The Flatwoods Monster

Region: Appalachia
Location:Flatwoods, West Virginia

On the evening of September 12, 1952, three young boys witnessed what looked like a bright fireball streak across the sky and land on a nearby hill. Curious and frightened, they gathered a small group of locals and hiked toward the site. What they reported seeing has become one of the most vivid descriptions in American folklore: a towering figure—estimates range from seven to ten feet tall—wearing what looked like a dark metal dress or suit, topped with a glowing, spade-shaped head framed by a hood-like structure. Some described the creature’s eyes as porthole-like, others as headlights. The air was thick with a pungent, metallic odor that irritated their eyes and throats.
Witnesses claimed the creature emitted a hissing or mechanical noise, and that its movements were stiff, almost floating rather than walking. Several in the group later reported nausea, throat irritation, and burning sensations on their skin—symptoms that folklore fans now compare to “radiation exposure,” though no official explanation was ever found. The military, arriving the next day, dismissed the incident as a misidentified meteor and “mass hysteria,” but the villagers remained adamant that what they saw wasn’t a trick of the light or a frightened animal. The fireball in the sky had been real. So had the creature’s presence.
Over the decades, the Flatwoods Monster evolved from a one-night terror into a cultural icon. Towns across West Virginia adopted imagery of the spade-shaped hood and glowing eyes for murals, souvenirs, and museum exhibits. Some speculate the creature was an alien probe or a misidentified owl; others hold firmly to the original description—that something otherworldly landed in the hills that night. Regardless of explanation, the Flatwoods Monster remains one of America’s most striking and visually distinct cryptids, remembered not for what it did, but for how clearly it imprinted itself on the people who saw it.

World: Koina
Owner: kaixabu
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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