Mothman Death List Photo
Posted by: Loren Coleman on April 6th, 2006
Anyone from Ohio or West Virginia? I’m looking for a Mothman death list photo.
Mothman image, copyright 2002, created by cryptozoology illustrator William Rebsamen for Mothman and Other Curious Encounters
In the Charleston Daily Mail of March 20, 2006, in “Mothman has his own museum,” reporter Samantha L. Thomas, discussing the collection in Point Pleasant, mentions:
One attention grabber is the “death list” displayed prominently in the middle of the museum. It draws connections between the sudden or strange deaths of those associated in some way with the Mothman legend.
I wonder, does anyone have a photograph of this display, which can be scanned and shared with me as a jpg? I would like to place it on the original site of this death list here. And, from there, point future visitors to the location of the bricks and mortar Mothman Museum.
Please contact me here.
Thank you.
Below: Artist John Frick of Cumberland, Maryland, stands under his creation, a Mothman replica that hangs from the ceiling of the Mothman Museum in Point Pleasant, West Virginia.
For more information on Mothman, see Mothman and Other Curious Encounters. Remarkably, this book was the number one Paraview Press bestseller for March 2006, which only goes to show me that people are still intrigued with the stories of these weird winged wonders of West Virginia.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
I don’t think the Mothman is connected with the deaths anymore than the Easter Bunny is connected with JFK’s death.
I would have to say that I’ve never really understood the whole Mothman thing, at least in the wider, more paranormal, perspective. Seems to me that people are choosing to connect a lot of random events and trace them back to a single, paranormal source. Then again, because I have never read much about it, perhaps that means I simply haven’t read enough to see what the big deal is. Besides, My state’s official entity, the Jersey Devil, is supposed to be a harbinger of war, so who knows?
Yes, I would recommend reading more about the historically significant cryptid reports and how they have been the fire beneath the sinister smoke that so many think of when imaging the “Mothman phenomenon.”
I’m familiar with the basic sighting reports, it’s everything else that seems unconnected- the bridge deaths, MIB’s, etc. Just seems like people are building a larger and more complex myth around the actual encounter stories. I agree it’s a fascinating tale, but because of all this, I think it’s much harder to find any truth behind it all. Come to think of it, that does sound a bit like the problem most Cryptozoologists have with the Jersey Devil too, since everything from Sasquatch to UFO reports and deer being hit by cars gets attributed to him.