The Flatwoods Monster (Braxton County Monster)

September 1952. The United States was in the middle of a national UFO wave. That evening, many people across several eastern states saw meteors. Flatwoods was a small town in Braxton County, West Virginia, about 5 miles from the county seat of Sutton.

7:15 p.m. Near dusk. A group of boys was playing football in the yard of the Flatwoods grade school. Then a bright light crossed the sky. It seemed to come down on a hill on G. Bailey Fisher's farm. The boys climbed up with Kathleen May, a local beautician, and Eugene "Gene" Lemon, 17, a West Virginia National Guardsman. Lemon's dog came too. On the hill a pulsing red light glowed. Lemon later told United Press of flashes of light, "flash, flash, flash, three or four times."

Lemon raised his flashlight. In the beam stood a man-like figure about 10 feet tall, with a round red face inside a pointed, hood-like shape that resembled the ace of spades. Its eyes gave off a greenish-orange light. Below the waist were drape-like folds. Kathleen May described "small, claw-like hands that extended in front of it."

"Suddenly it emitted a hissing sound and glided toward the group," Gray Barker wrote. Lemon screamed and dropped the flashlight. Everyone ran. The dog fled "with his tail between his legs."

A "very sickening, hot, stuffy smelling odor" hung over the hill. Witnesses later reported nausea, vomiting, irritated throats and an oily film on their faces. A doctor found no obvious medical cause. Sheriff Robert Carr and a deputy searched the hill that night. They "saw, heard and smelled nothing."

The next day A. Lee Stewart Jr. of the Braxton Democrat found "skid marks" and an "odd, gummy deposit." Kathleen May and Gene Lemon were taken to New York for the CBS show We the People. There an artist drew the creature from May's description.

Ivan T. Sanderson arrived on 18 September. His 36-page report concluded that the group met "an extraterrestrial craft and its occupant." Gray Barker, a Braxton County native, taped interviews and wrote "The Monster and the Saucer" for Fate in January 1953. It was his first UFO article. It set him on the road to the Men in Black lore.

The Project Blue Book file runs to two pages. Its card classes the case as a "meteor." Kevin Randle notes that the later stories of Air Force investigators at the site are not backed by the file. Frank Feschino built his cover-up thesis on those stories.

In 2000 Joe Nickell argued that the streak was a meteor, the pulsing light an aircraft beacon and the creature a barn owl on a branch. Foliage made the skirt. Talons made the claws. On Skeptoid, Brian Dunning added that local youth Max Lockard admitted driving his truck around the site, which would explain the skid marks. Fog explained the mist. Sulphur springs explained the smell.

The witnesses held firm. Freddie May kept to his account for decades. Today Flatwoods calls itself "Home of the Green Monster." Sutton has a Flatwoods Monster Museum, and a convention has been held there every year since 2019.