FLATWOODS

1. Public Record

12 September 1952, dusk. A bright object dropped onto a hill near Flatwoods, Braxton County, West Virginia. Kathleen May, her sons Eddie and Freddie, teenage National Guardsman Gene Lemon, and other boys walked up from the village with a torch. They found a pulsing red light, a mist that smelled of oil and metal, and a tall figure with a spade-shaped head and a skirt-like lower body. Lemon screamed. They ran. Several were sick that night.

Sheriff Robert Carr and a reporter were on the hill after dark and found skid-like marks and a lingering smell. A. Lee Stewart of the Braxton Democrat got the first interviews before the story left the county. The next days brought the Air Force, the usual weather-balloon sentence, and a drawing that would outlive every official line.

It looked worse than Frankenstein. It couldn’t have been human.

2. Date of Incident

12 September 1952, about 19:15 on the hill. Same autumn as the Washington merry-go-round, different state, different texture.

3. Location

A knoll outside Flatwoods, Braxton County, West Virginia. Approximate 38°43 N 080°39 W. Village first, then the hill. Not Point Pleasant. Different county, fourteen years earlier than Mothman.

4. Official Narrative

Air Force / Blue Book adjacent: meteor, then barn owl plus hysteria is the later sceptical close. Official narrative never produced a body or a balloon on that hill. Local paper first, Pentagon second.

5. Witness Layer

May household and the boys. Lemon the oldest armed presence and the first to put light on the figure. Illness after the mist is in the early medical talk: throat, nausea. Stewart’s notes are closer to the hour than any book written after the drawing hardened.

There was a hissing sound and a throat-burning mist.

I thought it was the devil.

6. Recovery Logistics

Skid marks. Greasy film on grass that did not last. No figure. No craft. The drawing is the durable object, which is a problem as well as a gift.

7. Assessment

A West Virginia entity file that is not Mothman and should not be filed as Mothman. Seven people on a hill, a smell, a night of sickness, a sheriff who walked the ground. Owl-plus-meteor is a tidy later sentence. It has to carry a lot of children and a Guardsman. Keep the county. Keep the date. Leave Point Pleasant on its own page.

8. Materials & Remains

Stewart’s interviews. The famous drawing. No specimen.

9. Key Personnel

Kathleen May : Adult on the hill.

Gene Lemon : Torch. Scream.

Eddie and Freddie May : The sons.

A. Lee Stewart : First paper.

Sheriff Robert Carr : The hill after dark.

10. Aftermath

Flatwoods put a chair and a mural in town. The figure became merchandise. The mist did not.

11. Current Archive Status

Status: Multi-witness entity on a Braxton County hill, 12 September 1952. No specimen. Official close: meteor and misidentification.

Confidence: High that a group from Flatwoods walked a hill that night and reported a figure and a smell. High that several were unwell afterward. Low that the later owl-and-meteor sentence covers the first interviews. Low that a body was recovered.

Filing note

Seven people, a torch, a pulsing light, a smell like oil and metal, a figure with a spade for a head. Fourteen years and a county line away from Point Pleasant. Do not staple them because both are West Virginia.

They took a torch because it was already getting dark. Not a hunt. A walk up a familiar slope with the light they had. That small domestic decision makes the mist colder than any later mural of a monster in a cape.