The legend of the Mothman is long and varied. As John A. Keel describes in his book, "The Mothman Prophecies," the stories about who and what he might be range from alien visitations to the manifestation of a 200 year old curse placed on the region by Shawnee chief Cornstalk. However, a little research turns up several different experiences that all seem to be connected to The Mothman.

It begins in the early 1900's, when an area outside Point Pleasant was designated the McClintic Wildlife Preserve. It was, among other things, . a bird sanctuary. As part of the World War II war effort, part of the preserve was ripped up and converted to a munitions dump where about 100 cement and steel "igloos" were built to house wartime explosives-. These were later. sold off to a variety of gunpowder, chemical and even bio-chemical companies. This area soon became known to the locals simply as the T.N.T., and later became a popular hangout where young people would "park" and have parties. This is the area where many of the Mothman sightings occurred.

In the summer of 1966, sightings began to take place around the Ohio River. One woman reported seeing something looking like a giant butterfly, about six feet long. On another evening a group of gravediggers saw what they described as a "brown human being" fly out of the trees. Later that November a man in Salem, West Virginia saw two red objects hovering over a field. His German Shepard took off after the objects and was never seen again.

The very next evening, two married couples were driving in the T.N.T. area. They spotted a figure which one of the men described as being shaped like a man only bigger, maybe six and a half feet tall, with huge wings folded against its back. His wife commented on its large red eyes, like automobile reflectors. The man who was driving the four of them took off in the car, reportedly going "better than a hundred miles an hour." At this point the creature spread its wings and flew after the car. The other woman in the car noticed that it had a wingspan of over ten feet and didn't seem to be flapping them at all. She also claimed that it made a squeaking noise, "like a big mouse."

The two couples went straight to the Mason County Sheriffs' Office to report what they had
seen. Deputy -Millard Halstead accompanied them back to the T.N.T. area and said as he passed the spot where they had first seen the figure, his police radio made a garbled sound similar to a tape recorder playing at very fast speed. He found nothing, and returned to the office and filed his report.

The next morning several more reports came in, each one claiming the same "bird," as they
called it, was flying in the area.

The following morning Sheriff George Johnson held a press conference and all of the witnesses were interviewed by reporters. On November 16, 1966, Mrs. Mary Hyre, editor of the Point Pleasant Register and someone who features prominently in John A. Keel's book, had the story put on the Associated Press wire. It was a copy editor there who dubbed the creature "moth-man". Fuelled by the ever-increasing reports, the preserve soon had thousands of visitors streaming in every night. Television crews began setting up at the old generator plant in hopes of getting footage of the terrifying creature. Most people just wanted to see the strange being; some wanted to make contact with it and still others just wanted to hunt it. While many were convinced that it must be an alien from another world, some felt it might be some kind of angel trying to give us a message.

Others theorized that this was nothing more than a freak of nature, a wayward bird displaced by the  igloos, forced to live on chemicals and then mutated from the nourishment. In other words, the Mothman was the personification of our ecological transgressions. In the months to follow more and more sightings were reported in the Point Pleasant area. The Point Pleasant Register had no shortage of stories to tell. Some people would merely see the creature, others could hear it and still others could feel its presence in the form of an overwhelming fear.

Many reported that premonitions of impending disasters accompanied a sighting. But all reported the same basic features, including the glowing, hypnotic eyes. The stories culminated on December 15, 1967 with the disaster on the Silver Bridge. After that the sightings all but stopped. Those that speculate on the connection between the events are  divided.

Did Mothman some how cause the catastrophe that took 47 lives that day, or had it appeared as a warning of the imminent disaster? Perhaps faced with real human tragedy and grief, the people of the Point Pleasant area just stopped looking for the bizarre visitor. Sightings have occurred since, but none to match the frequency of the period between November 1966 and December 1967. There are even reports that the creature was seen in the days preceding other tragic events around the globe including the Mexico City earthquake of 1985 and the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986.

Although the real events surrounding 'The Mothman Prophecies' occurred in 1969, the filmmakers decided to tell a 'contemporary story'.

"I was not interested in making a 'creature' movie, " says Mark Pellington, "I was not interested in making a sci-fi movie or even a supernatural movie. The Mothman Prophicies is a psychological mystery with naturally surreal overtones."

"It's the interpretation of reality based on one's mental make-up, one's emotional make-up, "says Richard Gere, who plays John Klein, a Washington Post reporter who, following a terrible loss in his own life, becomes caught up in some very extraordinary events affecting the lives of very ordinary people.  '"This story we're telling is really psychological," says Gere.   

It is the psychological aspect of the story that attracted director Mark Pellington to the project.

"Richard Hatem, the original screenwriter, did a fantastic job taking this book and putting it into a movie form," says Pellington. "By creating the character of John Klein as the pole by which all of these events revolve around, Hatem established a hero for the story."

Of his personal approach to this story, Pellington says, "This is difficult territory, and it's really easy to veer into melodrama or wackiness. It's really kind of unbelievable so you have to go deeper, to a metaphysical, naturally surreal, enigmatic, mysterious emotional place with this material to make it work. Otherwise it's ridiculous."

Though the movie will retain the basic overall detail of the book, executive producer Richard S. Wright gives Pellington credit for keeping the focus of the film on the human story and maintaining the psychological impact.

"People have been trying to make a movie of "Mothman" almost since Keel's book was published," Wright says. "There are a number of writers who took various, cracks at it but it's a difficult subject to get right. Mark. Pellington is the guy who figured out how to do it. We decided early on to stay away from UFOs but kept events we found more interesting, such as people seeing strange lights in the sky and getting phone calls featuring strange voices. We're looking at Mothman as a presence. We're not going for the full latex 'Creature from the Black Lagoon' version. Ours is much less obvious and more creepy."

As Pellington described to the crew as production began, "We never say 'creature' or 'monster.' It is never manifested in the same way to any one person, although there are similarities."

Lakeshore Entertainment president and producer Gary Lucchesi has been with this project for a long time. It is the believability of the story that convinced him it should be made. "I'm a producer who believes 'lf it can happen to me, I'm interested," he says, continuing: 'If you think of the great Hitchcock movies -- if you think of 'Rear Window' and Jimmy Stewart sitting there with a broken leg and he's a witness to a murder - you say to yourself, 'Well, that could happen to me!' and I find that intriguing. It's very Hitchcockian. It's what happens when sane reasonable people are faced with the unbelievable. In this case the unbelievable is the harbinger of fate, the harbinger of death."

"What we have always tried to achieve in this script is to create a character in John Klein who is a total pragmatist," says producer Lucchesi. "He's a writer for the Washington Post. His entire life, has been about finding facts. Now he finds something that he can't quite put his hands around, that the most logical side of him knows can't exist so it becomes a question of whether he can believe in something supernatural or metaphysical or more spiritual."

Gere expands on this idea, saying, "I think there's an openness that this character starts to approach where he doesn't have to have proof of things anymore. What his character ultimately realizes, is something on a very human plane. I think in this process we have a lot of people on various levels healing themselves and helping each other, which I find valuable in this work."

Because The Mothman Prophecies is based on real events that involve the lives of real people, it was apparent from the start that the production staff and cast members alike had to approach the story with only the highest level of respect for the residents of Point Pleasant.

As important as any single character in the story is the town of Point Pleasant. The Point Pleasant that director Pellington was looking for was not simply a small town. He described what he wanted this way: "The place feels strangely out of place but never obviously or overtly weird or spooky. It is simple and sad."

To achieve the very specific look Mark spent three weeks going through the script in detail and created a 130-page document where each scene is discussed. What do you see in this scene? What do you want in this scene?"

This document then became a kind of guide that each of the departments in the production could use to understand the vision and tone that Pellington wanted the film to have. It was not as much a physical description of each scene as a map that moves through the film, offering insight into the mood of the charters and the atmosphere they'd travel through. In this document Pellington offered everything from a list of "key" words such as "ambiguity, subtlety, scary and beautiful at the same time" or "eerie and strange, yet inviting" to the very last line: THE GOAL IS TO GET ALL THE IMAGES WE NEED TO, MAKE THE FILM... PERIOD!!"

For director Mark Pellington, the complexity of the story is not in the mechanics of the production's effects, but on the- emotional affect of the film on the audience. "Richard Gere said something at the beginning of the film about just letting things happen, and I think that's what's happened on this film in every performance, every choice, exists in a zone that feels right." He explains, "That's subjective but if it feels right to me, and everybody else, we kind of go with it."

As for what he personally wants the film to be, Pellington says, "Perception is a trick thing. Everybody has their own experiences and everybody has little mind tricks or things that say, 'Was that real? Was it not real? From simple deja vus to blackouts. It's hard to put that abstraction in a box for people. How do you put that on a poster?" he asks.

"My goal is to make it believable to the people sitting in the theater and for them to feel something even if they have no clue what is going on. Everybody wants to know, as the puzzle builds, why John is where he is and what's going to happen. Those are the two questions that need to be answered. If those are answered and the audience leaves the cinema feeling something, and I hope a range of emotions, then we're okay."

the mothman prophecies the real events that happened in december 1967
There is scarcely a resident in Point Pleasant who wasn't profoundly affected by the Silver bridge disaster which forever changed their town. In 1928 the design of the 'Silver Bridge' was called unique and revolutionary, but almost 40 years later it could only be called tragic. The bridge was dedicated on 30 May 1928 and officially known as the Ohio River Bridge. The 1,750 foot span was in many ways a gateway to the southeast. It crossed over the Ohio River for the primary north / south corridor at that time, joining the town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia with its neighbour across the river, Gallipolis, Ohio. It was dubbed the "Silver'' bridge because of a new type of aluminium paint used to cover the elegantly curved structure.

Shortly before 5:00 PM on December 15, 1967, a stoplight on the Ohio side of the bridge wasn't working properly. It was allowing traffic to move from Ohio to West Virginia but not in the other direction. Traffic was bumper to bumper on the bridge as it swayed and bounced in the chill of the winter evening but these were motions the locals had come to expect from the two-lane span. More than 60 people huddled in their cars against the 28-degree weather outside. It is hard to imagine that the timing could have been worse; holiday traffic combined with commuters from area industrial plants, truckers hauling goods from the south and dump trucks loaded with gravel.

Those who survived the next few moments remember their conversations turning to the bridge as it started to make an eerie sound, like a creaking door, very loud, and the shaking became more violent. They knew the bridge always shook - but not like this. Without warning, one of the steel links in the suspension chain failed. Forty years of traffic, the elements, and neglect had taken their toll. The eyelet snapped and the rest was a chain reaction. Witnesses said the bridge swayed violently to one side, then the other, then the entire structure began to slowly self-destruct. The anchorage at the Ohio side of the bridge pulled free and the bridge, still partially suspended, flipped the flooring upside down, spilling vehicles and passengers 100 feet to the icy water below. As cars began to sink in 40 feet of water, the steel superstructure disintegrated. Failing first on the Ohio side, the 90-foot high Ohio tower tumbled into the water working back toward West Virginia, bringing down tons of steel and concrete on top of the cars below. In a mere 45 seconds the structure that had been a key landmark for Point Pleasant and the Ohio River Valley had completely vanished beneath the water.

In the hours, days and weeks that followed a massive recovery effort was under way. A command centre was set up at the Mason County courthouse and at the river divers went about the grim task of locating cars and tying buoys to mark the place where a crane could dredge.  As each- car was brought to the surface the crane let out an eerie whistle that could be heard throughout the valley. Morgues were set up at National Guard armory in Pt. Pleasant and Grace United Methodist church in Gallipolis. The last of the 44 bodies recovered was brought up a full six months after the disaster; two of the victim's 'bodies have never been recovered.

Today, 46 bricks, each engraved the name of one of the victims, pave the ground overlooking the river where the bridge once stood. People at the time speculated that the bridge collapse was caused by damage the bridge received when several barges, which had broken loose, struck the bridge abutments. A four-year investigation found the source of the failure was metal fatigue. On February 8, 1968 President Lyndon Johnson promised a new bridge which was constructed on an accelerated schedule a few miles south of Point Pleasant. The Silver Memorial Bridge was dedicated on December 15, 1969 - exactly two years to the day after the tragedy.