"The Mothman of Point Pleasant" is a surprisingly pleasant (as in non-sensationalist) documentary about paranormal phenomena in West Virginia, mostly in the small town of Point Pleasant at the Ohio state border. It´s done from a sympathetic perspective, and features interviews with eye witnesses. Other people featured include a guy who operates "the world´s only Mothman museum" and some former newspaper reporters. We also get to see the local Mothman festival, footage of sandhill cranes, and an interview with a descendant of Chief Cornstalk. The only people (or perhaps non-people) left out of this production are the actual Mothmen, but then, it´s difficult to get an appointment with a supernatural entity of the winged-humanoid persuasion...
Mothman is a world celebrity by this stage (I live in Sweden but read about Mothman, Point Pleasant and the Silver Bridge already as a kid in a UFO book), but the documentary nevertheless manages to present facts I never heard before. For instance, the infamous curse of Cornstalk turns out to be a modern legend, first attested in writing during the 1920´s. Even more interesting is the fact that "birdmen" were part of Appalachian folklore. A birdman was described as an enormous bird with a human head, and dark reddish feathers that glistened in the sunlight. From 1914 to the 1940´s, people started to actually see these birdmen in various contexts. The connection to the Mothman sightings of the 1960´s is obvious. By that time, the winged humanoids were sometimes associated with UFOs or seen during UFO flaps - the phenomenon had clearly evolved (make of that what you wish). Soon, MIBs or Men in Black also entered the fray.
In passing, "The Mothman of Point Pleasant" also mentions the famous UFO contactee case of Woody Derenberger, which took place in Mineral Wells (not Point Pleasant). Many people associate the Derenberger case with Mothman anyway, since the case was mentioned by John Keel in his classical book "The Mothman Prophecies". The UFO occupant called himself Indrid Cold, a name immortalized by the 2002 film also called "The Mothman Prophecies", where Cold and the Mothman have been conflated into one character.
Some of the Mothman encounters detailed in this documentary are extremely difficult to debunk as meetings with cranes or owls, so unless you think the witnesses were lying through their teeth or completely hysterical (always a possibility, I guess) *something* strange is going on in the Ohio River valley! After the disastrous collapse of the Silver Bridge in December 1967, Mothman and UFO sightings became rare to non-existent. Today, the elusive winged humanoid seems to linger mostly as a pop culture phenomenon. Or at obscure Swedish blogs like this one!
Recommended.
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