From Mothman To The Silver Bridge: 13 Months In The Life Of A Local Journalist

The Halloween season is upon us. WVPB steps back in time to explore some of the first news stories written about what has arguably become West Virginia’s most beloved cryptid. Despite its dark origins as a creature forewarning of doom, it has solidified itself in pop culture today.

But before its pop culture icon status, the people of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, including one local journalist, were fixated on an alleged flying monster… Was it a UFO? A crane?

Or something else…

The First Sighting

The first time anyone saw the “mothman” in West Virginia was the fall of 1966. It was described in a story from the Point Pleasant Register on Wednesday, Nov. 16.

The headline? Couples See Man-Sized Bird…Creature…Something

The story continued with a quote from someone who allegedly saw the creature, “It was a bird…or something. It definitely wasn’t a flying saucer.”

Two Point Pleasant couples said today they encountered a man-sized, bird-like creature in the TNT area about midnight last night.

Sheriff’s deputies and City Police went to the scene about 2 o’clock this morning but were unable to spot anything.

But the two young men telling their story this morning were dead serious, and asserted they hadn’t been drinking.

Steve Mallette of 3305 Jackson Avenue and Roger Scarberry of 809 30th Street described the thing as being about six or seven feet tall, having a wing span of 10 feet and red eyes about two inches in diameter and six inches apart.

“It was like a man with wings,” Mallette said. “It wasn’t like anything you’d see on TV or in a monster movie..”

Enter Mary Hyre, The First To Write About ‘Mothman’

Mason County and Point Pleasant were growing and one journalist in particular watched the area closely. Her name was Mary Hyre and she wrote for The Athens Messenger as a reporter and columnist from the paper’s Point Pleasant office. 

Her column “Where The Waters Mingle” was where she talked about happenings in town, local gossip and community events. On Nov. 6, 1966, she discussed weather predictions in the Old Farmer’s Almanac for the coming year. 

But then came the sighting. Nov. 16, 1966. Hyre wrote 10 columns between then and the end of the year that mentioned the Mason County monster, long before it earned the nickname Mothman. 

Her first headline story ran with the title: 

Winged, Red-Eyed ‘Thing’ Chases Point Couples Across Countryside

Hyre’s story began with a question. 

What stands six feet tall, has wings, two big red eyes six inches apart and glides along an auto at 100 miles an hour? 

Don’t know? Well, neither do four Point Pleasant residents who were chased by a weird “man-like thing” Tuesday night.

The story ended with a quote from one of the four original people to see the creature.

“Believe me if you ever saw it, you’d be a believer.”

A little ironically, the story wrapped around a shorter piece on the page announcing the Leonid Meteor Shower was set to peak that night, for one of the “most spectacular shows in more than a century.”

Hyre’s next mothman headline was the very next day. It read: Monster Returns To Mason

She wrote: Six – or maybe seven – more people became believers in the Mason County Monster Wednesday night. What is it they saw? They don’t know, but they have managed to convince a raft of people they saw something. 

A few days later on Nov. 20, Hyre took a slightly more skeptical tone with her writing. The headline read: Is Mysterious Creature Balloon Or Crane? 

The “thing” has caused a sudden interest in the remote TNT plant area and nightly motorists plow bumper-to-bumper over the dusty, dirty roads in hopes of spotting the creature. 

Only five days later, there was another sighting  —  but this time it was in the daylight. 

The Mason Monster made its daylight debut Friday morning adding Tom Ury, 25, of Clarksburg to its list of endorsees. 

Ury sighted the creature at 7:15 a.m. Friday while driving toward Clarksburg on Route 62. When he reached the vicinity of the Homer Smith Farm, about eight miles north of Point Pleasant, he saw the creature “rise up just like a helicopter’ from a nearby field. 

Growing Interest In The ‘Point Pleasant Monster’

In her next column on Nov. 26, Hyre reflected on the effect the monster sighting was having on the town. 

Since the strange creature was sighted in the area this week, it has brought more excitement than anything I have witnessed since I started working for The Messenger nearly 25 years ago. 

I always said nothing could compare with a flood back in the days when the town would be covered just about every year, but this has created more turmoil and fear for many. 

I don’t care where you go, you can hear it being asked: “Wonder what the latest is on the thing that has been hovering over the area?”

There were several more stories in December and early January 1967, but things changed some on Jan. 22 when the UFO reports started coming in. 

The latest was by Tad Jones of Dunbar who said he came upon the Unidentified Flying Object on Interstate 64. Its description is like many that have been reported in many areas of the United States and around the world. 

Hyre mentions John Keel, the author and paranormal investigator that had recently been to Point Pleasant looking into the sightings. 

There is an interesting article in True Magazine…he says that each new sighting only adds to the mystery, one that the government has assigned scientists at the University of Colorado to solve. Any immediate solution, however, seems improbable. 

The origins and motivations of these creatures, if they are real, can only be speculated. But millions of people throughout the world are now convinced that something is going on and that there is “somebody out there. More and more, respected scientists are beginning to take the matter seriously as they delve into the question of life on other worlds. 

Hyre and Keel would end up working together over the next few years. 

On April 2, in her “Where The Waters Mingle” column, Hyre discussed continued sightings of both the monster and UFO sightings. She noted other communities are having “watch parties” looking for them. 

Friday, John Keel, of New York, a well known ufologoist, lecturer and writer, and I appeared on the Jackie Oberlinger Show on WCHS-TV in Charleston and discussed recent sightings of unidentified flying objects in West Virginia. 

There were a few additional stories in The Athens Messenger and a few more sightings claiming the monster and a UFO appeared to make a rendezvous in mid air, but things seemed to die down. Hyre’s columns returned to normal. She looked at historical occurrences and social activities in town. 

Her Sept. 10 column would turn out to be fateful. 

The Silver Bridge Tragedy 

Thirty-nine years ago when the Silver Bridge was dedicated on August 2, 1928, it was a gala affair, according to a story in the State Gazette published at that time in Point Pleasant. Perhaps it was not anticipated that in 40 years, it would hardly be sufficient to take care of the traffic on the heavily traveled U.S. Route 35 and the traffic between Ohio and West Virginia towns. Today the State Road Commission is tearing apart the right side of the approach to the bridge on the West Virginia side to widen it. 

Just three months later, on Dec. 18, she was writing about the Silver Bridge again, but there was no discussion of celebration. Three days before, on Dec. 15, at 5 p.m. the bridge collapsed into the Ohio River. The final death toll was 46. 

I could easily change the name of my column to Where the Bodies Mingle since the worst disaster ever to hit Point Pleasant struck with a flash Friday when the Silver Bridge collapsed, sending dozens of people to a water grave. 

I am sure we could never pick a time for tragedy but I have heard it over and over that it’s so much worse at Christmastime. 

In another column dated Dec. 19, Hyre wrote: 

I personally interviewed some of those who were rescued from the waters of the Silver Bridge tragedy here Friday night, and while their physical wounds will be healed, mentally they will relive this tragedy the rest of their lives. 

In Hyre’s Christmas Eve column, she wrote: 

Friday people began to relax after working endless hours since the tragedy. Many said they still could not conceive  of the fact that the once heavily traveled bridge on Sixth Street is no longer there. December 15 will always be remembered as a Black Friday. 

On the second anniversary of the bridge collapse, Hyre wrote a remembrance. The headline was Reporter Regrets Her Biggest Story. 

Every reporter after years in the news writing business has a few stories that stand out in the memory, making deeper impressions than the hundreds of run-of-mill articles you write. There may be murders, fires, campaigns for worthy causes or a feature about an outstanding person. 

I have some of those myself, but the one that burned deepest into my memory, leaving an indelible mark, was the one I wish I never had to report. 

That’s the Silver Bridge disaster. 

On Dec. 16, two years and a day after the collapse, Hyre’s column, with a slightly changed name to “Where Waters Mingle” discussed the recent dedication of the new Memorial Bridge as a replacement to the Silver Bridge. The event was attended by the governors of Ohio and West Virginia along with state and federal officials. 

She wrote of hearing a little boy talking about the event afterward. She reported the boy said: 

“I’m not going to tell the teacher I was sick today, because I missed school. I’m going to tell the truth…I attended this dedication because I thought it was important. I seen a lot of dignitaries and people and the new bridge and I think it was educational and I learned a lot and…you know, this new bridge is progress, we just had to have it.”

And she wrapped it up with a personal reminiscence. 

As I sit here in my office tonight and look out across Sixth Street, there is hardly a person working on the street and very few cars passing by and my memories go back to two years ago, a few hours after the bridge collapsed. What a difference tonight than that night. I have all the compassion for those who lost their loved ones that fatal night and I shall never forget. I am happy that we have a new bridge across the Ohio…

Mary Hyre’s Final Days

A few weeks later, into the start of 1970, there was a small blurb in the paper noting that she was admitted to Holzer Medical Center in Gallipolis, Ohio, with difficulty breathing and a slight case of pneumonia. 

Four weeks after that, Mary Hyre died. Her obituary was published on Feb. 16, 1970. It noted her column was widely read and that there was no story she wrote more about than the Silver Bridge. 

The masthead editorial in the paper began simply, “Mary Hyre Is Gone.”

Five years later, in March 1975, John Keel published his book The Mothman Prophecies about the Mason County monster. That’s where he made the connection between the Silver Bridge collapse and the appearance of the mothman as a warning. He dedicated the book to Hyre. 

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The narrator is voiced by Eric Douglas, Bill Lynch voiced the initial news story and Liz McCormick performed the voice of Hyre.