 In 1966, a winged creature with glowing red eyes was spotted in the small Appalachian town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. It was continuously sighted for a year before a tragedy befell the town and then it mysteriously disappeared. Today, we're going to talk about the mystery of the Mothman. This is Red Web. Let's dive into the sightings. Clendenin, West Virginia was the first instance of this creature. It was first spotted by three gravediggers on November 12th of 1966. They said it soared overhead, but this is the only spotting of this year in Clendenin, West Virginia. The rest all took place in a town called Point Pleasant, West Virginia. The next sighting was from two couples. They were drag racing in a 1957 Chevy at night and what was known as the TNT area, kind of like Dynamite TNT, not the channel or whatever else. TNT knows drama. They do. Maybe they made, maybe this is a, no, anyway. November 15th, 1966, this is when this went down. Just to expand a little bit on this TNT area, it was a top secret government facility that was used to create explosives for the atomic bombs that the United States was making around that time. Employees were driven there on a bus with blacked out windows so they couldn't see exactly where they were going. This area, this government facility, was abandoned after Hiroshima in 1945. In the area there are still old factories and scattered bunkers where explosives were stored and they still have leftover materials and we'll kind of dive a little bit more into that later on. But in 1966, this area was converted to the McClintic Wildlife Management Area. So they're taking something that used to be a bit nefarious and turning it into something a little bit nicer. Ain't nothing wrong with that. Managing that wildlife. Turn around, okay. Yeah, so that's the TNT area we're talking about. The two couples that were drag racing in the area. We have Roger and Linda Scarberry and we have Steve and Mary Millet. They noticed some strange movement in the abandoned munitions plant. As you might do when speeding through in the night and they drove away and as they turned to go away, something began chasing their cars and they described this as a large flying man with 10 foot wings. Gray appeared not to have a neck and when the headlights hit the creature, its eyes began to glow or they lit up with a glowing red. When they returned again to town, they did tell the police what they saw and they reported it at 2 a.m. So not too long after they saw it. Deputy Millard Halstead knew the couples personally and so he believed their story. The police went searching that night but didn't find anything. A few days later, two volunteer firefighters saw quote a large bird with red eyes. The next sighting was by Marcella Bennett on November 16th of 1966. All clustered together by the way. These all happened within a one week span of each other. Marcella and her family said they saw the creature while visiting friends that lived near that TNT area. They saw red lights overhead and when she went to investigate, they said it landed near their car and Bennett noticed that it looked like a man, but its legs were covered in feathers. Red eyes, its wings were drawn and it had no neck or it had its neck down in some way. She couldn't run. She said she couldn't look away and when she finally did get herself to turn around and face away from the thing, she said she collapsed in shock. Newspapers then began to pick up the story and report on it. One anonymous writer named the creature the Mothman at that moment inspired actually by Batman. So police dispatches were interrupted at periodic times. Some even heard screaming on their radios. Many people had malfunctioning cars or appliances. The Scarburys who we talked about earlier said they heard strange beeps and large garbled noises around their trailer at night that led them to move actually into their parents home. And some other people said they saw UFO sightings. Many people claim that they had doors opening and closing on their own. Many Mothman witnesses actually received strange phone calls and visitors to their home. These strange visitors that kept appearing at people's houses were the supposed men in black. These men in black started showing up in town. In fact, even before the appearance of Mothman, citizens were reporting UFO sightings and these like visitations from the supposed men in black. The last detail that I think is interesting about the men in black is that they were always described as awkward, socially awkward, translucent, maybe very fair skin and had oddly long fingers. Some people and this is kind of diving into the men in black topic in general. Some people wager that these are aliens or or a different species that live among us. But that's for another episode. So now comes the tragic event that happened to Silverbridge. You might have heard of this. So Silverbridge is the bridge between Point Pleasant and Gallopolis, which is in Ohio. And on December 15th, 1967, this was a little over a year after these major sightings, Silverbridge collapsed. It occurred during rush hour when lots of people were out holiday shopping. 37 cars in total were halted on this bridge and the bridge began to shake. 64 people fell into the water below and unfortunately 46 of them passed away. Some people blame Mothman for what happened, claiming that they saw Mothman on the bridge before the collapse. Others claim that they heard a sonic boom right before the collapse, but there's no evidence of this. So that is the story of Mothman. If you want more details and theories, check out Red Web wherever you listen to podcasts.