The start of a legend
History stude In mid-November, 1966, in the small town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, two young couples fled the local woods, claiming they’d seen a terrifying creature. They recounted their story to the sheriff and reported that the entity looked human in most respects – except for its 10foot wings and glowing red eyes. The local paper ran the story of the ‘Mothman.’ Within a day or two, the whole town descended on the location where the creature was reported, toting guns and ready to hunt it down. They didn’t find it, but they did spark a legend. How did the Mothman go from a local myth to an internationally-recognized figure, similar to Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster?
Great question. Jonathan Gitter is glad you asked. Gitter just finished his major in history at UWM and graduated in May. His capstone research project tackled the Mothman myth, and he presented his work at UWM’s virtual Undergraduate Research Symposium in late April. Initially, Gitter and his classmates were told their capstone project had to cover “non-human” history. “My first thought was to do something with cryptids or various mythological creatures,” he said. “I looked at, where does this Mothman myth come from?” Unlike Bigfoot, the Mothman myth has a definitive start date and location. After the initial report by the two young couples in West Virginia, newspapers in the area began to run with the story. That was where Gitter began his research. “I looked at … newspaper articles, and then I looked at books that were written on the topic,” he said. “(There was) Ufologist John Keel’s book The Mothman Prophecies, and then I looked into, more recently, the media that’s constructed around the Mothman myth – various documentaries and the Point Pleasant Mothman Festival.” Through his research, Gitter uncovered far more than the cryptid’s origins: He found a snapshot of small-town Americana built into the fabric of the myth. Take, for example, the area of Point Pleasant where the Mothman was first sighted. According to Gitter’s research, that spot was known as the
4 • IN FOCUS • July, 2021
The Mothman is an urban legend purported to have glowing red eyes and a 10-foot wingspan. The first sighting of the Mothman was reported in West Virginia in 1966. This rendering is by artist Tim Bertelink.
