Monstrum

- In 1952, headlines across the nation reported a terrifying creature, a 10-foot-tall, spade-headed, and glowing-eyed being, wrapped in metallic clothing, spewing out a noxious gas.

(tense music) The bizarre creature seemed to be ripped from sci-fi novels and movies of the time.

Was this the alien visitor we'd predicted, a military exercise gone wrong, Cold War paranoia, or something even more terrifying?

Let's explore one of the most peculiar and perplexing encounters of the 20th century, the Flatwoods Monster.

(soft music) You may have seen it in "Fallout 76," or "The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask."

But before it was a pixelated Easter egg in your favorite video game, the Flatwoods Monster struck fear into a small community in West Virginia.

(tense music) It's September 12th, 1952, and the rural community of Flatwoods, isolated by hundreds of miles of forest and mountainous train in West Virginia.

At the local elementary school, brothers Edward and Freddie played with friends.

Just before dusk turned to darkness, around seven o'clock, a bright flash streak passed in the sky above them.

They first thought it was a meteor, although later it would be described as a saucer speeding across the sky in a fiery flash of red.

It came from the southwest, crossed the boys line of sight before descending over the ridge of a nearby hilltop.

The brothers quickly ran to tell their mother, Kathleen May, to Kathleen's credit, when her sons told her what they saw, she took them seriously.

She called Teen National Guard member Eugene Lemon, her cousin, gathered the family dog, and the whole gang set off to take a closer look at whatever landed, or crashed into the hillside.

Armed with only a single flashlight, they could see a reddish light pulsating in the distance.

When they crested the hill, they were engulfed in a dense mist.

To their horror, they spotted what they could only describe as a monster standing before them.

They reported seeing a 10 foot tall humanoid with a red face that seemed to glow.

The strange being was draped in a garment from the waist down, in a metallic looking dress with either a head or a headpiece shaped like the ace of spades.

At least one of the crew thought they saw claws for hands.

As the figure floated towards them, the group smelled a sickening metallic odor emanating from its body.

When the creature was caught in the glow of flashlight, it hissed at them.

The group quickly fled in abject horror.

Local law enforcement investigated later that night, but found nothing, and the days following their sighting, a few of the witnesses became ill with vomiting, nausea, and sore throats.

Local newspapers quickly picked up the story.

Coincidentally, national outlets reported separate incidents of witnesses claiming to see a fireball streaking through the sky that same night.

- So I knew Freddie quite well.

We were actually neighbors for at least seven years.

Whenever Freddie would talk about the story, you know, there's debate as to what this thing was, whether it was a, you know, an owl, a robot, or an alien.

And if you talk to him though, as far as I can tell, it wasn't really the witnesses that ever called it anything.

You know, they just described what they saw and tried to describe it as best they could.

- Eventually, the national news printed Kathleen story.

It was even picked up internationally.

Some details were a little fuzzy, but a few things were always consistent.

The fireball from the sky, the spade shaped head on a floating tall body, the metallic garment, and the strange hissing sound.

There's different sort of variations of what the Flatwoods Monster looks like.

What do you think, in your opinion, what are like the main characteristics?

- I always go back to the original sketch done based off of Kathleen May's testimony that was done back in 1952.

It's become almost iconic at this point.

- Reports of similar sightings began to trickle in, about five miles north of Flatwoods, Audra Harper claimed that at some point before September 12th, she and a friend also saw a floating ball of fire in the woods, along with a human-like figure.

As the reports rolled in, the creature turned legend and became known as the Flatwoods Monster.

- At the time, it was a major deal.

If you were to ask people that lived here at the time, they would say that like basically the next day, all of Braxton County was in Flatwoods to check out what happened.

- Walt's appearance was undeniably monstrous.

The story soon shifted away from a tale of a mysterious figure to one of a UFO encounter and an extra terrestrial sighting.

- The conclusion that it's an alien came from an object flying through the sky, but they didn't call it an alien.

They just described it the way I described it to you, to where it doesn't make any sense, might as well be an alien, but, you know, it's not like they asked it for its papers, you know, they ran.

- I've covered a little bit about the flying saucer era in a previous episode, but there's something unique about this one.

The Flatwoods Monster sighting involved a kind of typical saucer shaped craft, similar to many other sightings at the time, but close encounters were still rare, so it made it stand out, and it wasn't just one or two people who saw the figure in the woods.

At least seven were present.

Additionally, reports of alien creatures usually involve small, often green humanoids, colloquially little green men.

But the Flatwoods Monster was big and mechanical, not wholly organic, and seemingly not bipedal.

Its appearance also corresponds to what most people believed to be some kind of aerial event, something that the Air Force confirmed.

A lot of people saw something that September night.

During the 1940s, 50s, and 60s there was a steady increase in reported sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena.

And in the 1950s, UFO paranoia was at its height giving this monster a lot of runway.

In April of 1952, Life Magazine featured an article asserting that flying saucers from outer space could be real.

The piece reported that all operational units of the Air Force were currently on the lookout for unidentified aerial phenomena.

Life even made some of their case files open to the public, detailing 10 different sightings backed by their own investigation.

After the article hit the stands, the Air Force received more reports than ever of unidentified aerial phenomena.

A few months later, Notre Dame University hosted a stargazing party titled Operation Flying Saucer.

At least 2000 people came to look through telescopes and scan the skies.

Gray Barker, a noted UFOlogist published a detailed report of the Flatwoods incident in Fate Magazine.

Not only was Baker a Braxton County native, but he would go on to write about the infamous men in black, as well as the book, the Silver Bridge, which detailed the accounts of the Mothman sightings, another famous West Virginia monster.

You can learn more about that monster here.

Braxton was never able to get to the bottom of what happened at Flatwood, but concluded these people did see something, and whatever they saw was very much like what they described.

- It seemed like if you knew the May family really well, or you knew any of the witnesses really well and you heard their testimony, the typical reaction is that they believed, you know, whatever the witnesses say happened, that's what happened.

But then the other camp, if you didn't know 'em very well, rumors would start, you know, that it was some sort of hoax or that, you know, the boys were drinking moonshine, whatever would've happened, it would've had to correspond with aerial phenomena that a bunch of people saw.

- The forest of West Virginia are ominous with dense tree growth.

It's easy to go miles without seeing another soul.

They can be particularly frightening.

So I'm not going to completely dismiss reports of strange sightings.

We also have to keep in mind that the wave of sci-fi and alien movies of the early fifties featured saucer shaped flying machines, metal wearing aliens, and strange creatures.

Case in point, 1951's "The Day the Earth Stood Still" was a landmark science fiction movie and features elements similar to the Flatwoods Monster incident.

(woman screaming) A sleek, silver flying saucer, and a towering robot companion to the humanoid alien.

In "The Thing From Another World" a team of Arctic scientists discovers a crashed flying saucer lodged in the ice.

When they accidentally thaw out the alien creature inside, it begins to attack the crew.

The film ends with a famous warning... - [Narrator] Keep watching the sky.

- In 1952's "Zombies of The Stratosphere," yes, space zombies.

The invading martians use a robot to attack.

(tense music) So the era's fascination with UFOs may have shaped how witnesses described what they saw in Flatwoods West Virginia.

Either way, the incident was taken seriously and investigated by the United States Air Force under Project Blue Book, a covert government program set up to investigate unidentified flying objects.

Project Blue Book reported 1,501 sightings in 1952.

303 of those were deemed unidentified.

This number is significantly more than previous years, like hundreds more.

Also reaching a fever pitch in the 1950s, Cold War anxieties, the public and intelligence organizations alike nervously wondered if these UFOs weren't extraterrestrial, but real missiles or secret aircraft originating from the Soviet Union.

Tensions were at their height with the Soviet blockade of Western Berlin, the first Soviet atomic bomb, and other communist powers coming into play.

People were suspicious about how science, technology, and biotoxins could be turned into weapons.

Movies started combining the idea of extraterrestrials with fears of the Cold War.

Released in 1952, "Red Planet Mars" involved communist government invasions and coverup plots.

In "Radar Men from the Moon," Earth is under attack by mysterious explosions.

The culprit is discovered to be an alien race that lives on the moon, complete with an army of robot-like soldiers with spacecraft.

Part reality, part Cold-War-fuel mass hysteria, unidentified aerial phenomenon certainly had their moment.

Government officials tried to downplay the sightings, often blaming meteors, but the events of Flatwoods remained a mystery of note, what was it that people saw?

Ivan T. Sanderson, a biologist and naturalist, who was known for his interest in unexplained phenomena, traveled to Flatwoods to investigate the sightings.

He and his assistant called in two cave explorers, who were also chemists.

They set out, along with a publisher of a local newspaper and five reporters, and explored the area where the sighting occurred, and interviewed witnesses.

He also consulted scientists and other experts.

Sanderson was a prominent investigator who gave the Flatwood story a platform beyond sensational news stories.

He became one of the earliest defenders of the story, concluding that a flight of intelligently controlled objects flew over West Virginia on the evening of September 12th, and that two crashed, and another exploded.

He asserted that the pilot of the fourth flying object, the Flatwoods creature, landed intentionally and exited wearing the equivalent of a spacesuit or deep sea diving bell.

When it encountered the humans, it tried to get back to its ship, which had disintegrated due to unknown environmental factors, which is what caused the smell and the fog.

Sanderson's involvement helped frame the incident as more than just a local curiosity, and something that had a foundation in 1950s UFO lore.

UFOlogists Major Donald Keyhoe also investigated.

He claimed that the Air Force sent two men undercover to Flatwoods.

They concluded that the witnesses saw a meteor, than an owl above underbrush that made it look larger than it really was.

They also argued that the illness some experienced was just caused by fear.

Other theories have attempted to explain the event with familiar elements.

One such idea was that the witnesses were exposed to mustard gas.

Another byproduct of Cold War anxieties.

Mustard gas was widely known and deeply feared, and has a pungent sulfur smell similar to that the witnesses reported.

It could also account for the dense fog in the air, and the health issues witnesses experienced following the sighting.

Still, this theory remains a theory.

How do locals now feel about the Flatwoods Monster?

- I think the mentality is kind of like, you know, why can't we just be normal?

You know, there's a little bit of that, but at the same time, it's been a thing that at least some locals have always embraced.

We had a teacher, and she also would sing this song to her class that that was about the Flatwoods monster.

The Phantom of Flatwoods From the moon or from Mars Maybe from God and not from the stars - Everybody that I've really interacted with in my generation, they seem to appreciate that there's this thing that has to do with where they live that's world famous.

The Flatwoods Monster Museum happened actually incredibly organically after kind of years and years and years of people being interested in the Flatwoods Monster.

Finally, I created a display in the front of our visitor center.

So the collection just started growing slowly, and then the collection just grew and grew and grew every day, the majority of the people coming through the door, they're coming 'cause it's a Flatwoods monster museum.

Interest seems to grow and grow.

So, you know, as long as people care, it'll be here.

The piece on the left, I guess you would call it the first novelty item created in the likeness of the Flatwoods monster.

- I just love that it seems like that first novelty item is actually very close to that original sketch with like the clawed hands and everything.

I love it.

- [Andrew] Then of course, like everybody gets their picture taken, you know, by the mascot.

- Can someone actually get in that suit?

- [Andrew] Yes, I can get in that suit.

- Yes, you're the Flatwood Monster mascot.

I love that so much.

That's the other thing about monsters.

They tend to bring artifacts and stories out of the woodwork that might never have seen the light of day otherwise.

- I want people to make the Flatwoods Monster whatever they want it to be 'cause at the end of the day, whatever they think doesn't hurt anything.

I'm just a fan and whatever that means is good enough to me.

- The Flatwoods Monster is a product of a strange event in a spooky setting, UFO Fear, Cold War paranoia, and 1950s sci-fi, the 1950s were full of flying saucers in sci-fi books, and movies with mechanical robots and sleek aliens.

Great examples of how historical context, cultural fears, and popular media shape the way we imagine and interpret what we see, like the Flatwoods Monster.

Or maybe it's all real.

Here, here, here, and here.

You may have seen it in "Fallout 76" or "The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask."

(stuttering over words) Landed intentionally.

Okay, being not lame.