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A review by jstilts
Mothman: The Facts Behind the Legend by Donnie Sergent
challenging
informative
mysterious
slow-paced
3.0
It does what it sets out to do - present factual material on the Point Pleasant Mothman sightings of the 1960s, which - regardless of your beliefs of what was really going on - certainly had a very big impact on the people of the city at the time. The book consists of a potted history of Pt Pleasant from 1770s onwards, eyewitness reports written in the days after the original sightings, a very large number of newspaper clippings, personal correspondence between author/investigator John Keel and his contacts in Pt Pleasant - and most interesting - a recent interview with the primary eyewitness Linda Scarberry that differs slightly from her original account.
While these historical documents are presented plainly (often scans of the originals alongside the typed transcript) a little context would have been appreciated: who took down and stored the original eyewitness accounts - John Keel, the police, someone else? The newspaper clippings are often undated, and a timeline to go with them would have helped. Strangely the Silver Bridge collapse is barely mentioned and doesn't feature in the clippings aside from a passing comment in an obituary. The letters from John Keel fair a little better, but a timeline would have helped greatly here too.
I appreciate the authors ideal to present the materials without conjecture, but there's nothing wrong with adding a little context. With the historical documents so well presented it would have been easy to visually seperate the documents from a narrative.
In summary: despite it's shortcomings this book is worth getting just for the fascinating recent interview with Linda Scarberry (and her original eyewitness account). It's a touching interview that casts a new light on the whole affair, and gives us a very human connection to the strange events that created such a sensation in the city and in the press.
While these historical documents are presented plainly (often scans of the originals alongside the typed transcript) a little context would have been appreciated: who took down and stored the original eyewitness accounts - John Keel, the police, someone else? The newspaper clippings are often undated, and a timeline to go with them would have helped. Strangely the Silver Bridge collapse is barely mentioned and doesn't feature in the clippings aside from a passing comment in an obituary. The letters from John Keel fair a little better, but a timeline would have helped greatly here too.
I appreciate the authors ideal to present the materials without conjecture, but there's nothing wrong with adding a little context. With the historical documents so well presented it would have been easy to visually seperate the documents from a narrative.
In summary: despite it's shortcomings this book is worth getting just for the fascinating recent interview with Linda Scarberry (and her original eyewitness account). It's a touching interview that casts a new light on the whole affair, and gives us a very human connection to the strange events that created such a sensation in the city and in the press.