THE FLATWOODS MONSTER!

Flatwoods is a small town in Braxton County in the hills of West Virginia. At 7.15pm on 12 September 1952, events occurred there that meant, ever since, Flatwoods has been associated with a terrifying apparition. Three teenage boys were playing in their schoolyard when they saw something red and fiery fly across the sky, appearing to crash at a local farm. One of the boys fetched his mother, Mrs May, and the group made its way to the farm. Approaching the site through the woods the group saw something that would haunt them forever.

The creature was described by the 17-year-old Gene Lemon as a “10ft monster with a blood-red body and a green face that seemed to glow”. Two vast beams of light appeared to project outward from its eyes and scour the dense mist. As the light from Lemon’s torch hit the creature, they were able to see it clearer. The monster was described as having a green body, and Mrs May said it had drape-like folds. (Some of the boys present disputed this, instead describing the creature as dark in colour.) Its face was round and red, with a hood-like shape surrounding it. The monster was seen for only the briefest moment before it let out a terrifying hiss and glided menacingly towards the group. In sheer terror, the boys and Mrs May fled through the trees.

A number of explanations have been given over the years for what the group saw. A meteor did pass over the village and was seen by numerous people, explaining the bright light in the sky. Ufologist Major Donald Keyhoe claimed that the US Air Force had sent two investigators who determined that the meteor had “merely appeared to be landing when it disappeared over the hill”. But what of the monster? According to Keyhoe, the investigators concluded that the creature was “probably a large owl perched on a limb”. Various other accounts and the work of sceptic Joe Nickell would seem to corroborate this, but the legend of the Flatwoods Monster lives on and today the little town remains a popular tourist attraction.