Perhaps one of the most famous stories concerning the Mothman is that of the December 15, 1967 collapse of Point Pleasant, West Virginia’s Silver Bridge. The catastrophe claimed the lives of 46 people and was thought to have occurred due to a single eyebar in the bridge’s suspension chain suffering a 0.1-inch defect brought about by poor maintenance and “heavier loads than it had originally been designed for.”
Shortly before the collapse, several Point Pleasant residents reported having nightmares that eerily foreshadowed the impending event. In renowned cryptozoologist Loren Coleman’s book, Mothman and Other Curious Encounters, he recounts resident Mary Hyre telling The Mothman Prophecies author John Keel the following on November 19, 1967—less than a month before the Silver Bridge collapsed:
“On November 19, 1967, she told Keel: ‘I had a terrible nightmare. There were a lot of people drowning in the river and Christmas packages were floating everywhere in the water…it’s like something awful is going to happen.’
When Keel returned to Point Pleasant around Thanksgiving 1967, he had a flat tire in the rain. His trip was a string of miseries. And people in the area were having dreams and nightmares about a coming disaster. Virginia Thomas had them about people dying in the water of the nearby Ohio River.
And, indeed, at 5:04 PM, on December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge collapsed during rush hour…Cars loaded with Christmas packages, shoppers, commuters, and kids fell into the Ohio River. A couple sightings of Mothman were said to have occurred near the bridge right before it collapsed.”