'The Mothman Legacy': How the West Virginia myth came to be and what made it so popular
America loves its monsters and there is no better time of the year than during Halloween to revisit some of the country's best legends and spooky stories. It is at this perfect time that filmmaker Seth Breedlove -- who deals exclusively with monsters ('The Minerva Monster', 'Terror in the Skies', 'On the Trail of Bigfoot') comes with a sequel to his 2017 documentary, 'The Mothman of Point Pleasant'.
'The Mothman Legacy' is out on VOD on October 20, produced by Breedlove's Small Town Monsters and distributed by 1091 Pictures. The documentary delves into the origins of the Mothman legend and the impact it has had on the people of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. The Mothman has been part of American horror stories for a while now and there has been a best-selling book as well as a movie made on it. The 2002 film 'The Mothman Prophecies', starring Richard Gere, was based on John Keel's 1975 book, which tells the accounts of his investigation into alleged sightings of a large, winged creature called Mothman in the vicinity of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, during 1966 and 1967.
The first Mothman sighting was reported in November 1966, when two young couples from Point Pleasant, Roger and Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Mallette, told police they saw a large grey creature whose eyes "glowed red" when the car's headlights picked it up. They described it as a "large flying man with ten-foot wings", following their car while they were driving in an area outside of town known as the TNT area, the site of a former World War II munitions plant. In the months that followed, more such sightings were reported.
More than a year later, on December 15, 1967, Silver Bridge which connected Point Pleasant to Gallipolis, Ohio, collapsed, killing 46 people. In his book, Keel linked the Silver Bridge collapse to alleged sightings of the Mothman, based on local folklore.
Sightings of the Mothman have been reported in areas other than West Virginia as well, in fact, they have reportedly occurred all over the world. Some conspiracy theorists believe he was at Chernobyl before that disaster; or when the planes struck the World Trade Center buildings on 9/11. From 2011 to its peak in 2017, at least 55 people reported seeing the Mothman in Chicago.
It could be that because these sightings first came about at a time when UFO sightings were aplenty that the Mothman legend grew into what it has become. Folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand believed that something real may have triggered the scares and became woven with existing folklore, according to his book, 'The Baby Train and Other Lusty Urban Legends'.
Since 2002, Point Pleasant has held an annual Mothman Festival and even has the Mothman Museum, where visitors can learn more about the sightings and even pose with a Mothman statue. In fact, during the height of the Black Lives Matters protests in June 2020, a petition was launched to replace all Confederate statues with that of the Mothman. As of October 2020, over 4,200 have signed the petition.
'The Mothman Legacy' is out on VOD on October 20.