Tag: The Flatwoods Monster

Paranormal West Virginia: The Flatwoods Monster

Article by Shayla Klein and Shyla Parsons                                    October 29, 2020                                     (wboy.com)

• Gray Barker is a well-known UFO conspiracy theorist from Braxton County, West Virginia. He got his start as a writer by telling the story of the ‘Flatwoods Monster’ of 1952, which led to his own series of paranormal publications.

• David Houchin maintains the ‘Gray Barker UFO Collection’ at the Clarksburg Library in Clarksburg, West Virginia. In 1952, when Barker was dabbling in film distribution and booking in Clarksburg, he heard or read about the Flatwoods incident. Barker went to Braxton County to interview the people involved with the Flatwoods Monster incident. The Flatwoods encounter was prominently featured in his publication, The Saucerian, and in his book, They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers. Barker was the first to introduce the idea of the government’s “Men in Black”, and “used the Flatwoods incident as his springboard to becoming a more or less respected UFO researcher out on the fringe,” says Houchin.

• When the Flatwoods Monster story emerged in the early 1950’s, it was just after the Roswell UFO crash. The public was eager for tales of space aliens, and the Flatwoods story quickly gained traction. It put Braxton County, West Virginia on the map. Some believed that the whole thing was a made up hoax, or mass hysteria. Houchin says that he actually met the family who were at the center of the incident. They were very adamant about what they saw.

• The story begins on September 12, 1952 in Flatwoods, West Virginia. A local resident, Mrs. May, her sons, their friends, and their dog were outside when they saw a bright light in the sky circle around the hill and crash. They thought it might have been a meteor, and so they all walked up the hill to the crash site. When they got up there, there was a glowing red orb in the ground. The air was filled with acrid-smelling oil and smoke. The dog was terrified.

• As they got closer to the glowing orb, they noticed a figure standing over to the side of them. It was humanoid in shape, nearly 12 feet tall with a head shaped like the ace of spades and wearing a metal suit. Mrs. May and the children ran home, and reported it to the authorities. The US government sent some ‘Men in Black’ to their house to investigate the sighting. They took the each of Mrs. May’s family members’ witness reports – and all were consistent. Mrs. May had gotten some of the acrid oil residue from the ship on her dress that night. They took the dress and never returned it

• Today, the Flatwoods Monster is considered the second most popular monster in West Virginia next to the Mothman. The town of Flatwoods has embraced the folktale, creating a Flatwoods Monster Festival, putting up monster shaped chairs across the city, and installing a Flatwoods Monster Museum in 2018. “We’ve been really surprised as to how many people want to come and visit anything dedicated to the Flatwoods Monster. We have folks coming from all over,” said Andrew Smith, founder of the Flatwoods Monster Museum.

• A video game that features places and things in West Virginia called “Fallout 76”, has renewed interest in the Flatwoods Monster. People visit the museum as part of a “Fallout Tour,” where they visit places featured in the game.

 

 the Mays with an illustration of the monster

FLATWOODS, W.Va. – On September 12 in 1952, a family in Flatwoods said they were visited by an alien spacecraft.

That mysterious night became national–and eventually international–news that put Braxton County, West Virginia on the map.

Jason Burns, a storyteller who specializes in paranormal stories in West Virginia, told the story of what happened that night.

“Mrs. May, her sons, their friends, and a dog were outside playing when they saw this bright light in the sky. They saw it circle around the hill and crash, and they thought it might have been a meteor or something like that, and so they all walked up the hill to where the crash site was, and when they got up there, there was this glowing red orb in the ground. The air was filled with smoke. It was very acrid smelling apparently. Oily kind of air and the dog got close to it and just ran away. The dog was terrified and not wanting anything to do with whatever the ship was or whatever this object was. And as they got closer to it, they noticed that there was a figure over to the side of them,” said Burns.

       Gray Barker

According to legend, the monster was nearly 12 feet tall with a head shaped like the ace of spades. It was glowing reddish

         David Houchin

and green, but some believe that the color of the grass and the ship was reflecting off a metal suit that the alien was wearing.

“When they saw the monster or alien, Mrs. May and the children all ran off to their home, and they reported it to the authorities. Apparently, the US government sent some men—‘men in black’ to their house who investigated the sighting, took down their witness reports–which apparently all of them were the same. Mrs. May got some of the oil on her dress that night from the ship, and they took the dress. They said that they would return it, and they never did,” said Burns.

Conspiracy theories on what the monster was began to pop up as the story gained traction. Some theories suggest that it was just a kid pulling a prank or an owl.

“They tied it in with other stories around the country about the same time,” explained Burns, “This was the age of the space race, so there was a lot of interest in interstellar crafts. This was the time of Roswell. This was the time of Sputnik and things like that that were getting ready to take off, so it was very forefront in people’s minds. So people were thinking maybe it was just mass hysteria,

                        Andrew Smith

maybe it was fake, maybe it was just made up, but I actually have met the Mays at one point years ago. A long time ago, in Flatwoods at one event, and they are very adamant, they saw what they saw. And I believe they believe—you know, I believe them. What they say they saw. Now what it was, I don’t know.”

Gray Barker, a well-known UFO conspiracy theorist from West Virginia, had a part in boosted the national popularity of the monster story by telling the story in several of his publications.

“Barker was from rural Braxton county. He was born on a farm at Riffle, and he was one of the only two kids in his family to get a high school diploma and only one to go on to college. I think he had ambitions to be a writer, but that doesn’t work out for everyone, and in the end he became a writer courtesy of the space brothers and the men in black,” explained David Houchin, the Special Collections Librarian at the Clarksburg Library who maintains the Gray Barker UFO Collection. “In 1952, he was living in Clarksburg, and working in businesses that had to do with film distribution, film booking—that kind of thing, and he heard about the Flatwoods incident. I imagine that he read about it in the newspaper. It was treated pretty confidently as a serious mystery for a short time, and he was familiar with Braxton county and he was fond of the preternatural. The spooky.”

Gray Barker went to Braxton County to interview people who knew about the Flatwoods Monster incident, and the following year, he began his own publication called The Saucerian. The first issue was devoted to the Flatwoods Monster. In 1956, he wrote up the story again in his book “They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers,” which arguably introduced the idea of the “men in black” to alien conspiracy stories and became popular amongst UFO conspiracy theorists across the nation.

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Five Weirdest UFO Sightings Ever Reported

 

Article by Lindsey Evans                           November 20, 2019                          (oddee.com)

• The 1950’s and 1960’s were they heyday of UFO sightings, experiences and abductions. It could be exciting and terrifying at the same time. Here are five weird UFO sightings:

• The Flatwoods Monster 1952 West Virginia – A group of local boys and a woman all witnessed a fireball falling from the sky near Braxton. A highly noxious odor overwhelmed them and they saw a 10-foot tall monster with glowing red eyes and a spade-shaped head floating toward them. Both journalists and scientists investigated the site, but released no formal reports. (see previous ExoArticle here)

• Airmen Disappearance 1953 Lake Superior – A pair of unusual blips appeared on military radar traveling across the sky. Airmen First Lieutenant Felix Moncla and Second Lieutenant Robert L. Wilson were dispatched in their Scorpion jet to investigate. Ground radar watched the two blips come closer to each other as the military jet approached until they were one blip. The radar operators assumed that the Scorpion must have flown over or under it. But the Scorpion had disappeared, and the original phenomena continued on its original flight path. Search and rescue teams couldn’t find any trace of the men or the plane.

• Levelland UFO Case 1957 Levelland, Texas – Over the course of a single night, police in Levelland fielded calls from 15 separate motorists describing similar incidents. In all of them, the individuals vehicle died as they approached a large, egg-shaped object in the road. The egg would take off, and power returned to their car. Some described thunderous noise and extreme heat.

• Betty and Barney Hill Abduction 1961 New Hampshire – The couple observed a UFO descend from space and follow them down an isolated road. Unseen forces stopped their car and four foot tall humanoid creatures led them aboard the spaceship and subjected them to medical examinations. Their memories were wiped, but Betty recalled many of the details during a series of vivid dreams (and hypnosis) later on.

• Snippy the Horse Mutilation 1967 Alamosa, Colorado – Agnes King found the body of Snippy in a field, the head and neck de-fleshed. She picked up a piece of metal from the ground next to the horse’s body with horse’s hair on the implement. It was hot enough to burn her. There was a rumor that the horse’s tracks ended 100 feet from where they found the body.

 

The middle of the last century, before we went to the moon and immediately after, were the real heyday of UFO sightings. There were unexplained phenomena in the world, plus nuclear testing, military testing and no information highway. On the one hand, it must have been exciting to think you were witnessing an unexplained alien event. On the other, truly terrifying to imagine that alone on a dark road, aliens could abduct you to outer space. It was a world before drones, blimps, and missile testing explain can every bizarre phenomenon and strange sighting.

The Flatwoods Monster. 1952. West Virginia. A group of local boys and a woman all witnessed a fireball falling from the sky near Braxton. A highly noxious odor overwhelmed them and they saw a 10-foot tall monster with glowing red eyes and a spade-shaped head coming floating on top of the air as it approached them. Both journalists and scientists investigated the site, but released no formal reports.

Airmen Disappearance. 1953. Lake Superior. The airbase scrambled First Lieutenant Felix Moncla and Second Lieutenant Robert L. Wilson in their Scorpion jet to investigate unusual radar sightings. The phenomena appeared as two blips, that joined to form one blip the closer the airmen got in their jet. Ground control assumed that Moncla flew over or under the other aircraft and would circle around, but the Scorpion had disappeared, and the original phenomena continued on its original flight path. Search and rescue dispatched, but couldn’t find any trace of the men or the plane.

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In 1952, the Flatwoods Monster Terrified 6 Kids, a Mom, and a Dog

by Roy Wenzl                  July 20, 2018                  (history.com)

• At dusk on Sept. 12, 1952, brothers Ed, 13, and Freddie May, 12, had been playing in their schoolyard with their 10-year-old friend Tommy Hyer when they saw a pulsing red light streak across the sky and crash on a nearby farm. The three boys and the Mays boys’ mother, went to check out where the light had landed. A few other boys and a dog showed up too. According to the local newspaper, “Seven Braxton County residents on Saturday reported seeing a 10-foot Frankenstein-like monster (see illustration above) in the hills above Flatwoods,” a central West Virginian mountain town of less than 300 people.

• “A National Guard member, [17-year-old] Gene Lemon, was leading the group when he saw what appeared to be a pair of bright eyes in a tree,” stated a local newspaper account. Lemon screamed and fell backward “when he saw a 10-foot monster with a blood-red body and a green face that seemed to glow.” The story got picked up by national radio and big papers all over the country. Mrs. May and Gene Lemon ended up going to New York to talk to CBS television news.

• Local newspaper publisher A. Lee Stewart said, “Those people were the most scared people I’ve ever seen.” State police laughed off the reports as hysteria,” It was the era of Cold War anxieties. LIFE magazine had recently published a story about flying saucers. The Korean War was raging and Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Minnesota had been stoking fear of communism in every corner of the nation.

• People across the nation were “seduced by the story,” said behavioral psychologist Clay Routledge who has studied brain science, UFO beliefs and culture. “There’s the hope that we are not just insignificant organisms walking around aimlessly on a rock floating in space,” says Routledge, “There’s the hope that we’re part of something bigger.”

• The U.S. Air Force sent investigators. They concluded that a meteor had streaked across the eastern sky. And that the ‘monster’ was likely an owl. But that didn’t stop the townspeople from promoting the incident with merchandise, a museum, and a highway sign that reads, “Home of the Green Monster.”

• Freddie and Ed May are in their late 70s now, and still stand by their story. “As far as for myself,” Freddie says, “It doesn’t matter to me whether people believe, or don’t believe.”

 

The Flatwoods Monster has not hissed at boys in the little village of Flatwoods, West Virginia, since Sept. 12, 1952.

People grin about it now—and take Monster souvenir money, from hundreds of Monster tourists every week. But it scared people plenty back then, including the eyewitnesses: six boys aged 10 to 17, a dog and a Mom.

“One of the boys peed his pants,” said John Gibson, a high-school freshman at the time, who knew them all. “Their dog (Rickie) ran with his tail between his legs.”

The encounter made the local and national news, scaring a wider swath of people.

Then it prompted a U.S. Air Force UFO inquiry, part of a project called Project Blue Book that dispatched a handful of investigators around the country to look into such claims.

It also became a local legend, a Southern spook story that defined the tiny village of less than 300 people for more than six decades. To this day, tourists come out of their way to Flatwoods—secluded in the low, timbered Appalachian hills of central West Virginia—to visit its monster museum and buy Green Monster tchotchkes and T-shirts.

What they witnessed

It was dusk when they saw it. The May brothers Ed, 13, and Freddie, 12, had been playing in their schoolyard with their 10-year-old friend Tommy Hyer. After noticing a pulsing red light streak across the sky and crash on a nearby farm, the three youngsters ran to grab the Mays boys’ mother, then high-tailed it up that hill to check out where the light had landed. A few other boys, one with a dog, showed up too.

They ran back down—in sheer and credible terror.

“Seven Braxton County residents on Saturday reported seeing a 10-foot Frankenstein-like monster in the hills above Flatwoods,” a local newspaper reported afterward. “A National Guard member, [17-year-old] Gene Lemon, was leading the group when he saw what appeared to be a pair of bright eyes in a tree.”

Lemon screamed and fell backward, the news account said, “when he saw a 10-foot monster with a blood-red body and a green face that seemed to glow.” It may have had claws for hands. It was hard to tell because of the dense mist.

The story made the local news, then got picked up by national radio and big papers all over the country, said Andrew Smith, who runs the Flatwoods Monster Museum and the Braxton County Convention Visitors Bureau. “Mrs. May and the National Guard kid ended up going to New York to talk to CBS,” Gibson said.

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