We Went For Mothman and Found The Silver Bridge
Is the Mothman an Omen of Coming Disaster?
When you have 7 cats, and you live in the country, it’s difficult to plan a vacation.
Cats aren’t valued so, getting someone to come take care of all of them for a week or two is nearly an impossible task. Asking a neighbor to watch them for a week or two is unfair, especially when a couple of the cats have special needs.
Special needs you ask?
Because of missing teeth, one has to have the gravy skimmed off canned cat food, though he will eat dry food. Go figure. Another never learned how to groom himself, so he needs to be cleaned with a wet wipe and brushed periodically.
There’s more, but you get the picture. They were all abandoned critters we took in.
So now, for vacations, we take all of them to a wonderful pet “resort”.
But because of the cost for 7 seven cats, for one or two weeks, at a pet resort, we take many day trips.
A recent day trip was to Point Pleasant, West Virginia.
Why Point Pleasant, West Virginia?
To go to the Mothman museum.
Husband rolls eyes.
I like quirky destinations, and bribery with the thought of a good cheeseburger usually works.
Point Pleasant is a historical Ohio River town where river barges still move coal and the people cherish their American history.
Point Pleasant has a few good restaurants, great cheeseburgers, a charming park (Tu-Endie-Wei State Park means "the point between two waters" in the Wyandot Indian language) some antique shops, quaint hotels, some pretty spectacular flood wall murals and, the Mothman museum.
The Mothman Museum is the world’s only museum/research center devoted to the West Virginia legend called Mothman. Movie props, archives and rare collectible items related to the phenomenon are on display there.
We learned about the some of the people who documented the Mothman legacy like John Keel and Mary Hyre. We read the handwritten eyewitness accounts from Linda Scarberry & Mary Mallete. We saw rare historical press clippings and photographs of the Silver Bridge disaster.
It doesn’t get much quirkier than Mothman.
But, what we went for, and what we found was quite surprising.
Legend of the Mothman
On a chilly, fall night in November 1966, two young couples drove into the TNT area north of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, when they realized they were not alone.
What they saw that night has evolved into one of the great mysteries of all time; hence the Mothman Legacy began. It has grown into a phenomenon known all over the world by millions of curious people asking questions: What really happened? What did these people see? Has it been seen since?
It still sparks the world’s curiosity—the mystery behind Point Pleasant, West Virginia’s MOTHMAN.
Sculpture by:
Artist and Sculptor
Bob Roach
New Haven, West Virginia
Erected 2003 by the Town of Point Pleasant.
The legend started when two young couples from Point Pleasant reported a large creature with 10-foot wings whose eyes "glowed red" that chased them while driving near a former military munitions site outside town.
In that same November, gravediggers working in a cemetery in Clendenin, West Virginia, spotted a strange, man-like figure in the trees above their heads.
Sightings of what area newspapers dubbed the "Mothman" continued throughout the following year, often leaving witnesses with a deep sense of dread.
Many locals believed the Mothman lived in a vacant nuclear power plant outside Point Pleasant, perhaps an escaped product of some secret government experiment.
As we walked through the museum, we began to realize there was more to Mothman than just a local Loch Ness monster.
The sightings abruptly stopped in December 1967.
Why?
On December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge collapsed over the Ohio River, shocking the town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia — and some believe that the mythical Mothman was responsible. The True Story Of The Silver Bridge Collapse That Left 46 People Dead.
The thirty nine year old Silver Bridge, which carried U.S. Route 35 over the Ohio River, collapsed under the weight of heavy rush hour traffic.
Thirty seven vehicles were on the bridge when it fell into the Ohio River. Forty six people died, and nine others were seriously injured, two of the bodies were never found.
They say the bridge collapsed in less than 22 seconds.
It’s why people couldn’t escape.
As it turns out, the bridge failure was due to a defect in a single link, known as eyebar 330, on the north of the Ohio subsidiary chain, the first link below the top of the Ohio tower.
What happened?
A small crack was formed through fretting wear (refers to wear and corrosion damage of loaded surfaces in contact while they encounter small oscillatory (to swing backward and forward like a pendulum) movements) at the bearing, and grew through internal corrosion, a problem known as stress corrosion cracking (is the growth of crack formation in a corrosive environment. It can lead to unexpected and sudden failure of normally ductile (ductility is defined by the degree to which a material can sustain) metal alloys). The crack was only about 0.1 inches (2.5 mm) deep when the link failed, breaking in a brittle fashion.
First opened in 1928, the Silver Bridge had been designed by J.E. Greiner Company and built by the precursor to the West Virginia-Ohio Bridge Company as well as the American Bridge Company. It was a two-lane, 1,760-foot-long eyebar suspension bridge, and it took a year to finish.
From the very beginning, the builders cut corners. The bridge was originally meant to be suspended with traditional wire cables. However, an alternate bid for an eyebar design ended up being cheaper. Plus, this design would make the bridge one of the first structures of its kind in the United States. The True Story Of The Silver Bridge Collapse That Left 46 People Dead.
In 1975, writer John Keel wrote a book titled The Mothman Prophecies, linking the bridge collapse with the Mothman sightings. In it, Keel suggested that the sightings were bad omens about the impending bridge collapse.
In 2002 the book was turned into a movie starring Richard Gere and Laura Linney, and the spooky West Virginia legend exploded onto the national stage.
We watched The Mothman Prophecies the other night, and I’ve got to tell you, it gave me nightmares, and I never have scary dreams.
But Mothman isn’t unique to Point Pleasant.
The Case Of The Chicago Mothman
As recently as 2011 Chicago citizens have reported seeing a giant, flying, winged humanoid.
The reports, which peaked in 2017, inspired Chicago-based comics artist Sarah Becan to bring Curious City this question:
There was a rash of sightings in Chicago of a creature that people then called the "Chicago Mothman." Did we ever find out what it was? The Case Of The Chicago Mothman.
Is the Mothman an Omen of Coming Disaster?
According to many accounts, this strange paranormal entity has been present before some of the worst disasters that have occurred in living memory.
If one looks globally it could be said that the Mothman is related to mass sightings of a “man-dragon” in China, which occurred before a deadly dam disaster in 1926. Many decades later, a similarly described winged entity was supposedly sighted in Mexico before the outbreak of swine flu. Described as a “man-bat” with glowing red eyes, the Mexican Mothman bears striking similarities to early reports of the Chupacabra, leading one to question just how widespread Mothman sightings are. Is the Mothman an Omen of Coming Disaster?
And:
Often described as a humanoid figure around 7 feet tall with a massive wingspan and hypnotic glowing red eyes, the creature of legend known as the Mothman seems to be connected to tragic events. Across the world, witnesses claim to have seen a creature, with sightings becoming more frequent in the days leading up to horrific events. Two bridge collapses, the Chernobyl disaster, and even the 9/11 terrorist attacks were all allegedly preceded by Mothman sightings.
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The following are stories of real people who claim to have seen Mothman and what disasters they experienced - or narrowly averted. Convincing Stories Of People Who Claim They Saw The Mothman In Real Life
Real or make believe?
In getting back to our day trip to Point Pleasant, West Virginia, the people there do remember their history.
The images above are at the West Virginia end of the collapsed Silver Bridge. The mural is a depiction of how it would look to drive onto the bridge.
They also celebrate their most famous resident:
The Mothman Festival is an annual gathering commemorating the visit of the mysterious entity known only as "The Mothman."
Every year on the third weekend in September, thousands of people flood the streets of Pt. Pleasant to indulge and celebrate all things Mothman. Mark your calendars for September 16th & 17th, 2023. You aren't going to want to miss it!
So, if you can’t take a vacation, take a day trip.
You never know what you’ll find.
I like the Silver Bridge story. It reminds of how the Roman Empire would prevent Engineers from cutting corners when building bridges. They would routinely make the families of the engineer stand under the bridge as the scaffolding was removed, and in some cases the families were required to live there for Months at a time. I suspect that bridge might still be standing today if we had tried the Roman way.
I sympathize with your difficulty of planning trips around animal care - we have several rescue dogs, planning for them is often more work than planning the vacation.
I had no idea about any of this! So terrible about the bridge.