The Mothman was reportedly first sighted on November 12, 1966 by Lonnie Button, at the time a young boy. Five men were preparing a grave in a cemetery near Clendenin, West Virginia, when they reportedly saw a "brown human shape with wings" soaring from behind trees and flying over their heads. The sighting was not made public until later, and the first sighting reported in the media occurred three days later.
On November 15 1966, two young married couples from Point Pleasant, Roger and Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Mallette, were on a late night drive in the Scarberrys' car. They were passing the West Virginia Ordnance Works, an abandoned World War II TNT factory, about seven miles north of Point Pleasant, in the 2500 acre (10 km²) McClintic Wildlife Station, when they noticed two red lights in the shadows by an old generator plant near the factory gate. They stopped the car, and were startled to discover that the lights were actually the glowing red eyes of a large animal, "shaped like a man, but bigger, maybe six and a half or seven feet tall, with big wings folded against its back," according to Roger Scarberry. Terrified, they drove toward Route 62, where the creature chased them at speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour.
Going down the exit road, they saw the creature standing on a nearby ridge. It spread its wings and flew alongside their car to the city limits. They drove to the Mason County courthouse to alert Deputy Millard Halstead, who later said "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." He followed Roger Scarberry's car back to the TNT factory, but found no sign of the strange creature. According to the book Alien Animals, by Janet and Colin Bord, a poltergeist attack on the Scarberry home occurred later that night, during which the creature was seen several times. The following night, on November 16, several armed townspeople combed the area around the TNT plant for signs of Mothman. Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Wamsley and Mrs. Marcella Bennett with baby daughter Teena in tow were in a car en route to visit friends, Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Thomas, who lived in a bungalow among the "igloos" (concrete dome-shaped dynamite storage structures erected during WWII) near the TNT plant. The igloos were now empty, some owned by the county, some by companies intending to use them for storage. They were headed back to their car when a figure appeared behind their parked car. Mrs. Bennett said it seemed like it had been lying down, slowly rising up from the ground, large and gray, with glowing red eyes. While Wamsley phoned the police, the creature walked onto the porch and peered in at them through the window.
An eyewitness's sketch of the Mothman.On November 24, four people saw the creature flying over the TNT area. On the morning of November 25, Thomas Ury, who was driving along Route 62, just north of the TNT, claimed to have seen the creature standing in a field, and then spread its wings and flew alongside his car as he sped toward the Point Pleasant sheriff's office.
On November 26, Mrs Ruth Foster of Charleston, West Virginia reportedly saw Mothman standing on her front lawn, but the creature was gone by the time her brother-in-law went out to look. On the morning of November 27, it apparently pursued a young woman near Mason, West Virginia, and was reported again in St. Albans the same night, by two children
A Mothman sighting was again reported on January 11, 1967, and several other times that same year. Fewer sightings of the Mothman were reported after the collapse of the Silver Bridge, when 46 people died. The Silver Bridge, so named for its aluminum paint, was an eyebar chain suspension bridge that connected the cities of Point Pleasant, West Virginia and Gallipolis, Ohio over the Ohio River. It was built in 1928 and collapsed on December 15, 1967; investigation of the wreckage pointed to the failure of a single eye-bar in a suspension chain due to a small manufacturing flaw.
In the wake of Mothman and Other Curious Encounters (ISBN 1-931044-34-1), author Loren Coleman was contacted by those linked to the events issuing from Point Pleasant, and he began a study of the so-called "Mothman Curse,"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothman
