by Dean Traylor

Created on: January 25, 2011

Predictions and bad omens have a strange way of popping up after an event has happened. It’s only afterward that somebody or something - in the case of the Mothman Prophesies – emerges, claiming to have foreseen or signified a major disaster that had just occurred.

Case in point: The Mothman. Supposedly, this winged-humanoid demon’s mere presence is a harbinger of bad things to come. Since the mid-1960s it has been spotted by frightened commuters in the forests and abandoned mines off of Route 62 near Point Pleasant, West Virginia. If its massive body and sinister red eyes were not enough to send chills down the back of the eye-witnesses, its reputation for showing up before a disaster occurs made many dread its presence.

However, a closer look reveals something other than a prophetic creature; its reputation as a bad omen was based on one unrelated event. On top of that, the supposed sightings and precognitive powers were merely the thing of legend and imagination.

The Mothman’s emergence was first reported on November 15, 1966 when a group of young travelers from Point Pleasant spotted something lurking near the West Virginia Ordnance Works, an abandoned World War II explosives factory.  Roger and Linda Scarberry, along with Steve and Mary Mallette and their cousin Lonnie Button noticed two red lights in the shadow by an old generator plant.

Curious, they pulled the car over to get a better look. What they saw terrified them. The red lights, as Roger Scarberry claimed, were the eyes of a large beast “shaped like a man, but bigger, maybe six and a half or seven feet tall with big wings folded against its back. The young travelers sped away toward Route 62 with the creature in hot pursuit of them (a version of this legend was written on a plaque on the Mothman statue).

They managed to reach the Mason County courthouse where they alerted Deputy Millard Halstead. Instead of casting doubt on the story the deputy later stated, “I’ve known these kids all their lives. They’d never been in any trouble and they were really scared that night. I took them seriously.”

The next day, the deputy investigated, but never found any evidence of the creature. (Many skeptics point out the travelers may have misidentified an animal such as the Sandhill Crane which had been a problem in the region during the 1960s. These cranes were 39 inches with a wingspan up to 7 feet.)

This should have been the end of the story; however,

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