Reality Checking—Alternate Perceptions Magazine, February 2026
Jeff Wamsley working on a new Mothman book
by: Brent Raynes
Brent Raynes on the left and Jeff Wamsley on the right, 2014.
I first met Steve Ward, a former resident of Michigan, back in September 2015 during the annual Mothman Festival in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. He was volunteering with the hayrides at the time in the old legendary TNT area and like myself he had been long intrigued with the writings of journalist John Keel, the author of The Mothman Prophecies. Afterwards we soon engaged in correspondence, I did several interviews with him, and he’s become a popular speaker and podcaster in the field. In fact, not so long ago he moved from Michigan to Point Pleasant.
That’s a true and dedicated Keelian.
“What more have you perhaps learned from Roger Scarberry I wonder?” I recently asked Steve, who works closely with the Mothman Museum staff in Point Pleasant. Roger Scarberry was a major Mothman witness along with three others back on November 15, 1966. I continued, “When I met Linda in May 1976 at her parent's home, she told myself and Ron Schaffner, who later edited a newsletter called The Creature Chronicles, that Roger, back around 1958, in the TNT area, came across one night a creature that was crouched down eating a possum. Then it stood up like a man, was about 4 foot tall, had a large head, and scurried off with its possum. She later, in a phone conversation, mentioned how he once had about three hours of missing time, or some sort of black out. And, by the way, a physicist from Jacksonville, Florida, has been coming up trying to help us identify unusual lights we've been observing in rural Cloverdale, Alabama (he thinks we have plasma-based phenomena). He's originally from West Virginia, and he says that back in the 1960s his father claimed he was hunting in the TNT area and a manlike figure landed briefly in front of him and then flew back up into the sky. He said he always had a kind of hard time fully processing his dad's stories, that included the paranormal, but then insisted, ‘He wasn't crazy.’ I gathered that as a man of science and physics he had a hard time with such stories. But it certainly fit in with what Keel wrote about the ‘Mothman’ witnesses often having paranormal experiences as well.
Steve replied: “Last summer, Roger Scarberry, the man who was actually driving the car that night when The Mothman chased them down Route 62 out of the TNT Area came to Jeff Wamsley and said he was tired of people telling his story and getting it wrong. He gave Jeff a long form interview to set the record straight.
“The day before they actually sat down Jeff asked him (Jeff lived on the same road that Roger and Linda lived on. In fact, Jeff was Linda's paper boy!) - Jeff asked him, Roger - did it really happen? Roger told him - it scared the hell out of me. It scared the hell out of all of us.
“I was fortunate to be in on part of that interview. It will be in Jeff's next book. His first two books were Mothman: The Facts Behind the Legend and Mothman: Behind the Red Eyes. This will present a trilogy.
“He also interviewed Connie Carpenter (mentioned in The Mothman Prophecies) recently and Emil Gibson, who was one of the grave diggers in Clendenin, WV. a few days before the Scarberry/ Mallett sighting.
“We all can't wait for his next book.”
Unfortunately, Steve doesn’t yet have any idea at present when this third book will come out. But hopefully it won’t be too far into the future. It should have some interesting new nuggets of information to offer.
