Flatwoods Monster Museum

On September 12, 1952, brothers Edward and Fred May, along with Tommy Hyer, Neil Nunley, and Ronnie Shaver, told adults they had seen a bright object cross the sky and come down on a nearby farm outside Flatwoods, West Virginia. Kathleen May, mother of the May brothers, and Eugene Lemon, a West Virginia National Guardsman and her cousin, joined the group that climbed the hill to investigate. Several members of the group described a roughly 10-foot-tall figure with a round, blood-red face inside a pointed, hood-like shape, dark clawed hands, and a pulsating light. Some in the group reported nausea and irritation afterward.

The sighting drew national press coverage within days and has remained one of the most frequently cited cases in American UFO literature since. Paranormal investigator Joe Nickell later proposed that the light was a meteor and that a barn owl perched in a tree, combined with shadow and startled imagination, produced the humanoid description; other researchers have pointed to aircraft navigation beacons as a possible source for the pulsating red light.

The case has never been definitively resolved, and the town has leaned into the legend rather than away from it, erecting a "Home of the Green Monster" sign and hosting an annual festival. The Flatwoods Monster has since appeared in period newspapers, a 2018 feature documentary, and references across popular culture.