The legend of the Mothman has pervaded modern cryptozoological lore since the late twentieth century, when the creature was first spotted near Point Pleasant, West Virginia, on November 15, 1966 (“Couples See Man-Sized Bird …” 1966). It was then reported by various witnesses for the next thirteen successive months (Monstrum 2019). The creature was originally spotted in what is now the McClintic Wildlife Area, locally known as the “TNT area,” a region six miles north of Point Pleasant. The place acquired this moniker because at one point it was owned by the West Virginia Ordnance Works, a company that produced trinitrotoluene (TNT) for the United States Army during World War II. To safely store their product, the company built one hundred above-ground, steel-reinforced, concrete bunkers, which were dubbed “igloos” because of their domed construction.

When the company became defunct, the facility was abandoned, though these sturdy “igloos” are still standing and can be seen today (Sergent and Wamsley 2002, 10), sans any remaining TNT. As is generally the case with abandoned places, the area has an air of mystery about it, which lends itself nicely to the tale of the Mothman’s presence. 

The Mothman is allegedly an enigmatic cryptid of unknown origin who some claim was responsible for the Silver Bridge Collapse in Point Pleasant on December 15, 1967. Others take a different perspective and claim that the Mothman was not responsible for the collapse but rather came to warn the populace of the impending disaster (Sergent and Wamsley 2002, 24–25). While the idea that the Mothman was in some way connected to the Silver Bridge collapse is widely circulated as a possibility by those seeking to make a link between the creature and the tragedy, an analysis at the time by an Army Corps of Engineers investigator reported that the disaster was due to a flaw during the manufacturing of a component of the bridge’s structure, an “eyebar.” This eyebar had a micro-fine crack in it that widened over the course of the years from exposure to weather, and eventually the piece deteriorated to the point of breaking. When the eyebar broke, “it caused a chain reaction” of failures of the bridge’s components, and the bridge collapsed (Sergent and Wamsley 2002, 6–7). This resulted in the tragic death of forty-six people (Sergent 2015).

Irrespective of perceived malevolent or benevolent intent, the Mothman, or some variant of the original entity, has made its way into popular culture. There are numerous references to it in music, television, films, games, and books (List of Mothman References in Popular Culture n.d.). There is even an annual Mothman Festival in Point Pleasant to celebrate the creature and seemingly all other things paranormal. Given its popularity, it seems the Mothman has undergone a cultural metamorphosis and has transformed from a fearsome harbinger of doom into a para-celebrity of renown. 

Just as the public persona of the Mothman has continued to evolve, the iconography of the creature has also changed from the original hand-drawn images produced by the witness Linda Scarberry in 1966 to what it is at present (Nickell 2011, 180). In the beginning, the creature looked very much more owl-like than it does now. Over the years, representations of the Mothman have evolved to become more anthropomorphic in appearance, as evidenced in Figure 1.

Mothman Candidates

What was the Mothman, really? In truth we will never know for certain, but there are many ideas circulating as to its identity, both from 1966 and contemporarily. While some explanations are otherworldly, one commonly held prosaic idea is that the cryptid creature’s sightings were due to highly imaginative people partially seeing, and summarily misidentifying, owls. The assertion that some of the original sightings of the mysterious entity were likely an owl is at least partially based upon the initially reported shape of the creature as well as the “red glowing eyes” that it was purported to have had when lights were shown upon them (“Couples See Man-Sized Bird …” 1966). In his book Tracking the Man-Beasts, author Joe Nickell asserts, “Very likely the Mothman sightings were caused by barred owls, as well as other types of owls” (Nickell 2011, 177; see also Nickell 2002a, 2002b).

Another alleged culprit for some of the sightings was purported to be a wayward sandhill crane. In the December 1, 1966, edition of the Gettysburg Times, Robert L. Smith, an associate professor of wildlife biology at West Virginia University, “said the descriptions [of the creature] all fitted the sandhill crane, the second largest American crane, which stands as high as a man and has a wingspan of more than seven feet.” Dr. Smith continued to say that “the ‘red eyes’ could be the large circles of bare reddish flesh around the crane’s eyes.” Smith concluded the article by asserting that “the bird apparently wandered out of its normal migration route” (“Monster Bird with Red Eyes May Be Crane” 1966). In a newspaper article of an unknown source, Smith is quoted as saying that he “was of the opinion there has [sic] been no previous sightings of the large … [sandhill crane] this far east” and that it “may have followed geese or other waterfowl to the McClintic Wildlife” area (Sergent and Wamsley 2002, 98).

Sandhill cranes are on average 47.2 inches in length (3.93 feet) and have a wingspan of 78.7 inches (6.56 feet) (Cornell Lab of Ornithology 2019a). Certainly, this is an impressively large bird, especially if seen in flight or in low light conditions without a reference point to accurately gauge its size. It is true that the sandhill crane has naturally occurring red spots around its eyes due to the “featherless red cap on their heads” (Wildlife Illinois n.d.). However, the likelihood that these reddened areas are apt to be reflective to the point of resembling “automobile reflectors,” as attested to by eyewitness accounts (Keel 1991, 77), is questionable.

It is possible that a wayward migrant sandhill crane could serve as an explanation, especially for those sightings for which eyeshine was not reported. Interestingly, when examining the actual accounts of reported sightings, it is discovered that eyeshine was not reported in most of the cases. In his review of the various eyewitness accounts, author Benjamin Radford found that eyeshine was not “characteristic of Mothman sightings.” Radford states that nearly a dozen people “claim to have seen the creature or had some personal connection to it. Of those only one person mentions glowing red eyes” and went on to say that her information was based on accounts of her father; she had not seen the eyes herself (Radford 2020).

Sandhill cranes are listed by the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources in their “Birds of West Virginia” checklist (West Virginia Division of Natural Resources n.d.). However, sandhill cranes in West Virginia were a rarity at the time and are still not common to this day. An article in the Sunday, November 20, 1966, edition of the Athens Messenger reported that Ohio University Zoology department officials disputed the sandhill crane hypothesis. “Ohio U. officials said there has never been a known sighting of the sandhill crane in this part of the country” (“Is Mysterious Creature Balloon or Crane?” 1966). See Figure 2 for the sandhill crane range map (Cornell Lab of Ornithology 2019b).

 

While this statement from the unnamed official at Ohio University sounds conclusive, a contemporary review of data reveals that it was, in fact, inaccurate. I consulted Dr. Tamaki Yuri from the Museum of Biological Diversity at the Ohio State University, and she recommended I review data from the Global Diversity Information Facility (GBIF) to investigate the statement. The GBIF aggregates and catalogs data about “all types of life on Earth” from museums, research facilities, and naturalists around the world, and it has compiled many years’ worth of data for longitudinal studies of various species.

Using the GBIF website, I was able to define a polygonal search area that covered approximately a sixty-mile radius from Point Pleasant, West Virginia, looking for all reported instances of Antigone canadensis (the scientific name of the sandhill crane) within that area. The results were quite informative. 

The data revealed that there indeed were sightings of sandhill cranes in and around the Point Pleasant area prior to 1967. In fact, the earliest reported sighting of the crane in Point Pleasant was in 1938, along with fifty other sightings within the defined sixty-mile radius from 1938 until August 2021. These data were confirmed with Dr. Yuri, who told me that the “expert who commented on the sand hill cranes back then couldn’t even imagine that an aggregated database such as this would become readily available [one day] to prove or disprove his/her comment.”

Despite their occasional presence in West Virginia, sandhill cranes do not commonly frequent the area during their migration, let alone for an extended amount of time, such as the thirteen-month span associated with the Mothman sightings. This assertion was affirmed by a study conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Univerisity of Minnesota, and Western University that investigated the vernal and autumnal migration patterns of forty-two GPS-collared sandhill cranes from December 2009 through August 2014 (Fronczak et al. 2017). This study showed the distance of the migratory routes of the sandhill crane from the state of West Virginia were significant. The information from this study lends itself to support the assertion that sandhill cranes do not typically migrate through West Virginia during their fall or spring migration routes. However, David L. Fronczak told me that there is always the possibility that wayward migrant cranes could make their way farther east and into West Virginia.

Mothman as Crane: Pro and Con

Examining all this information, would it seem that the sandhill crane is the most likely candidate for most of the Mothman sightings in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, as some assert? Is the bird common in the state? No. Did most people originally report seeing the “red” eyes of the Mothman, which were explained as being the red patches around the eyes of the sandhill crane? No. In fact, only one person reported this, and it was secondhand information at that. So, given this, in those cases where eyeshine was not reported, what other explanations for the sightings are likely?

One practical hypothesis suggested was that some of the sightings of the Mothman were attributable to geese (“Is Mysterious Creature Balloon or Crane?” 1966). While geese can certainly be large birds—between 29.9 inches (2.49 feet) and 43.3 inches (3.6 feet) in length (Cornell Lab of Ornithology 2019c)—they are quite distinctive. One cannot be around a goose or flock of geese without noticing that geese have a very characteristic “honk” that they make, even sometimes while flying. This distinctive “honking” noise could certainly identify a goose as a perpetrator if the noise was made by the bird. While some sightings may very well be attributable to a silent goose, there is yet another suspect in this lineup of potential candidates for the sightings that is perhaps better suited, especially when it is seen in low light, while in flight, or at a distance.   

The great bird to which this article is dedicated is common to the geographical area of Point Pleasant and has been suggested as a candidate for the Mothman in the past. When in 1966 the Mason County (the county in which Point Pleasant is located) sheriff at the time, George Johnson, received reports of the Mothman, he was cited by the Williamson Daily News as having said that he “was not discounting the stories he was told, but said he feels what was seen was nothing more than a ‘freak shitepoke,’ a large bird in the heron family.” The article goes on to say, “The shitepoke, sometimes called a shag, is the smallest heron in the Western Hemisphere” (“Eight People Say They Saw Creature” 1966).

This statement in the newspaper article is quite perplexing. How could the bird in question be both a “large bird” and yet be “the smallest heron in the Western Hemisphere?” The answer may lie in what various types of fauna—in this case species of heron—are referred to as colloquially.

Colloquialisms can be hard to define, and sometimes colloquial sources are needed to ascertain their meanings. A cursory search of the internet for “shag heron” reveals a 1934 fiddle song titled “Shag Poke” and may lend some insight into the terms in question. In the description that accompanied the song, the following text is cited: “Shag Poke and Shy-poke are names for a Great Blue Heron in Missouri and elsewhere in the MidWest. The term may have derived from the bird’s penchant for defecating while flying (shite poke or shit-a-cord are also names associated with it), which is also sometimes called a Blue Crane” (Traditional Tune Archive 2019).

As Joe Greathouse, assistant professor of biology at West Liberty University, told me during a phone interview, great blue herons are common in West Virginia. As stated, the Williamson Daily News referred to a “shag heron” and went on to say that the shag heron is the “smallest heron in the Western Hemisphere.” This quote may be referring to the comparatively small green heron, which is also common in West Virginia during its breeding season (Cornell Lab of Ornithology 2019d). The green heron is on average between 16.1 and 18.1 inches (1.34 feet to 1.51 feet) in length, and in terms of its body, it is more comparable to the size of the common crow (Cornell Lab of Ornithology 2019e). In contrast, according to audubon.org, the great blue heron is the largest heron in North America and is often referred to as a “crane” (National Audubon Society n.d.).

The Mothman was reported by Linda Scarberry to be “about seven feet tall” (Sergent and Wamsley 2002, 20) and was reported by another individual identified only as “Eyewitness #1” as “running” and “appeared to be a man about 6 feet tall” (Sergent and Wamsley 2002, 61). These two assertions suggest that the full body of the creature when on the ground would have been quite large, possibly as tall as seven feet. It would be curious, and seems unlikely, that the sheriff would refer to a bird as small as the green heron when hypothesizing an explanation for sightings of such a large creature. His use of the term shitepoke in this case would seem to be more applicable to the larger of the two birds. Given the foregoing, it is possible that the use of such colloquialisms may play a part in the confusion of what was said to the newspaper versus what was meant in the way of a potential explanation by Sheriff Johnson in 1966.

The debate associated with properly identifying colloquial terminology for various species of cranes or herons is beyond the scope of this article. Any attempt to determine what was meant by the sheriff, as opposed to what was interpreted by the reporter, will only result in unresolvable speculation. Nevertheless, irrespective of what these great birds are called locally, a definite connection emerges between herons, the geographical location of Point Pleasant, and extant documentation at the time suspecting some form of heron as a potential explanation for the Mothman.

In terms of size, the great blue heron is comparable to the sandhill crane. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology reports that great blue herons can range in length from 38.2 (3.18 feet) to 53.9 inches (4.49 feet) in length (Cornell Lab of Ornithology 2019f). The distinction between the two great birds as candidates for being mistaken for the Mothman comes not from their size but rather from their commonality to the area. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology website All About Birds provides insight into the range of the great blue heron, which is shown to be in West Virginia year-round (Cornell Lab of Ornithology 2019g; see Figure 3).

 

Previously, I had used the GBIF website to examine the sightings of the sandhill crane, and I determined that there have been fifty-one reported sightings of the crane from 1938 to the present. Using the same geographically defined polygonal search area—but this time searching for the great blue heron (Ardea herodias), I found 5,576 sightings from 1907 to the present. Given these data, it seems plausible that if one saw a large, gangly, crane/heron shaped bird in the area, it would statistically be more likely to be a great blue heron than a sandhill crane. This assertion is further supported by a telephone interview I conducted with David McClung, a West Virginia Department of Natural Resources officer who is responsible for the McClintic State Wildlife Management “TNT Area” of Point Pleasant. McClung revealed that great blue herons are very common and can be seen daily in that area, even well into the winter months. McClung said that he has seen many great blue herons in the vicinity. He went on to tell me, “I have worked that area for thirty-three years, and I have never once seen a sandhill crane out there.”

For another perspective, I conducted an additional telephone interview with Joe Greathouse, assistant professor of biology at West Liberty University, who provided further confirmation of the presence of great blue herons in the Point Pleasant area. Greathouse stated that the great blue heron is common throughout all of West Virginia and that it is the “most common wading bird in the state.” Greathouse went on to tell me that great blue herons are prevalent in Point Pleasant “because of the wetlands in that area.”

It should be noted that just because animals are common to an area, it does not necessarily follow that the people who live in that area are familiar with them. In his book What the Robin Knows (2012), Jon Young, a naturalist and expert tracker, cites several instances of human residents being unaware of the presence of their various animal neighbors in a geographical area (Young 2012, 49–50, 82–83, 166, 173). How many people live in an area where bear, fox, or weasel are quite common, yet people rarely (if ever) see these animals? Occasionally people might stumble across the animal’s tracks or other signs of their presence—assuming they are even looking for such things—but they may otherwise go for years without ever seeing the actual animal itself. Therefore, the argument, “If these great birds are so common, why wouldn’t people have known what they were seeing?” becomes less profound. Just because great blue herons are common to an area does not mean that people who live there regularly will see them or would be able to accurately identify them when they did.

The intent of this article is not to dismiss the sandhill crane hypothesis outright. As we have seen, sandhill cranes are occasionally spotted in West Virginia. Instead, my purpose is simply to look at existing data related to these great birds to determine what the likelihood of such a sighting might have been and hopefully bring new information into the discussion on the Mothman that has not been previously examined.

In conclusion, there is little doubt that individuals saw something in the Point Pleasant area during 1966–1967. What that was remains undetermined, and there is still much speculation about the matter. While the barred owl accounts for the large, bicycle-reflector, circular eyes reported in some of the cases, the sheer reported size of the creature lends itself to potentially being the great blue heron (or perhaps a sandhill crane), particularly in those cases where the creature was witnessed at a distance or even in flight.

It is clear that no one will ever be 100 percent certain in accounting for who saw what in each reported case of the Mothman sightings. It is possible that the stories of sightings of many different creatures, be they sandhill cranes, great blue herons, geese, barred owls, or others, have merged over time. Through confabulation (and perhaps in some cases intentional prevarication) and through the retelling of tales with occasionally misremembered facts (or perhaps through outright embellishment) the stories have evolved into a form the folkloric legend that we have in the Mothman story of today.

There’s a question we must ask ourselves: Which is more likely? Did an alien from another planet or plane of existence visit Point Pleasant, West Virginia, in 1966, or is it more likely that people saw one or more large birds with which they were not readily familiar and mistook for something else? In the analysis of the facts, we must also ask ourselves another question: Is it more likely that a rare, wayward, migratory sandhill crane was spotted in Point Pleasant for more than a year, or is it more likely that a large bird common to the area, such as the great blue heron, was spotted and mistaken for something else? Perhaps Occam’s razor, a premise asserting that the explanation with the fewest assumptions is most likely correct, provides us insight into how to consider both questions.

I recently visited the McClintic State Wildlife Management “TNT Area” of Point Pleasant. It is a beautiful place that is unique in the topography of the hills of West Virginia. Upon entering the area, a great blue heron flew from its perch high up in one of the trees and majestically took to the sky, quickly fading from sight behind the verdant tree line. It was a large specimen, but I could not determine the exact size. For one familiar with the species, it was easily identifiable by its silhouette against the sky. It was from that singular sighting that this research was born. Given the foregoing, perhaps the great blue heron will finally get the consideration that it deserves in one of the greatest folkloric mysteries associated with the great state of West Virginia. 

References

 Couples see man-sized bird … creature … something! 1966. The Point Pleasant Register (November 16).

Cornell Lab of Ornithology. 2019a. Sandhill crane identification. Online at https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Sandhill_Crane/id.

———. 2019b. Sandhill crane range map. Online at https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Sandhill_Crane/maps-range.

———. 2019c. Canada goose identification. Online at https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Canada_Goose/id.

———. 2019d. Green heron range map. Online at https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Green_Heron/maps-range.

———. 2019e. Green heron identification. Online at https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Green_Heron/id.

———. 2019f. Great blue heron identification. Online at https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Great_Blue_Heron/id.

———. 2019g. Great blue heron range map. Online at https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Great_Blue_Heron/maps-range.

Eight people say they saw creature. 1966. Williamson Daily News (November 18).

Fronczak, D.L., D.E. Andersen, E.E. Hanna, et al. 2017. Distribution and migration chronology of Eastern population sandhill cranes. Journal of Wildlife Management 81: 1021–1032. Online at https://doi.org/10.1002/jwmg.21272.

Is mysterious creature balloon or crane? 1966. The Athens Messenger (November 20): D-1.

Keel, John A. 1991. The Mothman Prophecies: A True Story. New York, NY: Tor Books.

List of Mothman references in popular culture. N.d. Cryptids and Myths Wiki. Online at https://allcryptid.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Mothman_references_in_popular_culture.

Monster bird with red eyes may be crane. 1966. The Gettysburg Times (December 1).

Monstrum. 2019. Mothman: America’s notorious winged monster (video). Online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUpeDwiD64M.

National Audubon Society. N.d. Great blue heron Ardea herodias. Online at https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/great-blue-heron.

Nickell, Joe. 2002a. ‘Mothman’ solved. Skeptical Inquirer 26(2) (March/April).

———. 2002b. Mothman revisited: Investigating on site. Skeptical Briefs 12(4). Online at /newsletter/mothman-revisitedinvestigating-on-site.

———. 2011. Tracking the Man-Beasts: Sasquatch, Vampires, Zombies, and More. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Radford, Benjamin. 2020. Investigating Mothman’s Red Eyeshine. Skeptical Inquirer 44(3) (May/June).

Sergent, Beth. 2015. Silver Bridge victims remembered. The Point Pleasant Register (December 15). Online at https://www.mydailyregister.com/top-stories/3573/silver-bridge-victims-remembered.

Sergent, Donnie, and Jeff Wamsley. 2002. Mothman: The Facts behind the Legend. Proctorville, OH: Mark S. Phillips Publishing.

Traditional Tune Archive. 2019. Shag poke. Online at https://tunearch.org/wiki/Annotation:Shag_Poke.

West Virginia Division of Natural Resources. N.d. Birds of West Virginia (brochure). Online at https://www.wvdnr.gov/Publications/PDFFiles/bird%20checklist2.pdf.

Wildlife Illinois. N.d. Sandhill crane. Online at https://www.wildlifeillinois.org/gallery/birds/sandhill-crane/.

Young, Jon. 2012. What the Robin Knows: How Birds Reveal the Secrets of the Natural World. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.