The relocated Mothman Museum is in the yellow brick building across from Point Pleasant’s Mothman statue.
POINT PLEASANT, W.Va. — Museums are usually reserved for proof.
Their exhibits — whether it’s a taxidermied specimen of some long-extinct animal, a collection of dinosaur bones, a historic document or some famous work of art — are meant to prove the existence of something and preserve those artifacts for future inspection.
Not so with the Mothman Museum, Point Pleasant’s number-one tourist attraction.
There is no Mothman specimen. There’s not even a clear photo of the creature, or any other definitive proof of its existence.
Like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster, Mothman is a mythic creature that some people adamantly believe is real, even though the larger scientific community does not.
However, the museum does feature several different kinds of “evidence,” such as it is, laid out for visitors to form their own opinions.
Founded in 2006 by Jeff Wamsley, author of “Mothman: Behind the Red Eyes,” the museum claims it has drawn visitors from all seven continents.
It relocated last month to a new storefront just across from the town’s famous chrome Mothman statue.
The museum will mark its grand re-opening this Saturday at 9:45 a.m., as part of the 13th annual Mothman Festival.
While the collection was a bit jumbled in its former location, the new larger space has plenty of room to spread out spacey memorabilia, allowing the museum to better organize its exhibits.
One table features a display case containing hand-written eyewitness accounts of the first reported Mothman sighting…
