Strange things were brewing in Flatwoods, West Virginia on the night of September 12, 1952. Several Citizens of this small town reported seeing an alien space craft land in the area. There were sightings of a large monster like creature and reports of strange smells, weird sounds and odd marks on the ground. The people who saw the creature became known as the September 12 group and tales of their Encounter with the Flatwoods monster still stir up fear and controversy decades after it happened

It all began when 2 brothers Edward, age 13, and Fred May, age 12 and their friend Tommy Hyer, 11 saw a very bright object streak across the night sky. It seemed to land on farm land belonging to a man named G. Bailey Fisher. They ran to the May’s family home and told Mrs. May that they’d seen a UFO crash into the hills. Mrs. May decided to look into things and went to the site with the three boys. 2 other boys and a 17 year old West Virgina National guardsman named Gene Lemon went to the farm with them.

SKetch of Flatwoods Monster

Gene Lemon took his dog along and it ran ahead of the group, barking wildly. It immediately returned to them with it’s tail between it’s legs, a sure sign of fear in a dog. After walking for nearly 1/4 of a mile the group stopped on top of a hill and saw what they thought was a pulsing red ball of fire and also noticed a thick mist surrounding them that made their noses and eyes water and burn. Lemon had a flashlight aimed at two lights he’d noticed off to the side and shined his light into the woods, leading to his first Encounter with the Flatwoods monster. He saw a creature that’s been described as at least 10 feet tall with a heart or ace of spades shaped head, a red face with bulging eyes and a man shaped body. Some accounts have the creature without arms while others said it had short stubby arms with claw like fingers that stuck out from the front of it’s body.

The group fled the scene, returned home and called the local sheriff Robert Carr and the owner of the local news paper, Mr. A. Lee Stewart. Stewart conducted a few interviews around town and went to the site of the “crash” himself. He said he could still smell a burning metallic like scent in the air. Carr and his deputy did a search of the area but found nothing to support the claims of those who’d seen the alien like creature or a space ship. Stewart did go back a day later and found traces of black liquid and some deep tracks in the mud.

Hearing of the event, William and Donna Smith, investigators from LA who were associated with the Civilian Saucer Investigation, came to interview several people in the area. They found a woman who said her 21 year old daughter had had her own Encounter with the Flatwoods monster only a week before. It affected her so badly she spent 3 weeks in the hospital. And the mother of Gene Lemon said that her home had been rocked violently that night and she’d lost radio reception for nearly an hour at the exact moment the boys saw the “crash”.

All of these events have since been explained in one way or another. There was a known meteor sighting that night. The monster was probably an owl, 3 flashing aircraft beacons were the pulsating red lights the group had seen and any illnesses the group had were contributed to nerves. And yet, the legend of the Flatwoods Monster still lives on.

What are your thoughts on alien abduction? By nature people love to be afraid. Think about haunted houses, an interest in all things macabre, and horror movies. The more frightening it is the more popular. That leads us to the question at hand – are alien abductions real or are they simply a work of our own overactive imaginations at work? Let’s look at some of the things that point the answer to yes, alien abductions do happen, and often.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

There is a book entitled “The Evidence For Alien Abductions” that was published in 1984 and written by John Rimmer. It gives details about an experiment involving alien abduction performed by Alvin Lawson and William McCall. The two men used hypnosis to try and distinguish real alien abductions from hoaxes. What they found in their studies were that between the two groups of people there was little difference between the stories, even down to the tiniest detail. It is very unclear how they determined the ‘real’ cases from the hoaxes beforehand, so this should be taken with a grain of salt. Assuming the test was performed perfectly the conclusion could be one of two things: either everyone is making up alien abductions with their extremely active imaginations in sync or there are more people that have been abducted than know about it.

There have been numerous people have been polygraphed to determine if they were lying about their abduction stories. The shocking conclusion is that the majority of these people’s polygraph results come back as not deceptive. The findings of several tests over 25 years of the accuracy of polygraph test concludes that they are almost 100% accurate every time. So how could so many people lie and pass an almost 100% accurate lie detector test? Did they all get together beforehand and make themselves believe it to be true? That is not plausible in the least.

You will find a virtual plethora of videos online that claim to prove the existence of alien life. You can’t trust any of these. Almost every single video has been cleverly photoshopped or edited to make it seem real. There are videos online that can make the hair on the back of your neck stand on end, but they are not real. They are simply great works by great artists.

It could be argued that we are under constant scrutiny from higher lifeforms, watching us as we watch ants in an ant-farm. Why is that not possible? It’s completely possible because there isn’t a single person in the world right now that has an overall picture of what life is all about. We have ideas and beliefs. No solid proof at all can be found of what our existence means. We could be the pets of something much smarter and far more advanced than we will ever be. It may not be abduction so much as science experiments on pets. Who are we to say that it isn’t real when millions and millions of people report alien abduction each and every year. There could even be more unreported cases because the subject is so taboo. Perhaps one day we will have a solid answer to the question at hand.