WHEELING — Students in seventh and eighth grades at Wheeling Middle School are leaving today on a quest to learn more about West Virginia’s mythical “Mothman” in person.

The school applied for and received a grant from the West Virginia Department of Tourism to help fund a student trip to Point Pleasant, the Mothman Museum and other locations.

The school was approved for a $3,000 grant last month, and students went to community donors and raised an additional $3,500.

The grant offers financial support to encourage state tourism — especially trips that involve culinary opportunities.

A total of 110 students and 19 chaperones will be boarding buses at 8 a.m. Monday to venture to the land of the Mothman. In addition to the museum, they will make stops at Riverfront Park Mural and visit Tue-Endie-Wei State Park.

Then there will be a lunch and learn session at the Village Pizza Inn in Point Pleasant, where employees will talk about the operations of a culinary business in a tourist town. They will also get to participate in making root beer there.

Reading teacher Trish Cronin incorporates a “Myths, Legends, and Cryptids” unit into her lessons. Her teaching involves articles about urban legends including Bigfoot, the Kraken and West Virginia’s own Mothman.

She applied for the grant with the hope of taking WMS students to see Point Pleasant in person.

Wheeling Middle School was one of 123 applicants, and one of nine schools to receive the grant.

But Cronin initially thought the school had been rejected for the award when she checked with the Department of Tourism and learned winners had already been notified.

Disappointed, she and her students decided they would go to the community to raise money for the trip. They created letters seeking funding that day to take to local businesses.

The next day Cronin received a letter from the Ohio County Board of Education congratulating her on getting the grant. State officials had sent notification of the grant to the board and not the school.

But that actually worked to the students’ benefit, as they also learned the trip was going to cost far more than the $3,000, Cronin explained.

Students raised an additional $3,500 for the trip, resulting in a total of $6,500 for the experience. Three buses will be used to make the trip.

Cronin thanked Stephen Turbanic and Morgan Bayes at Wheeling Park High School, whose students pressed more than 130 sweatshirts “so our students had a memorable takeaway from the experience.”

“(Wheeling Middle Principal Rich) McCardle also deserves a huge shoutout for embracing the idea and helping us put a huge trip together,” she added.