Mothman Turns 60: What the Newspapers Said in November 1966

This month marks 60 years since Point Pleasant, West Virginia, woke up to a story about a winged figure with red eyes. The legend of Mothman has since grown into a festival, a museum, a Hollywood film and a ballet. Our earlier report covered this fall’s festivities. Here is something different: what the newspapers actually printed in the first weeks, and what was added only later.

Two newspapers, one night

The account starts on the night of November 15, 1966. Roger and Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Mallette, two young Point Pleasant couples, told police they had seen a winged, humanlike creature with red eyes near an abandoned power plant in a former World War II munitions complex north of town, known as the TNT area, and said it followed their car toward town. West Virginia Explorer notes that police found nothing, and that curious motorists began driving out to the area.

The next day, November 16, the Point Pleasant Register ran the story under the headline “Couples See Man-Sized Bird…Creature…Something.” According to West Virginia Public Broadcasting, the text began: “Two Point Pleasant couples said today they encountered a man-sized, bird-like creature in the TNT area about midnight last night.” Mallette was quoted as saying, “It was like a man with wings.”

The story also reached readers across the river. Mary Hyre, who wrote for the Athens Messenger of Ohio from its Point Pleasant office, filed a front-page story that day headlined “Winged, Red-Eyed ‘Thing’ Chases Point Couples Across Countryside.” It opened with a question, quoted below. Hyre reported that the men talked of searching for it again that night, though they feared they might find it. A front-page follow-up on November 17 read “Monster Returns to Mason.”

What stands six feet tall, has wings, two big red eyes six inches apart and glides along behind an auto at 100 miles an hour?

Mary Hyre, opening line of her front-page Athens Messenger story, November 16, 1966, as reprinted by the Messenger (WVPB’s version omits “behind”)

The explanations came within days

The skeptical explanations were part of the coverage almost from the start. A headline on November 20 asked, “Is Mysterious Creature Balloon Or Crane?” The Messenger reported that Dr. Robert Smith, an associate professor of biology at West Virginia University, believed residents were seeing a large sandhill crane. Ohio University’s zoology department replied that there had never been a known sighting of a sandhill crane in that part of the country, according to the same account, and the Proctorville-Fairland High School Science Interest Club suggested the object was a gas-filled balloon.

An owl was suggested too. The Messenger reported that a man had shot a large white owl a few miles south of Point Pleasant, but that when Hyre interviewed the two couples, “all four said the owl did not fit the description.” None of the sources reports tracks, feathers or a photograph from those first weeks; the Messenger mentions only a deputy finding a “strange pile of dust” at the farm.

More reports followed. West Virginia Public Broadcasting, in its look at Hyre’s columns, says that later in November a Clarksburg man, Tom Ury, 25, reported seeing the creature at 7:15 a.m. on Route 62, and the Messenger carried a story on December 12 headlined “Cheshire People Tell of Strange Sightings.” That December story also describes John Keel as a magazine writer from New York City.

What was added later

Two parts of the modern legend are missing from this record. The name “Mothman” does not appear in the coverage the sources describe; WVPB says Hyre wrote “long before it earned the nickname.” And there was no bridge. The Silver Bridge between Point Pleasant and Ohio collapsed on December 15, 1967, killing 46 people, about 13 months after the first reports. The link between the two came from Keel’s 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies, which is dedicated to Hyre, who died in February 1970 at age 54.

Sixty years on, at Ohio State

Ohio State University’s Center for Folklore Studies and Humanities Institute are marking the anniversary with a “Moth-Vember” series, which the center describes as free and open to the public. A cryptid pop-up at Hagerty Hall’s Global Gallery runs today, November 6, and tickets are not required. On Monday, November 16, a screening of the 2002 film The Mothman Prophecies is set for the Gateway Film Center in Columbus. The Humanities Institute page invites everyone to a free cryptid social hour from 6 to 7 p.m., with a chance to meet curators of the Mothman Museum before the movie, but says the screening itself is at capacity and offers a waitlist. On Thursday, November 19, folklorist David J. Puglia will give a free lecture, “How America Makes Its Monsters,” at the university’s Faculty Club at 7 p.m.

The record of those first weeks is a reminder that a 60-year-old legend is built from many layers: a few witness accounts, a local newspaper correspondent, some quickly offered ordinary explanations, and decades of retelling. For more, see the West Virginia page.