The Falkville Metal Man

Police chief Jeff Greenhaw of Falkville, Alabama, said he photographed a silver-suited figure on a gravel road on 17 October 1973.

On 17 October 1973 Jeff Greenhaw, then Falkville's newly elected police chief, aged 26, described meeting a humanoid in a silver suit and offered four Polaroid photographs. The Birmingham News account has him at home when a woman rang to say a craft with flashing lights had come down in a field to the west of the city. Other versions call the caller anonymous. UFOs had already been reported nearby, so he took a camera.

On a gravel road, Greenhaw said, a figure shaped like a person stood in the middle of the way. It walked toward him, and he shot four pictures. He said he was "scared stiff". He described it as wrapped in something like tin foil, with an antenna on its head, stiff in its movements like a robot and silent.

Later accounts that draw on the Decatur Daily say he was pushed to resign in November 1973. A 1983 report of his said the photographs had been stolen from his home. Some call the case a hoax. What happened rests on Greenhaw's own account.