The Silver Bridge was the first aluminum painted bridge in America, the silvery aluminum color giving the bridge its name. On December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge, spanning the Ohio River between the two cities of Point Pleasant, West Virginia and Gallipolis, Ohio, collapsed, sending thirty one vehicles into the swirling water below. Forty-six people who were on the Silver Bridge at 5:00 p.m. on that fateful evening lost their lives. The official cause of the collapse of the bridges was that a manufacturing defect caused an eyebar to fail and, in a domino effect, the remaining eyebars could not support the heavily loaded bridge resulting in the collapse of the entire structure.

In the thirteen months prior to the collapse of the bridge, there were numerous reports of a huge winged creature with the body of a human seen in the area near Silver Bridge. Some of those who lost their lives that night had reported seeing the mothman prior to the collapse of the bridge. The creature was dubbed the mothman because of the huge moth-like wings that were described by witnesses. A few witnesses said that the creature did not have a head, but instead its eyes were located in what would be considered the chest of the mothman. There were people that said there were UFOs seen in the area prior to the collapse of the bridge and that the mothman was an alien trying to meet with these extraterrestrial ships. There were even claims of cattle mutilations and missing pets blamed on the mothman.

Supposedly, there was an Indian curse on the land where Point Pleasant is located and that is why the bridge collapsed. When American settlers began their move west into West Virginia, they fought violently with the Native American tribes. Shawnee Chief Cornstalk became a friend to the settlers who later deceived him and his tribe. The settlers defeated the Indians in 1774 and fatally wounded the Shawnee Chief, Cornstalk, who cursed the land for two hundred years as he lay dying. It is true that the area surrounding Point Pleasant has had many catastrophes over the past 200 hundred years, but could this alleged curse be related in any way to the legend of the mothman? Was the mothman a doomsday omen signifying that the fulfillment of the curse was about to take place?

Interestingly, there are no photos of the mothman and no tracks were ever found. In fact, no proof of any kind has ever been found that would prove that the mothman ever existed, even though some witnesses claim that the creature stood on the ground and even in the snow. Police investigated some of these reports and never found anything to conclude that a creature of the size described by witnesses walked the earth where witnesses claimed.

What is even odder is the fact that within a few months after the collapse of the bridge, the sightings of the mothman stopped as did the sightings at the scenes of other disasters. There were sightings of a creature similar to the mothman prior to other disasters such as the earthquake in Mexico City in 1985 and Chernobyl in 1986.

Although the stories of the mothman being an omen of doom seem fantastical and the product of overactive imaginations for which there is no proof, it would seem that a creature similar to the mothman has indeed appeared as a portend of doom prior to disasters throughout the world. The number of reports of sightings prior to disasters makes it difficult to easily dismiss the claims.