Peel back the layers of Point Pleasant lore and discover the lesser-known, weirder stories that locals keep locked up tight.

There’s something in the water in Point Pleasant, West Virginia—and it’s not just the murky swirls of the Ohio River. By now, most folks have heard the story of the Mothman: that red-eyed, winged creature that terrorized the area in the late 1960s and (allegedly) predicted the tragic Silver Bridge collapse. But what if I told you Mothman was just the opener? A trailer, if you will. The main feature? A whole catalog of weird, whispered-about events that make Mothman look like your mildly spooky uncle at the family reunion.

This is where things get really strange.

The Men in Black… No, Not the Will Smith Kind

After the Mothman sightings, Point Pleasant didn’t just return to normal. Nope. Enter the Men in Black. Not agents with charm and memory-wiping gadgets—these were stiff, pale, expressionless types who drove spotless black cars and asked way too many questions about things they shouldn’t have known. Locals described them as “off,” like they were wearing skin the way someone might wear an itchy suit.

They didn’t blink. They didn’t smile. They asked about Mothman, about UFOs, and then… they vanished.

Some say they’re still here, watching.

The Curse of Cornstalk Still Echoes

Long before cryptids, long before conspiracies, there was Chief Cornstalk—a Shawnee leader who, in 1777, was betrayed and murdered while under a flag of truce. His dying words? A fiery curse on the land.

Ever since, calamity has followed. Floods. Fires. Explosions. Even the 1967 Silver Bridge collapse. Locals will look at you sideways if you bring it up, but no one says it’s not true.

Some nights, if the fog rolls in thick, you can hear a low wail from Tu-Endie-Wei Park. They say it’s Cornstalk calling.

The “Other” Creature in the TNT Area

Everyone fixates on Mothman sightings near the TNT domes, but that old World War II munitions site has more than one trick up its sleeve. Hunters and teens have whispered about a different creature entirely—one with no wings, but glowing eyes and long, ropey arms.

One local claimed to see something dragging itself across the gravel, leaving deep gouges behind. “Wasn’t no deer. Wasn’t no bear. Wasn’t anything I want to see again.”

And don’t even get them started on the whispers. People report hearing voices in the domes, speaking in static. Sometimes, the radios in their trucks go haywire just passing by.

Phantom Lights Over Gallipolis Ferry

Across the water near Gallipolis Ferry, strange lights hover low over the trees. Some say they blink out when you look directly at them. Others swear they followed them for miles. There’s one old-timer who claims a light hovered outside his bedroom window for two hours straight. He says he aged five years that night. Doesn’t shave anymore. Won’t say why.

The River Knows Things

The Ohio River is the town’s lifeblood, but it also might be its memory. People have spotted full-bodied apparitions along the banks—Civil War soldiers, coal miners, even a ghostly steamboat that appears in the mist. Always silent. Always gone before you can grab your phone.

A group of kayakers once claimed the river “hummed” beneath them, like it was alive. One of them still won’t go back on the water.

Point Pleasant: A Thin Place

If you ask the locals, they’ll tell you this place is “thin.” Meaning the veil between this world and the next—between what we call real and what we’d rather not—is worn down here.

This isn’t just a town with a cryptid. It’s a portal, a haunted storybook, and maybe even a warning.

So yes, Mothman was terrifying. But he wasn’t the climax. He was just the town crier. The siren call. The flare in the sky before the real weirdness woke up.

And if you think that’s unsettling… there are things even we won’t write down.