As legend has it, the flying Mothman mortified countless Point Pleasant residents in the late 1960s. And when a bridge collapsed, the creature was blamed for the deaths of 46 people.

On November 12, 1966, in Clendenin, West Virginia, a group of gravediggers working in a cemetery spotted something strange.

They glanced up from their work as something huge soared over their heads. It was a massive figure that was moving rapidly from tree to tree. The gravediggers would later describe this figure as a “brown human being.”

This was the first reported sighting of what would come to be known as the Mothman, an elusive creature that remains as mysterious as it was on the night that a few frightened witnesses first laid eyes on it.

The Legend Of The Mothman Of Point Pleasant

Just three days after the gravediggers’ initial report, in nearby Point Pleasant, West Virginia, two couples noticed a white-winged creature about six or seven feet tall standing in front of the car that they were all sitting in. Eyewitnesses Roger Scarberry and Steve Mallett told the local paper, The Point Pleasant Register, that the beast had bright red eyes about six inches apart, a wingspan of 10 feet, and the apparent urge to avoid the bright headlights of the car. According to the witnesses, this creature was able to fly at incredible speeds — perhaps as fast as 100 miles per hour. All of them agreed that the beast was a clumsy runner on the ground.

They knew this only because it allegedly chased their vehicle to the outskirts of town in the air, then scuttled into a nearby field and disappeared.

Knowing how absurd this must have sounded to a local paper in a small, Appalachian community in the 1960s, Scarberry insisted that the apparition couldn’t have been a figment of his imagination. He assured the paper, “If I had seen it while by myself, I wouldn’t have said anything, but there were four of us who saw it.”

More Spooky Sightings Across West Virginia

At first, reporters were skeptical. In the papers, they called the Mothman a bird and a mysterious creature. However, they did print Mallett’s description: “It was like a man with wings.” But more and more sightings were reported in the Point Pleasant area over the next year as the legend of the Mothman took shape.

The Gettysburg Times reported eight additional sightings in the short span of three days after the first claims. This included two volunteer firefighters, who said they saw “a very large bird with large red eyes.”

Newell Partridge, a resident of Salem, West Virginia, claimed that he saw strange patterns appearing on his television screen one night, followed by a mysterious sound just outside of his home. Shining a flashlight toward the direction of the noise, Partridge supposedly witnessed two red eyes resembling bicycle reflectors looking back at him. This anecdote remains a popular one in the Mothman mythos, especially since it allegedly led to the disappearance of Partridge’s dog. To this day, some still believe that the fearsome beast took his beloved pet.

What Is The Mothman Really?

Dr. Robert L. Smith, an associate professor of wildlife biology at West Virginia University, dismissed the notion that a flying monster was staking out the town. Instead, he attributed the sightings to a sandhill crane, which stands almost as tall as the average man and has bright red flesh around its eyes.

This explanation was compelling, especially given the number of early reports that had described the creature as “bird-like.”

Some people hypothesized that this crane was deformed, especially if it resided in the “TNT area” — a name that locals gave to a series of nearby bunkers that were once used for manufacturing munitions during World War II. It has been suggested that these bunkers have leaked toxic materials into the neighboring wildlife preserve, possibly affecting nearby animals. Another theory suggests that the creation of the Mothman was the work of one very committed prankster who went so far as to hide in the abandoned World War II munitions plant, where some of the sightings occurred.

This theory posits that when the national press ran with the Mothman story, people who lived in Point Pleasant began to panic. Locals became convinced they were seeing the Mothman in birds and other large animals — even long after the prankster had given up on the joke. It’s worth noting that the Mothman legend bears a resemblance to several demon archetypes found among those who have experienced sleep paralysis, which may suggest that the visions are nothing more than the embodiment of typical human fears, pulled from the depths of the unconscious and grafted onto real-life animal sightings when people panic.

And then there are the paranormal explanations, a morass of complicated theories that weave together aliens, UFOs, and precognition. These theories paint the Mothman as either a harbinger of doom or, more sinisterly, its cause — a legend that has its roots in the tragedy that befell Point Pleasant shortly after the Mothman arrived.

The Silver Bridge Collapse

On December 15, 1967, just over a year after the first Mothman sighting, traffic was bad on the Silver Bridge. Originally built in 1928 to connect Point Pleasant, West Virginia, to Gallipolis, Ohio, the bridge was packed with cars. This placed a strain on the bridge, which had been built in a time when cars were lighter. The Model T had weighed just 1,500 pounds — a modest sum compared to the 1967 average for a car: 4,000 pounds.

The bridge’s engineers hadn’t been particularly imaginative, nor had they been especially cautious, while creating this structure. The bridge’s design featured very little redundancy, meaning that if one part failed, there was almost nothing in place to prevent other parts from failing as well. And on that cold December day, that was exactly what happened. Without warning, a single eyebar near the top of the bridge on the Ohio side cracked. The chain snapped, and the bridge, its careful equilibrium disturbed, fell to pieces, plunging cars and pedestrians into the icy water of the Ohio River below.

Forty-six people died, either by drowning or being crushed by the wreckage. Footage of the wreckage of the Silver Bridge and interviews with witnesses and survivors. Following the Mothman sightings, the bridge collapse was the second terrible and bizarre thing to put Point Pleasant on the map in a year’s time. So it didn’t take long for some to connect the two. In 1975, author John Keel conflated the Mothman sightings and the bridge disaster while creating his book The Mothman Prophecies. He also incorporated UFO activity. His story took hold, and the town soon became iconic among conspiracy theorists, ufologists, and fans of the paranormal.

The Legacy Of The Mothman

Point Pleasant’s fame as the home of the Mothman legend hasn’t waned in recent decades. In 2002, a movie based on Keel’s book rekindled interest in the Mothman. In the Mothman Prophecies film, Richard Gere plays a reporter whose wife seems to have witnessed the Mothman shortly before her death. He finds himself inexplicably in Point Pleasant several years later with no clue how he got there — and he’s not the only one having trouble explaining himself.

As several locals experience premonitions of distant disasters, there’s talk of visitations from a mysterious figure called the Mothman. The film — a supernatural horror and mystery — offers no conclusions, communicating instead an eerie feeling of disjointedness that was both panned and praised by critics. Most notably, the film popularized the image of the Mothman as a harbinger of doom. Richard Gere plays journalist John Klein in The Mothman Prophecies.

The idea that visitations from the Mothman predicted disaster led some believers to make ties to the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, the Mexican swine flu outbreak of 2009, and the 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan. As for sightings of the actual Mothman, they’ve mostly declined since the late 1960s. But every so often, a sighting emerges. In 2016, a man who’d just moved to Point Pleasant spotted a mysterious creature jumping from tree to tree. He claimed to local reporters that he was unaware of the local legend of the Mothman — until he allegedly spotted the beast himself.

Whether these sightings are real or not, the Mothman can still be seen in Point Pleasant today in the form of a historical museum, and also in the form of a 12-foot-tall chrome-polished statue, complete with massive steel wings and ruby-red eyes. Furthermore, a festival commemorating the Mothman’s visits has taken place annually for years — a fun celebration that attracts locals and tourists alike. Every September, the festivities celebrate one of America’s strangest local legends that still has people scratching their heads to this day.

Big Foot, the Chupacabra and the Loch Ness Monster -- they're all creatures of lore that have captivated mankind for centuries. But did you know that Houston has a legend of its own? It's been 65 years since several Houstonians reported terrifying encounters with a "Batman" in the Bayou City.

While most people are heading home, others gather for a different purpose -- to catch a glimpse of something hidden in the shadows. "You can kind of see the awe on their faces when the bats come out en masse," said Suzanne Jurek, a zookeeper at the Houston Zoo and bat specialist. The bats of the Waugh Street bridge are just getting up. It's a colony of 250,000 and every one of them is a nocturnal hunter. "They fly for miles and they eat. It's all about the food," Jurek said.

"The most notorious reports of a flying humanoid is that of the Houston Batman," professional cryptozoologist Ken Gerhard said. This tale takes us to Houston back in the 1950s, when it was a boomtown bursting at the seams. It was 2:30 am on June 18, 1953, in the Houston Heights. Three neighbors claimed they saw something extraordinary just a few feet from their home.

Hours later, the unearthly encounter was front-page news in the Houston Chronicle. "There's really only one account that I'm aware of and it's a very chilling encounter," Gerhard said. "Subsequently, they were so horrified by their experience that they contacted the local police." The Houston Chronicle article detailed the encounter.

"Hilda Walker, a 23-year-old housewife, and two of her neighbors were sitting on their front porch, and suddenly Hilda noticed a large shadow moving across the lawn," Gerhard said. "It was then that they could make out its form." One of the witnesses, Howard Phillips, a tool plant inspector, told the Houston Chronicle, "I could hardly believe it, but I saw it." All three witnesses had a similar description of what they saw that night.

"It appeared to be a very tall man or manlike figure standing about six and a half feet tall but with bat-like wings attached to his back," Gerhard said. "Also seemed to be encased in a halo of glowing light." We asked graphic designer Michael Charles what he thinks the Batman may have looked like. "Give it the qualities of the bat -- slender frame, broad shoulders," Charles said. "When you see it, you freeze in your tracks and you just can't move."

And that's all the stunned onlookers said they could do -- just freeze. "Our automatic response when we're startled or afraid is to freeze up -- the deer-in-headlights effect," said Dr. Peter Norton, an associate professor of psychology and director of the University of Houston Anxiety Disorder Clinic. "We talk about fight or flight as the dominant response. But really it's more fight, flight or freeze."

They said the mysterious figure lingered for 30 seconds or more. "Then suddenly, the light began to fade out and the figure vanished," Gerhard said. The details of the Houston Batman may be uniquely 1950s, but the story is not. "The flying humanoid phenomenon dates back millennia," Gerhard said. Gerhard, who's finishing a book on the subject, has tracked down similar accounts all over Texas and Mexico. But while sightings are many, the answers remain few.

"What it is we're describing is essentially a biological impossibility," Gerhard said. Why? "If there were a bat as tall as a man, his wing-span would have to be 18 feet or more from wingtip to wingtip. It's not something that you would easily mistake," Jurek said.

We may never know what, if anything, visited the Heights on that night in 1953. "I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that it probably wasn't a giant winged bat/human creature, but who knows," Norton said. For now, the Batman creeps deeper into the shadow of legend -- vanished like a colony of bats into the night sky. But remember, just because we can't see them, doesn't mean they're not there.

"It's a great legend. It brings more flavor to the city," Charles said. We have been unsuccessful finding any trace of the original eyewitnesses to this strange encounter. If you have information about Hilda Walker, Judy Meyer or Howard Phillips, give us a call at 713-669-1313.

Later the four horrified eyewitnesses would explain that an erratic, shambling, quasi-humanoid figure emerged from the woods and waddled towards them. The beast apparently looked like a headless bat that was approximately 5-feet tall, with large webbed feet and wings protruding from its back. In Hutchinson’s own words:

“It didn’t seem to have any head. There were huge wings on its back… like bat wings.”

The group of friends, understandably overwhelmed with terror and adrenaline, sprinted away from the freakish bat-thing and made their way to the nearest police station. Once there they related their tale to what one must assume were highly skeptical officers. Flaxton would later state that he had “felt cold all over” during the episode.

Less than a week later, on the 21st of November, a young man named Keith Croucher seemed to confirm the teens claim of an unusual object soaring over Kent, when he announced that he too had seen an oddly shaped craft hovering over the local soccer field, not far from where Flaxton and his crew had claimed to have their curious encounter with a UFO and its bizarre occupant.

On November 23rd, John McGoldrick decided that the reports coming from Sandling Park were simply too outrageous to be ignored. So, after soliciting the help of an unnamed (yet clearly intrepid) friend, McGoldrick and his cohort made their way to the site of all the unusual goings on, hoping perchance to have a face to face encounter with the strange alien creature.

Once inside the wooded area, McGoldrick claimed that he and his companion discovered no less than three “footprints” — each 24-inches long and nine inches across. He also stated that they had stumbled across an area where the bracken (foliage) had been flattened, as if by some tremendous weight.

McGoldrick’s claims caught the ear of the local press, who were no doubt eager to feed the public’s ever growing appetite for new information regarding this strange phenomenon. To that end, the newsmen accompanied McGoldrick back to the scene of the “weirdness” on December 11th.

While the reporters did not manage to turn up any new evidence, it was stated that the thickets were still bathed in an eerie glow, which continued for some days before subsiding. The case was reported in scads of newspapers as well as a 1971 issue of “Flying Saucer Review,” under the title the “Saltwood Mystery,” due to its proximity to the area.

In the 1970s, ufologist Chris Wolfe also re-opened the case of this almost avian anomaly. According to records, he interviewed Flaxton and also inspected the scene of the unearthly encounter.

Following his investigation, Wolfe came to the dubious conclusion that what Flaxton, Hutchinson and their chums actually saw was an ordinary crow oddly illuminated by the flashing of an electric train passing not far away in the chilled autumnal air. He apparently did not attempt to explain, however, how the crow managed to appear to be nearly 5-feet in height, web footed or headless. Other skeptics have even more dubiously suggested that the quartet saw nothing more than a scarecrow.

Thus ends the apparent saga of the Bat Beast of Kent, but it has been pointed out by numerous investigators that — as unusual as this creature’s description was — it bears an uncanny resemblance to its British crypto-cousin (and Cornwall’s most famous monster) the Owlman.

The headless, bat-like description also begs comparison to a bizarre, yet eerily common, breed of cryptid that includes West Virginia’s Mothman, Germany’s Freiburg Shreiker, China’s Man-Dragon and the former Soviet Union’s Black Bird of Chernobyl — just to name a few.

Most of the aforementioned creatures are considered by many Fortean researchers to be “paranormal” entities, essentially oracles of doom, but what makes the Kent case so intriguing is that it marks the first reported association between these bizarre beings and the UFO phenomenon.

While, admittedly, none of the young eyewitnesses saw the thing actually exit the UFO, one would be hard pressed to deny at least some tenuous connection between the unusual aircraft seen landing in the woods at Sandling Park and the monster that soon thereafter emerged from the thicket… and ever after into the lore of both ufology and cryptozoology.

Source: https://cryptidz.fandom.com/wiki/Bat_Beast_of_Kent