The Mothman sightings at Point Pleasant
On 15 November 1966 two couples from Point Pleasant, West Virginia, told police they had seen a large winged creature near a former munitions plant.
On the evening of 15 November 1966, two young couples from Point Pleasant, West Virginia, drove to the area known as the TNT area. Roger and Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Mallette went to police with an account of a large black creature with red glowing eyes standing at the side of the road. The TNT area was the site of a World War II munitions plant. Linda Scarberry's description was a "slender, muscular man" some seven feet tall, with white wings.
The next day, 16 November 1966, the Point Pleasant Register ran the story under a headline about couples seeing a man-sized bird. National press picked the story up and carried it across the United States.
The West Virginia Humanities Council's encyclopedia records that sightings continued, 26 of them over the following year, centred on Point Pleasant and usually in or near the old TNT plant. Some sceptics proposed a sandhill crane that had strayed.
"On November 15, 1966, two young couples from Point Pleasant—Roger and Linda Scarberry, Steve and Mary Mallette—told police they had seen a large black creature whose eyes "glowed red", standing at the side of the road near "the TNT area", the site of a former munitions plant from World War II.[10][11][12] Linda Scarberry described it as a "slender, muscular man" about seven feet (2.1 m) tall with white wings."
- On the Trail of the Mothman, Atlas Obscura (podcast)
- e-WV: Mothman, West Virginia Humanities Council (e-WV)
- The Mothman of West Virginia, Legends of America