The Mothman

Driving through West Virginia this weekend I was reminded of the Mothman, mostly because once you hit a local gift shop there is always a stack of books about the legend. We first encountered the legend in the 2002 Richard Gere/Laura Linney movie "The Mothman Prophesies." It's odd that we hadn't heard of it before since we spend a good deal of time in West Virginia, but mostly on the east side and the Mothman incidents were on the west side. If you aren't familiar with the legend, it is about a large, winged creature with red eyes that was seen by multiple witnesses around Point Pleasant, West Virginia back in the 60s for about a year before a significant bridge collapse that killed 46 people. Some theorize that the Mothman came to warn the town of the impending danger.

But I told you all that in order to tell you this: my husband invited the Mothman over to our house. Well, alright, that's not exactly how it went but that's how it worked out. A couple of years ago while driving through West Virginia to a conference we were heading through the West Virginia Parkway and saw the sign for Point Pleasant. My husband pointed it out, we laughed and chatted about the Mothman legend, and that was that. I thought.

After the conference we arrived home late on a dreary, drizzly night. We brought in our bags and tossed them on the bed. Shortly after we arrived I heard something fall in the shower. No big deal, I thought. Sometimes just a little shifting and things fall. Then things fell off the shelf in the closet, at the other end of the master bedroom. It had added up to odd at this point but hardly traumatizing so we shook it off. Then the house plunged into darkness as the power shut off. This had all happened within about ten minutes. Alright, I thought, it's raining so... maybe the power lines got wet... or something. This is when my husband turned to me and said, "Honey, I have to tell you something."

What he had to tell me was that after seeing the sign for Point Pleasant he had started thinking it would be really cool to look up on one of those mountains and see the Mothman. In his own mind he began inviting the Mothman to show himself. And then, on the return trip, had taunted the Mothman for not showing himself. Since this is a man who has encountered ghosts and fae and not particularly enjoyed it, I thought this showed a tremendous lack of wisdom on his part.


We tried resetting the power, no dice. We looked out to see that neighbors on all sides still had power. Hmm. We called the power company and the poor dude had to come out in all that rain to get it going again. Having taken care of the practical, I then focused on the spiritual and began praying and sending out divine light. If we did get the Mothman's attention we didn't have it for long. But definitely be careful who you invite over to your house.