Unidentified in West Virginia (part 2)

E ditor’s Note: This is the second in a series about UFOs in West Virginia.

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The drawing made of the Braxton County Monster.

West Virginia’s most-famous UFO sighting is also part monster story. On September 12, 1952, Edward May, 13; his brother Fred May, 12, and their friend Tommy Hyer, 10, saw a bright object in the sky near Flatwoods that seemed to come to rest on a nearby field. The boys told the May brothers’ mother, Kathleen May, what they had seen. She, the boys, and Neil Nunley, 14; Ronnie Shaver, 10, and Gene Lemon, 17, went to try and locate the UFO.

At the top of a hill, they saw a large, pulsating “ball of fire.” Lemon also noticed small lights near the object. When he shined his flashlight toward the lights, he saw a creature. Though the descriptions of the creature vary somewhat, most agree it was about 10 feet tall with a red face that glowed from within and a green body. The body was man-shaped and wore a skirt.

Both the creature and witnesses fled the scene. The group reported the event to Sheriff Robert Carr who went to investigate the incident with a deputy.

When A. Lee Stewart, co-owner of the Braxton Democrat visited the scene later that night, he found “there was a sickening, burnt, metallic odor still prevailing.” The following day he visited again and found elongated tracks on the ground and a thick, black liquid. He reported the incident as a possible UFO landing.

Was the sighting real? That’s still being debated today. At least one report says it was a hoax.

Adrian Gwin of the Charleston Daily Mail wrote a 1977 article that said Flatwoods resident Bill Steorts had written the paper a letter saying that he and A. Lee Stewart, Jr., the son of the owner of the Braxton Democrat, had invented the Flatwoods Monster.

“Being slightly intoxicated, we fabricated the story of the Braxton County Monster.  … From there it just mushroomed. Kathleen and her children went to New York on a TV show. Scientists from all over came to investigate. We sat back and laughed. My father knew what we boys were doing but his store was doing a booming business from the tourist trade …,” Steorts wrote in the letter published in the Daily Mail.

One report says the pulsating light could have been a meteor (there was one in the region that night) and the creature an owl (though the witnesses’ perceptions were distorted somewhat by their anxiety). Also, the tracks were later identified as belonging to a pick-up truck driven by Max Lockard who had gone to the site to look for evidence of a UFO.

The Braxton County Monster also has a famous cousin in West Virginia Lore called the Mothman.

The Mothman was first seen on November 15, 1966, near the West Virginia Ordnance Works at Point Pleasant. David and Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Mallette were driving in the Scarberry’s car when they saw two red lights near the plant gate. When they stopped to investigate, they discovered the red lights were the eyes of animal that “shaped like a man, but bigger, maybe six and a half or seven feet tall, with big wings folded against its back,” according to Roger Scarberry. When they tried to drive off, the creature chased them even when their speed was 100 mph.

The group told their story to Deputy Millard Halstead at the Mason County Courthouse. He investigated but found no sign of the creature. However, several sightings over the next year described roughly the same creature.

Sightings diminished after the collapse of the Silver Bridge between Point Pleasant and Kanauga, OH, that killed 46 people. This gave rise to the story that the Mothman appears before upcoming disasters.

However, one explanation of the Mothman is that it was a sandhill crane. They were known to be in the area and they could grow to large heights. They also had large wingspans. They also have an unusual shriek.

While there is no spaceship involved in the story, the Mothman himself is an unidentified flying object and many believe him to be an alien.

You might also enjoy these posts:

A Wonder of Natural Resources: West Virginia at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair
The champion coal miner of the world
Unidentified in West Virginia (part 1)