Text:
In Point Pleasant, West Virginia, a bridge collapsed and killed many people. The rumor started that a Mothman has come to destroy it. One man claimed he had seen the Moth Man days before the incident, and it prophesied to destroy the bridge.

Context:
Informant from midwest and heard this more as a joke from their father as a child. They gathered most of the information about the Moth Man they know today from the mass media and internet.

Analysis:
Point Pleasant becomes a liminal space where the boundaries between the natural and supernatural dissolve. Mothman serves as a modern banshee-like figure—a being whose presence signals impending catastrophe. But for me, I know it from the internet and pop culture as a crypid. I was a little disappointed to hear the origin story about the Moth Man that it just destroyed a bridge and that is all the information we know about it. Their function is not only to scare or thrill but to provide cultural coherence in a chaotic, fragmented society.