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The Mothman Legend

© Florence Cardinal

It stood seven feet tall and had a wingspan of ten feet. Its glowing red eyes held people with a hypnotic stare. And, for over a year, it haunted the hills of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. The creature could fly, and some folks report seeing it take off, straight up like a helicopter. It made a loud squeaking noise, like an overgrown mouse.

The creature was first spotted on November 15, 1967 when it appeared at the home of Newell Partridge. His first warning was a disruption of his TV reception. The TV went blank and then a strange herringbone pattern appeared, accompanied by a loud whining noise. Newell's muscular German shepherd, Bandit, saw the creature down by the barn and took off in pursuit. Bandit, although trained as a hunting dog, was never seen again.

News of the giant birdlike being traveled fast, and soon the newspapers got hold of it. One reporter, after hearing the description, dubbed the creature "The Mothman" after a similar character that had appeared in the Batman comic books. The name stuck.

Mothman seemed to make his home in an abandoned World War II munitions dump labeled the TNT area. It had ripped the door off an abandoned generator plant and was seen disappearing inside the building.

The TNT area started out in 1900 as a bird sanctuary. Later the Government took 2500 acres and turned it into a storage place fir ammunition. It's in a sparsely populated area of the state, an area of forests and hills. The countryside is pockmarked with strange tunnels. With its isolated location, it soon became popular as the local Lover's Lane.

What was this Mothman? Some thought he might be a mutation of a large bird, perhaps altered because of strange chemicals around the munitions dump. Others thought he might be an alien whose UFO had crashed in the area. Then, again, Mothman might be merely the figment of overactive imaginations or perhaps someone's idea of a hoax. Both these ideas don't carry much weight. Who would have the energy to carry on such a hoax for over a year. And overactive imaginations? There were over 200 sightings during the period Mothman was active.

This year was also a time of car accidents, train wrecks, floods and other disasters in the area. Was it the Mothman? Or was it something else? Much strange phenomena occurred as well - UFO sightings, poltergeist activity, cattle mutilation and the mysterious presence of strange men in black.

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