The Scoutmaster’s UFO
True to the pattern set during 1947, the first summer of the saucers, the panic of 1952 did not end without an elaborate hoax and a good monster story.
The famous “Scoutmaster” incident occurred at West Palm Beach, Florida, on the night of August 19[[VII-1], p. 229]. According to the report given the Intelligence officer at the local air base, the scoutmaster (an ex-Marine) had offered to drive four of the boys to their homes at the close of the evening’s meeting. While traveling over a country road bordered by scrub pine and palmetto thickets, he had noticed some mysterious lights among the pines and decided he must investigate. Leaving the frightened boys in the car with instructions to go for help if he had not returned in fifteen minutes, he took his machete and two flashlights and bravely set off into the dangerous woods. He was found some time later by the boys, the constable, and the deputy sheriff, and was apparently terrified. When he entered the woods, he said, he noticed a peculiar odor and felt an oppressive sensation of heat. On looking up, he saw hovering above him a dark circular object with a turretlike dome in the middle, so large that it blotted out most of the sky. When he went closer, a door opened, a ball of fire emerged and drifted toward him, enveloped him, and rendered him unconscious. He called on the boys to confirm the presence of the strange lights and the huge machine, and as further proof he exhibited burns in his cap and on his face and arms.
Since scoutmasters are traditionally upright citizens, the story seemed to merit attention. Investigators from ATIC visited the scene, interviewed all persons concerned, and sent the cap and the machete to Dayton for analysis. Very soon, however, the drama began to fall apart. The scoutmaster, after being interviewed by Air Force investigators, assumed an aura of mystery and stated publicly that he had been warned not to talk. At the same time he hired a press agent and offered to sell his story to the newspapers. A study of the landscape showed that the boys could not have seen any “machine” from the road. The townspeople did not consider the woods dangerous. Aircraft preparing to land at the airport regularly flew over the area in question with their landing lights on; to a person on the road, the lights might seem to be flitting through the woods. Furthermore the study showed that the scene had been set in advance for a frightening incident. As they drove along the lonely road, the scoutmaster had been talking about flying saucers and, after he stopped the car, had warned the boys that they might need to go for help. The man’s reputation for veracity, too, began to melt away, and one townsman remarked that if the scoutmaster claimed that the sun was shining, he’d look up to see for himself before accepting the statement. The knife and cap showed no radioactivity. The laboratory report from the Federal Bureau of Investigation showed that the burn on the cap was made by a cigarette, and the “burns” on the hand and arm proved to be only superficial scorching of the hair and could easily have been produced by the flame of a kitchen match.
This investigation cost the usual amount of time and money, but it was unquestionably a hoax[VII-4].
Monster in West Virginia
The final incident in the summer’s panic occurred on the evening of September 12 when a family group near the town of Sutton, West Virginia, saw a flaming object flash across the sky and apparently land on a nearby hill. Taking their flashlights, they set out to investigate and, on reaching the hill, smelled an unpleasant odor. When they turned on their flashlights, they stated, they saw two red eyes glaring at them; a huge monster, ten feet tall, breathing fire, with a bright-green body and a blood-red face, waddled toward them, and they turned and ran[VII-5].
Air Force investigators concluded immediately that the flaming object first seen was the meteor observed that night by thousands of persons in Virginia and West Virginia and reported officially to various observatories. What the frightened family saw when they reached the hilltop and flashed the light was probably the glowing eyes or body of some mundane creature of the woods. A local group of civilian saucer investigators rejected this explanation, as usual, and after making its own study concluded that the monster story could very well have been true!
The monster is now enshrined in West Virginia history[[VII-5]], and forms the subject of a new ballad written by Cindy Coy and set to the tune of “Sweet Betsy from Pike.” One verse and the chorus will suffice:
The size of the phantom was a sight to behold,