Flatwoods, West Virginia is home to a monster that has been marketing locally and attracted the attention of the US government's Project Blue Book, but isn't very famous with the rest of the world. Toys and other geegaws may be purchased of the creature, called the Green Phantom, the Phantom of Flatwood, and the Flatwoods Monster.
In September 12, 1952, numerous witnesses saw a UFO over Flatwoods. Three groups tracked what most people thought was a meteor to a nearby hill where it seemed to have crashed. The first group was Kathleen May and her teenage sons, the second was two little boys, and the third was a member of the National Guard, Eugene Lemon, who was walking his dog. They met along the way. At the site, the dog ran ahead and then ran away. They reported a strange fog that smelled badly and hurt their eyes.
The witnesses all agree they saw a glowing ball and then the creature. It had a blood-red face, greenish-orange eyes that glowed, and it wore a dark green hooded robe.
They fled from the beast. Lemon later returned with reporters and local law enforcement officers, who also saw and felt the mysterious fog. The investigation turned up skid marks near the hill and a circular marking in the grass.
No one believes that so many unconnected witnesses were involved in a hoax, and the original witnesses were clearly very frightened. Project Blue Book investigated years later and suggested that the UFO was a meteor and the creature was a misidentified animal. No one ever found meteor fragments. It's difficult to say what kind of animal would be described by six different people the way these sober West Virginians described the Flatwoods Monster. No one has reported seeing the creature again, except on tourist brochures, in toy stores, and souvenir shops.