{"id":1556,"slug":"mothman-museum-point-pleasant-west-virginia","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["For thirteen months, from November 1966 to December 1967, the people of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, reported a winged figure with glowing red eyes in the abandoned TNT area outside town. Couples in parked cars, night-shift workers, credible locals — the reports accumulated in the county's newspapers until the phenomenon had a name.","Then the legend found its ending. On December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge between Point Pleasant and Ohio collapsed at rush hour, killing forty-six people — and the Mothman was permanently reframed as an omen. Whether the sightings predicted the disaster or the disaster retrofitted the sightings is the question the museum exists to hold open."]},{"heading":"The archive of a year","paragraphs":["The museum itself is the file's subject: a storefront on Main Street that preserves the eyewitness documents, police reports and press clippings of the 1966–67 flap — the primary paperwork of America's most famous cryptid year. It is a museum of testimony rather than specimens, which is the honest version of what the phenomenon left behind.","The town around it completed the transformation: a chrome Mothman statue on the riverfront, an annual festival, a legend fully adopted by the place that reported it. Point Pleasant did for its monster what Flatwoods did for its own — it filed it under civic identity."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["The Mothman file is the atlas's best case of a legend welded to a tragedy. The sightings and the bridge collapse are both documented; the connection between them is folklore — and the museum's achievement is preserving the papers while letting the interpretation stay open.","Sixty years on, the red eyes still work on the people who read the clippings. The museum is the rare paranormal institution that lets you check the original sources and decide for yourself — which is all this archive has ever asked."]}],"name":"Mothman Museum","aliases":[],"type":"MUSEUM","type_label":"Museum","cats":["CRYPTID_MUSEUM"],"groups":["institutions"],"desc":"Museum preserves eyewitness documents concerning the 1966–1967 Mothman reports.","full_desc":"Mothman Museum is a museum in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Museum preserves eyewitness documents concerning the 1966–1967 Mothman reports. HauntHunt files it with cryptid museums. The dossier holds 1 documented fact — the record is history-forward, no paranormal claims on file. It operates as a museum. For HauntHunt it is exactly the kind of file the archive exists for: a real place, a real record, and a story still being told.","address":"400 Main Street","city":"Point Pleasant","county":null,"state":"West Virginia","postal":null,"region":"South","lat":38.850227,"lon":-82.131978,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"ACTIVE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":"https://www.mothmanmuseum.com/","phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"Museum location is distinct from the original encounter locations.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":62.1,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.8,"paranormal_claim_provenance":null,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[],"history":[{"description":"Museum preserves eyewitness documents concerning the 1966–1967 Mothman reports. A documented site gives the file real substance; this entry is part of that record. The press recorded it; the detail stands as reported history. The record appears in 'Mothman Museum'. The date is part of the site's documented spine.","evidence":"MEDIA_REPORTED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Mothman Museum","url":"https://www.mothmanmuseum.com/mothman-museum.html","publisher":"Mothman Press / Mothman Museum","type":"MUSEUM","authority":2}}],"legends":[],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"opening_hours":"Mon–Thu 10–17; Fri–Sat 10–18; Sun 12–17; listed holiday closures.","admission_fee":"Ages 11+: USD 4.99; age 10 and younger: USD 1.99.","photography_policy":"Museum encourages personal photographs.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-14T10:36:20+00:00","source":{"name":"Mothman Museum","url":"https://www.mothmanmuseum.com/mothman-museum.html","publisher":"Mothman Press / Mothman Museum","type":"MUSEUM","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Mothman Museum","url":"https://www.mothmanmuseum.com/mothman-museum.html","publisher":"Mothman Press / Mothman Museum","type":"MUSEUM","authority":2}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Mothman","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothman","desc":"Modern urban legend","extract":"In American folklore, Mothman is the name given to a humanoid creature that was reportedly seen around Point Pleasant, West Virginia, from November 15, 1966, to December 15, 1967. Despite its name, the original sightings of the creature described avian, not lepidopteran, features. The first newspaper report was published in the Point Pleasant Register, dated November 16, 1966, titled \"Couples See Man-Sized Bird ... Creature ... Something\". The national press soon picked up the reports and helped spread the story across the United States. The source of the legend is believed to have originated from sightings of out-of-migration sandhill cranes or herons, or possibly the misidentification of b","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f6/Mothman_Artist%27s_Impression.png/960px-Mothman_Artist%27s_Impression.png?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":73},"counts":{"claims":0,"history":1,"legends":0,"entities":0,"sources":1}}