Mothman Statue

June 1, 2007 — If there’s one thing that the world absolutely needs, it’s more imaginary monster byproducts of mass hysteria. That’s right. Not love, not peace, not medical breakthroughs. The world needs more mothmen.

The Mothman story starts like every other story of this ilk. Once upon a time late one night in the woods somewhere a handful of people “witnessed” a creature. In this case “once upon a time” means November of 1966. Somewhere was near Point Pleasant, West Virginia, a small town just across the Ohio River from, well, Ohio. The creature was more than six feet tall, furry, winged, red-eyed, man-legged, and, yes, capable of flight, aeronautics be damned. But although that’s quite a commentary on how flaccid the human imagination is at constructing its monsters, the Mothman turned out to be more than just that. The Mothman was the centerpiece of a year-long vortex of strange events occurring in Point Pleasant. Spectral lights, mystery men, UFOs, supernatural visitations, government conspiracy, livestock mutilation. Sure, it was the Sixties, but still. That’s weird.

It’s about at this point in articles on the Mothman that people start making X-Files references. My well of popular culture references is not that shallow, though. My life? Probably. But not my well of popular cultural references. Also, does anybody know if I’m supposed to be capitalizing Mothman like I am?

Anyway, two things really separate the Mothman from all the other creature-men such as Goatman, Bunnyman, Sarah Silverman, etc. First, these events were recorded in a first-person real-time account by a professional chronicler. His name was John Keel, and he was basically a chaser of the strange, although most pieces on him cite his occupation as journalist. I guess that’s a generic enough title to be true. A month after the first sighting, he went to Point Pleasant to look into some of the phenomena for a book he was writing on UFOs or some such. He soon became personally entrenched in the events and weaved his experiences into a book called The Mothman Prophecies. If you plan on visiting Point Pleasant, definitely read it before going. It’ll help set your atmosphere. Truth to tell, I also watched the Richard Gere movie that was based on the book before I visited. But that’s something only you, me, and my priest know.

The second differentiating characteristic of the Mothman story was that it actually had an ending. Of sorts. And not in the proved-to-be-a-hoax-but-people-keep-believing-it kind of way. Actually, let’s call it a climax. Like every major studio movie from the last few decades, this story ended in a disaster. On December 15, 1967, about 13 months after the initial Mothman sighting, the Silver Bridge that spanned the Ohio River and connected Point Pleasant, West Virginia, to Ohio, collapsed at rush hour, killing 46 people. After that the sightings pretty much stopped. To some, this incident turns the Mothman from some random spook spotted in the middle of the night to a harbinger. Yes, a harbinger. It’s a total step up from a doubtful sighting, trust me. More than likely, though, people just had more important things on their mind than perpetuating myths once the bridge collapsed.

But enough about all that. What about me? I went to see Point Pleasant, not for the nightlife, but to specifically see how the town commemorated that year in its history. You see, the thing about Point Pleasant is that they love to commemorate. This small town seems to have more monuments per square foot than D.C. itself. Besides the memorial for the bridge disaster, it also has seen its share of battles that I could care less about that are commemorated in town all over the place. And I don’t mean just random plaques (though they do have those). They have a freaking 84-foot granite obelisk, for goodness sake. I’m kind of glad this paragraph is over because I never want to use the word commemorate ever again.

Point Pleasant also has a strange penchant for stainless steel statues. It has three of them. How much radder (more rad?) would D.C. be if all its monuments were all constructed out of freaking stainless steel? One of those statues depicts Chief Cornstalk, who cursed the land back in the day and whose remains are ensconced in one of those aforementioned memorials. The second is some Revolutionary-War-looking cat whose name I can’t remember (and which I can’t find on the Internet...so much for my Internet as God hypothesis). The final stainless steel statue is our Mothman. An artist named Robert Roach (or “Bob” as he’s credited on the statue), who I’m sure did all three stainless steel sculptures, created the Mothman statue as a 12-foot tall creature with an insect-like face, great abs, a smattering of chest hair, giant impressive wings that give the statue almost half of its height, and red glass eyes that, because the universe has no style, are not rigged to glow at night. Overall, it rather reminds me of something you’d find in a child’s toy box stamped with “Made in China” somewhere obnoxious on the body (high praise from me). Kind of the best thing about the Mothman Statue is that being stainless steel, it’s pretty much guaranteed to outlast all the actual wonders of the world. There’s something perversely satisfying about that (which, I just realized after using that phrase a thousand times in my life, basically just means that there’s something perverse about me personally and merely satisfying about the actual fact at hand).

I don’t need really to tell you how to find the Mothman statue. Did I mention it was a 12-foot-tall stainless steel monster? Just checking. If you can find Point Pleasant, you will stumble across it. If you hit the river, turn around (in general that’s good advice, I guess). Also, I forgot to mention in my description of the statue that there’s a plaque below this brute. It doesn’t tell much of the interesting parts of the story, unfortunately, or, really, much of the story at all. It just oversells the drama in cheesy fashion. Most of what it says isn’t worth the effort of being punched into a plaque...or recorded here.

Also of relevant note is that just down the road from the statue is a Mothman “museum” that you pretty much have to go to, not so much for the quality of the exhibition but because you’re not going to have much to actually do once you’ve seen the statue. Inside it contains lots of homemade mothmen and drawings of mothmen, plenty of old newspaper accounts tacked to boards, tons of props from The Mothman Prophecies movie, and a couple documentaries you can watch in a backroom with black plastic trash bags taped over the windows. In many ways it’s a gift shop, really.

Also, a little south of the original Silver Bridge location is the bridge they constructed two years after the disaster to replace it. It’s called the Silver Memorial Bridge (of course...it’s Point Pleasant, after all). Definitely drive over it while you’re there because, well, you might as well. Jumping state lines for no reason is always cool. Especially across a bridge that (sigh) commemorates a bridge disaster. Oh, unless you’re coming from Ohio in the first place, in which case just go home.

I know—this article ended up way too long. Too much back story. But it does all prove that the Sixties really was the best decade. My stupid hippy uncle was right.