The Point Pleasant Reports

The first account the archive holds is the one that started it. Four teenagers near the power plant at Point Pleasant reported a man-like figure six to seven feet tall which rose into the air and pursued their car at over sixty miles an hour. Police held a press conference. The newspapers named it Mothman.

A second account comes from a local banker, who heard a noise, went out onto his porch, and reported losing twenty minutes. He said the creature stood on his lawn staring at him while he was unable to move.

What is on the record

Three claimants are resolved: the four young people, counted as one, a local banker and residents cited by John Keel. Three tellings across two channels carry the file, which makes it better sourced than most in this batch.

This canonical bundles several strands and the archive should say so rather than present them as one event. Alongside the figure sightings it carries accounts of men in black who conducted stalker-like conversations with reporters and witnesses, described as speaking as though in a trance or on a delayed broadcast. It also carries the claim that these appearances preceded the collapse of the Silver Bridge, and an account of drowning victims hearing numbers spoken aloud. Those are different kinds of claim about different events, and grouping them under one heading is a property of the record rather than a finding.

Provenance matters more here than usual. A substantial part of the material reaches the archive through John Keel's investigation, so the residents cited are cited by him. That is one collector, and an account collected by one person is not the same as accounts gathered independently.

Why it sits where it does

This case grades L3, the archive's tier for multiple independent claimants describing one connected event. What people saw at Point Pleasant is not resolved here.