I am ridiculously excited about this, y’all. I just found out that the town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, hosts a Mothman Festival every year. Now, if you’ve followed this blog very much, you know I have a “thing” for cryptids. I’m fascinated by the lore and the conspiracies that tend to follow them around, and absolutely enthralled by the possibilities.
Every now and then, I’ll get on a cryptid kick and start looking to see if there’s anything new on the Internet like documentaries or such things. Well, I just came across a YouTube channel called “The Carpetbagger” and lo and behold, he has a video on the Mothman Festival!
Not saying I nearly broke the remote in my enthusiasm to click on it, but yeah… kinda.
Now, I know Mothman doesn’t necessarily have a positive association for the people in Point Pleasant. For those of you not familiar with the lore, he’s a winged, human-sized, red-eyed creature who appeared in and around Point Pleasant in the days and weeks leading up to a tragic bridge collapse in 1967 that claimed several lives. In the documentaries I’d seen previously, a lot of the older folks in town wanted to distance themselves from Mothman lore because of the connection to the tragedy. So when I saw that there was a festival, I was surprised.
From what I was able to see from the video, it looks to be a pretty active. There were tons of booths selling Mothman merchandise, several booths featuring crafts and artwork related to cryptids, and even tables with authors hawking their wares. It appears to be a typical small-town fall festival but with a paranormal twist. I like that concept. And since, according to the Google machine, Point Pleasant is only three and a half hours from my current location… Yeah, guess what just got added to the bucket list?
A lot of the cryptid lore has a cheesy, sci-fi, pulp-fiction feel to it. Night of the Living Dead, Day of the Triffids. The Blob. Truly iconic, classic stuff. And I love that. Some of it is really compelling because it just seems so well-documented and the people who report their experiences appear so believable. Others… well, The Weekly World News would be calling them up for interviews, no doubt. Regardless of which camp it falls into, I’m happy to see more people getting interested in cryptids if for no other reason than it means I’ll be able to feed my own addiction. *wink, wink*
Happy Reading! Don’t forget to keep an eye out for the Pope Lick Monster, Mothman, and all their kith and kin.
T.L.