to the United States.

Once they got here,

the colonies were kind of already established

and these were sort of outsiders,

so they started to push them closer to the mountains,

the Appalachian Mountains.

Technically the English didn't want anybody

moving past the mountains

because there was an agreement with the French.

But we started chipping away atthat

and that ultimately led to the French and Indian War.

- Well, the Natives were kind of frightened

of West Virginia.

They thought West Virginia was cursed

and they only used West Virginia mostly as hunting.

So the Shawnee were here quite abit.

The Saponi were kind of like in the mountains

is where the Blackfoot Saponi Indians were all

in the southern part of the state, down into Virginia.

- When we started pushing into the region

across the Appalachians,

the Natives chose to fight on the side of the French.

When the English colonists werecoming in, it was a threat,

so the Native sided with French.

Well, ultimately that did not gowell

and the French left the region,

leaving the Natives kind of on their own.

The different tribes tried to get together

to form alliances to fightagainst the English if need be.

- The Confederacy's made up of many, many tribes

and they were all in and out of West Virginia

throughout the years.

The Shawnee were big here, the Cherokee were here,

Lenape, Ojibwe.

There were many, 31 tribes.

There were villages, there werefamilies.

- Once the French left,

they were really kind of left ontheir own

and it ultimately was not something

that they could withstand

and so they slowly got pushed out of the area.

- The traditions were extremelyimportant to pass down.

Our elders' pasts

were lost.

It was extremely important to listen and to pay attention

and to follow the traditions.

- We do hold onto our stories.

You know it might be genetic aswell

because if you look into the Celts,

West Virginia is mostly Celtic.

We do have some Pennsylvania Dutch Germans here as well,

but that's like a natural thing with the Celts

and I think it's passed down that way.

Plus, that little bit of Native American ancestry.

- Well I mean there's, again a love of music and singing

and passing stories through thatway.

It's more of a human characteristic to want to tell stories

and make sure that your legacy is passed on

in one way or another.

- As Appalachia began to see more and more settlers,

traditions and stories started to merge,

just as the remaining Natives begin to exist

alongside the Scotch-Irish settlers inhabiting a land

they once called their own.

So too, did stories and cultures begin to meld

and what was born of this blendwas something wholly unique,

Appalachian culture.

Folktales and lore were absorbed and transmitted

from one generation to the next.

Now the region was defined as much by tales of ghosts,

witches and red-eyed banshees

as it was the rugged wildernessbackdrop

where they were told.

When 1966 saw the rise of the Mothman,

it was strangely familiar despite its unique appearance.

After all, it was simply one more tale to be told

as if a new face had been put on an old legend.

- I grew up in Southeastern Ohio

and during the original sightings of the Mothman,

I was about 10 years old.

Whenever I first heard about Mothman

was through my older male cousins.

One night they came over to visit my dad

and wanted to have a private conversation with him.

And they seemed very concerned,

so of course I needed to know what they were talking about.

My cousins were concerned about going night fishing

and they were afraid that if they did,

that they might see or be taken by Mothman.

So I listened in on the conversation

and that's how I first heard about Mothman.

Later in the summer,

I was asleep one night,

I heard something outside.

I woke up.

I went over to the window,

looked out and I saw red eyes inthe yard.

Whatever it was could have been, I don't know,

maybe six feet or more in height.

And so I ran to my parents' bedroom.

My dad, I told him, I thought Mothman was outside

and he tried to tell me he didn't think

that that was probably Mothman.

Now, you know, like sometimes they'll say

that Mothman's there to either mourn you or whatever.

Like just a few months after I saw those red eyes,

my dad was in an airplane accident.

He was one of 16 people that survived.

It happened in Cincinnati.

It was like TWA 128.

It was a flight coming from San Diego, California

going to Boston, but it stopped in Cincinnati

and there wasn't enough runway for the jet.

And so it went on and went intoa orchard and caught on fire

and just like threw people out of the plane

all over the place.

My dad, the seat that he was in,

the seat right beside him was onfire

and there was a husband and wife behind him.

The wife was killed and my dad turned around

and grabbed this guy by the hand

and said, "If you want to live, come with me."

- Flight TWA 128 crashed on approach

to the Cincinnati airport on November 20th, 1967,

just shy of one month prior

to the collapse of the Silver Bridge

in nearby Point Pleasant, West Virginia.

If there was one overwhelming takeaway

from the activity running rampant

around Point Pleasant during 1966 and 1967,

it was the feeling that everything was accelerating,

heading towards some inevitableconclusion

that couldn't be avoided.

When the Silver Bridge collapsedon December 15th, 1967,

it seemed that the unavoidable collision had been reached

and with it, the story of the Mothman had ended.

The book had closed.

For the next few months,

stories of encounters with the creature were absent.

It seemed that the bridge collapse had led

to the departure of the being.

However, nothing could have been further from the truth.

The book had never closed

and in some ways the Mothman story was just beginning.

- I've read and collected several newspaper articles

from the late '60s, early '70s.

I've talked to people that were still seeing

whatever this thing was in the TNT Area

and it was well after 1966, '67.

A lot of the people that I've talked to,

I will specifically ask them what the timeframe was

and you know, '71, '73, '75.

- The Mothman frenzy went from 1966 into 1967,

but the activity continued.

We lived close to the Scarberrys.

I grew up on a hillside in WestUnion called Shannon's Knob

and late at night,

it would sound like someonehad jumped out of a helicopter.

The roof would go, boom, just like that.

There would be a pause and then these footsteps,

somebody was walking on our roof.

And they might be up there at 10, 15 minutes

and the footsteps would stopas if something had flown away.

And of course my parents did not believe me,

you know, when I kept telling them

about these footsteps.

Until I woke up early one morning

and I heard them talking to eachother,

saying, "Wonder what those footsteps are on the roof?"

And I was pretty small, Iwasn't even quite in school yet

and I was thinking, "I want to go outside.

I want to go outside and, you know, and hide the bushes

and see if I can see the Mothman."

But I never developed the courage to do that.

- I talked to one lady,

and she specifically mentioned early '70s,

who had a morning paper route in the Gallipolis area.

She'd deliver papers about five in the morning

and she told me that as she was coming down the street,

on the other side of the street was like a guard rail,

right beside the Ohio River.

There's a little island that's right off of that guard rail

that goes out into the Ohio River

and she said she looked up

and saw the biggest bird that she'd ever seen in her life,

sittin' there starin' at her.

And she said it scared her and she turned to run

and she said, the bird raised up, flew across

and landed in the trees over on this island.

She said it was enormous.

She was very detailed about it.

And I asked her specifically, you know, when this happened

and she said, it was the late '60s, early '70s era.

- In the 1970s, I met my husband and married him

and he is from Point Pleasant.

He and his dad were actually out in their car,

driving around and looking for Mothman.

And he was camping out in his backyard

hoping to find Mothman, where I was, you know,

40 miles away, terrified at thesame time.

- You know there were sightingsin Ohio,

there were sightings in West Virginia,

Pennsylvania, Kentucky.

It's just that that rash of sightings didn't last

nearly as long as it did here in Point Pleasant.

- Major players in the Mothman story

during the 1960s and '70s included the likes

of West Virginia UFO author and investigator, Gray Barker

and a newspaper reporter

and Point Pleasant local, Mary Hyre.

Hyre chronicled the ongoing activity taking place

following the collapse of the Silver Bridge,

relaying sightings of Mothman, UFOs

and the infamous Men in Black

in her "Athens Messenger" columntitled,

"Where the Waters Mingle."

Hyre herself had a run-in with a Man in Black

in her Point Pleasant office following the collapse

of the Silver Bridge in Decemberof 1967.

However, in February of 1970,

Hyre would pass away after an extended illness.

Around Point Pleasant,

the Mothman became less of a talking point,

although the UFO activity,

which accompanied the initial wave of strangeness,

continued unabated.

While Hyre was tracking ongoingreports

during the late '60s and early '70s,

New York based author, John Keel,

was laboring over his own recounting

of the 13-month-winged-creaturesiege.

Keel would release his book,

"The Mothman Prophecies" in 1975.

The nonfiction saga would become a bestseller

and reignite an interest in thetopic.

Keel continue to write about theMothman,

but no longer made trips to Point Pleasant.

And with Mary Hyre no longer around

to update Keel on the Mothman,

no one was keeping tabs on the creature,

who was now making its presencefelt

around much of Appalachia.

- I think the planets kind of aligned

with the sightings in Point Pleasant

because number one, you had all these people seeing UFOs,

the Men in Black, the Mothman, the Silver Bridge collapse.

John Keel comes to town

and it isolated the Point Pleasant sightings.

- I came across "The Mothman Prophecies," the book,

in the mid-'90s and it immediately got my attention

'cause it sort of was my sweet spot

in terms of my interest in the paranormal,

which is, well it had tons of phenomenon in it,

UFOs, poltergeists, the Mothman.

And at the same time,

the story was told from the point of view of John Keel,

the guy who was there investigating it,

and it focused so much on his interaction

with the phenomenon and theway it affected him personally,

which I found fascinating.

- Well "The Mothman Prophecies" book didn't come together

until about 10 years after the events.

He did do some, there was an article

in "The Flying Saucer Review" and I think "Saga Magazine"

where he did talk about it

and he talked about certain elements of it.

Apparently his publisher told him, he said, "Hey, look,

it's time we put together a book on the Mothman."

So Keel talks about how he got his tattered briefcase out

and went through all his notes and articles and so forth

and kind of pieced together a book.

- What was happening in Point Pleasant

felt extremely personal.

And what was interesting to me

was this sort of interactive nature

of his experience with the phenomenon.

The more he studied it

and the more he tried to really nail it down

and be totally objective,

the more the phenomenon seemed to want to bring him on stage

as it were and make his experience less objective

and more subjective and that's exactly what happened.

- In November of 1966,

Roger and Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Mallette

had the first regionally-reported encounter

with the Mothman.

The incident took place in an area

frequently tied to Mothman lore,

an abandoned munitions facility

just outside of Point Pleasant.

The area was known as the McClintic Wildlife Management Area

or as locals referred to it, theTNT Area.

While the bizarre entity would become known as the Mothman

a short time later,

it was initially referred to as the Bird or the Birdman.

Its association with a known avian animal

was based in part on the creature's wings,

its ability to fly

and its occasional comparison to a large owl.

In other words, many encounters detailed a being

that looked and behaved like a bird.

Despite stranger features

described in later Mothman reports,

the ID of a man-sized winged creature

that descends from the sky

to terrify people when they least expect it

is an ancient one and one foundworldwide.

- John Keel, his original title,

which never made it to press obviously,

was the "Year of the Garuda."

He saw sort of a connection

with the Hindu mythology ofthe Garuda, this winged entity.

Of course he was knocked down by the publisher.

- But the Garuda is in multiple traditions.

In Hinduism, the Garuda is a massive sun bird

that ultimately becomes the vehicle, the mount,

for the god Vishnu.

It is depicted as some human features,

sometimes two arms, sometimes four arms,

but the body of an eagle, massive wings as well.

- And you know,

when you read some aspects of "The Mothman Prophecies,"

"The year of the Garuda was at hand.

A shadow was passing over a little town

I had never even heard of, Point Pleasant, West Virginia."

This winged apparition, sometimes winged-demon or whatever,

I think it just lends it to theidea

that whatever Mothman was, it is kind of an archetype.

- I remember back,

and it started out they didn't even call it Mothman.

There for several months, they called him Birdman.

I do remember that.

And then something went around

that it was a sandhill crane, the rather large crane

that had red feathers around itseyes.

- The kind of explanations that get talked about a lot,

one of them is a sandhill crane.

A friend of mine, Forrest Burgess,

once said that, "The sandhill crane is to Mothman

what swamp gas is to UFOs."

You know, it's the go-to explanation

that makes absolutely no sense.

- Other people thought, youknow, well, maybe it was a bird,

but it was a mutated bird.

You know, the TNT Area, the waste in the TNT Area

and the chemicals used in WorldWar II

contaminated the ground.

Which makes a perfect scenario for a Boris Karloff movie.

- I know that back in the '80s, that they came in

and it was an EPA disaster site

and they had to shave two or three inches of top soil off

within an eight mile radius just to clean the place up.

- But that was maybe a way for a lot of those people

to validate, "Hey, yeah, it was some sort of a monster

because it got into this toxic waste

and it resembled a monster."

It scared people, you know,

and it's no secret that the TNT Area was contaminated

with a lot of stuff.

- It's not a natural creature to this area.

There wouldn't be anything that would match that.

There's no birds that would have wings anywhere close

to the size of Mothman, you know, his wings.

- Yes, there are many researchers

that look at the giant birds as something very tangible.

There have been a sightings

that look like they were just giant owls.

And the Mothman, it's seen in the dark sometimes,

did look quite like kind of a giant owl.

- It's common in folklore for a screech owl.

In Welsh there's the Corpse Bird.

It's a screech owl that comes banging at the window

of someone who's ill or sick.

And then that motif follows its way into Appalachia, too.

If you see or hear an owl

outside of your window at night making a call,

it's a sign that someone's goingto die.

Likewise, if a bird flies in your house,

that's really bad news.

Someone is probably going to get hurt or die as well.

- The Native American of coursehave the Thunderbird legend,

which some people associate with the Mothman,

I think maybe John Keel did even.

- The Thunder Bird is a Southwest tribal,

it is not Shawnee, it's not Eastern Woodland.

So it is said that the Mothman could be tied

to the Thunderbird, but wedidn't have a Thunderbird here.

- Tom Ury, one of the Mothman witnesses,

that's really what he saw was a giant bird,

about a 10 to 12 foot wingspan.

I was able to talk to him one on one about his experience.

In fact, Tom, for a while,

thought that the other people like Linda Scarberry

and Marcella Bennett and so forth,

saw the same thing he did,

but thought perhaps it was so shocking

that they've maybe added the details.

But the thing is about the Mothman,

the Mothman was a paradox.

Some people got a pretty good look at it,

and it was about seven feet, tall, dark gray, or black,

about a 10 foot wingspan.

A 10 foot wingspan probably isn't gonna lift something

that's seven foot tall.

Just biologically it didn'twork, but people kept seeing it.

- While the 1980s were a dead zone for Mothman research,

sightings of winged humanoids

and giant birds continued around Appalachia.

In Northern Pennsylvania,

a string of reports of a pterosaur-like creature

made regional headlines during the early '80s.

Meanwhile, around Point Pleasant and West Virginia,

the red-eyed creature that dominated headlines

during the late 1960s had faded into relative obscurity.

Despite the Mothman's lack of popularity,

kids still warned one another

about venturing into the TNT Area after dark.

Tales also circulated amongst the locals,

such as one in which hunters

encountered a mysteriously largebird

in the early morning hours.

A group of teenagers even claimed to have found a pile

of abnormally large feathers

in one of the abandoned TNT bunkers.

As the years tick by,

the reality of what was encountered began to fade

and was replaced by something else,

a modern folktale in the making.

Still, an absence of evidence

doesn't necessarily indicate evidence of absence,

as Leah Wilson discovered in the summer of 1987.

- I was in Calhoun County, WestVirginia,

Leading Creek Road, it's outside of Grantsville,

my aunt and uncle's old farm house.

A few months before that, like in the spring,

people were talkin' about,

like their chickens and stuff coming up missing,

you know overnight.

But they would talk about weirdnoises,

but no one had ever talkedabout actually seein' anything.

The farmhouse, there's nothing around it.

So there's no other residents for like a half a mile

from the house that I was stayin' in.

And it was probably 1987, '88,

somewhere around there, summertime,

it was like two o'clock in the morning,

I was just goin' to bed

from after watching movies and stuff.

And across the street from the farmhouse is a holler

that goes up on the hill and I started hearing this noise.

You could tell us some kind of,

I thought it was kind of a bird-type thing.

I thought maybe it was an owl or somethin',

but it just kept getting closerand closer

and louder and louder.

The only way I can describe it is the Hollywood movies,

the pterodactyl noises, you know,

that's the only way I can describe it.

It was that loud and that piercing and it kind of had,

I don't know, kind of a giggling,

loud giggling noise to it, too.

I mean, it's really hard to describe.

By the time I sat up to look out the window,

'cause I thought whatever this was

was gonna fly right into the window,

the wingspan of this covered thewindows.

And then when it got to that part of the house

and went up over the house, you actually could hear it.

You actually heard the whoosh sound.

Again, not sure what I wasgonna do or what I'd just seen.

I turned around to the back window of the bedroom

and you could see the shadow of whatever this was flyin'

over the field to the back of the house.

I've never heard anything like that.

I have stayed at that country house all my life, you know,

never heard it, never seen it, anything like that again.

So not sure what it was,

but it was something that was very large

and very loud and very fast.

'Cause that holler that it cameout

was probably about a mile long.

You know, I was the first one on that Leading Creek Road

that actually seen somethin'.

- You know I think there were things going on

all the way through the '80s and'90s.

It's real hard to validate a lot of that stuff

because sometimes it comes from other states,

but it's hard for me to pinpointand say,

that's exactly what they were seeing here in 1966, '67.

- We had that other sighting in Parkersburg

of the girl having seen it on Quincy Hill.

She said when she was in high school in 1987,

she and her boyfriend were driving

to the top of Quincy Hill,

which is the highest location in Parkersburg.

Something very similar,

they saw this huge creature was walking across the street.

She said, it looked like six-and-a-half-foot insect.

She said its knees were on backwards,

you know like an insect's leg

and had these huge wings as well.

But she said, the thing that stood out to her was

this creature had a shuffling gait,

like it was not used to walking on its feet.

That told me she was tellin' thetruth

because I had read a lot of the written accounts

down a Point Pleasant,

they all described the Mothman as walking that way.

- In the early 1990s,

a Point Pleasant local named Darren Hayes

encountered the Mothman in the TNT Area.

While talking to Jeff Wamsley in an interview for his book,

"Mothman, Behind the Red Eyes,"

Hayes recalled while driving into the area,

a massive winged humanoid-bird appeared above the car.

As Hayes stepped on the gas,

the creature made five or six passes over the car

before the vehicle eventually outran it

as the men headed back to PointPleasant.

Darren's account wouldn't becomepublic

until the publication of Wamsley's book

nearly a decade later.

The story illustrates

that the Mothman was still making its presence felt.

Perhaps no one felt the creature's presence more

than John Keel.

Despite living states away

and making an effort to distancehimself

from "The Mothman Prophecies,"

the author felt himself pulled back to the story

over the years.

- People thought he had the answers

because he had spent so much time in Point Pleasant.

He stayed with Linda's family, Linda Scarberry's family.

In "The Mothman Prophecies,"

it talks about how his life became intertwined

with the people of the Ohio Valley,

especially in Point Pleasant.

- Here's how it went.

When John Keel was there,

the entire town was sort of haunted.

The people that he was speaking to were very scared

about what was going on.

There seemed to be a general understanding

that all of this was going to lead to something bad,

at least that's certainly what John Keel felt.

- He had proposed some ideas for other books

that never came about.

He seemed to kind of move away from it.

I remember hearing people that interviewed him,

they want to talk about the Mothman,

he would change the subject,

he would want to talk about something else.

- Because he was solving his ownmystery

and he really wanted an answer.

And like most of us do when we first get involved

in the paranormal,

we think, on a certain level, we're gonna figure it out.

The experience typically does not provide an answer

and it certainly didn't for JohnKeel.

- When people would ask him, "What was the Mothman?

What was it all about?"

He'd have to be honest and say he didn't know.

I mean, he didn't have the answers.

He was someone that chronicled the events.

A very important thing about Keel,

he didn't reject stuff that didn't fit a certain paradigm.

And that's how he became towrite books like "Trojan Horse,"

because he began to see the interconnectedness

of all paranormal activity.

- So I grew up pretty much right near the woodlot.

We were the last house actually,

before it turns into the woods

and you know, a very small area.

And there was a community area,

an old community area

and passed down, you know, family to family,

one of those kind of deals.

I've been going over it in my head

and this is pretty much how it went.

We were comin' home, it was either 1999 or 2000,

We were comin' home

and it was late in the evening.

We're coming around the first curve

and the first curve will be near a graveyard actually,

it's an old family graveyard, it's up on a hill there.

And as we go around the curve, we slowed down

and the headlights hit somethin' in the road.

What they hit was a form

and for a split second, I thought, "Oh, it's a large bird,"

and all that.

And then, we're sitting there you know,

and this thing, whatever it was,

you notice really quickly it's not a bird

because you can kinda almost see through it.

It has this weird, not translucent,

but almost like it was phasing or shifting.

It kinda stands up a little bit

and puts out what I assume werewings,

I mean, arms somethin'

and they reached almost to the sides of the road.

But with just one movement, it shot straight up.

And as it's shootin' straight up, you know,

we're sitting there and you could hear it

and you can see it, too.

There were twigs fallin', you know?

It made no sense.

The speed at which it moved, I have no idea.

Now I never thought for one second when this happened,

by the way, you know,

that was Mothman or that was somethin'.

Nope, what I felt was absolute, 100% fear, terror.

I hit the gas as hard as I possibly could.

I don't think I ever got that car to go as fast

as I did that night.

And it weird about that,

and I looked back at it to thisday,

but something said, "Get out," and I got out.

Yeah, it was pretty scary.

But what is really weird about the story

is not my sighting,

the part that gets me is,

where it happened is only about

just maybe a couple hundred yards

from where my mom had a sighting

and that would have been in the'50s.

And her and four other people atthe time

had seen what they described as a gray ghost.

They were walking along the ridge line at the time.

They said that this gray thing appeared near the graveyard

and

to them,

it just

went up in the air.

That was their words. "It went up in the air."

I didn't even, you know,

we've heard that story so much growin' up

and it's just like, you know, it never really clicked

until that night I saw that thing.

I'm like, "This is where they saw it."

- From sandhill crane to giant owl, to mythical birds,

during the 1960s and up until the release

of John Keel's seminal book in 1975,

the most common theories as to what the creature might be

all revolved around tangible flesh and bone beings,

animals that either existed within known science

or on its fringes.

Yet with the release of "The Mothman Prophecies,"

something new is proposed.

Suddenly, the answers as to what the entity might be

weren't being sought in the pages of science,

but in the realms of physics.

As Keel put forth his own ideasabout alternate dimensions

and realities to explain the Mothman,

similar theories were beingpresented for various phenomena.

Could the Mothman be a visitor

from another plane of existence,

one beyond our own?

If so, was there something about Point Pleasant,

or even all of Appalachia,

that acted as a gateway between these realities?

Legends suggest that Native Americans

avoided much of the land where West Virginia now sits,

leading to speculation

that the earth itself in this place was cursed.

In later years, an unfounded story

regarding a supposed curse placed on Point Pleasant

began to circulate.

It involved the real life murder

of a Native chief named Cornstalk.

Though likely having little basis in reality,

it is possible that some kernelof truth

does exist in the story.

Perhaps the curse in question was simply a word ascribed

to a location that seemed to invite strangeness,

if not tragedy.

- What I have gathered

is that there are parts in the Ohio Valley

that are kind of believed to becursed.

They're a land of the dead.

It was common for people to be buried closer

to bodies of water.

That's where we find some of themounds.

It's a valley of the dead,

so I would think that any place along a river

is kind of the same thing.

There's probably a lot of burials there.

Different Native American tribes believed so strongly

that they wouldn't come at night.

They would not.

- There's a lot of people that believed

the movement of water is conducive

to helping to produce some of this activity.

And yes, I find it easy to believe

that there is something about the confluence

of the rivers coming together.

There's even the lore about crossroads, you know,

the Devil's Crossroads or whatever,

and that's where Indrid Cold was supposed to have shown up

along Route 77 there.

- That's common in a lot of different cultures.

The idea that a river or a confluence

of bodies of water is a gateway somewhere, yes.

- Keel did not believe

that we were interacting with extraterrestrials.

He called them ultra-terrestrials.

In other words, something that is earth bound,

some sort of phenomenon that originates on earth

that we can sometimes see and interact with.

And it might be from another dimension,

or it might simply be a little bit outside

our normal perceptual abilities.

- Keel used the term ultra-terrestrial

and he revealed in later years,

he used it as a literary device.

Again, he wasn't really fixed

in his thinking about these things.

It was really a term used to suggest that these entities,

whatever they are, wherever they actually come from,

may be a natural condition of the planets,

suggesting that they're not necessarily from off world

or are even necessarily from another dimension.

- They're your radio waves and ultraviolet rays

and various things that exist and we know they exist,

but we can't see them.

But what if under somecircumstances we could see them,

what else would we see?

And I think his notion was that

what we might see is Indrid Cold or the Mothman.

- So the idea would be

that perhaps we can't really conceive of other dimensions

and these creatures or whatever, while they exist with us,

can hide or pass into these other dimensions.

People will use the term vortex or a portal

or a window area.

- I do know that in the 1980s and even before,

the TNT Area was a hub for a lot of occult type activity,

you know, the activity in the TNT Area for all those years.

Is it possible that maybe somebody did something

to open up some kind of portal

to let some kind of activity in?

Why would it just choose Point Pleasant?

Or there's all kinds of questions

and even John Keel himself thought

that there was some kind of portal in the TNT Area.

And if you've ever been to the TNT Area,

there very well could be, you'd never know it,

if you believe in that kind of thing because it's so vast.

I've talked to several people

that have seen hooded figures upthere.

When I was a kid,

there was a rumor going around

that the 13th gate to hell was in the TNT area

and that's what I remember about my childhood.

Kind of makes you want to stay away.

My dad's sister, I'm gonna out her,

but she snuck out in highschool with a bunch of friends,

went up to the TNT Area.

That's not unusual,

a lot of people used to do that kind of thing.

Inside the igloos that are up there,

there's like 100 of these bunkers.

Well, there's just a few of those that are open today,

but people like to go up there and investigate

and all that kind of stuff.

Well, they had went into one

and said that there was all these symbols

written all over the walls

and there was a table with a outline

of a cat,

where somebody had sacrificed acat.

There was always stories that, once a year,

that there was a large group ofoccultists

that would come and meet.

I know another girl that was one of my neighbors

that lived up in that area

that said that she was walking in the TNT Area

with her parents one day

and said that she'd looked over

and she'd seen this giant fire

and there was all these people in these hoods

just like standing there aroundit.

And she said she freaked out andran off.

- You know, some of the people that encountered this,

you know, Mothman, giant bird-type creature

that said it was more on a supernatural type of basis.

They felt that what they were seeing

was not a tangible thing they could reach out and touch,

but it was more of a vision of evil.

They said, you know,

"This wasn't an animal or anything like that,

it was more of somethin' that just popped up

and I couldn't explain it."

I think there's a lot of people that tend to think

that it was more of a vision or a spiritual thing.

- Well I think the Mothman is some kind

of an inter-dimensional being

and I think it's very odd that he is described

as being a flesh and blood creature.

Some people describe the wings as looking like bat wings.

Some describe him as having feathers.

He looked flesh and blood,

but yet his eyes looked electrical.

I guess he could be from either another planet

or another dimension that sort of slipped through.

- There really is no explanation as far as I know.

I don't know if there's aparticular unconscious archetype

that's being accessed.

I have a general theory of the paranormal,

which is if it does exist,

if there is an exterior force atwork,

that it might be presenting itself

as almost just as a sort of incoet energy,

almost like snow on a TV.

And as people experience it,

whatever that energy is that they're interacting with,

interacts with their mind

and as human beings we try to unscramble the signal.

It's like a Rorschach test.

Here's this thing, but what do you see?

Some people will see Mothman,

other people will maybe see a dead relative,

other people will see aliens.

It's just sort of your mind flipping through things,

trying to attach to something.

Maybe that exterior energy is interacting with your mind

and helping you select something that works for you

and then you move on to phase two of the experience,

which is whatever the content of the communication is.

- As decades passed,

the effects of the initial events still lingered

with some of the original witnesses.

Marcella Bennett and Linda Scarberry were among those

who saw the Mothman for themselves

during the 1966-67 wave of sightings.

As time went on, their recollections of who

or what the Mothman might have been

couldn't have been further apart.

Marcella Bennett encountered theMothman

outside the home of a friend late one evening.

Her encounter took a turn for the worst

when she dropped her infant daughter

and fell on top of her in terror

as she claimed the Mothmanswooped toward them from above.

Bennett, in later years,

would recall the creature as looking every bit

like the devil himself.

Meanwhile, Linda Scarberry would recount the being

in a way that painted it in a sympathetic light,

as an entity lost in a place it did not recognize

with no way to communicate or relay a cry for help.

- After Linda Scarberry,

her initial sightings in '66,

you know for years after, she told me and others that,

you know, weird things happened in her house.

She always had this premonitionof somethin' watching her.

In later years,

she lived in the downtown area in an apartment

above just a vacant building orwhatever.

- She said it was winter,

it was like really, really cold, like January.

And she heard a thump

and she had one of those roof lines

like came right up to the window, two story house.

And said she opened up the window and she looked

and it was sittin' there.

And it was cold and it was shivering.

And it had taken its wings and wrapped around itself.

- A few years after that,

I found the newspaper clipping

of a police officer in Charleston, West Virginia,

who took a phone call from someone

who was looking out their window

to the roof facade of their house

and they described it the exactsame way.

And the police officer said, you know, "What is it doing

and where's it at?"

And the person said,

"It's sitting on our roof, justright outside of our window

and I'm starin' at it."

- You know, is it possible thatLinda,

I mean she had a traumatic experience,

is it possible some of this wasimagined?

I've spoken to Linda Scarberry, very credible lady,

and I don't think she made up any of this.

Even I would have to wonder,

if I had that original experience

and then saw it again afterwards, am I really seeing it

or is it something, a sort of artifact

of what happened before?

- I think even up to when she passed away,

she was always very wary

of things around her.

You know, she seemed like she was always on the lookout.

- I would say I was probably 10, 11 at the time

and the holler that we lived in,

like the last street light was probably,

I'd say 100 feet away from where the house was

that I saw the Mothman.

I knew to be home before dark, but I wasn't.

So when I was pushin' my bike up to the holler,

the asphalt ended, the gravel started,

that's where that house was.

The house was abandoned.

The guy that lived there, he got killed in the coal mines.

And I happened to hear a noise

and I just happened to look over

and I seen somethin' standing doorway and it had red eyes.

It was really tall.

I really remember the eyes,

like the reddest red you'd eversee.

He was at least seven foot tall.

So I started cryin' and I felt like I stood there cryin'

and lookin' at it for like at least 15 minutes.

And here come my brother's friend, actually,

out of the holler and he'd seenit, too.

He picked up a rock, threw it atit

and it just kind of vanished.

I would say probably, maybe a year later,

that me and one of my buddies went in that house

we went in the basement part

and there was these weird footprints.

It looked like they was burnt into the concrete.

The best I can describe it, they was in a Y shape

and like, they had blackaround them, like they got hot.

Yeah, I've thought about it fora lot,

I never really did go out into the bottom by myself,

I was always home before dark after that.

I was scared of that house

and finally, when they tore it down, I was pretty happy.

If somebody talks about the Mothman,

I'll tell my story, you know?

I always tell everybody, "Hey, I've seen that thing."

- If the 1980s and '90s were a down time regarding Mothman,

then the 2000s were to be the creature's come-back tour.

In the year 2000, Jeff Wamsley

and fellow Mothman enthusiast, Donnie Sergeant,

started a website dedicated to tracking the Mothman legend,

called "Mothman Lives."

The website served to answer questions

regarding the initial wave of Mothman sightings

and was as much about promotingthe town and the TNT Area

as it was the creature.

However, the Mothman's popularity

was just beginning to grow.

In 2002, a feature film adaptation

of "The Mothman Prophecies" would see

a successful theatrical launch in North America.

While the movie would bolster the title character's stardom,

it would also serve to enhance ongoing reports

of its presence.

- When I read the book, "The Mothman Prophecies,"

I immediately knew that it was addressing something

that had been brewing inside me for a while, which was,

is there a way to write a movie

in which someone experiences the paranormal,

but does not come away solving a mystery or a crime?

Where they are left as destabilized, to a certain degree,

as real people are

when they typically experienced the paranormal.

The arc of John Keel's experience

and his trying to make senseof the events in Point Pleasant

and ultimately not being able to,

and then having to simply take a step back,

accept that there are things he's not ever going to be able

to totally understand,

and then go on with the rest ofhis life,

which is essentially what he did.

- When Keel first found out about the screenplay

for the film that was actually made, he was actually giddy.

He had held off for a long time.

He felt that finally somebody was kind of getting the,

sort of the underlying ideas orthemes

of "The Mothman Prophecies."

- I mean it was not a huge hit when it came out by any means

and yet I do hear from people who have seen it

and the ones who saw it

and

"liked it,"

They had a reaction to it.

The reaction, the one I hear most often is,

"That was so scary and I don't even know why."

- Following the release of "The Mothman Prophecies,"

Point Pleasant found itself at the center

of a second wave of Mothman sightings.

As new encounters

with Appalachia's infamous legend came to light,

Jeff Wamsley set aboutdocumenting as much information

about the 1966 and '67 sightings as possible.

He interviewed witnesses and unraveled long-buried accounts

for publication in two books he would eventually publish,

"Mothman, The Facts Behind the Legend,"

and "Behind the Red Eyes."

He also compiled physical artifacts relating to the Mothman

and in 2005, he opened his collection to the public

inside the walls of what would auspiciously become

the world's only Mothman Museum.

Meanwhile, the TNT Area itself

became a hub of activity once again,

whether through chance

or due to the new found attention brought on

by the release of the film.

In 2001, a paramedic driving

along the Kanawha River near Leon

sighted a large winged creature

following the path of the water.

Four years later, a structural engineer saw a creature

he described as having no arms,

but wings that bent and folded inward

with a gray skin stretched overthe bone.

He claimed the creature attempted

to communicate telepathically with him

before taking to the sky at a speed he estimated to be

over 50 miles per hour.

Hunter Bellamy, a Point Pleasantlocal,

recalled seeing red eyes in a tree

as he drove within the TNT Area.

Eventually, a shadowy being could be seen

as it took to the skies.

Two reports from hunters came in

during the years of 2009 and 2013.

They both claimed to have seen a creature in the TNT Area.

In one case, it was spotted directly behind

one of the abandoned munitions bunkers.

As the 2000s ticked by,

a new element was added to the Mothman lore,

one that was as rooted in the original 1960 sightings

as it was in the current activity.

A piece of the legend that had been added

by none other than John Keel.

- There's the idea that Mothman was a harbinger

and that it culminated

with the collapse of the SilverBridge in December of '67.

- Over the years, you know, the Mothman sightings

and the Mothman activity has brought up the subject of,

was it a harbinger of doom?

Was it here to warn people of the Silver Bridge collapse?

Honestly, a lot of the people, you know,

when the bridge fell,

nobody really talked about that a whole lot.

They were shocked the bridge had collapsed,

but then, you know, the movies were comin' out,

John Keel's book

and different little things were poppin' up sayin',

hey, you know, every time somethin' bad happens,

you know, there's a sighting of this creature.

- The idea that it was a harbinger of doom

was sort of baked into the book.

And then as I was adapting it for the movie,

that also seemed a link I wantedto make,

that there was, you know, I mean, obviously that

that sort of gives the story the propulsion that it had,

the feeling that all of thisstuff was leading to something.

- Because of circumstantial events that happened,

Mothman has been kind of labeledas this harbinger of doom.

You know, he's been allegedly sighted

before Chernobyl happened and I've heard 9/11,

you know, and of course that here in Point Pleasant

before the bridge collapsed.

- I've talked to some of the original witnesses

and some of them firmly believe that that's true.

Some people believe that it created the disaster.

Others say, no, it just coincided with it.

- The notion that the Mothman isseen

at the site of later disasters is something

that I'm pretty sure I made up.

But again, because it was part of the original story,

it felt like let's extrapolate this outward.

I almost get the feeling that once it was suggested

in the movie that people had seen the Mothman at Chernobyl,

I think it became sort of part of urban legend

because then I began to hear

that story being reported back to me from other sources.

- People will compare it to,

obviously the banshee wailing before someone's about to die

and there are several traditions like that.

- The banshees are part of Irishfolklore.

They're women that appear and scream, weep,

whenever someone,

that is part of the familyline that they're connected to,

is doomed to die.

It's kind of not the thing that you want to hear.

- A banshee is an Irish-Scottish death fairy.

And even though she does not cause a death,

she will announce the death

with her high-pitched wailing cries.

And we've got a banshee in the Parkersburg area

called the Banshee of Marrtown

and I consider that folklore ofcourse.

Something happened, it's been added onto over time,

but it's interesting that she does have red eyes

and she is a harbinger of doom,

they say much like the Mothman.

- The key to the Mothman's origins may be found

in the Native American or Scotch-Irish oral traditions

of those that first inhabited Appalachia.

Stories of banshees, enormous owls,

and even the Garuda all have ancient origins.

Passed from generation to generation,

these tales bear a startling similarity to one another.

Their central character arrives,

carried on the wind by its wings to offer a warning,

a warning of death, destruction and tragedy.

Behind the red eyes of a new figure, like the Mothman,

might lie an ancient secret,

one which can still be found today,

though seeking it might be the last thing we should attempt.

- Well, five years ago,

my dad was diagnosed with heart disease

and was goin' through heart failure.

Then finally, the doctors got him stable.

It went on and then this year, Father's Day of this year,

we all went to the mountains.

The following weekend, he callsme

and said, "Hey, I've fallin' and I can't get back up."

So I go to his house and he was unable to feel his legs.

He spent some time in the hospital.

He didn't want nothin' else to do with the hospital,

so we brought him home.

We had to have two people with him at all times.

I was there most days and I was actually sleeping

on the dining room floor on an air mattress

and my brother was sleeping

on the couch beside the hospitalbed.

As a laid on the mattress, I'd dozed off,

I immediately started feeling like I was dreaming.

I had a dream that my son was standin' beside my bed.

- Daddy.

- There beside the bed

and I remember in the dream asking him, you know,

why he was there, who brought him there

and how'd he get there.

And I guess I had enough consciousness to know

he shouldn't be there.

So I immediately woke up

and when I did there was this,

the figure standing beside the bed had long arms,

skinny, like fingers, skinny arms,

skinny legs with kind of bulky lookin' feet,

wings above his shoulders and its face,

I could see like dark largecircles where its eyes would be.

I stared at it for probably five seconds or so

and then it just,

I don't want to say walk 'cause it didn't walk,

it glided quickly across the top of my feet

and into another room.

I laid there for a second,

tryin' to figure out what I wasseein'.

I got up later that morning,

Dad was doin' pretty good.

Sat there with him with my brother.

We got up early on the 14th,

or about nine o'clock on the 14th,

hospice called and said they were comin'.

I said, "Okay, he's not doin' sowell.

I'll see you in a little bit."

As soon as I hung up the phone,

I noticed him gaspin' for air.

I went in, helped him lay down on his bed,

held his hand and he passed away.

So

That's when I, you know,

we called everybody and my brothers come over.

I would draw all this,

I kept drawin' this figure thatl'd seen.

I couldn't figure out what it was, you know,

or I was tryin' to figure out itwas

and drawin' it was kind of helping me

trying to figure it out, I guess.

We're sitting at the table, my brothers and I,

and I explained to 'em what I saw

and my middle brother looks at me

and goes, "Do you remember whatdad told us five years ago?

You know when he was going through heart failure

the first time?"

And it was a dark figure stood in a corner.

- The Mothman and other strange winged creatures

are still seen around Appalachiatoday.

Jeff Wamsley's Mothman Museum continues

to document the original rash of sightings,

as well as the more modern day accounts.

John Keel passed away in 2009,

but not before he finally made areturn

to the town of Point Pleasant,

where he was able to see what had become

of one of the more prominent pieces of his legacy.

- I think John Keel was very pleased

with what Jeff had done.

He had seen the original incarnation of the museum.

It's there because of him, because of his efforts.

Something he did years ago is finally coming to fruition.

So I think that he was very pleased.

He warned the people of Point Pleasant early on

about this idea that this is folklore in the making

and this little town may not be prepared for it.

And he gave the warning again when the film came out,

to just a small town of just several thousand,

and the film may be bringing a lot more people in droves

than they're used to.

- It is a very personal movie tome,

but what's odd about it

is that I have never experiencedanything.

I've never seen a UFO, I've never seen a ghost,

I've never had a weird phone call, I mean, none of it.

When I talk about the supernatural,

I say, "You've got the Mozarts and the Salieris.

You know, the guys who actually experience it

and the guys that wish they could, but haven't

and can only stare at those

who have seen behind the veil ofreality

and look upon them with envy."

And I used to look upon them with envy and I used to think,

"Wow, as soon as have a few bucks in my pocket,

I'm gonna give it all, you know, get out of LA,

go investigate the hauntedhouses and the haunted places,"

and now I don't feel that way anymore at all.

I say, let the Mozart's deal with their experiences,

I'm happy to be a Salieri.

- Like Keel, Jeff Wamsley's research continues

to keep Point Pleasant on the international stage.

Thousands attend the Mothman Festival each year,

making it one of the two best attended events

in the state of West Virginia.

The museum, meanwhile,

continues to grow, attracting scores of people

to a town they might never have even heard of

were it not for the Mothman.

The museum acts as a sort of living story,

part of a tradition of storytelling come to life

that is rooted in the cultural heritage of the region.

A tradition that stretches back far beyond North America

and helps to highlight today,

this lone page among the centuries of Appalachian history.

- What Jeff did was he went back

and he interviewed some of the original witnesses.

And the thing is that it had been, at that point in time,

it had been 35, 40 years after the events

and he corrected some of the things

that were not quite right in "The Mothman Prophecies."

That was so, so valuable.

- Dad's legacy,

I just, I would say it's gotta be Mothman.

I mean, it is bigger than that though.

Whether locals or whatever want to admit it or not,

Mothman has really reversed a lot of the negative stuff

of Point Pleasant.

What I mean is lack of business,

lack of interest, lack of opportunity.

It's kind of just blossomed overtime.

That in itself is major.

- I'm a grandfather now, so I think, you know,

if I left a legacy, it would be,

be motivated, go out and chase your dreams.

I mean, you know, I've done that all my life

and some have come true and some you know have not.

But you know, be creative and be nice to other people.

That's probably the bottom line is, you know,

be nice to other people.

I learned that from my parents though.

Well, my daughter, Ashley, you know,

from a young age was brought up a lot differently probably

than most kids.

I always tell her, I'll say, youknow,

"I'm retirin' here in a year, you can have all this

and take care of all the museum

and the festival and all that,"you know.

- It's very important to hold onto these old tales, legends.

I think Mothman has kinda movedinto the area of folklore,

where people are continuing to add to the story.

The folktales tell us who we are.

It helps us remember who we are.

It helps us remember those Celtic roots,

those Native American roots, so we know who we are.

And really, that's an importantthing for every person

is to know who you are, to know what your talents are.

That's very important

and I think it's a good reason to remember these stories.

- Fear is a funny thing.

In the end, it's part of our life.

You can't outrun it or hide fromit.

All we can do is name it, embrace it and learn from it.

Maybe the true power of an event isn't fully realized

until it's retold.

Until we can put into words our own experiences

and share them with others.

What we share might be laughteror tears, joy or sorrow.

Occasionally though,

it's something more, something primal and ageless.

Sometimes what we share is nothing more than our fear,

but at least for a moment, we are together

in the dark.

>>>>oakislandtk www.opensubtitles.org