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Thousand YesteryearsA Thousand Yesteryears is a crime thriller, set in 1982. A young woman named Eve Parrish returns to her hometown of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Eve, and everyone in the town, are still haunted by the tragic collapse of the Silver Bridge 15 years before. Eve’s father and her best friend Maggie Flynn were among the victims of the collapse.

Eve is in town to deal with the estate of her recently-deceased Aunt Rosie, which includes selling the family hotel. She reunites with Caden Flynn, her girlhood crush and Maggie’s older brother, who is still haunted by survivor’s guilt that he lived through the bridge collapse when his sister did not.

Eve begins settling in town and reconnecting with old acquaintances, including Katie Lynch, a friend and confidant of her late aunt. Katie is also haunted by a lost sibling–her sister Wendy, who disappeared shortly before the bridge disaster.

Soon, strange things begin happening to Eve. Her late aunt’s home is vandalized, and soon she is plagued by threatening notes and mysterious phone calls. Caden and his brother Ryan grow fearful for Eve’s safety.

As the disturbing events escalate, the four begin to uncover strands of the past that all lead back to that horrific night in 1967 when their lives–and the whole town of Point Pleasant–were changed irrevocably.

It’s a fascinating blend of literary novel, romance, and thriller. Gradually, the thriller aspect takes over as they put the pieces together, but there are also plenty of atmospheric interludes that tell us about the characters and the strange mood that hangs over Point Pleasant. I especially enjoyed the relationship between Katie and Eve. It starts off sort of on the wrong foot, but then Eve gradually realizes that a lot of what she assumed about Katie from when they were in school isn’t true, and once she accepts that, they start working together. I really liked that.

As I mentioned, this is at least partially a crime novel, and the crimes in question are truly horrific ones. Readers should go in expecting to deal with dark subject matter. It’s actually much grimmer than the sort of story I normally like to read, but it was so well-written I just had to know where it was going, and it certainly reaches a very satisfying conclusion. I don’t often read gritty crime novels, but this is one I’ll definitely recommend for its well-paced plot, its relatable characters, and most of all its memorable, haunting setting.

Ah, okay… and there’s another reason, too. I wasn’t totally up front with you in describing this book, but most readers probably already guessed from the time and the place that there’s another element to this besides crime and romance. Because if we’re doing word association, I’m betting that for 99 out of 100 people, the words “Point Pleasant” instantly call to mind the word “Mothman.”

The legend of the Mothman is one of the most fascinating stories of modern folklore, in my opinion. For those who don’t know, the story is that, beginning in 1966, a strange winged creature was sighted repeatedly throughout Point Pleasant. Eyewitnesses describe a monstrous thing with red eyes making horrible screeching nosies.

Some people believe it was a monster, wreaking havoc. Others believe it was trying to warn people of impending disaster–specifically, the Silver Bridge disaster. John Keel’s book The Mothman Prophecies links the creature to all sorts of strange phenomena, including UFOs, “Men in Black,” and so on. The story was further popularized by the 2002 film inspired by Keel’s book.

Like the headless Hessian of the Hudson or the witches of New England, the Mothman is intimately tied to the landscape. Anyone who has been to Appalachia recognizes the mysterious and slightly otherworldly quality of the region’s hills and forests. Traveling the Ohio/West Virginia border, you can’t help but feel a sense of eerie wonder. My own opinion is, if the Mothman did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.

Clair clearly did her research on the legend, as the book is filled with references to all the classic concepts of Mothman lore, from the eerie voices on the phone to the eternally ambiguous motivations of the creature. Because, oh yes; to be quite clear–the Mothman is very much a character in this book, portrayed carefully and thoroughly, yet preserving the proper degree of mystery.

If you love the Mothman legend as I do, you have to check this book out. It’s a dark, unsettling visit to that legend-shadowed river town, and the enigmatic being that reputedly haunts its lonely roads at night.

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A couple years ago, I blogged about “The Mothman”–the mysterious creature seen in West Virginia in the 1960s and associated with the collapse of the Silver Bridge.  I also featured the Mothman as a minor element in my book The Start of the Majestic World.  And so I decided I should watch the movie The Mothman Prophecies, starring Richard Gere, as this year’s Halloween horror movie.

“The Mothman Prophecies” poster, via Wikipedia, used under Fair Use.

Gere plays a reporter named John Klein, whose wife gets injured in a car accident. Right before the accident, she sees a vision of a winged creature.  At the hospital, it’s revealed she has a preexisting brain problem that will ultimately lead to her death. Before she dies, she makes sketches of winged creatures that orderlies at first call “angels”, but which Gere sees are far more sinister.

Klein goes for a long drive one night as he despairs over his late wife, and finds himself in West Viriginia, with no memory of getting there.  He goes to a nearby house for help, where he is held at gunpoint by the residents, who insist he has been there at the same time on the past several nights.  He is rescued from the situation by a police officer. (Laura Linney) She tells him that strange things have been happening in the town of Point Pleasant lately, and slowly they begin to get drawn into the mysterious events.

People in the town have been seeing visions similar to those of his late wife.  Soon, people start to get phone calls from a strange buzzing voice, (more shades of Lovecraft’s “Whisperer in Darkness”) identifying itself as “Indred Cold” and foretelling impending disasters.

Eventually,  Klein tracks down a mysterious Professor named Alexander Leek (the late, great Alan Bates) who has encountered these strange events in the past.  He gives Klein some info, implying that they are caused by preternatural creatures whose motivations are completely beyond his comprehension, but he ultimately advises Klein to stay out of it, for the sake of his life and his reason.

I won’t spoil the plot–to the extent that there is one–but I bet you can guess whether Klein follows his advice or not.

This was pretty much the very model of a Lovecraftian, weird tale/cosmic horror/mystery movie.  To quote Lovecraft’s definition:

The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain–a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space.

Yep.  That is this movie.  I’ve complained before about movies over-explaining things, and Mothman Prophecies could never be accused of that.  Everything is weird and mysterious and unexplained.

Also, the atmosphere in the movie is just pitch-perfect.  It was filmed in Pennsylvania, but they captured very well the tired, depressing look of Point Pleasant, West Virginia.  It is a grim, eerie place, and the movie conveys that vibe wonderfully.

This was the film I’ve been asking for all these years: Scary, without being excessively violent.  Spooky and creepy, and never giving away too much about the threat.

So, given that, my verdict must be 5 out of 5, must-see, awesome, A+ movie, right?

Nah, not really.  It was good.  Better than I expected.  But not great.  There was something missing from it that prevented it from being truly great.  And I don’t know what it was.  It actually makes me feel bad, because it is almost as if they made a movie exactly to my specifications, and then I said, “meh, it’s all right.”  I feel like it’s more my fault for not knowing what I wanted.

I think the problem might have been that the weirdness wasn’t tied together adequately.  But that’s very tough to do, especially when you consider that doing so runs the risk of making it all seem too neat, and thus not weird.

It’s a good movie, lacking one unknown element that prevents it from being great.  My recommendation: watch it, figure out what that element is, and then you will know how to make a truly great weird horror movie.

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Have you heard of Mothman?  Legend has it that a winged humanoid was seen flying around Point Pleasant, West Virginia, in the late 1960s.  The sightings are connected with the collapse of the Silver Bridge, with folklore suggesting that the “Mothman”, if not directly responsible, is at least a harbinger of bad luck.

Mothman_statue_in_Point_Pleasant,_West_VirginiaWhat this legend reminded me of was the H.P. Lovecraft story The Whisperer in Darkness, which tells a tale of strange flying creatures in the Vermont hills.  The “Mothman” stories even tell of  buzzing noises and strange animal disappearances just like the events in Lovecraft’s short story.

What’s even more interesting is that, in the first chapter of Whisperer, the initially skeptical narrator writes of the prevalence of these kinds of legends the world over:

“It was of no use to demonstrate… that the Vermont myths differed but little in essence from those universal legends of natural personification which filled the ancient world with fauns and dryads and satyrs… When I brought up this evidence, my opponents turned it against me by claiming that it must imply some actual historicity for the ancient tales; that it must argue the real existence of some queer elder earth-race, driven to hiding after the advent and dominance of mankind, which might very conceivably have survived in reduced numbers to relatively recent times – or even to the present.”

Well, add West Virginia to the list of places that have such legends.  The description was so close to Lovecraft’s flying aliens, the Mi-Go, that it is a bit uncanny.  (Of course, the skeptic in me says that the most obvious explanation is that whoever started the legend had read the story.)

There was also movie made about the Mothman legend about ten years ago, entitled The Mothman Prophecies. I haven’t seen it, but it seems like it plays up the paranormal/conspiratorial nature of the story.