For a festival that is just a little quirky you may want to drive down to Point Pleasant , West Virginia , just a bridge span across from Route 35 as you leave Ohio. It has a small festival, one that started not with noble pioneers settling down nor the praises of fall harvests, but with the rumored sightings of a winged creature. Named Mothman and spotted a number of times around the Point Pleasant area in the 1960s the six foot being with red glowing eyes started a cult following. It was rumored that it appeared before disasters as a warning. The 1967 collapse of the Silver Bridge resulting in 46 deaths insured the Mothman legendary status.The Eighth Annual Mothman Festival runs Sept. 19 and 20 and celebrates the mysterious beast as well as all things paranormal. Authors, ghost experts, film makers and researchers give lectures and set up booths to sell related t-shirts, books and ghostly trinkets. Men in Black as well as the Mothman himself (or herself?) wander the streets looking sinister and posing for photographs. Check the website mothmanfestival.com for scheduled events such as guest speakers, music, pancake eating contests, meeting Mothman witnesses, a Miss Mothman beauty pageant, and TNT hayrides. The Mothman Museum houses artifacts from the film and book “The Mothman Prophecies”. There is also a Point Pleasant River Museum and monuments to the Silver Bridge disaster and the Battle of Point Pleasant with Chief Cornstalk.
Jean Payne
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1 comment:
I have been meaning to take a drive down to Pt. Pleasant ever since seeing the movie. I didn't know anyone else would be interested until I saw Gary Reimers wearing a Mothman t-shirt. The movie, by the way, wasn't bad. I've seen it twice. Unlike recent horror movie fare, where the monster is always in your face, you never actually see the Mothman, a Hitchcockian way of building suspense.
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