The Monster and the Saucer

By Gary Barker

January 1953

The huge shape with the weirdly glowing eyes was seen by seven witnesses. Was it an alien life form?

On September 12, 1952, the nation’s wire services crackled with news of a 10- foot, red-faced monster, which sprayed a foul, sickening gas and frightened seven Flatwoods, W.Va., residents into panic.

“It looked worse than Frankenstein,” Mrs. Kathleen May, one of a party who climbed a hill to investigate a flying saucer sighting, told reporters.

Shortly afterward I went to Flatwoods, a small town of 300, and spent three days subjecting these seven people, and other residents of the area, to rigorous questioning. If this story were true, I felt it deserved factual reporting; if it were a hoax I wished to explode it.

The stories obtained from the seven different persons who had been present were heard separately. Although their accounts did not reach the terrifying proportions originally reported, and some of them had taken on color through retellings and leading questions, their stories agreed, except in very minor details. And try as I might, I could not break these stories down.

On that terrifying night reports of strange lights and objects in the skies were prevalent from Ohio eastward to Washington D.C., and from Virginia northward to Pennsylvania. About seven o’clock, just as it had become dark, Mrs. May, a beautician, was told by her two small sons, Eddie 13, and Fred 12, that they had seen a “flying saucer” land on a hilltop above their house. The two May children had been at a nearby playground with Gene Lemon 17, Neil Nunley 14, Ronnie Shaver 10, and Tommy Hyer, also 10.

The “saucer” which the children described to me, “looked like a silver dollar rushing through the sky,” spouting an exhaust which looked like red balls of fire. It came southwestward across the sky and, directly over the hilltop, paused, seemed to hover, and descended out of view on the other side,

The group ran to Mrs. May’s home, at the base of the hill, and the two May children told their mother about the object. She insisted it was “just their imaginations,” until she looked upward and saw a strange red glow. Gene Lemon found a flashlight and led the party up the hill after Mrs. May agreed to accompany them.

Although not definitely timed, not more than a half-hour could have elapsed from the time of the sighting and the movement Lemon screamed with terror and fell backward, and the party fled from the sight before them.

I am now listening to tape-recorded interviews, correlating details, and sifting out those which do not exactly agree or might be colored by the horror and excitement of the moment.

The story told with least emotion is that of Neil Nunley, and the exact words I will quote will be his. Nunley impressed me as being a very level-headed and unimaginative youngster. He was very definite on what he saw and what he did not see.

He and Lemon were ahead of the others. Before them, up a roadway leading to the hilltop, they could see a reddish light pulsating from dim to bright. As they approached they encountered a mist which resembled fog but which carried a pungent, irritating odor. It seemed to become denser as they walked farther.

As they went over the hilltop, through a gateway, they saw a globular object down over the hill to their right, about 50 feet away.

“It was just a big ball of fire,” Nunley explained, and it would grow dimmer and brighter at regular intervals. He could not estimate the exact size, but others in the party said it was “big as a house.”

Because their attentions were on the globe they did not notice a huge figure standing to their left, near the hilltop, until they were about 15 feet from it. Seeing two glowing green spots, which he thought were animal eyes, Lemon turned his flashlight in that direction.

Towering above them was a man-like shape. Its face was round, and blood-red. Around the face was a pointed hood-like shape, dark in appearance. In the “face” were two eye-like openings from which greenish-orange” beams projected over their heads. The body, illuminated by the flashlight from the head downward to the waist, appeared dark and colorless to Nunley, although some others said it was green. Mrs. May said she saw clothing-like folds around the figure. Descriptions from the waist down are vague; most of the seven said this part of the figure was not under view.

Not all agreed that the “monster” had arms. Mrs. May described it with terrible claws. Some said they just didn’t see any. Not all agreed on the height of the figure, but according to their descriptions it couldn’t have been more than 10 feet tall. It was said to have stood under an overhanging limb which is about 15 feet from the ground, and it didn’t reach to this limb.

A powerful odor, described by all as sickening and irritating to the nostrils, pervaded the scene. Some had originally said it smelled like burning metal or burning sulphur, but under questioning none of the seven could remember anything in their experiences resembling the odor.

Others in the party reported a sound, coming either from the figure or the globular object, described as something between a hiss and a high-pitched squeal. They could also hear a thumping or throbbing noise.

The figure was observed for a very short while, a matter of seconds, because of the terror they experienced. It was impossible to ascertain the exact length of time it was viewed; most of the stories varied slightly. But all agreed with Nunley it was “a very short time. We just got a good look at it and left.”

The figure was moving toward them but inscribing an arc, which, after viewing the scene, I estimate would lead the entity down the hillside to the globular object.

I questioned Nunley at length about the means of locomotion employed by the figure. I asked him to re-enact the scene and walk about, imitating it.

“ I couldn’t move as it did. It just moved. It didn’t walk. It moved evenly; it didn’t jump.”

He could still view the figure after Lemon screamed and dropped the flashlight. The globular shape, he explained, emitted enough light to make the figure visible.

Two of the party, Mrs. May and Lemon, said they did not see the globe. They were the worst frightened, however, and their entire attention may have been centered on the figure. The Nunley boy was very definite about the globe, though; he said the reason they got so close to the monster before seeing it was because they were looking at the globe.

They had taken a dog with them, and Nunley said it howled and ran away and was found at the house with “its tail tucked between its legs.”

At the house they telephoned the nearby town of Sutton, the Braxton County seat, for law officials but were told that Sheriff Robert Carr and his deputy were near Frametown, another small town about 17 miles southward, investigating the report of a plane crash. About an hour later they returned to Sutton, heard of the Flatwoods incident, and rushed to the scene. They climbed the hill, investigated, but saw, heard and smelled nothing.

I questioned A. Lee Stewart, Jr., of the Braxton Democrat, who arrived shortly before the sheriff, and found some members of the party receiving first aid. Others were too terrified to talk coherently. He finally was able to persuade Lemon to accompany him to the hilltop.

No signs of the figure or globe were visible, but bending close to the ground he could smell the strange odor, which he also described as sickening and irritating. He said he had smelled gases used in warfare, while in the Air Force, but had encountered nothing similar.

At seven o’clock the next morning he returned and found “skid marks” in the tall grass, leading from the spot where the figure was seen to where the globe was reported. The earth was not disturbed, but small stones had been tossed aside.

I have been over the site carefully. I saw marks and a huge area of grass trampled down, but multitudes have visited and walked over the location. I believe Stewart’s observations are accurate, however. I could see no trace of the oil reported to have been present on the ground and to have saturated the weeds with an odd, gummy deposit; but there had been a rain. Some said samples of the deposit were being analyzed but I could not track down the information.

Although Flatwoods residents shake their heads and discredit the story, attributing the phenomena to anything from a buck deer with white breast to the dome of the State House; allegedly stolen and flown to Washington by the party in power, there have arisen dozens of variations, each more hair-raising than the other before.

I ran down a number of rumors. I drove 50 miles to interview a man who had claimed to be present when a space ship had taken off from the hill. He told me he had not seen this occur, but had been present shortly after the incident and seen an object in the air. It was round, with a flat top, orange in color. Streams of fire, like jets, were projecting downward from the apex. He agreed to meet me that evening, drive to Flatwoods with me and point out the exact spot over which the object had circled and then flew southwestward. He did not keep the appointment.

Numerous people in a 20-mile radius saw illuminated objects in the sky at the same time. I could have spent a month interviewing all of such viewers. The objects were described mainly as round, red or orange in color, and spouting fire.

These objects were reported flying in various directions, although the progress of some of them could be charted. It is evident that either they saw different objects, or one object was making a circuit of the area.

Mayor J.Holt Burne of Sutton, also editor of his Braxton Central, put the inevitable question to me.

“Well, what do you think it was?”

Sitting in his newspaper office, surrounded by the hustle and bustle of a busy small town, I should have liked to say, “The misinterpretation of natural phenomena.”

In my belief, I told him, the account fits perfectly with others of flying saucers or similar craft.

I believe that such a vehicle landed on the hillside, either from necessity or to make observations.

The monster could have been a robot from the globular ship, or some entity inside a suit which would adapt the wearer to Earth’s atmosphere. When the flashlight was shone upon it, that stimulus then would start the creature on its way back to the ship. Or perhaps it did not see nor take notice of the seven odd bipeds that had come to view it and, had they waited, might have completed its progress to the ship and left.

But that is speculation. What I do know is that when you talk to seven people with honesty and fear in their eyes you know in your heart when they are telling the truth. These people did see something. And whatever they saw was very much like what they described.