The Good

For several months, there have been no new Mothman news, as it relates to the Mothman Death List.

That’s great.

Not since 26 January 2007, when a member of the cast of the Mark Pellington-Richard Gere movie, The Mothman Prophecies, died five years after the national release of the film, has there been a well-documented, well-publicized passing of anyone on the cast. (For more details on that 2007 death, click on “Cyrus Bills”.)

The void in deaths has been welcome. Or is the absence of information perhaps only a lack of knowledge of such deaths, as the movie fades into the DVD library?

The Bad

Other deaths, of course, have happened in the community, and I’ve discussed those here on Cryptomundo.

Such events have shaken the community, and have hit close to Point Pleasant’s Mothman Festival co-founders, Wamsley and Carolyn Harris, owner of Harris’ Steakhouse, a diner on Main Street. Harris’s father, 85, died about a year ago, and then news came that Carolyn Harris’s niece died in a head-on car crash around the same time. Sad news indeed.

The Ugly

Recently, someone linked to the events of 1967 wrote me, sending along clippings about her cousin, Wes Wears. Wears received a medal for his heroic acts saving people while working on an ice boat in the Ohio River, after the 1967 collapse of the Silver Bridge.

The correspondent noted that Wesley Franklin Wears of Point Pleasant suffered a heart attack after his heroics and never fully recovered. He lived only until August 1972, dying when he was only 42. His oldest son Thomas died in a tragic car accident in Mason County, West Virginia, shortly after his father’s death.

Wes’ daughter Sheila Wears Pierce went missing in 1977. She was never found. Her wallet was located in the Ohio River, miles from where she was last seen. Serial killer Henry Lee Lucas confessed to her murder, but was not tried for that offense. (Lucas’ confessions may have been mere fictions, of course.)

The Cryptomundo correspondent wrote: “While I don’t know if any of these people ever saw Mothman, their lives were certainly tragic and were touched by the Silver Bridge Disaster.”