Flatwoods Visit Convinced Skeptic Saucers Are Real

*The following is a Charleston Gazette article from Tuesday, April 30th 1968 written by Sandra Grant and entitled "Flatwoods Visit Convinced Skeptic Saucers Are Real"*

Other-worldly? Or just another peculiar West Virginian? Definitely the first, UFO experts say. The statue, modeled after the "Baxton County Monster," which supposedly arrived in West Virginia in a flying saucer, is examined by (from left) "Ufologisit" Gray Barker of Clarksburg, James Mosley of New York and Ralph Jarrett of St. Albans. (Staff Photo by Lewis Raines)

### ***Flatwoods Visit Convinced Skeptic Saucers Are Real***

By Sandra Grant, Staff Writer

In 1952, Gray Barker set out to expose as a hoax the sighting of a flying saucer in Flatwoods.

He went back to his home in Clarksburg a believer.

"Seven people had seen it - a huge globe settled in a hollow," he recalls. "I was going to write an article to expose the whole thing. But then I talked to them. Most of them were children and they were very honest and sincere. I left convinced that they had seen something."

He's devoted his spare time to flying saucer research since then.

Barker, who sells educational audio-visual aids, was in Charleston Monday night to speak at a meeting of the new county UFO investigators. He and James Mosley, a fulltime saucerean, talked about some of the classic sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO's) and gave a slide lecture on the history of saucer sightings.

They both admitted they and other saucer buffs have trouble getting people to take them seriously.

"Last year," Mosley said, "we tried holding the annual Congress of Scientific Ufologists in New York. That's such a sophisticated city that we had trouble from the start. We had the Greenwich Village crowd all over the place and the newspapers paid absolutely no attention to our business sessions. They concentrated on the wilder aspects and the entire thing was pretty bad. We're hoping to have next year's convention in Charleston. We think it could be run a little more calmly here."

. . .

MOSLEY SPENDS most of his time traveling and lecturing at colleges and universities on UFOs. Until recently he was editor of Saucer News, a publication now produced by Barker.

Saucer News has been the object of some unusual pranks - or contacts by alien worlds, however, you choose to look at it. In the winter issue, Mosley reported that a woman from Long Island had called the magazine and said she was in with a person or thing named "Agar" who knew all about Mosley's private life and could predict the future.

The woman agreed to meet Mosley at a specified time and place but failed to show up.

. . .

BARKER AND Mosley said West Virginia has had a relatively high number of UFO sightings. The first on record was in 1897 at Sistersville. Almost everyone in the town saw the UFO that lit up the area.

One of the most highly publicized in recent years was the sighting in 1966 by Woodrow Derenberger, a Parkersburg salesman who says a flying saucer approached him on I-77. The cylindrical, metallic ship contained a man dressed in shiny clothes who tried to talk to the salesman through the car window, the Parkersburg man said.

"Derenberger made the mistake of telling a radio station about," Barker said. "He got so many telephone calls and was bothered so much that he had to move."

By coincidence, Kanawha County's most famous UFO sighting also happened on an interstate highway. In January, 1967, furniture store operator Tad Jones said he saw a shiny, spherical craft on I-64 between the institute and Cross Lanes interchanges, and the thing shot upward and vanished as he [ page cuts off ]

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**Sources:**

*Flatwoods Visit Convinced Skeptic Saucers Are Real, April 30th 1968*

**John Gibson Newspaper Collection (**https://braxtonwv.org/the-flatwoods-monster/folklore/)

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