The story took place on September 7, 1954. At about seven o'clock that September day, four boys playing on the football field saw a large silver object overhead.
Young people - Neil Nunley, 14, Ronald Shaver, Eddie and Freddie May - said that the object slowly climbed to the top of the hill, stopped abruptly in the air and disappeared from view. Then a bright orange light flashed across the hill, they said, and continued to “pulsate,” flashing and fading.
The young men ran towards the hill until they reached the home of May's mother, Mrs. Kathleen May, who called out to them and asked what was going on.
With that, Mrs May and her roommate, 17-year-old National Guard Eugene Lemon, grabbed flashlights to pierce the deepening dusk and joined in. The group was also joined by a small neighbor boy, Tommy Hier, who could barely keep up with the others.
When they reached the top of the hill, seven people saw a "bright, pulsing light" in a field about 100 yards away. They also noticed that the air was "hazy" and filled with a strong metallic scent that burned their nostrils and eyes.
Heading towards the light, the group walked over 200 feet along a path around the swamp when suddenly they saw two lights “the size of lanterns and about a foot apart” flickering on them from behind a group of trees to their left.
One of the boys pointed his flashlight at the "eyes" and there, according to all seven witnesses, was a huge humanoid object about 10 feet high. Mrs. May said that this "thing" had "a bright red face, a bright green body, an ace of spades head and clawed hands."
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The object appeared to "float right above the ground," she said, adding that it was "moving towards us with a hissing noise."
Terrified, spectators ran off the hill and “did not stop until we got to our homes. By the time they reached the bottom of the hill, both Mrs. May and the young man were very ill and claimed it was from the gas that the thing sprayed on us. “Later, their throats were very sore.
Mrs. May called Braxton County Sheriff Robert Carr to report the "monster" but discovered that both the Sheriff and his deputy, Burnell Long, had gone to investigate another incident.
The second message came from Woodrow Eagle of Duck, who said he saw an object like a small plane flying overhead and crashing into a mountainside by a sugar stream. The officers searched the entire area but were unable to find any sign of the plane crash.
Back in Sutton, they learned of the "monster" and hurried to Flatwoods. In the meantime, however, a large number of Flatwood residents went to the top of the hill, but could not find any trace of this strange object.
According to unconfirmed reports, something took off from the hill at night, and in his book "Flying Saucers from Space," retired Marine Major Donald Keyhoe says that Sutton's student councilor saw the "strange machine" leave the hill just after sunrise.
The next day, the story hit local newspapers, telegraph services and radio networks, and within 24 hours spread around the world. In the weeks that followed, it became what was rated 11th biggest news of the year.
Meanwhile, hundreds of curious visitors flocked to Flatwood. On the day following inspection, visitors reported large "slip marks", oil stains, scraps of metal, and chunks of black, plastic-like substance on the circular surface. Lee Stewart, a writer at Braxton Democrat, said the skid marks were about ten feet apart and about ten yards long.
Such was the situation when Ivan Sanderson arrived in Braxton County to investigate the story for the North American newspaper alliance.
Sanderson, an accomplished investigator of unusual phenomena, began a systematic study of these events. He obtained aerial photographs of the area, collected written reports of the incident, and interrogated everyone remotely connected with the incident - with the exception of Mrs. May and Eugene Lemon, who left for New York to appear on a television program about the "monster."
After interviewing residents of the entire county, he found that a total of five meteorite-like objects were seen at the same time, moving in the same direction on the night the "monster" was seen.
