The Flatwoods Monster was a possibly extraterrestrial being allegedly sighted by several witnesses on the night of September 12, 1952. Often linked to the mothman, another West Virginian folkloric character, the creature has since become a claim to fame for the small town of Flatwoods and has since become one of the most well known alleged close encounters of the 20th century.
Overview[]
Eyewitnesses described the creature with varying consistency, but many characteristics were universal. They described it as standing at least ten feet in height, although it also reportedly hovering quite a bit off the ground. The entity's body was green, metallic, and resembled a large conical 'skirt'. Its most notable feature was its head, which was shaped like an ace of spades and filled with a blood-red face dominated by luminous orange eyes. Some witnesses described bony arms with claws, but this detail was not present in other stories. The creature levitated off the ground and seemingly emitted toxic gases and shrill hissing sounds.
The original sighting began when three boys, brothers Edward and Fred May and Tommy Hyer, noticed a bright object streaking across the sky while they were playing in the yard that evening. Seeing that the object seemingly crashed on the property of a nearby farmer, they, along with their neighbor Kathleen May, two other children named Neil Nunley and Ronnie Shaver, and National Guardsman Eugene Lemon, ascended the hill to investigate the crashed object. At the top, the group noticed a bright pulsing red light. When Lemon shined his flashlight at the hill, he briefly illuminated the spade-headed cybernetic entity that began gliding toward them while releasing toxic gases. Terrified by what they were seeing, the group fled and several among them developed breathing problems and extreme nausea over the next few days.
Skeptics have routinely denied the idea that the creature was an extraterrestrial visitor, a hypothesis that they maintain doesn't have sufficient verifiable evidence. No photographs or videos of the creature were taken, and aside from some burn marks found by local authorities at the site of the encounter, no real physical evidence was ever discovered. Many paranormal investigators, such as Joe Nickell of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, have suggested that the glowing object in the sky was a meteorite and the entity itself was a startled barn owl sitting atop a tree branch, with the foliage beneath it creating the 'green skirt' and the red face being due to flashing aircraft beacons.
Sightings[]
At 7:15pm on September 12, 1952, three little boys witnessed a bright object cross the sky. The object came to rest on land belonging to a local farmer. Once they saw the thing land, the boys went to one of their moms' houses, where they reported seeing a UFO crash land in the hills. From there, the boys and a group of locals went to the farm to try to find whatever it was that the boys had seen.
One of the locals' dog ran ahead out of sight and started barking, and moments later ran back to the group with its tail between its legs. After traveling about ¼ of a mile the group reached the top of a hill, where they reportedly saw a large pulsating "ball of fire" about 50 feet away. They also saw (and smelled) a mist that made their eyes and noses burn. A farmer then noticed two small lights over to the left of the object, and directed his flashlight towards them, revealing the creature, which was reported to have emitted a shrill hissing noise before gliding towards them, changing direction and then heading off towards the red light. At this point the group fled in panic.
Upon returning home, the mother contacted the local sheriff and a news reporter. The reporter conducted a number of interviews and returned to the site with the farmer later that night, where he reported that "there was a sickening, burnt, metallic odor still prevailing." The sheriff and his deputy searched the area separately, but found no trace of the encounter.
Early the next morning, the reporter visited the site of the encounter for a second time and discovered two tracks in the mud, as well as traces of a thick black liquid. He immediately reported them as being possible signs of a saucer landing based on the premise that the area had not been subjected to traffic for at least a year. It was later revealed that the tracks were likely to have been those of a Chevrolet pickup truck driven by a local, who had gone to the site to look for the creature some hours prior to Stewert's discovery.
After the event, investigators associated with Civilian Saucer Investigation, obtained a number of accounts from witnesses who claimed to have experienced a similar or related phenomena. These accounts included the story of a mother and her 21 year-old-daughter, who claimed to have encountered a creature with the same appearance and odor a week prior to the September 12 incident; the encounter reportedly affected the daughter so badly that she was confined to a hospital for three weeks. They also gathered a statement from the mother of the local farmer, in which she said that, at the approximate time of the crash, her house had been violently shaken and her radio had cut out for 45 minutes, and a report from the director of the local Board of Education in which he claimed to have seen a flying saucer taking off at 6:30 in the morning of September 13th (the morning after the creature was sighted).
The day after the Flatwoods incident, a couple taking a leisurely drive through the mountains of Frametown, West Virginia, at dusk were met with a similarly horrific experience. Their car came to a sudden stop and refused to start again. Shortly thereafter, a putrid sulfuric odor filled the air. The couple, circling the vehicle in hopes of spotting the culprit, spotted something far worse than they could have imagined. From the waist down it was similar to the Flatwoods Monster, but from the waist up it was a reptilian humanoid. This creature, thought to be the same creature sighted in Flatwoods, is known as the Frametown Monster.