The following story has featured previously in the US edition of my book Unexplained. When Christopher Columbus's ships first near the shores of the islands known today as the Bahamas, it is said that the islanders, not having the mental capacity to comprehend the strange vessels that were approaching them,
couldn't physically see them coming. It wasn't until they saw the unfamiliar fluctuations in the water caused by the wash from Columbus's fleet did they apparently realize that something was awrye This same story is told in a variety of ways.
Replaced Columbus with any old European explorer discovering what to them at least was supposedly uncharted territory, and you were get the same effect, the implication that the ships were so alien to the local communities that they were effectively rendered invisible, as noted by Barry Evans in his North Coast Journal article Myth of the Invisible Ships from June two thousand and nine. These apocryphal tales are thought to stem from diary entries recorded by botanist Joseph Banks in
seventeen seventy. Banks accompanied Captain James Cook on his infamous journey to the Southern Hemisphere, aboard the HMS Endeavor. On making its way into what is now called Botany Bay in Australia, the Endeavor passed a number of canoes piloted by local fishers, but when, as Evans' rights, the ship passed within a quarter of a mile of them, they
scarce lifted their eyes from their employment. Joseph Banks was almost inclined to think that so attentive were they to their business, and deafened by the noise of the surf, they neither saw or heard the ship go past. Later, with the seemingly unmissable hundred foot long vessel anchored less than half a mile opposite a small village, the fishers gave it barely a moment's notice as they paddled back to the shore and pulled their canoes onto the beach
before returning to their homes. Although there could be any number of reasons for this peculiar behavior, Banks's own suggestion that the people were simply too distracted by the standard regiment of their daily lives to notice the ship as it moved into the bay is particularly insightful. In nineteen ninety eight, psychologists Arian Mac and Irvin Rock published a study for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology titled Inattentional Blindness.
Building on the earlier work of cognitive psychologists Ulric Nysser and Robert Becklan, the paper outlined the results of a series of simple experiments that highlighted a fundamental deficiency in our sense of perception. The study concluded that, due to the brain's natural tendency to band multitudes of objects and stimuli into single groups, we often fail to notice the most obvious of stimuli, even if they occur directly in front of us. One well known example of this was
demonstrated in an experiment known as the Invisible Gorilla. A version of it can be easily found on YouTube under the title Selective Attention Test by Daniel Simons. For anyone who hasn't heard of this before, I urge you to pause the podcast now and watch it before I spoil the surprise for everyone else. Will continue. In the experiment, participants were shown a film of a group of people passing a basketball among themselves and then instructed to simply
count the number of times the ball was exchanged. When the correct number of passes was then revealed at the end. Many participants congratulated themselves on guessing the correct number. However, almost fifty percent of them were then surprised to learn that they had missed something quite irregular. The person in a guerrilla suit who walked straight through the shot stopped in the middle and even turned to the camera to
beat their chest before walking out again. Although inattentional blindness wouldn't explain how something could remain hidden in plain sight as opposed to it not being seen momentarily because we are more intently focused on something else, it remains a startling example of the limits of our perception. It is hard not to wander, then, just what else we might
be missing. It's certainly fascinating to speculate that there might exist technologies or beings even living alongside us, that are either considered so unlikely or formed of materials so beyond our comprehension that we don't even register them, let alone understand them, or that during the course of our lives we might become so conditioned that we are always blind
to certain things. In ancient Greece, the Pythias, the high priestesses of the Temple of Apollo, who served as his oracles at Delphi were thought to originally have been young children, ideally farmers daughters, who were chosen for their perceived purity and innocence. It is a common theme in the history
of divination found in many cultures. In ancient Rome, for example, it was children who often performed the drawing of lots, a process used to determine the will of the gods by the reading of small tablets, usually made from wood, that were thrown into water. Classicist Sarah Illis Johnston of Ohio University attributes this to the strongly held belief that children were simply quote able to see gods, demons, and ghosts that other people could not, a skill that would
invariably be lost once they grew up. Interestingly, we find hints of this theme with regard to a number of especially compelling UFO sightings. In nineteen seventy seven, fourteen pupils from a school in broad Haven, a village on the southwest coast of Whales, reported seeing a silver cigar shaped craft land in a field beside their playground. Parents and teachers, who were quick to dismiss the event, were later left scratching their heads when the children were asked by their
headmaster to draw pictures describing what they saw. Despite being separated to perform the task, their drawings were found to be strikingly similar. Just over fifteen years later, a remarkably similar event unfolded in another village, this time in Zimbabwe. There, around sixty school pupils aged seven to twelve claimed to see two strange spherical aircraft land at the back of their playground, which were then exited by two figures with large eyes who were wearing black suits like a scuba
diver might wear. These children were also asked to draw pictures of what they seen. Again, many of the resultant images contains striking similarities, despite the fact that the children had had little to no time to confer on what they'd apparently witnessed. The cultures of both ufology and cryptozoology broadly hold the possibility that within the universe, or merely just on the planet that some call Earth, there exist a variety of creatures and entities who supposed existence as
yet to be accepted by the wider scientific community. Rarely, however, does a story come along which appears to draw from both ideas, such as that which unfolded around a small West Virginian town in the United States in the late nineteen sixties. It is a story quite unlike any other, that continues to baffle, excite, and terrorizers to this day. Many have wandered, like the great Enrico Fermi, if there really are other sophisticated life forms out there, then where
are they? Others might say that just because we don't always see them, it doesn't mean they aren't there. You're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard McClean smith. The family stared at the TV with more amusement than annoyance. They were used to the odd signal interruption, but this was
like nothing they'd ever experienced before. The way the picture had first twisted and distorted before suddenly being replaced by gray scale herring bones steadily sliding up the screen, And that peculiar noise coming out of the speaker was something else, the pitch of it rising up and down in waves
like an air raid siren. As that awful noise reached another crescendo, the family watched aghast as a sudden surge of power blew out the set completely, leaving a blank screen, a thin trail of smoke and an eerie silence in its wake. It was only then that they became aware
of the dog barking outside. It had been a fairly uneventful weekend for Merl Partridge and his family before that fateful Sunday night on November thirteenth in nineteen sixty six, when they gathered in the sitting room to enjoy an
evening of TV together. The family lived on a modest farm holding on the outskirts of Salem in West Virginia, and what was about to occur there that night, for many marks the beginning of one of the most inexplicable and unsettling series of events ever to have taken place in the United States. On hearing the dog, Merle told the rest of his family to stay put, before grabbing his eight millimeter mouser and a flashlight. Then he pushed open the screen door and stepped cautiously onto the back
porch bandit. The family's large German shepherd was perched at the end of it, his eyes fixated on something toward the hay barn at the back of the yard. His frantic barking shifted suddenly to an oddly anguished wail. What is it? Boy? Said Merle as he looked out into the silent darkness surrounding the house. Merle flicked on his torch and sent a beam of light shooting out across the yard, trying to ignore the thumping of his heart as he slowly swept it over the property. With the
dog continuing to wail. Merle had just brought the light up to the front of the barn when he caught sight of something unexpected, what looked like a series of small red lights floating about just outside it, each one flashing on and off intermittently. Bandit saw them too, and leaped into the dark yapping frantically as he tore off towards them. Bandit, get back here, shouted Merle, but the
dog kept on running. Merle continued shouting in vain for his dog to return, and was desperate to charge on after him, but something told him that wouldn't be a good idea. The following morning, Merle stepped out into the damp, cold air and scanned the yard. Bandit had never disappeared for more than a few minutes, but after running off the night before, he was still yet to return. Merle took a moment to gaze out at the distant tree covered hills shrouded in mist, before tucking in his shirt
and heading off toward the barn. With recent rains having made the ground soft and muddy, it wasn't long before Merle picked up Bandit's poor prince. As he approached the area outside the barn where he'd seen the lights, the tracks became more numerous, as if Bandit had been circling and jumping around at that precise place. But there the tracks stopped. Wearily, Merle looked back to the prince that
led from the house. It was uncanny, he thought, if it weren't such a ridiculous notion, it was as though Bandit had just disappeared right there on the spot. Two nights later, just over ninety miles to the west of the Partridge property, a black fifty seven Chevrolet swung off Route sixty two and into the eerie stillness of Mason County's TNT area, just seven miles north of the town
of Point Pleasant in western Virginia. The area was so called for its former existence as the West Virginia Ordinance Works, a US Army ammunition manufacturing and storage facility from the Second World War, operating between the years of nineteen forty two to forty five, and covering roughly eight thousand, three hundred acres of land. It has since been converted partly into farmland, but mostly into a wildlife management area comprised
of thick scrub, wetlands and forest. Although the area was now largely deserted, the specter of its ominous past continued to haunt the landscape in the hulking ruins of its two abandoned powerhouses and the series of peculiar reinforced concrete domes that dotted the area, Hidden amongst the trees and bracken. Known locally as igloos, these eerie chambers had originally served as ammunition storage houses, but had long since been cleared out.
The tnt area was undoubtedly to some a strange and unsettling place, but perfect for teenagers and young adults, who regularly drove up there at night looking to get lost and blow off steam away from the prying eyes of the various small towns nearby. One such individual was eighteen year old Roger Scarborough, who rarely missed an opportunity to show off his fifty seven Chevy so lovingly kept and
cared for without a scratch on it. Joining him that fateful night in November was his wife Linda, also eighteen, and their friends Mary and Steve Mallett, eighteen and twenty, respectively. Steve and Mary laughed in the back as they were thrown together on the turn, halfheartedly begging Roger to slow
down as they clung to each other in excitement. Linda turned up the dial on the radio at the first strains of Johnny Rivers and its latest hit Poor Side of town, and together they careered off toward the darkened back roads of the TNT area. Perhaps it was the especially cold evening or the lateness of the hour, but for whatever reason, the two couples appeared to be just about the only people out that evening. Growing board with the clock approaching midnight, they decided to head back home
to Point Pleasant. Roger swung the car round and set off back toward Route sixty two along the main stretch that intersected what had once been the North and South power plants. Though the moon was hidden by thick cloud somewhere above, the friends could just about make out the North plant up ahead, silhouetted against the night sky, But as they drew closer, something else began to materialize from
out of the dark. It was sometime later when Deputy Millard Halstead, halfway through the night shift, received a call at the Mason County Sheriff's office in Point Pleasant. It was Gary Northrop, the owner of Tiny's Diner up on Jackson Avenue. I got four kids scared out of their wits up here. You better come quick, he said, before
promptly hanging up. With little else to go on, Halstead didn't quite know what to expect when he stepped into the diner a few minutes later to find the two young couples shaken and pale anxiously waiting for him inside. He certainly hadn't anticipated what they were about to tell him. They'd be nearing the back of the North Power Plant when Steve suddenly yelled for them all to look at
something by the side of the road. Linda and Mary had glanced up just in time to see what seemed to be a huge pair of red eyes reflected back at them from the edge of the road, lit up by the car's headlights. Roger saw it too, and slammed on the brakes to get a better look at it. Switching the radio off the four sat together in silence, trying to get a handle on what exactly the thing was.
It seemed to be some kind of wild animal in a trail of wire by the side of the road, desperately trying to free itself, but as their eyes continued to adjust, it soon became clear that this was like no animal they'd ever seen before. They described it as being almost humanlike in its posture, standing upright on two legs, but with disproportionately long arms and strangely large hands, but almost seven feet tall. Its body was lithe and muscular, and, from what they could make out in the white of
the headlights, a sort of dirty gray in color. At first, they said it appeared to have its hand trapped, but as they soon realized, it wasn't a hand at all. It was a wing. It was only when they saw the first wing that they noticed the pair of them sticking up from behind the creature's shoulders. They were almost like angel's wings, thought Linda. Oddly, They then said that moments later, they all watched as it broke free and hobbled as fast as it could toward the shelter of
the former power plant in the car. A Stunt's silence was swiftly replaced by a rising panic as Steve, Linda, and Mary yelled for Roger to step on the gas. Only too happy to oblige, Roger wrenched the car into gear and powered off toward the highway. Before long, they were back on Route sixty two, heading toward the sanctuary of Point Pleasant. Mary and Steve gripped each other as they scoured the road from the back seat for any sign of the bizarre creature. Hurry, Roger, shouted Linda as
the speedometer edged toward ninety. Oh God, what's that, muttered Steve, pointing at the road ahead. As they later explained to Holstead, they were just approaching across roads when they saw something crouched down by the road. When the car's headlights flashed across it, they saw again those same bright red eyes and realized with horror the creature was back. After speeding right past it, the group screamed in terror when it suddenly unfurled its huge pair of wings and shot straight
up into the air. As they continued to yell for Roger to go faster, Linda caught sight of the creature and screamed out again. It was in the air above them. They were watched petrified with disbelief as it glided for a moment, keeping pace with the car, then suddenly swooped down toward them, only to veer off at the last minute and disappeared into the night. Roger eventually brought the car to a skidding stop outside the entrance to a farm.
As they struggled to catch their breath, Roger and Steve debated whether it was best to head straight home or turn back to try and get a second look at the thing. As Linda was frantically looking for any sign of it, she noticed the body of a large dog lying dead in the road, which, unbeknownst to her, bore a striking resemblance to Merle Partridge's dock that had gone
missing two days before. She was just about to alert the others to it when the creature suddenly appeared once more, leaping out of the shadows and bouncing over the car before tearing off into a nearby field. The friends squealed with terror once more as Roger hit the gas and
the Chevy powered off in a cloud of dust. They'd barely stopped screaming by the time they'd made it to Tiny's diner, and this is where it scratched the car, said Roger, pointing to the fresh scrape marks on the side of his otherwise pristine Chevy to the utterly bewildered Deputy Halstead. The Deputy ran his fingers along the scupped paint work, feeling the flex of it crumble off under his fingers. Ulstead turned to Gary, the diner's owner, and then back to the kids. Not a hint of mischief
on any of their faces. None of them were drunk either, as far as he could tell, and while he had no idea what they had seen exactly, he'd known these kids their entire lives. He had no reason to think they were making any of it up. There was only one thing for it. Twenty minutes later, beams of light swept across the back of the Tnty Area's North power plant. Halstead pulled the cruiser in behind it, cut the engine,
and switched off the lights inside. Linda, Roger, Mary and Steve sat with him in the darkness, nervously peering out at the windows for any sign of the apparent birdlike creature. A blare of static from the police radio caused them all to jump. As Halstead hurriedly switched it off, a large shadow flittered across the buildings facade. Mary shrieked there,
she said, I saw its eyes. Halstead immediately flicked on the lights, just in time to illuminate a large cloud of black dust rising up from an old coal heap, as if it had just recently been disturbed by something. Collectively, they all held their brea, but for quite what they couldn't be sure. In the end, there was nothing else to be seen, and with the night air getting ever colder, Hulstead put the cruiser back into gear and drove off
towards town, passing the farm they'd stopped at earlier. Linda was surprised to see that the dead dark was now gone. You've been listening to Unexplained Season six, episode twenty seven, or that we see Part one of three. Part two will be released next Friday, January thirteenth. If you enjoy Unexplained and would like to help support us, you can now do so via Patreon. To receive access to add three episodes, just go to patron dot com forward slash
Unexplained Pod to sign up. Unexplained the book and audiobook featuring ten stories that have never before been covered on the show. Is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Waterstones, among other bookstores. All elements of Unexplained, including the show's music, are produced by me Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe and rate the show wherever you listen to podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the
stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like to share. You can reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com, or Twitter at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com, Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast