Point Pleasant's most famous resident is about to start showing up on envelopes all across the country.
The U.S. Postal Service has announced that Mothman will be one of five creatures featured in a new Mythical Creatures set of Forever stamps planned for 2027. The announcement came as part of the Postal Service's early look at next year's stamp lineup.
Mothman shares the set with four other legends from around the country: the Jackalope of Wyoming, the weeping Squonk of old Pennsylvania lumber-camp lore, Sasquatch of the Pacific Northwest, and Champ, the lake monster of Lake Champlain in New York and Vermont.
In its description of the stamps, the Postal Service calls Mothman a flying, red-eyed, human-size being first reported in 1966, and notes that it emerged more recently than any other creature in the set. The legend took hold after a gravedigger reported a winged figure overhead, and a few nights later two couples on a late-night drive outside Point Pleasant said something chased them from the sky as they raced back to town. Newspapers gave it the name that stuck.
The Postal Service also gave a nod to how West Virginians have embraced the legend, pointing out that people at festivals in Mothman's home state often wear "spooky-cute" costumes to honor the cryptid. Anyone who has walked Main Street in Point Pleasant during the Mothman Festival knows exactly what they mean.
According to the Postal Service, the artwork was drawn digitally by artist Nat Power in bold black lines and bright colors inspired by her tattoo-design work, and USPS art director Antonio Alcalá designed the stamps. The five creatures will come together on a pane of 20 stamps. It is Power's first stamp project for the Postal Service.
Other 2027 stamps announced include tributes to baseball great Willie Mays and Tennessee women's basketball coach Pat Summitt, a Year of the Goat stamp, Unicorns, Halloween, and a Cure Childhood Cancers stamp that will raise money for research.
The Postal Service says the designs are preliminary and could change, and a release date and first-day-of-issue location for the Mythical Creatures set have not been announced yet. So for now, there is no word on whether Point Pleasant will get to host the big day, but plenty of folks in Mason County would surely roll out the welcome mat.
Either way, sixty years after those first sightings, the winged legend of the Mountain State is headed for mailboxes from coast to coast.