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Welcome to this edition of The High
Strangers Factor, copyrighted on the Paranormal UK

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Radio Network. I am your host, Steve Warred, Eddie Mercer has tonight

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off. In the past, we
have devoted many shows to the Mothman phenomenon,

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John Keel's writings and investigations. Today
we are going to focus on the

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silver Bridge tragedy that occurred in December
fifteenth, nineteen sixty seven, at the

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end of thirteen months of high strangeness
that took place in the Ohio Valley with

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two great guests. Jackie Bill Kuslis, PhD are the authors of Bridging the

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Tragedy, a book based upon the
nineteen sixty seven Silverbridge disaster in Point Pleasant,

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West Virginia. Mothman and post traumatic
growth, a phenomenon that often occurs

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after tragedy. Bill's interest in the
paranormal began in the late seventies with the

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original Project UFO television series. In
two thousand and three, he was introduced

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to the Mothman Prophecies movie and it
changed his life. Jackie is a retired

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postmaster and a current business owner operator. She specializes in research, data analytics

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and conducting the dots between intuition,
perception, and reality. Since twenty sixteen,

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Bill and Jackie have visited Point Pleasant
regularly, where they become friends with

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several area residents, including Mothman Museum
owner Jeff Walmsley and the late Carolyn Harris,

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co founders of the Mothman Festival.
Bill holds a doctorate in psychology with

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a focus on post traumatic growth,
the good things that come from bad experiences.

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They reside in Sycamore, Illinois.
Guys, welcome back to the high

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Strangeness Factor. Thanks, it's great
to have you here. First, just

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I want to get into a couple
of things before we really get into the

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book. But it's uh, you
know, uh, riveting is a word

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that's often used in blurbs for books, but your book really was. It

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pulled me in right away when I
started reading the experiences that people had relating

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to that time period when the bridge
collapsed. And I think it's a book

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that now, of course, we
all all three of us have connections to

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Point Pleasant and have had for some
time, but I think it's the kind

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of book that will appeal to many
people, not just people that know about

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the Mothman, are interested in the
folklore and so forth. But it really

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really is a fascinating book the way
you put it together. Thank you well,

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Thank you for that. It was
a real neighbor of love, and

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we're just honored to be able to
have the conversations might about it. Thank

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you, Steve. Well. First
I want to I want to talk a

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little bit about Project UFO. You
in your introduction. It reminded me of

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that show. I think it was
a I think it was a Jack Web

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production, if I got that right. Flight two Air Force officers investigating UFO

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reports. That sounds familiar. I
was a little kid back then, Steve,

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so I barely barely remember it.
Okay, it was the first thing

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that I had ever been exposed to
that talked about UFOs or aliens or anything

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of that nature. I had no
idea what they were talking about, but

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boy was it interesting. Well I
remember thinking at the time, but some

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of their special effects weren't too bad. They would make these great uh spaceships

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and UFOs or whatever this is way
before CGI, where they would do something

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called kitbashing, where they would actually
take model parts and fabricate some of their

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own to make these models, and
I thought they were pretty cool. Look

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back at some of those episodes,
they do lack a little bit of uh,

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I don't know what to say quality. They stretched out a story into

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an hour, you know, minus
a few commercials. But anyway they are

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they are a lot of fun to
revisit. Now. You also mentioned in

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the introduction, now, did did
you guys both see the Mothman Prophecies movie

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at the same time? No?
No, Bill saw years before me,

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and I think I had seen it
at one point, but I don't remember

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when, but he made sure I
rewatched it. Now, you hadn't read

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the book, but when you saw
the movie, or had you? No?

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I read the book after the movie, saying with you Bill, Yeah,

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the same thing with me, Steve. I mean I really saw.

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I saw the movie and then it
just kind of sad in my consciousness for

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a while until I finally ordered the
book and the audio book and just immersed

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myself completely in it. But the
movie it was first, the book was

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second. What were your impressions of
the movie when you saw it the first

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time. I'm just curious, you
know. I enjoyed the movie. It

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kind of pulled me in. I
found it to be a little anti climactic.

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It never really seemed to get to
where it promised that it could go.

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Now this obviously, the first time
I saw the movie, I didn't

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know anything about the legend of Mosman. I didn't know anything about the bridge

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disaster. I just remember all this
strange stuff was going on throughout the movie,

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and Richard Gere playing John Klein,
who was supposed to be John Keel,

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was getting all these different messages.
And there's a guy Ben't even according

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to Smallwood, who was really a
compositive Woody Darrenberger and such and all these

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things. It was interesting, but
I wouldn't call it a great movie.

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It was good, it was entertaining. What really pulled me in was the

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fact that it was based in real
events, and I needed to know more

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about those real events. After watching
the movie, I've grown to really like

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the movie. My first impression,
I was really disappointed that they didn't because

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I was the guy that bought the
book off the stands in seventy five with

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the dust Jacket, you know.
I couldn't wait to get my hands on

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the Mothman prophecies, and I was
disappointed that they didn't do much with the

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men and Black aspect. But later
on, when I thought about it.

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They had already done two silly movies
based on The Men in Black, and

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they would have had to be really
careful about how they portrayed it because it

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would it would have seemed like a
caricature of a previous movie. Yeah,

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and I can see that. I
mean, being somebody who was really immersed

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in the legend before the movie,
I think there's always a little bit of

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a letdown because you've already got a
metal picture as to how things went,

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what it was all about, and
the movies never quite live up to that,

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to that aspect of things. But
over time, I mean they did

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kind of eke out, as Keel
said, a few of the basic truths

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out of his book. So I
again, I've really grown to like it,

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even though there's a few few I
have a few problems with it.

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But yeah, I was just curious
because you mentioned how that I guess that

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kind of set up a chain reaction
where you were led to read the book.

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Well, what brought you guys to
Point Pleasant the first time? Well,

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what brought us to Point Pleasant originally
was so Jackie and I have been

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together as a couple since two thousand
and four, and around two thousand and

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ten in addition to our careers.
I decided to start taking classes in addition

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to a full time career, and
we stopped spending that much time together.

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We go on a vacation occasionally,
but we realized in twenty sixteen that we

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hadn't been anywhere together for a while, and we hadn't done anything fun with

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just the two of us, And
Jackie said, you know, we need

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to take a vacation. What would
you like to do? And I thought

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about it for about ten seconds,
and then I said, I want to

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go to Point Pleasant. And she
said, oh, okay, if you

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if you throw in the Serpent Mound, let's go there too. Then Point

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Pleasant would be fine. But that's
what brought us there. I wanted to

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go see where this whole area was
that I've been researching for ten years by

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that point. That's what brought us
to town. That's what brought me there.

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In nineteen seventy seven, after reading
the book, I was visiting friends

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in the Buffalo area, and so
I left that Sunday morning and drove down

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to Point Pleasant, stumbled down to
the Low Hotel, and the next day

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I drove around kind of aimlessly.
I found the T and T area.

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You could drive in it back then. I have no idea where I was.

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Uh, I couldn't couldn't pinpoint it
now. But I purposely didn't talk

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to anybody ask anybody about the Mothman
because even though I don't believe there was

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any real connection between what people were
seeing and the bridge disaster, which we'll

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be talking about in a moment,
it still happened in space and time,

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so it's always associated with that.
The last thing I wanted to do is

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say to somebody, hey, did
you see the moth Man and find out

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that they had lost a family member
on the bridge. But it was it

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was very cool. I had the
same kind of feeling you did. You

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want to see the area? The
old North power plant was still standing,

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and I've got some great pictures of
those which I haven't been able to find

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for about twenty years, but maybe
it'll show up. So what tell okay,

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tell us tell us about your experience. I know you had a great

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experience when you arrived there the first
time, so kind of and that kind

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of set the stage for what was
to come later on. It really did,

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Steve, And I gotta tell you, you know, when we planned

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the trip. It seemed like it
would be a lot of fun, and

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it was nice for the two of
us to spend time together after being as

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busy as we were with everything,
because I think by then we were raising

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Arena too. Our granddaughter was living
with us at that point too, so

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in addition to to me being in
school and both of us working in full

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time, we were empty nesters who
became re nesters with our granddaughters. She

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came and lived with us as well, so we just didn't have any time

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for each other at all. So
we decided to drive down to the Serpent

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Mound and we drove from our home, which is about sixty miles west of

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Chicago. It's really more cornfields than
it is skyscrapers where we live. We

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drove all the way down to Serpent
Mound and spent the night and then checked

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the place out the next day.
In Serpent Mound was really cool, But

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the whole time we were there,
I was twitching because I wanted to get

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going. I wanted to go to
Point Pleasant and I want to say,

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it's what is it about one hundred
miles or thereabouts to Serpent Mound back to

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Point Pleasant. So we drove to
town, and I remember I've had back

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trouble for many, many years,
and by the time we arrived in town

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at Point Pleasant, we stopped at
our hotel in Gallipolice, we went to

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Bob Evans. We stopped there.
I had a work project. I had

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cooking, and Jackie helped me with
at But as soon as we were done

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with what we needed to do for
that, we drove across the Silver Memorial

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Bridge and I'll never forget. It
was a beautiful, bright sunny day.

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It was probably eighty degrees There was
not a cloud in the sky, and

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I could see the mountains in the
background, and I just felt like I

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was going to the Promised Land.
I mean really felt like I was going

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to the Promised Land. We rolled
into town, probably about five fifteen five

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thirty to find a totally dead,
tiny downtown. Point Pleasant was Virginia,

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and we saw the Mothman Museum and
of course it was closed, and we

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saw the statue, and of course
that was cool, and we each got

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our pictures taken with that, and
then we didn't really quite know what to

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do. So Jackie, being a
postmaster, notices the post office kind of

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kitty corner from the Mothman Museum and
then turns around and she sees the Harris's

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Steakhouse. And for anybody who has
not been to Point Pleasant or has been

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there in recent years, not twenty
sixteen or before, the Harris's Steakhouse was

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an icon, it was run by
care and Harris. We didn't know who

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she was at that time. Jackie
just said, there's a little lady in

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the window and she wants us to
come in. I think she wants to

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talk to us. And I said, well, yeah, let's see what

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else is going on in town.
She's like, no, I seriously,

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she wants to talk to us,
and I trust my wife's intuition. So

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we walked indoors. We started visiting
with this little lady. We learned who

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she was. There was a gentleman
by the name of Mark Griffith in there

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with her also, and we just
kind of sat down and Mark's words,

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we just started chewing the fat.
We just started just talking with her.

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And after probably I don't know,
twenty minutes or so, I noticed that

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I had recognized Carolyn from somewhere,
and I said, have I seen you

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in a documentary or two into which
that she replied, I've been in how

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many was it? She told us
sixteen or seventeen, sixteen or seventeen documentaries,

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And she was a little sheepish about
it. She was kind of shy

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about it, you know, but
blushed, she blushed. Yeah, But

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we just we just all in love
with Carolyn, and Mark became a good

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friend, and we went back to
that restaurant every day that we were in

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town. We were in town for
four or five days the first trip there,

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and we just we met Jeff after
that, and he was great to

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visit with, and we just had
a really super nice visit our first time

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in town. Yeah, you know, I feel the same way about Carolyn

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m I had. I got to
know her a little bit longer than you

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did. H we uh. Back
in the back in the day, there

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was used to be a bar next
door, and so she would stay open

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super late so that the the people
that had been uh imbibing in adult beverages

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for hours could come in and get
coffee at her place. And so we

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would come back from our excursions in
the T and T area late at night

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and have a cup of coffee and
pie, and you know, it was

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really always a great that she had
would stay open too long. She was

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it was like walking to Mom's kitchen
at home when I would go in there

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and uh, she would uh,
you know, a pillar of the community.

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She would feed people that were hungry
and didn't have any money. Um.

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She's just such a great lady.
And she used to just during the

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festivals. She would just work and
work and work for hours without any rest.

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She was just amazing and a great
loss that we that she's not with

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us anymore, sure as it really
is. So what how did how did

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the idea for your first first give
us the full title of your book,

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concluding the subtitle Bridging the Tragedy Silver
Linings in the Mysterious Ohio River Valley,

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And so what was the how did
the idea come about to produce this book?

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And uh? And and how did
you decide to structure it? Well,

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it was percolating in my mind for
quite some time, and the main

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reason I had decided to go back
to school in the first place, in

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my forties by then almost bid forties, was because I wanted to write professionally.

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And after we had met Carolyn and
hung out in Point Pleasant, I

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got to tell you we left town
we like to follow the Chicago Cubs around.

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That's what we did before we started
doing all of our Point Pleasant excursions.

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And we left Point Pleasant and we
drove up to Pittsburgh to go watch

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the Cubs play against the Pirates.
And I found myself a little sad.

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I found myself. I found myself
a little angry with the traffic and the

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congestion and the big city going into
Pittsburgh, and really it's like I've had

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a mountaintop experience and now I have
to go to a big city. Are

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you kidding me? I don't want
to do this. And then we had

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to go back into our workaday world, Steve. So we drove home,

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and I remember getting back into my
next class as it was starting up,

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and we got back into our careers
and back into co parenting our grand daughter

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and all these types of things.
And as the months went by, I

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noticed I was starting to get kind
of despondent. And I think what it

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was was, I'd had that mountaintop
experience of being in Point Pleasant, and

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it's like I felt like I found
a new life there, and so getting

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back into things, into the swing
of things, A lot of times you

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don't have time to really stop and
think. But right at Christmas time,

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I had told Jackie that I really
think that I would like to get ahold

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of Carolyn. She'd given us her
phone numbers, and on Christmas Eve,

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on the way to Jackie's mom's house
for Christmas Eve dinner, I brought this

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up and she said, why don't
you get ahold of Carolyn? But why

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don't you do it after the holidays? And I said, okay, yeah,

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that makes sense. We don't want
to bother her. At Christmas time,

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Mark Griffith, the guy that we
met with Carolyn in the restaurant,

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sends us a message on Facebook Messenger
Bill Jackie Carolyn's had a heart attack,

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and the next day Carolyn passed away. So, as you can imagine here,

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we had been to the mountaintop.
Four months later, we made up

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our minds that we were going to
try to see if Carolyn would maybe let

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us interview her talk to her about
maybe writing a story about her life.

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And all of a sudden it was
over and we never got a chance to

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see her again. And I remember
feeling really dejected about that. I mean,

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it was very, very disturbing because
we just loved this lady, we

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really did. So the next year, as things went by and as I

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got back, you know, I
mentioned back into the career of working and

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graduate school and all this business.
I got ahold of a writing coach and

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I told her, you know how, I really wanted to write this book

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and really wanted to do this story
about Carolyn. And then Carolyn died and

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she said to me, what you
can do is you can tell her story

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anyway, and that'll be a way
of keeping her memory alive. So conceptually

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it began as something like that,
but I didn't really have a whole lot

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of time to really consciously think about
it until I finished school in twenty twenty

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one. But it was I'm not
kidding you. It was a month later

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that we came up with the research
plan. My dissertation was based on post

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traumatic growth. What better subject material
to talk about in the context of post

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traumatic growth than what happened in the
Silver Bridge collapsed Because Caroline had lost her

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young son in the Silver Bridge disaster, and it just seemed like a marriage

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made made between passions, and that
was passion for the legend and the community

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of Point Pleasant. The Bridge disaster, the victims being concerned about them Mothman,

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of course, the legend of Mothman, because that's what got the whole

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thing started. But then it coupled
it with post traumatic growth. That's where

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it came from. So so do
you said, let's say the plan came

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together in about a month, you
know, it really kind of did.

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And Jackie came up with she came
up with like a prototype for the study.

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00:18:57,000 --> 00:19:03,200
Tell him a little bit about that. When I thought about post traumatic

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growth, Okay, So I was
meditating and the idea came to me that

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Bill could use post traumatic growth and
different look through. The thought that I

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had was post traumatic growth and hellacious
experiences. And then as we were talking

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about it more came out and it's
like, well we could have you know,

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there's a lot of really hellacious experiences, you know, UFO abductions and

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sexual abuse and divorces and you know, all these different things. And he's

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like the silver Bridge collapse. So
that kind of fed right into all of

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it too. So, um,
that's the path we're on. Actually this

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was just to kick off our plan, was the silver Bridge. You know,

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I can I can relate to the
idea that you felt like you're on

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the mountaintop and then had to come
down to real life. Uh. We

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uh, you know, we we
would just live for the Mothman festival and

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you know, helped set up in
the T and T area to fly the

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Mothman and and it was just uh. And of course the more I came

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down to the festival, the more
I got involved in it as far as

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speaking and m seeing and uh and
and helping behind the scenes. And then

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you go home. You know,
you're there for like four or five days,

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and then we would all have withdrawals, so we would all have to

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congregate again about mid November to celebrate
the first major sighting of the Mothman.

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But you know, just just the
the festival wasn't enough. Um. So,

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so what you did was you,
uh, you you sat down.

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You spent a lot of time interviewing
people that were alive at the time of

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the tragedy, and you found out
about their life and how you had you

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have a series of questions you would
ask each individual and could you talk a

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little bit about that? Yeah,
absolutely, So what we did was we

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came up with a couple of research
questions that we could build the study around.

286
00:21:12,759 --> 00:21:18,440
And the research questions were what are
the dimensions of post traumatic growth for

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individuals who endured the silver Bridge disaster? That was the first research question.

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The second research question was similar,
It was what are the dimensions of post

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00:21:29,680 --> 00:21:37,119
traumatic growth for individuals who encountered the
paranormal phenomena associated with Mothman in nineteen six

290
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p six and nineteen sixty seven.
We wanted to be specific about that because

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there have been other sightings before and
after, but we wanted to focus primarily

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on the Ohio River Valley, and
so that's why we were as specific as

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we were with the research questions.
When we were able to find the participants,

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the people who volunteered for the study, we had eleven them altogether,

295
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we came up with what we called
guiding interview questions and they were designed around

296
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both of those research questions. They
were identical basically, except you superimpose silver

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Bridge disaster for Mothman and parormal phenomena
into those questions. So they were basically,

298
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you know, what was your life
like in nineteen sixty six sixty seven,

299
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what happened before the silver Bridge collapse? What was the aftermath like afterwards?

300
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And I want to say we had
twelve to fifteen questions for each one

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of the research questions, so to
speak. I mean, we weren't looking

302
00:22:34,839 --> 00:22:38,480
for anything specific, Steve. It
was just a matter of tell us about

303
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what your experience is. And that's
that's how we gathered the data from the

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interviews, was by using those open
ended questions that just really sparked conversations.

305
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What are some of the I guess, the high points, some of the

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surprises, some of the most interesting
things that some of your people told you.

307
00:23:03,119 --> 00:23:07,200
You know. One of the most
interesting things I found was Jimmy Wedge.

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He lost both of his parents on
the bridge, and the way he

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spoke about his experience really surprised me
because he said that he was just glad

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that he wasn't younger and that he
was old enough. He was like twenty

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five, I think when when his
parents died, and he said he was

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he was glad that he wasn't a
younger person because he was able to handle

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it better than he thought he would
have if he were younger, you know.

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And for me, it's like,
my gosh, I would think losing

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both of your parents at the same
time would be so traumatic. And he

316
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found he had such gratitude just for
that I liked. Charlene Westwood interview when

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we asked her about what it was
like in the area when Mothman was present,

318
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and she said to us how exciting
it was because we had this crazy

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thing going on in the community,
and it was it was she didn't use

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these words, but it was almost
like there was electricity in the air.

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It was so exciting for the the
kids to get out and go looking for

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this, this paranormal creature that was
that was really anything too. I mean,

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how cool is it to have a
monster in your backyard? Yeah,

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well I wouldn't want one in our
backyard here, but yeah, I mean,

325
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well maybe not literally but figuratively.
Yeah, I mean it's a great

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idea. Um. I was really
impressed by Jeff Wonsley, you know,

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I mean I've known Jeff for years, but one of the things that came

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out wash You know, I'm a
resident here now, so I can actually

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walk down to the festivals now,
as you well know. But uh,

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I guess I had forgotten or didn't
really know that the when they started the

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00:25:00,839 --> 00:25:03,559
festival back two thousand and one,
two thousand and two, the town was

332
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really against it. Jeff and Carolyn
and Denny Bellamy were the forces behind it,

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and uh, you know you look
at it now, I mean you

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I guess what I'm leading up to
is tell us a little bit about how

335
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the various people in your study talk
about what happened economically with the bridge gone.

336
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I mean, the the tragedy is
bad enough and all these, you

337
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know, and literally seeing bodies being
pulled out of the river, but the

338
00:25:36,440 --> 00:25:41,480
aftermath of stores closing up and so
forth. Tell us about that. We

339
00:25:41,640 --> 00:25:47,079
heard about that from a lot of
people. Rick Hanley, who is I

340
00:25:47,079 --> 00:25:51,599
want to say he is Rose Commissioner, Yes, in Mason County. Rick

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was a wonderful interview and as he
talked about what had happened in about the

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bridge going down and you lose comperorce, I mean all this on you.

343
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You had this major thoroughfare going right
through downtown Point Pleasant, which commuters would

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stop into restaurants, they would they
would gas up their vehicles, they'd go

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about their business, but they do
commerce in Point Pleasant. When the bridge

346
00:26:15,640 --> 00:26:19,279
collapsed and there was nothing but ferry
service for a couple of years, there

347
00:26:19,359 --> 00:26:25,200
was there was no way for that
traffic to go through town. So the

348
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businesses started closing up. I remember
Susan Sayer talked to us about how the

349
00:26:30,519 --> 00:26:33,839
shoe store closed and the department store
is closed, and all these different things.

350
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They just went away and it was
really sad. Susan talked about how

351
00:26:38,519 --> 00:26:42,240
sad it was to have her a
little town basically just go down the tubes.

352
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What other sort of patterns? I
guess we've got some competition back there.

353
00:26:52,640 --> 00:26:56,759
That's one of our girls outside talking
to neighbors. Well, good neighbors,

354
00:26:56,799 --> 00:27:00,680
better watched your step. It's the
monster in the back we were talking

355
00:27:00,680 --> 00:27:02,680
about. Well, I think it
might just be in the county, so

356
00:27:02,720 --> 00:27:07,480
I wouldn't worry too much about it. But anyway, what are some of

357
00:27:07,480 --> 00:27:11,079
the other patterns that might have turned
up? I mean, one is the

358
00:27:11,039 --> 00:27:17,480
economic devastation, but were there other
other things that were would show up in

359
00:27:17,519 --> 00:27:22,559
different interviews. Well, there were
several people throughout the interview process that talked

360
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about how this is West Virginia.
You just buck up and go on with

361
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life. So obviously, the prevalence
of counselors being around to be able to

362
00:27:36,000 --> 00:27:41,440
help people deal with trauma was slim
to nothing back then. So today,

363
00:27:41,799 --> 00:27:45,079
were something like that to happen,
you'd have people showing up at the schools,

364
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people showing up at the churches,
people practically showing up on the street

365
00:27:48,920 --> 00:27:55,160
corner offering assistance, offering help.
That wasn't something that that was available then.

366
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So these folks just were encouraged to
kind of go on with their grief

367
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and just deal with things and kind
of plowed through life that way. That

368
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was one of the patterns that emerged
from some of the interviews. Yeah,

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00:28:07,799 --> 00:28:15,240
that's that's something that we're so used
to all the services and all the help

370
00:28:15,319 --> 00:28:18,920
that is available now when nothing was
like that, nothing like that was available

371
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then, you know. I actually, as a kid, I didn't watch

372
00:28:22,720 --> 00:28:26,119
the news much and I did not
was not aware when the bridge collapsed.

373
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I was aware when that first mockman
sighting took off, chasing the scarberries and

374
00:28:30,519 --> 00:28:34,480
the mallets that hit the wire services
all over the world, but I did

375
00:28:34,519 --> 00:28:37,960
not. I was not aware of
the bridge collapsing. I'm sure if I

376
00:28:38,000 --> 00:28:41,079
had watched any of the network news
programs, I would have seen it.

377
00:28:42,200 --> 00:28:45,759
Let me do my quick station break
here. You are listening to the High

378
00:28:45,799 --> 00:28:51,480
Strangers Factor a coffee right another paranormal
UK radio network. I am Steve Ward

379
00:28:51,519 --> 00:28:55,920
and tonight I am talking to Bill
and Jackie Kuslus about their book Bridging the

380
00:28:55,960 --> 00:29:00,960
Tragedy Silver Linings in the Mysterious Ohio
Valley. For me, you know,

381
00:29:00,960 --> 00:29:06,960
of course, I had read the
Mothman prophecies and Keel has the chapter on

382
00:29:07,000 --> 00:29:12,039
the bridge collapse. It didn't really
hit me until it didn't hit me in

383
00:29:12,079 --> 00:29:17,359
seventy seven when I was just there
briefly. But the first festival I went

384
00:29:17,400 --> 00:29:22,160
to in two thousand and six,
you know, meeting the people and really

385
00:29:22,319 --> 00:29:26,559
getting a look at the town,
and then rereading the Mothman prophecies, that

386
00:29:26,680 --> 00:29:33,640
started to bring it home again.
And then in twenty seventeen I went to

387
00:29:33,680 --> 00:29:37,440
the fifty year remembrance ceremony. Of
course Carolyn was no longer with us.

388
00:29:38,559 --> 00:29:44,240
They read the names of the forty
six people that died and had some speakers

389
00:29:44,279 --> 00:29:49,400
there talking about how everything changed with
the bridge inspections and so forth after this

390
00:29:49,480 --> 00:29:55,200
tragedy. But the next day I
met a man named Bill Edmondson who was

391
00:29:55,279 --> 00:30:00,279
a driving a semi across the bridge
that night, and he went when in

392
00:30:00,319 --> 00:30:03,200
the water. His partner was in
the sleeper cab never made it out.

393
00:30:03,920 --> 00:30:10,000
Bill came to the surface and Uh
and a tugboat captain pulled him up out

394
00:30:10,039 --> 00:30:15,680
of the water. Um, you
know that's those those things have all brought

395
00:30:15,680 --> 00:30:19,680
it really close. And now that
I live here in Point Pleasant, just

396
00:30:19,880 --> 00:30:23,279
uh. When I when I work
at the Mothman Museum, I tell people

397
00:30:23,279 --> 00:30:26,279
that if they walk a couple blocks
up the street, you're going to see

398
00:30:26,279 --> 00:30:30,359
the Bridge Memorial where they have this
beautiful mural on the flood wall the way

399
00:30:30,400 --> 00:30:34,160
the bridge used to look going from
Sixth Street over to Ohio, And it

400
00:30:34,160 --> 00:30:37,880
has the forty six names of the
people that died embedded on the sidewalk with

401
00:30:37,920 --> 00:30:44,920
the with the mural so and and
then then the next stage in reading your

402
00:30:44,920 --> 00:30:49,359
book, it brought even a step
closer. So uh, I can't recommend

403
00:30:49,440 --> 00:30:55,880
this book enough, especially if you
have any interest or ties to the the

404
00:30:56,200 --> 00:31:03,680
Mothman legend, the Point Pleasant or
West Virginia. What are the things?

405
00:31:03,640 --> 00:31:08,240
What are you? What are the
things did you want to accomplish while you're

406
00:31:08,240 --> 00:31:14,960
writing the book? Well, I
think the main thing as we were developing

407
00:31:15,480 --> 00:31:18,920
the book and coming up with a
narrative once we had the interviews and then

408
00:31:18,960 --> 00:31:25,599
really sympathized all that information to come
up with the growth. You know,

409
00:31:25,599 --> 00:31:30,720
the post traumatic growth that was illustrated
by the participants in the study and for

410
00:31:30,759 --> 00:31:34,680
the community they're in Point Pleasant in
Gallipolice, Ohio, right across the river.

411
00:31:36,400 --> 00:31:41,200
Was really to kind of lay out
a blueprint to show how a community

412
00:31:41,359 --> 00:31:45,559
can not only just rebound and come
back to maybe some sense of normalcy,

413
00:31:45,720 --> 00:31:51,720
or how people individuals can rebound after
trauma and come back to some sense of

414
00:31:51,759 --> 00:31:56,000
normalcy, but even to thrive.
I mean, because now the community of

415
00:31:56,079 --> 00:32:00,960
Point Pleasant is at the point that
it's it's thriving, and a lot of

416
00:32:00,000 --> 00:32:06,599
this is really because of the Mothman. And even during the interview process when

417
00:32:06,599 --> 00:32:09,519
we were talking to Susan Sayer,
we kind of came up with the idea

418
00:32:09,680 --> 00:32:14,519
that Mothman kind of saved the town, which is really kind of a neat

419
00:32:14,599 --> 00:32:17,720
thing too, because if you reframe
that, obviously, the legend of Mothman

420
00:32:19,640 --> 00:32:23,720
was this black winged entity with all
this paranormal trappings and trimmings that came with

421
00:32:23,759 --> 00:32:28,160
it, with the UFOs, the
men in black, the cattle mutilations,

422
00:32:28,200 --> 00:32:30,799
etc. Etc. And then we
have the bridge disaster with the bridge going

423
00:32:30,839 --> 00:32:37,720
down. Now with Mothman and Jeff
and Carolyn's efforts along with Denny to be

424
00:32:37,759 --> 00:32:43,039
able to bring the community back and
really grow it up with business after business

425
00:32:43,039 --> 00:32:46,359
after business that is coming up now
because of the promotion by Jeff and Denny

426
00:32:46,440 --> 00:32:52,880
and Carolyn of the Mothman legend.
Mothman has literally saved the town and the

427
00:32:52,920 --> 00:32:55,440
community is thriving. And it's just
a wonderful thing to see and to kind

428
00:32:55,440 --> 00:33:01,519
of lay out through the book,
through those stories to display how positive things

429
00:33:01,720 --> 00:33:07,559
can be after a horrible tragedy.
Yeah, and uh and and and Jeff,

430
00:33:07,799 --> 00:33:10,960
the Wansley family has done just an
incredible job. I mean, they've

431
00:33:10,960 --> 00:33:17,400
got what four stories between just it's
their family, uh in downtown so uh

432
00:33:17,400 --> 00:33:21,400
and and I'd have to tell you
it is such a blast working at the

433
00:33:21,960 --> 00:33:24,240
at the Mothman Museum. I'm sort
of the information guy, you know,

434
00:33:24,279 --> 00:33:28,880
since I've been following it since November
of sixty six when I was in junior

435
00:33:28,960 --> 00:33:34,319
high in Michigan. Um and uh
uh it's uh, it's great because you

436
00:33:34,400 --> 00:33:37,359
get into great conversation sometimes uh uh. You know, some people you can

437
00:33:37,359 --> 00:33:45,279
tell aren't that aren't interested. But
it's amazing how how many people have made

438
00:33:45,279 --> 00:33:47,319
it as a destination. You know, there a lot of them. I've

439
00:33:47,359 --> 00:33:52,160
seen a sign on the highway,
but most of them, you know,

440
00:33:52,200 --> 00:33:55,079
it's like been on their bucket list
sometimes for several years. And I just

441
00:33:55,119 --> 00:34:01,079
talked to two young men from Nigeria
that were there last uh Saturday, So

442
00:34:01,720 --> 00:34:07,799
it's just just a blast. And
h I also U take people out to

443
00:34:07,839 --> 00:34:10,960
the the Mothman statue. I mean, people love it when uh you know,

444
00:34:12,000 --> 00:34:14,920
some one of their family members doesn't
have to step out to take the

445
00:34:14,960 --> 00:34:19,239
picture. And of course I showed
them the secret of the Mothman, which

446
00:34:19,239 --> 00:34:22,800
you have to walk around behind the
statue to see. But yes, which

447
00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:29,840
I think his uh, his posterior
is as famous as his front these days.

448
00:34:30,239 --> 00:34:37,440
But so what are you guys coming
down again? Well for the Mothman

449
00:34:37,559 --> 00:34:40,800
Festival for sure. Okay, yeah, we we just confirmed that yesterday.

450
00:34:40,840 --> 00:34:45,440
Actually I treated an email with Jeff
and he said he'd get us, uh,

451
00:34:45,800 --> 00:34:47,760
he'd get us on the speaking bit
again. So oh good good,

452
00:34:47,800 --> 00:34:50,960
we'll be Yeah, we'll be able
to do that, which will be a

453
00:34:50,960 --> 00:34:52,960
lot of fun. We had such
a good time doing that last year.

454
00:34:53,119 --> 00:34:57,199
But I sure would like to get
out there one time before that, even

455
00:34:57,239 --> 00:35:00,719
for just a few days. We
don't have it carved out just yet,

456
00:35:00,880 --> 00:35:02,800
but if we can make that happen, I think that would be really cool.

457
00:35:07,079 --> 00:35:10,280
You're gonna have to come to the
hay right, Yeah, we miss

458
00:35:10,320 --> 00:35:14,880
that last year. Yes, that's
I and you have to come on my

459
00:35:14,920 --> 00:35:16,719
card so I can harass you guys. That'll be fun. Oh, well,

460
00:35:16,719 --> 00:35:21,320
that would be fun. You can
harass me back though. Way,

461
00:35:21,360 --> 00:35:27,559
well, talk for those for those
of us there layment out there talking.

462
00:35:28,000 --> 00:35:30,679
Could you talk a little more about
post traumatic growth and maybe, you know,

463
00:35:30,880 --> 00:35:37,559
give other examples besides just the silver
Brief tragedy so that people really have

464
00:35:37,679 --> 00:35:40,280
a grasp on what you're talking about. You know, It's kind of like

465
00:35:40,320 --> 00:35:44,840
with Mothman, Steve. I'll go
into Mothy mode and be talking about Mothman

466
00:35:44,920 --> 00:35:47,360
to people who I think know what
I know about it, and I start

467
00:35:47,400 --> 00:35:51,719
glazing over. Then I realized that
they don't really know what I'm talking about.

468
00:35:52,000 --> 00:35:55,559
And I've been kind of close to
being dug into post traumatic growth for

469
00:35:55,639 --> 00:35:59,760
several years now, so it means
something to me, But I forget that

470
00:35:59,800 --> 00:36:04,480
it's not necessarily common knowledge. I
think the first thing that pops up when

471
00:36:04,480 --> 00:36:08,199
people hear the term is they think
of post traumatic stress disorder. Right now,

472
00:36:08,440 --> 00:36:14,800
post traumatic growth really isn't the opposite
of post traumatic stress disorder. Post

473
00:36:14,840 --> 00:36:20,800
traumatic growth. It's basically the good
things that we can experience as a result

474
00:36:20,840 --> 00:36:25,960
of going through traumatic incidences. And
the way it was kind of laid out

475
00:36:27,000 --> 00:36:30,719
in some of the psychological books that
I studied were that they were things that

476
00:36:30,760 --> 00:36:37,280
would normally shatter cognitive schemas. What
that means is the way we see the

477
00:36:37,320 --> 00:36:39,119
world, you know, do we
see the world as a safe place?

478
00:36:39,159 --> 00:36:43,719
Do we see it as a positive
place where we're always going to be protected,

479
00:36:43,840 --> 00:36:45,360
you know, and loved by family
and all this kind of thing,

480
00:36:45,440 --> 00:36:50,639
and nothing really super traumatic is going
to happen. Bad things happen, yeah,

481
00:36:50,639 --> 00:36:52,960
but they don't really happen to me, right It's not going to happen

482
00:36:52,960 --> 00:36:57,960
to me. But the way that
post traumatic growth really came about was over

483
00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:01,199
the course of the last twenty three
to thirty years, a couple of a

484
00:37:01,199 --> 00:37:07,880
couple of psychologists from the University of
North Carolina, Tadashi and Calhoun, came

485
00:37:07,000 --> 00:37:12,480
up with this concept of post traumatic
growth, and they utilized it or applied

486
00:37:12,519 --> 00:37:15,719
it in circumstances like let's say,
the tsunami that happened back I think in

487
00:37:15,760 --> 00:37:21,559
two thousand and four, which just
killed hundreds of thousands of people, or

488
00:37:21,800 --> 00:37:27,320
earthquakes that happened that thousands and thousands
of people are killed, or nine to

489
00:37:27,320 --> 00:37:30,519
eleven is a big one. Absolutely, nine to eleven is a big one.

490
00:37:30,760 --> 00:37:35,480
Those are things that you know you
could very easily. They could obviously

491
00:37:35,599 --> 00:37:38,960
end lives, but they could ruin
the lives of families who lost members in

492
00:37:39,000 --> 00:37:44,199
those catastrophes as well. And I'm
not saying that that's a good thing by

493
00:37:44,239 --> 00:37:50,559
any stretch, but sometimes we gain
qualities like resilience, sharing things with others,

494
00:37:50,599 --> 00:37:54,320
a new sense of community from being
in community with other people who maybe

495
00:37:54,360 --> 00:38:00,440
have been through similar circumstances, not
necessarily to commisserate, but to help each

496
00:38:00,480 --> 00:38:05,199
other get a leg up over their
circumstances. Spiritual growth, spiritual development,

497
00:38:05,199 --> 00:38:07,920
well, that was a big one
that we found in our study for the

498
00:38:07,960 --> 00:38:12,760
book. So it's it's the good
stuff that we sometimes don't realize we could

499
00:38:12,800 --> 00:38:19,039
ever accomplish, especially when we're knocked
down so badly by the circumstances that could

500
00:38:19,079 --> 00:38:24,480
really crush us, both literally and
figurably. It's sort of like the Napoleon

501
00:38:24,559 --> 00:38:34,239
Hill stuff turning adversity into something positive
exactly exactly. Uh yeah, it was.

502
00:38:34,559 --> 00:38:38,440
I've read a lot of those those
kinds of books, so it's only

503
00:38:38,599 --> 00:38:43,000
uh yeah, I guess that's you
know, it applies to all kinds of

504
00:38:43,039 --> 00:38:45,599
things, things that we might think
are kind of minor, just you know,

505
00:38:45,679 --> 00:38:49,960
challenges in our everyday life, and
then to some of the big situations

506
00:38:50,000 --> 00:38:54,559
like nine to eleven and so forth. Um So, what are some of

507
00:38:54,559 --> 00:39:01,280
the things that we haven't talked about
that we need to discuss about your book

508
00:39:01,360 --> 00:39:07,639
in case I haven't thought of everything
to ask here. You know just how

509
00:39:08,119 --> 00:39:12,760
rewarding it was to be able to
sit with these people and to talk about

510
00:39:13,320 --> 00:39:16,480
their experiences. I mean, I
can't even tell you. And I can

511
00:39:16,559 --> 00:39:20,199
speak for Jackie as well too.
She could put it just as well as

512
00:39:20,239 --> 00:39:23,360
I could. We were so honored
to sit down with these folks and to

513
00:39:23,800 --> 00:39:28,519
hear their stories. One of the
neatest things that's come out of all of

514
00:39:28,519 --> 00:39:31,000
this is that I think we're in
touch with at least half of the people

515
00:39:31,480 --> 00:39:36,440
who we interviewed for the book.
We talked to on a pretty regular basis.

516
00:39:36,760 --> 00:39:40,280
Linda Lane from Gallipolis, Ohio.
We trade messages with her on Facebook

517
00:39:40,519 --> 00:39:45,480
all the time. In fact,
her sister Linda, and Linda was somebody

518
00:39:45,519 --> 00:39:50,800
who lost her sister in law in
the Bridge disaster and then ended up helping

519
00:39:51,079 --> 00:39:55,039
her family raise those children. Now
we got connected to her sister also,

520
00:39:55,280 --> 00:40:00,360
and her sister put together a story
from her perception of what the Silverbridge disaster

521
00:40:00,559 --> 00:40:05,280
was, what it meant to her, and we're going to utilize that to

522
00:40:05,360 --> 00:40:08,360
do for the second edition of our
book that's going to come out sometime here

523
00:40:08,599 --> 00:40:14,559
later this year. So those are
things that are happening as a result of

524
00:40:14,639 --> 00:40:23,199
just being a part of this.
Do you have any plans to produce a

525
00:40:23,199 --> 00:40:30,199
sequel or to follow up follow up
with some of your interviewers, Well,

526
00:40:30,199 --> 00:40:35,440
we keep in touch with them pretty
regularly in terms of just having conversations with

527
00:40:35,519 --> 00:40:38,519
them. Now. I don't know
that we looked to do any anymore like

528
00:40:38,679 --> 00:40:45,559
expounding upon the original interviews, but
we are looking to do another project that

529
00:40:45,599 --> 00:40:49,760
would have started earlier this year had
I not been injured back in January and

530
00:40:49,840 --> 00:40:53,920
lost a thousand days. But we
had at the end of our presentation for

531
00:40:54,039 --> 00:41:00,519
the at the Mothman Festival, Jackie
had taken the last slide in our PowerPoint

532
00:41:00,559 --> 00:41:06,199
presentation, and she presented options for
what our future studies could look like,

533
00:41:06,280 --> 00:41:09,920
and they're all based around post traumatic
growth and the paranormal And there were a

534
00:41:09,960 --> 00:41:15,199
couple of different instances our ideas that
we had and can you share a little

535
00:41:15,199 --> 00:41:21,880
bit about Oh yeah, definitely,
Yeah, yeah, great. I don't

536
00:41:21,920 --> 00:41:25,760
remember exactly what they were, but
what we have decided on for our next

537
00:41:25,800 --> 00:41:36,880
project is the epidemic of witchcraft in
the US, because there's a real issue

538
00:41:37,239 --> 00:41:42,519
on social media with these kids that
are casting spells and they don't even know

539
00:41:42,519 --> 00:41:45,719
what they're doing and they're causing real
harm to themselves, their families, their

540
00:41:45,719 --> 00:41:52,320
friends. So that's that's one that
we want to do because the dangers of

541
00:41:52,360 --> 00:41:58,679
witchcraft and the way it's being put
out to everybody. I think another one

542
00:41:58,960 --> 00:42:06,760
was sexual abuse and physical abuse and
paranormal activity, the connection between those and

543
00:42:06,840 --> 00:42:13,239
post traumatic growth that a person can
gain from that. What about the abduction

544
00:42:13,280 --> 00:42:17,599
experience, Yes, we have that
also, and we have one more that

545
00:42:17,639 --> 00:42:21,480
we thought of too, but I
can't think what they are. And it's

546
00:42:21,519 --> 00:42:23,760
really weird because I was just working
on our PowerPoint and presentation because we're going

547
00:42:23,800 --> 00:42:30,559
to be doing a presentation at a
library here, and I had them all

548
00:42:30,599 --> 00:42:32,760
listed at the end there was like
four of them and then the one that

549
00:42:32,800 --> 00:42:37,320
we finally decided that we're going to
start on this year, and I can't

550
00:42:37,320 --> 00:42:44,360
remember what they are. Well,
that's okay, remembering too though, that

551
00:42:44,519 --> 00:42:50,639
the abuse and paranormal activity and post
traumatic growth combination, as well as the

552
00:42:51,039 --> 00:42:57,360
witchcraft epidemic and paranormal activity and post
traumatic growth. One thing I do want

553
00:42:57,360 --> 00:43:02,079
to say, Steep about what you
said for about I don't remember what your

554
00:43:02,119 --> 00:43:07,119
question was, but one of the
things when we were at the Mothman Festival

555
00:43:07,159 --> 00:43:09,719
and at our table and I was
pulling people over to the table and I

556
00:43:09,800 --> 00:43:15,719
was telling them that our book is
such a good book, and it's not

557
00:43:15,760 --> 00:43:19,199
because we wrote it, but it's
because we included the interviews in it.

558
00:43:19,960 --> 00:43:23,760
And I think that really makes it
an excellent book. And we've heard from

559
00:43:23,760 --> 00:43:28,199
a lot of people that you know, it's just like like you're sitting there

560
00:43:28,519 --> 00:43:32,880
in the interview with us, by
reading the interviews and you don't want them

561
00:43:32,920 --> 00:43:37,199
to end. I mean, they're
so good and people were just so open

562
00:43:37,280 --> 00:43:44,239
with their feelings and it's opened up
a whole you know, a whole new

563
00:43:44,280 --> 00:43:47,119
area of knowledge for me about what
happened. You know, even though I've

564
00:43:47,360 --> 00:43:52,760
been, you know, following this
sort of thing forever, go ahead,

565
00:43:52,079 --> 00:43:57,320
even though even though you try to
stay impartial and not to attach feeling to

566
00:43:57,360 --> 00:44:00,880
any of it. I cried at
several of the interviews several points because I

567
00:44:00,920 --> 00:44:07,519
was so moved by but how they
were expressing what happened. I mean with

568
00:44:07,679 --> 00:44:10,159
Jimmy, I don't think that he
cried or even had a tear out of

569
00:44:10,159 --> 00:44:16,480
his eye, but I was crying
because his story was just so it just

570
00:44:16,559 --> 00:44:22,960
touched my heart. Well, you
know, you you you try to push

571
00:44:22,000 --> 00:44:27,800
yourself in those situations where you lost
a family member, and what about the

572
00:44:27,840 --> 00:44:32,400
people that they knew the bridge fell? And then in some cases their family

573
00:44:32,440 --> 00:44:36,719
members were all right, but they
got tied up in traffic or something like

574
00:44:36,760 --> 00:44:42,119
that. So they've got this one
or two hours of absolute terror wondering what

575
00:44:42,199 --> 00:44:45,239
happened, and then you know,
in some cases that worked out fine,

576
00:44:45,559 --> 00:44:49,719
and others they just didn't come home. Yeah, I think someone said something.

577
00:44:49,719 --> 00:44:53,039
I don't know if it was Susan
that said something about these people that

578
00:44:53,119 --> 00:44:57,599
weren't even from the area, that
were crossing that bridge to you know,

579
00:44:57,639 --> 00:45:02,079
truck driving or whatever traveling, and
people had to just assume that when they

580
00:45:02,119 --> 00:45:05,920
heard the bridge went down, and
they hadn't heard anything from their family member

581
00:45:05,960 --> 00:45:08,000
that they were on the bridge until
they literally pulled the vehicles out of the

582
00:45:08,000 --> 00:45:13,719
water. They didn't know that was
Linda Lane's sister in law. They didn't

583
00:45:13,800 --> 00:45:16,760
know for sure that she was on
the bridge until her brother. He was

584
00:45:16,960 --> 00:45:21,079
at the river every day. She
said, you couldn't pull them away from

585
00:45:21,079 --> 00:45:23,239
the river until they finally pulled the
car out, and then he knew.

586
00:45:25,000 --> 00:45:29,840
Bill Edmondson, the truck driver,
was from North Carolina. He was on

587
00:45:29,880 --> 00:45:32,760
his way to Detroit to deliver material
to make tires. So he was one

588
00:45:32,760 --> 00:45:37,679
of those people. It wasn't local
at all, but one of the fortunate

589
00:45:37,719 --> 00:45:40,920
ones that got out of the truck
and was pulled out of the water.

590
00:45:42,000 --> 00:45:45,960
There was you know, if people
that don't know, maybe we should describe

591
00:45:46,239 --> 00:45:50,599
what the the what the date was
like, what the you know, was

592
00:45:50,679 --> 00:45:54,159
almost nightfall, Bill Gibbis, a
kind of a rundown of what when the

593
00:45:54,199 --> 00:46:01,119
bridge fell? What was going on? So when the bridge it was five

594
00:46:01,239 --> 00:46:09,639
flow four pm Friday night in the
Christmas season December fifteenth, and the lights

595
00:46:09,679 --> 00:46:15,679
on the bridge both were read.
John Keel talked about them being richelcifren they

596
00:46:15,719 --> 00:46:19,800
had for whatever reason, they weren't
always in sequence with one another. So

597
00:46:19,840 --> 00:46:23,000
the entire bridge filled up, and
it filled up with car after car after

598
00:46:23,079 --> 00:46:30,360
car after sumi. It was jam
packed and the ibar, I believe Ibar

599
00:46:30,519 --> 00:46:37,800
number thirteen had some type of a
manufacturing defect in it, and when it

600
00:46:37,840 --> 00:46:42,440
began to crack, it gave the
ibar broke and the bridge just basically came

601
00:46:42,519 --> 00:46:45,039
down like a series of dominoes.
And the way it was described to us

602
00:46:45,119 --> 00:46:49,440
and one of the interviews, was
that it turned to the left and dumped

603
00:46:49,440 --> 00:46:52,440
half the cars into the river,
turned to the right, did the same

604
00:46:52,480 --> 00:46:55,760
thing with the other half, and
then everything fell from the bridge on top

605
00:46:55,800 --> 00:47:00,760
of those poor victims below, to
which forty six as were lost, and

606
00:47:00,079 --> 00:47:04,960
like you mentioned, only a handful
of them were rescued from the river down

607
00:47:04,960 --> 00:47:12,159
into the icy cold water, where
if people would have survived the collapse in

608
00:47:12,199 --> 00:47:15,280
their vehicles and the bridge falling on
top of them, they would have died

609
00:47:15,280 --> 00:47:20,880
from hypothermia. So for so for
the trucker to be able to survive,

610
00:47:21,199 --> 00:47:27,880
that was a miracle in itself.
Yes, he was forced through the passenger

611
00:47:27,960 --> 00:47:32,239
window right arm first, and the
currents pulled him up. Some debris caught

612
00:47:32,280 --> 00:47:36,199
his pants on the way up,
and part started to pull him back under.

613
00:47:36,440 --> 00:47:40,320
He kicked loose. He hung onto
the material that he was hauling,

614
00:47:40,400 --> 00:47:45,480
was floating on the on the water, and the tugboat captain intercepted his flow

615
00:47:45,519 --> 00:47:50,199
down river and they pulled him up. So and there was a photograph in

616
00:47:50,280 --> 00:47:52,039
the Mothman Museum if he and two
other guys that were pulled out of the

617
00:47:52,039 --> 00:47:55,599
water. They of course, they
got them out. They immediately put heat

618
00:47:55,639 --> 00:48:00,559
on them. And he came he
came down in twenty seven team to pay

619
00:48:00,599 --> 00:48:04,840
his respects to those that had lost
their lives. And you know, it's

620
00:48:06,360 --> 00:48:08,400
I'm sure this is something that you
guys have thought of. You know,

621
00:48:08,440 --> 00:48:14,519
the people that survived, they wonder
why me, Why did I survive this?

622
00:48:14,599 --> 00:48:17,719
And and and so many innocence did
not. Some of the people talked

623
00:48:17,760 --> 00:48:22,159
about that. They said they thought, you know, must be survivor's guilt.

624
00:48:22,159 --> 00:48:24,800
Even though they weren't on the bridge
or near the bridge, they had

625
00:48:25,039 --> 00:48:30,559
crossed the bridge so frequently they wondered, why did it happen, then,

626
00:48:30,920 --> 00:48:36,000
why not when I was on it
and they had they had to deal with

627
00:48:36,079 --> 00:48:43,199
that on top of the funerals at
Christmas time. But Linda Lane talked about

628
00:48:43,280 --> 00:48:46,239
that, and so did Marva Bailey. They both discussed having been over the

629
00:48:46,280 --> 00:48:50,639
bridge, you know, within the
day or two before it collapsed, and

630
00:48:50,719 --> 00:48:53,599
having noticed that there was something wrong. There was something wrong with the bridge,

631
00:48:53,599 --> 00:48:57,039
and one of them said, I
think I think it was Linda.

632
00:48:57,199 --> 00:49:00,199
Linda said this bridge is going to
fall down, and her friend was in

633
00:49:00,239 --> 00:49:01,760
the car with and said, oh, no, it's not. You're crazy,

634
00:49:01,800 --> 00:49:07,760
that's not going to happen. You
know, it's such a major point

635
00:49:07,760 --> 00:49:12,280
in time. When I was working
at electrical wholesale in Jackson, Michigan,

636
00:49:12,639 --> 00:49:16,079
I would often wear one of my
many many Moth band T shirts and a

637
00:49:16,079 --> 00:49:19,599
lot of people, you know,
there was one guy that said, well,

638
00:49:19,639 --> 00:49:22,360
you know, we used to cross
that bridge all the time to see

639
00:49:22,440 --> 00:49:25,320
family. We crossed it two weeks
before it went down. So there's so

640
00:49:25,360 --> 00:49:30,880
many people that don't not didn't just
know the legend, but they you know

641
00:49:30,920 --> 00:49:36,599
that that's just major major event in
time that affected so many people, and

642
00:49:36,719 --> 00:49:39,559
so many people can relate to it
because they crossed that bridge or knew somebody

643
00:49:39,559 --> 00:49:45,000
that did in one time or another. We talked about Denny Bellamy earlier,

644
00:49:45,119 --> 00:49:51,079
and in Denny's interview, he talked
about how his big sister would hold onto

645
00:49:51,159 --> 00:49:54,679
his hand as they were walking across
the Silver Bridge and swing him over the

646
00:49:54,679 --> 00:50:01,559
holes in the bridge so he would
fall into the river. That's just so

647
00:50:01,639 --> 00:50:07,880
scary. And also he was wasn't
he supposed to go shopping and he refused

648
00:50:07,880 --> 00:50:10,199
to come down under the tree,
so they didn't go shopping. And he

649
00:50:10,800 --> 00:50:15,840
may have saved all their lives by
being a belligerent little brat that day.

650
00:50:15,119 --> 00:50:20,320
Yes, and he was such a
fun interview. We we arrived at the

651
00:50:20,679 --> 00:50:24,039
visitors Bureau like an hour before we
started the actual interview, but we were

652
00:50:24,079 --> 00:50:28,719
taping the whole time, so he
just talked and talked and talked for an

653
00:50:28,719 --> 00:50:30,480
hour, and then we interviewed him
for an hour hour and a half and

654
00:50:30,519 --> 00:50:34,079
then we went out to his property
to hung out with him for the rest

655
00:50:34,079 --> 00:50:36,920
of the night. What a fun
guy he is, I mean, but

656
00:50:37,079 --> 00:50:39,800
what a wonderful story telling him.
He is a great story chatler. He

657
00:50:39,840 --> 00:50:44,159
used to talk about how he would
look over to his neighbors, and he'd

658
00:50:44,199 --> 00:50:49,920
see John Keel out there laying back
looking up at the sky looking for UFOs.

659
00:50:49,960 --> 00:50:52,239
I guess yeah, And I think
I think he was the one.

660
00:50:52,760 --> 00:50:58,400
Either he or Jeff said stay away
from that hippie. He referred to John

661
00:50:58,519 --> 00:51:00,079
Keel as being a hippie. Now, he's not one I would associate with

662
00:51:00,159 --> 00:51:04,159
being a hippie. But if you're
from West Virginia and some guy from New

663
00:51:04,199 --> 00:51:07,599
York comes down into your little town, I guess that'd be the first thing

664
00:51:07,639 --> 00:51:09,199
you think. Back in the late
sixties, must be a eight. He

665
00:51:09,320 --> 00:51:13,519
probably had his beard, you know, and so that was probably enough to

666
00:51:13,719 --> 00:51:16,960
put him over the edge. Oh
yeah, there's always that. And uh,

667
00:51:17,320 --> 00:51:27,039
you know the U when you read
the Mothman prophecies. Missus Thomason and

668
00:51:27,159 --> 00:51:30,159
Mary Higher, the Mary Hire the
reporter, friend and colleague of John Keel,

669
00:51:30,679 --> 00:51:35,519
they were both having what turned out
to be prophetic dreams of packages floating

670
00:51:35,559 --> 00:51:42,079
in the water. And you know
they I know Mary Higher, And of

671
00:51:42,119 --> 00:51:45,480
course anybody knows the story, knows
that John Keel was getting all these messages

672
00:51:45,519 --> 00:51:50,719
from people that firmly believed that you
were in contact with some other intelligence another

673
00:51:50,880 --> 00:51:57,159
another story, But everybody was blindsided
cited by what happened. There was this

674
00:51:57,199 --> 00:52:00,800
feeling of oppression that something bad was
going to happen, and there are even

675
00:52:00,840 --> 00:52:05,960
predictions of something called an em effect
or whatever whatever that meant. We never

676
00:52:05,960 --> 00:52:08,079
really knew. But and then,
you know, all of a sudden,

677
00:52:08,320 --> 00:52:14,199
it turned out it was the bridge
that fell. And he'll really blamed himself

678
00:52:14,199 --> 00:52:16,639
for that, thinking that somehow he
should have known because he was getting all

679
00:52:16,679 --> 00:52:22,119
these different prophecies. He was getting
all these messages, messages about Bobby Kennedy

680
00:52:22,199 --> 00:52:28,239
and messages about doctor Martin Luther King
and the pope at the time being having

681
00:52:28,239 --> 00:52:31,000
an assassination attempted. He really kicked
himself for not being able to connect the

682
00:52:31,039 --> 00:52:35,559
dots. But how do you do
that with all the disparate information that he

683
00:52:35,639 --> 00:52:39,519
was receiving coming from these different sources, How do you piece that together and

684
00:52:40,159 --> 00:52:45,920
really be able to predict a bridge
collapsing That really was an icon for almost

685
00:52:45,960 --> 00:52:49,639
forty years right there across the river, right, and people knew that it

686
00:52:49,719 --> 00:52:53,039
was would shake and vibrate, and
but you know, bridges are supposed to

687
00:52:53,119 --> 00:52:55,880
do that, They're supposed to give
way a little bit, right, So

688
00:52:58,960 --> 00:53:02,320
I guess interesting that that lady said
this bridge is going to fall and it

689
00:53:02,360 --> 00:53:07,920
did. Um, let's see,
Well, Jackie, I just had a

690
00:53:07,920 --> 00:53:13,480
great question and it just escaped me. I've got I've got something, Steve,

691
00:53:13,519 --> 00:53:16,199
I'd like that. Yeah, you
were asking earlier about some of the

692
00:53:16,239 --> 00:53:21,599
things that surprised us from the study. Yeah, And I think probably the

693
00:53:22,199 --> 00:53:28,440
really the most profound, I think
statement that we received was well, there

694
00:53:28,440 --> 00:53:32,800
were a lot, but in the
line of questioning with Linda Lane when we

695
00:53:32,800 --> 00:53:37,599
were talking to her, Linda was
kind of guarded. When we first met

696
00:53:37,639 --> 00:53:40,079
with her, she was nice,
but you could tell she was a little

697
00:53:40,119 --> 00:53:44,639
nervous. Didn't want to have video
on. She was okay with audio,

698
00:53:44,800 --> 00:53:49,719
that was fine. But as we
went through the sequence of the questions and

699
00:53:49,840 --> 00:53:52,679
she was sharing with us what her
experience was like. She she talked about

700
00:53:52,679 --> 00:53:58,159
getting off work at five o'clock and
coming up to go across the bridge and

701
00:53:58,280 --> 00:54:01,360
the bridge was gone. And so
I just kind of recapped for her what

702
00:54:01,519 --> 00:54:07,000
I heard during the interview. And
I wasn't the one doing the questions with

703
00:54:07,039 --> 00:54:09,039
her, so I was just kind
of sitting back listening and I said,

704
00:54:09,079 --> 00:54:14,280
you know, I'm going to put
myself in your position, and what I

705
00:54:14,480 --> 00:54:20,639
basically collected, if I could reframe
that into my own context, is I'm

706
00:54:20,679 --> 00:54:24,840
eighteen years old, I just got
off work. It's Friday night. I'm

707
00:54:24,840 --> 00:54:29,679
going to go across the river,
and I'm going to go do what eighteen

708
00:54:29,760 --> 00:54:32,519
year olds do on Friday nights.
And as I approached the river, the

709
00:54:32,559 --> 00:54:37,679
bridge, it's not there. I
mean, it's just not there. And

710
00:54:37,719 --> 00:54:45,679
then slowly reality starts catching up,
my mind starts wrapping itself around what's really

711
00:54:45,679 --> 00:54:47,679
going on? And she said,
you know now that you put it that

712
00:54:47,760 --> 00:54:52,239
way, and this was nothing,
Steve. She didn't allude to this at

713
00:54:52,280 --> 00:54:58,440
all in the regular line of questioning, but she said, now that you

714
00:54:58,519 --> 00:55:05,079
mentioned it, I was at my
mom's house and it was one of those

715
00:55:05,119 --> 00:55:07,440
things. It was weird. She
said, you know how they would say

716
00:55:07,440 --> 00:55:12,079
on TV shows, Well, where
am I? She said, I kind

717
00:55:12,119 --> 00:55:16,159
of woke up in my sister's bed
or somebody else's bed at mom's house,

718
00:55:16,840 --> 00:55:21,559
and I said where am I?
Because I had fainted. I didn't know

719
00:55:21,599 --> 00:55:25,719
that I fainted, so they rushed
me to the hospital and I flatlined,

720
00:55:27,440 --> 00:55:30,719
and two or three times between their
house and down the street, she lost

721
00:55:30,719 --> 00:55:36,079
her pulse. Because she was in
such a state of shock because they had

722
00:55:36,119 --> 00:55:39,920
just lost her sister in law.
She was processing all this information. She

723
00:55:40,000 --> 00:55:45,440
was totally overloaded, and she had
buried those memories. And it wasn't until

724
00:55:45,480 --> 00:55:49,719
we went through the sequence of questions
and then we did that recap that she

725
00:55:49,920 --> 00:55:52,920
was conscious of the fact that she'd
actually died a couple of times at eighteen

726
00:55:53,000 --> 00:55:57,559
years old because of the Silver Bridge
disaster. Now, obviously she came back

727
00:55:57,559 --> 00:56:00,280
from that. She's in her seventies
now, but holy cow, that was

728
00:56:00,880 --> 00:56:05,199
I get shows just talking about it
now, because it was just amazing that

729
00:56:05,199 --> 00:56:07,719
that came out the way that it
did. Those memories had submerged so deeply

730
00:56:07,760 --> 00:56:14,079
into her subconscious Yeah, that's that's
an astounding that. Uh, you know,

731
00:56:14,119 --> 00:56:17,960
we think of people having a shock
and fainting, but to actually flatline

732
00:56:19,079 --> 00:56:22,159
as a result of something like that
is remarkable. As a kid, Yeah,

733
00:56:22,679 --> 00:56:30,639
years old, I'm gonna I'm gonna
ask you guys ah an out there

734
00:56:30,719 --> 00:56:37,480
questions. It's unanswerable, But have
you I mean, we've all heard the

735
00:56:37,719 --> 00:56:43,440
stuff about the moth Man possibly being
a harbinger or causing the disaster or just

736
00:56:43,800 --> 00:56:46,760
you know, coinciding with all the
other stuff. Have you did you have

737
00:56:46,840 --> 00:56:54,079
any more insight into the high strangeness
aspects that went on that year after doing

738
00:56:54,079 --> 00:57:01,239
this study. I don't think so. Okay, I don't think so either.

739
00:57:01,760 --> 00:57:07,239
The only the only thing that really
um when we talked about it,

740
00:57:07,360 --> 00:57:10,159
I think, was Susan. I
think Bell already said this when we talked

741
00:57:10,360 --> 00:57:15,559
with Susan about you know, people
saying that people saw Mothman on the bridge

742
00:57:15,679 --> 00:57:20,199
right before it went down, and
um, it wasn't seen again and Mothman

743
00:57:20,320 --> 00:57:24,840
was responsible and all that. Um, we said that maybe Mothman really did

744
00:57:24,880 --> 00:57:30,159
save Point Pleasant because he caused all
of the activity, or was around for

745
00:57:30,199 --> 00:57:34,360
thirteen months before the bridge went down. And if it wouldn't hadn't been for

746
00:57:34,360 --> 00:57:37,280
that, Jeff never would have had
all of the articles and stuff to open

747
00:57:37,320 --> 00:57:43,840
the Mothman Museum. But um,
other other than that, no, Okay,

748
00:57:44,039 --> 00:57:45,159
I know it was. It was
one of those out there questions.

749
00:57:45,199 --> 00:57:49,840
I don't I didn't feel that way
either. I mean, I still don't

750
00:57:49,840 --> 00:57:52,440
know what it was exactly. I
think the the you know, John Keel,

751
00:57:52,519 --> 00:57:57,760
with some of his ideas, has
gotten the closest to try and explain

752
00:57:57,800 --> 00:58:01,480
some of that. But we've we've
talked about that before. So where can

753
00:58:01,519 --> 00:58:07,280
they get your book at the Mothman
Museum. You just stole my line,

754
00:58:07,320 --> 00:58:10,719
but that's okay. I'm sorry.
I thought you're gonna say, well,

755
00:58:10,760 --> 00:58:15,559
Amazon, and I was gonna say
and the Mothman Museum. Yeah, definitely

756
00:58:15,599 --> 00:58:21,440
Amazon. Also, yeah, well
it's it's on Amazon, Steve. It's

757
00:58:21,440 --> 00:58:28,159
been up now since right before the
festival last year. It's bridging the Tragedy

758
00:58:28,280 --> 00:58:35,719
Silver Linings in the Mysterias Ohio River
Valley and again at the Mothman Museum it's

759
00:58:35,719 --> 00:58:37,360
there as well too. And I
gotta tell you, we just had a

760
00:58:37,360 --> 00:58:42,280
conversation with a name that I think
we'll ring true with you, a gentleman

761
00:58:42,280 --> 00:58:46,320
by the name of Michael Hacker.
Oh yeah. He is an audiobook narrator.

762
00:58:46,360 --> 00:58:52,519
Extraordinary, dude is awesome, and
he is going to do the narration

763
00:58:52,679 --> 00:58:57,039
for the audio version of our book, and we expect that to be out

764
00:58:57,400 --> 00:59:01,159
this summer. I do want to
say if anyone does not have Amazon,

765
00:59:01,719 --> 00:59:07,239
have an Amazon account, and or
doesn't want to shop Amazon and can't make

766
00:59:07,239 --> 00:59:12,960
it to the museum, we have
a Facebook page Phenomenology research Professionals, and

767
00:59:13,000 --> 00:59:15,679
if anyone contacts us through that page. We have copies that we can make

768
00:59:15,719 --> 00:59:21,719
sure to get to them. Well, guys, I really appreciate you being

769
00:59:21,760 --> 00:59:23,880
on tonight. I can't say enough
good things about the book. I think

770
00:59:23,920 --> 00:59:29,519
it will as I said before,
I think it will appeal to far more

771
00:59:29,559 --> 00:59:36,000
people than people like us that are
so interested and invested into the whole point

772
00:59:36,039 --> 00:59:42,480
pleasant Mothman phenomena. And uh,
it's as Jackie was saying, Uh,

773
00:59:42,800 --> 00:59:50,960
the interviews are just are really are
riveting. They're just fascinating. And you

774
00:59:51,000 --> 00:59:52,960
know, I kept when I was
turning the pages, I kept hoping there'd

775
00:59:52,960 --> 00:59:57,760
be another page full of the of
the interview that. You know. It

776
00:59:57,840 --> 01:00:00,840
wasn't like, oh God, another
interview. You know. It was just

777
01:00:00,320 --> 01:00:05,400
it just so well done and uh
and and well organized. And it's it's

778
01:00:05,440 --> 01:00:09,239
it's really it's a even though it
deals with tragedy, this is a very

779
01:00:09,280 --> 01:00:14,480
positive book. I mean, it's
it's uh, it gives you, you

780
01:00:14,519 --> 01:00:17,480
know, there's times when you want
to cry, but overall it gives you

781
01:00:17,559 --> 01:00:22,199
a just a good feeling of I
don't know, triumph, a survival of

782
01:00:22,239 --> 01:00:27,639
the human spirit. Uh. It's
just a great book. Thank you,

783
01:00:27,719 --> 01:00:32,639
Steve It Okay, I'm going to
close out the show again. Thank you

784
01:00:32,679 --> 01:00:37,480
Bill and Jackie Kuslas and check out
Amazon and if you come into the Mothman

785
01:00:37,599 --> 01:00:40,599
Museum to buy it, come and
see me and I and say hi.

786
01:00:42,320 --> 01:00:45,760
The High Strangers Factor. It was
created by Steve Ward and Andy Mercer and

787
01:00:45,960 --> 01:00:50,400
is copyrighted by the Paranormal UK Radio
Network. I want to thank our fearless

788
01:00:50,480 --> 01:00:53,519
leaders here at the network, the
Three Musketeers, Iron Ellen, block Mark

789
01:00:53,599 --> 01:00:58,800
Johnson, Andy Mercer, and he
also gets credit not only for hosting the

790
01:00:58,840 --> 01:01:04,639
show but produced also. You can
also hear me weekly on Macmaloney's Military X

791
01:01:04,679 --> 01:01:08,840
Files as a correspondent on the same
and other platforms. And I am Steve

792
01:01:08,880 --> 01:01:13,800
Ward. You're a humble host here
at on the High Strangeness Factor, a

793
01:01:13,960 --> 01:01:19,159
displaced Michigander deep in the Ohio Valley, inches from downtown Point Pleasant, West

794
01:01:19,239 --> 01:01:22,440
Virginia, living on the same road
that Mothman used to chase cars in a

795
01:01:22,480 --> 01:01:28,800
few streets from where the original Silver
Bridge once stood. Thank you all for

796
01:01:28,920 --> 01:01:32,199
listening. I will see you all
again in a fortnight. Take care,