Thursday Thrills | Flatwoods Monster to Mothman: A West Virginia Cryptid Road Trip

On September 12th, 1952, a flashlight swept across a hillside above Flatwoods, West Virginia. The group behind it had followed a bright thing in the sky. They thought it might have come down up there. Gene Lemon pointed the beam toward a pair of eyes in the shadows. Kathleen May later described a towering figure with a red face and a black spade-shaped cowl. The group reported a sickening odor. Lemon fell backward. Everyone ran. For 74 years, people have argued over what that flashlight found. A visitor from space? An owl in a tree? Or something else entirely? But the first question is even better.

If that light in the sky was only a meteor, then what was waiting on the hill? Thursday Thrills This is Thursday Thrills, a quick weekly ride into the creepy stories haunted places Weird obsessions and eerie little corners of the world worth talking about. I'm Henrique Couto, and tonight we're taking a West Virginia monster road trip. We'll start at the Flatwoods hillside, where a flashlight caught two eyes, and finish near Point Pleasant, where car headlights found another pair 14 years later. This weekend, people are scheduled to head back into that second patch of darkness on purpose.

I have questions about their transportation choices. Flatwoods was not looking for a monster that Friday evening. Some local boys were outside near their school when a bright object crossed the sky. It appeared to drop beyond a nearby hill. They ran to Kathleen May who lived along the way, and she went along with them. Eugene Lemon joined the search along with a dog. Something brilliant seems to fall behind a hill near your home. You want to know whether there's a fire, a wreck, or a story that no one... will believe. May went along with the kids.

Once they reached the hill, the thing that crossed the sky was no longer overhead. It was supposedly beyond a bend among trees and brush. A falling light had turned an ordinary slope into a place they had to enter. According to the accounts gathered just Days later, the group saw a red light pulse ahead of them. They also reported an unpleasant, hot, sickening smell. Then Lemon aimed his flashlight toward Shining Eyes. For a moment, that flashlight had to carry the entire answer. The group was already primed to find whatever had fallen from the sky. May's description supplied the image that would travel far beyond Flatwoods.

A red face, a dark cowl rising like the point of a playing card spade, a body she compared to green armor. She said it seemed to move toward them. Other witnesses described the thing less elaborately. The shared point in early reporting is simpler and stronger. They saw something that terrified them, and they fled. I've seen enough horror movies to know that dropping the flashlight usually earns you a lecture from... the audience in between chews of popcorn. In Flatwoods, Lemon repeatedly fell backward when the beam hit those eyes... I won't be assuming the role of the person telling him to.

Go back and get it. The next day, local newspaper man A. Lee Stewart went up to the hill with others. He described flattened vegetation, a lingering odor, and two long marks that looked like skids. Nobody found a crashed aircraft. The hill offered marks people could argue about, and a story nobody could put back in the dark. By the time you turn to ask the person beside you what exactly they saw, the thing is gone. One person says eyes, one says face, another says a shape far taller than any animal ought to be. Then the whole country gets a drawing.

Stuart knew the witnesses and thought they were frightened. He wondered, though, whether an owl in a tree had supplied the eyes and a startled mind had supplied the towering body. The Charleston Gazette noticed another wrinkle. May gave the famous red face and spade-shaped cowl. while the other witnesses offered less elaborate descriptions. The drawing that spread afterward let the whole country inspect that face at their leisure. The group on the hill had a flashlight and one frightening encounter they couldn't replay. Nobody got to call for a second take. The light that started the climb had its own story.

Newspapers reported that people across several states saw a bright fireball on September 12th. Some were certain it had fallen near them as well. A meteor can do that. Everybody gets a convincing hill for it to disappear behind. so the sky may have sent the search party up the wrong hill, it still doesn't tell you what started them once they arrived. And to be honest, I'm not sure if I would want to chase after it to find out what the bright, fiery hubbub was all about or not, again after seeing a lot of horror films in my day.

I imagine my curiosity might be stifled by a fear of having my brains sucked out through my nose or a replicant of me created and replacing me to my family or any number of other strange encounters. Let's not forget a giant acidic blob absorbing me until I'm nothing but bones and regret. So really, if you were sitting in your living room or in your backyard and you saw a giant flaming meteor shoot right past and it really, truly seemed to land not far from you, would you go check it out or would you decide to go back to doomscrolling?

If you love hearing all about what's thrilling and on Thursdays, make sure you subscribe on your favorite podcasting app right here on the weekly spooky feed. Not only do we bring you whatever is fresh and hot and smelly from space, but we bring you brand new terrifying tales every Wednesday, true crime on Mondays, and There's just something scary every day of the week to keep your Halloween vibe alive, regardless of what the oppressive calendar may say. Now, let's get back to West Virginia. Decades later, investigator Joe Nickell walked the area and offered an ordinary explanation, piece by piece.

The fireball was likely a meteor. The red light might have been an aircraft beacon. The eyes and towering hood might have been a barn owl, perched above brush, briefly caught in Lemon's beam. Back at the bend, Lemon's beam rises. It catches eyes above the brush. In Nichols' reconstruction, the animal is a barn owl, and its height belongs partly to the tree. You can see how the mistake might happen. You can also see why someone who stood on that hill would be tired of hearing from a safe, comfy desk that they should have recognized an owl.

immediately. There were skid-like marks, too. Nickell interviewed a Flatwoods resident, Max Lockhart, who said he had driven his Chevrolet pickup onto the hill that night. Nickell believed the truck accounted for the marks and an oily deposit, later attributed to a landed craft. Lockhart's memory is not A lab result, but it does give those marks a very earthly owner. Try Nichols' version as a nighttime sequence. A fireball vanishes beyond a hill. A beacon flashes near where it seemed to have landed. An owl turns its face into a flashlight beam. A pickup crosses the field before morning.

Every link is relatively ordinary. The whole sequence could still scare the hell out of you, though. It is a persuasive possibility. It's not a recovered photograph of the thing that Lemon illuminated. We can say the evidence doesn't establish a visitor from another world, but we can also say the people who ran down the hill had no chance to Pause. Look at the scene, adjust the flashlight, and take a better look for all of us. And that may be the detail that keeps Flatwoods alive. The witness who holds the light can only see what fits inside it.

The rest of the hill stays available for any other spooky things you can imagine, or at least imagine. Hope you're imagining. Today, the reported sighting site is on private property. Braxton County's Visitor Bureau specifically tells monster hunters not to trespass. If you want to follow the story without becoming the scariest thing in somebody's yard, there is a Flatwoods Monster Museum in nearby Sutton. The county has even turned the creature's outline into a giant photo-op. This year, the Bureau listed a September 12th event called Monster in the Hills with a hayride planned to the usually inaccessible sighting location.

In 1952, the group ran down that hill, but in 2026, the county invited visitors to Ride back up. But let's keep on driving. Because Flatwoods does not have the only West Virginia story that begins when someone puts a light on a shape they can't identify. Take the long way from that hillside toward Point Pleasant. Fourteen years pass. The flashlight becomes... A car's headlights. Instead of climbing toward a falling light, the witnesses try to escape something. They say is following them. Around midnight on November 15th, 1966, two couples drove through the TNT area outside Point Pleasant, the former grounds of a wartime explosives plant.

The old power plant buildings still stood. Roger and Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Mallette later told police they encountered a large, winged, bird-like figure near one of them. Linda Scarberry's written account contains a small detail that still gets to me. She said the red eyes seemed to glow when the car headlights struck them. Not a pair of lights shining by themselves across the woods, a pair that came alive in the beam. The couples reported that the figure pursued their car as they drove toward town. Early newspaper accounts carried the report almost immediately. Sheriff's deputies and city police went out to look.

They did not find the creature. But we all know what the legend eventually named it. Mothman. We don't know what those four people actually encountered. A West Virginia University biologist suggested a sandhill crane. The witnesses rejected evidence. that explanation. The reported shape was frightening enough to launch a local search, more sightings, and a legend with much broader wings than any bird on the Ohio River. The story later became tangled with the 1967 Silver Bridge collapse, which killed 46 people. Investigators traced that disaster to structural failure. Mothman as a warning belongs to later lore, not an established prediction.

The first night is strange enough. I mean, four people in a car, headlights on a face, and a road that suddenly feels... short. Short. Go looking for the 1966 scene now, and the old powerhouse will not be waiting in your headlights. Those buildings were demolished years later. You can follow the road, but you cannot follow their gaze to that same building. This Saturday and Sunday, September 19th and 20th, Point Pleasant is scheduled to host the 2026 Mothman Festival It's planned Saturday night Mothman Hayride will take visitors into the TNT area after dark if the organizer's schedule holds The idea is kind of hilariously backwards In 1966 the people in the car said they wanted out of the TNT area as fast as they could possibly go Now in 2026, people are planning to pay $ 6 to ride right into it, and after dark to boot.

I approve, though, but from a safe distance. I also reserve the right to keep one eye, you guessed it, on the treeline. Flatwoods had its anniversary last weekend. Point Pleasant has its monster weekend ahead. Put the two together, and you have a road trip held together by beams of light. One narrow beam found a shape above a hillside. One pair of headlights found red eyes near an old power plant. In both cases, the witnesses reached safety before anyone could go back and give us the clean, satisfying answer a listener like you might want. The fun does not depend on declaring either creature to be real.

A meteor may very well have steered a search party toward an extraordinary scare on the ground. Near Point Pleasant, four people believed something kept pace with their car. And if you go looking this weekend, just please respect the gates and the people who live around these places. Visit the museum, take an official tour if one is running, keep the old accounts in their proper place. Testimony, not proof, and certainty, not permission, to turn private land into your personal monster hunt. On a night drive, headlights give you the next stretch of road, but they don't give you the whole hillside.

That was true in 52 and 66, and the facts, and the facts are on the edges of the beams. So if you're attending, enjoy the festival, enjoy the stories, and if a pair of eyes flashes at the edge of the light, let them belong to an owl until you've have a very good reason to believe otherwise. You can still drive a little faster, though. I won't judge you. I'm Henrique Couto, and this has been Thursday Thrills. Drive safe. Keep those headlights on. See you soon. Come back tomorrow for more fear. Until then, lock your doors as if that will help.