The Native American tribes of the area had a long history of chronicling stories about Thunderbirds-large “bird-man” figures that were always harbingers of woe. They just thought it was preposterous.”īut others, like cryptozoologist and author Loren Coleman, said there is a history of this kind of lore in the Ohio River Valley. I thought it was a hoot everyone just sort of laughed at this. It could have been something spawned by the toxic ground from the TNT area. It was probably a bird,” said Hilda Austin, 58, who lived through the Mothman sightings and is currently the head of the Point Pleasant Chamber of Commerce. “I believe that some people saw something. And others say the people in Point Pleasant succumbed to mass hysteria. Another is that it was a giant, mutated owl. One theory is that people saw a huge sandhill crane that veered off course. It did not help to calm fears when the town’s investigative reporter Mary Hyre, who had devoted much ink to the Mothman, died suddenly. Others suffered from bleeding eyes after reportedly seeing it. Some said the creature chased them to the ground. They reported the incident to the police, and the sightings continued from there. It began in mid-November 1966, when two couples, parked at an old World War II munitions dump site that the locals called TNT, say they were chased by a large creature. But for the folks who say they saw the strange, malevolent creature-whatever it was-their lives were never the same. Indeed, nobody knows what those people saw on those dark West Virginia nights. There are many things that we will never know.” It took a long time for me to realize that I was dealing with something that the human mind could not understand. As it progressed, I became more and more baffled. I was determined I was going to find the answers to this. When the bridge collapsed, it was pretty distressing. Keel, who has seen the movie, said he thought “Richard Gere does a great job of gradually going nuts.” Now 72 and still writing books and articles from his home in New York City, he says: “I didn’t go nuts, but I was very upset. We wanted to play it straight and strip out any melodrama or kookiness.” That was the appeal to me, the ambiguity and the unanswered questions. “Could this be a man? A voice? A light or a monster?” Pellington said. This was a movie about dealing with something that human beings will never be equipped to understand.”ĭirector Mark Pellington (“Arlington Road”) was not interested in making a “monster movie.” Rather, he wanted a film about the psychology of belief. “I wanted to write a story that said you can ask questions about why things happen, but they are the sort of things that we are never going to get an answer to. “Most Hollywood movie ghosts make their presence known to help us get back together with our girlfriends,” said Hatem. But Hatem’s vision for the film remained intact. The film also stars Laura Linney (who was paired with Gere in the 1996 thriller “Primal Fear”) and “Will & Grace’s” Debra Messing.īy 1998, Lakeshore Entertainment (producers of “The Gift,” “Runaway Bride”) bought the rights to the script and began a two-year development process. Although the real story occurred in the 1960s, the movie is set in contemporary times. He gradually becomes embroiled in the town’s strange sightings until he reaches a point of obsession and near lunacy. “The Mothman Prophecies,” a $42-million Sony Screen Gems release that opens Friday, stars Richard Gere as a crusading Washington Post journalist named John Klein who, through a personal tragedy, finds himself in Point Pleasant. Keel in his 1975 book “The Mothman Prophecies.” The story of this strange season in Point Pleasant was chronicled by journalist John A. “There are a lot of people who just don’t want to talk about it anymore, either because they are traumatized or they don’t want the press attention,” said Jeff Wamsley, a Point Pleasant native and author of “Mothman: The Facts Behind the Legend.” “People were pretty much scared out of their wits.” “Mothman”-as the beast was known by locals-was never seen or heard from again.
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