Script

When I first heard of the Flatwoods monster, I thought it was another West Virginia cryptid, in the same family of unexplained creatures as the Moth Man as well as it’s lesser known bretheren from the state like Bigfoot, the Grafton Monster and the Snarly Yow.  In fact, West Virgina is so populated with cryptids that there are maps for sale that show all the local legends.

Other creations have been influenced by their weirdness, like the hit video game franchise, Silent Hill. But why is this? Where did it all come from?

Most West Virginians think of this rich culture as diverse folklore. After all, migrants began coming to the Virginias the early 1700s. That and the strangeness of those Appalachian mountains (again, they're really old) lends itself to the mountainous state as a hotbed for superstitions and tales of mystery.

And so, initially I dismissed the Flatwoods Monster as simply another cryptid – interesting but ultimately another undifferentiated monster.

That was, until I dug a little deeper, including a visit to Braxton County.  The Tlatwoods monster is definitely NOT a cryptid story, but a story of a close encounter of the 3rd kind, an interaction between 7 humans and an alien whose ship appeared to crash in Braxton county.  And that, my friends, is how we’ll discuss the story of the Flatwoods Monster.  The year 1952 saw quite a few unexpected visitors, both earthly and unknown. Between July 12- July 29th, Washington D.C. experienced a notable series of unidentified flying object sightings, often referred to as the “Invasion of Washington” or the UFO flap. But this was not just in fringe media.  UFOs had such a celebry status they appeared next to Marilyn Monroe, on April 7th 1952 issue of Life Magazine.

A later, that mysterious figure gains a name: “The Flatwoods Monster.” Its dizzying tale soon becomes part of a larger pattern of 1950s extraterrestrial phenomena. Questions, questions, more questions than answers. What do the Flatwoods Monster sighting and the subsequent strange visits that occurred around the same time reveal about how the U.S. government (or something else) responds when people get too close to the truth?

So today, I’ll share the story of the Monster Who Was Actually an Alien.

Hi, I'm MF Thomas, and welcome to My Dark Path. In every episode, I explore the obscure corners of history, conspiracies, and the unexplained. Check us out on YouTube, X, and Instagram. I'd also like to thank our Patreon supporters. Check out our Patreon, where subscribers will have access to exclusive full episodes starting with our special miniseries, a My Dark Path tour of history, science, and the paranormal in Cold War Moscow, I call "Secrets of the Soviets."  And if you'd like to buy one of my four novels, you can find links to them in the show notes.  And so, let’s get started with season 5, episode 74, Was the Flatwoods Monster and Alien or Robot?

Part 1 – A Disabled UFO

It's 7:15 PM on Friday, Sept 12, 1952. A group of 10 boys are playing football near their school in the small town of Flatwoods. The weather is crisp in the mid 60s during the day.. The sun had just set and twilight covered the small, leafy green town surrounded by hills and forests.  It was a perfect fall evening with the promise of autumn in the air.  In just 30 days, the leaves would reach their peak fall colors.  Freddie May, Edison, his brother, Tommy Hyer and Neil Hunley were among the 10 boys, all aged between 11 and 14 years old.

As the two teams setup for their next play, one of the boys pointed at the sky and yelled out “Look there!”

The others paused and looked skyward, each exclaiming in astonishment.  They watched large, fiery object soar over their heads, disappearing just over a hilltop.  The object flew quickly but uncertainly, not like a meteor but more like a damaged airplane.

The boys buzzed with excitement.

One, Freddie May, said  “the object looked light a round ball of fire, or possibly oval shaped.  It emitted a “small trail of fire as flames were trailing behind it.”  Freddie saw the object overhead for three seconds.

Another boy who was interviewed said: “it was a pear-shaped glowing red object, which was pulsing from cherry red to bright orange, traveling blunt-end first.”

Another boy later told two reporters: “it travelled quite slowly across the valley over [our] heads and managed to top the mountain on the other side.”

Another described the object’s slow pace, saying “looked like a door falling flat-wise.”  My interpretation of this is that it looked like a leaf, lazily falling to the ground.

Freddie May later showed reporters the object’s trajectory: “It came down and lit on the other side of the mountain right up there,” he said, pointing at the mountain top.  “Just over the edge we could tell it came down up there.”

The oldest witness to the flying object was fourteen-year-old Neil Nunley. He suggested that the object was probably a meteorite and that they should go find it. His teachers at school said that any meteorite fragments should be gathered up for the West Virginia State Geological Department.

And the boys weren’t the only ones in the area to see it.  Other witnesses included Flatwoods resident named Jack Davis, a prominent area businessman. Davis explained that he witnessed the passing of the object as it flew into the area and landed. Researcher and writer Frank Feschino would capture Davis’ testimony in the book, The Braxton County Monster.  I’d highly recommend reading this for great reporting as well as one perspective on the story.

David told Feschino the following:

“I went over and visited my mother-in-law and father-in-law. ... I stayed there a little while that evening. Then I decided to leave as it was getting near dark. So I was coming out and on the other side of the hill from the main road. . . . When I topped the hill at the Stout Cemetery, why, I saw a lighted object coming through the sky. It crossed where the railroad cut is today and it was an oblong-shaped object, lit up. Well, my first thought when 1 caught the first glimpse of it was there was an aircraft coming down and it was in trouble. And then I recognized it wasn’t [an aircraft] and that it was bigger than an ordinary aircraft you’d see in this area at that time. It wasn’t traveling at a great rate of speed in terms of that day and age. It came a little bit above the height of the trees at that time. It had a clearer, brighter illuminated light from the top and kind of an orange-red. And then as it came on down a little farther, the object was a little duller orange-red. The top of it had the reflection of a light that I would describe today as a mercury vapor light.”

When asked if could be a meteor, he replied,

“It didn’t resemble a meteor to me. To me, the object that I saw was a craft. I didn’t hear any noise.  It was just clearing the trees, just a little bit above the height of the trees there. I had the general feeling that whatever it was had landed. . . . Naturally, it was coming down, not very far over the treetops until it came in behind the trees that follow the ridge out, that ran parallel to the railroad at the time, with the school building down below that. I knew it was up there. . . . And I knew with the reflection, the light stopped there, and I could see the reflection of it through the trees. It was very obvious to see.”

Davis was adamant that the object was a craft.  

“It looked like it was something controlled.  .. …[I]t looked like it was something controlled. Like I said, it wasn’t traveling at a high rate of speed, and it basically seemed like it was slowing down when it was coming in, from where I was looking at it.” 

Later when asked did he have interest in going to find the object, Davis replied: “I wanted nothing to do with it.  If you had seen it, you wouldn’t have gone up there either.”

While Davis wanted nothing to do with the object, the boys certainly did. 

Part 2 – The crash site

After the mysterious object disappeared behind the hilltop, the boys charged up the street, eager to follow it to its likely destination. They ran along the road for nearly half a mile before crossing the street and scrambling over the railroad tracks. Their route took them toward a side street, where the train depot stood. This road was the primary path leading up to the Fisher farm, climbing steeply uphill before veering sharply to the right just past the depot. Three houses stood along this street, with the Lemon residence at  the top. Joe Lemon, Freddie May’s grandfather, owned the home. He lived there alongside his wife, their daughter Kathleen May, aged thirty-five, and her two sons, Edison, age 13, and Freddie, age 11.

As the boys drew near the Lemon house, their noisy excitement stirred the curiosity of neighbors. An investigator later observed that as the boys ran between the houses, people came out on their verandas and wanted to know what was going on.

One of the younger kids yelled to the onlookers, “A flying saucer has landed...”

Breathless, the boys scrambled onto the May’s porch, their excited yells erupting as they shoved through the front door, only to be met by Mrs. Kathleen May’s steady, inquisitive stare.

Mrs. May had just returned home from work.  She later told of this moment:

“I was sitting. I had just got home from work. I was working in Sutton at the beauty shop and still had my uniform on. I hadn’t even taken it off or taken a shower. I bet I hadn’t been home for ten minutes when the boys came running in the house. They said…there was a flying saucer landing up there on the hill behind the house.”

One of the young men, Ronald Shaver, yelled out to Mrs. May, “A flying saucer landed up on the back hill and we wanna to go look at it!” 

The boys were adamant that they were going to search for the object that they were convinced had crashed or landed just over the hill.

Perhaps like any mother of young boys, Mrs. May was not going to allow her sons and their friends to wander into a dangerous situation alone.  So, she grabbed a flashlight that her father kept on the coffee table and told the boys that they weren’t going to look for the space ship at night by themselves and that she would be accompanying them.

So Mrs. May and the boys set out, accompanied by another young man who had been visiting - Eugene Lemon, age 17. I haven’t found any direct reference about Eugene’s relationship to Kathleen, but given his last name he was either her younger brother or cousin.  And Eugene brought along his dog.

As they prepared to head out, Freddie explained where they thought the object had landed.  He told her: “We told our mother that it lit, up on the old Fisher farm, up close to the old cistern.”

And so the group headed out, even as dusk turned to night.

Freddie explained what they were heading into as they left his house:

“When it got dark, you would need a flashlight to get around. You wouldn’t walk around these parts of the woods without a flashlight at night. Gene and mother both had flashlights that night.”

Almost immediately upon stepping out of the house and starting up the hill, the group saw something astonishing.  Mrs. May described it as a great big red flare, a purplish-looking flare.

At that same moment, a neighbor Mrs. Neal was on the street, having come outside to see what had caused the ruckus.  She was Teddie Neal’s mother, one of the boys in the group.  She also saw the light coming from the farm.  The boys told her that something had landed and that they were headed to look at it.

Rallying the boys to her before setting off, Mrs. May told them

“Now boys, we’ll just go. . . . We won’t go clear up to it. We’ll just go get the direction and the location of where it landed and then we’ll just come back and call the law, and let them go up and investigate.”

At this moment, a few of the boys who had seen the object fly overhead decided to go home.  Why the split off at this point, I don’t know.  I’ve found no explanation for why some stayed and others returned home. 

And so, the group now consisted of Kathleen May, Eugene Lemon and five of the original boys: Neil Nunley, Teddie Neal, Edison May, Freddie May and Ronald Shaver.  And another boy, who had not seen the flying object earlier, joined the group – a six-year-old Tommy Hyer.

And so at about 7:40pm, the group said goodbye to Mrs. Neal and departed into the night.  Almost immediately, the group left the road and walked uphill on a grass path.  After climbing a short distance, the path then leveled off into an open field.  Several hundred yards away, toward the back of the Fisher Farm, was the small mountain or hill where the boys thought the flying object had landed or crashed.  It was as this point that the land transitioned from twilight to complete darkness.

Their unease swelled, and their steps hastened. Their breathing grew heavy as the once-even path tilted upward again. To the right, a fence of wire and weathered posts stretched far into the distance. The grassy trail ran nearly parallel to the fence. Beyond it, a broad, sloping pasture unfurled within a valley, darkness just outlining the mountains and hills that loomed over the sprawling farmland.

As Kathleen and Eugene led the group up the trail, they soon faced their first hurdle, about ten minutes after setting out.  A five-foot metal gate, lashed to a thick post with wire, blocked the path. It marked the threshold to the main farm, preventing livestock from wandering. The older boys unwound the wire, ushering everyone through before sealing it shut again.

They walked into a wooded area and the grass path gave way to rugged, rocky ground.  It jagged sharply right, flanked by a dense line of trees on the left and the persistent fence on the right. Beyond, the valley pasture dipped away.

Together, they traced the path’s many twists and turns.

But to their astonishment, something far off to the right, down the pasture’s incline, caught their attention.  A vast, spherical shape hulked in the valley, pulsing faintly—dimming, then flaring. Not all saw it. Those who did called it house-sized. One boy swore it blazed like a fireball.

Freddie, who did not see it, later stated:

“The boys who saw the object. . . the older, taller boys told me later that the thing they saw sitting down in the valley was pulsing. A couple of them said it would get a little brighter, then dim. They saw it to the right of the path in the grass on the inner slope.”

Later investigators and reporters would interview members of the group about this glowing object.  Several pointed out examples that would have meant it was about 22 feet high.  They described the position the object as having landed with the nose, the blunt end down and the rest of sticking upright.

So what might explain why some of the group didn’t see the object in the field?  It might be explained by a few reasons.

First, the area was overgrown with tall brush.  Freddie noted later that at the time, there was a lot of brush in the area, a lot of tall brush…which made it difficult to see down into the valley.  Investigators thought it reasonable that some of the boys would have found it impossible to see the object for this reason.

One investigator, when interviewing six-year-old Tommy Hyer, noted he said:

But mister, I couldn’t see.  I’m too low down.  There was grass in between.”

Second, in 1952, the area was covered by pear trees, potentially blocking the view of the object from path.

And third, it’s thought that the object had moved from the location where it had initially landed.  While no one saw it move, the boys had thought it had landed at the top of the hill before sliding down the slope to the small valley.

Freddie described this as:

“We were looking up the path to where we saw the object land on the back of the farm on the mountaintop. I was looking ahead up the path to where I saw the object land. I was not looking to the right down into the valley. We [the boys in the schoolyard] thought it was a meteorite that landed back there. . . . We were unaware that it had moved.”

And now, about 15 minutes into their climb, everyone in the group encountered something unusual: a warm, fog-like mist engulfed the area.  It was pungent and nauseating.  And, oddly, it wasn’t an evening fog that would blanket the entire area, instead it was isolated to the path only.

Part Four

Kathleen May described the odor

“Before we got up there, we could smell a kind of metallic odor, and it looked like it was getting foggy.  I turned around, and looked toward the town to see if I could see the streetlights.  And that metallic odor, oh, I can still smell it yet today. It was very penetrating.  It affected me in the chest area.”

Mrs. May noted that Eugene and many of the boys had a strong reaction to it, burning their throats and noses.  Some coughed.

Freddie recalled the noxious odor in the following way:

“The smell was similar to the old TV tubes burning out in the old TV sets years ago.  A tube would burn out and have that, what we’d call that metallic smell.”

As everyone struggled with the noxious smell as they continued up the trail, some in the group encountered something else – an odd mechanical noise. 

Freddie later said of it:

“you could hear a whining noise…I had never heard anything like it before. Since then, with my employment, I have heard electrical compressors when they’ve been shut down, and they’re what they call ‘whining to a stop.’ Same kind of noise.”

The group marched on.  Eugene at the front of the group with the flashlight, shadowed by Nail Nunley and followed closely by Kathleen and her oldest son Edison.  Behind them were Ronald Shaver, Freddie May, Teddie Neal, and finally little Tommy Hyer.

It was now 8 pm and the group was just about 100 yards from the top of the hill.  Suddenly, Eugne’s dog, who had stayed close by to this point, growled suddenly before dashing forward up the trail, out of sight into the dark and mist. 

Then, moments later, the dog barked loudly and aggressively, before reappearing.  He came back into view but instead of stopping at his master, he raced by Eugene, running down the trail.  It would be the last time Eugene, or the group would see him.  Sadly, he would be found later in the town, covered in his own vomit and dead.

As they reached the point on the hillside where the boys had seen the object land, there was nothing.  Interviews by author Frank Feschino uncovered the fact that the object had moved from the location of its original landing.

At this point, the group, minus Eugene’s dog, was close to the hill top, the trail following a group of trees to the left.  Kathleen was now in the lead, walking in the beam of Eugene’s flashlight.  To the group’s left, amid the tree line, was a large oak tree, set back from the path by about four feet.

And at this moment, Kathleen heard something odd as she approached the tree on her left.  She described it as “making a hissing noise, and it just sound like it was frying bacon and flipping a silver dollar or something against a piece of…stretched canvas.”

And then, Kathleen saw something.

Kathleen said:

“As I turned, I thought I could see it in eye view, eye level.  I thought I saw something there.”

Eugene also caught sight of something, elevated above his line of sight, as though in the trees above. Two eyes peered from the darkness and fog to his left.  He turned his flashlight toward the eyes, expecting to see an animal in the trees.

And at the same moment, Kathleen did the same.

To their horror, their flashlights revealed, not an animal in the trees, but a towering figure, standing to the right of the tree.

This creature would come to be known as the Flatwoods monster.

Part 5

Later, Kathleen would say:

“I turned the flashlight on, and the thing lit up from the inside.  I turned on my flashlight and it lit up like a Christmas tree.”

Moments as the beams of both flashlights lit up the entity, its glowing eyes lit up, beams of light cutting through the fog, over the group’s heads, illuminating the area and making the entity visible the whole group that trailed behind Kathleen and Eugene.

It was clear to them that the entity was reacting to the group’s presence.

An interviewer later summarized the group’s observations of those first moments: “[Beams of light were] … Coming out of what appeared to be glass on the front of the head of this entity. The thing was turning slowly around, waving from left to right and right to left as if it was searching the horizon with those beams.”

Now the entire group saw the fully illuminated entity.  Some thought it was green, others said it was dark.  Later it was thought that it was a sort of aluminum-gray color but reflecting the color of the bushes and such, gave the idea it was green.

If you’re just listening to this video and not watching on YouTube, I’ll describe the entity fully…not in the way that later media accounts, anxious for a sensational story about a monster, but in the way that Kathleen, Eugene and the boys described it.

The entity was about 12 feet tall. It was made of metal. 

At the top, where the head might be, was something like a helmet, vaguely in the shape of an ace of spades.  Two illuminated eyes were inside the semi-transparent helmet. 

Below the helmet was a metal tube.  Just below the point where the helmet and upper torso joined, small antennas emerged, seemingly encircling the entity.

The helmet and body comprised about half its height.  The bottom half of the entity’s torso flared out somewhat and at the bottom there were small tube openings that appeared to be used for propulsion, allowing the entity to hover off the ground.

Kathleen described what happened next:

“We came up on it. We got close enough to it so I could see exactly what it was, and we all saw the same thing. I was as close to it as the length of a small car.”

The monster then rose from beside the tree and hovered momentarily before gliding down and crossing the path, directly in front of the horrified Kathleen and Eugene. Eugene, in shock, who fell to the ground and dropped his flashlight.

Kathleen described this moment of terror:

“Gene fell over first, but he wasn’t long in getting up. I don’t know if he passed out, or his legs got rubbery, or what. Now anyways, he just fell to the ground.”

The monster continued its movement, now crossing in front of the boys who were standing to the right of the path, away from the tree line. 

Neil Nunley described the monster’s movement as the following:

“It just moved.  It didn’t walk.  It moved evenly.  It didn’t jump.”

Kathleen clarified further:

“It was just kind of floating.  It was about a foot to a foot and a half off the ground, but it didn’t have any kind of feet or anything that we could see.”

Moving from their left to right, Kathleen also recalled the sound the entity made – that hissing and frying noise. 

As the glowing monster towered over the terrified witnesses and moved across the path, it bathed the area with an eerie orange light. And because the immediate area with covered with mist, the entire area appeared to glow, making the monster and everything around it visible.

The group watched in disbelief.  The younger boys gazed wide-eyed and terrified as if trapped in a nightmare.

Within moment, Kathleen said that the group just took off running.

Freddie May said that

“To get out of there, we could have done the Olympics proud.”

Their legs finally started pumping madly as they careened back down the path into the darkness. A shocked Eugene gathered himself up off the ground and quickly caught up to the fleeing group.

The terror-struck witnesses raced back down the path through the mist and darkness as adrenaline surged through their bodies. They quickly the five-foot-tall metal gate that they just passed through and wired shut. Some went over the top of it and the smaller boys slid through it.

They were finally out of the wooded area, they entered the wide-open field where it was easier to run as the ground flattened out. Blood pounded in their ears.  One of them passed the May house and continued running to their own homes.

Kathleen later recalled

“After we all ran off the hill, the boys and I went in the house and we were all scared silly!  Teddie Neal got so scared he ran home. He lived in Shaversville, I’d say about half a mile away. He ran all the way home and opened the door and ran in, and his mother knew that something was wrong. She said it looked like he was scared to death. And he ran into his bedroom and turned his radio on, and he just would not talk to her for ever so long.”

One by one, the others piled through the front door of Kathleens home. There was chaos as they tried to regain their senses. Kathleen May instinctively tended to the traumatized boys. All of them had difficulty breathing. Some of the boys needed greater attention than others. Some were bruised and bleeding, while others were coughing and gagging. Their eyes were glassy and tearing. Their noses and throats were inflamed.

Eugene Lemon rushed straight to the bathroom and vomited profusely.

Freddie May recalled the scene:

“When we got back to the house, we were all very scared. We were all pacing around the house, our adrenaline was pumping, and we couldn’t stand still. As a matter of fact, it scared me so badly for weeks after the incident I didn’t go out of the house after dark.”

Kathleen May said:

“Gene vomited all night and I had to take my boys to the doctor the next morning. Their mouths and throats were as raw as a piece of meat. I got so scared it’s a wonder I hadn’t vomited my head off, but I hadn’t eaten and that made the difference.”

After tending to the boys, Kathleen called the local Sheriff.  It was now 8:15pm.

Kathleen described the phone call:

“[the jail keeper] Cecil Rose answered the phone and he told me all the law enforcement had gone down to the river…investigating what they thought was a plane crash.  But it was one of these [spacecraft] that landed, I’m sure.”

And this was true.  The Sheriff was unavailable.  Just about the same time the boys had seen the object overhead, others witnesses had observed what they thought was a small airplane crash in Frametown, 20 miles away. And the Sheriff would not call Kathleen back until he had finished searching for the crashed airplane. 

Kathleen made other phone calls.  And by 8:30, the entire town of Flatwoods was alive with news of the encounter. 

Part x

Remember Jack Davis, who had seen the object fly overhead earlier but declined to investigate?  Driving through town later that evening, he saw a scene at the country store:

“I pulled in there to kind of see what the gathering of people was, and I learned what they were describing….the green monster.”

Another neighbor, seeing how genuinely terrified Kathleen and the boys were of their encounter, drove his truck up onto the farm.  He didn’t see, smell or hear anything but it was unclear if he knew the location of the event.

Meanwhile, Cecil Rose tried following up with the state troopers, but before either the sheriff or state troopers could respond, A. Lee Stewart Jr, a journalist at the Braxton Democrat heard of Katheen May’s call. 

Part 6

Around 9:00 P.M. on September 12, 1952, when Corporal Ted Tribett of the West Virginia State Police reached Stewart at the office of the Braxton Democrat newspaper. After explaining that the sheriff was searching for an airplane crash in Frametown, Corporal Tribett went on to brief Stewart on a peculiar call that had just come in from a resident named Kathleen May.

In the summer of 1952, A. Lee Stewart held the reins of the Braxton Democrat, a modest newspaper he co-owned and published in the heart of West Virginia. Stewart grabbed his coat and set out for her home. As far as he knew, that was the only involvement the State Police had with the case. En route to Flatwoods, he stopped at the Steorts’ store, where Bill Steorts was working with his father. Stewart brought Bill along, and the young man guided him to the May residence and would remain with him through his investigations that night. 

When Stewart arrived at Kathleen May’s home, he found a scene of utter disarray. Three boys were hunched over, nauseated, coughing and wheezing as if they had inhaled something toxic. Kathleen’s eyes were bloodshot, watery, and raw. The group spoke franticly, their voices thick with fear and confusion. Stewart sat quietly at first, taking it all in. Once he understood that the incident had occurred on the Fisher farm’s mountain, just behind the house, he asked if anyone could lead him up there to investigate for himself.

Stewart would explain:

"After a little coaxing, I convinced the two older boys to go up to the mountain with us. So we left, the boys, Bill Steorts, and I. We were armed. We had a twelve-gauge automatic shotgun and a couple handguns. Two or three other people who lived right around there came up and went with us.  They were also armed. Kathleen May's father, Joe Lemon was part of this group. On the way up, the boys were hesitating and wanting to go back, and we coaxed them on. As a matter of fact, I had my hand up around one of the boys' necks. And under his breath, he was actually crying like a whipped pup. We went on up to the tree where this thing was supposed to have happened.  Upon arriving at the scene, we were…reminded by the boys about the odor that made them all sick. We got down close to the ground, and we could still pick up an odor. Eugene and Nunley identified it as the same odor that made them sick."

At the massive tree, the site of the encounter, the group found two parallel tracks using their powerful flashlights.  Each track stretching roughly thirty feet. Positioned to the right of the tree and the path, these marks scarred the grass, tracing a line from the valley up to the spot where the entity had appeared.

Stewart continued:

"We just spotlighted around because not one of us was inclined to hunt for something we didn't know what it was in the dark. We decided we'd go back to the Mays. We were on the mountain probably thirty to forty minutes."

It was at this time that Sheriff Carr, having given up finding the crashed airplane, arrived on the mountain with a pair of dogs. 

Freddie May said,

"When the sheriff got to the house someone told him where we saw the monster. He went to the farm with two dogs, but they didn't get very far before heading back. He never even got up near the tree where we saw it. When Carr got back with his dogs, Joe Lemon [Kathleen's father] even offered to take him up there to show him where it happened.”

Based on his own research UFOlogist Donald Keyhoe said later:

"When the sheriff arrived, a fog was settling over the hillside. Twice he tried to get his dogs to lead him to the spot where the monster was seen. Each time they ran away, howling, and he gave up until morning."

At this time, Stewart was back inside the Lemon home, talking with Kathleen and the boys.  He wanted to come back the next day with a tape recorder to interview the boys.

The Sheriff, however, remained skeptical and returned to his office with his dogs.

Stewart, though, remained, leaving the home before 11:00pm. He dropped his guide, Bill Steorts, at home and went straight to his office at the newspaper and called a friend who agreed to lend him a reel to reel tape recorder.  Then, at 1am, Stewart made his last trip of the night.  He drove to his attorney’s home.  They discussed the story and called the Charleston Gazette and the Associated Press, ensuring that any articles would credit Stewart.  And, exhausted, Stewart left his attorney’s house about 2:45 that morning.

Part X – the Next Morning

On the morning of September 13, 1952, as dawn broke over the Fisher farm, Stewart arrived at approximately 7:00 A.M. to examine the site. Armed with a notepad, Stewart meticulously documented the evidence before a crowd of onlookers descended upon the area.

The landscape bore two prominent skid marks, each stretching roughly thirty feet through the tall grass of the valley. The grass appeared flattened, suggesting the passage of an unknown object, though no direct ground contact was evident. Curiously, several rocks had been displaced by an unseen force.

Stewart continued his inspection, noting an unusual substance at the site.

"I walked up both of the skid marks and examined the area. That's when I realized I was getting the oil on my clothes.  Upon examination, I had gotten the same thing [on me] the night before—I actually thought…that it could be from the grasses. There is a grass in West Virginia called tar grass that leaves marks on your clothes, but the marks wash off. But these marks didn't come off. The oil that came from the scene adhered to your clothes, and was darker than anything you would normally get [from anything] such as tar grass."

Later, Stewart dismissed a common explanation for the skid marks.

"Somebody made the statement that the skid marks were probably made by a tractor. Well, these skid marks were probably ten or eleven feet apart and two feet to thirty inches wide. That takes a damn big tractor." he remarked.

Following the skid marks away from the tree where the group had encountered the entity, Stewart found a piece of metal on the ground.

"It looked like somebody had taken a soldering iron and just dripped solder. The piece of metal was shiny and silver, very easy to see in the daylight. I don't think we would have ever found it at night, even if we looked. It was about this big (making a circular shape with thumb and forefinger), rugged on the edges like any dripped metal would be."

Then, at the far end of the parallel skid marks Stewart observed a circular patch of flattened grass, approximately twenty feet in diameter.

"Just a few feet away from the skid marks was a large pressed down area of grass. It was round and I'd say, about twenty feet across. It looked like something had set down there in a way that the tall grass was pushed down.”

After an hour and a half at the site, Stewart walked to Kathleen’s home to conduct interviews. Using the borrowed reel-to-reel tape recorder, he spoke with seven witnesses—four in the morning and three in the afternoon—ranging in age from six to eighteen.

"One point that you've got to remember on this, is that you're dealing with an age range of from six to eighteen years of age," Stewart emphasized. "These kids were not modern street punks; they were country kids. They had not been exposed to TV or monster movies [or the sophistication] that kids [have been] in this day and time. You've got to remember, this was 1952 in central West Virginia."

"I interviewed each one of these people separately and privately and asked each the same questions. Approximately thirty questions on anything and everything I had heard the night before, and ones [questions] I had been able to come up with since that time.  After I finished with each one of these kids, I'd change the questions. I would take a couple or three of the questions and change them around so I could expect another answer. They'd always come back to the same things they had said before. They were sincere, truthful, [and] to be quite honest with you, I believe they believed everything they said."

As word of the incident spread, Flatwoods became a hub of activity drawing hundreds to the area.

Colonel Leavitt and his troops descended upon the farm, encountering a tumultuous scene where swarms of people darted chaotically across the land, prompting Leavitt to caution, "There were so many people that came up here and ran all over the place... they might have gotten killed or something."

Freddie May vividly depicted the pandemonium, recalling that when the national guard troops arrived, there were a lot of people already at their house and on the farm.

Leavitt also appeared to find some physical evidence.  Feschino noted in his book, The Braxton County Monster, that a Charleston Gazette article written by James Haught on October 31, 1954, titled "Martian or Mirage" stated the day after the sighting visitors reported finding large marks', oil spots, scraps of metal and pieces of black plastic-like substance on the ground.  He also stated that article is accompanied by a photograph of Leavitt to something on his thumb with the tip of the pencil. The caption stated, "Metallic fragment the size of the tip of a pencil was found at the spot where the 'monster' was seen.”

The following September 14, the situation spiraled further, Kathleen marveling that the amount of people who came up to see the site was unbelievable. The National Guard stayed onsite to keep the crowds under control.

And it wasn’t just the curious, or local officials interested in the encounter with the entity and the crashed spaceship.  The government, of course, was interested as well.  Very interested.

Part 10

Among the early UFO investigators in the United States, Donald Keyhoe remains one of the most notable. A retired major from the US Marine Corps, Keyhoe became convinced that UFOs were probably of extraterrestrial origin.  Upon first learning of this case, which he called the Sutton Monster, Keyhoe remarked,

"Of all the eerie saucer stories, this was the weirdest."

As his own investigation progressed, Keyhoe shared,

"Later from a source outside the Pentagon, I heard that intelligence had followed this up by sending two men in civilian clothes who posed as magazine writers while interviewing witnesses. 

The morning of September 13, two men knocked on Kathleen’s door saying they were reporters from a Clarksburg newspaper and wanted to see the site of the crash and encounter.  Her older son Eddie, was too sick to go, but her son Freddie accompanied her.  It was the first time she had returned to the location since the event of the night before.

Kathleen described the experience with the supposed reporters

"We were just talking about the thing and they saw the skid marks. These skid marks went right down a little slant. One stayed there with Freddie and me, and one went across [the fence] and went down. Well, he was gone about thirty minutes and came back."

The supposed reporter was covered in oil when he returned.  Kathleen recalled the words he spoke to his partner

“'Now what do you think Ed's gonna think of this when we send these in for analysis?'”

She continued:

“They had beautiful, nice suits on with hats to match, and he was striped. He looked like a zebra, with oil. Everything he touched left oil marks on his suit and hat."

The next morning, Sunday, September 14, the two men reappeared at Kathleen’s door. The day prior, they’d presented themselves as reporters, but this return visit hinted at a deeper motive.  This time, their visit carried an air of urgency and apology as they disclosed their true identities: government investigators dispatched from Washington, D.C. Having flown in and rented a car to reach the remote location, they admitted to Mrs. May that their earlier deception was intentional. They had posed as journalists, they explained, out of concern that she might withhold information if she knew they were federal agents investigating her extraordinary encounter.

The conversation quickly turned to the heart of their mission that day — a strange detail from Kathleen’s story that had piqued their interest. During her encounter with the entity, an unusual oil had been sprayed onto her uniform. One of the investigators, particularly insistent, pressed her for more details about the substance.  She provided her uniform and one man carefully scraped remnants of the oil for analysis, hoping to uncover its composition.

This encounter shed light on the depth of the federal government’s involvement in the Flatwoods case, far exceeding what officials publicly acknowledged. The investigators’ actions aligned with rumors circulated by UFO researcher Donald Keyhoe, who claimed intelligence officers often masqueraded as magazine reporters to discreetly gather witness accounts. Adding intrigue to the narrative, Mrs. May distinctly remembered one of the officers introducing himself as Ed—a name that carried weight, given that Captain Edward Ruppelt, head of the Air Force’s Project Blue Book, was overseeing UFO investigations at the time.

And while the government was clearly interested in the encounter, the media was scaling up it’s sensational coverage.

Part Eight – the Media Gets Involved

The United Press (UP) was quick to disseminate the story, and on September 15, the *New York Daily News* ran with the headline: **"The Thing, 10 Feet."** The article described the monster as **"an evil-smelling fire breathing monster, 10 feet tall, with a bright green body and a blood-red face."** This vivid portrayal set the tone for much of the coverage that followed, prioritizing sensationalism over accuracy.

The *Washington Daily News* escalated the drama with a headline that read: **"The Monster of Braxton County Around a Bend They Saw a Pair of Bulging Eyes."** Its lead paragraph painted a picture of **"an evil-smelling, green bodied monster 12 feet tall with bulging eyes and clswy /sic) hands,"** inflating the entity’s height from 10 to 12 feet and adding menacing details that gripped readers’ imaginations.

Not to be outdone, the *Binghamton Press* in New York declared: **"Flashes of Life—Green Monster with Blood-Red Face Scars Wits Out of Seven Hill Folk,"** employing shock tactics to draw attention. These exaggerated accounts transformed a local sighting into a national spectacle, amplifying the fear factor with each retelling.

Mayor J. Holt Byrne of Flatwoods also contributed to the skepticism, proposing that the sighting was likely **"vapor"** from a meteor, with the foul odor attributed to **"strong-smelling weeds."** Though plausible to some, this explanation rang hollow to witnesses who insisted on the alien nature of their encounter, further fueling the divide between media portrayals and firsthand accounts.

However, not all media outlets embraced the sensationalism. The *Charleston Gazette*, with the assistance of local journalist A. Lee Stewart, Jr., provided a more measured account. Their headline on September 15 read: **"Braxton Monster Left Skid Tracks Where He Landed,"** and the article described the entity as wearing **"a suit of green armor,"** looking **"like a mechanical man,"** and being **"10 feet tall, four feet wide; had a blood-red face; spored a black, spadelike cowl."** This description, while still dramatic, aligned more closely with the witnesses’ statements and introduced the nickname **"The Phantom of Flatwoods."**

Stewart’s involvement was pivotal. Having interviewed the witnesses shortly after the incident, he lent credibility to the reporting. His newspaper, the *Braxton Democrat*, became a hub for media inquiries.

The story gained momentum with every retelling embellishing some portion of the story.  Someone even wrote a ballad, The Phantom of Flatwood to commemorate the event.  Radio commentators nationwide kept the tale alive. Flatwoods became a focal point for UFO enthusiasts, its name synonymous with the bizarre. The media’s amplification turned a local incident into a cultural phenomenon, capturing the public’s imagination even as it distorted the truth.

This spotlight brought scrutiny and ridicule to the witnesses. Kathleen May recalled being razzed by locals who accused her of being drunk or concocting the story while making moonshine. Residents noted the community’s skepticism, essentially saying, that the people in this area tended to be very skeptical unless you can really prove something to them.  And so, the media’s sensationalism thus had a dual effect: elevating the story’s profile while casting doubt on its tellers.

As the story continued to spread, other researchers and reporters arrived for their own look.  Two, in particular, arrived on Friday, September 19.  Ivan T. Sanderson, a naturalist and researcher, arrived to cover the story on behalf of True magazine.  Gray Barker, a former English teacher, who was investigating the story for Fatemagazine.  But even as they pulled into town, three of the most important people in the story were no long there – they were in New York City, preparing to appear on the show, We the People.

Part 10

On that Friday afternoon, Stewart, May, and Lemon were driven to NBC studios to prepare for the live airing of We the People. The three met with talk show host Dan Seymore and his staff, and reviewed the story with them. During the course of their initial interview, an artist stood by and drew his interpretation of the monster. This poster-sized drawing of the entity was to be shown on air during the broadcast.  This image would be the one that would come to define the story of the Flatwoods Monster – despite the glaring inaccuracies compared to the witnesses stories and sketches.

Kathleen would comment decades later about why this became the image? "They just told me they'd like to draw a sketch of it, and Gene and I together had told them what we'd seen, and they drew the sketch."

Later, researcher and author Feschino would ask her: "Why did he draw arms on it then, because you told me it had antennae?"

Kathleen responded "I told him that too, but that's what he drew on it. To make it look more like a monster, I guess."

The drawing that evolved is an inaccurate rendition of the monster. It portrayed the monster as having menacing claw-like hands, wearing a monk-like robe and a cloth cowl, which looked like a dress. This illustration can still be found in publications today. The network was probably trying to emphasize to its viewers the threatening appearance of a monster with arms and claws. Its inaccurate depiction of the monster eroded the story's credibility.

I’ve searched all over for a video copy of the interview.  Unfortunately, all I have is copy of the transcript of the entire show that day.  I’ll reproduce parts of it here so you’ll get a sense of how the story was handled.  By the way, the entire transcript, with handwritten notes from the producers, is available on this episode’s web page at MyDarkPath.com.

Host Dan Seymore began the show by setting the stage of the incident for viewers while the orchestra performed soothing background music.   He said:

You saw this headline this week. the intriguing, unbelievable story, phenomenal report where a space monster suddenly appeared on a West Virginia hillside. And now look closely at something you didn't see, but something that seven terrified eyewitnesses did see.

Three of the people who saw the space monster or whatever it was on that hillside sat with our artists and tried to express a memory of what they had seen. The artists have put it all down as faithfully as they could. Imagine a dark night, the eerie, silver afterglow of a meteorite plunging into a hillside, a frightening rush of hot wind through the trees and an apparition green and silver and red as fire, that looked like this.

We have some eye witnesses here. You'll meet them in a moment. Let me quickly reassemble the facts that emerge from this most bizarre of stories. Mrs. May was in her home when the meteorite flashed over her home and seemed to land on a hill beyond. Her sons and his teenage friends were playing football in the yard. Because it was almost dark, one of the boys, 17 year old Eugene Lemon grabbed a flashlight and ran towards the hill. Mrs. May and the others followed.

Suddenly the prosaic turned into the fantastic. First, two huge green eyes staring out at the shadows. Then. incredibly something that looked like a 10 foot tall mechanical man - a red face, clawlike hands, a monstrous distortion of a mouth that emitted heavy and nauseating fumes of some strange go. The seven eyewitnesses were ill. Almost over-come by both the gas and terror of what they suddenly saw.

Tonight, a week later, some of these people have reassembled their thoughts and are going to try and tell us how they felt, at that moment.

Seymour then turned to his three guests, introducing Kathleen, Eugene and Stewart.  Because the transcript only provides the show’s scripted statements and questions, we do not have verbatim responses.  Still Seymour asks a series of 8 questions before having Kathleen stand and show the cameras the sketch of the entity. 

He goes on to state:

“We don't know if the words of these eyewitnesses have given you a clear picture of this unexplained night terror. We have had them speak to our artists, who then drew this impression of these people's stories . . Is it accurate, Mrs. May?”

Seymour turns to Eugene and asks: “What do you think as you look at it?”

And Eugene replies, “THAT I NEVER WANT TO SEE IT AGAIN.”

And with that, Seymour turns to Stewart, and says:

“Thanks for bringing us this report---these facts, however bizarre they are. Without trying to sensationalize their meaning, what is your reportorial sum-up of the Monster of Sutton, West Virginia?

Stewart replies essentially saying that neither he nor anyone else can interpret what they saw.  Perhaps in time, he goes on saying, it will all fit into some pattern of strange developments in the sky.  But until then, all anyone can do is know that strange and unexplainable things are happening. 

And with that Seymour turns back to the camera and says:

“Yes, strange things are happening, and perhaps some day they 'll be explained... And so we'll file this under Stories with endings to come.. An active file , including one monster that looks--like this.”

And with that, the segment ended and the show cut to a commercial break – promoting a product called Trak – a spray to kill moth larve in your wool clothing.

Upon returning to West Virginia, the witnesses faced a swarm of photographers and reporters, cementing the story’s place in public consciousness. Yet, the local Huntington channel did not carry the show, leaving Flatwoods residents with only garbled transmissions, further distancing the community from the media’s polished narrative.

Of course, the show wasn’t just watched by the public, eager for another sensationalized story. It even caught the eye of UFO investigator Major Donald E. Keyhoe who said:

"Then Mrs. May and the Lemon boy appeared on We the People and retold their frightening experience. It was obvious they believed the monster was real."

Keyhoe also contacted Air Force public liaison, Albert Chop.  Chop had just come off of handling the UFO flap that had raged across the US capitol earlier that summer.  Keyhoe told him: "This could get out of hand.  Why doesn't the Air Force squelch it?"

Chop responded that the Air Force had already declared that the object was a meteor and that the story would die out.

Keyhoe responded "A lot of people don't believe it. And the way this has built up, it's bad. Why doesn't intelligence go down there and kill it? They sent Ed Ruppelt to Florida and that thing didn't have half the potential danger."

Chop's reply was short: "We didn't know the answer to that one. This time we do. Al those people saw was a meteor. They imagined the rest. We can't send intelligence officers out on every crazy report. Project Blue Book hasn't the people or the funds."

Despite these statements, mysterious elements hinted at a possible cover-up.  If you just listened to my episode about the Doublemint Twins vs. the CIA, you’ll know that the CIA has admitted to investigating UFO incidents in the US and then lying about it.  So it’s easy to suspect that there were undercover CIA officers visiting Flatwoods at this time.

The odd encounters started on Wednesday, September 17, just a day before Kathleen Eugene and Stewart when three individuals claiming to work for the Treasury Department paid Stewart an odd visit. 

Stewart brought the piece of metal back to his newspaper printing plant, where it remained on his desk for several days. His father advised him to remove it, noting that locals who saw it were keenly interested in it. Stewart had initially attempted to melt the metal using a soldering torch available at the plant, but it wouldn’t melt. He then took it to a shop in Sutton, where workers placed the metal in a prong device and applied two gasoline blow torches to it, yet still failed to melt it.

On a Wednesday, three visitors—a man, his wife, and their friend who worked in Virginia—arrived at Stewart’s home. They had taken time off and were driving through the mountains to visit the site associated with the metal fragment. Stewart invited them into his house that evening, where they inquired about the metal and stains on his clothing. Stewart and his wife showed them a pair of pants with the stains. The visitors produced a piece of paper and, using a hot iron, transferred the stains from the pants onto it.

The next day was newspaper day, a demanding time in Stewart’s weekly newspaper business, requiring full effort from seven in the morning until the paper was sent to the post office for Friday afternoon delivery. Around ten o’clock, the visitors stopped by Stewart’s office, asking if they could obtain a small clipping of the metal. At this point, they revealed to Stewart and his father that they worked for the Treasury Department, though they emphasized this trip was not connected to the federal government. They also requested scrapings from the legs of the pants Stewart had worn. Stewart and the visitors drove to his house, where he retrieved a vial containing the metal. He went to the basement, grabbed metal shears, and cut the metal into three pieces, giving them a fragment no larger than the tip of his pinky finger. His wife fetched the pants, and the female visitor scraped them. Stewart placed the small metal piece in an envelope, which the visitors took. They drove him back to the shop.

During his lunch break, Stewart checked the vial and discovered the remaining metal was gone. He had recorded the visitors’ names and addresses, expecting them to contact him with analyses of the metal and scrapings. After waiting a month to six weeks without any response, he called their phone numbers and wrote to their addresses, only to realize he had been deceived. To this day, Stewart has never heard from them.

Just like the multiple encounters, Kathleen had by the two men posing as reporters, these incidents stripped the witnesses of physical evidence just before their national television appearance, raising suspicions of interference.

Part Nine – Possible Explanations

As intriguing as this story may be, there’s nothing definitive that moves this from any more than a story that I want to believe is true.  And so, to understand the story more fully, it’s worth evaluating the possible explanations for the key pieces of evidence.  Unlike some other UFO cases, the honesty of the eyewitnesses isn’t in question.  In my research, I’ve found nothing that would impugn the honesty of Kathleen May, Eugene Lemon and the boys.

It's entirely reasonable that the events surrounding the Flatwoods Monster to be natural phenomena misidentified in the heat of the moment: a meteor, a barn owl, an aircraft beacon, a truck, and skunk cabbage. 

Let’s look at each of the pieces of evidence and how they might be explained. 

The Flatwoods saga kicked off around 7:15 p.m., when a group of locals—among them children playing football—witnessed a fiery object blazing across the sky. To their untrained eyes, it resembled a spacecraft, especially as it appeared to descend toward the nearby hill. But Flatwoods wasn’t alone in its wonder; similar reports flooded in from Maryland, Pennsylvania, and other parts of West Virginia that same evening, painting a picture of a widespread phenomenon.

The culprit could easily have been a meteor. Astronomical records from September 12, 1952, confirm that a meteor illuminated the skies over the region, its brilliant trail visible across state lines. Meteors are chunks of space rock that burn up upon entering Earth’s atmosphere, creating a dazzling display of light and color—often white, yellow, or orange, with a tail that can stretch for miles. Moving at speeds of up to 160,000 miles per hour, they can appear to hover or "land" when they vanish behind a hill or horizon, an optical illusion that fooled the Flatwoods witnesses. The Air Force, under Major Donald E. Keyhoe’s intelligence team, investigated and reached the same conclusion: no spaceship had touched down, just a cosmic visitor burning out in the atmosphere. The meteor’s dramatic appearance, combined with the era’s UFO craze, set the stage for what followed.

Meteors certainly are the source of many of the UFOs sighted.  I wonder, however, the cause of the boy’s claim that the object appeared to be slowing down as it approached the hill.  Is that just another optical illusion?

Adding to the night’s enigma was a pulsating red light observed near the site, described by some as a "ball of fire" or a rhythmic glow. It seemed like evidence of the crashed UFO’s presence. Yet there may be a mundane source: an aircraft beacon. In 1952, three such beacons operated in the Flatwoods area, their lights flashing rhythmically to guide pilots and warn of obstacles like hills or towers.

Aircraft beacons are designed to be conspicuous, emitting red or white pulses at regular intervals—typically every few seconds. Mounted on elevated structures, they can be seen for miles, their light cutting through fog or darkness. On that September night, one of these beacons likely caught the witnesses’ eyes, its steady flash misinterpreted as something extraterrestrial. The timing was perfect: rattled by the meteor, the group was already on edge, their minds primed to see the unusual.  This is a very reasonable explanation – but I wonder. Everyone in this group had seen these beacons many times – this was rural West Virginia in 1952 with minimal light pollution – so why would they misidentify them in this instance?

What the group encountered on Fisher’s hill turned their UFO sighting into a full-blown mystery. As they hiked up the hill to look for the crashed ship, they glimpsed a figure that would become the Flatwoods Monster: a tall entity with a red, glowing face, two eye-like openings, and a hood-like shape around its head. A shrill, piercing sound rang out, and a noxious odor sent them reeling. Kathleen May’s description ignited imaginations nationwide. The entity’s height was estimated at ten to twelve feet and its movements described as gliding or floating.

Skeptics, however, point to a far less exotic explanation: a barn owl. Common in West Virginia’s woodlands, the barn owl is a nocturnal predator with features that align strikingly with the witnesses’ accounts. Its large, rounded head and heart-shaped facial disc, framed by pale feathers, can appear ghostly in dim light, especially when viewed head-on. This disc, an evolutionary adaptation to enhance hearing, could easily be mistaken for a "hood" or "shroud" in the dark, particularly by frightened observers. The owl’s eyes, large and reflective, catch even faint light—moonlight or a flashlight’s beam—producing an eerie glow that matches the "glowing eyes" described.

The sound, too, fits the owl’s profile. Unlike the soft hoots of other species, barn owls emit a raspy, high-pitched screech—sometimes likened to a scream—that can startle anyone unprepared. Witnesses reported a "hissing" or "squealing" noise, a close match to the owl’s vocalizations when alarmed. As for the "gliding" motion, barn owls are silent fliers, their feathers muffling sound as they glide or flap slowly through the night. A startled owl, perhaps perched on a branch or taking flight, could have appeared taller, its legs hidden, while its brief presence—seen for mere seconds—left room for fear and imagination to fill in the gaps. In the aftermath of the meteor’s shock, a bird became a monster.

Again, a reasonable explanation of the entity.  But again, not conclusive in my mind.  Considering the background of the witnesses, they were not people from the big city, cosplaying their way into a made up encounter for their social media accounts.

There’s another interesting hypothesis that the object was actually a government missile test.  The day that Kathleen, Eugene and Stewart returned from New York, Kathleen spoke with Colonel Dale Leavitt,

commander of the West Virginia National Guard.  She said:

"I hadn't been home too long until this truck came up and it had all the troops and everything on it, and Dale came in. He asked me if he could borrow the picture and he took it out and showed it to all the boys. After a while he came back in and said, "Well, I want you to take a look at this' and he just turned it [the picture] sideways and said, 'This is a complete missile.'"

Kathleen was somewhat skeptical of the government’s position.  She told a researcher later that she was proud of the National Guard unit in their county.

"They did all they could and they tried their best to find out—but the government, I just don't know. I'm still puzzled as to what the government—[the few] answers, the government gave us. And I guess I always will be."

What are we to make of the physical evidence found at the supposed landing site: the two parallel skid marks, each about thirty feet long, accompanied by an oily residue on the grass. These purported to be traces of a UFO’s touchdown, proof of an alien visit. But the explanation rolled in with Max Lockard, a local who drove his 1942 Chevrolet pickup truck through the field that night. Curious about the commotion, Lockard had navigated the uneven terrain, leaving behind tire marks and oil from his leaky engine.

Investigator Joe Nickell confirmed this account through interviews and site analysis. Lockard’s truck, with its worn tires and dripping oil pan, matched the scene perfectly: the skid marks stretched from the valley up to the hilltop where the entity was spotted, and the oil explained the greasy patches. Rain in the days that followed washed away much of the evidence, but the story held firm. What seemed like an alien landing strip was simply the aftermath of a neighbor’s curiosity, captured in rubber and oil.

We have no reason to doubt the good faith efforts of Nickell and this story – and it sets up a conflict between two witnesses.  If you recall Kathleen described getting an oily substance on her clothing that night, before Nickell drove his truck through the area.  This evidence is difficult to reconcile.

Finally, the foul odor that overwhelmed the witnesses—described as sickening and noxious—rounded out the mystery. Some speculated it was a byproduct of alien technology, but Nickell traced it to a natural source: skunk cabbage.  Abundant in West Virginia’s damp, wooded areas, this plant emits a pungent smell—akin to a skunk’s spray, hence its name —when its leaves or roots are crushed. On that night, the group’s trek through the woods could have disturbed the plant, releasing its stench into the air.

Skunk cabbage thrives in marshy soil, its odor a defense mechanism against herbivores. In the dark, with adrenaline pumping, this natural whiff could have heightened the sense of otherworldliness, driving the witnesses back in fear. It wasn’t an alien gas but a botanical quirk, stirred up at just the wrong moment.

Ultimately, what do we know about the night of September 12, 1952.  We have an observation of something unknown flying through the skies and an encounter with something unexplainable.  We have the usual bad actors - the government who attempted to cover it up and the media who twisted the story to sensationalize it.  The same behavior that persists 70 years later.

And yet, the mystery remains.  Unresolved and ever to remain so.

This is My Dark Path, and I’m MF Thomas. Thank you, dear friends, for walking the Dark Paths of the world with me. Until next time, good night.