Urban Myths and Legends

On November 15, 1966, two young couples from Point Pleasant, Roger and Linda Scarberry, and Steve and Mary Mallette, along with their young cousin, Lonnie Button, were traveling late at night in the Scarberrys' car. They were passing the West Virginia Ordnance Works, an abandoned World War II TNT factory, about seven miles north of Point Pleasant, in the 2,500 acre (10 km²) McClintic Wildlife Management Area, when they noticed two red lights in the shadows by an old generator plant near the factory gate. They stopped the car, and reportedly discovered that the lights were the glowing red eyes of a large animal, "shaped like a man, but bigger, maybe six and a half or seven feet tall, with big wings folded against its back," according to Roger Scarberry. Terrified, they drove toward Route 62, where the creature supposedly chased them at speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour.

A plaque on the Mothman statue provides a version of the original legend: "On a chilly, fall night in November 1966, two young couples drove into the TNT area north of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, when they realized they were not alone." Driving down the exit road, they saw the supposed creature standing on a nearby ridge. It spread its wings and flew alongside the vehicle up to the city limits. They drove to the Mason County courthouse to alert Deputy Millard Halstead, who later said, "I've known these kids all their lives. They'd never been in any trouble and they were really scared that night. I took them seriously." He then followed Roger Scarberry's car back to the old Ordnance Works and found no trace of the strange creature. According to the book Alien Animals, by Janet and Colin Bord, a poltergeist attack on the Scarberry home occurred later that night, during which the creature was seen several times.

The following night, on November 16, several armed townspeople combed the area around the TNT plant for signs of Mothman. Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Wamsley, and Mrs. Marcella Bennett, with her infant daughter Teena, were in a car en-route to visit their friends, Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Thomas, who lived in a small house near the igloos (concrete dome-shaped dynamite storage structures erected during WW-II) near the TNT plant. The igloos were now empty, some owned by the county, others by companies intending to use them for storage. They were heading back to their car when a figure appeared behind their parked vehicle. Mrs. Bennett said that it seemed like it had been lying down, slowly rising up from the ground, large and gray, with glowing red eyes. While Wamsley phoned the police, the creature walked onto the porch and peered in at them through the window.

On November 24, four people allegedly saw the creature flying over the TNT area. On the morning of November 25, Thomas Ury, who was driving along Route 62 just north of the TNT, claimed to have seen the creature standing in a field, and then it spread its wings and flew away, and Thomas sped toward the Point Pleasant sheriff's office. He then reported the incident that he had seen.

A Mothman sighting was again reported on January 11, 1967, hovering over the town's bridge, and several other times that same year. Fewer sightings of the Mothman were reported after the collapse of the town's bridge, the Silver Bridge, when 46 people died. The Silver Bridge, so named for its aluminium paint, was an eyebar chain suspension bridge that connected the cities of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and Gallipolis, Ohio, over the Ohio River. The bridge was built in 1928, and it collapsed on December 15, 1967. Investigation of the bridge wreckage pointed to the failure of a single eye-bar in a suspension chain due to a small manufacturing flaw. There are rumors that the Mothman appears before upcoming disasters and seems to try to warn people of them. After that, Mothman was never again seen in Point Pleasant.

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Bloody Mary is a ghost or witch featured in Western folklore. She is said to appear in a mirror when her name is called three times or sometimes more, depending upon the version of the story, often as part of a game.

One of the more common ways participants attempt to make her appear is to stand before a mirror in the dark (usually in a bathroom) and repeat her name three times, though there are many variations including chanting a hundred times, chanting at midnight, spinning around, rubbing one's eyes, running the water, or chanting her name thirteen times with a lit candle. In some versions of the legend, the summoner must say, "Bloody Mary, I killed your baby." In these variants, Bloody Mary is often believed to be the spirit of a young mother whose baby was stolen from her, making her mad in grief, eventually committing suicide. In stories where Mary is supposed to have been wrongly accused of killing her children, the querent might say "I believe in Mary Worth." This is similar to another game involving the summoning of the Bell Witch in a mirror at midnight. The game is often a test of courage and bravery, as it is said that if Bloody Mary is summoned, she would proceed to kill the summoner in an extremely violent way, such as ripping their face off, scratching their eyes out, cutting their head off, driving them insane, bringing them into the mirror with her or scratching their neck, causing serious injury or death. Some think if she doesn't kill the one who had summoned her then she will haunt them for the rest of their life. Other versions tell that if one chants her name thirteen times at midnight into a mirror she will appear and the summoner can talk to a deceased person until 12:08a.m., when Bloody Mary and the dead person asked to speak to will vanish. Still other variations say that the querent must not look directly at Bloody Mary, but at her image in the mirror; she will then reveal the querent's future, particularly concerning marriage and children.

Bloody Mary Worth is typically described as a child-murderer who lived in the local city where the legend has taken root years ago. There is often a specific local graveyard or tombstone that becomes attached to the legend and a destination for legend trips.

On the other hand, various people have surmised that the lore about taunting Bloody Mary about her baby may relate her tenuously to folklore about Queen Mary I, also known as "Bloody Mary", whose life was marked by a number of miscarriages or false pregnancies.

Speculation exists that the miscarriages were deliberately induced. As a result, some retelling of the tale make Bloody Mary the queen driven to madness by the loss of her children. It is likely, however, that Queen Mary only provided her nickname to the Bloody Mary of folklore. She is also confused in some tellings of the story with Mary, Queen of Scots.

The mirror ritual by which Bloody Mary is summoned may also relate to a form of divination involving mirrors and darkness that was once performed on Halloween. While as with any sort of folklore the details may vary, this particular tale encouraged young women to walk up a flight of stairs backwards, holding a candle and a hand mirror, in a darkened house. As they gazed into the mirror, they were supposed to be able to catch a view of their future husband's face. There was, however, a chance that they would see the skull-face of the Grim Reaper instead; this meant that they were destined to die before they married.

On September 4, 1985, the British tabloid newspaper The Sun reported that a firefighter from Yorkshire was claiming that undamaged copies of the painting were frequently found amidst the ruins of burned houses. He stated that no firefighter would allow a copy of the painting into his own house. Over the next few months, The Sun and other tabloids ran several articles on house fires suffered by people who had owned the painting.

By the end of November, belief in the painting's curse was widespread enough that The Sun was organizing mass bonfires of the paintings, sent in by readers.

To lift the curse it is said you must give the painting to another or reunite the boy and the girl and hang them together, if not then your house will burn. 

Karl Pilkington has made reference to these events on The Ricky Gervais Show.

Steve Punt, British writer and comedian, investigated the "curse" of the crying boy in a BBC radio Four production called Punt PI. Although the programme is comic in nature Punt researches the history of the Crying Boy painting and reveals an intriguing past. The Punt PI page, Crying Boy episode (programme broadcast on Sat 9 Oct 2010, 10:30 on BBC Radio 4). The conclusion reached by the programme, following testing at the Building Research Establishment is that the prints were treated with some varnish containing fire repellent, and that the string holding the painting to the wall would be the first to perish, resulting in the painting landing face down on the floor and thus being protected.

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