Legend has it that Mothman, a looming, red-eyed monster, appeared above the Ohio River before the Silver Bridge collapsed in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, in 1967.
An image that has previously been associated with that tale is now being repurposed to suggest something sinister about Baltimore’s March 26 Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse March 26.
“Someone shared this photo of a black figure on the bridge before it collapsed,” reads the text above a Facebook post sharing the image of a bridge, with a black shape on one of its apexes highlighted.
(Screenshot from Facebook)
This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
It’s clear from photos of the Key Bridge that the image in the Facebook post is not it.
And it’s been online for years.
A reverse-image search on TinEye found it first appeared online in 2008. Users in other forums, like this Reddit post, recall seeing it on websites even earlier.
A 2016 YouTube video exploring Mothman myths further contends that this photo doesn’t show a cryptid on the Silver Bridge, but a piece of metal falling into the water from the Ironton-Russell Bridge in Ohio.
That bridge, which has since been demolished, does resemble the bridge in the Facebook post’s image.
We rate claims that this image shows a black figure on the Key Bridge before it collapsed False.
