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‘Fallout 76’ video game features former Moundsville Penitentiary

MOUNDSVILLE — A Facebook post circulating over the weekend said West Virginians likely would be among the first to play upcoming Bethesda game “Fallout 76,” if only to see how wrongly it represented their hometowns.

People in Marshall County won’t be the only ones geeking out over the scenery in the ninth installment of the post-apocalyptic franchise. Scheduled for a Nov. 14 release, the launch trailer shown at the E3 Expo last week featured John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” as gameplay footage showed players working together to comb through the ruined remnants of the West Virginia.

Dave Sibray, publisher of WV Explorer — a website focusing on tourism and travel within the Mountain State — said the local lore provided an enticing target for people across the globe. There was an unprecedented spike in searches from western Europe — Germany in particular — and Japan. Since the announcement, Sibray said traffic to his site has increased more than 15 times.

“I’ve never seen anything like this, and I’ve been publishing WV Explorer since 2000,” Sibray said. “We live in a special state that other people maintain a fascination with. However, I’ve never seen numbers like this, and I think there’s something about West Virginia. There’s a mystique about our state that not only caused the developers to find West Virginia a worthy place — gamers from across the world have been interested in it.”

Sibray said hits in the past week have recorded all-time high levels of traffic to the site, particularly in the “dark tourism” aspects: The weird, notorious and supernatural parts of Appalachia.

One screenshot from the game trailer shows a vault dweller fighting the Grafton Monster — a monstrous cryptid vaguely resembling a cross between Bigfoot and a seal — in front of the unmistakable walls of the former West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville.

Whether or not West Virginia’s most famous cryptid, Mothman, will appear in the game has yet to be seen.

Sibray suspects that with the newfound interest, statewide tourism might shift to focus more on West Virginia’s weird and wild side. More people likely will become acquainted with the state’s landmarks in the context of the game and the native wildlife — whether they be radioactive or simply born that way.

“Grafton, because of the Grafton Monster, seems to have been about the one place (of interest) above all else,” Sibray said. “We’ve never seen so much traffic to our pages that regard the Penitentiary, the (Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum) at Weston and all other dark tourism matters. Besides those, we have plenty of info on our most haunted locations. Monsters and folklore are where we’re getting more traffic than ever before.

“The New River Gorge region and the Eastern Panhandle have always attracted national attention; however, I always thought the Ohio Valley region was a West Virginia — Wheeling, Moundsville, on down to Point Pleasant — that had been sort of undiscovered, and that’s what we’re seeing now, gaining more and more interest,” he said.

“I look forward to when people think of the Ohio River as a destination itself.”

In addition to worldwide attention, Sibray said West Virginia is most popular as a destination from Washington, D.C., residents as a scenic escape. However, in the past week, views and traffic had become more uniform across the country, with gamers from each state looking into West Virginia’s assets. For its part, John Denver’s song, recently adopted by the state tourism office as part of its “Always Heaven” initiative to market the state, more than doubled in Google search entries.

Gameplay footage also shows vault dwellers exploring the grounds of the penitentiary itself. They are walking past dilapidated cells visible through grated walkways. General Manager Tom Stiles said the penitentiary was not contacted by Bethesda to assist in reconstructing the interior of the notorious building. Nonetheless, the former prison had been getting increased attention in its off season as a result of the exposure.

“I’m not sure how authentic it’s going to be,” Stiles said.

Regardless, Suzanne Park, executive director of the Marshall County Economic Development Council, was excited to see Moundsville on the map once again. The Penitentiary also recently played home to the Netflix series “Mindhunter,” as well as upcoming Stephen King adaptation “Castle Rock,” to be available on Hulu.

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