Liz Cultivates

Just like it says on the tin: I finally went to the Mothman Museum in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, on my way home from my gramma’s 90th birthday party. I have been meaning to visit this place for ages, ever since I moved to Ohio and started driving past Point Pleasant when I visit my family in Charleston.

Even my partner got into the fun. He allowed me to buy him a really nice Mothman-branded messenger bag (he is very frugal and doesn’t often get himself nice things or even let me get them for him, so this was a victory), and when we came home, he looked up the Mothman Prophecies movie and found where we could watch it online. (It was a fun, campy film.)

I spend a lot of time online (shocker), and it seems like Mothman has been coming up more and more for me recently. I make a point to say “for me” because, well, in doing a little bit of research, he’s not new to a lot of different communities and it’s certainly not news to much of Appalachia.

Why am I obsessed with Mothman? It’s a good question, and one I’m not really sure I have an answer for. If I think about it for long enough, I’m sure we could follow it back to the idea that it’s West Virginia’s own cryptid — and the pride I have for my homestate translated to a love for this oddball of a bird-man.

Who is Mothman?

Mothman represents an interesting piece of folklore central to the Appalachian region. The story goes that in the 1960s, the town of Point Pleasant experienced a few supernatural events that all centered around sightings of a “tall, humanoid figure, large wings, and glowing red eyes [that] is said to glide through the air without flapping its wings,” according to EBSCO. People saw the creature often before mysterious events happened in the area. Nearly one hundred sightings of the Mothman occurred between 1966 and 1967. Then, in 1967, the Silver Bridge in Point Pleasant collapsed, leading to the deaths of 47 people and many injuries — and the Mothman was supposedly spotted immediately before and immediately after the event, leading many people to make a correlation between the appearance of the cryptid and the tragedy.

After the collapse of the Silver Bridge, sightings dwindled, and there have been virtually zero sightings in the area since that fateful year. But since then, the creature has grown into a bit of a celebrity — with of course the Mothman Museum catering to that particular flavor of fame. The Richard Gere movie from 2002 fed into that, as well (and much of the museum was dedicated to props and information about the movie).

What Mothman means to me

The first real experiences I had with Mothman came from Dungeons & Dragons-themed podcasts (surprising no one). The first was when Griffin McElroy pulled him into an oops-all-cryptids season of The Adventure Zone as an NPC. The character, Indrid Cold, wore red-tinted glasses and spoke in a vaguely mystical tone, courtesy of his ability to see bits and pieces of the future. When the spectacles were removed, he transformed into a huge moth-like humanoid, a terrifying creature to behold.

My most recent narrative brush with Mothman came from the Dungeons and Daddies podcast, during which Beth May’s PC, Trudy, shares an intimate connection with the Mothman character (who in this story was revealed to come from a distant planet of highly technologically advanced Moth people and was stationed on Earth to further the Moth-person species; this character recently met a rather unfortunate end).

The thing about the Mothman every time he shows up, though? The descriptions are always vaguely horny.

In Amnesty, Indrid is described as “fascinating to look at”: somewhat withering and gaunt, yet confident and strong; he appears both young, yet somehow wrinkled. He has short silver hair, with hints of black peeking through, and wears a tank top and jeans as well as a pendant comprised of an orange, crystalline material. His most noticeable feature however is a pair of large, round, opaque red glasses that easily reflect whatever is in front of them.

-The Adventure Zone wiki entry for Indrid Cold

Like, hot, right?

At the museum, even, I bought a button that said: Mothman is my boyfriend. (So I’m not the only one.) But what is it about Mothman? Why is he so hot? Why does everyone want him to be their boyfriend?

Mothman as a queer icon

I’m certainly not the only person who has found Mothman intriguing. There’s an entire lore surrounding Mothman irrespective of the events of 1967. There is also a lot of really interesting research and writing (that I’m not going to recreate) about how the queer community has practically adopted cryptids — with some speculation about how the former has been seen as ‘monstrous’ by society, so they have taken to the latter as a matter of connection and (maybe) solace.

There’s also the troublesome question of that connection being overtly sexual, for various reasons. Earlier this year, Queer Kentucky contributor Jules Crawley wrote about how Mothman is often ‘oversexualized,’ drawing an obvious comparison between how queerness has often been reverted to ‘only’ sexual characteristics (think of drag being considered inherently sexual, when it’s really anything but). In fact, western society has traditionally looked at queerness as oversexual, and thus pariah in a society that lionizes conservative Puritan ideals when it comes to sex. The adoption of the Mothman and other misunderstood cryptid characters from around the country (notably Bigfoot, el chupacabra, the Jersey Devil, etc.) by a marginalized group of people indeed makes sense when we see it through this lens.

[I]t’s popular for tourists to take sexualized photos with the Mothman Statue, such as sliding money or credit cards in the crack of his butt. Once a feared creature of the night, he is now treated as an object of sexual innuendo.

-Jules Crawley, Queer Kentucky

(In fact, when I posted this picture in Discord, someone asked me if I had put a quarter in Mothman’s butt. What a wild turn of phrase.)

Why am I still talking about this?

The question remains, even with all the evidence . . . Why is Mothman so popular? Why does this somewhat obscure cryptid garner so much attention and so many hits on Google (as I’m typing this, my search five minutes ago generated 4.43 million results)? And (perhaps most importantly to this particular blog) why do I care about him so much?

The answer is deeply unsatisfying, and probably poorly interrogated (by me). I truly don’t know. There’s something mysterious about the creature that’s intriguing; there’s also something menacing and exciting and dangerous about the supposed “man” behind the moth, as it were.

Aside from that, I just think it’s fun to think of Mothman as some hot prophet in red spectacles. I’m glad I got to meet him.