The Mothman Festival!
 

Point Pleasant, WV is one of those places that would be right at home in a David Lynch/Stephen King collaboration. The place doesn't just feel cursed, it feels like it's been fucked-with on a demonic and supernatural level. Not only is the area blanketed by a legendary Shawnee curse, terrorized by some sort of pissed-off mutant bird alien and pollution-raped within an inch of its life, but it's also a toxic government munitions dump and the site of the Silver Bridge collapse, one of the worst bridge disasters in American history, which abruptly dropped 46 people to their deaths ten days before Christmas.

When you put all of this together, you get a band of shellshocked citizens in a landscape that looks like the inspiration for Silent Hill, doing the best they can with what they've got left. And that's how the Mothman Festival came to be.


The Mothman is a hard one to explain. He was first sighted by gravediggers in 1966, chased some teenagers in November of that year, may or may not have murdered a dog and appeared randomly to scare the shit out of people, running alongside cars and chasing small aircraft. Most reports have him at about 7 feet tall, with a 10 foot wingspan, grayish in color, and most importantly with glowing, mesmerizing red eyes. There's not anything particularly mothlike about him, but "Batman" was taken and "The Tick" hadn't happened yet.

A scientific panel opined that he might be some sort of mutant sandhill crane, or maybe a leftover pterodactyl. Some people said he was an alien, others some sort of supernatural harbinger of disaster, and when Mothman sightings were at their peak the town was overridden with men dressed in black suits who intimidated the townsfolk and told them they never saw anything.

Whatever he was and wherever he came from, he caused one hell of a ruckus in the months leading up to the Silver Bridge collapse, and even then people reported seeing him perched atop it before it fell. The Silver Bridge disaster brought the 200-year "Curse of Cornstalk" handily to a close, and gave everyone something bigger to worry about than a red-eyed cryptid snacking on housepets.

I have family who live just north of this whole situation, and I'd been simultaneously wanting and not wanting to visit Point Pleasant's Mothman Festival for years. Family was fuzzy on the Mothman issue when quizzed. My uncle reported that he'd been over the Silver Bridge in 1965, which I guess means he cleared the course with two years left on the clock. Everyone vaguely remembered something about a giant bird scaring people. My grandparents had worked with a man who was tailed by a notorious mystery man-in-black named "Indrid Cold" at about the same time. The Indrid Cold thing is creepy as all fuck, but that's a different post.

Anyway, this year was the year I finally made it happen. I got to the Mothman Festival, and it was everything I hoped it would be. I went to the Mothman Museum, I attended the Miss Mothman Pageant (yes, there is actually a Miss Mothman pageant), I ate Mothman Pancakes, and I paid homage to the inexplicable giant chrome statue of Mothman that someone erected downtown. So now that I've given you the background, I can get on with the show.

Nice post. sounds interesting and i cant wait to see more.

One of the first things you notice about the place is the atmosphere of general doom. It's like crossing from normalcy into soul-crushing depression. The Point Pleasant area is flanked by two enormous coal-fed power plants. One of them managed to clear out an entire town with toxic gases; the other looks like a screencap from Portal. These big smokestacks...some of the tallest in the world...are just constantly churning poisonous crap into the atmosphere. It really sets the stage.


You have to cross two bridges to get there, one of which is the replacement bridge for the one that collapsed, and the main view is of these big cooling towers and the clouds of pollution. No matter where you are, you seem to have either big poison chimneys of doom or the remnants of a huge bridge disaster somewhere in the background. Add that to the general decrepit and run-down state of the town, and you have a recipe for depression.


The grave of Cornstalk, the betrayed and murdered Shawnee chief who cursed Point Pleasant, is in a park right downtown. In a curse-ending attempt you usually only see in movies, his remains (bone shards and a tooth, I believe) were unearthed and ceremonially sealed inside the monument. Didn't work.


Right in the center of the downtown area is an unexpectedly badass chrome statue of the Mothman. I can't imagine all of the townsfolk being on board with this, but there it is.


We got there on the opening night of the Festival, and the big attraction was the Miss Mothman pageant. From the moment I learned that it existed, I knew I had to be there, and it did not disappoint. The Pageant took place on a black-draped stage, with swags of green tulle that could have represented either swamp gas or alien tractor beams, I don't know. It kicked off with a big, choreographed opening number that must be seen to be believed. I think I will have those lyrics in my head till the day the Mothman chases me off this mortal coil.


("Mothman, he's not from Japan, he's gen-u-ine, A-mer-i-caaan...")

Other than "Mothwear", a bewildering competition where contestants had to interpret the Mothman concept in fashion, it was a fairly standard beauty pageant, but Mothwear alone was worth attending. One contestant had sewn green flaps from her wrists to her waist, producing a look similar to that of a radioactive flying squirrel:


This one was a crowd favorite:

Here's Miss Mothman 2010 talking about her whirlwind year. It looks like that column has nefarious intentions.
.

The Pageant was fun, but we wanted to avoid the crowds so we crept away to poke around town. Next stop: the "World's Only Mothman Museum".

That reminded me of the fact that pretty much all of State Route 7 is littered with coal and nuclear plants usually adjacent to corn fields.

Since corn is in pretty much everything these days enjoy eating your irradiated pretty much everything

Welcome to "The World's Only Mothman Museum", which is exactly what it says on all of the signs, so it must be true:


It's essentially a long room that is plastered floor to ceiling with newspaper articles, the original draft of The Mothman Prophecies, clothing and other small things from the bridge disaster and associated rescue personnel, assorted Mothman stuff like this...


And, seemingly most importantly, anything and everything that ever came anywhere near Richard Gere and/or Debra Messing during the making of the film version of The Mothman Prophecies. I'm serious.


There's all kinds of prop stuff...breakaway glass, chunks of fake styrofoam bridge asphalt, cake plates and napkin dispensers, stuff like that. The movie wasn't filmed here, but it was loosely about here and somehow they got hold of the stuff.


The movie wasn't the only claim to fame, though. Televisions around the room played "Unsolved Mysteries" and other shows that went over the Mothman story on loops. There was an "AV Room" where people could watch documentaries, a TV playing "rare footage" of the Silver Bridge Collapse, and props from MonsterQuest here and there:


There was also this giant quilt that seems to be based on the same version of Mothman the chrome statue depicts:

Most importantly, though, was what I'm going to call "Mothmerchandise". If you could picture it with two red eyes, it was for sale. I'll throw a few examples on here in the next post.

The World's Only Mothman Museum had what I'm pretty sure was the World's Only Search for Mothman Claw Machine.


Mothman water bottles, magnets, you name it.


I can't really begrudge them, because the area's so economically depressed, but it was amazing how far they ran with it.


Mothman for President!

One store sold the "Mothman Frappachino". In case you can't make it out from the sign, that's a blended coffee drink with a blob of chocolate on top and two maraschino cherries. If I remember correctly it was like $6.75.


Two women selling at a booth near the Mothman statue. Note the itty bitty statue on the table.


Even the antique store got in on the action. These paper-maiche Mothmen with bike reflector eyes were marked at $65 apiece.


There was even a guy with a card table set up on the sidewalk...he was literally sticking red rhinestone eyes on just about anything and people were grabbing it up. If you can put red eyes on things, I highly advise you to truck it to Point Pleasant next September, you'll clean up.

On to the festival!

This mothman thing is really interesting shit. Man, I wish I could travel to all kinds of fucked up places. Thanks for sharing it.

That's no mothman, that's shirtless Chojin wearing a halloween mask.


edit:

I would really wear those two mothman shirts. The one for president and the one with mothman guiding the sleigh. Those are awesome.

I bought two mothman shirts, but not those. I'm still getting stuff together here.

The Festival kicked off with the Miss Mothman pageant on Friday night. Once Miss Mothman 2011 was crowned, they loaded her in the back of a pickup truck with the stage mascot and paraded her through town so the festivities could begin in earnest.


As a prank, someone had scattered mothballs all over the downtown area. I mean, boxes upon boxes of them, and most were smashed. The smell of mothballs was overwhelming. I guess it was somewhat funny, but it must have really done in the food booths. Nothing is appetizing when all you can smell is mothballs.


They didn't really do a hell of a lot to pretty up the downtown area, but it sort of worked, given the dark and ominous theme. This theater screened Mothman Prophecies and also Eyes of the Mothman, which is an excellent and thorough (but very, very long) documentary about everything that happened. It's available on Netflix instant, if you're so inclined.


There were guys dressed as Ghostbusters for no discernible reason.


There were Men in Black around town, but their out-of-character high school girlfriends usually ruined the effect.


There was a Men in Black dunk tank, letting locals score one against the terrifying government agents who once stalked them. My personal favorite thing about this picture is the lady on the right hand side.


Anyone in costume was an instant celebrity, so people flocked to these guys when they showed up.

Check out the sweet homemade puffy-paint jacket on this guy admiring the Cornstalk statue. They really seem to love chrome statues in Point Pleasant.


The Mothman Tram hauled tourists around. This one stopped to take a picture of me holding a must-have...the Mothman Pancake.

The Mothman Pancakes are something I'd heard about and had to try. I mean, look at this logo. You're like, what Mystery Machine?


When I saw they had t-shirts of that logo, you better believe I bought one. Unfortunately, I missed the Mothman Pancake eating contest, and I really would have loved to have gotten pictures of that. But here is the notorious Mothman Pancake booth, the purveyors of the most coveted item at the Mothman Festival. Note smashed mothballs in the foreground.


I was sure that a Mothman Pancake would have two red cherries for eyes, and I was surprised that it didn't. It was a Mothman-shaped pancake, possibly made on a special griddle, with a T-shaped squirt of whipped cream. The eyes were banana chips, with small slices of twizzler. I didn't realize one of the twizzlers slipped when I took the picture, but you get the idea.


It's a design that would translate well to men's novelty briefs, don't you think?

Was the pancake good? I couldn't imagine eating a twizzler/banana chip on a pancake, but other than that it looks tasty.

I discarded the eyes (my teeth break too easily to take on banana chips) and ate the rest. The pancake tasted like a pretty standard Aunt Jemima pancake, you know, box mix. The syrup was really good, though. I ate about half of it before the general mothball smell got to me and I gave up.

Edit: forgot to mention that there were several varieties of the pancake, with fruit and chocolate and so forth. I got the original mainly for the picture, and when I bought it I had people swarming me (and the aforementioned entire tram stopping) to get a photo of it, so it must be like the classic thing.

:mothmonsterman

The movie has just the slightest passing brush with reality, but it's a big claim to fame for the town so the prop discards are everywhere.

Of course, after eating the Mothman Pancake, it's all downhill from there. We went to the Little Miss Mothman pageant, but that wasn't nearly as well-attended:


Took in some more sights, including this long-rotted squash arrangement that had assumed a vaguely mothman-like shape:


And did a final pass by the creepiest house we've seen in a while.


Weirdly enough, the guy next door to this place had an immaculately manicured lawn and a sign that said POINT PLEASANT LAWN OF THE MONTH. Well, sure, by comparison. I really wanted to get a shot of the two houses together, but the guy spotted my camera and came out talking, trying to distract me by chatting about the festival, so that was a no-go.

A little of the ominous Point Pleasant atmosphere tried to hitch a ride back with us...when we had the car door open, a completely black cat tried to jump in.

So it was back over the Silver Memorial Bridge, past the gloomy cooling towers and through the ghost town of Cheshire, Ohio, toward home.


Never did see the actual Mothman. At least, I don't think I did.

I remember a big thread of local folklore a while back that had a little bit of mothman posted in it, its good to learn a little bit more about how crazy people go for these things.

Yeah, there are a lot of layers to the Mothman thing. I don't know if anyone will ever figure out what actually happened. I think the people saw something, because they are legitimately scared out of their minds. I just don't know what that something was. There are still people there who refuse to talk about the Mothman because they think it will summon him back. There are photos of people who were "visited", for lack of a better term, and they have big red rings around their eyes from staring, and unexplained radiation burns on their bodies.

I also believe that the townspeople were stalked by government agents, because there are actual photos of that and reports of attempted kidnappings where they attempted to bundle old church ladies off in unmarked vans. I have no idea why they'd find the need to do that, though.

West Virginia is one of those places that is just completely exploited by richer areas, sapped of all resources, polluted all to hell and just sort of left to die. The "TNT area", the government munitions dump, was originally a wildlife preserve. They drained some of the swampland, built "igloos" to hide a wartime arsenal, and made a factory that produced TNT. After the war was over, TNT and other chemicals were stored in the locked underground igloos. Pretty soon, there were reports of red liquid seeping into the local ponds and of weird, deformed fish being caught there. Turned out it was pure liquid TNT seeping out, among other things, and the ground itself was so carcinogenic it was scraped off and removed. So, could there be a giant mutant bird calling the TNT area home? Possibly. There were definitely mutant fish.

The conspiracy theorists were out in force at this thing, and you could hear it loudly discussed by folded-arm beerbellies on every streetcorner. The government was covering up alien visits. Someone knew someone who knew someone who saw a UFO crash in the nearby river. The Mothman was warning everyone of the bridge collapse. The Mothman caused the bridge collapse. The CIA was after Grandma. And so on.

At the core of it, though, you still had the older townspeople, most of whom still have clippings of the bridge disaster story in their downtown businesses (it's a tiny community, so nearly everyone lost a friend or loved one in the collapse) who were terrorized in the sixties and are still afraid to say a word about it. The Mothman thing is mostly the younger generation, and outsiders, trying to turn tragedy into profit and give the area a claim to fame.

Oh the movie is so awful. The book's entertaining enough. When I lived in WV, I always wanted to make my way to Point Pleasant, but never did.

Though I'm glad. I figured there would be local merchants playing up the Mothman thing in an attempt to sell tacky stuff, but man, they take it to a pretty incredible level.


"One of the first things you notice about the place is the atmosphere of general doom. It's like crossing from normalcy into soul-crushing depression."

That's par for the course for West Virginia towns, though!


GIVE PICKLES (good thread)

If they had a decent enough internet provider, I'd totally buy a house there someday. I'm probably not to far off from being able to right now, given the look of things.

Great thread thanks for sharing. I wish i could make it out to something like this, i really like that chrome statue looks like something outta Ultraman.

I like how the statues have abs of jesus-like proportion. Obviously this mothman was lifting cars to work out. Or maybe lifting other, lesser creatures.

Wow, that place looks amazing. Thanks, Kitsa!
Now I want to try to make my own Mothman Pancake.
Maybe I'll use cherries for the eyes, and blackberry syrup to make it nice and dark (though it'd be more reddish-purple than black).

The abs are a strange development with the Mothman thing. If you look at the original sketches (including the one I put in the first post), the silhouette is hunched and birdlike. Later sketches show the Mothman like he's something right out of a comic book, with killer abs and an abundance of chest hair. Not really sure.

I think they did have a version with the cherries and the blackberry syrup, dextire. If I ever go back, I'll try that one and see what it looks like.

Found this Mothman Pancakes menu from last year.

I wonder if they'd let you mix them up with a 'fruity mothman goes bananas'. I wonder what the mothman would think about people calling him fruity. It's like they're beckoning to come back and get cursed again.

I don't know, I'm kind of picturing a mothman-Paul Lynde hybrid situation and I think that's worse than the original.

For anyone interested, here's that MonsterQuest episode.

Honestly, those prices aren't really that bad for carnival food. I've been at state fairs with $7 turkey legs and stuff.

Nah, nothing was bad at all. The only drawback, as I said, was the horrible omnipresent stench of mothballs, which is absolutely incompatible with food smells. We had Mothman Pancakes, and during the Miss Mothman Pageant we had some cotton candy for $2.50. We were quite amused because cheerleaders were running the refreshment booth and didn't know what to do when I handed them a five. The cheerleader getting my order went blank, asked a friend, and the friend ran off for her mom. When I told them I was to get $2.50 in change, they seemed to think I was ripping them off.

I want a mothman patch cable

I went looking for the exact same mothman for president shirts and god damn they're expensive. 21 dollars plus 8.95 shipping from ebay is what they want for them. I haven't bought a shirt under 15 dollars since I was a kid. I guess I'll have to wait until I can visit there and get it on the cheap.

I doubt it would be on the cheap there...maybe no shipping. The Mothman Pancakes shirts were I think $17.95, and I think I got my pink shirt with the stylized comic book mothman at the Mothman Museum for around $13. If you really like them, go to the gift shop site itself for a few dollars less.

Mothman for President Shirts

Thanks for the link. I may end up buying it from them directly then! I didn't think that they'd be smart enough people to have it online. And if I get some disposable income that isn't taken by videogames, the mothman statues are kind of cool. I think I've just become a mothfan.

West Virginians aren't particularly stupid. I've met plenty of people from other states who could beat them in a redneck doofus contest hands down. They know how to make a buck when an opportunity becomes available.

I think the Mothman thing is fascinating. If you have Netflix instant or other means to rent "Eyes of the Mothman", I highly recommend it as the completely exhaustive education on the subject.

Edit: I was seriously considering the Mothman Plush for my daughter's birthday. She was a weird kid anyway, but she came away from the festival drawing blobs with big red eyes and telling me, "This is Mothman. I love him."

I think when I was in west virginia as a kid, I remember seeing so many rednecks. And one that scarred me for life. It was a morbidly obese black guy running a gas station in the middle of nowhere with a giant goiter on his neck. It looked like he had a mini second head sprouting from it. I try not to think about west virginia because it always pops into my head.

I am guessing my dad was just traveling through a strange part of west virginia and it's not all like that. Just like all of texas isn't cattle and farms.

You might enjoy "The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia".

The cables were unmarked and unexplained, just out there in the middle of a display. My working theory is that, since the woman at the checkout was the one who gave the tours, it was audio stuff she needed and set out and maybe forgot where she put it.

Although, given the state of things, I would not have been at all surprised if someone drew two red blobs on it with a sharpie and tried to sell them as Mothman Patch Cables.

You know, I could see Groundhog Day 2 taking place during the Mothman Festival. I'd definitely watch it.

Does the mothman feed on improperly stored clothing?

They did spread mothballs.

So many neat things in Ohio, I need to get outta my town more often.

I was born in Gallipolis, OH; the town that the Silver Bridge connected Point Pleasant to across the Ohio River. I go through Point Pleasant and across the Silver Memorial Bridge whenever I trek back up there. I lived there the first 15 years of my life and it wasn't until I moved to North Carolina that I found out there was a Mothman festival. I was pissed when I found out since I never got to go.

I just happened to be visiting in OH during Mothman Prophecies opening weekend. Of course some friends and I went and saw it. The place was absolutely packed. Lines out the ass to see this movie. Too bad it sucked the big one.

I actually did venture into the TNT area once, the place where Mothman was supposed to live, along with being acquainted with a few people who dared to go there. It is one of the creepiest places in America. It's so quite all the time, like there's just no man or animal around, so whenever you hear something it grabs your attention immediately. Whenever you're in that area you feel a tremendous amount of unease. Didn't help that I found an abandoned vehicle while exploring the place, hazard lights on and drivers door open. I went into one of the munitions storage "igloos" while I was there but there was nothing of interest other than a garbage bag full of something. Coulda been a dead body which would have been interesting.

That entire area of Southeast Ohio/Northwest West Virginia is surreal. Like the entire region just doesn't feel right. It's so rural and so out of the way and everywhere you go there's forests, an image I've always connected with the supernatural. It's an interesting place for sure. I still want to go back to that TNT area one day.

Anyway, I was on the imockey main page and saw this topic on the front page and just wanted to comment. Glad to see people are still interested in the Mothman.

http://www.i-mockery.com/forum/image...ine=1235708859

why wont it work :(

i give up

because it's filed as a php

very few people here? must be some ghosts!!!!!

RedComeXXX I disagree with you I think that the more people that there would be, then there would be more dead people, and then there owuld be more ghosts. Having less people and more ghosts just doesn't make sense to me.

Anyway, welcomme to the imockery forums and feel free to talk about other scary events in your life like mothman and such.

I'll give you the unease thing. Every time I start to get near Point Pleasant I start to feel the same way, with no particular cause. I'd be interested to see if someone who was transplanted there with no knowledge of the history would also get the jibblies.

Always very relieved to leave Point Pleasant behind. It's got the eeyore dark cloud over it.

You east coasters are easily terrified. In Arizona we have a bunch of scary places with weird back stories, we call them towns.

i use a coaster on my coffee table

whats the big deal about a mothman anyway

there's so many deadly weapons that can be made out of mothballs that he's basically boned.

probably like the most easily countered monster next to the witch in the wizard of oz and the aliens in mars attacks

I agree that they could have come up with a way better name than "Mothman". He's supposed to be slightly scarier than something that bats at a screen door or goes belly-up in a light fixture. I don't know what to tell you there.

West Virginia is also home to the "Flatwoods Monster", which scared the shit out of people well before Mothman.

In the area of WV where I lived, there was a link to the Mothman story in the personage of "Indrid Cold". It was never clear who or what Indrid Cold was, but I always found that story to be way creepier than Mothman's. A local businessman was driving along when a vehicle overtook him and blocked the road. A man got out and walked to the businessman's door. Reports vary but the general idea was that the man communicated telepathically with the guy and had sort of a fixed, maniacal grin on his face. He told the guy he was going to follow him around.

Then the story gets kind of wacky, the guy said he was abducted and went on all kinds of adventures with Indrid Cold, and he really was nowhere to be found when this was going on. My family corroborated this- he worked with my grandfather and lived next door to an aunt. The thought at the time was that he was running off somewhere and the whole thing was, quite obviously, fabricated. I guess he alienated (no pun intended) his family, lost his business, and so on, maintaining till the end that Indrid Cold was real and stalking him.

The really weird part of all of this is that there really was some guy following him. There are pictures that have surfaced of a man, fitting the description that the businessman gave of Indrid Cold, in the background of various crowd scenes, street scenes, outside the guy's house, and so on. No one knew who the guy was and no one could remember ever seeing him before. But it was always the same guy, popping up in every picture this businessman was in, somewhere in the crowd or scenery. So that was definitely strange. I don't know what the truth of the thing is, but Indrid Cold was a name that gave me goosebumps when I was a kid and I used to be absolutely sure sometimes that I would turn around and see a face with a maniacal, fixed grin looking in through the window.

Indrid Cold is spookier to me than Mothman, but maybe that's because I grew up in Indrid territory.

This all makes me yearn for Unsolved Mysteries. I've got a couple of books about ghost stories in Alberta, but it's all pretty boring. You'd think the prairies would be rife with spooky stories, but no dice.

I've read a couple of short stories in Canadian Lit about people who went nuts listening to the wind and murdered their families in prairie province cabins, but that's about it. I think there might also have been one about a guy in northern Ontario (maybe Quebec?) who went nuts listening to turbines at the isolated hydroelectric plant where he worked. I think almost all of the creepy Canadian stuff I had dealt with isolation, sort of Shining-esque scenarios.

Indrid Cold has been called "The Grinning Man". I don't know if it was a Joker sort of grin or what...I always pictured just this fixed, transparently fake look of good-naturedness that was hiding something really horrible. The scariest thing about Indrid Cold was, to me, the many times the story intersects with fact. Yes, it was a bit of a stretch to imagine that Indrid Cold was an alien from the planet Lenulos. But more than one person reported seeing his vehicle, all of those people were on the same road at the same time as the witness, and there were lots of independent, incidental reports of things that verified that the Cold guy might be a real person. For some reason the thought of some psychopath randomly stalking a businessman was the scariest thing of all to me...moreover, the fact that he disappeared. I always thought he was going to show up again. Maybe outside my window. After all, the whole thing happened practically down the street.

we have a urban legends museum here in zacatecas is pretty nice you have dioramas that follow the story, a recording plays as the dioramas different parts light up and some figures moves etc

I want to go there so bad. I found out about Mothman about when I was 16, and I still think it's extremely interesting.

In related news, I keep getting this ad.

Ominous! If you hear a high-pitched noise at night, try to upload a few pictures before your unassumingly untimely demise

I doubt I have the time, what with the surprise I'm supposed to prepare for.

So this is coming up again, and I just don't know if I can make it down there again this year. Part of me is okay with that, because I tell you Point Pleasant just gives me the damn jibblies.

I'd like to commemorate the occasion, though. Probably the wearing of Mothman t-shirts, which now fit me more like nightshirts. Definitely the making of Mothman pancakes.

We actually did a qualifying round for Little Miss Mothman and bombed that one big, which confirmed that a) we're just not pageant people and b) we're so ugly we don't even place in rural WV beauty pageants. So, suck on that, ego. It actually was kind of a really negative experience, which surprised me. Gonna give that whole...way of life...a wide berth from now on.

But Mothman! Nothing can kill my love for things that glow red in the night, or inexplicable chrome monuments to monsters that terrorize small towns. So I'm open to suggestions.

How about a tap-dancing Mothman cake?

Ooh.

I have an idea for some kickass cookies :D

Kitsa, reading your post about this Mothman festival really makes me want to go to this sometime and do a photo piece for the site. I don't know if I'll be able to do it this year (not sure exactly when it is?) but West Virginia is only a few hours away from me. I could easily make a day trip of it, or stay for a weekend.

You're just in time for it. It's in September.

Anyway.

Another theory about Mothman is that it was a pissed-off owl, mutant or otherwise. Barred owls are common to the TNT area, one might have gotten mutated to some giant proportion; fish there did. It's not entirely impossible that an Incredible Hulk (Hawk?) of an owl was flapping around the place scaring the shit out of people.

Owls can get pretty terrifying when they feel threatened or when they're pissed off. I wouldn't want to be alone with one.

Exhibit A- Imagine this suddenly appearing before you on a dark road, with the eyes reflecting red.


Exhibit B- Owls can make themselves look considerably more evil when they want to.


I don't know that Mothman was an owl, but I guess I wouldn't be surprised. An owl would appear threatening and could divebomb people. An owl could have perched on the Silver Bridge. That place is all forest, I bet there are owls everywhere, and it's creepy enough in Point Pleasant that anything threatening would be way amplified.

See also:

Seeing Red- Demonic Owl Eyeflash

I've always thought the Owl explanation was pretty boring.
But a giant, mutated red-eyed Owl that attacks people and can predict/cause a bridge to collapse? That would make a pretty respectable Mothman. :halloween2

I guess it's boring, but the more I look at the evidence, the more likely it seems to me.

you fools that's what the mothman wants you to belive

My daughter says that all moths and owls are mothman's friends. Sort of like the all-mall-santas-being-real-santa's-helper concept.

She's 2, though.

Oh shit, she talks? I guess because we never see pics of her, I consider her to still be in the larva stage.

She hasn't shut up since she was about 5 months old.

It's getting closer...

Well, he's the Mothman, glowing red eyes
Ten feet tall, (? tracking you?), he flies
They say he's a bird, they say he's a man
It was late one summer when it all began

My friends and I, we were playing it cool
Cruising around, and acting a fool
Not suspecting what was up ahead
If it were a nightmare, we'd wake up dead

from the
MOTHMAN
Glowing red eyes
Ten feet tall, baby that's no lie
MOTHMAN
He's not from Japan!
He's a...genuine...
A-MER-I-CAN.

:lol I had no idea Mothman was a patriot.


Hmm... maybe I'll make some Mothman pancakes this week.

I'm definitely doing Mothman cookies and possibly mothman pancakes. Also, the wearing of the Mothman shirts.

I can't figure out what the fuck that guy is saying in the second line of the song. Any ideas?

I hear "tracking you, he flies" as well.
But I think the "we'd wake up dead" is actually "we'd drop dead".

Also, I found another song about Ol' Mothy.

Live, it sounded like "We'd wake up dead." I don't know. I really wanted a clean copy of it, but the Mothman Festival people just referred me to the lady who runs the pageant.

Tomorrow- Mothman Cookies!

Step 1- Make a template by taping the infamous police sketch to a paper plate, then cutting it out.



Step 2- Use the template to cut mothmen out of my badass sugar cookie dough srsly this is the best dough there is



Step 3- This is how you make the best cookie icing ever. Melt an entire stick of butter on a saucepan over low heat. Get a bag of powdered sugar and just keep dumping it in and stirring until there is no more visible oil, until all of the sugar is absorbing the butter in a thick paste. Pour in a teensy bit of milk and stir until it's glossy and smooth. Use more milk for a thinner glaze, less for a thick icing. Add paste food color (I used black, which is actually dark purple). This stuff tastes incredible and keeps cookies soft.



Step 4- Decorate with red eyes made from red hots, or if you're too stupid to remember red hots when you're out, get those cherry lemonheads. Transfer and spread icing to cookies with a spoon and stick those bad boys on there. If the icing starts to get crusty, add a teensy bit more milk and stir until smooth again.



Bingo, Mothman cookies. And they were delicious.

Ha ha, those are awesome Kitsa! I love the step-by-step instructions. :halloween2
Not willing to share the secret "badass sugar cookie dough" recipe?

It's folded up in one of my mom's cookbooks, I'll have to wait to get it. It's one of those not open to improvisation- if you follow it to the letter, the cookies will be absolutely perfect. If you don't, they turn out terrible.

Dinner. There was a miscommunication and there were no cherries for the eyes the way I'd planned. Due to further miscommunication, 9 lbs of twizzlers I had bought and stashed in the pantry were also absent. I ended up subbing two blobs of piped raspberry preserves, which were actually really good and made the mothmancake taste something like a jelly donut.

Very nice. :halloween2 The one you made looks more professional than the official one.

And the raspberry preserves is a far superior choice to the 9 pounds of twizzlers.
That much edible plastic can't be good for you. :halloween

As the heat of the pancake melted the preserves, it looked like he had bleeding red eyes, which was excellent.

I know the Mothman Pancake people have some sort of special griddle, but I just sort of tried to approximate the uterine, bloblike shape and T of whipped cream and I think it's fairly close, thanks. Weird not eating it in the appropriate atmosphere- feels like it's not right if you're not standing next to the Point Pleasant floodwall, breathing in mothballs, balancing it on a styrofoam plate as a tram full of tourists take your picture.

Thank you. I will now forever look at Cherry Lemonheads as the eyes of the Mothman. Great job on the cookies!

MOTHMAN COOKIE DOUGH

2/3 Cups Butter (REAL butter)- this is one stick plus 3 tablespoons, just hack it into pieces and use it straight out of the fridge, don't soften it
3/4 Cup Granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg (REAL egg, not egg beaters)
4 teaspoons milk
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Cream together butter, sugar and vanilla. Add egg and beat till fluffy. Stir in milk one teaspoon at a time. Sift together the dry ingredients in a separate bowl, give it a few stirs to combine, and dump it into the creamed mixture. Mix very MINIMALLY, just until everything is integrated. Chill the dough in the fridge for an hour. The longer past an hour, the harder it is to work with.

When you have about 15 mins left on the hour, preheat your oven to 375. Get out a sheet of parchment and dust it with flour. You'll also need a rolling pin and whatever cutters you plan to use. At the end of the hour chill, pull the dough back out, scrape it out of the bowl, form it into sort of a ball thing and roll it out to 1/8". You might need to put another piece of parchment on top. (For some reason, this works best with parchment, not silpat or wax paper.)

When it's flat, peel off the top parchment and do your cutting. Transfer to a parchment-lined cookie sheet. Again, can't stress enough the importance of the parchment, it makes this a hell of a lot easier.

Bake at 375 for about 6 to 8 minutes, or as many as 10 if they're big cookies. Watch them like a freakin' hawk. When you start to smell the vanilla and when they are just BARELY beginning to turn the slightest golden brown on the edges, they're done. I take the cookie sheet, give the parchment a tug and lay the parchment and cookies right on a flat countertop to let them cool. This makes about 2 dozen cookies, depending on size, and translates well to christmas cookies or hamantaschen or jam thumbprints or pretty much anything. The icing shown above will keep them crazy soft.

Awesome! I'll try it out soon. :halloween2

They should work out well if you follow the recipe to the letter and watch the cookies very well so that they don't overbake. Most of the friends who reported the recipe didn't work eventually admitted that they subbed margarine/wholegrain flour, or that they overbaked the cookies by a minute or two, etc.

Mothman sighting! I was at a park and me and a friend of mine spotted this thing in the trees.



No clue what it was but my friend actually said "it looks like Mothman Prophecies" so I had to snap a picture of it. The above photo is digital zoom. And here is a photoshop zoom with a circle.



I must of watched it for about 10 minutes and it never moved. I nearly jumped the fence just to get a better look at the thing.

Weird. Trash bag maybe? Kite?

Heh, who knows. Maybe a buzzard (it was big)? No idea, just never saw it move or flutter in the breeze like a kite normally would.
It does make for a nice blurry Mothman photo though, right? :xmas1

Clearly, it was Batman.

BTW, I went to the mothman festival this year on a Sunday. I ran all over the place trying to find the Mothman Pancakes stand because I had talked them up the whole trip and was eager to prove it.

Couldn't find them, asked a cop...and there are no Mothman Pancakes on Sundays! Denied! >:

So we ate at Hillbilly Hot Dogs instead.

I also met the creator of the documentary Eyes of the Mothman. I said something really sophisticated like, "It was a fantastic documentary". I'm smooth like that.