New Rash of Mothman-Linked Deaths

I am sorry to report that details are just beginning to trickle in of a new wave of deaths and near-misses tied to the Mothman researchers, museum staff and festival people in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. (Click here for a historical overview of other similar deaths. For more on the logic behind making an openminded focus of this kind of data, see my extended comment below in response to some early critics of this specific blog.)

Many of these people impacted have become friends in the last five years, so these incidents are becoming more difficult to note. However, it is with some duty to history and the data tha I share what appears to be this latest rash of tragic events. My sources of information are from the folks there.

Mothman Museum director Jeff Wamsley (above) holds his most recent book. With him is museum co-worker Todd Wiseman, an Ohio University film student.

Let’s begin with a near-miss that has touched Jeff Wamsley, the author of Mothman: The Facts Behind The Legend with Donnie Sergent, Jr., and Mothman : Behind the Red Eyes. His wife Julie was in a mid-February car crash when she hit a deer (3rd one in the past few years); minor damage to the front of her SUV, no injuries and it happened in Crown City, Ohio. This seems to have happened about the same time in February 2007, when a member of the cast of the Mark Pellington-Richard Gere movie, The Mothman Prophecies, died exactly five years after the national release of the film. For more details on that death, click on “Cyrus Bills”.

Artist John Frick (above) of Cumberland, Maryland, stands under his and his brother Tim’s creation, a 10 ft Mothman replica that hangs from the ceiling of the Mothman Museum in Point Pleasant, West Virginia.

Sadly, we have learned that Mothman Museum artists John and Tim Frick recently lost their sister to a tragic unexpected death.

The Mothman Festival co-founders are Wamsley and Carolyn Harris, owner of Harris’ Steakhouse, a diner on Main Street. Harris’s father, 85, died not long ago, and then news came that Carolyn Harris’s niece died in a head-on car crash.

Meanwhile, Bob, the owner of th Point, the store next to the Mothman Museum, next to the Mothman statue (above), has had a heart attack.

Finally, in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, Patty Oxyer, 46, died on April 9, 2007. She use to be a great supporter of the Annex rock band of which Jeff Wamsley is the lead guitarist. See her obituary below.

Patricia M. Oxyer, 46, of Cheshire, passed away on Monday, April 9, 2007, at her residence. She was born Dec. 10, 1960, in Point Pleasant, W.Va., daughter of the late Willard Oxyer and Mary Haines Oxyer, who survives her.
Patricia was a social worker, having worked for the Gallipolis Developmental Center, Woodland Centers and Lakin State Hospital. She was a member of Addison Freewill Baptist Church.
She is survived by her mother, Mary Oxyer of Cheshire; half-sisters and half-brothers, Ann (Dennis) Jenkins of Middleway, W.Va., Robert (Ruby) McKinney of Hayward, Calif., Wanda Russell of Tennessee, and Wayne (Shirley) Oxyer of Cheshire; and several nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles and cousins.
Preceding her in death were her father, Willard Oxyer, and a half-sister, Mary Jo Hager.
Services [were held at] 1 p.m. Thursday, April 12, 2007, at Willis Funeral Home, with the Rev. Rick Barcus officiating. Burial [followed] in Poplar Ridge Cemetery.

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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