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Open your eyes.

It's even hard for me to believe that I've seen it,

but you don't forget,

and I'm nervous now just talking about it.

I got the shakes.

Well, can we start from the very beginning?

As far as, you know, right before you saw the craft,

what were you doing? Who were you with?

In the beginning, I was in the house.

I think, I was eating.

My cousin went out on the porch

and he come back in and... He come back in,

"You gotta see this. You gotta see this." That's what he said.

So, everybody went out on the porch,

and that's when we seen the craft or whatever it was.

It was... Like I said, you had to see it.

It was the biggest thing I've ever seen.

But it looked like it was drawing something on the power lines to me.

You know, I'm ten years old, so I could be, you know, a little off,

but, it looked like a diamond.

But it was red. Like, red,

and in the center of it, it was a little bright in the center,

but then, like pulse, like, you know, outward.

And that's why I thought it was drawing something from the power lines.

- Did you hear anything? - Not a sound.

Can you show us where on the ridge you saw it?

This big tower right here.

It was probably 50 feet away from the top corner.

- One of the points of the craft. - Mm-hm.

Well, the whole top of that hill was covered.

And like I said, it was big as a building,

whatever it was.

You said you saw something a couple nights later.

Can you go through that?

I was out at the end of her house.

We lived in a mobile home,

and I was at the end of the trailer.

There's a field, like, this way on this hill,

and there's a big boulder that sticks out of the hill.

There was something standing, and I walked closer to it,

and it looked like somebody in a hazmat,

'cause the headpiece was wide,

and they were about like this.

But, you know, it looked like a human.

I mean, the other features,

but... And being a kid,

stupid kid, I had a BB gun

and I started shooting at it, but it didn't move.

And then, I turned and turned back, and it was gone.

So, there was something there.

After that, I was, you know... I was afraid to go outside.

And... at night anyhow.

But it always came between, I think, eleven and one o'clock in the morning.

It was, you know, very on time,

I'll put it that way, every year.

You saw it three times.

Your mom saw it five times.

What was the timeframe between

the first sighting, the second and the third for you?

It was always the same time at night.

And it wasn't long after that we moved.

I moved back to my hometown.

And then, I swore that I'd never come back to this road.

But the diamond shaped thing,

you just... you can't forget it.

I still have dreams about it.

Every once in a while, I'll have a dream

that that's in it.

And, like I said, you felt... you felt static in the air.

I don't know if you've ever felt static in the air,

but it's like the whole area was, like, static electricity.

Copy.

What do you see when you look up?

Darkness? Light?

Maybe a haze so thick with manmade chemicals

that it hides the stars?

I live in Las Vegas.

It's a city that's always shining,

so, at night, when I look up, I don't see much of anything.

My name is Shannon LeGro,

but maybe you already knew that.

Which means, you probably also know that I collect stories.

Stories about the bizarre and unexplained.

Currently, I'm collecting stories about UFOs,

or UAPs or flying saucers,

or whatever you want to call them.

I'm in West Virginia, the Mountain State.

A place I've never spent much time in,

but whose connection to the unusual is inescapable.

You see, despite its reputation as being out of the way,

West Virginia has been tied to the UFO phenomenon for over a century.

Want to know why? Well, so do I.

In search for the truth behind the existence and origin of

these strange objects

people are seeing over our heads,

most have stopped looking up.

But here, in the heart of Appalachia,

taking a second to stop and stare and stare into the dark sky

might mean the difference between just another boring night,

and having an encounter with something that will change your life.

As a kid, did you get a read that

it's a weird state, that strange things happened here?

Um, yeah.

Especially in Moundsville.

Can we talk about your your sightings?

The things you've experienced for yourself?

The one main one that I'm pretty sure it was something, my opinion, weird...

Mm-hmm.

It was a very clear day like it is today.

My pap and I were out shooting hoops in the backyard.

I was probably between ten and thirteen.

I went to shoot the basketball up,

and out of the left corner of my eye,

and it is something, like, reflecting in the sky.

And I paid more attention to it after, you know, I noticed it.

And it looked like

a mirror.

Like a light was reflecting off of a mirror.

And there may or may not have been smaller, like, little detail,

where it might have been multiple different lights

or it might have been different panels of something reflective.

So...

Did you hear anything when you saw it?

No, but my pap saw it, we both saw it,

and then... That's when my grandfather shared with me

an experience he had when he was younger.

And he said, "I was out playing in the front yard,

and I looked south, and above the ridge line,

it's, like, this dark gray, brownish looking disc

came over the hill

and stopped, and then it went straight up

in the air, and then it disappeared." So...

Did you get a sense that what you were looking at was like a solid object?

It looks like a solid object.

Have you ever wondered what it's purpose might have been

in that place at that time?

Being where it was at,

and how high it was, it's hard to tell.

Are there any, like, mines, or caves in Moundsville or in that area?

Oh, yeah. I mean, Moundsville was a coal mining town.

Wheeling, pretty much, is, too.

I know there's a lot of old coal mine shafts under Moundsville.

There's a lot of underground streams,

a lot of unused coal mine shafts underneath Moundsville right now,

that have water running through them to the Ohio River, so...

So, West Virginia is larger than I was expecting.

It's defined by its backroads and hills and hollers,

and by a history that feels ancient.

I've only been here a short time,

but in that span,

I have already learned about sightings around the state of strange craft,

lights in the sky,

and even heard whispers of government cover ups.

I've always thought of myself as simply a collector of stories,

but this time, I'm trying to dig deeper

to piece together some of the clues

that are laid out with each eyewitness account.

But to start analyzing the case laid out before me,

I want to understand the people who live here,

the culture of the area.

That's why I'm in Wheeling.

It's a bustling industrial town on the Ohio River

that is known as the City of Lights today.

It's original moniker, though, was far darker.

Native Americans called the land where wheeling sits, "Weelonk"

which meant "A place of the skull."

So named due to the decapitated heads

that lined its bank to ward off those

attempting to make a home here.

When the area was eventually claimed by European settlers,

they made the questionable decision

of sticking with the name "Wheeling."

A fitting origin story

for a town that acts as an entryway

into the Ohio Valley.

So I mean, as far as West Virginia, have you grown up here?

Yeah, I grew up here.

My paternal grandparents came over from Ireland in 1905

and built the farmhouse that my family still lives in today.

And how did you end up in Wheeling?

You know, that's a good question.

Uh, family lore is that we came in through New York,

and we, kind of, traveled around for a little while,

but it seems like people from the British Isles

are attracted to this area,

and I think it's because it's the same mountain range.

We have a common bond here with these mountains.

It's like the bones of the world almost.

How long have you owned the restaurant?

Uh, we've been in downtown West Virginia for six and a half years.

What about, you know, weird stories?

I mean, you're probably familiar with Mothman,

and everybody is, but what about other stories in the area?

Point Pleasant does the Mothman Festival every year,

and they've been doing that for a long time,

but I feel like, especially recently, it's really caught hold of

the cultural zeitgeist in the state.

But the supernatural stuff is really strong in Appalachia.

Um, I spent some time down in Canaan Valley

in the Davis, Thomas, West Virginia area.

And there's just a lot of weird stuff,

and people are diving a little deeper into that

than they have in a long time.

But there's just something about

the hills and the hollows of this area

that... Especially the light quality at dawn or dusk.

Like, I've seen all kinds of weird shit.

I'm not prepared to say what it is,

but, you know, I've seen plenty of things,

and I feel like, again, our brain

has this false pattern recognition,

and we put together the puzzle in a certain way

to make sense of our experiences.

And, you know, I think there's a lot of stuff out there that we don't understand.

...ground deposits. West Virginia has

coal enough to last the nation for generations.

Tell us about, uh, the state of West Virginia

and its ties to coal mining.

Coal mining is is a very important part of West Virginia history

Been going on for over 150 to 200 years.

Helped build America.

Helped power America, helped us win two World Wars.

It is fully ingrained into people's personalities, even.

But mining is what it...

It's more than a job, more than an occupation.

It is everything to a lot of people.

In terms of UFOs, aliens,

uh, The Mothman pulls you in at a young age.

I saw the movie when it came out.

then bought the book thinking that it would be similar,

and it's a lot better.

Been hooked into it ever since.

Appalachia is nothing

if not a haven for stories and storytellers.

One of the keepers of the Mountain State's legends and lore

was author, poet, tour guide and mother, Susan Sheppard.

I've been aware of Susan's work for years,

but this was our first time to meet

and to hear her unfold years of paranormal history in minutes

was truly a thrill,

and, offered a unique insight into how stories are told and retold.

If anyone is aware of

the Appalachians' ufological history,

it was Susan.

What were some of the commonalities of UFO sightings

that were taking place, like, during that time?

What were people seeing?

Well, mostly lights in the sky was big among them.

There was one case where my former mother-in-law

was stepping out of the house one evening,

and there were these spinning lights.

Just the spinning lights right over her head.

And she went right back inside,

and then they vanished.

There is another incidence where my grandmother,

she was walking by the window,

and she looked up and she saw in the distant sky,

she saw a red light, a green light and a white light,

and they would flash intermittently.

Now, at that time, she called them tokens,

'cause she didn't really know what a UFO was.

She thought it was some kind of sign.

That's what she thought of that, but it was mostly lights in the sky.

The oldest sighting in the state,

potentially, was in 1950 at a place called Mount Hope.

The mayor of the town actually saw something

in the eastern sky near his home.

He saw a light zipping about that was not normal.

As far as I know, the records are lost.

The connection between the study of UFOs and West Virginia is

in some ways, there's quintessential cases from West Virginia

that you have to talk about

if you're talking about major flaps

that have taken place in the United States.

So, it really is, uh, instrumental,

although that's not the first state people think of

in terms of UFOs.

I don't think that you can take a complete look at the topic

without looking at the cases from the Mountain State,

of Flatwoods, as one that is gaining notoriety,

and, if you look back historically,

it's one that has to be dealt with,

along with many of the major flaps of the 1950s.

Any true UFO historian

is aware of the Flatwoods monster case

in August of 1952 a bizarre being was encountered

on the hill late one evening following a string of

reported UFO sightings across the eastern United States.

The creature was sighted by a group of locals,

most of them just kids, during a terrifying ordeal

that became a media sensation across the country.

The event helped to shine a light on the weird activity

taking place in the strange little state of West Virginia

and bolstered the name of one of West Virginia's

most well-known UFO figures, Gray Barker.

Before we get to Barker, let's visit the tiny hamlet of Sutton.

Home to the Flatwoods Monster Museum

and a hub for ongoing unusual activity.

So how long have you had the museum here?

We established the museum here in downtown Sutton, um...

in, uh, October of 2018.

A big reason why people come to the area or interested in the area,

particularly from really far away,

is because of the Flatwoods monster.

So I talked to my board and we decided having a fight

with Monster Museum makes a lot of sense

in conjunction with the visitor center.

I saw something about a rash of sightings

like around 1950s. Can you talk about that?

Yes, as far as I know, there were a lot of sightings

that that took place in the '50s and, you know,

most notably starting with the Flatwoods monster case

that took place in '52, I think,

maybe a sighting or two that took place before that

of UFO phenomenon things like that, but a lot after as well

going into the mid '50s and maybe even beyond.

And I've heard a lot of stories

that according to the people that told them to make,

they've either never shared them with anybody else

or if they have just really close friends.

They want to get it off their chest to somebody that they know

who won't make fun of them, because obviously if we have this,

they see a place where weird things are kind of, you know,

accepted or can be discussed without feeling ridicule.

The Flatwoods case became a seminal moment in Braxton County history,

but what was overlooked in the days following the incident

was the rash of sightings of strange craft

across the entire United States,

as well as other sightings of beings matching the green monsters description.

While digging into the tale of what was once dubbed the Green Monster.

I came across accounts in Wheeling of a similar creature

that the local media had dubbed Bashful Billy.

A long forgotten side story to the Flatwoods monster saga

is the UFO wave over Wheeling, which also took place on August 15th

just three nights following the Flatwoods events.

That point in time in American history,

the mid '50s was so big for UFOs and Project Blue Book

and everything else going on, that is, it was almost destined,

I feel like, that happened at one point in time in Wheeling.

The Wheeling intelligence there in the Police Department

and the Wheeling news registers of newspapers at the time

had been getting flooded with calls for last couple of days

from the 12th to the 15th-16th.

About seeing several meteorites burning objects in the sky,

things like that, disappearing, weird turns, weird low object flights,

and that includes Wheeling, St. Clairsville, Zanesville, Ohio.

Cambridge, West Liberty, Glendo, McMechen, West Virginia,

including even Morgan Town, Garrett County, Maryland.

There were odd sightings all across the state across Ohio

across Pennsylvania, even Baltimore had sightings.

And all this ties in sort of with the Flatwood monster, which happened on the 12th,

to the point where, you know, the newspapers and the Police Department

won't really investing any more time into the whole thing.

And then it culminated with this Bashful Billy sighting

Around September 15th, I believe

there was a crash landing of a UFO, and it was shortly after that

that people started reporting that they saw a monster of some sort

at Vineyard Hills in Wheeling,

which is a housing development area.

People had called the police, saying that they saw or heard

that someone saw a creature that was large, seven to nine feet tall,

had the ability to breathe fire a noxious odor.

There was a lot of raising reports by times

that it got to the newspapers as widely blown up as a half robot

slash, half man, half dragon creature.

There was a drawing that I found once

that was almost like it came out of, like a 1600s fairy book

and just way overdone.

Supposedly, a woman had been burned

when she got too close to the creature,

and there are some unsubstantiated reports

that police were there and shots were fired.

The only hard evidence

was reports of a police officer who had his arm burned.

And a woman who had supposedly deceased

and was severely burned from head to toe.

It's kind of thought that

when the story ran in the Wheeling Intelligencer, and they called it Bashful Billy

that was sort of a way to discredit the creature.

But a few nights later he was seen,

or a creature similarly described was seen

across the river, just right across the Ohio River on the Ohio side.

And it was same standard, a creature that was seven to nine feet tall,

green body, red face, breathing fire, a noxious odor.

I feel like honestly,

even, if it landed in a different part of town.

Vineyard Hills is housing development. It was low income.

The police. I mean, this is all my opinion.

The police that time had a very low interest in going up there

and solving any kind of crimes, let alone paranormal crimes.

So I feel like where it landed, in this lower income area,

it was already... it was destined to be forgotten, you know.

As a kid were you very aware of...

of like, strange things in the skies of West Virginia?

I was. I grew up near one the first Mothman sightings,

and I can actually remember that

of course, the strange case in 1966, 1967

where there was a church bus going past our house, they saw a UFO

actually hovering over our house, and they called my parents.

And that was about the time my parents began to believe in these things.

So, yeah, there was tons of things going on,

this strange poltergeist, Mothman

Men in Black, UFOs, hundreds of sightings of UFOs.

So the '50s through the '70s there were all kinds of things happening.

There were tons of sightings, um, of UFO's of creatures,

things like that in West Virginia, specifically,

or just across the river in Ohio.

So you get to the Ohio Valley and then deep into West Virginia

you have... This is where the big names come in.

You get the Flatwoods Monster.

You have Mothman in the '60s.

You have the Grafton Monster in the '50s as well.

Almost as if once one story started

then other people would see something similar.

Or maybe they were feeling brave enough to come forward

at that point in time.

Because I've talked to some witnesses that were hesitant at first

to say that they saw anything.

But once they did talk to a few people

then more would start coming forward.

But it's initially getting past that breaking point.

So one of the most infamous cases in West Virginia UFO history

is the case of Woodrow Derenberger

who around the same time

that things were really jumping off in Point Pleasant in 1967

had initial encounter going from Parkersburg to Mineral Wells

driving a box truck, and he reports a craft by his truck,

but then swinging out in front of him and stopping,

making it impossible for him to continue.

They had swerved over into the berm

and figure got out, approached his truck.

A man steps out, who looks like any ordinary man on the street.

It's like it's about 35 years of age, dark hair,

dressed in dark clothing, proceeds to walk toward Mr. Derenberger's panel truck

goes around to the side window, he says to Mr. Derenberger,

"Would you roll down your window?"

Which Mr. Derenberger did.

Whoever this figure was communicated to Derenberger he said,

not by speaking but by direct telepathy.

The figure introduced himself as Indrid Cold

and claimed that he was from another planet.

And Indrid Cold said, "I'm a searcher.

I'm a searcher."

Then he said, "Mr. Derenberger, why are you so frightened?

He said, "I mean you no harm."

He said, "I bleed just as you do."

And he says that several times to reassure him.

And after about a five-ten minute conversation,

Indrid Cold says to Mr. Derenberger

"Thank you very much for answering my questions,

we..." Not I, "We will see you again."

And when he says, we will see you again,

this charcoal great craft comes right back down

begins to hover on the side of the road.

The hatch opens.

A human arm extends,

pulls Indrid Cold up into the craft, goes up in the air

about 25 feet

where it hovers for a few seconds makes a fluttering sound.

It shoots away at a very high rate of speed,

and within a few minutes, Mr. Derenberger gets back to his farm house.

His wife meets him at the door and she said, "What's happened?

Why are you late?"

He said, "Well, get me a glass of water and I'll tell you why I'm late."

Mrs. Derenberger later said,

Mr. Derenberger could not have been

any whiter if he had been lying in a coffin.

Derenberger was very public about this.

It got into the papers almost immediately.

It made Derenberger a media sensation,

and he was soon being talked about both locally and nationally.

It almost seems to me like they seem to target families for some reason.

That same year, my uncle worked as an engineer

at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

He was out coon hunting with two friends,

and they come upon this UFO, again.

Dark charcoal gray, no lights.

A man steps out.

My uncle's dog starts going crazy, running around in a circle.

The other two men run away, perfectly human looking man

asked my uncle about different things in the area.

As very similarly he said at the end of the conversation.

"Thank you for speaking to me.

We will see you again."

Gets back into the UFO.

You know, shoots up in the air, goes away at a very high rate of speed.

That's all I know of that story because my uncle wouldn't...

Wouldn't talk about it very much.

But, you know, I've got that steel trap of a mind

and you know everything I heard either from his brother or from him

when they were talking, you know, I absorbed it, and I recorded it.

Why do you think so much unusual activity

takes place in this particular area?

I don't know if it's just because that the the skies are pretty clear.

You know, we don't really have much,

you know, smog, stuff like that

when it gets dark, you know, it's dark,

so we don't have a lot of light pollution.

Some places you know more than others.

So there's that and you know, it's quiet.

It feels like to me that there's just the better opportunity,

maybe the better environment to see things.

And have you had your own sighting?

I may have.

Well, I had a sighting of something.

I don't know what it is, but, yes, it took place about 6:20 p.m.

I was driving between the town of Gassaway and Sutton

on October 12th of 2019.

Me and my wife were driving, and for about a period of 20 seconds

while I was driving, the sky was completely clear.

As I said it was in the evening the sun was working on setting.

And as I'm driving, I noticed this bright object just setting in the sky.

It seemed to be completely still from what I could tell,

and it had a yellowish white color

that I would associate, looking a lot like the way

the sun's reflection looks on anything shiny.

And then I realized, no, it's just a ball

like there's no definition to it whatsoever.

As I'm looking at it, I'm just thinking,

well, okay, so neither one of those make any sense.

so now I don't know what it is.

So then, as I'm continuing driving,

continue to look at it right about that time, um, it just went away.

There was a period of maybe like two seconds that it went

from as bright and glowing as it was to fading into nothing.

It was just gone.

I wonder sometimes if West Virginia has so much strangeness

because people are actually taking time to go out

and look around, to look up into the sky.

Um, there's just more time to be out

and being around things or not in the middle.

I mean, they have cities, but it's not like the middle of New York City,

where you're busy and constantly just moving about, milling about.

Your into areas where there's very little lighting.

Um, you go outside, you just look up this massive sky.

So I think anywhere like that would be more prone to having strangeness occur.

It could be, you know, it is on a sacred area,

especially Ohio Valley, among the Native American tribes.

It was also an area that they were afraid of for some reason,

and they considered it cursed in some way.

But it could be the energies from the Indian mounds,

the river's intersecting or just the plain own reason.

Not much happens here.

You notice... People notice it more.

They talk about things more.

The mysterious green Monster would eventually make its way

into the historical records of you Ufology,

written and spoken about alongside prominent cases

like the Betty and Barney Hill Abduction or even Roswell.

Braxton County has since become a destination

for those seeking out information on the famed event,

with the Flatwoods Monster Museum stationed as a hub

for all things weird in the area.

Interestingly enough, Braxton County is at the geographic center

of the mountain state.

Fitting, considering its importance

to the state's Ufological history as well.

I could see why so many unusual events happen in this particular area.

The nearest cities are over 60 miles away.

Which might account for the volume of reports

in the state of strange lights and craft in the night sky.

Um, we were just outside, David, his son and I,

and we're just sitting out there.

We happen to glance up and see a light in the sky,

and the fact that it was not moving,

there was no sounds was what caught our attention.

So we stood there and watched it for a few minutes,

and it was basically coming slowly,

uh, heading in a northerly direction, and we just watched it.

And when that's when his son went inside and got him, I got my phone out

and videotaped for about a minute is all I did.

I forget what time it was but it was after dark,

and I was in the process of closing up the store.

My son came in and said,

"Dad, you've got to come outside and come see this."

Okay, fine. So I went outside to see what he was concerned about.

And I found him and my wife and Janet all looking in the sky

towards the south of town.

Uh, the object originally came from the south of town,

came over the ridge on the other side of the river,

and then it stopped.

And that's when I came out.

And I saw it when it was in a fixed position.

And then, while we were all there,

that's when it started moving west.

And it was just a spherical shape,

and it was changing colors from orangish red to a white.

In my estimation, it was about, uh,

about the height you'd see, like, a small aircraft flying,

was what I would say was a sphere,

and it seemed to be

undulating between orange and white.

And it sat in the sky for a couple of minutes,

um, when we stood there watching it.

And then it began moving west, like, along the river.

And so I know, speaking for myself,

I think a couple of the others followed me.

But we went towards the end of the street

to see where it was going.

And, uh, as it moved west and just disappeared.

And we just watched it just slowly move.

There was no sounds. We didn't hear anything

of, like, a drone or an aircraft

or a helicopter, um, and then,

it did turn direction,

and started heading in a westerly direction.

And then next thing you know, it just disappeared.

Uh, any whispers in the next two days

after you guys' sighting? Anybody else saw all this?

We mentioned it to someone that we know in town

or actually, just outside of town.

And he had an interesting comment.

He said that as a kid,

he saw something similar to that.

Which means about 40 or 50 years ago

he would've seen something of that same nature

because when we described it to him,

- or I think it was the dam. - It was the same location.

- It was around the dam. - Yeah.

Anything of interest in that area

or in... On the... In or around the ridge

where it was stopped?

- Besides the dam, you mentioned. - The dam and the rivers.

You have a history of this stuff happening

around the area.

Well, and I have a theory about that,

but I don't know if we need to go into that.

My theory is, uh, there have been stories

about military bases in West Virginia.

And given the nature of the state,

low population density, very rural, most areas,

and my understanding is that there have been

quiet military operations in the state.

We've got... The FBI has their facility in Clarksburg.

So we knew they've got a presence.

Greenbrier, which is in the south end of the state,

that was gonna be used in the event

of a Cold War nuke attack on Washington.

They have that completely set up for Congress.

Is there a history of coal mining in this area?

Like, around Sutton, around Flatwoods?

There is a coal mine...

I'm curious to know. Why are you asking about the mines?

We've heard some ties between

sightings of UFOs and coal mines in the state of West Virginia.

We left Flatwoods,

but remained in Braxton County for the night.

Staying in a remote corner on a plot of land

situated on top of a mountain

that happened to be truly Dark Sky territory.

Here we met up with Ron Lanham and Joe Perdue,

paranormal investigators based in the area.

They've also brought a witness named Dave,

who has had his own experience.

Ron and Joe's knowledge

of the state's history of weirdness

will prove invaluable to piecing together

the strange occurrences we've learned about so far.

But historically, can you expand on

the period of time between the '50s and the early '80s

where you had...

Oh, there was the I-64 incident.

Yeah, I mean, there's just

this constant stream of activity during that time.

You wanna talk about that?

The I-64 incident actually took place

right across from what's now Dow Chemical Plant

and that chemical plant used to actually manufacture

one of the three necessary parts

to make, uh, what we would call now

weapons of mass destruction, which was the nuclear missiles.

That was the rumor. You are correct.

They were manufactured in the Dow Chemical Plant.

And there was a manufacturing plant

in the Kanawha Valley.

Where Dow Chemical sets is in a town called Institute,

and that is exactly where the I-64 sighting took place,

where this UFO was 50, 60 feet off the interstate

and the gentleman that had the encounter

got out of his vehicle and observed this thing

for some time before it left

and then proceeded to actually make a UFO detection device.

He alleged that it worked, and he had many reports

that he took the device out on.

I mean, we went from the '50s

- all the way up to... - '80s?

Yeah, the '80s.

But the '70s was a huge flood.

There were several good sightings during that one.

That's one, you know...

There's a lot of those early cases,

especially, you know, the '66

and flaps back around Ohio and Point Pleasant.

All that has a view of those sightings,

which people just don't, for whatever reason,

really pay that much attention to.

They were witnessed by a lot of people.

You have so many different things

that have happened here.

The Appalachian Mountain Range

is the oldest mountain range in the world.

It used to be the tallest mountain range in the world.

So depending on how long these UFOs have been around,

it's a known target range.

It's... It's a landmark that, you know,

hasn't really changed, other than the fact that

it's been eroded and weathered away.

But the course is still there.

West Virginia is the perfect place

to conduct your business if you don't want to be seen.

A key piece to the UFO story in this area

are encounters with the Men in Black,

enigmatic beings who appeared to witnesses

following unusual incidents,

often to question them about the event

and occasionally to threaten or terrify them into silence.

The Men in Black rose to prominence in the 1960s

during the wave of UFO and Mothman sightings

that swept across the area.

Clarksburg native, Gray Barker, wrote a book titled

They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers,

which detailed encounters with black suited individuals

around the United States.

Barker has since passed away,

but his contributions to the UFO subject are numerous.

So the Men in Black phenomenon

is what people explain happens

after they've looked into either UFO sightings

or they've specifically had

some sort of encounter with a UFO.

It's happened both with researchers

who have apparently been digging too deeply

or like I said, people have had an actual encounter.

And the Men in Black, it's not always a black suit,

but that's typically what comes to mind.

Men show up in a dark suit, a black suit

and come to warn you that you need to stop

talking about whatever it is related to UFOs

that you were previously sharing.

The Men in Black would often show up

within a day or so of somebody seeing a UFO.

And there's one example in particular that sticks out,

the case of a family.

I think Christiansen was their last name?

They had just moved into this house.

Nobody knew,

except their close family that they had moved.

They had no new telephone number.

They had seen lights in the skies.

The next day, a strange person shows up on their doorstep.

So this very strange man

dressed in like, very odd fitting clothing,

again, strange mannerisms and speech,

and, uh, sort of a singsong quality to his voice.

He starts asking them numerous questions about,

"Is this who you are?"

Um, "What have you seen?"

And then all of a sudden he starts dropping

another details about UFOs.

"Have you ever seen some of those?"

One of the children who was present at that time,

she could see a green wire coming out of his sock

and then, going into his leg around a brown patch.

The other thing that was very strange

is that he said at the beginning when he came in

and wanted access to their home,

"This is going to take 40 minutes,"

and it did. It took exactly 40 minutes.

When 40 minutes was over,

he shut up all of his books and his briefcase,

and he left.

Because of the strange nature of this,

either the wife or one of the daughters

decided they're gonna watch him leave

to see where was he gonna go.

He walked out

down the driveway of the home is a fairly wooded area.

A black forty style Buick pulls up in the driveway.

Lights off.

The man jumps in the car.

Just a classic Men in Black style car

and it, it backs down the driveway

with the lights still off and he's gone.

Indrid Cold fits the description of a man in black perfectly

and also after his encounter with Indrid Cold,

the Men in Black began to visit.

Woodrow Derenberger at his farm.

He thought they were the Mafia.

I mean, if you read any John Keel's books,

John Keel thought they were some strange race of people.

He was actually frightened of them,

and so, so was Derenberger.

Many people that encountered the Men in Black,

even though Cold said

when he was talking to Woodrow Derenberger

"We mean you no harm.

"We wish you only happiness."

He would say that over and over to him to reassure him.

But there's just something not right about the Men in Black.

Some of the encounters that I've had with them

as a young person and a child.

Yeah, can you add some more detail

about your own personal experiences

with the Men in Black?

With the Men in Black?

Well, uh, my friend Jeannie and I were up on the hill.

We were playing up on the hill in the woods.

We saw these two men dressed entirely in black

and they were measuring the hillside.

One looked perfectly ordinary,

except he was dressed all in black.

Caucasian looking.

The other man looked kind of Asian.

And then he had, like, dyed blond hair.

Now, nowadays, if you saw an Asian man

with dyed blond hair all dressed in black

that, that might not be unusual.

It was back in 1966.

We knew to be frightened of them,

and then we ran home.

Later, my brother came home from school

and said he and his friends were up on the hill

and they found this big circular impression on the hillside

like either an impression of a UFO

or a crop circle or something.

Then, of course, years later I would,

I would see the Men in Black in various ways.

Uh, Men in Black reports.

Have you guys taken any of those?

Uh, it's just, it hasn't been necessarily a formal report.

But just speaking with individuals that told us,

you know, when they were kids that...

- They saw it. - They saw a man in black

or Men in Black came to their house.

We've had one, one report that was really intriguing to us

that that kind of lined up with

some of the, uh, bizarre man in black,

where the translucent kind of skin

and looked kind of weird,

and didn't know how to shake hands

or work a ballpoint pen sort of deal,

but that was just one account.

Yeah, there's various theories, of course,

about who the Men in Black really are,

or if they're even part of a qualifiable group.

I think the most prosaic and simple explanation

is that they are... some type of government

disinformation group that is seeking to, you know,

if, if they are behind what people have seen,

then they're following up on that sighting

by further, you know, either trying to find out what they saw

and get a, get a description

for their own data gathering purposes,

or if it's an entire, sort of, psychological operation,

to just chart what people,

how they are reacting to the strange goings on, in their area

and that they have experienced.

Whether or not Indrid Cold and the Men in Black

have any ties to the military is debatable,

but all of this talk about them reminded me

of a conversation I had with my friend, Mark Muncy.

Mark is a paranormal author and historian based in Florida

who grew up in Appalachia

and who would come across a story regarding Indrid Cold

which might help put together some pieces

regarding the origins of the person

or being behind the myth.

So Mark, I have heard that you have uncovered

a brand new Indrid Cold story when you were researching

for one of your new books.

Can you please share that with us?

Indrid Cold Is this interesting figure

in UFO work and research.

There's some other sightings here throughout histories

supposedly turns up similar to Mothman.

It kind of turns up in places right before bad things happen,

or, or just after bad things happen.

And one of the incidents

from Florida's past I was researching

was, uh, known as the Crestview incident.

This happened in 1967 in April.

This was a UFO incident there.

A school, uh, a bunch of students at a school

saw, uh, unusual aircraft.

Tons of students see it.

The teachers see it.

There's no keeping kids in school.

This thing is flying right outside.

It's got little ones with it.

It's a big, classic saucer.

Everybody's like, "Wow, that was crazy."

But then the military show up

and they start interrogating the students

and, and the teachers as witnesses.

The story in the paper says,

"Unusual craft sighted was, was helicopters,"

and it disappears. It goes out of the papers.

Nobody talks about it again through,

you know, 50 years.

Well, the advent of social media,

suddenly these kids are like,

"Wait a minute, it wasn't helicopters.

"I saw something weird. What did you see?"

And a lot of them started talking

and started getting in touch with each other there.

They, they kind of form a group online.

I reached out to that group when I was told about it,

and when that caught me,

I, I, was like, "Okay, tell me. Tell me about this.

"Tell me about this."

And I started talking to each one

that was willing to talk to me.

I got to talk to one in particular.

He had met with, uh, government agents,

uh, had come to his house to talk to him after the incident.

His father had kept the names

of the men who had asked him questions.

He had the note that his dad

well, you know, basically journaled everybody he talked.

He had talked to a Lieutenant Smith.

There was a a Captain Sinclair from the Coast Guard,

but then the third name just said, government man,

Cold.

This would have been six months

after Indrid's encounter with Derenberger.

Is he working with the government now?

And I'm like, "Do you remember the guy?"

And he said, "Yeah, he just kind of stood there.

"Weird suit and just smiled at me the whole time."

I don't remember him asking any questions.

Is Indrid Cold working with the government?

You know, has he become the Men in Black?

You know, that we hear so much about?

It would make a lot of sense.

You wanna talk bomb shells, it's like goose bumps.

Still, you know, thinking about it

and seeing that piece of paper.

Yeah, I think we get issues with the UFO's,

when we started talking about UFO's because it draws this

this image into people's heads of alien spacecraft.

It's not necessarily what we're talking about.

We're talking about an unidentified flying object

or a piece of, you know, aerial phenomena.

Which could be nocturnal lights, you know,

and we don't know what that is,

we haven't a clue what that is.

These things have been happening around here for a very long time.

You can talk to a lot of people,

and they'll tell you they've seen things.

You know, my grandmother,

back in the days when she was growing up,

there was a bright light that came down,

and it's all out in the field.

Well, I thought that was probably a meteorite.

So you know, as I got older,

I went out and try to find that,

but never found it.

I don't necessarily believe that

we're dealing with the modern phenomenon

as some people believe.

Well, Dave, thanks for coming out to talk to us.

So I heard you had a sighting.

That's quite interesting.

Ecosystems of Davis of West Virginia,

North of the Dolly Sods Wilderness and then it came...

My wife now is actually there vacationing for a week.

And this is on a June 30th,

on a Tuesday night and it was, of course, of this year.

It's a really odd area,

but it's quite beautiful.

But anyways, we wanted just to do some astronomy,

and we drove out there with the telescope,

and, uh, 'course star maps and everything,

and do some stuff.

And we got parked,

we probably weren't even out there, maybe 15 minutes,

and we looked up in the northwestern sky

and we just saw this orbit just,

like a golden tan color.

Orbit just popped into the sky.

Of course, it went from Northwest to Southwest.

And it went towards the Southeast, it kind of...

it just jolted, like, did a skid like a jolt thing,

and it just disappeared.

And then a second later, I was looking down,

looking actually, like looking at my wife,

and she just looked up.

And yelled at me, "There's another one."

And then, as she looked up

and then another came across the sky.

And in the same trajectory,

and it did the same thing of... it just poof, poof,

it was gone. Um...

How long did you see each thing?

When they blinked in, and then by the time they left?

Not even maybe two minutes.

And then it was, it was nice,

it was too fast to be an airplane,

too slow to be a satellite.

It's just this... the whole trajectory of it.

When we drove up from forward seventy from Davis

and, of course, the trajectory of both,

the first and second object

that went across the sky...

towards the Dolly Sods Wilderness.

I believe, you know, obviously,

there's something going on that we can't explain.

Of course, what they're being UFO.

I mean, it could be a military craft, for all we know

'cause we don't know everything

that they have right now, obviously...

but that was... that's basically the whole experience.

The more time I spent in West Virginia,

the more I felt like I wasn't seeing the big picture.

At this point, I talked to numerous witnesses

and learned about a number of fascinating sightings,

both historic and present day.

But what connected them?

While conducting this interview

about their sighting in Sutton,

Lewis had hinted at the possibilities

of a military angle to the sightings of UFOs in the state.

Dave had similarly wasn't ruling out the possibility of the light he'd seen

in the skies near Dolly Sods belonging to a military craft.

Whispers of military operations

in West Virginia have been

a part of the state's lore for decades.

Rumors of underground bases dotting

the Appalachian Mountain range that runs through the state

are nearly as widespread

as sightings of Mothman or UFOs.

The NSA, FBI, Army and National Guard

all operate out of the region.

But those are the known locations.

What else might be happening in the state

that were being kept in the proverbial dark about?

You know, thanks for doing this with us today.

So you have seen something highly anomalous?

Yes. Yes.

Go on tell that story to us.

I was 13 years old.

It was May of 1997.

The sun had just went down.

So it was about 09:15, I would say.

My mom, my younger brother and I,

we were on the front porch of our house.

As we're looking out that way,

we noticed this bright light appear

out in the distance and we watch it,

thinking that it was an airplane

um, we realize that it's moving way too slow.

And we watch it for about ten minutes

before it's close enough to us,

that we realize it's something really, really large.

We're in so much shock.

We just watch it as it approaches.

And by the time it gets to us, we realize it's at least

from where we're to the end of the street.

I'd say it was about 300 feet wide,

it was a triangle, and it might have been

at the most a 100 feet up in the air,

and moving maybe at five miles an hour.

I mean, it was slow.

And we just step there and all,

like looking at this thing in shock,

and I mean, we were terrified.

Not a sound coming from it.

Nothing... just floating along.

And we watch it, like travel past.

And we go around the side of the house,

and we watch it go off into the horizon.

And at that point, we're like, "Oh, my goodness,

"we gotta get someone else to see this."

So we go and get our dad. He watches the flight go off and he's like,

I'm not saying that, "You didn't see a UFO."

I can't tell what it was.

Um, but don't tell anybody what you saw

because they will think you're crazy.

It peaked an interest in me as to like,

"Okay, what was this?"

I mean, for me, honestly,

there's... no matter what the intent is,

there's nothing that we can do, you know?

So it's not something that I really think about

or consider 'cause whether they're here just to, you know, observe us,

or if they're planning an invasion,

there's... and I know that's extreme,

the whole invasion thing.

But when we go to a foreign place here on Earth,

it's where you're there to observe,

to actually engage the civilization

and take samples and collect data and all that,

or we're there to just completely

take it over. There...

there was a neighbor that lived beside of us,

and she swore that

there is a government test facility for aircraft.

It would be roughly...

about 40 miles to the South East

of where we're at, uh, town called Elkins.

The direction where it came from

would have been in that area.

Katie, thanks for chatting with us.

I mean, are you... have you always been interested in UFOs

or you just had your own sighting?

And that's what...

that's got you kind of going in this subject.

I've always been interested in UFOs

because of my grandfather,

who was part of Project Blue Book,

and he worked before that with NASA.

Um, he was kind of a spokesman for Blue Book.

And he would give the line, like,

"You know, we don't find any evidence

"to support the existence of UFOs."

He was a disinformation guy.

Essentially. Even though he had his own UFO sighting.

Oh, can you expand upon your... your own sightings.

Yeah. I've never seen anything in the sky before

I moved out here,

and then all of a sudden I saw things that,

you know, I didn't... I didn't know what they were.

The first thing I saw was from my deck it was at dusk,

and I was looking up over here in the sky.

I saw what looked like a star,

and it got really, really, really bright.

And then it started moving around really radically,

like, really crazy, like an insect almost.

And then it just blinked out to nothing.

Well, I saw another thing that was sort of like that again

in that same part of the sky,

and from the same place on my deck.

But I saw it at about 3:00 In the morning,

and I also I don't know what that was,

and I posted on facebook

seeing if anybody else had seen anything like that

or had seen... saw what I saw before,

and there was like one gal in town

who said that she's seen that a couple of times,

and it also didn't know what it was.

So this, this area has a lot of military presence in the sky.

Maybe that could explain

some of the things that I've seen.

I wouldn't be too surprised, but...

Like the experimental craft.

Yeah, like something that nobody knows about.

Throughout our trip, we've heard about Davis

and specifically the Dolly Sods Wilderness.

It's where Dave had his sighting.

And it's also a location where my friend Les O'Dell

conducts a lot of his paranormal research.

There are also rumors of secret military ops

taking place in the region.

But the more time we spend looking into all of this,

the more rumors of government installations

and secret black ops involving UFOs come up.

National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia.

Here there is no industrial noise,

no airports, little highway traffic,

no transmission interference.

The surrounding mountains protect the area

from the crackle of Earth's atmosphere.

It's worth mentioning Green Bank Observatory

construction began in 1957.

Originally intended to be just one piece

of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

Its ultimate goal was to study objects in space

based on the radio waves.

Frequently referred to as West Virginia's Area 51.

Part of the mission assigned to the facility

was determining whether or not

other life existed in our solar system.

Today, the observatory is privately owned

and wholly embraces it's extraterrestrial history,

but its mystique continues to grow.

The Green Bank Observatory is one of the largest

observatories on the East Coast,

and the money was approved very recently

after the Flatwoods Monster event,

and subsequent government investigations.

It's in Green Bank, West Virginia.

It's one of those areas where when you enter

into this certain perimeter,

no cell phones, no TV.

Everything's 1940s era equipment.

Otherwise the satellite can pick it up,

it can damage the signals or corrupt signals.

Can you tell us about the Green Bay incident

with the photos that you showed me.

There was the guy got a hold on me through e-mail.

He e-mailed me his pictures,

and he said he took them in the Green Bank area.

I believe he took them with a cell phone,

and he said he was just driving around,

and he looked up and he's seeing this thing in the sky,

he starts taking pictures,

next thing he knows, there's a second one

and he's taking pictures of it.

And what's strange is Green Bank

in my understanding is a no fly zone.

So if these are near Green Bank,

they shouldn't have been there.

Even if they were drones, they shouldn't have been there.

So I got hold of Ron Lanham

and he was perplexed by them and he took them in.

done the enhancements, and have done the 3D modeling

to show that it's something other than like...

a bird in the sky, you know?

Yeah, that's about as far as it went with

the guy that sent me the pictures.

Are you aware of...

like government investigation of UFO sightings?

I've heard...

I've heard Green Bank has something to do with it.

But there are people in Beckley area in the Oak Hill area

believe that there's more that goes on there.

How about your own personal sightings?

I've only had one, but it was at Dolly Sods.

And that was two months ago.

I went up to watch the stars like I do.

You know, I'll just drive up there to watch stars

and I'm laying in my van looking out the window,

and I see this, uh, orange light

come across from one horizon.

It just moves in a blink and then moves in another blink.

It wasn't moving steadily. It just moved to a spot, blink,

and then they got so... so far over,

and it blinked and went out.

And then I could see blink again,

and it shot like in an angle and started blinking again

and moved over again and then eventually just went off.

Thanks for taking us out here.

This is where I've seen the light.

- I've seen... I was sitting over here... - Mm-hmm.

and I was actually laying in my van,

and it was right over here,

along this side in this area, the sky here.

You felt like it was maybe conventional?

It... way it moved.

- I mean, I couldn't say it was UFO. - Mm-hmm.

Mainly, because I couldn't see it, also was the light.

But it moved.

It moved forward.

It's starting to seem like this.

It's stopped blinking and then it like,

seemed like a shot in the Z pattern,

shot down in an angle, started blinking again.

And then kept on going so far this way.

And that was it. I lost it. Didn't see it any more

- All right, where are we at? - So, so, now.

So, you know, let's tell them what you saw

in the first night she was able to pick it up too.

Yes. So, um, right over in that area,

going pretty like, pretty fast.

We saw a consistent bluish light

going pretty quickly and disappeared.

It disappeared and then it came back

and disappeared.

Now it's gone.

Whoa, I've never seen anything

move that quickly through the sky. That was...

That was actually really far away.

That's what's impressive

is because the second you said it,

I actually, I locked eyes on it,

and it was so far,

but it was smooth, and going extremely fast.

- Yeah. - Something to go.

- I mean, where that plane is... - Mm-hmm.

Look how far. It's been in this.

It's been going, going in the sky.

And comparing the speed of the plane

to what it was doing was just significantly quick.

Yeah, that was... that is...

that is a huge difference between what was there,

and then that.

I don't know, it was weird, man.

It was weird, man.

It like turned off and then you could see it again.

Was that an airplane 'cause like, we just lost it.

Oh, that is weird.

Hey, Shannon. That one just disappeared.

- I have it on film. - Yeah.

So...

- Watch... So right here, right where my finger is at. - Uh-hmm.

See? So watch that zone.

I was trying to get focus.

You're seeing it move?

Oh, yeah. Was that an airplane 'cause I just lost it.

It's there, you'll see it move and then it goes away.

Oh, I think I just saw it behind it and then it goes.

Yeah, right there. Right... So see there's those two pieces?

You're gonna see the bottom one move...

Watch.

Moving, moving, moving, moving...

And then it goes away.

It's gone.

Oh!

- That literally moved, like... - That's awesome.

couple, maybe, I don't know, that far up, thousand feet,

ten thousand... I don't know. I'm not a scientist,

- but we definitely... You wanna see that side? - Okay, that was cool.

You have to see this...

I've officially seen a UFO.

Holy crap!

That's for real. That's legit. That was legit.

The objects or lights that we saw at night are unidentifiable.

Could they be known aircraft?

Sure. Maybe.

But they bear startling similarities

to what Dave and Les saw in the same area,

right down to the fact that they disappeared without a trace.

The camera didn't quite do justice

to the low altitudes they seem to be flying at.

And against a sky full of bright stars,

you almost had to be there to really get the full effect,

which I now realize

is something that witnesses say to me all the time...

"You had to be there to understand it."

So, I've finally seen something

that I can't identify.

I'm still trying to make sense of where it came from or what it was.

Did it come from one of those rumored military bases

or is it simply a test aircraft running maneuvers?

If it's not of this earth, then what is it doing here?

Is there something in this particular area drawing it in?

As far as a defining characteristic of UFOs in West Virginia,

I think the most consistent

seems to be a light or a flying disc of some sort

that will often be spotted in places where

there has been a history of mining.

There's a correlation it would seem between those two things,

even to the degree that in many cases,

people report seeing

what appears to them to be a physical craft,

suddenly dive into the ground

without an explosion.

And that's so often accompanied by some type

of mine or location that has to do with that industry.

Are you aware of any other sightings in association with coal mining?

The coal mine areas, yeah.

I mean, there's even one that come from the Canaan area in the valley

where... is it 2012 I believe, or it's 2013,

where several people say they saw these large

black triangles, like three in a row cross over this coal mine.

Have you taken many or any reports?

Have you heard of any reports?

Doesn't matter if you've taken it or not,

I'm just asking general...

that tie together

UFO sightings at coal mines.

We do have mines and we do have, you know, episodes of high strangeness

that do occur around these things.

So if there's an episode of high strangeness

that are sometimes related to UFOs.

It's related to other things too,

but, you know, you have to look at those.

The reports that we've all taken

were actually in correlation with power plants in the Chemical Valley.

- Are you talking about... - I'm talking about the big...

You're talking about nukes.

- Yeah... - That's a whole different story.

That's not necessarily the power plant.

That's not a power plant... That's way more impressive.

But we recently... we had a report that came in,

it's about three weeks old now at this point,

where a Saint Alban's gentleman

had a visual sighting, daylight sighting,

and it was flying through the Chemical Valley.

He said the object looked like it was

a silver, kinda mirrory finish

and it was flying alongside an Osprey.

He said that this Osprey didn't have

a stereotypical paint job that you would expect

from a military vehicle

and then there was the single fighter jet

that he said came on blaring up the valley.

And whenever the two objects kinda came in close proximity,

that the shining unidentified object

blinked out and went straight up in the atmosphere.

And that would have been roughly near the John Amos power plant.

Inside the Kanawha River Valley,

they call it the "Chemical River Valley" or the "Chemical Valley."

West Virginia... The Kanawha river area

was home to all of these weapons manufacturing plants.

Nitro is named after, you know,

the production of TNT and explosives for the war.

And, there were sighting in Saint Albans.

And Saint Albans is right across river from Nitro,

so these things could have been in Nitro.

So what you're saying is...

basically the exact same thing

that they're reporting at these nuclear bases and what not...

today, that we could be dealing with the same thing

that they were actually looking at maybe the components,

rather than the actual nuclear side of it.

Right, because at that point, they were all separate components

and each area was developing their own portion.

Kenneth, can you tell us where we are right now?

We're about...

I don't know exactly... We're about a mile from...

- We're near Bowden area. - Bowden? Okay.

Do you think there could be some kind of tie-in between

between caves and mines and what you saw?

I see mines all over the place.

Um... There's one probably

I'd say two miles from my house.

A good sized mine.

Um, but there's mines all over West Virginia.

I mean, you've got the mine, we're brimming with mines up there.

You know, 150-year old mines.

It didn't come from the ground, it came from the air, evidently.

It was in the air.

And when it took off, it didn't have no trouble at all, like that...

that fast and it was gone.

But... It was something.

I don't know if it was from here, you know, or space,

or I ain't gonna say UFO

because what I've seen were seen other times in West Virginia.

We've seen it in Morgantown.

I think it was even seen around here somewhere.

So after going through all of the places that we've been,

I kinda put together this map and let me know what you think.

But it looks like

these locations that we've been talking about

all correlate with coal mines.

I mean, within miles

or minutes in some instances.

There's a lot of abandoned mines in West Virginia

and deep mines with some that go back centuries.

And what are active mines that are even close to power stations in...

So, I don't know if many power stations,

those cells meant something

as an energy source for something like this

and maybe that's why.

Maybe some of these mines are some place it seems they can hide

and be developed by

something other-worldly or something right here.

The interesting thing is West Virginia is a heavily mined state, right?

So known for coal mines.

The western part of the state is not heavily mined.

And yet you've got this preponderance of reports around Point Pleasant

in the 1960s.

Point Pleasant is a mined location,

an area

that is not know for mining.

And if you extrapolate that out,

the same thing holds true for Sutton and Flatwoods

where all of a sudden there's been mines

and those are places known for sighting.

So it's not necessarily an effect of sightings happening in heavily mined areas.

It seems like the big thing is that there's

sightings happening in places that are not known for mining

where there happen to be mines.

Even maybe years ago.

Now, Les, we went to Dolly Sods when you came.

Tell me about that area in relation to the theory we're kinda going with.

It's largely

limestone area,

a majority of what would be considered as mine areas.

There are mines...

like Buffalo Coal that used to be there.

There's a Mettiki Mine...

And they're all feeding into the Mount Storm Power Plant.

It just came from miles away from Dolly Sods.

So we pretty much haven't come across a sighting that does not correlate

with an energy source.

Okay, what about the idea, guys, of...

maybe these things

just strictly taking out power plants and coal mines?

These things coming directly in and out of the earth?

But there has been sightings in this area, you know,

just in Elkins or like the Milton area...

We've had a few sightings from there,

where there was a triangle object or a disc, you know.

This local UFO researcher named Bob Keats

who wrote a book all about West Virginia,

compiling his West Virginia cases.

The theory that you're presenting

was put forth by him as well,

and one thing that had pointed out

was that there were a large number of sightings in that book,

historical sightings, older sightings,

where people did see objects diving into or coming out of the earth.

I suppose the easier question,

not with an answer though,

is could they be pulling energy from these sources?

What is the purpose?

It certainly kinda nods in that direction at the very least.

Yeah, are they leeching energy from these places?

Are they literally coming out of the earth?

There's books from the 1950s and 60s

where people posited the idea

that UFOs are coming from hollow earth.

So basically after everything that we've gone through,

it still doesn't tell us much of anything for sure.

Just gives us more questions.

But at least for our part of it, especially in West Virginia,

it is a model that we can build on.

The dark sky of West Virginia holds a lot of secrets.

Apparently, so do it's mountains and rivers,

it's forests and it's hills and hollers.

Maybe it's all connected,

maybe there are extra-terrestrial beings

coming from the stars to secretly mine our planet.

Or maybe it's our own

or even a foreign military testing aircraft in our backyard.

Maybe the visitors are coming from inside the earth itself.

For now, I'm heading back home,

where I'll no doubt continue my search for stories and answers

to questions I haven't even asked yet.

After all, just because I live in a city too bright to see the stars,

doesn't mean I'll ever stop looking up.

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