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Dave Lavender, of the Huntington W. Va. Herald-Dispatch, loaded up his family and made his annual trek to Point Pleasant. His 5-year-old son Jacob, official Mothman and Santa Claus Search Team member, left some heavy breath of anticipation on the Mothman Museum store front window.

…we headed out onto the street, promising Jacob we would take a picture if we happened upon the Mothman or his footprints.

On heightened alert for Mothman info, we resisted the urge to buy another Johnny Cash 45 and hopped Main Street again, where Ohio University film student Todd Wiseman was opening the doors to The Mothman Museum and Research Center, that’s just been open a couple of months.

Toril Lavender/For The Herald-Dispatch
This nearly 10-foot-long Mothman, made by artists Tim and John Frick, greets visitors to the newly opened Mothman Museum and Research Center on Main Street in Point Pleasant. The museum opened in September during the annual Mothman Festival. Suspended from the ceiling, Tim and John Frick’s 10-foot-long Mothman sculpture — and chunks from faux concrete from the set of "The Mothman Prophecies" — greet you as you enter the small museum that has already drawn people from Idaho, Iowa and Wisconsin.

Filled with lots of props from the major motion picture that starred Richard Gere and Laura Linney, and tons of newspaper clips and photo books, the museum is the place to dig into the many layers of the Mothman legacy from the sightings, to the Men In Black and UFO sightings, as well as the Silver Bridge collapse.

Formed up in part by Jeff Wamsley, who has written two books about the Mothman, the museum runs a documentary about the bizarre occurrences back in the 1960s that freakishly hit a crescendo before the collapse of the Silver Bridge at 4:55 p.m. on Dec. 15, 1967.

It sounds like Point Pleasant is one of a few places that is capitalizing on its cryptozoological history.

Toril Lavender/For The Herald-Dispatch
This lighted Mothman figure lurking in the pines with his red eyes glowing is just one of more than 150 light displays that grace Krodel Park in Point Pleasant for the annual Fantasy Light Show. The light show, which features more than 250,000 lights, runs 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. daily through Dec. 31.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 11th, 2005 at 11:24 am and is filed under Bigfoot Report, Cryptotourism, Cryptozoology, Mothman, Movie Monsters, Museums, Pop Culture. You can follow responses via our RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.