POINT PLEASANT, W.Va. — With the Mothman Festival returning, cryptid researchers and enthusiasts return by the thousands to the town where an unknown creature reportedly chased two young couples from the old “TNT Area” north of the city back into town on November 5, 1966 and spurred a series of sightings.
Ohio Filmmaker Seth Breedlove and colleagues returned to the festival Friday evening for a showing of their recent works, “Momo: The Missouri Monster” and “Terror in the Skies.” They are often recognized as the creators of Small Town Monster documentaries. The team is recognized for having made documentaries around “The Flatwoods Monster: A Legacy of Fear,” “The Beast of Whitehall,” and “The Mothman of Point Pleasant.”
Hailing originally from Bolivar, Ohio, Breedlove said he was a newspaper reporter for eight years before making films.
“Where I grew up in Bolivar, Ohio, everything was Ohio Valley so this area (Point Pleasant) isn’t new to me. Point Pleasant always feels like home when I come here,” the filmmaker said.
“Then in 2014, I decided to do a documentary with some buddies about the Minerva Monster from Minvera which was near where I grew up,” said Breedlove. “We decided to cover stories in that area and turned it into a documentary. On a regional scale, it did fairly well and made enough money so we could flip it into doing more of these types of movies.”
Breedlove said he and his colleagues had continued with their work and were in the midst of speaking with developers about creating a potential television show.
“There’s still a lot to be discussed there and we’re not even sure of the format yet,” said Breedlove. “We’re trying to create an ongoing brand based around Small Town Monsters. Regardless of what happens with the television show, we’ll continue working on the independent side of Small Town Monsters.”
When asked how he decided to enter filmmaking and research on cryptids, the filmmaker said he wished he had a unique story for how he began.
“I always say I wish I had a cool story for this but I don’t,” said Breedlove. “I’ve never seen anything or experienced anything out of the unusual that got me into it. It’s honestly just a curiosity about the unknown…Getting into interviewing witnesses and stuff, that comes from finding out that there were Bigfoot sightings near the town that I grew up in and interviewing some of the people that claimed to have seen something. Originally, it was part of a book proposal that was going to be called Small Town Monsters. I started down there doing that and that was kind of what kicked me into doing movies.”
The filmmaker said that despite being a newspaper reporter, a lot of his documentary and filmmaking skills were learned “on the fly.”
“Filmmaking is special because it’s a very specific type of art form but requires little talent,” said Breedlove. “If you’re willing to put the effort in, you can learn any aspect of shooting and all that kind of stuff. I’ve always wanted to be a filmmaker but as far as learning any of the technical stuff, we honestly taught ourselves. We learned a lot through trial and error.”
In his research surrounding the Mothman, Breedlove said he started with newspaper archives as well as learning from the Mothman Museum’s Jeff Wamsley before accruing a variety of knowledge about the creature and interviewing other area individuals.
Breedlove said he anticipates a new Mothman documentary to potentially be shown in September 2020 by the Small Town Monsters team, but that its focus was still being discussed.
“We think it will focus more using Point Pleasant as a jumping-off point for the larger Mothman phenomena around the country, specifically the Appalachian region, especially West Virginia and Pennsylvania,” said Breedlove. “We’ll be interviewing a lot of witnesses and people who’ve claimed to see stuff in the skies.”
Dean Wright can be reached at 740-446-2342.