The Anomalous Archive

Mothman – Point Pleasant, West Virginia, 1966-67

Flooded ammunition storage igloo at the former West Virginia Ordnance Works near Point Pleasant
One of the surviving ammunition igloos at the former West Virginia Ordnance Works. By November 1966, locals called this abandoned wartime complex north of Point Pleasant simply the TNT Area — the setting of the encounter that brought Mothman into the newspapers.
FI-005 · Full Investigation Cryptids & Strange Creatures

KEY FACTS

  • Date: 15 November 1966
  • Location: Point Pleasant, Mason County, West Virginia, USA
  • Witnesses: Roger and Linda Scarberry; Steve and Mary Mallette
  • Setting: the abandoned West Virginia Ordnance Works—the TNT Area
  • Initial record: a local newspaper account the following morning
  • Category: Cryptids & Strange Creatures

On the night of 15 November 1966, four people drove out of an abandoned wartime complex certain that something had followed their car through the dark. They went straight to the police. By morning their account was already in print — and not one of them could say, with any certainty, what they had actually seen.

Roger and Linda Scarberry, and Steve and Mary Mallette, had taken Roger’s black Chevrolet into the old West Virginia Ordnance Works north of town. The plant had shut down two decades before. Its access roads still cut through woods and wetland, past concrete buildings that had been built for war and left to nobody.

Near one of those buildings, something made all four of them turn the car around. Their descriptions reached for familiar shapes without settling the identification — and the newspaper that broke the story the next morning couldn’t settle on a name for it either.

It could have stayed a strange, forgettable night for four young people. Instead, more reports followed within days — and the thing nobody could name started to take on a life of its own.

What actually happened on that first night — before anyone involved knew what story they were stepping into?

THE MOTHMAN QUESTION

What followed the Scarberry–Mallette car that night — and how much weight can the surviving record actually carry for everything that came after?

Related Reports — Cryptids & Strange Creatures

THE INVESTIGATION CONTINUES

What did the four witnesses actually report?

The full dossier follows the earliest accounts as they spread — what can actually be traced back to the first four witnesses, how the story changed within days, and which questions the surviving evidence still can’t settle. Members can also open the Archive Vault to check the record trail themselves.

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