Ralph Turner

One night in late 1966, two young couples from Point Pleasant, West Virginia, were terrified when a huge, winged, manlike creature appeared in the light shed by their car headlights. Sightings of the creature, which came to be called Mothman, were reported by many other people over the next several weeks. Then, abruptly, the sightings stopped, and from then on Mothman has only been reported sporadically near Point Pleasant and elsewhere.

During the height of the sightings in late 1966 to early 1967, many townspeople were terrified. Were they and their neighbors seeing some kind of invading extraterrestrial alien, a bizarre and frightening monster, or was there another explanation? Local newspaper reporter Ralph Turner spent at least one night wandering around the creature's favored locale, the abandoned ordnance factory (known as "the TNT area"), but he didn't see the creature...