Mothman/Owlman — Comic showing Bigfoot posing for a photo interrupted by Mothman photobomb

Mothman/Owlman

1966urban legendclassic

Published September 7, 2026

The Mothman/Owlman story started with a November 1966 sighting in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, when two young couples reported a red-eyed winged creature chasing their car near an abandoned WWII munitions site3. The wave of sightings ended a year later, days after the Silver Bridge collapse killed 46 people, seeding decades of cryptid folklore that spawned a British cousin called the Owlman and a devoted online fan community1.

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Overview

Mothman/Owlman works online as a cryptid pair that fans treat like a shared mythology rather than a single template. Discussion clusters around eyewitness accounts, disaster prophecies, and the visual shorthand of a tall figure with red eyes and huge wings3. Artists on DeviantArt built out a large body of fan illustrations5, and the Point Pleasant Mothman Museum keeps the local tourist economy going with statues, festivals, and merchandise1.

The Owlman side of the pair came out of a 1976 sighting in Mawnan, Cornwall, and is often paired with Mothman in cryptid roundups as a British counterpart2. Together they anchor jokes, artwork, and horror edits that frame winged humanoids as omens of disaster.

Origin & Background

Platform
Local news (viral folklore)
Date
1966

The first newspaper story ran in the Point Pleasant Register on November 16, 1966, under the headline "Couples See Man-Sized Bird...Creature...Something"2. Roger and Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Mallette told police they saw a large white winged figure with glowing red eyes near the TNT area, an abandoned World War II munitions plant outside town3. More sightings followed over the next thirteen months, with witnesses including volunteer firemen and contractor Newell Partridge, whose German Shepherd went missing the same night1.

How It Spread

Sightings tapered off after the Silver Bridge over the Ohio River collapsed on December 15, 1967, killing 46 people, and locals tied the two events together into a curse narrative traced back to the Shawnee chief Cornstalk1. Nine years later, Cornwall residents reported the winged Owlman near Mawnan church, giving the folklore an international sibling2. The story picked up mainstream reach through the 2002 film The Mothman Prophecies and a run of documentary videos, including archival footage still circulating on YouTube4.

Online, the pair became a fixture on cryptid discussion boards and fan art communities, with the Mothman Museum in Point Pleasant working as a real-world anchor for fan pilgrimages and an annual festival1. The KYM entry places Mothman above The Slenderman and The Rake in cryptid reputation, an unusual position for a legend that predates the internet by three decades3.

Frequently Asked Questions