Welcome to this edition of The High Strangers Factor, copyrighted on the Paranormal UK
Radio Network. I am your host, Steve Warred, Eddie Mercer has tonight
off. In the past, we have devoted many shows to the Mothman phenomenon,
John Keel's writings and investigations. Today we are going to focus on the
silver Bridge tragedy that occurred in December fifteenth, nineteen sixty seven, at the
end of thirteen months of high strangeness that took place in the Ohio Valley with
two great guests. Jackie Bill Kuslis, PhD are the authors of Bridging the
Tragedy, a book based upon the nineteen sixty seven Silverbridge disaster in Point Pleasant,
West Virginia. Mothman and post traumatic growth, a phenomenon that often occurs
after tragedy. Bill's interest in the paranormal began in the late seventies with the
original Project UFO television series. In two thousand and three, he was introduced
to the Mothman Prophecies movie and it changed his life. Jackie is a retired
postmaster and a current business owner operator. She specializes in research, data analytics
and conducting the dots between intuition, perception, and reality. Since twenty sixteen,
Bill and Jackie have visited Point Pleasant regularly, where they become friends with
several area residents, including Mothman Museum owner Jeff Walmsley and the late Carolyn Harris,
co founders of the Mothman Festival. Bill holds a doctorate in psychology with
a focus on post traumatic growth, the good things that come from bad experiences.
They reside in Sycamore, Illinois. Guys, welcome back to the high
Strangeness Factor. Thanks, it's great to have you here. First, just
I want to get into a couple of things before we really get into the
book. But it's uh, you know, uh, riveting is a word
that's often used in blurbs for books, but your book really was. It
pulled me in right away when I started reading the experiences that people had relating
to that time period when the bridge collapsed. And I think it's a book
that now, of course, we all all three of us have connections to
Point Pleasant and have had for some time, but I think it's the kind
of book that will appeal to many people, not just people that know about
the Mothman, are interested in the folklore and so forth. But it really
really is a fascinating book the way you put it together. Thank you well,
Thank you for that. It was a real neighbor of love, and
we're just honored to be able to have the conversations might about it. Thank
you, Steve. Well. First I want to I want to talk a
little bit about Project UFO. You in your introduction. It reminded me of
that show. I think it was a I think it was a Jack Web
production, if I got that right. Flight two Air Force officers investigating UFO
reports. That sounds familiar. I was a little kid back then, Steve,
so I barely barely remember it. Okay, it was the first thing
that I had ever been exposed to that talked about UFOs or aliens or anything
of that nature. I had no idea what they were talking about, but
boy was it interesting. Well I remember thinking at the time, but some
of their special effects weren't too bad. They would make these great uh spaceships
and UFOs or whatever this is way before CGI, where they would do something
called kitbashing, where they would actually take model parts and fabricate some of their
own to make these models, and I thought they were pretty cool. Look
back at some of those episodes, they do lack a little bit of uh,
I don't know what to say quality. They stretched out a story into
an hour, you know, minus a few commercials. But anyway they are
they are a lot of fun to revisit. Now. You also mentioned in
the introduction, now, did did you guys both see the Mothman Prophecies movie
at the same time? No? No, Bill saw years before me,
and I think I had seen it at one point, but I don't remember
when, but he made sure I rewatched it. Now, you hadn't read
the book, but when you saw the movie, or had you? No?
I read the book after the movie, saying with you Bill, Yeah,
the same thing with me, Steve. I mean I really saw.
I saw the movie and then it just kind of sad in my consciousness for
a while until I finally ordered the book and the audio book and just immersed
myself completely in it. But the movie it was first, the book was
second. What were your impressions of the movie when you saw it the first
time. I'm just curious, you know. I enjoyed the movie. It
kind of pulled me in. I found it to be a little anti climactic.
It never really seemed to get to where it promised that it could go.
Now this obviously, the first time I saw the movie, I didn't
know anything about the legend of Mosman. I didn't know anything about the bridge
disaster. I just remember all this strange stuff was going on throughout the movie,
and Richard Gere playing John Klein, who was supposed to be John Keel,
was getting all these different messages. And there's a guy Ben't even according
to Smallwood, who was really a compositive Woody Darrenberger and such and all these
things. It was interesting, but I wouldn't call it a great movie.
It was good, it was entertaining. What really pulled me in was the
fact that it was based in real events, and I needed to know more
about those real events. After watching the movie, I've grown to really like
the movie. My first impression, I was really disappointed that they didn't because
I was the guy that bought the book off the stands in seventy five with
the dust Jacket, you know. I couldn't wait to get my hands on
the Mothman prophecies, and I was disappointed that they didn't do much with the
men and Black aspect. But later on, when I thought about it.
They had already done two silly movies based on The Men in Black, and
they would have had to be really careful about how they portrayed it because it
would it would have seemed like a caricature of a previous movie. Yeah,
and I can see that. I mean, being somebody who was really immersed
in the legend before the movie, I think there's always a little bit of
a letdown because you've already got a metal picture as to how things went,
what it was all about, and the movies never quite live up to that,
to that aspect of things. But over time, I mean they did
kind of eke out, as Keel said, a few of the basic truths
out of his book. So I again, I've really grown to like it,
even though there's a few few I have a few problems with it.
But yeah, I was just curious because you mentioned how that I guess that
kind of set up a chain reaction where you were led to read the book.
Well, what brought you guys to Point Pleasant the first time? Well,
what brought us to Point Pleasant originally was so Jackie and I have been
together as a couple since two thousand and four, and around two thousand and
ten in addition to our careers. I decided to start taking classes in addition
to a full time career, and we stopped spending that much time together.
We go on a vacation occasionally, but we realized in twenty sixteen that we
hadn't been anywhere together for a while, and we hadn't done anything fun with
just the two of us, And Jackie said, you know, we need
to take a vacation. What would you like to do? And I thought
about it for about ten seconds, and then I said, I want to
go to Point Pleasant. And she said, oh, okay, if you
if you throw in the Serpent Mound, let's go there too. Then Point
Pleasant would be fine. But that's what brought us there. I wanted to
go see where this whole area was that I've been researching for ten years by
that point. That's what brought us to town. That's what brought me there.
In nineteen seventy seven, after reading the book, I was visiting friends
in the Buffalo area, and so I left that Sunday morning and drove down
to Point Pleasant, stumbled down to the Low Hotel, and the next day
I drove around kind of aimlessly. I found the T and T area.
You could drive in it back then. I have no idea where I was.
Uh, I couldn't couldn't pinpoint it now. But I purposely didn't talk
to anybody ask anybody about the Mothman because even though I don't believe there was
any real connection between what people were seeing and the bridge disaster, which we'll
be talking about in a moment, it still happened in space and time,
so it's always associated with that. The last thing I wanted to do is
say to somebody, hey, did you see the moth Man and find out
that they had lost a family member on the bridge. But it was it
was very cool. I had the same kind of feeling you did. You
want to see the area? The old North power plant was still standing,
and I've got some great pictures of those which I haven't been able to find
for about twenty years, but maybe it'll show up. So what tell okay,
tell us tell us about your experience. I know you had a great
experience when you arrived there the first time, so kind of and that kind
of set the stage for what was to come later on. It really did,
Steve, And I gotta tell you, you know, when we planned
the trip. It seemed like it would be a lot of fun, and
it was nice for the two of us to spend time together after being as
busy as we were with everything, because I think by then we were raising
Arena too. Our granddaughter was living with us at that point too, so
in addition to to me being in school and both of us working in full
time, we were empty nesters who became re nesters with our granddaughters. She
came and lived with us as well, so we just didn't have any time
for each other at all. So we decided to drive down to the Serpent
Mound and we drove from our home, which is about sixty miles west of
Chicago. It's really more cornfields than it is skyscrapers where we live. We
drove all the way down to Serpent Mound and spent the night and then checked
the place out the next day. In Serpent Mound was really cool, But
the whole time we were there, I was twitching because I wanted to get
going. I wanted to go to Point Pleasant and I want to say,
it's what is it about one hundred miles or thereabouts to Serpent Mound back to
Point Pleasant. So we drove to town, and I remember I've had back
trouble for many, many years, and by the time we arrived in town
at Point Pleasant, we stopped at our hotel in Gallipolice, we went to
Bob Evans. We stopped there. I had a work project. I had
cooking, and Jackie helped me with at But as soon as we were done
with what we needed to do for that, we drove across the Silver Memorial
Bridge and I'll never forget. It was a beautiful, bright sunny day.
It was probably eighty degrees There was not a cloud in the sky, and
I could see the mountains in the background, and I just felt like I
was going to the Promised Land. I mean really felt like I was going
to the Promised Land. We rolled into town, probably about five fifteen five
thirty to find a totally dead, tiny downtown. Point Pleasant was Virginia,
and we saw the Mothman Museum and of course it was closed, and we
saw the statue, and of course that was cool, and we each got
our pictures taken with that, and then we didn't really quite know what to
do. So Jackie, being a postmaster, notices the post office kind of
kitty corner from the Mothman Museum and then turns around and she sees the Harris's
Steakhouse. And for anybody who has not been to Point Pleasant or has been
there in recent years, not twenty sixteen or before, the Harris's Steakhouse was
an icon, it was run by care and Harris. We didn't know who
she was at that time. Jackie just said, there's a little lady in
the window and she wants us to come in. I think she wants to
talk to us. And I said, well, yeah, let's see what
else is going on in town. She's like, no, I seriously,
she wants to talk to us, and I trust my wife's intuition. So
we walked indoors. We started visiting with this little lady. We learned who
she was. There was a gentleman by the name of Mark Griffith in there
with her also, and we just kind of sat down and Mark's words,
we just started chewing the fat. We just started just talking with her.
And after probably I don't know, twenty minutes or so, I noticed that
I had recognized Carolyn from somewhere, and I said, have I seen you
in a documentary or two into which that she replied, I've been in how
many was it? She told us sixteen or seventeen, sixteen or seventeen documentaries,
And she was a little sheepish about it. She was kind of shy
about it, you know, but blushed, she blushed. Yeah, But
we just we just all in love with Carolyn, and Mark became a good
friend, and we went back to that restaurant every day that we were in
town. We were in town for four or five days the first trip there,
and we just we met Jeff after that, and he was great to
visit with, and we just had a really super nice visit our first time
in town. Yeah, you know, I feel the same way about Carolyn
m I had. I got to know her a little bit longer than you
did. H we uh. Back in the back in the day, there
was used to be a bar next door, and so she would stay open
super late so that the the people that had been uh imbibing in adult beverages
for hours could come in and get coffee at her place. And so we
would come back from our excursions in the T and T area late at night
and have a cup of coffee and pie, and you know, it was
really always a great that she had would stay open too long. She was
it was like walking to Mom's kitchen at home when I would go in there
and uh, she would uh, you know, a pillar of the community.
She would feed people that were hungry and didn't have any money. Um.
She's just such a great lady. And she used to just during the
festivals. She would just work and work and work for hours without any rest.
She was just amazing and a great loss that we that she's not with
us anymore, sure as it really is. So what how did how did
the idea for your first first give us the full title of your book,
concluding the subtitle Bridging the Tragedy Silver Linings in the Mysterious Ohio River Valley,
And so what was the how did the idea come about to produce this book?
And uh? And and how did you decide to structure it? Well,
it was percolating in my mind for quite some time, and the main
reason I had decided to go back to school in the first place, in
my forties by then almost bid forties, was because I wanted to write professionally.
And after we had met Carolyn and hung out in Point Pleasant, I
got to tell you we left town we like to follow the Chicago Cubs around.
That's what we did before we started doing all of our Point Pleasant excursions.
And we left Point Pleasant and we drove up to Pittsburgh to go watch
the Cubs play against the Pirates. And I found myself a little sad.
I found myself. I found myself a little angry with the traffic and the
congestion and the big city going into Pittsburgh, and really it's like I've had
a mountaintop experience and now I have to go to a big city. Are
you kidding me? I don't want to do this. And then we had
to go back into our workaday world, Steve. So we drove home,
and I remember getting back into my next class as it was starting up,
and we got back into our careers and back into co parenting our grand daughter
and all these types of things. And as the months went by, I
noticed I was starting to get kind of despondent. And I think what it
was was, I'd had that mountaintop experience of being in Point Pleasant, and
it's like I felt like I found a new life there, and so getting
back into things, into the swing of things, A lot of times you
don't have time to really stop and think. But right at Christmas time,
I had told Jackie that I really think that I would like to get ahold
of Carolyn. She'd given us her phone numbers, and on Christmas Eve,
on the way to Jackie's mom's house for Christmas Eve dinner, I brought this
up and she said, why don't you get ahold of Carolyn? But why
don't you do it after the holidays? And I said, okay, yeah,
that makes sense. We don't want to bother her. At Christmas time,
Mark Griffith, the guy that we met with Carolyn in the restaurant,
sends us a message on Facebook Messenger Bill Jackie Carolyn's had a heart attack,
and the next day Carolyn passed away. So, as you can imagine here,
we had been to the mountaintop. Four months later, we made up
our minds that we were going to try to see if Carolyn would maybe let
us interview her talk to her about maybe writing a story about her life.
And all of a sudden it was over and we never got a chance to
see her again. And I remember feeling really dejected about that. I mean,
it was very, very disturbing because we just loved this lady, we
really did. So the next year, as things went by and as I
got back, you know, I mentioned back into the career of working and
graduate school and all this business. I got ahold of a writing coach and
I told her, you know how, I really wanted to write this book
and really wanted to do this story about Carolyn. And then Carolyn died and
she said to me, what you can do is you can tell her story
anyway, and that'll be a way of keeping her memory alive. So conceptually
it began as something like that, but I didn't really have a whole lot
of time to really consciously think about it until I finished school in twenty twenty
one. But it was I'm not kidding you. It was a month later
that we came up with the research plan. My dissertation was based on post
traumatic growth. What better subject material to talk about in the context of post
traumatic growth than what happened in the Silver Bridge collapsed Because Caroline had lost her
young son in the Silver Bridge disaster, and it just seemed like a marriage
made made between passions, and that was passion for the legend and the community
of Point Pleasant. The Bridge disaster, the victims being concerned about them Mothman,
of course, the legend of Mothman, because that's what got the whole
thing started. But then it coupled it with post traumatic growth. That's where
it came from. So so do you said, let's say the plan came
together in about a month, you know, it really kind of did.
And Jackie came up with she came up with like a prototype for the study.
Tell him a little bit about that. When I thought about post traumatic
growth, Okay, So I was meditating and the idea came to me that
Bill could use post traumatic growth and different look through. The thought that I
had was post traumatic growth and hellacious experiences. And then as we were talking
about it more came out and it's like, well we could have you know,
there's a lot of really hellacious experiences, you know, UFO abductions and
sexual abuse and divorces and you know, all these different things. And he's
like the silver Bridge collapse. So that kind of fed right into all of
it too. So, um, that's the path we're on. Actually this
was just to kick off our plan, was the silver Bridge. You know,
I can I can relate to the idea that you felt like you're on
the mountaintop and then had to come down to real life. Uh. We
uh, you know, we we would just live for the Mothman festival and
you know, helped set up in the T and T area to fly the
Mothman and and it was just uh. And of course the more I came
down to the festival, the more I got involved in it as far as
speaking and m seeing and uh and and helping behind the scenes. And then
you go home. You know, you're there for like four or five days,
and then we would all have withdrawals, so we would all have to
congregate again about mid November to celebrate the first major sighting of the Mothman.
But you know, just just the the festival wasn't enough. Um. So,
so what you did was you, uh, you you sat down.
You spent a lot of time interviewing people that were alive at the time of
the tragedy, and you found out about their life and how you had you
have a series of questions you would ask each individual and could you talk a
little bit about that? Yeah, absolutely, So what we did was we
came up with a couple of research questions that we could build the study around.
And the research questions were what are the dimensions of post traumatic growth for
individuals who endured the silver Bridge disaster? That was the first research question.
The second research question was similar, It was what are the dimensions of post
traumatic growth for individuals who encountered the paranormal phenomena associated with Mothman in nineteen six
p six and nineteen sixty seven. We wanted to be specific about that because
there have been other sightings before and after, but we wanted to focus primarily
on the Ohio River Valley, and so that's why we were as specific as
we were with the research questions. When we were able to find the participants,
the people who volunteered for the study, we had eleven them altogether,
we came up with what we called guiding interview questions and they were designed around
both of those research questions. They were identical basically, except you superimpose silver
Bridge disaster for Mothman and parormal phenomena into those questions. So they were basically,
you know, what was your life like in nineteen sixty six sixty seven,
what happened before the silver Bridge collapse? What was the aftermath like afterwards?
And I want to say we had twelve to fifteen questions for each one
of the research questions, so to speak. I mean, we weren't looking
for anything specific, Steve. It was just a matter of tell us about
what your experience is. And that's that's how we gathered the data from the
interviews, was by using those open ended questions that just really sparked conversations.
What are some of the I guess, the high points, some of the
surprises, some of the most interesting things that some of your people told you.
You know. One of the most interesting things I found was Jimmy Wedge.
He lost both of his parents on the bridge, and the way he
spoke about his experience really surprised me because he said that he was just glad
that he wasn't younger and that he was old enough. He was like twenty
five, I think when when his parents died, and he said he was
he was glad that he wasn't a younger person because he was able to handle
it better than he thought he would have if he were younger, you know.
And for me, it's like, my gosh, I would think losing
both of your parents at the same time would be so traumatic. And he
found he had such gratitude just for that I liked. Charlene Westwood interview when
we asked her about what it was like in the area when Mothman was present,
and she said to us how exciting it was because we had this crazy
thing going on in the community, and it was it was she didn't use
these words, but it was almost like there was electricity in the air.
It was so exciting for the the kids to get out and go looking for
this, this paranormal creature that was that was really anything too. I mean,
how cool is it to have a monster in your backyard? Yeah,
well I wouldn't want one in our backyard here, but yeah, I mean,
well maybe not literally but figuratively. Yeah, I mean it's a great
idea. Um. I was really impressed by Jeff Wonsley, you know,
I mean I've known Jeff for years, but one of the things that came
out wash You know, I'm a resident here now, so I can actually
walk down to the festivals now, as you well know. But uh,
I guess I had forgotten or didn't really know that the when they started the
festival back two thousand and one, two thousand and two, the town was
really against it. Jeff and Carolyn and Denny Bellamy were the forces behind it,
and uh, you know you look at it now, I mean you
I guess what I'm leading up to is tell us a little bit about how
the various people in your study talk about what happened economically with the bridge gone.
I mean, the the tragedy is bad enough and all these, you
know, and literally seeing bodies being pulled out of the river, but the
aftermath of stores closing up and so forth. Tell us about that. We
heard about that from a lot of people. Rick Hanley, who is I
want to say he is Rose Commissioner, Yes, in Mason County. Rick
was a wonderful interview and as he talked about what had happened in about the
bridge going down and you lose comperorce, I mean all this on you.
You had this major thoroughfare going right through downtown Point Pleasant, which commuters would
stop into restaurants, they would they would gas up their vehicles, they'd go
about their business, but they do commerce in Point Pleasant. When the bridge
collapsed and there was nothing but ferry service for a couple of years, there
was there was no way for that traffic to go through town. So the
businesses started closing up. I remember Susan Sayer talked to us about how the
shoe store closed and the department store is closed, and all these different things.
They just went away and it was really sad. Susan talked about how
sad it was to have her a little town basically just go down the tubes.
What other sort of patterns? I guess we've got some competition back there.
That's one of our girls outside talking to neighbors. Well, good neighbors,
better watched your step. It's the monster in the back we were talking
about. Well, I think it might just be in the county, so
I wouldn't worry too much about it. But anyway, what are some of
the other patterns that might have turned up? I mean, one is the
economic devastation, but were there other other things that were would show up in
different interviews. Well, there were several people throughout the interview process that talked
about how this is West Virginia. You just buck up and go on with
life. So obviously, the prevalence of counselors being around to be able to
help people deal with trauma was slim to nothing back then. So today,
were something like that to happen, you'd have people showing up at the schools,
people showing up at the churches, people practically showing up on the street
corner offering assistance, offering help. That wasn't something that that was available then.
So these folks just were encouraged to kind of go on with their grief
and just deal with things and kind of plowed through life that way. That
was one of the patterns that emerged from some of the interviews. Yeah,
that's that's something that we're so used to all the services and all the help
that is available now when nothing was like that, nothing like that was available
then, you know. I actually, as a kid, I didn't watch
the news much and I did not was not aware when the bridge collapsed.
I was aware when that first mockman sighting took off, chasing the scarberries and
the mallets that hit the wire services all over the world, but I did
not. I was not aware of the bridge collapsing. I'm sure if I
had watched any of the network news programs, I would have seen it.
Let me do my quick station break here. You are listening to the High
Strangers Factor a coffee right another paranormal UK radio network. I am Steve Ward
and tonight I am talking to Bill and Jackie Kuslus about their book Bridging the
Tragedy Silver Linings in the Mysterious Ohio Valley. For me, you know,
of course, I had read the Mothman prophecies and Keel has the chapter on
the bridge collapse. It didn't really hit me until it didn't hit me in
seventy seven when I was just there briefly. But the first festival I went
to in two thousand and six, you know, meeting the people and really
getting a look at the town, and then rereading the Mothman prophecies, that
started to bring it home again. And then in twenty seventeen I went to
the fifty year remembrance ceremony. Of course Carolyn was no longer with us.
They read the names of the forty six people that died and had some speakers
there talking about how everything changed with the bridge inspections and so forth after this
tragedy. But the next day I met a man named Bill Edmondson who was
a driving a semi across the bridge that night, and he went when in
the water. His partner was in the sleeper cab never made it out.
Bill came to the surface and Uh and a tugboat captain pulled him up out
of the water. Um, you know that's those those things have all brought
it really close. And now that I live here in Point Pleasant, just
uh. When I when I work at the Mothman Museum, I tell people
that if they walk a couple blocks up the street, you're going to see
the Bridge Memorial where they have this beautiful mural on the flood wall the way
the bridge used to look going from Sixth Street over to Ohio, And it
has the forty six names of the people that died embedded on the sidewalk with
the with the mural so and and then then the next stage in reading your
book, it brought even a step closer. So uh, I can't recommend
this book enough, especially if you have any interest or ties to the the
Mothman legend, the Point Pleasant or West Virginia. What are the things?
What are you? What are the things did you want to accomplish while you're
writing the book? Well, I think the main thing as we were developing
the book and coming up with a narrative once we had the interviews and then
really sympathized all that information to come up with the growth. You know,
the post traumatic growth that was illustrated by the participants in the study and for
the community they're in Point Pleasant in Gallipolice, Ohio, right across the river.
Was really to kind of lay out a blueprint to show how a community
can not only just rebound and come back to maybe some sense of normalcy,
or how people individuals can rebound after trauma and come back to some sense of
normalcy, but even to thrive. I mean, because now the community of
Point Pleasant is at the point that it's it's thriving, and a lot of
this is really because of the Mothman. And even during the interview process when
we were talking to Susan Sayer, we kind of came up with the idea
that Mothman kind of saved the town, which is really kind of a neat
thing too, because if you reframe that, obviously, the legend of Mothman
was this black winged entity with all this paranormal trappings and trimmings that came with
it, with the UFOs, the men in black, the cattle mutilations,
etc. Etc. And then we have the bridge disaster with the bridge going
down. Now with Mothman and Jeff and Carolyn's efforts along with Denny to be
able to bring the community back and really grow it up with business after business
after business that is coming up now because of the promotion by Jeff and Denny
and Carolyn of the Mothman legend. Mothman has literally saved the town and the
community is thriving. And it's just a wonderful thing to see and to kind
of lay out through the book, through those stories to display how positive things
can be after a horrible tragedy. Yeah, and uh and and and Jeff,
the Wansley family has done just an incredible job. I mean, they've
got what four stories between just it's their family, uh in downtown so uh
and and I'd have to tell you it is such a blast working at the
at the Mothman Museum. I'm sort of the information guy, you know,
since I've been following it since November of sixty six when I was in junior
high in Michigan. Um and uh uh it's uh, it's great because you
get into great conversation sometimes uh uh. You know, some people you can
tell aren't that aren't interested. But it's amazing how how many people have made
it as a destination. You know, there a lot of them. I've
seen a sign on the highway, but most of them, you know,
it's like been on their bucket list sometimes for several years. And I just
talked to two young men from Nigeria that were there last uh Saturday, So
it's just just a blast. And h I also U take people out to
the the Mothman statue. I mean, people love it when uh you know,
some one of their family members doesn't have to step out to take the
picture. And of course I showed them the secret of the Mothman, which
you have to walk around behind the statue to see. But yes, which
I think his uh, his posterior is as famous as his front these days.
But so what are you guys coming down again? Well for the Mothman
Festival for sure. Okay, yeah, we we just confirmed that yesterday.
Actually I treated an email with Jeff and he said he'd get us, uh,
he'd get us on the speaking bit again. So oh good good,
we'll be Yeah, we'll be able to do that, which will be a
lot of fun. We had such a good time doing that last year.
But I sure would like to get out there one time before that, even
for just a few days. We don't have it carved out just yet,
but if we can make that happen, I think that would be really cool.
You're gonna have to come to the hay right, Yeah, we miss
that last year. Yes, that's I and you have to come on my
card so I can harass you guys. That'll be fun. Oh, well,
that would be fun. You can harass me back though. Way,
well, talk for those for those of us there layment out there talking.
Could you talk a little more about post traumatic growth and maybe, you know,
give other examples besides just the silver Brief tragedy so that people really have
a grasp on what you're talking about. You know, It's kind of like
with Mothman, Steve. I'll go into Mothy mode and be talking about Mothman
to people who I think know what I know about it, and I start
glazing over. Then I realized that they don't really know what I'm talking about.
And I've been kind of close to being dug into post traumatic growth for
several years now, so it means something to me, But I forget that
it's not necessarily common knowledge. I think the first thing that pops up when
people hear the term is they think of post traumatic stress disorder. Right now,
post traumatic growth really isn't the opposite of post traumatic stress disorder. Post
traumatic growth. It's basically the good things that we can experience as a result
of going through traumatic incidences. And the way it was kind of laid out
in some of the psychological books that I studied were that they were things that
would normally shatter cognitive schemas. What that means is the way we see the
world, you know, do we see the world as a safe place?
Do we see it as a positive place where we're always going to be protected,
you know, and loved by family and all this kind of thing,
and nothing really super traumatic is going to happen. Bad things happen, yeah,
but they don't really happen to me, right It's not going to happen
to me. But the way that post traumatic growth really came about was over
the course of the last twenty three to thirty years, a couple of a
couple of psychologists from the University of North Carolina, Tadashi and Calhoun, came
up with this concept of post traumatic growth, and they utilized it or applied
it in circumstances like let's say, the tsunami that happened back I think in
two thousand and four, which just killed hundreds of thousands of people, or
earthquakes that happened that thousands and thousands of people are killed, or nine to
eleven is a big one. Absolutely, nine to eleven is a big one.
Those are things that you know you could very easily. They could obviously
end lives, but they could ruin the lives of families who lost members in
those catastrophes as well. And I'm not saying that that's a good thing by
any stretch, but sometimes we gain qualities like resilience, sharing things with others,
a new sense of community from being in community with other people who maybe
have been through similar circumstances, not necessarily to commisserate, but to help each
other get a leg up over their circumstances. Spiritual growth, spiritual development,
well, that was a big one that we found in our study for the
book. So it's it's the good stuff that we sometimes don't realize we could
ever accomplish, especially when we're knocked down so badly by the circumstances that could
really crush us, both literally and figurably. It's sort of like the Napoleon
Hill stuff turning adversity into something positive exactly exactly. Uh yeah, it was.
I've read a lot of those those kinds of books, so it's only
uh yeah, I guess that's you know, it applies to all kinds of
things, things that we might think are kind of minor, just you know,
challenges in our everyday life, and then to some of the big situations
like nine to eleven and so forth. Um So, what are some of
the things that we haven't talked about that we need to discuss about your book
in case I haven't thought of everything to ask here. You know just how
rewarding it was to be able to sit with these people and to talk about
their experiences. I mean, I can't even tell you. And I can
speak for Jackie as well too. She could put it just as well as
I could. We were so honored to sit down with these folks and to
hear their stories. One of the neatest things that's come out of all of
this is that I think we're in touch with at least half of the people
who we interviewed for the book. We talked to on a pretty regular basis.
Linda Lane from Gallipolis, Ohio. We trade messages with her on Facebook
all the time. In fact, her sister Linda, and Linda was somebody
who lost her sister in law in the Bridge disaster and then ended up helping
her family raise those children. Now we got connected to her sister also,
and her sister put together a story from her perception of what the Silverbridge disaster
was, what it meant to her, and we're going to utilize that to
do for the second edition of our book that's going to come out sometime here
later this year. So those are things that are happening as a result of
just being a part of this. Do you have any plans to produce a
sequel or to follow up follow up with some of your interviewers, Well,
we keep in touch with them pretty regularly in terms of just having conversations with
them. Now. I don't know that we looked to do any anymore like
expounding upon the original interviews, but we are looking to do another project that
would have started earlier this year had I not been injured back in January and
lost a thousand days. But we had at the end of our presentation for
the at the Mothman Festival, Jackie had taken the last slide in our PowerPoint
presentation, and she presented options for what our future studies could look like,
and they're all based around post traumatic growth and the paranormal And there were a
couple of different instances our ideas that we had and can you share a little
bit about Oh yeah, definitely, Yeah, yeah, great. I don't
remember exactly what they were, but what we have decided on for our next
project is the epidemic of witchcraft in the US, because there's a real issue
on social media with these kids that are casting spells and they don't even know
what they're doing and they're causing real harm to themselves, their families, their
friends. So that's that's one that we want to do because the dangers of
witchcraft and the way it's being put out to everybody. I think another one
was sexual abuse and physical abuse and paranormal activity, the connection between those and
post traumatic growth that a person can gain from that. What about the abduction
experience, Yes, we have that also, and we have one more that
we thought of too, but I can't think what they are. And it's
really weird because I was just working on our PowerPoint and presentation because we're going
to be doing a presentation at a library here, and I had them all
listed at the end there was like four of them and then the one that
we finally decided that we're going to start on this year, and I can't
remember what they are. Well, that's okay, remembering too though, that
the abuse and paranormal activity and post traumatic growth combination, as well as the
witchcraft epidemic and paranormal activity and post traumatic growth. One thing I do want
to say, Steep about what you said for about I don't remember what your
question was, but one of the things when we were at the Mothman Festival
and at our table and I was pulling people over to the table and I
was telling them that our book is such a good book, and it's not
because we wrote it, but it's because we included the interviews in it.
And I think that really makes it an excellent book. And we've heard from
a lot of people that you know, it's just like like you're sitting there
in the interview with us, by reading the interviews and you don't want them
to end. I mean, they're so good and people were just so open
with their feelings and it's opened up a whole you know, a whole new
area of knowledge for me about what happened. You know, even though I've
been, you know, following this sort of thing forever, go ahead,
even though even though you try to stay impartial and not to attach feeling to
any of it. I cried at several of the interviews several points because I
was so moved by but how they were expressing what happened. I mean with
Jimmy, I don't think that he cried or even had a tear out of
his eye, but I was crying because his story was just so it just
touched my heart. Well, you know, you you you try to push
yourself in those situations where you lost a family member, and what about the
people that they knew the bridge fell? And then in some cases their family
members were all right, but they got tied up in traffic or something like
that. So they've got this one or two hours of absolute terror wondering what
happened, and then you know, in some cases that worked out fine,
and others they just didn't come home. Yeah, I think someone said something.
I don't know if it was Susan that said something about these people that
weren't even from the area, that were crossing that bridge to you know,
truck driving or whatever traveling, and people had to just assume that when they
heard the bridge went down, and they hadn't heard anything from their family member
that they were on the bridge until they literally pulled the vehicles out of the
water. They didn't know that was Linda Lane's sister in law. They didn't
know for sure that she was on the bridge until her brother. He was
at the river every day. She said, you couldn't pull them away from
the river until they finally pulled the car out, and then he knew.
Bill Edmondson, the truck driver, was from North Carolina. He was on
his way to Detroit to deliver material to make tires. So he was one
of those people. It wasn't local at all, but one of the fortunate
ones that got out of the truck and was pulled out of the water.
There was you know, if people that don't know, maybe we should describe
what the the what the date was like, what the you know, was
almost nightfall, Bill Gibbis, a kind of a rundown of what when the
bridge fell? What was going on? So when the bridge it was five
flow four pm Friday night in the Christmas season December fifteenth, and the lights
on the bridge both were read. John Keel talked about them being richelcifren they
had for whatever reason, they weren't always in sequence with one another. So
the entire bridge filled up, and it filled up with car after car after
car after sumi. It was jam packed and the ibar, I believe Ibar
number thirteen had some type of a manufacturing defect in it, and when it
began to crack, it gave the ibar broke and the bridge just basically came
down like a series of dominoes. And the way it was described to us
and one of the interviews, was that it turned to the left and dumped
half the cars into the river, turned to the right, did the same
thing with the other half, and then everything fell from the bridge on top
of those poor victims below, to which forty six as were lost, and
like you mentioned, only a handful of them were rescued from the river down
into the icy cold water, where if people would have survived the collapse in
their vehicles and the bridge falling on top of them, they would have died
from hypothermia. So for so for the trucker to be able to survive,
that was a miracle in itself. Yes, he was forced through the passenger
window right arm first, and the currents pulled him up. Some debris caught
his pants on the way up, and part started to pull him back under.
He kicked loose. He hung onto the material that he was hauling,
was floating on the on the water, and the tugboat captain intercepted his flow
down river and they pulled him up. So and there was a photograph in
the Mothman Museum if he and two other guys that were pulled out of the
water. They of course, they got them out. They immediately put heat
on them. And he came he came down in twenty seven team to pay
his respects to those that had lost their lives. And you know, it's
I'm sure this is something that you guys have thought of. You know,
the people that survived, they wonder why me, Why did I survive this?
And and and so many innocence did not. Some of the people talked
about that. They said they thought, you know, must be survivor's guilt.
Even though they weren't on the bridge or near the bridge, they had
crossed the bridge so frequently they wondered, why did it happen, then,
why not when I was on it and they had they had to deal with
that on top of the funerals at Christmas time. But Linda Lane talked about
that, and so did Marva Bailey. They both discussed having been over the
bridge, you know, within the day or two before it collapsed, and
having noticed that there was something wrong. There was something wrong with the bridge,
and one of them said, I think I think it was Linda.
Linda said this bridge is going to fall down, and her friend was in
the car with and said, oh, no, it's not. You're crazy,
that's not going to happen. You know, it's such a major point
in time. When I was working at electrical wholesale in Jackson, Michigan,
I would often wear one of my many many Moth band T shirts and a
lot of people, you know, there was one guy that said, well,
you know, we used to cross that bridge all the time to see
family. We crossed it two weeks before it went down. So there's so
many people that don't not didn't just know the legend, but they you know
that that's just major major event in time that affected so many people, and
so many people can relate to it because they crossed that bridge or knew somebody
that did in one time or another. We talked about Denny Bellamy earlier,
and in Denny's interview, he talked about how his big sister would hold onto
his hand as they were walking across the Silver Bridge and swing him over the
holes in the bridge so he would fall into the river. That's just so
scary. And also he was wasn't he supposed to go shopping and he refused
to come down under the tree, so they didn't go shopping. And he
may have saved all their lives by being a belligerent little brat that day.
Yes, and he was such a fun interview. We we arrived at the
visitors Bureau like an hour before we started the actual interview, but we were
taping the whole time, so he just talked and talked and talked for an
hour, and then we interviewed him for an hour hour and a half and
then we went out to his property to hung out with him for the rest
of the night. What a fun guy he is, I mean, but
what a wonderful story telling him. He is a great story chatler. He
used to talk about how he would look over to his neighbors, and he'd
see John Keel out there laying back looking up at the sky looking for UFOs.
I guess yeah, And I think I think he was the one.
Either he or Jeff said stay away from that hippie. He referred to John
Keel as being a hippie. Now, he's not one I would associate with
being a hippie. But if you're from West Virginia and some guy from New
York comes down into your little town, I guess that'd be the first thing
you think. Back in the late sixties, must be a eight. He
probably had his beard, you know, and so that was probably enough to
put him over the edge. Oh yeah, there's always that. And uh,
you know the U when you read the Mothman prophecies. Missus Thomason and
Mary Higher, the Mary Hire the reporter, friend and colleague of John Keel,
they were both having what turned out to be prophetic dreams of packages floating
in the water. And you know they I know Mary Higher, And of
course anybody knows the story, knows that John Keel was getting all these messages
from people that firmly believed that you were in contact with some other intelligence another
another story, But everybody was blindsided cited by what happened. There was this
feeling of oppression that something bad was going to happen, and there are even
predictions of something called an em effect or whatever whatever that meant. We never
really knew. But and then, you know, all of a sudden,
it turned out it was the bridge that fell. And he'll really blamed himself
for that, thinking that somehow he should have known because he was getting all
these different prophecies. He was getting all these messages, messages about Bobby Kennedy
and messages about doctor Martin Luther King and the pope at the time being having
an assassination attempted. He really kicked himself for not being able to connect the
dots. But how do you do that with all the disparate information that he
was receiving coming from these different sources, How do you piece that together and
really be able to predict a bridge collapsing That really was an icon for almost
forty years right there across the river, right, and people knew that it
was would shake and vibrate, and but you know, bridges are supposed to
do that, They're supposed to give way a little bit, right, So
I guess interesting that that lady said this bridge is going to fall and it
did. Um, let's see, Well, Jackie, I just had a
great question and it just escaped me. I've got I've got something, Steve,
I'd like that. Yeah, you were asking earlier about some of the
things that surprised us from the study. Yeah, And I think probably the
really the most profound, I think statement that we received was well, there
were a lot, but in the line of questioning with Linda Lane when we
were talking to her, Linda was kind of guarded. When we first met
with her, she was nice, but you could tell she was a little
nervous. Didn't want to have video on. She was okay with audio,
that was fine. But as we went through the sequence of the questions and
she was sharing with us what her experience was like. She she talked about
getting off work at five o'clock and coming up to go across the bridge and
the bridge was gone. And so I just kind of recapped for her what
I heard during the interview. And I wasn't the one doing the questions with
her, so I was just kind of sitting back listening and I said,
you know, I'm going to put myself in your position, and what I
basically collected, if I could reframe that into my own context, is I'm
eighteen years old, I just got off work. It's Friday night. I'm
going to go across the river, and I'm going to go do what eighteen
year olds do on Friday nights. And as I approached the river, the
bridge, it's not there. I mean, it's just not there. And
then slowly reality starts catching up, my mind starts wrapping itself around what's really
going on? And she said, you know now that you put it that
way, and this was nothing, Steve. She didn't allude to this at
all in the regular line of questioning, but she said, now that you
mentioned it, I was at my mom's house and it was one of those
things. It was weird. She said, you know how they would say
on TV shows, Well, where am I? She said, I kind
of woke up in my sister's bed or somebody else's bed at mom's house,
and I said where am I? Because I had fainted. I didn't know
that I fainted, so they rushed me to the hospital and I flatlined,
and two or three times between their house and down the street, she lost
her pulse. Because she was in such a state of shock because they had
just lost her sister in law. She was processing all this information. She
was totally overloaded, and she had buried those memories. And it wasn't until
we went through the sequence of questions and then we did that recap that she
was conscious of the fact that she'd actually died a couple of times at eighteen
years old because of the Silver Bridge disaster. Now, obviously she came back
from that. She's in her seventies now, but holy cow, that was
I get shows just talking about it now, because it was just amazing that
that came out the way that it did. Those memories had submerged so deeply
into her subconscious Yeah, that's that's an astounding that. Uh, you know,
we think of people having a shock and fainting, but to actually flatline
as a result of something like that is remarkable. As a kid, Yeah,
years old, I'm gonna I'm gonna ask you guys ah an out there
questions. It's unanswerable, But have you I mean, we've all heard the
stuff about the moth Man possibly being a harbinger or causing the disaster or just
you know, coinciding with all the other stuff. Have you did you have
any more insight into the high strangeness aspects that went on that year after doing
this study. I don't think so. Okay, I don't think so either.
The only the only thing that really um when we talked about it,
I think, was Susan. I think Bell already said this when we talked
with Susan about you know, people saying that people saw Mothman on the bridge
right before it went down, and um, it wasn't seen again and Mothman
was responsible and all that. Um, we said that maybe Mothman really did
save Point Pleasant because he caused all of the activity, or was around for
thirteen months before the bridge went down. And if it wouldn't hadn't been for
that, Jeff never would have had all of the articles and stuff to open
the Mothman Museum. But um, other other than that, no, Okay,
I know it was. It was one of those out there questions.
I don't I didn't feel that way either. I mean, I still don't
know what it was exactly. I think the the you know, John Keel,
with some of his ideas, has gotten the closest to try and explain
some of that. But we've we've talked about that before. So where can
they get your book at the Mothman Museum. You just stole my line,
but that's okay. I'm sorry. I thought you're gonna say, well,
Amazon, and I was gonna say and the Mothman Museum. Yeah, definitely
Amazon. Also, yeah, well it's it's on Amazon, Steve. It's
been up now since right before the festival last year. It's bridging the Tragedy
Silver Linings in the Mysterias Ohio River Valley and again at the Mothman Museum it's
there as well too. And I gotta tell you, we just had a
conversation with a name that I think we'll ring true with you, a gentleman
by the name of Michael Hacker. Oh yeah. He is an audiobook narrator.
Extraordinary, dude is awesome, and he is going to do the narration
for the audio version of our book, and we expect that to be out
this summer. I do want to say if anyone does not have Amazon,
have an Amazon account, and or doesn't want to shop Amazon and can't make
it to the museum, we have a Facebook page Phenomenology research Professionals, and
if anyone contacts us through that page. We have copies that we can make
sure to get to them. Well, guys, I really appreciate you being
on tonight. I can't say enough good things about the book. I think
it will as I said before, I think it will appeal to far more
people than people like us that are so interested and invested into the whole point
pleasant Mothman phenomena. And uh, it's as Jackie was saying, Uh,
the interviews are just are really are riveting. They're just fascinating. And you
know, I kept when I was turning the pages, I kept hoping there'd
be another page full of the of the interview that. You know. It
wasn't like, oh God, another interview. You know. It was just
it just so well done and uh and and well organized. And it's it's
it's really it's a even though it deals with tragedy, this is a very
positive book. I mean, it's it's uh, it gives you, you
know, there's times when you want to cry, but overall it gives you
a just a good feeling of I don't know, triumph, a survival of
the human spirit. Uh. It's just a great book. Thank you,
Steve It Okay, I'm going to close out the show again. Thank you
Bill and Jackie Kuslas and check out Amazon and if you come into the Mothman
Museum to buy it, come and see me and I and say hi.
The High Strangers Factor. It was created by Steve Ward and Andy Mercer and
is copyrighted by the Paranormal UK Radio Network. I want to thank our fearless
leaders here at the network, the Three Musketeers, Iron Ellen, block Mark
Johnson, Andy Mercer, and he also gets credit not only for hosting the
show but produced also. You can also hear me weekly on Macmaloney's Military X
Files as a correspondent on the same and other platforms. And I am Steve
Ward. You're a humble host here at on the High Strangeness Factor, a
displaced Michigander deep in the Ohio Valley, inches from downtown Point Pleasant, West
Virginia, living on the same road that Mothman used to chase cars in a
few streets from where the original Silver Bridge once stood. Thank you all for
listening. I will see you all again in a fortnight. Take care,