Yesterday we stretched our definition of cryptid to accommodate a fictional swamp creature with a propeller for a tail.
Today we’re going to stretch it again.
Because the Flatwoods Monster may be a cryptid.
Or an alien.
Or an owl.
Or several completely ordinary things that happened at exactly the right time to scare the living hell out of seven people on a West Virginia hillside.
Welcome to Flatwoods.
The Encounter
On the evening of September 12, 1952, several boys were outside in Flatwoods, West Virginia, when they saw a bright object streak across the sky.
It appeared to come down somewhere beyond a nearby hill on the property of farmer G. Bailey Fisher.
So they did what children have apparently always done when confronted with a potentially dangerous unidentified object.
They went to investigate.
Fortunately, they brought adults.
The group eventually included Kathleen May, her sons Edward and Fred, several other local boys, 17-year-old West Virginia National Guardsman Eugene “Gene” Lemon, and a dog.
The dog will shortly demonstrate better judgment than everyone else involved.
As the group approached the top of the hill, they saw a pulsing red light.
Lemon’s dog ran ahead.
Then the dog came back.
Frightened.
This would have been an excellent time for everyone to acknowledge that the dog had conducted the preliminary investigation and returned a negative recommendation.
They continued.
And Then Gene Lemon Turned on His Flashlight
Near a tree, the group noticed what appeared to be two bright eyes.
Lemon aimed his flashlight toward them.
And everybody got a much better look at something they immediately wished they had not seen.
Descriptions varied, but the creature they reported was enormous, sometimes estimated at ten feet tall.
It had a round, reddish face.
Bright or glowing eyes.
A large pointed shape surrounding its head, often described as resembling the ace of spades.
Below that was a dark body that witnesses described as robe-like, skirt-like, or metallic.
The figure appeared to glide rather than walk.
And then it moved toward them.
The investigation concluded.
Rapidly.
They Were Terrified
This part matters.
Whatever those people saw, the people who interviewed them shortly afterward generally agreed on one thing:
They were frightened.
Not mildly startled.
Terrified.
Local newspaper publisher A. Lee Stewart interviewed the witnesses soon after the encounter and went to the site himself.
The story spread quickly from local newspapers to national media.
Stewart commissioned a New York sketch artist to create a drawing based on Kathleen May’s description. That image would become the familiar portrait of the Flatwoods Monster.
Pointed hood.
Round face.
Glowing eyes.
Dark, flared body.
One of the strangest-looking creatures in American folklore had acquired its portrait.
But that portrait may also have helped transform a few seconds of terrified observation into something much more definite than the witnesses actually had time to see.
There Was Something in the Sky
This is one of the more interesting parts of the Flatwoods case.
The boys didn’t simply invent the bright object.
A bright meteor or fireball was reported over a wide area that evening.
So something really did streak across the sky.
The question is whether it landed on that West Virginia hillside.
There is no verified evidence that it did.
A meteor seen near the horizon can appear to descend toward the ground even when it is actually traveling far beyond the observer.
The pulsing red light the group later saw on the hill may also have had a perfectly terrestrial source.
An aircraft navigation beacon was visible in the area.
So now we potentially have:
One real meteor.
One ordinary red beacon.
And one very frightened group of people standing in the dark looking for whatever had just fallen out of the sky.
Which brings us to the owl.
We Need to Talk About the Owl
The leading skeptical explanation for the Flatwoods Monster is a barn owl.
Before you dismiss that as ridiculous, go look at a barn owl at night.
Preferably from a safe distance.
They’re beautiful.
They’re also perfectly capable of looking like something that has arrived to collect a debt your ancestors forgot to pay.
Barn owls have pale, heart-shaped faces.
Their eyes can reflect light.
They perch in trees.
Their bodies can appear elongated when viewed beneath spread or partially spread wings.
Vegetation beneath a perched bird could contribute to the appearance of a larger, robe-like lower body.
And if you’ve just watched something fiery cross the sky, followed it into the dark, encountered an acrid smell or mist, heard your dog panic, spotted glowing eyes, and then pointed a flashlight at a large pale-faced bird above you?
Your brain has not been given ideal laboratory conditions.
A startled owl taking flight could also produce the impression that the creature glided toward the witnesses.
That’s a pretty good explanation.
It is not, however, a proven one.
What Evidence Do We Actually Have?
Eyewitness testimony.
Contemporary newspaper reporting.
The witnesses’ descriptions.
A bright object genuinely reported in the sky that evening.
And not much physical evidence capable of settling the question.
Marks and residue reported around the site have acquired greater significance in later retellings, but they did not provide verifiable evidence of a landed spacecraft or unknown creature.
No body.
No biological sample.
No photograph of the creature.
No piece of a spacecraft.
No verified material of extraterrestrial origin.
And the actual encounter was extremely brief, at dusk or after dark, involving people who were already expecting to find something unusual because they believed they had just watched it fall from the sky.
That’s almost a textbook environment for misperception.
Did Project Blue Book Solve It?
You’ll often read that the United States Air Force investigated the Flatwoods incident through Project Blue Book and officially concluded that the witnesses saw a meteor, an aircraft beacon, and an owl.
That’s tidier than the surviving record appears to support.
The Air Force was certainly investigating UFO reports during this period, and the Flatwoods story became entangled with that history.
But evidence of a formal Project Blue Book field investigation producing the familiar meteor-beacon-owl conclusion is difficult to establish.
That explanation was developed and popularized largely through later skeptical investigation.
And that’s worth distinguishing.
Because a good explanation doesn’t need an imaginary government stamp of approval to be good.
The meteor, beacon, and owl combination explains a remarkable amount of what happened that night.
We simply shouldn’t give it provenance it doesn’t have.
The Grove Take
I think they probably saw an owl.
There.
Seven days into Cryptid October and I’ve sided with the bird.
But here’s why I love Flatwoods anyway.
I don’t think those people were lying.
I think something flew across the sky.
I think those kids genuinely believed it came down behind that hill.
I think Kathleen May did something completely understandable and went to see what had frightened the children.
I think the dog encountered something it didn’t like.
I think Gene Lemon pointed his flashlight into a tree.
And I think a large nocturnal bird suddenly illuminated in the West Virginia darkness may have scared the absolute shit out of everybody.
Then humans did what humans do.
They told the story.
An artist gave the creature shape.
Newspapers carried it around the country.
UFO culture absorbed it.
West Virginia adopted it.
And seventy-four years later, that few seconds on a hillside has become one of the most recognizable monster encounters in America.
Maybe nothing extraordinary was standing underneath that tree.
But something extraordinary definitely happened afterward.
A monster was born.
And unlike whatever was on that hill, we know she survived.
Porch Ruling
Come on up, sweetheart.
Monster, alien, owl, whatever.
There’s a seat.
If you’re an extraterrestrial visitor, we’d like to hear about the trip.
If you’re an unidentified Appalachian creature, we have questions.
And if you’re actually a barn owl who accidentally scared seven people badly enough to become a West Virginia icon?
You have earned that fucking chair.
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