Two years pass (Hatem sets the story in the present day), and Klein is sent on assignment to interview the Governor of Virginia, who may be about to declare his presidential ambitions. En route to Richmond, the reporter becomes lost and ends up in Point Pleasant, which is 400 miles off course, even if he has only been driving for two hours. Even more disturbing is the fact that the guy on whose door he knocks, Gordon Smallwood (Will Patton), threatens him with a shotgun because, he says, this is the third night in a row Klein has woken him in the middle of the night.

Klein becomes obsessed with understanding what is happening, especially when the local police sergeant (Laura Linney) - who rescues him from Gordon - tells him of some of the strange events and sightings that have occurred in Point Pleasant over the preceding months.

Before long, Klein himself is receiving strange calls from a non-human voice that identifies itself as ‘Indrid Cold’, and discovers more about the ‘mothman’ from former university professor Alexander Leek (a cameo from acclaimed British actor Alan Bates), whose career had been ruined by an earlier brush with the legend.

Will Patton as Gordon Smallwood, who cannot bear the Mothman’s visitations

“Richard Hatem did a fantastic job taking this book and putting it into a movie form,” says Pellington. “By creating the character of John Klein as the pole which all of these events revolve around, he established a hero for the story. This is difficult territory, and it’s easy to veer into melodrama or wackiness. It’s really kind of unbelievable, so you have to go deeper - to a metaphysical, naturally surreal, enigmatic, mysterious emotional place to make it work.”

Obviously Hatem’s screenplay had the same effect on other people, too, given the quality of the cast Lakeshore, the film’s producers, were able to attract to a project which, in different hands, could have become a low-budget TV movie in which a bunch of small-town hicks gradually fall prey to a tall guy in a latex suit.

Laura Linney as Point Pleasant police sergeant Connie Parker, who cannot deny the evidence

Treating Point Pleasant and its real-life inhabitants in a dignified manner was, reckons Linney, crucial to the film - and crucial to her decision to take the part of Connie. “No one in this town is a hick,” she says. “This is a community; all these people grew up together. All the histories are intertwined, so there’s an ease and a respect that they all have. My character is a responsible person - she’s a law enforcement officer and she’s responsible for the town. It’s scary, but she is secure enough in herself that she knows what her own world is. I think she feels like she has control over that. And she does - up to a point.”