The Flatwoods Monster

1952 was a big year for UFO reports, including the Washington, D.C. flap in July. Flatwoods sits in Braxton County, West Virginia, about 5 miles from the county seat of Sutton.

Friday, September 12, 1952. About 7:15 p.m. Brothers Edward and Fred May and their friend Tommy Hyer were playing on the Flatwoods Elementary School grounds. A bright object crossed the sky. It seemed to come down on G. Bailey Fisher's farm.

The boys ran to the May house. Kathleen May, the brothers' mother, led a group up the hill. Local boys Neil Nunley and Ronnie Shaver came along. So did 17-year-old National Guardsman Eugene "Gene" Lemon, and the family dog. Near the top they saw a red pulsating light. Then they walked into a foul-smelling mist.

Lemon had a flashlight. "I turned the flashlight on and the thing lit up from the inside." It stood about 10 feet tall. A round, blood-red face sat inside a large, pointed, hood-like shape. The head resembled the ace of spades. Its eyes shone straight out. The body was dark or green, with clothing-like folds, and small claw-like hands extended in front of it. It hissed. Then it glided toward the group.

Lemon screamed and dropped his flashlight. Everyone ran. "It looked worse than Frankenstein," Kathleen May said. "It couldn't have been human."

Mrs. May called Sheriff Robert Carr and A. Lee Stewart Jr. of the Braxton Democrat. The sheriff and a deputy saw, heard and smelled nothing. Stewart went back the next morning. He found two tracks that "looked like skid marks, about a foot wide, a car length apart, and about ten yards long." Several witnesses suffered throat irritation, vomiting and nausea that persisted for days. The story was carried throughout the country. Wire services rated it the No. 11 story of the year. On September 19, Kathleen May appeared live on the CBS show We the People. A staff artist drew the creature from her description.

Ivan T. Sanderson arrived on September 19 for the North American Newspaper Alliance. He found crushed grass and a flattened circle about 15 feet across, but no skid marks. He also noted three plane beacons visible from the hilltop. Gray Barker, a theatre booker from Clarksburg, wired Fate magazine. The reply: "STORY PROBABLY HOAX BUT INVESTIGATE RIGOROUSLY." He did, with a tape recorder. Both men concluded the witnesses had experienced something real. A local boy, Max Lockard, admitted he had driven his truck around the site "hoping to see something." The Project Blue Book file runs two pages. Its conclusion was a meteor.

In 2000, Joe Nickell set out the sceptical case. The bright light was a meteor, seen in Maryland, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The pulsing red light was an aircraft beacon. The creature was a startled barn owl on a tree limb. Leaves below it made the skirt. Its talons, gripping the branch, made the claws. Fear shaped the rest. Donald Keyhoe had suggested an owl back in 1953. In 2004, Frank Feschino argued the opposite. To him the object was a crashed craft, and the monster a mechanical suit.

Years later, Fred May put it simply. "It doesn't matter to me whether people believe, or don't believe." Braxton County has embraced its visitor, with a museum in Sutton, five 10-foot wooden monster chairs and an annual convention. The creature has since appeared in Fallout 76, History's Project Blue Book and the anime Dan Da Dan.