As summer winds down, most of us look forward to the joys of Autumn: pumpkin spice, Halloween, apple picking, cinnamon brooms. But in the little town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, the end of summer means one enormous thing.
It's time to celebrate Mothman, baby!
In 1966, the Point Pleasant area experienced a rash of sightings of a large, winged biped with glowing red eyes that locals dubbed "The Bird" and the rest of the world dubbed "The Mothman.. Everyone in Point Pleasant at the time had a story of how they'd seen something they couldn't explain, or had seen the mysterious Men in Black that descended on the town, which they also couldn't explain, but at least looked mostly like human beings.
Mothman sightings continued until 1967, when it was seen near the Silver Bridge across the Ohio River in downtown Point Pleasant. Possibly related, possibly not, the bridge collapsed on December 15 of 1967, killing 46 people. The town didn't feel like talking much about "The Bird" after that. But writer John Keel connected the tragedy to the Mothman sightings, and after adding some of his own strange encounters, published the book The Mothman Prophecies in 1975 that became a great film starring Richard Gere in 2002. Mothman was back in the public eye and the time was right for Point Pleasant to embrace him.
Mothman. Not necessarily Richard Gere.
Point Pleasant has been celebrating the Mothman sightings since 2002 with a festival that brings cryptozoology fans from around the world. And folks, I just got back from it and have got to tell you: it is a pretty damn good festival from a town that decided to go all in on its eerie reputation. It's held on the third weekend of September every year, with musicians, vendors, street food, the local high school marching band, and guest speakers. This year was the largest one so far!
The highlights are, ironically enough, the things that are in Point Pleasant all year round: the Mothman Museum and the statue of Mothman that stands in the center of town. The museum had a line to get in that wrapped around the block, and that line stayed steady from the festival's opening at 10 am all the way until 6 pm when the sun started to set. The Mothman statue had a line all on its own, with people queuing up all the way to the flood wall to get a picture with it.
Or its butt. Mothman has a pretty prominent dump truck that people love getting photos with.
Despite the festival being all about Mothman, other cryptids get included as well, making it a little party celebrating mystery monsters from around the world. Wisconsin's resident cryptid, the Hodag, had a large presence, with staged demonstrations, a monstrous inflatable, and a little Hodag you can pose with. A vendor was selling replicas of famous Bigfoot footprint casts. The Flatwoods Monster, a 1952 alien sighting that took place only an hour away from Charleston, was well represented throughout the town. Loveland Ohio's Frogman was on more than a few t-shirts and crafts.
The vendor selection needs to be called out as absolute winners. I'm used to New York street fairs, where it's a gathering of whoever felt like getting a table that day. You'd get someone selling bulk socks and iPhone covers next to a local clinic offering hand sanitizer next to a guy with stickers of Spongebob dressed like a pimp. At Mothman Festival, the vendors are very curated; to get a table, you pretty much need to have some connection to cryptids. Crafts, books, shirts, art, it's all things Mothman, Bigfoot, Nessie, Flatwoods, Fresno Nightcrawler, Tsuchinoko, Mongolian Death Worm, and Hopkinsville Goblin.
Folks, I bought so many Mothman t-shirts.
The food is similarly themed, going from the simple Mothman branded root beers and potato chips, to specialty Mothman burritos, Mothman pizzas, and Mothman margaritas (margaritas with Chambord, food-colored tequila, plastic bat wings, and glowing red ice cubes). Lines were long and painful in the blasting heat of the sun, but had eased up by Sunday.
The Mothman Museum is the center of it all, really, explaining the history of the Silver Bridge disaster, the Mothman sightings themselves (the original witness statements are presented under plexiglass), and the tie-ins with John Keel and The Mothman Prophecies book and movie. It could have stood a little more of a narrative through it though, as press clippings are on display next to Mothman crafts, props from the film are interspersed with unrelated Mothman figures, and info about the Men in Black sits by unrelated Hawkman comic books. A lot of stuff is faded from the sun, and the condition of some of it could be better (I cry at the witness statement that has faded to the point of just being some faint impressions on notebook paper).
But it's a small town museum for a very niche topic. It's doing the best it can do, like so many of us these days. The attraction and excitement for it was justified — it IS the place to see the Mothman stuff in Point Pleasant.
(On a side note, the Flatwoods Monster Museum in nearby Sutton, West Virginia, is usually closed on Mondays, but opened on Sept. 22 to take advantage of the Mothman Festival crowds headed home. It's well worth the detour! The story of the Flatwoods Monster encounter is told in simple style with many accompanying visuals, and while it's not as expansive as the Mothman Museum, it does tell the story of the local celebrity cryptid in a more organized fashion.)
My traveling party took advantage of the air conditioned bus tours that the festival was offering of the TNT manufacturing facility where a lot of the sightings, including the first, took place. It's an old Army site located on the outskirts of town, with numerous decommissioned bunkers and wetlands. There's a local narrator for the tour who points out where the sightings took place, who saw them, and even some town history (the first cesarean section in the US was performed by a Point Pleasant doctor). I loved that she infused the presentation with her own opinions, such as how she is disappointed that kids aren't coming to the decommissioned TNT bunkers to drink and fuck like they used to, because they're now glued to their phones.
Overall, I had a blast at Point Pleasant's Mothman Festival. I got plugged into the cryptid zeitgeist, and while I didn't get to see any of the guest speakers, I got a great view into how America, and the world, views cryptids. They're monstrous, but cute, mysterious, but marketable. The crowd included local hillbillies as well as out-of-town goths and furries. There was a Fallout '76 contingent, due to the Mothman appearing in that game. Kids were there for fun, while others were there to dress up. You could get photos with local Ghostbusters cosplayers, or snack on Mothman cookies and "TNT water". Two days of pure American weirdness.
Some tips I figured I'd share with you, if you intend to check Mothman Festival out in the future:
- Parking is dreadful on Saturday. There is a nearby park (and I'm going to put "nearby" in quotation marks) that offered parking, and there were signs directing cars there, but we found that driving into town and looking for locals offering spots in the lots in places like Dominos Pizza and the dentist's office was a better deal. They were closer to the action and less of a walk. And the price of $10-$20 was the same or lower than the cost of spots in the park. They do fill up, but we nabbed a space as late as noon.
- Sunday was much less crowded than Saturday, and felt like there were more locals. On the positive side, you could get around easier, park closer, and lines for everything were shorter. On the other hand, many vendors had sold out of certain items by Day 2, so if you were hoping to come back and pick up that one special t-shirt, your size might be gone by the time you get back.
- The bus tour is completely worth it. Local people taking pride in local history is a good thing, and even if you don't see Mothman on the tour, you get insight about the sightings from people who grew up in the area who knew the key players. And it's air conditioned! Tickets sell out fast, so purchase well ahead of time and get to the bus stop early, otherwise you're stuck in the back.
- Speaking of selling out fast, BOOK YOUR TRAVEL QUICKLY once you've decided to attend. We waited and ended up at a Vrbo in Charleston, an hour away. Hotels book up, and it's not like there are a ton of them in the first place.
- Avoid the lines by hitting the Mothman Museum and photos with the Mothman statue on Sunday. Saturday is packed and it's more fun to walk around checking out vendors than standing in a line most of the day.
- Take the time to travel to the Flatwoods Monster Museum in Sutton, WV. It's charming and has its own merch! I'm bummed that they sold out of the Flatwoods Monster lanterns that seem to sell like hotcakes.
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