The Flatwoods monster

On the evening of 12 September 1952, boys and a local woman in Flatwoods, West Virginia, reported a light coming down on a hilltop farm and a tall hooded figure with a red face.

Wikipedia dates the sighting to 12 September 1952. The Braxton County visitors bureau says a group of boys playing on the Flatwoods Elementary School lawn saw a bright light streak overhead and seem to come down on land belonging to G. Bailey Fisher. Joe Nickell, writing in Skeptical Inquirer in 2000, puts the time at about 7:15 p.m. They stopped at the home of Kathleen May, a local beautician, who took a flashlight and went up the hill with them. In Nickell's account the group was Mrs. May, her two sons aged 13 and 14, four other boys aged 10 to 17, and Gene Lemon's dog. The bureau's page names Lemon as National Guardsman Eugene Lemon and calls the dog the family's Richie.

According to the bureau's folklore page, Lemon then noticed eyes that were shining and animal-like, and aimed the flashlight toward them. The beam picked out a figure the page calls towering and man-like, its face red and round, set inside a hood-like point. The body was dark and seemingly colorless, though some later described it as green. Mrs. May reported folds like drapery. The figure was seen only briefly: it hissed and glided toward the group, Lemon screamed and dropped the flashlight, and everyone fled.

Wikipedia says the story drew national attention. Former news editor Holt Byrne said it ran in newspapers and on network radio across the country and brought hundreds of phone calls, and the press services ranked it No. 11 for the year. The figure is also called the Braxton County monster, Braxie and the Phantom of Flatwoods. UFO writers Gray Barker and Ivan T. Sanderson went to Flatwoods to investigate. Ryan Haupt's Skeptoid episode in 2014 says Sanderson arrived within a week, that both men explored the site and interviewed witnesses, and that both came away believing the group had met an extraterrestrial craft with an occupant.

In 2000 Nickell suggested the light was a meteor and the figure a barn owl perched in a tree. Snopes reports that he visited the site and interviewed original witnesses before reaching that view.

WV MetroNews reported in 2017 that the area now promotes the monster for tourism, under the name Braxie. It quotes a man named Smith saying Japanese video game designers have used the monster as a boss in four or five games.