What is the Mothman and where did it come from? Many theories have been offered to the wondering minds.

Mothman was the name given to a strange creature thought to have been sighted many times in the Point Pleasant area of West Virginia, on the border with Ohio between November 1966 and November 1967.

The Mothman has been described as a creature man-sized with wings and large reflective red eyes. There are many hypotheses made to explain what people have reported -- ranging from paranormal phenomena to owls but there is no definitive explanation.

The strange events connected to the Mothman creature was on November 12, 1966 when a groupd of men were preparing graves in a cemetary close to Clendenin West Virginia when what they described as a "brown human shape with wings" lifted off from nearby trees and flew over their heads. However, this sighting was not made public until later -- The first sighting described in the media took place three days later.

On the night of November 15, two young couples, Roger and Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Mallette, from Point Pleasant were out for a drive. They were passing an abandoned World War II TNT factory just outside of Point Pleasant when they noticed two red lights in the shadow by an old generator plant near the gates of the property. But when they stopped the car, it wasn't lights flashing, but two red eyes of a large animal looking at them. Roger Scarberry, claimed "it was shaped like a man, but bigger, maybe six and a half or seven feet tall with big wings folded against it's back". The group quickly drove away and headed toward Route 62 only to see the creature again standing on a ridge near the road only this time, spread its wings and took flight following their car to the city limits.

Terrified, the group fled to the Mason County courthouse and todl their story to Deputy Millard Halstead, who later said "I've known these kids all their lives. They'd never been in any trouble and they were really scared that night. I took them seriously." Later he followed Roger Scarberry's car back to the TNT factory, but found no sign of the strange creature.

According to the book Alien Animals, a poltergeist attack on the Scarberry home took place later that night, in which the creature was seen several times.

The next night, November 16, local townspeople, armed, went searching the area around the old TNT plant for signs of Mothman.

The TNT factory became the popular area for the sightings of Mothman in the following months. The area was several hundred acres of woods and large concrete domes where high explosives were stored during the 2nd World War. There were also tunnels that made it easy for the creature to move around without being noticed. The area also was home to the McClintic Wildlife Station, a heavily forested animal preserve filled with woods, artificial ponds and steep ridges and hills. Most of the property wasn't accessible and this made it easy for the Mothman to hide and remain unseen for months.

The area around the TNT factory wasn't very populated . On november 16, the family of Ralph Thomas witnessed a "red light" in the sky hovering over the TNT plant. A friend of the Thomas family, Mrs. Marcella Bennett who stated, "“It wasn’t an airplane...but we couldn’t figure out what it was.” Mrs. Bennett drove to the Thomas house a few minutes later and got out of the car with her baby daughter Teena. Suddenly, a figure appeared behind their parked car. “It seemed as though it had been lying down,” she later recalled. “It rose up slowly from the ground. A big gray thing. Bigger than a man with terrible glowing eyes.”

The family locked everyone inside the house and Mr. Wamsley phoned the police. The creature walked onto the porch and peered in through the window at them. The Mothman had vanished by the time the authorities had arrived.

On November 24, four people reported seeing the Mothman again over the TNT area.

On November 25, Thomas Ury was driving along Route 62 north of the TNT when he claimed to see the creature standing in a field by the road and then spread it's wings and took off. Thomas Ury went on to say that the creature followed his car as he speed into Point Pleasant. He reported it to the sheriff.

On November 26, Mrs. Ruth Foster of the Charleston, West Virginia suburb of St. Albans saw Mothman standing on her front lawn, but it was gone when her brother-in-law went out to look.

On the morning of November 27, it pursued a young woman near Mason, West Virginia, and was reported again in St. Albans the same night, by two children.

For nearly a year strange happenings in the area continued. Many researchers, investigators and so called "monster hunters" descended on the area. Even strangers dressed in all black began to appear in the area. It is said that these men were government agents investigating the reports of the Mothman but others believe they were priests who arrived to exorcize the creature.

In December 1966 author John Keel, the most famous researcher and who had written extensively about the Mothman, arrived to the town of Point Pleasant. According to Keel, humans have had a long history of experiences with the supernatural.

Keel immediately began collecting reports of Mothman sightings and had even collected UFO reports from before the creature was even seen. His reported listed detailed information about problems with televisions and phones, lights in the skies (mainly around the TNT plant) and cars stalling that passed the plant without explanation.Keel and his collegues also reported a number of poltergeist cases in the Ohio Valley area, locked doors opening and closing, thumps inside and outside homes and strange voices were heard.

January 11, 1967, and several times during 1967 the Mothman was reportedly seen again.

On December 15, 1967 the Silver Bridge -- which connected the cities of Point Pleasant, West Virginia and Gallipolis, Ohio -- collapsed and killing 46 people.

No sightings of the Mothman have been reported after the collapse of the Silver Bridge.

THEORIES

There are several theorires about the Mothman sightings.

The largest collection of material about this creature is from the book "The Mothman Prophecies" written in 1975 by John Keel. In the book Keel lays out the events chrologically of the Point Pleasant events and claims the are related to parapsychological events in the area, including UFO activity, Men in Black encounters, poltergeist activity and the collapse of the Silver Bridge across the Ohio River in 1967.

In 2002 a book titled "Mothman and Other Curious Encounters was published by Loren Coleman. In the book he acknowledges Keel's approach on demonology.

Many skeptics go the route of argueing on the side that the sightings were excited eyewitnesses and the allegeded creature was in fact a Great Horned Owl -- the largest owl known in West Virginia -- They also suspect it could have been other types of owls like a rare Great Grey Owl, although it's a very rare sighting -- It's the largest owl in North America.

So... if this "Mothman" was real, does he still exist in the thick forests going unidentified that no one can explain? And, what's behind the UFO sightings, the poltergeist reports, the strange lights, sounds, the “men in black” and most horrifying, the collapse of the Silver Bridge? According to author John Keel, he believes that Point Pleasant was a “window” area, a place that is marked by long periods of strange sightings, monster reports and the coming and going of unusual persons. Keel also states that it may be wrong to blame the collapse of the bridge on the local UFO sightings, but still believes the intense activity in the area at the time does suggest some sort of connection.

Whatever the creature may have been, it's pretty clear that these sightings of the Mothman was no hoax. There were simply too many credible witnesses who saw “something”.