The Mystery Of The Flatwoods Monster

Many cryptids are said to lurk in the shadows of Appalachia, including West Virginia’s Flatwoods Monster.

During spooky season, popular attention turns toward ghosts and goblins or, if you live in Appalachia, cryptids.  

Cryptids are strange animals and entities — monsters — that may have been encountered by eyewitnesses but have never been verified by mainstream science.  

Appalachia has a lot of them. 

The best-known is the Mothman, which has become a global phenomenon with movies, video games and even romance novels. 

But there’s also the Flatwoods Monster, which predates the Mothman by 15 years.

It all began on a warm Friday evening in September 1952 in Flatwoods, a small town in Braxton County, West Virginia, surrounded by farmland and forests. A group of kids were playing after supper at the elementary school when they saw something streak overhead and crash into a nearby hill. 

“It was a pretty large group of kids that was playing,” said Andrew Smith, the executive director of the Braxton County Convention and Visitors Bureau and the semi-official keeper of Flatwoods Monster lore.. “Actually, most were fairly frightened by it, but at least five decided they wanted to see whatever that was.” 

A group of boys led by 14-year-old Freddie May and his 13-year-old brother Eddie started up the hill to investigate but stopped by their house to tell their mother what they’d seen.  

Kathleen May and her cousin Gene decided they also should go.  

Near the top of the hill, they were greeted by a strange green and red figure who towered over them.  

“They described this thing as being about 10 feet tall and having a red face,” Smith said. “It’s this round shape with these two things that kind of look like eyes, or sometimes they’re also described as lights, with this odd, spade shape wrapping the head, and then like a long, dark body.”

Frightened, the group fled back home, where Kathleen telephoned the police.  

By the time the authorities arrived, there was little to support the family’s claims. But the Braxton County sheriff supposedly didn’t think the story was a hoax.

“Just from interacting with the witnesses, he was very convinced that they at least had an experience that was incredibly frightening to them,” Smith said.

The incident quickly made the local news, then the story traveled all over the world.  

The appearance of the Flatwoods Monster happened in the midst of the Cold War. Fears of nuclear war may have caused an uptick in UFO sightings.

Smith said there were at least two other alleged appearances by the Flatwoods Monster. A family from New York claimed to have seen something between the towns of Clay and Sutton. 

But Smith doesn’t buy it.  

However, another report from the Falls Mills area sounded more believable to him — though weirder.   

“She describes a lot of transformation that seems like it has an even crazier layer and dimension than the original sighting story,” Smith said.  

What did or didn’t happen, nobody knows for sure. The last known eyewitness, Ed May, died earlier this year. Still, people wonder, and it keeps them coming to Braxton County to take a look.  

This story is part of our series seeking out answers about the region’s cryptids, “What Lurks Beyond the Porch Light.” It was produced by the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom, a collaboration between West Virginia Public Broadcasting, WPLN and WUOT in Tennessee, LPM, WEKU, WKMS and WKU Public Radio in Kentucky, and NPR. Sign up for the weekly Porch Light newsletter here for news from around the region.