Forbidden History - The Legend of Mothman

Episode Date: September 2, 2025

In this episode of the Forbidden History podcast, we unravel the chilling legend of the Mothman. Was this winged creature whose creepy sightings shook Point Pleasant, West Virginia in the 1960s really a harbinger of doom, or simply folklore taking flight? Cast List: Guy Walters: Author & Historian  Eric Meyers: Narrator  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Forbidden History Podcast. This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. The legend of the mothman begins not in some ancient ruin or distant battlefield, but in a sleepy American town. There are lots of theories about what the moth man is, you know, the identity of the mothman. You've got kind of winged, humanoid creed.

features, light mothman appearing in places like Chicago, Russia, Mexico. And in 2017, there were dozens of sightings of a large flying creature reported in Chicago. And the skeptics go, this is kind of like a mass hysteria. You know, you've got fear and suggestion, and all this stuff is adding together being bound up into this kind of big validation loop that amplifies the legend. In this episode of the Forbidden History podcast, we explore the spooky, mysterious story of mothman. Today we're joined by historian and author Guy Walters. The mothman legend begins in this little town in West Virginia called Point Pleasant.

In the mid-1960s, it was a modest community of around 5,000 people, shaped by River Trade, steelwork, and the shadows of the Cold War. Just outside of town lay the remnants of a Second World War Explosive Depot. They abandoned West Virginia Ordinance Works, or as locals called it, the TNT plant. Its deserted concrete bunkers and overgrown fields became the eerie stage for a mystery that would haunt generations. And it begins in November, 1966, when you have these two young, young couples, they're having a little walk around and something really spoils that little walk

around because they see, they encounter this large winged creature and it's near this abandoned explosive factory. When Roger and Linda Scarberry, along with Steve and Mary Mallet, reported the sighting, what they described was unlike anything in local folklore. A towering winged figure with burning red eyes. that seemed to pierce the darkness. The creature took flight, swooping after their car as they sped away in terror.

Now, that's going to ruin your night. That is a terrifying experience, and they report it, they say this happened, and what does that do? That launches over the next few months. Lots and lots of similar reports. In a town where most residents had never even locked their doors,

Fear spread like wildfire. Was this a cryptid, a creature unknown to science? A supernatural omen. Or just the fevered imagination of a community surrounded by the ghosts of war and the looming anxieties of the nuclear age. And there is this widespread panic in Point Pleasant. The scarberries and the mallets weren't alone. Within days, Point Pleasant police began receiving a flood of reports, each eerily similar.

Ordinary townsfolk claimed to see a giant winged creature stalking the skies or lurking in the shadows near the TNT plant. The mothman, as it becomes called, is described as a kind of humanoid, but it's massive. It's like six to ten foot tall. And it's got these enormous wings, and it's got these red piercing eyes that are utterly mesmeric. They kind of capture you. You don't want to look too closely

into the eyes of the mothman. The media soon caught wind of the story and what had begun as a local oddity became front-page news across the Ohio Valley. Each new account only deepened the panic. Some witnesses swore the creature chased their cars down dark country roads at speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour. Others claimed it perched silently on rooftops, watching them with unblinking crimson eyes. Rumors spread faster than the truth.

Hunters refused to go into the woods. Parents kept children indoors after dark. Point Pleasant, a town that once. Once lived up to its name, now found itself shrouded in dread. But this wasn't just Point Pleasant's paranoia. The mid-1960s in America were years of anxiety and transformation. The Vietnam War was escalating. The Cuban Missile Crisis was still fresh in people's minds.

The fear of nuclear annihilation hung over everyday life. UFO sightings were reported across the country with increasing frequent. from New Mexico to New Hampshire. And just months earlier, in 1965, a massive power outage had plunged 30 million people into darkness across the northeastern United States, fueling fears of Soviet attack or otherworldly interference. In that climate of tension and uncertainty, the appearance of a winged figure with glowing red eyes was more than just a local oddity. oddity. Many believed it was a sign, a warning of something darker on the horizon. These sightings continue for the best part of a year, over a year until about December

67. By the winter of 1967, the legend had escaped anyone's control. For many in Point Pleasant, the question took on a terrifying urgency, because soon the mothman would be linked to a devastating tragedy in West Virginia's history. Suddenly, tragedy strikes. On the evening of December 15, 1967, the folks of Point Pleasant were preparing for Christmas. Cars packed the silver bridge, a vital link across the Ohio River,

that connected the town to Gallipolice, Ohio. Built in 1928, the bridge had carried traffic for nearly four decades. But on that winter evening, disaster struck. During the rush out, the height of the rush out, busy, busy traffic, that bridge collapses. Forty-six people are killed. I mean, it's a horrific disaster. At 5.04 p.m., witnesses recalled hearing a sharp cracking sound, like a gunshot, and suddenly one of the bridge's suspension chains gave way. Within moments, the entire structure crumpled into the icy river below. 31 vehicles plunged into the water.

Survivors spoke of the river's swallowing cars' hole, headlights still burning beneath the dark current. When the structural engineers reported on the failure in the investigation, they said that the reason why the silver bridge, which was a suspension bridge, collapsed was because a single eye bar in the structure failed. But people who are already buying to the mothman thing are going, well, fine, the mothman predicted that. Corrosion and poor design proved catastrophic. But for the people of Point Pleasant, the disaster was more

than an engineering failure. The tragedy came at the very height of the mothman's sightings, and for many, it was impossible to ignore the connection. The creature with red glowing eyes had not just been a curiosity, they believed, but a harbinger of doom. Some claim to have seen the mothman near the bridge in the days leading up to the collapse. Others whispered that it had perched silently on the steel beams, watching as if it knew what was to come. Whether the mothman caused the tragedy or merely foretold it, Point Pleasant's legend was

forever bound to its darkest day. So, you know, we've got to watch out for the mothman because if it comes back, something else bad's going to happen. With the bridge collapse burned into local memory, the question that haunted Point Pleasant and later the world was simple. What exactly was the moth man? We dig deeper into the story after the break. Author and historian Guy Walters. There are lots of theories about what the mothman is, you know, the identity. of the mothman. Some people call cryptozoologists. He's a kind of a branch, a kind of zoologists who

believe in kind of hidden life forms. They think that mothman is this undiscovered species and possibly some kind of large owl or some sort of mutated bird. The nearby TNT plant left behind toxic waste, leading some to speculate that chemical contamination may have birthed the creature unlike any other. There's some people who think that it's a supernatural entity. It could even be some form of interdimensional being from a dimension that we don't yet know about, and it just occasionally gets glimpsed on Earth.

And some people think it could be some form of alien. It's an E.T. But skeptics counter with far less mysterious explanations. Some people don't really buy into that, unsurprisingly, and they say that actually the Mothman is misidential. identified animal, it could very well be this kind of a big bird called a Sand Hill crane. Indeed, the Sand Hill crane, with its five-foot wingspan and glaring red patches around the eyes, fits many of the descriptions. Owls, particularly the Bard Owl, can also reflect a deep

blood-red glow when caught in headlights. Even a heron, startled in flight, could take on a monstrous appearance in the dark of night. And yet, none of these explanations account for the sheer volume of sightings, or the way witnesses insisted that what they saw was far larger, stranger, and more terrifying than any bird. And the skeptics go, this is kind of like a mass hysteria. You know, you've got fear and suggestion, and all this stuff is adding together, being bound up into this kind of big validation loop that amplifies the legend. The more people talked about the mothman, the more frequently others claim to see it. Fear spreads like a contagion. In a small, tightly knit community like Point Pleasant,

a story could move faster than fact, a strange shadow in the night, a pair of red eyes in the dark, and suddenly an entire town was convinced of something otherworldly. So, was the mothman a flesh and blood creature? A supernatural entity? Or a phantom born from hysteria? Whatever the answer, the legend was only just beginning. And it was about to leap far beyond the quiet streets, a point pleasant. The silver bridge collapse might have ended the wave of sightings,

but it didn't kill the legend. If anything, it gave the mothman new life. the mothman new life because just a few years later one man would take the story far beyond West Virginia and tie it into a much larger web of the unexplained. The mothman legend really kicks off in about 1975 because you've got this journalist called John Keel and he writes this book called The Mothman prophecies and he kind of bundles the mothman thing you know way beyond point pleasant. John Keel was no ordinary journalist. Fascinated by the paranormal, he spent years interviewing eyewitnesses in Point Pleasant. But he didn't stop there. He connected their testimonies

to a pattern of other strange phenomena. He is binding us into broader paranormal activity, broader UFO activity, and he then adds its other dimension of these mysterious men in black suits, the men in black are all part of it. They are associated with the mothman in some way and witnesses receiving bizarre phone calls. So he's adding a lot of stuff around the whole mothman thing and he's saying that this is part of a much bigger story. Now there are some witnesses in Point Pleasant

who claimed that they were visited by strange men wearing black suits following their encounters with the mothman. you know what these mysterious men in black say they knock on your door and they warn you to shut up stay silent if you know what's good for you okay so this is a highly troubling thing to happen to you if you've seen them off man and you've got john keel and and people who believe in his theories suggesting that the men in black are government agents and what those government agents are doing is this they are suppressing knowledge of extraterrestrial visitations they are suppressing

of supernatural events, and they are maybe even suppressing something even more sinister. Maybe they're covering up these kind of non-human, inhuman entities connected to the whole Mossman phenomenon. To understand why Kiel's theories resonated, you must remember the era. The late 1960s and early 70s were the height of Cold War paranoia. The American public knew their government was capable of secrecy on an enormous scale. The CIA's covert projects like M.K. Ultra, which experimented on human subjects with mind-altering

drugs, were beginning to leak into public awareness. People were starting to distrust the government. Against that backdrop, the idea of mysterious government agents knocking on doors to silence witnesses did not feel far-fetched. The men-in-black aspect of the story added a sinister conspiratorial edge to the legend. In an age of assassinations, Watergate, and Vietnam, people were primed to believe that the government was hiding the truth. Kiel's book became a cult classic, and in 2002, it reached millions more when Hollywood adapted it into the Mothman prophecies, starring Richard Gere. Suddenly, the winged figure from a small West Virginia town was a global icon.

And that really cements Mothman in pop culture. Mothman, you know, believe him or not, he is here to stay. By the 1970s, the Mothman was no longer just Point Pleasance problem. As the legends spread, so too did the sightings. And more disturbingly, the claims that the creature appeared before major disasters across the world. Now, some people think they saw mothmen or the mothman before the Chernobyl nuclear power station disaster in 1986. On April 26, 1986, Reactor number four at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine,

which was at the time, part of the Soviet Union, exploded, triggering the worst nuclear disaster in history. Some locals later claimed that in the days before the meltdown, a winged figure with glowing red eyes had been seen flying over the plant, a blackbird of Chernobyl that vanished after the catastrophe. Some people think that they saw Mothman before 9-11, and even there was this big bridge collapsing on the I-35 in 2007 in Minnesota. Again, some people claim they saw the mothman before that bridge collapse.

In September 2001, America faced another tragedy, the attacks of 9-11. Some witnesses claimed, though always after the fact, that a dark, winged figure had been seen near the Twin Towers in the days leading up to the disaster. The evidence is, of course, unverifiable. But for believers, it was further proof of the mothman's mothman's grim role as a harbinger of doom. And in August 2007, the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis collapsed into the Mississippi River during rush hour, killing 13 people. Once again, reports surfaced of a winged creature seen near the structure in the weeks before the tragedy. It's very hard to evaluate these claims because they're of course anecdotal, they lack concrete

evidence, and some people kind of perhaps retroactively post- ipso facto link Mothman to disasters after the fact, and they kind of create a pattern that doesn't exist. Point Pleasant may have birthed the legend, but by the 21st century, the Mothman had become a global omen, even leading all the way up to the modern day. with the last major sighting being in 2017. And Mothman isn't just connected with disasters because Mothman has been seen outside Point Pleasant in lots of other locations around the world.

You've got kind of winged humanoid creatures like Mothman appearing in places like Chicago, Russia, Mexico. And in 2017, there were dozens of sightings of a large, flying creature reported in Chicago. And that caused a bit of a panic because people thought that mothman's returning coming to Chicago this time and something really bad is going to happen here.

But those sightings, they remain unverified. In the end, no tragedy struck Chicago. But the panic proves something else. The mothman was no longer just a tale whispered in Appalachia. It was a legend that now belonged to the entire world.

A phantom. Omen, forever tied to humanity's darkest hours. While you've got a lot of people who say, look, the mothman exists, and there are a lot of people who swear that they've seen mothman, but there are a lot of scientists, a lot of skeptics to say, you haven't. What you've seen is a known kind of big bird. The most common explanation is misidentification. The Sandhill Crane, with its red facial markings, fits the description eerily well. Owls, especially the bard owl, can appear enormous in flight.

Their reflective eyes glowing crimson in headlights. Even herons or turkey vultures, when startled, can look monstrous against a darkened sky. There's some footage of the mothman flying around, and it looks, the footage looks like this is a weird bird with giant legs, but actually a lot of people said, no, that's just simply footage of a bird carrying a frog in its beak, you know, the frog's legs. look like its own legs. To skeptics, the sightings are little more than tricks of light, misperceptions, and the brain's tendency to fill in the gaps.

What looks supernatural at first glance often collapses under closer inspection. Then you've got people saying, you haven't seen something natural, this is a kind of psychological phenomena, this is kind of mass hysteria in which people start to see things, and there are people who are just outright lying. And you've got these very small, tight-knit communities where gossip and misinformation travels very, very quickly. Mass hysteria has never been unique to Point Pleasant or anywhere else on the planet.

History is full of examples, from the dancing plagues of medieval Europe to the witch panics of Salem, to waves of UFO sightings in post-war America. Fear spreads through a community Suggestion amplifies it and soon the ordinary is transformed into the extraordinary. Whether cryptid, alien, omen or illusion, one thing is certain. The mothman has outlived Point Pleasant's panic.

What began as a series of strange encounters in 1966 has become a global phenomenon. Don't get me wrong, Point Pleasant, you know, it embraces its history. Since 2002, the town has hosted the Mothman Festival, which draws in thousands of visitors every year. Vendors sell t-shirts and souvenirs. Researchers hold lectures, and tourists pose with the towering stainless steel statue of the creature, its red eyes gleaming permanently in the town square. Got this statue in the middle of town, which has a kind of 24-7 webcam. can put on it. You can see what the statue is up to at any time of day or night should you wish. The Mothman is really good for tourism in Point Pleasant. I mean, the 2024 Mothman Festival,

20,000 people visited that festival. Imagine how many burgers and beers they're buying. If you're a local shopkeeper or bar owner in Point Pleasant, you want the Mothman to exist, frankly. Beyond West Virginia, the Mothman soars through pop culture. It appears in books, documentaries, games and television shows. The 2002 film The Mothman prophecies carried the legend to millions, while countless podcasts and paranormal investigators continue to dissect its mystery. It's now got beyond this kind of symbol of fear, but it's come this kind of symbol of mystery and curiosity in the unexplained. Even the Mothman doesn't exist, you know, it's a kind of metaphor in some way for people wanting things like Mothman to exist.

People want a sense of magic in their lives and the mothman gives it to them with wings. Perhaps that is why the mothman endures. Not because of what it is, but because of what it means. A dark winged figure, forever tied to disaster, mystery and the human need to find patterns in chaos.

Yeah, you can dismiss it as a mix, misidentification and psychological suggestion and hysteria. And you got other people saying, too many eyewitness accounts to ignore. But you know what? Mossman is always going to have a place in our hearts. You know, he or it or whatever it is, is always going to captivate people around the world

because people, they love a legend. And it kind of taps into our deepest fears. There's a fascination with the unknown. And there's always something about human nature that is looking out for a prophecy of, doom, you know, a tell-tale sign that something bad's going to happen. It's like spotting a magpie, but big time. A legend born in a small Appalachian town that has since taken flight across the world. And maybe, just maybe, the next time disaster looms, someone somewhere will claim they saw him

again. Thanks for exploring the past with us today. If you like this episode, please be sure to follow for more. We post new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Don't forget to leave a comment below and feel free to leave us a rating or review. Your feedback helps us reach more listeners like you. And for more from the Like a Shot Network, check out where did everyone go, Histories of the Abandoned, a deep dive into the incredible stories behind forgotten places, available now on your favorite podcast platforms. Thanks for listening.