The Mothman is one of the strangest cryptids in American folklore. The story started in November 1966 in a small town called Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Two young couples driving past an old factory at night reported seeing a tall, dark, human-shaped creature with huge wings and glowing red eyes. It chased their car at over 100 miles per hour.
Over the next year, dozens of other people in Point Pleasant said they had seen the same thing. Reports stopped suddenly in December 1967, the same month a bridge in the town collapsed and tragically killed many people. Some locals connected the Mothman to the disaster, claiming he was a kind of warning.
Skeptics think the Mothman sightings were probably a large bird - a barn owl or a Sandhill crane - being mistaken for something stranger in the dark. But the town of Point Pleasant has fully embraced the legend. There is now a Mothman museum, an annual Mothman festival, and a giant chrome statue of the creature in the town square.
