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Mothmania!
By Robert A. Goerman
FATE :: June 2001

Fiery-eyed demons prowled the haunted hills of West Virginia in 1966. On the evening of Tuesday, November 15, Salem resident Newell Partridge was watching television at his home.

“It was about 10:30 that night, and suddenly the TV blanked out. A real fine herringbone pattern appeared on the tube, and at the same time the set started a loud whining noise.…It sounded like a generator winding up.

“The dog was sitting on the end of the porch, howling down toward the hay barn.…I shined the [flash]light in that direction, and it picked up two red circles, or eyes, which looked like bicycle reflectors. I certainly know what animal eyes look like…these were much larger. It’s a good length of a football field to that hay barn… still those eyes showed up huge for that distance.”

Partridge described an unbelievably intense, morbid fear that swept over him as a “cold chill.” His dog snarled and ran toward the eyes. Newell hurried inside to get a gun but decided not to go back outside. He slept with his shotgun all night.

The next day, he and his six-year-old son went searching for their dog, Bandit, a large and muscular German shepherd. They found Bandit’s tracks going in a circle, as if the dog had been chasing his tail. But there were no other tracks of any kind.

Bandit was never seen again.

At 11:30 that same night, a classic 1957 Chevrolet slowly drove around a deserted World War II ammunition dump, known locally as the “TNT Area,” six miles north of Point Pleasant. The West Virginia Ordnance Works had once been the site’s official name. The WVOW was created to supply TNT for the war effort.

In the earlier part of the 1900s, an area outside of Point Pleasant was set up as the McClintic Wildlife Preserve. It was, among other things, designed as a bird sanctuary. During World War II, more than 2,500 acres of this area were ripped up in order to construct about 100 “igloos” laid out in a grid-like pattern to keep the entire complex from being destroyed during a possible enemy attack. These large mounds of earth were made to be unnoticed from the air. Deep inside each, cement and steel protected the explosive contents. Twin coal-fired power plants were constructed to supply power for the manufacturing facility. A series of underground bunkers, tunnels, and sewers connected the entire complex. Grass was allowed to grow high enough to camouflage the operation. After the war, parts of the preserve were sold off or leased to companies like the Trojan-U.S. Powder Company, the LFC Chemical Company, and American Cyanamid.

The TNT Area is a large tract of land. The entire area was sparsely populated and covered with dense forest, steep hills, and riddled with tunnels. Its remote location became a popular hangout for local youth. “Parking” and “partying” at the TNT Area became a norm.

Inside the ’57 Chevy were two young married couples, Roger and Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Mallette. They were looking for friends who might also be out that cold, winter night.

Their search paused at the old generator plant on the nature preserve.

“It was shaped like a man, but bigger. Maybe six and a half or seven feet tall. And it had big wings folded against its back,” Roger Scarberry told reporters.

“But it was those eyes that got us. It had two big eyes like automobile reflectors,” added Linda Scarberry. “They were hypnotic. For a minute, we could only stare at it. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.” ...

Read the rest of this article in the June 2001 issue of FATE

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