When A Fearsome Monster Terrified 1950s America, The U.S. Air Force Reached A Startling Conclusion

It’s 1952, and three kids are playing in their schoolyard. Suddenly, a bright light zooms through the evening sky. That gets the boys attention for sure – especially when the “thing” crashes into the ground nearby. Inquisitive as children are, they’ve got to find out what’s just flown over their heads. But first, the children gather one of their moms: Kathleen May. 

So, now the little gang is composed of Tommy Hyer, brothers Ed and Freddie May plus the latter boys’ mother. According to Medium writer B Jessee, three other young lads joined the group, one of whom brought his pooch Rickie along as well. The search party was now eight strong – counting the dog. Yet what they’re about to find will frighten the wits out of them.

Unfortunately, with so many sets of eyes, accounts of what the boys and Kathleen saw that night were confused. And they have only become more so over the decades. Though one thing we do know is this: what the children witnessed terrified them so much that they quickly skedaddled out of there. Jessee notes that the group found the dog later – hiding under a porch and shivering with fear.

The story of what they’d seen in their little West Virginian village of Flatwoods somehow got into the mainstream media after local reports. Yep, the being became a national sensation overnight! Whatever it was they’d seen now had a name; the Flatwoods Monster. Though whether this apparition was an Earthly manifestation or something more sinister from outer space was a question left hanging in the air.

In any case, the U.S. government took it seriously enough to instigate an investigation into the by-now notorious incident. The U.S. Air Force put investigators from Project Blue Book on the case, according to declassified documents. This organization was a secretive government probe into the UFO reports which had proliferated around the U.S. in the early 1950s. 

Let’s go through the detail of what happened in Flatwoods on the evening of September 12, 1952. It’s a remote village in West Virginia’s Appalachian Hills with a population of around 300, according to History.com. Until that fateful night in 1952, it was a place that very few people had heard of. Our story starts at about 7:00 p.m., as dusk was falling.

As we’ve seen, the first three characters in the story were the May brothers. There was Freddie aged 12 and Ed a year older, plus 10-year-old Tommy Hyer. These were the kids playing in their school’s yard when they spotted something soaring overhead through the sky. It was brightly lit and seemed to pulse as it traveled, Jessee notes. As the boys watched it, the flying object came to ground on nearby farmland.

Apparently, the three kids weren’t keen to go and investigate the landing spot on their own, so they headed to the May home first. There, the boys met Kathleen May and told her what they’d seen skimming through the sky. She decided to join the three lads on an expedition to investigate the landing site. They then picked up a flashlight to aid in their search.

On the way to the spot where the boys had seen the object crash to Earth, they picked up three more young lads and a dog. These were ten-year old Roy Shaver, Neil Nunley who was 14 and Gene Lemon – three years his senior. Also, the latter was the one who brought his dog Rickie along. So, now there were seven humans and one canine.

As we’ve said, accounts of what happened next were confused. Yet one man who came to investigate after the event was Gray Barker – a freelancer and not one of the USAF Project Blue Book men. The latter apparently thought that young Nunley gave the most sober account of events out of all the first-hand witnesses. 

Barker later wrote up his record of the Flatwoods Monster incident and published it in Fate Magazine and afterwards in his 1956 book They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers. According to Barker’s account of Nunley’s evidence, the youth said that he and Lemon were first up the hill where they’d seen the object crash to Earth. 

As they neared the spot where the flying “thing” had crashed, Nunley said there was a “huge globular mass” about 50 feet from them on the hillside. The site seemed to have a blanket of fog that had a distinctive odor – perhaps of burning metal or some kind of gas. The mass looked to be afire and pulses of light flashed from it. 

Nunley said that there was no noise, though others contradicted this. Some of the witnesses claimed that they’d heard some kind of regular banging noise. Plus, there was a hiss – something that could have been mistaken for a jet engine. Lemon then panned his flashlight, and what appeared in the beam shocked them all to the core. 

According to Jessee, the torchlight revealed a 15-foot figure – more or less humanoid. Yet all that the horrified boys saw was the creature’s upper half. Its “face” was round and red as blood. Both nose and mouth were absent, but its eye openings were there. Some said that they’d seen rays of “greenish-orange” light beaming from the eye apertures, too.

Something like a hood surrounded the face and it rose to a point at the top. Freddie and Ed’s mom also claimed a light shone from the apparition’s interior. And she noticed the body had fabric-like pleats and that the beast had hands with talons. Meanwhile, the eye-witnesses couldn’t agree among themselves whether the creature stood on firm ground or hovered above it. 

Alarmingly, as the group gawped at this bizarre beast – which they only had in view briefly – the creature began to make a hissing noise. Ominously, it then moved towards them. Some said the monster appeared to be readying itself to leap at them. But Nunley contradicted this in his interview with Barker.

Barker quoted Nunley’s description of the monster’s motion in his book. Nunley was sure that, “It just moved. It didn’t walk. It moved evenly; it didn’t jump.” Whatever the truth of the creature’s behavior, it was enough to terrify all of them. They beat a hasty and panicked retreat – just glad to escape from this bizarre monster.

There’s no doubt their fear was real enough. One Flatwoods resident called John Gibson knew all of the people who’d witnessed the incident. History.com quoted his memory of how the sight of the monster affected at least one kid and the dog. He said, “One of the boys peed his pants. Their dog ran with his tail between his legs.” 

Flatwoods is hardly more than a hamlet – the kind of place where news travels fast. A local newspaper called the Braxton County Democrat was soon covering the extraordinary story. History.com quotes the report, “Seven Braxton County residents on Saturday reported seeing a 10-foot Frankenstein-like monster in the hills above Flatwoods. A National Guard member – [17-year-old] Gene Lemon – was leading the group when he saw what appeared to be a pair of bright eyes in a tree.” 

A. Lee Stewart – publisher of the Braxton County Democrat – wrote that, “Those people were the most scared people I’ve ever seen. People don’t make up that kind of story that quickly.” After hearing the stories, Stewart went up the hill where the scene had played out armed with a shotgun. But by the time he got there, no monster was to be seen. 

The report added that Lemon cried out and fell to the ground “when he saw a 10-foot monster with a blood-red body and a green face that seemed to glow.” Andrew Smith – who runs the Flatwoods Monster Museum – said that the story was soon picked up by national press and radio. 

More than that, Smith related, “Mrs. May and the National Guard kid ended up going to New York to talk to CBS.” So, from being a minor local disturbance, this bizarre tale had been transformed into a national drama. It must have felt to the residents of sleepy little Flatwoods that things were spinning out of control!

Though not everyone was convinced by the tales from the eye-witnesses who’d experienced this bizarre incident. One paper – the Logansport-Pharos Tribune – wrote that, “State police and a number of residents hooted at the reports as a product of mass hysteria. Police said the eyewitnesses guess as to the monster’s height varied from 7 to 17 feet.” 

Nevertheless, the same newspaper reported the words of Kathleen May, whom they identified as a beautician. The woman said she’d seen a “fire breathing monster, 10 feet tall with a bright green body and a blood red face. It looked worse than Frankenstein. It couldn’t have been human.” The report also quoted Lee Stewart’s experience when he had rushed to the scene. 

According to the Logansport Pharos Tribune’s account, as well as going to the site armed with his shotgun, Stewart was accompanied by an “armed posse.” It seems that nobody was taking any chances with this potentially dangerous monster. He went on to describe what he saw after arriving on the scene. 

Stewart recalled a strange odor, adding, “It was sort of warm and sickening. And there were two places about 6 to 8 feet in diameter where the brush was trampled down.” But did he believe that there really had been a monster? Stewart prevaricated, “I hate to say I believe it, but I hate to say I don’t believe it.” 

Stewart added, “Those people were scared – badly scared, and I sure smelled something.” At this point, it’s worth examining the wider context of a rash of purported UFO sightings all across the U.S. during the 1950s. It was a time of high tension in the world; the Soviets had detonated their first atomic bomb in 1949. 

The Cold War was raging, and many felt that nuclear Armageddon might be just around the corner. And the USAF took flying saucers seriously enough to establish the investigatory Project Blue Book in 1947, which was disbanded 22 years later. As History.com points out, even normally sober publications like Life magazine were printing earnest stories about UFOs. 

Just a few months before the Flatwoods incident, Life had published a banner headline “Have We Visitors From Space?” The article went on, “The Air Force is now ready to concede that many saucer and fireball sightings still defy explanation. Life offers some scientific evidence that there is a real case for interplanetary saucers.” So, the American public, it seems, were ready and primed for an era of UFOS. 

Meanwhile, Project Blue Book sent its operatives around the country to investigate unidentified sightings. But Barker – the freelance UFO investigator we met earlier – was skeptical that there had been any official probe. In his 1956 book he wrote, “There were only wild rumors of governmental investigation. If the Air Force was interested, their concern was a well-kept secret.” 

Yet previously classified documents have since revealed that Blue Book officers did indeed take an interest in the Flatwoods Monster story – despite what Barker believed. Though it seems that they were signally unimpressed by the lurid witness accounts of the incident in West Virginia. Their bald conclusion? It was simply a “typical meteorite.” That’s fine as far as it goes, but what did the good folks of Flatwoods actually see? 

After all, the seven eye witnesses – and not forgetting Rickie the dog – may not really have seen a UFO in flight or a large monster. But they definitely experienced something. Several people have turned their minds to this conundrum over the years. Though a 2000 reinvestigation came up with what some consider to be the most likely explanation of the facts. 

Joe Nickell carried out that examination of the 1952 event in Flatwoods. On his current website he writes that, “I have been called ‘the modern Sherlock Holmes,’ the ‘real-life Scully’ – from The X-Files – and other appellations. I am well into my fourth decade as an investigator of historical, paranormal, and forensic mysteries, myths and hoaxes.” He clearly has no doubts about his own abilities. 

Nickell’s comprehensive investigation included speaking to witnesses, a site visit and a literature review. Early in his probe, he reached the same conclusion that the USAF’s Project Blue Book had. The flying saucer – the burning object soaring through the sky – had in fact been a meteor. This finding was also independently corroborated by contemporary reports. 

Press articles from the time told of a meteor in the sky over West Virginia. And even more conclusively, the Maryland Academy of Science noted a meteor over Baltimore at 7:00 p.m. on September 12. Interestingly, that is near the very time when the children had seen it in Flatwoods. Baltimore is 220 miles from Flatwoods – not far when it comes to spotting a meteor speeding through the heavens. 

And what about the strange fog, the weird smell and the terrifying monster? Mist is hardly an unusual phenomenon in the Appalachians. The range even has a section called the Smoky Mountains. The smell might be explained by plant life in the area. In 1967 one investigator – Ivan T. Sanderson – put it down to a particular grass with a distinctive odor. 

Another investigator called Major Donald F. Keyhoe – one of the earliest in 1953 – reported what the Project Blue Book officers had concluded. They believed that the strange apparition was probably “a large owl perched on a limb.” That – in combination with some over-heated imaginations among the witnesses – apparently explained the fearsome creature. 

Nickell was another adherent of the owl theory. He wrote that, “Several elements in the witnesses’ description help identify the Flatwoods creature specifically as Tyto alba, the common barn owl – known almost worldwide.” This is something of an anti-climax, isn’t it? All that those six frightened youngsters plus Mrs. May and Rickie the dog saw was a large owl! 

Though the whole saga has not been a disappointment for the good folks of Flatwoods. They have been able to exploit their status as a hotspot for UFOs and aliens ever since – despite experts saying that there was actually just a meteor and an owl. We mentioned the Flatwoods Museum earlier, and that’s evidence of the town’s status as a thriving tourist attraction. 

If you too join the hordes of tourists that make a pilgrimage to Flatwoods, you’ll be able to buy monster shot glasses, monster bumper stickers and other bric-a-brac. There are even over-sized monster chairs where you can sit for a photo to post on social media. So, whatever the kids saw – alien or owl – their experience lives seven decades later in ways they could hardly have predicted.