Point Pleasant, West Virginia, was invaded by the 2025 Mothman Festival, a celebration of the creepy cryptid in his hometown.
The legend begins in November 1966, when couples driving near the now-abandoned TNT munitions site reported a tall, winged creature with glowing red eyes chasing their car. The sightings crescendoed until the Silver Bridge disaster on December 15, 1967, which left 46 people dead and severed more than a bridge. The collapse is forever entwined with Mothman lore: many believe the creature was a harbinger, a warning ignored. Now, an annual festival celebrates the fabled character.
On this sunny weekend in late September, the festival overflows Point Pleasant's small downtown. Musicians set up in the streets, and bands play in the amphitheater along the Ohio River. Vendors sell "moth floss" (cotton candy), lemonade, tacos and noodles.
People line up for pictures with the large silver Mothman statue — often including front and rear angles, due to the figure's famously shapely derriere, dubbed the "Shiny Hiney."…
…Summer Maddux is visiting from Sacramento, Calif., and she's wearing a dramatic costume that's prompting strangers to take selfies with her."I am in a form-fitting, curve hugging black bodysuit with a black hand-painted moth cape with a little waist cincher, red spectacles, red contact lenses, a very hot wig upon my head and my little antenna that I made for the costume to perfectly embody Moth Ma'am," she says. "This is my expression of Mothman."
NPR
Previously:
• Finally catch Mothman with these night vision binoculars
• Mothman vinyl toy and festival photos
• Petition to replace every Confederate statue in West Virginia with Mothman
