POINT PLEASANT, W. Va. — Every September, the streets in this tiny town along West Virginia's border with Ohio are taken over by Mothman, a mysterious creature that, like Bigfoot, has inspired books, movies, podcasts and devoted fans.
It's the 2025 Mothman Festival, and many attendees are in costume, walking beneath giant inflatables ranging from Mothman — with filigreed wings and bulging red eyes — to the Ghostbusters Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. For an event celebrating a dark and mysterious being, the vibe is surprisingly uplifting.
"West Virginia's beautiful," says Eric Johnson, who's visiting from Chicago. "And Mothman is to die for," he adds with a smile.
Mothman's local origins lie in a late-night sighting in 1966, when two young couples reported seeing — and being chased by — a towering winged humanoid creature just outside of town (more on that below).
The extraordinary story sparked furious interest and established Mothman as a famous cryptid, or unverified creature. But its effect on Point Pleasant, its residents and economy — and its many fans — is undeniably real.
Johnson, who learned of Mothman through playing the video game Persona, hopes to snag a spot on a tour taking visitors through the area where the creature was reported. It's his third time at the festival; he says he likes the music and food, but his favorite thing is the town itself: "I like the riverside. It's beautiful."
Rallying point for cryptid enthusiasts
On this sunny weekend in late September, the festival overflows Point Pleasant's small downtown. Musicians set up in the streets, and bands play in the amphitheater along the Ohio River. Vendors sell "moth floss" (cotton candy), lemonade, tacos and noodles.
People line up for pictures with the large silver Mothman statue — often including front and rear angles, due to the figure's famously shapely derriere, dubbed the "Shiny Hiney."
Summer Maddux is visiting from Sacramento, Calif., and she's wearing a dramatic costume that's prompting strangers to take selfies with her.
"I am in a form-fitting, curve hugging black bodysuit with a black hand-painted moth cape with a little waist cincher, red spectacles, red contact lenses, a very hot wig upon my head and my little antenna that I made for the costume to perfectly embody Moth Ma'am," she says. "This is my expression of Mothman."
It's the first Mothman Festival for Maddux, who has wanted to come here since she was a kid, in the 1990s.
When the festival started in the early 2000s, the big boost was The Mothman Prophecies, the supernatural thriller starring Richard Gere and Laura Linney. But Maddux first learned about the legendary creature earlier, in a graphic novel series called The Big Book Of.
"I've always loved weird stuff, creepy stuff, monsters," she says. "So I just really latched on to Mothman."
Other attendees, like Johnson, were drawn to the cryptid while playing video games: Persona and also Fallout 76. Many leap at the chance to dress in cosplay outfits.
"You're never too old to be a nerd," Maddux says.
Nearby, attendees wait in a long line to enter the Mothman Museum, a corner storefront that holds memorabilia, newspaper clippings and eyewitness accounts of the creature. Up the street, a church hosts guest speakers, from paranormal researchers like the podcaster Ashley Hilt to Richard Hatem, screenwriter of The Mothman Prophecies.
"They call it the paranormal convention of the East," Denny Bellamy, the county tourism director, says about the festival. "Everyone in that world of the paranormal and cryptids and all that is here."
Tiny town gets a boost from cryptid currency
An early version of the Mothman Festival started in 2002, Bellamy says, as a one-day event with a few card tables stacked with hot dogs and books about the local cryptid. It now draws 20,000 visitors to a town with fewer than 5,000 residents.
"Our biggest problem starting out was the banks would run out of cash because it was Saturday," Bellamy says.
Now a three-day festival, millions flow through the little town over the weekend, he says. "That's Christmas for us. Probably as much as all year long together."
Downtown storefronts are no longer vacant — and fans don't wait until September to visit.
"Mothman definitely put us on the map," says Hope Love, who grew up in Point Pleasant. She's selling handmade crafts — Mothman potholder, anyone? — in a shop called the Flawed Frog.
"About two months ago, I had someone in here from Taiwan and then someone from Germany as well. It's pretty cool."
I run into Tyler Fields at the Piggly Wiggly. He's visiting from Ohio with his son and daughter. Fields says he usually avoids crowds — but he likes that this festival brings many different people to Point Pleasant.
So I ask, with all the excitement, does it matter if Mothman really existed?
"Does it really matter if there was an actual Mothman?" he says. "No, because everybody believes that something happened, and it's a giant story."
Famous Mothman sighting was reported in 1966
Late on the night of Nov. 15, 1966, two young couples — Roger and Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Mallette — were driving down a rural road north of town when they saw what Mallette described to the local Point Pleasant Register as "a man with wings."
The strange creature had glowing red eyes and stood 6 or 7 feet tall, according to the couples' description. After they first saw it near an old power plant, Roger Scarberry pointed his black 1957 Chevy away from the creature and floored it.
But they soon saw the creature again, ahead of them — and they reported that as they watched, it rose straight into the air before chasing them on the main highway leading back into town.
"We were going between 100 and 105 mph down that straight stretch and that thing was just gliding back and forth over the back end of the car," Linda Scarberry said, in an eyewitness account preserved by the Mothman Museum.
Their story quickly spread from local newspapers to international wire services.
The couples had been driving on a road in the "TNT Area" — the sprawling former military installation officially known as the West Virginia Ordnance Works a few miles north of town where high-grade explosives were made and stored during World War II.
Today, dozens of igloo-like bunkers are nestled into acres of overgrown woods, where murky ponds and canals once connected facilities. Tour buses with visitors hoping to soak up the vibes flood the TNT Area.
"The area itself is really creepy, especially at night," says Steve Ward, a local historian.
More sightings were reported, with similar descriptions. Debates erupted over whether the creature might be a huge sandhill crane, or some other animal. Hunting parties went in search of it.
Then, 13 months after that famous initial sighting, catastrophe struck Point Pleasant. The Silver Bridge, which connected the downtown to neighboring Ohio, collapsed during the afternoon rush hour, "folding like a deck of cards," as one witness put it, and sending cars into the Ohio River.
The shocking tragedy killed 46 people. It also prompted President Lyndon Johnson to order a safety investigation that culminated in national bridge inspection standards.
In Point Pleasant, theorists wondered if Mothman might have been a warning — or somehow, a cause — of the collapse. The stunning events, from extraordinary sightings to a transformative calamity, were woven together by writer John Keel in his 1975 book, The Mothman Prophecies. As portrayed later by Gere in the movie, the plot revolves around a journalist who concludes that unexplained phenomena and visions are omens of disaster. A modern legend was born.
Looking to be 'connected to something greater'
When the Scarberrys and Mallettes reported their sighting back in 1966, they joined a centuries-long tradition, says Meg Nicholas, a folklife specialist at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Nicholas says she first heard stories about Mothman as a child, due to her family's roots in West Virginia and Ohio.
"There have always been stories like this going back through history," she says. "People have always had stories about creatures that you see in the woods, or on the boundaries of town, or that come into a village. It's a way of interacting with sort of the unknown, and explaining the unknown."
Boosted by modern technology, such narratives now resonate far beyond their original community. Aside from a book and film, Nicholas notes, Mothman has been featured on podcasts such as My Favorite Murder. She's heard from kids who learned about it on TikTok, or through "creepypasta" — online sharing of urban legend-like stories.
So, why do all these people find the Mothman story so interesting — and what role could this story play now, nearly 60 years later?
To Nicholas, part of the answer is that Mothman has increasingly become tied to the Silver Bridge collapse. From books to TikToks, many people have embraced the idea that the eerie sightings were a warning.
"It kind of gives us a little bit of a power over the unknown and the unthinkable," Nicholas says of that interpretation. "If you believe that the Mothman can bring a vision of disaster," she says, it implies that you might be able to prepare.
Then there's the core of the Mothman legend: a monster story.
"Kids who feel very much on the outside often feel a very big connection with the monsters of monster stories — because they've often been made to feel monsters themselves," Nicholas says. In that case, she adds, kids might look to learn from the story, as they wonder how a Mothman might survive on the edge of civilization for years without being fully understood.
"I think that folklore has a power beyond just entertainment, and it always will," Nicholas says of Mothman's impact. "And I think that these stories help us feel connected to something greater than just our experience."
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