THE MOTHMAN

The Mothman statue on 4th Street in downtown Point Pleasant. Although impressive, the statue does not appear to be anything like eyewitness descriptions of the entity.

The Mothman was actually more bird-like than moth-like. Most people say that it stood about 6-7 feet tall, had a large, rounded head like an upside-down "U", the arms, torso, and legs of a man, mighty wings with an estimated 10-foot span, a beak-like protuberance for a nose, and large red eyes that seemed to glow when reflecting light. The body was masculine and humanoid, covered in brown to gray feathers.
Most witnesses were totally mesmerized by the glowing red eyes that seemed to want to communicate with several of them.

The Mothman appeared to be living within the TNT area, and was often seen in and around the North Power Plant, which has since been demolished. It appeared mostly in the night, and seemed to be afraid of lights. Several people saw it make incredible manuevers in the air such as leaping four stories and flying 100 miles per hour. It also seemed as though the creature need not flap it's wings to fly. It seemed to glide most of the time and even shoot straight up into the air without flapping. In all of the encounters with the Mothman, not a single person was harmed or directly attacked by it.

Most intriguing to me is the fact that people who claimed to have close encounters with the Mothman often suffered physical symptoms for a long time afterwards similar to those of radiation exposure, particularly burns on the skin and damage to the eyes.
Women who encountered it were often menstruating at the time, and there is a report of the Mothman swooping down to stick it's arm into a racing blood bank vehicle.

Was it an extra-terrestrial? An inter-dimensional? A TNT-mutated bird? An angel? A Thunderbird? An apparition? Or just a plain hoax?
No one is certain, but there have been other reports worldwide of winged beings terrorizing towns and cities, often before an impending disaster.

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