Flatwoods Monster — Cryptid Encyclopedia

On the evening of September 12, 1952, brothers Edward and Fred May, their friend Tommy Hyer, and their mother Kathleen May watched a bright object streak across the sky and land on a nearby hilltop in Flatwoods, West Virginia. They gathered a small group and climbed the hill to investigate.

What they found standing in the mist would become one of the most iconic cryptid encounters of the 20th century: a towering figure, roughly ten feet tall, with a dark metallic body shaped like a hooded dress. Its head was flat and spade-shaped — like the ace of spades — with two glowing orange-red eyes set deep within. Twisted, claw-like hands reached outward from its sides.

The creature emitted a hissing sound and released a noxious mist that made several witnesses violently ill. The group fled in terror. In the days that followed, investigators found a foul-smelling residue on the hilltop and damaged vegetation.

Skeptics have suggested the "creature" was a barn owl perched in a tree, with the bright light being a meteor. But the witnesses never wavered in their accounts, and the sheer strangeness of the Flatwoods Monster — part robot, part alien, part Victorian ghost — has secured its place as one of the most compelling cryptid encounters on record.

"It was worse than Frankenstein. I was too scared to run." — One of the child witnesses, 1952.