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"It looked worse than Frankenstein," was the way Mrs. Kathleen May described the alien being that she and seven other Flatwoods, West Virginia residents had seen on September 12, 1952. Mrs. May had had her attention called to the saucer by a group of excited children, including her sons, Eddie, 13, and Fred, 12. The children had been at a nearby playground with Gene Lemon, Neil Nunley, Ronnie Shaver, and Tommy Hyer when they had spotted a "saucer spouting an exhaust that looked like balls of red fire." According to the boys, the saucer had landed on a hilltop above the May house. "| told them that it was just their imaginations," Mrs. May told reporters, "but the boys kept insisting that they had seen a flying saucer land behind the hill." Gene Lemon, a husky seventeen-year-old, had found a flashlight and said that he was going to investigate. At the urging of her children, Mrs. May agreed to accompany the teenager, and the small party of West Virginians set out into the night. "Up on the hill, | could see a reddish glow," said Mrs. May. "I changed my mind about it all being their imaginations, and | was glad that Gene was in the lead." After about half an hour of tramping through the brush that covered the narrow uphill trail, Gene Lemon's courage left him in a long scream of terror, the intrepid band of saucer-hunters fled in panic from the sight that Lemon's flashlight had illuminated. When Lemon had flashed the beam on the glowing green spots, he had thought them to be the eyes of an animal. Instead, the flash had spotlighted an immense, man-like figure with a blood-red face and greenish eyes that blinked out from a pointed hood. Behind the monster was "a glowing ball of fire as big as a house" that grew dimmer and brighter at intervals. Later, Mrs. May described the monster as having "terrible claws." Some of the children, however, had not noticed any arms at all. Most agreed that the being had worn dark clothing, and fourteen-year-old Neil Nunley specified the color to be a "dark green." Estimates of the creature's height ranged from seven feet to ten feet. The party was in definite agreement about one characteristic of the alien, however, and that was the sickening odor which it seemed to emit. Mrs. May told reporters that it was "like sulphur," but really unlike anything that she had ever encountered.