Mothman Deaths: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Not since 26 January 2007, when a member of the cast of the Mark Pellington-Richard Gere movie, The Mothman Prophecies, died five years after the national release of the film, has there been a well-documented, well-publicized passing of anyone on the cast. (For more details on that 2007 death, click on “Cyrus Bills”.)

The void in deaths has been welcome. Or is the absence of information perhaps only a lack of knowledge of such deaths, as the movie fades into the DVD library?

Other deaths, of course, have happened in the community, and I’ve discussed those here on Cryptomundo.

Such events have shaken the community, and have hit close to Point Pleasant’s Mothman Festival co-founders, Wamsley and Carolyn Harris, owner of Harris’ Steakhouse, a diner on Main Street. Harris’s father, 85, died about a year ago, and then news came that Carolyn Harris’s niece died in a head-on car crash around the same time. Sad news indeed.

Recently, someone linked to the events of 1967 wrote me, sending along clippings about her cousin, Wes Wears. Wears received a medal for his heroic acts saving people while working on an ice boat in the Ohio River, after the 1967 collapse of the Silver Bridge.

The correspondent noted that Wesley Franklin Wears of Point Pleasant suffered a heart attack after his heroics and never fully recovered. He lived only until August 1972, dying when he was only 42. His oldest son Thomas died in a tragic car accident in Mason County, West Virginia, shortly after his father’s death.

Wes’ daughter Sheila Wears Pierce went missing in 1977. She was never found. Her wallet was located in the Ohio River, miles from where she was last seen. Serial killer Henry Lee Lucas confessed to her murder, but was not tried for that offense. (Lucas’ confessions may have been mere fictions, of course.)

The Cryptomundo correspondent wrote: “While I don’t know if any of these people ever saw Mothman, their lives were certainly tragic and were touched by the Silver Bridge Disaster.”

Loren Coleman 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.

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