Research Blog #8: Main Case

My main case is the Mothman Festival, which has been held every year (except 2020) since 2002 and hosts a plethora of events, activities, and even a guided tour. It follows my theoretical frame from my last blog post as such:

  1. People gained interest in the Mothman in three main movements before the first Festival: the initial news reports that got spread across the nation in 1966-7, the release of John Keel's book The Mothman Prophecies in 1975 which popularized the Mothman, and the buildup towards the movie interpretation of The Mothman Prophecies in 2002
  2. People would visit Point Pleasant because of the Mothman: one of the main ones was John Keel for his investigation, but they're not only plenty of others that either did so privately or tried to investigate and publish/share their findings, but the town also anticipated even more tourists to be inspired from the movie
  3. The Town Provides: Point Pleasant started the annual festival in 2002 to cater to Mothman tourists and have slowly expanded what the festival offers every year, and in 2005 the town furthered this by opening the Mothman Museum
  4. Change of Perspective and Spread of Notoriety: I haven't searched for anything, though I might do so and reference a post or two in my final paper, I imagine people had talked about and posted their thoughts about their experiences with the festival, and the town itself has a website to help spread the festival, but the festival has noted that they see an increase in attendees every year (going from about 2000 in 2002 to around 10-12 thousand in 2019)
  5. Repeat: People have to learn about the festival someway since attendance grows every year, and logically it would be based on the word of mouth travel from former attendees that had a good experience, and I'm willing to bet if I was able to interview attendees at this year's festival in September that many would say they were introduced to it by someone else
In case anyone is curious about my sources used or referenced for the Mothman Festival, I'll link them below in MLA format:
  • Johnson, Erin. "Mothman Festival Returns Sept. 21-22 - The Point Pleasant Register". The Point Pleasant Register, 2021, https://www.mydailyregister.com/news/44780/mothman-festival-returns-sept-21-22.
    • This article contains some basic information about the festival as well as the attendee number estimate referenced
  • "MothmanFestival.com". MOTHMAN Festival, 2021, https://www.mothmanfestival.com/.
  • "Mothmanlives.com". Mothmanlives.Com, 2003, https://web.archive.org/web/20030119034532/http://www.mothmanlives.com/indexMAIN.html.
  • "Mothmanmuseum.com". Mothmanmuseum.Com, 2021, https://www.mothmanmuseum.com/.
    • The previous sources are the websites for the Mothman Festival and Museum, as well as one of the old sites the town used to post information for the festival, more snapshots of the past websites can be found in the link below
    • https://themothman.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Festivals

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