Mothman Museum

The Register, November 16, 1966

The Point Pleasant Register of Wednesday, November 16, 1966, ran the headline "Couples See Man-Sized Bird...Creature...Something." The story described two couples chased by a winged creature near the old power plant in the TNT Area, a World War II ordnance works north of town. Steve Mallette and Roger Scarberry told the paper it stood six or seven feet tall, with a wingspan of 10 feet and red eyes about six inches apart that glowed "only when their lights shined on it." "It was like a man with wings," Mallette said. Deputies who searched the area at about 2am found nothing. Roger Scarberry's wife, Linda, wrote in her police deposition that the car was "going between 100 and 105 mph" while the creature was "just gliding back and forth over the back end of the car."

The name and the count

Mary Hyre, who covered Point Pleasant for the Athens Messenger, wrote on November 17 about the "Mason County Monster," and the same day a Huntington Herald-Dispatch headline read "Mason Countians Hunt Moth Man." Sources disagree on who coined the name. Jeff Wamsley, the museum's owner, says the press took it from the Batman television series. History.com credits an editor at the Messenger, though the paper noted in 2016 that its first story never used the name.

The New York writer John Keel, who first visited Point Pleasant in December 1966, wrote in 1970 that "more than one hundred sober, God-fearing people" had seen the creature. The West Virginia Encyclopedia counts 26 sightings in a year, the number in Keel's own table of "the more responsible" reports. Eleanor Hasken of Indiana University wrote that "no record has been maintained that would corroborate" Keel's claim of "hundreds of sightings."

Cranes and owls

Robert L. Smith, a wildlife biologist at West Virginia University, told reporters the descriptions fit a sandhill crane, and that the red eyes could be "the large circles of bare reddish flesh around the crane's eyes." Ohio University officials said there had never been a known sighting of a sandhill crane in the region. Daniel A. Reed's 2022 search of a biodiversity database found 51 sandhill crane records and 5,576 great blue heron records within about 60 miles of Point Pleasant, and concluded that a heron was the likelier bird. Joe Nickell wrote in 2002 that the sightings were "mostly caused by owls," which populate the TNT Area and whose eyes shine red in headlights.

The Silver Bridge

The Silver Bridge between Point Pleasant and Kanauga, Ohio, collapsed at about 5pm on December 15, 1967, 13 months to the day after the sighting. Forty-six people died. The National Transportation Safety Board found that a flaw in eyebar 330 had grown over the bridge's 40-year life through stress corrosion and corrosion fatigue, and that no inspection method then known could have found it without taking the joint apart. In the Skeptical Inquirer, Terence Hines calls Gray Barker's 1970 book The Silver Bridge, which tied the collapse to Mothman, "heavily fictionalized," and notes that Barker admitted one chapter was "constructed out of whole cloth."

The statue and the museum

After the 2002 film revived interest in the town, Charles Humphreys of Main Street Point Pleasant asked a retired welder, Bob Roach, to build a Mothman. Roach built the stainless steel statue in his garage in about a year, according to Humphreys, and it was unveiled September 13, 2003, with Keel as guest of honor. Jeff Wamsley, who was born in Point Pleasant, opened the museum in 2006.

In October 2026, the museum was open Monday through Thursday from 10am to 5pm, Friday and Saturday from 10am to 6pm, and Sunday from noon to 5pm, and it closes on Christmas, New Year's Day, Easter, and Thanksgiving. Admission was $4.99 for ages 11 and up and $1.99 for ages 10 and under, payable by Visa, MasterCard, or cash. The statue stands beside the building. Exhibits include John Keel's white suit and props from the 2002 film, which was shot in Pennsylvania.

On Saturdays from March 7 to November 14 in 2026, a guided 70-minute bus tour of the TNT Area ran at 11am and 1pm for $25.95, museum admission included. The TNT Area is now McClintic Wildlife Management Area, 5 miles north of town off Route 62 on Fairgrounds Road, where camping is not permitted. In 2010, the State Fire Marshal closed the active storage bunkers south of Potter Creek Road, first about 175 acres and later 305, in an order that ran "until further notice." The Silver Bridge memorial is 2 blocks north, on 6th Street.

The Mothman Festival fills Main Street on the third weekend of September, with free admission. The next is September 18 and 19, 2027.