Vacation Fun 1: The Moth Man Museum

My wife and I just returned from a long, short trip to visit Joy's relatives in Michigan--"short" in time, but  not distance.  It was sixteen hundred miles  for five days.   There's not much time for sightseeing on those fourteen hour drives.  So we try to break up the monotony however we can. 

On our northerly trip,  about midway was Point Pleasant, W. Va., on the Ohio River.  Now, Point Pleasant is a sleepy little river town on the Ohio River, with only one claim to fame--it is the home of the moth man.  The moth man is a local legend,  who  allegedly scared some people in 1969.  The moth man is over six feet tall with glowing  red eyes and great bat wings  (Think of Batman with a three day flu).  The next year, a local bridge collapsed--an event which was somehow predicted by  the arrival of the  moth man.  There have been at least two movies made on the moth man,  and he regularly shows up on those paranormal programs they show on the History Channel. There's  big silver statue of him in an intersection  downtown, and a small storefront museum. 

We had already seen the statue, but this time Joy and I decided to lunch in Point Pleasant and take in the moth man museum. Admission was three dollars each.  The whole thing could have fit in an old drug store--in fact, I think it did.  It was run by a bored-looking guy with a ponytail and a moth man tee shirt.   

Inside, among the tee shirts,  feed caps, and bumper stickers were mostly mannequin exhibits, dressed-up figures salvaged from an old  department store.  There was a mannequin in a gorilla suit with a  Halloween mask, bat cape and long fingernails, which represented the mysterious moth man; a mannequin dressed in a black suit,  sunglasses and hat,  one of the "Men in Black" who were supposed to have called on the witnesses later to threaten them into silences; and a  state trooper who was thrown in for no apparent reason. There were original handwritten testimonies by witnesses, props from one of the movies and autographs from the stars.  There were comic books and paintings of the beast, and cardboard cutouts used to disprove the moth man on  of the better History Channel shows.  There was also (again, for no good reason) an account of the first battle of the Revolutionary War fought there in 1774. Since the rest of the world believed the revolution began two years later, this did nothing to lend credence to the moth man. 

Joy and I toured it all in uncomprehending wonder.  What was the moth man? What could it be?  Could we get our three dollars back?  What were we doing here?

Let's answer the questions in reverse order.  We had no idea what we were doing there.  No, we could not get our three dollars back.  But as for the identity of the moth man, that remains a mystery for the ages. 

 After examining the evidence, we can see several possibilities. It may have been a cryptoid--an undiscovered animal like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster.  However, since we were in a heavily populated rural area, close to the original Bob Evans Country Restaurant, it seems unlikely - as unlikely as bumping into Sasquatch at the local Cracker Barrel Country Store.

Perhaps he was an alien from a UFO.  But why would such an alien choose to live at Point Pleasant, when he could go to Las Vegas or Los  Angeles and blend right in?  Here, he would stick out like an elephant in a cabbage patch. 

Of course, the museum offered an explanation as to why no one sees the moth man--mind control.  According to one theory, the moth man transmits a mind beam through his glowing eyes that makes people think of something else while they are looking straight at  him!  So, if you are not thinking of the moth man right now,  you may be under his evil mind controlling spell.

There is another explanation, that seems more likely.  They saw a hoot owl. It would explain the wings,  and the giant glowing eyes.   I believe that a hoot owl,  when magnified through the empty bottom of an empty Jack Daniels bottle,  would account for most of the scant actual evidence. 

Come to think of it, that empty bottle could explain a lot of unexplained phenomena.