On September 12, 1952, the Flatwoods Monster was born. It began in the fading late summer twilight of Flatwoods, West Virginia when a group of boys stopped their football game as they spotted a fiery ball streaking across the sky. Seeing it dip behind a hill, they ran in its direction, stopping only to gather more witnesses and a flashlight. When they reached the top of the hill they met the monster. It first appeared as a pair of eyes floating next to a pulsing red light. Described as towering, it stood seven feet tall with clawed-fingers and small arms tucked at its sides. One of the boys shined his light at the beast, causing it to hiss, flare its eyes a brilliant red, and glide towards the group. They boys screamed and ran.
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| Artist depiction of the Flatwoods Monster, as shown on national television in 1952. |
This actually happened. The boys were not lying. They saw the light flying through the sky and then chased it up the hill to discover a creature. Except that creature was most likely an owl, and that light in the sky was also something fairly common. That same night a meteor was reported throughout a number of east coast states, as well as an observatory as far away as Baltimore. Even residents of the town today explain it away as being nothing more than another meteor. The creature itself, with its claws and fiery eyes, was probably a barn owl perched above the ground on a branch in the failing light. Have you ever seen a deer in your headlights? Catch those dazzling reflections with your flashlight when you’re alien hunting and I’m sure they’d give you a start as well. The pulsing red light is easily explained as being one of the many lighted plane beacons on radio towers in the area, shining through the trees. The boys reported that they locked their eyes on the creature for no more than a second or two before turning tail, just enough time to see a cloaked figure gliding towards them and hissing like a barn owl.
The fact that the Flatwoods observers mistook a large bird for a creature from another world isn’t that far-fetched given how UFO-crazy Americans were in the 1950’s. UFO spotting had become far more common following the national news of Kenneth Arnold, who in 1947 spotted a series of flying saucers from his private plane over Washington state. Arnold’s claims were reported around the country and UFOs took center stage in the American zeitgeist. This was in the same month that the Roswell incident, where the U.S. government purportedly took possession of a downed spacecraft and its occupants, occurred in New Mexico. Following the Arnold encounter there was a spike in the number of UFO sightings in newspapers throughout North America, with one count coming in at 853 for the year. By 1952 when the Flatwoods Monster made its brief hissing glide into history, the government had convened several panels and commissions to determine the validity of UFO sightings, as well as evaluate the possible threat of these crafts. There is no doubt that these boys, who saw a meteor sliding across the horizon and called out “UFO,” had seen newspapers with fuzzy pictures of alien crafts and reports of visitors from other planets. The hysteria was enough that when they saw a common barn owl perched in a tree, their minds saw a floating creature out to abduct them.
