T he modern wave of UFOs was triggered on June 24, 1947, when businessman Kenneth Arnold, flying his private airplane over Washington state’s Cascade Mountains, reported seeing some objects flying with a motion like “a saucer skipped across water.” Thus the misnomer “flying saucers” was born. Arnold gave conflicting versions of what he saw, but it now seems likely that he was a victim of “mountain-top mirages.” My colleague, USAF Major James McGaha (2006), a UFO expert, told me that the conditions under which Arnold saw the strange objects—clear skies, smooth air, a potential temperature inversion, and the angle of the sun from the horizon—were ideal for producing just such mirage effects.
Other UFO reports soon described encounters with their supposed alien astronauts. Among them was the case of the Flatwoods Monster, which was launched on September 12, 1952, and was never completely explained. I investigated this story in 2000.
In modern police parlance, a long-unsolved homicide or other crime may be known as a “cold case,” a term we might borrow for such paranormal mysteries as that of the Flatwoods Monster.
The story began about 7:15 p.m. At the little village of Flatwoods, in
Braxton County, West Virginia, some boys were playing on the school playground when, suddenly, they saw a fiery UFO streaking across the sky. It seemed to land on a hilltop nearby. Running to the nearby home of Mrs. Kathleen May, a local beautician, the youngsters obtained a flashlight and went up the hill to investigate. The group now included Mrs. May and her two sons, Eddie (thirteen years old) and Freddie (fourteen), along with Neil Nunley (fourteen), Gene Xemon (seventeen), and Tommy Hyer and Ronnie Shaver (both ten). They were accompanied by Lemon’s dog.
What happened next is the subject of endless debate. Gray Barker, who wrote fanciful UFO tales for Fate magazine, interviewed members of the group later. Neil Nunley provided the least emotional account. He was in the lead as the group hastened to the hill’s crest, spotting in the distance a pulsing red light.
Suddenly, Gene Lemon aimed his flashlight at a pair of shining eyes peering out of the darkness. There was a tall, “manlike” being with a round red “face” that was surrounded by a “pointed, hood-like shape.” The creature’s dark body was indistinct but would afterward be described by some as green with—Mrs. May would report—drapelike folds. After a moment the monster suddenly emitted a high-pitched hissing sound and swept, in a gliding fashion, toward the group. Terrified, Lemon screamed, dropped the flashlight, and fled, followed by the others.
They reported their encounter to a few locals and then to the sheriff and a deputy (after the officers returned from investigating a report of an airplane crash). The site was searched but nothing was seen or smelled— even though the eyewitnesses had reported a pungent mist, and that afterward some had become nauseated. The next day, a reporter from the Braxton Democrat , A. Lee Stewart Jr., discovered what he described as “skid marks” in the roadside field, together with an “odd gummy deposit”—assumed to be traces of the landed flying saucer (Barker 1953).
Barker’s article (1953) and later book (1956) helped propel the Flat- woods Monster case into UFO history. Other reports followed, including those by paranormal mystery writer Ivan T. Sanderson (1952, 1967) and early UFOlogist Major Donald E. Kehoe. Some accounts are filled with garbled details, such as those by Peter Brookesmith (1995) and David Ritchie (1994). A generally sensible, factual version of events is Jerome Clark’s The UFO Encyclopedia (1998), which terms the case “one of the most bizarre UFO encounters of all time.”
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In mid-2000, I investigated the long-cold case at Flatwoods (see figure 15.1), speaking with resident Johnny Lockard (ninety-five years old; see figure 15.2), who told me that the fiery object the boys had seen had been recognized by local residents as a meteor. Indeed, a former newspaper editor stated, “There is no doubt that a meteor of considerable proportion flashed across the heavens that Friday night since it was visible in at least three states—Maryland, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia” (Byrne 1966). Astronomers confirmed the identification (Kehoe 1953; Reese 1952). Air Force investigators determined that the meteor “merely appeared to be landing when it disappeared over the hill” (Keyhoe 1953). That illusion was also responsible for the mistaken report investigated by the sheriff of a plane that crashed in flames.
Other illusions came into play. The red, pulsating light the boys had seen as they approached the hilltop was probably only “the light from a nearby plane beacon,” and Sanderson (1952) acknowledged that no fewer than three such beacons were “in sight all the time on the hilltop.” (However, he, busily promoting a UFO mystery, dismissed this obvious explanation.) As to the landing traces, Johnny Lockard’s son, Max, explained to me how he had caused them inadvertently: Responding to the reported incident that evening, he had driven his 1942 Chevy pickup up the roadway to see what he might discover. As a consequence, he left the skid marks while getting back onto the lane from the field, and the discovered gunk came from his leaking oil pan. In June 2000, he drove me in his modern pickup to retrace his actions in 1952 (figure 15.3).
Other elements in the Flat- woods incident have probable explanations as well. The nauseating odor was, conceded Sanderson (1967), “almost surely derived
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Figure 15.1. Sign at Flatwoods, West Virginia, heralds “Home of the Green Monster” (photograph by the author).
from a kind of grass that abounds in the area.” The actual nausea, the Air Force investigators reportedly concluded, “was a physical effect brought on by the fright” (Keyhoe 1953). But if all this is so, what then was the terrifying creature? Did it, too, have a terrestrial origin?
Known as “the Phantom of Flatwoods,” “the Braxton County Monster,” “the Visitor from Outer Space,” and other appellations (Byrne 1966), the Flatwoods Monster was unlikely to have been the effect of vapor from a falling meteor (“Monster” 1952) or Mrs. May’s own eventual notion that it was “a secret plane the government was working on” (Marchal 1966). Freddie May did tell me that his mother no longer knew what she saw ( 2000 ).
I am in agreement with most previous investigators that the incident was not a hoax. I believe the witnesses did see and experience something that can be explained as a known West Virginia creature—even its apparent towering height. They described it as having a somewhat “manlike shape,” with a “round,” “fiery orange” face, surrounded by a “hoodlike shape” and “shining,” “animal eyes.” It had “terrible claws” and moved with “a gliding motion as if afloat in mid air.” Its cry was “something between a hiss and a high-pitched squeal” (Barker 1953, 1956; Sanderson 1967).
They described, in other words, a barn owl. That creature, Tyto alba, indeed has a roundish face appearing as if “shrouded in a closely fitting hood.” It typically has a white facial disc and underparts, the female having “some darker buff or tawny color.” Its eyes exhibit bright eyeshine, and it does indeed have sharp, curved talons that may be prominently extended. The barn owl’s flight is often with “long glides,” and when accidentally disturbed it makes an “erratic getaway” while making a “shrill rasping hiss” (Blanchan 1925; Peterson 1980; Cloudsley-Thompson et al. 1983; “Barn Owl” 2000; for a more detailed comparison and additional sources, see Nickell 2000).
Of course, the barn owl does not stand ten feet tall. However, we should note that, as Barker (1953) reported of the Flatwoods Monster, “descriptions from the waist down are vague; most of the seven said this part of the figure was not under view.” These perceptions are consistent— see figure 15.4—with a large barn owl (the female is typically the larger of the species) perched on a tree limb. The locale where the Flatwoods Mon-
Figure 15.2. Johnny Lockard, ninety-five, recalls the monster incident (photograph by the author).
ster was encountered—near a large oak on a partly wooded hilltop on the outskirts of town—tallies with the habitat of Tyto alba (Blanchan 1925; Peterson 1980).
It is unlikely that the seven impressionable witnesses had ever seen a barn owl under such frightening nighttime conditions. However, to adapt an old adage, if it looked like a barn owl, acted like a barn owl, and hissed, then likely it was a barn owl.
Despite the foregoing evidence, flying saucer die-hards and conspiracy theorists have latched onto the case, notably one Frank C. Feschino Jr., author of The Braxton County Monster: The Cover-up of the Flatwoods Monster Revealed (2004). Actually, it reveals no such thing but merely illustrates
just how confused memories can become after half a century and how an amateur investigator can inflate a tale. Feschino does not even reference my investigative report from Skeptical Inquirer science magazine (Nickell 2000). He leaves that to the foreword written by UFO conspiracy promoter Stanton T. Friedman, whose previous lost causes include the “Roswell incident.” Friedman was taken in by the amateurishly forged “MJ-12” documents in that case (Nickell with Fischer 1992, 81-105). Caveat emptor , “let the buyer beware.”
Barker, Gray. 1953. “The Monster and the Saucer.” Fate (January): 12-17.
-. 1956. They Knew Too Much about Flying Saucers. New York: Tower.
“Barn Owl.” 2000. Auburn University College of Veterinary Medicine. http://www.vetmed.auburn.edu/.
Blanchan, Neltje. 1925. Birds Worth Knowing. Garden City, NY: Nelson Doubleday, pp. 180-82.
Brookesmith, Peter. 1995. UFO: The Complete Sightings. New York: Barnes & Noble, p. 54.
Byrne, Holt. 1966. “The Phantom of Flatwoods.” Sunday Gazette-Mail State Magazine (Charleston, WV), March 6.
Alien Monster at Flatwoods 165
Figure 15.4. Split-image illustration compares fanciful Flatwoods Monster (left) with the real-world creature it most resembles, the common barn owl (right) (drawing by the author).
Clark, Jerome. 1998. The UFO Encyclopedia. 2nd ed. Detroit, MI: Omnigraphics, pp. 1:409-12.
Cloudsley-Thompson, John, et al. 1983. Nightwatch: The Natural World from Dusk to Dawn. New York: Facts on File.
Feschino, Frank C., Jr. 2004. The Braxton County Monster Revealed. Charleston, WV: Quarrier Press.
Keyhoe, Donald E. 1953. Flying Saucers from Outer Space. New York: Henry Holt.
Marchal, Terry. 1966. “Flatwoods Revisited.” Sunday Gazette-Mail State Magazine (Charleston, WV), March 6.
May, Freddie. 2000. Telephone conversation with the author. June 12.
McGaha, James. 2006. Interview by the author. September 28-29. In Joe Nickell, “Mysterious Entities of the Pacific Northwest, Part II.” Skeptical Inquirer 31, no. 2 (March/April 2007): 14-17.
“‘Monster’ Held Illusion Created by Meteor’s Gas.” 1952. Charleston Gazette (Charleston, WV), September 23.
Nickell, Joe, with John F. Fischer. 1992. Mysterious Realms. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
Nickell, Joe. 2000. “The Flatwoods UFO Monster.” Skeptical Inquirer 24, no. 6 (November/December): 15-19.
Peterson, Roger Tory. 1980. A Field Guide to the Birds. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, pp. 174-75.
Ritchie, David. 1994. UFO: The Definitive Guide to Unidentified Flying Objects and Related Phenomena. New York: MJF Books, pp. 83, 96.
Sanderson, Ivan T. 1952. Typewritten report. Quoted in Byrne 1966 (above).
-. 1967. Uninvited Visitors: A Biologist Looks at UFO’s. New York:
Cowles, pp. 37-52.
Chapter 16