The Point Pleasant Gathering

Every third weekend of September, the largest single concentration of Mothman activity on record takes place in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. It is not a sighting. It is the annual Mothman festival.

Fifteen thousand people arrive over two days. They fill Main Street between the 200 and 500 blocks, a short drive from the spot where the first reports came in. They photograph a twelve-foot stainless steel statue. They line up outside a museum. A good number of them are dressed as the subject of the file.

The Bureau has kept the Mothman file open since 1966. In that time the encounter reports have thinned, the way they tend to. What has not thinned is the gathering. The 1966 sightings produced a creature. The decades since produced an event, and the event now brings more people to Point Pleasant in a weekend than the sightings ever did.

The full case file for the Mothman itself can be viewed here.

📋 Bureau File Summary

Designation: Mothman (Harbinger, file open since 1966)

Event: Mothman Festival, Point Pleasant, West Virginia

Held: Third weekend of September, annually since 2002

2026 Dates: September 19 to 20

Recorded Attendance: 15,000 and up (2023)

File Status: Open

What Happens at the Mothman Festival

The festival runs two days on the third weekend of September. Admission to the street is free. Some attractions and events carry a fee, and much of Main Street runs on cash, so the Bureau notes that anyone attending should arrive with some.

Main Street becomes a marketplace. Vendors set up along several blocks selling art, craft work, food, and merchandise, most of it built around a single winged figure. Between the booths there is live music, and there are guest speakers who work the paranormal and folklore circuit. The crowd skews toward the enthusiast. Cosplay is common enough that a person walking Main Street in wings does not draw a second look.

Two fixed points anchor the weekend. The first is the statue: a stainless steel figure unveiled in 2003, roughly twelve feet tall, standing downtown as the town's most photographed object. The statue's height is a sculptor's choice and not a measurement. Witnesses in 1966 put the creature closer to seven feet. The second is the Mothman Museum, which holds the artifacts, the newspaper record, and the case material that the town has kept since the sightings.

The festival began in 2002. It was organized to bring people to Point Pleasant, and it worked. Attendance now runs into the tens of thousands, drawn from well outside the region and, in some years, well outside the country.

Why Point Pleasant

Point Pleasant had several options after a seven-foot winged figure started appearing north of town. It kept the newspaper record, opened a museum, installed a twelve-foot stainless steel likeness on Main Street, and invited everybody back once a year. The Bureau respects a town that handles an unresolved case by giving it office space and a festival permit.

The encounter that brought the Point Pleasant file to public attention came on November 15, 1966. Two young couples driving through the old TNT Area reported a tall figure with red eyes that lifted beside their car and kept pace with it. The museum, statue, and festival are downtown. The encounter site is several miles north in the TNT Area, where old munitions bunkers have gone back to woods and water.

On December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge collapsed and forty-six people died. Later tellings recast the Mothman as a harbinger of the disaster. The Bureau records that interpretation and makes no claim that the creature caused what happened. Point Pleasant marks the loss at the former bridge approach, where the forty-six names are read each December.

Why the Bureau Is Watching This Weekend

On an ordinary weekend, a report of a tall figure with red eyes and wings on Main Street would receive immediate attention. This weekend, it may be waiting to enter the costume contest.

Fifteen thousand people will be looking for Mothman. A substantial number will also be dressed as Mothman. The statue will remain in its usual fixed position downtown. Wings, red eyes, unusual silhouettes, and people posing for photographs are therefore classified as expected field interference. The Bureau considers conditions observationally compromised.

A useful report gives the exact location, the time, the direction of travel, and what the subject did. “Near the Mothman” will not narrow the field this weekend. Neither will “it had wings.”

Several miles north, the TNT Area will remain what it is: old concrete, standing water, and woods growing over the roads. If the actual subject wanted to cross Main Street without attracting official attention, this would be the weekend to do it.

Bureau Recommendation

If you are attending the festival on September 19 or 20:

1. Bring comfortable shoes, cash, and a reasonable tolerance for wings.
2. Use the statue as a landmark, photograph backdrop, and fixed control subject. It is expected to remain downtown.
3. Visit the TNT Area in daylight. Stay on the roads, mind the water and the old concrete, and remember that the land out there does not owe anyone a good time.
4. If something at the edge of the woods lifts, glides, or keeps pace with traffic, note the time, the direction, and what it did before what it looked like. Then file a report.
5. Submit your report here. The file stays open on the strength of accounts like yours.

File status: OPEN. Monitoring: ACTIVE.

This bulletin has been approved for public release by the Bureau's Field Documentation Division. Certain witness identifying information has been redacted. Certain other information has been redacted for reasons the Bureau is not currently at liberty to disclose.