It was a half hour 'til midnight and the moon shined brightly as Roger Scarberry drove the black '57 Chevy with his three passengers through the old, deserted US military TNT plant a few miles outside of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Suddenly, and without warning, they all spotted a large, red-eyed shadow turning towards the doorway of the North Power Plant. "It was shaped like a man, but bigger." Roger Scarberry said, "Maybe six and a half or seven feet tall. And it had big wings folded against its back." "But it was those eyes that got us. It had two big eyes like automobile reflectors. They were hypnotic. For a minute, we could only stare at it. I couldn't take my eyes off it." Linda Scarberry later reported. Panic-stricken, Mr. Scarberry stomped the accelerator. Up ahead the same or a similar thing was encountered standing near the roadside. As the Chevy sped past, the thing spread its apparent, huge, bat-like wings and started chasing the car down Highway 62 reaching speeds of 100 miles per hour. The occupants were terrified. As they approached the Point Pleasant city limits the flying monster veered away and disappeared. Roger Scarberry drove straight to the Mason County sheriff's office and reported the matter. Deputy Millard Halstead then accompanied the couples to the origin of the first encounter near the TNT Area. "I've known these kids all their lives. They'd never been in any trouble and they were really scared that night," Deputy Halstead later reported. A press conference was called the next day by Mason County Sheriff George Johnson where local journalist Mary Hyre, a correspondent for the Athens, Ohio Messenger, picked up the story. As reports of the monster continued to grow (with over 100 reported sightings), another later news story labeled the frightening, unknown creature "the Mothman". The rest, as they say, is history.

The following night, Wednesday, November 16, another harrowing encounter would take place at a home near the TNT Area. It was around 9:00 PM and Marcella Bennett, her baby daughter and her brother, Raymond Wamsley, and his wife were about to leave their sister's house when Marcella's brother suddenly stopped after he spotted some strange, unidentified lights in the sky. "They were real brilliant lights," Mrs. Bennett stated, "almost as if they would hurt your eyes to stare directly at them. I know what a plane looks like, and it wasn't a plane's lights." When Mrs. Bennett reached down to unlock the car door that's when she saw the thing. "I remember looking down at the car keys, and I saw these legs that looked like gray feathers. They looked like a man's legs, but I did not see feet. I just started looking up towards the body, and when I looked at the shoulders and head, I could see that this thing wasn't a man. I just couldn't figure out what I was looking at, but I knew it wasn't a man. It did look like a big bird, because its arms were like wings. I just figured my time is over, and I'm going to die." After falling paralyzed with fear on top of her baby girl, Marcella was finally able to pull herself together enough to run back to the house where her brother promptly locked the door and phoned the police. As hysteria and fear swept all those in the house the unthinkable happened. "It came to the front window and looked in the window. It also came to the front door and sort of shoved on the door." said Marcella, "I know this sounds like a very strange thing, but this is real and it happened. I am 65 years old and I have never changed my story. I know what I saw, and I know what I heard."

What does a strange monster do in a town or a community? Or one might ask what happens at the news desk of a paper! Since the strange creature was sighted in this area this week it has brought more excitement than anything I have witnessed since I started working for The Messenger nearly 25 years ago. I always said nothing could compare with a flood back in the days when the town would be covered just about every year, but this has created more turmoil and fear for many. I don't care where you go, you can hear it being asked: "Wonder what the latest is on the thing that has been hovering over the area?" While some are curious about it, others are afraid to leave their homes at night. People who have been to other cities this week say that is all you can hear. One lady said, "This could only happen in Mason County," I think it is a good county and maybe the monster picked a good one to come to, what ever it might be, a creature or a man from another planet. My phone rings constantly about this happening and if I could print all of it I would have to write a book. Some have some cute sayings while others are very serious and concerned. "It is the Gallipolis Blue Devil football team, coming over to haunt the Big Blacks." said one, while others said, "It's only the Democrats coming back from Salt Creek with red eyes." Rumors Friday flooded the office saying, "Why did they kill the eagle, why did they catch and put it on display so that people could see it." The Steve Mallette and Roger Scarberry families who first saw this creature don't appreciate all the jokes that are being said, and I don't blame them. The wife of a prominent businessman a few weeks ago during the day saw an object flying. She said it wasn't an airplane, but resembled a butterfly, between 10 and 15 feet long. She said she was afraid to tell anyone fearing they might laugh at her. The traffic continued to grow Friday night when a constant stream of cars, flowed into the TNT area. Ed Brown, director of the West Virginia Security Service, a private detective concern, is interested in contacting any person who may have seen the monster. He would like to talk with the people, whose names will never be revealed, for research and evaluation. He may be reached by sending mail to Ed Brown, Charleston or phone 925-9851.

Prolific writer, Alva John Kiehle, a.k.a. John A. Keel, was commissioned in the mid-1960s to author a definitive work on the burgeoning UFO phenomenon. As a result, Keel was able to devote a large portion of his time to investigative research in the paranormal field. In 1966 and 67 John's research lead him to the Ohio River Valley in general and to Point Pleasant, West Virginia in particular. While there, Keel forged an ongoing friendship with local journalist Mary Hyre and many of the local witnesses. "You could feel something was happening there. So I lingered there and I started getting into all of this stuff." Keel states, "I found many strange things going on in the homes. And I found that many, many people had seen things, but never reported it to anybody. They were not the kind of people that would make these things up. There's very little humor in these stories." While in Point Pleasant, Keel discovered that a plethora of UFO sightings had accompanied the appearance of the Mothman, and mysterious "men in black" had showed up and threatened several of the local citizens, including journalist Mary Hyre. "She [Mary Hyre] was more scared of the Men in Black than anything else." stated Hyre's next-door neighbor Dottie Campbell. No one knew if these various unexplained phenomena were connected, but the consensus was that they somehow were.

Although the term "Mothman" was never used in describing the appearance of West Virginia's flying phantom, the name was forever associated with the creature after an apparent news reporter labeled it as such. In November of 1966 ABC's campy and wildly popular Batman television series had just completed its first-season run and it is commonly reported that the Mothman was named after a villain on the show. However, in truth, the show never aired a villain known as the "Mothman". In an effort to incorporate "Batgirl" into the series, Batman television executives created a ten minute video short to introduce the Batgirl. The villains presented in this unaired test reel were known as "The Killer Moth" and his "Mothmen" - characters created by DC Comics in 1951. The "Killer Moth" is an anti-hero of sorts, who sports a "Mothmobile", "Moth Mansion", and fancy "Moth" gadgets, in an effort to counteract the Batman. If it's true that the Mothman monster is named after the Batman villain "The Killer Moth", the name is very apropos. Some attribute the 1967 collapse of the Silver Bridge and the 46 deaths which followed to the West Virginia monster. Others claim the winged spectre is a harbinger of death and visits doomed locations prior to a catastrophe - killer moth indeed.