The Grinning Man is the name given to one or more
mysterious figures that has become associated with various reports
of paranormal activity. The Grinning Man is sometimes described as
being an
extraterrestrial,
Men in Black or a
hominid cryptid and was
investigated by notable paranormal author
John A. Keel and
ufologist
James Moseley. Arguably the
best known Grinning Man was
Indrid Cold,
who appeared during the 1960s'
Mothman
sightings. Reports of Grinning Men often occur during periods of
increased UFO sightings .
Reports
New Jersey
Perhaps
the most famous sighting of a Grinning Man is reported to have
taken place on October 11, 1966 in Elizabeth, New Jersey
. The entity was sighted by two boys, James
Yanchitis and Marvin Munoz, as they were walking home along Fourth
Street and New Jersey Street when they reached a corner parallel to
the
New Jersey Turnpike
(40°39'17.43"N, 74°11'29.48"W). The turnpike is elevated and there
is an extremely steep incline going down from the busy street above
which leads to Fourth Street. A very large, high wire fence runs
along the edge of the other street below where the boys were
walking, making it incredibly difficult to near impossible for
anyone to want to climb up the incline to the turnpike above. There
are bright street lights in that area, which gave the boys a good
glimpse of what they called "the strangest guy we've ever seen."
Yanchitis noticed the strange entity first. "He was standing behind
that fence," he stated later to investigators. "I don't know how he
got there. He was the biggest man I ever saw.""Jimmy nudged me,"
Marvin Munoz reported to police, "and said, 'Who's that guy
standing behind you?' I looked around and there he was... behind
that fence. Just standing there. He pivoted around and looked right
at us... then he grinned a big old grin." There had been recent
reported incidents of violence in the nearby neighborhood, such as
a middle-resident being chased by a "tall green man" down that same
street and on the same night, so the boys fled quickly.
Well-known author, paranormal investigator, and journalist
John A. Keel visited the
two boys in Elizabeth,
New Jersey, three days after the incident. Along with
Keel came UFO lecturer
James Moseley
and actor
Chuck McCann. Munoz and
Yanchitis were interviewed by Keel separately in the home of Mr.
George Smythe and both boys told the exact same story. "The man was
over six feet tall, they agreed, and was dressed in a sparkling
green coverall costume that shimmered and seemed to reflect the
street lights. There was a wide black belt around his waist." The
boys also said "He had a very dark complexion, and little round
eyes...real beady...set far apart." The most frightening and
bizarre aspect of the encounter is the fact that
"They could
not remember seeing any hair, ears, or nose on this
figure."
The figure reported by witnesses became associated with
extraterrestrials because it was sighted shortly after a UFO report
near the same area.
The report states that a "blazing white light
as big as a car" almost hit the 550-foot tall television tower
outside of Pompton Lakes, New Jersey
. A policeman and his wife witnessed the
object move in a slow manner north, and it then disappeared beyond
the nearby hills. On the other side of the hills, Sergeant Benjamin
Thompson and Patrolman Edward Wester, of the Wanaque Reservoir
Police, also witnessed the same light at around 9:45 p.m. as it
flew low over the reservoir. "The light was brilliantly white"
officer Thompson stated, "It lit up the whole area for about three
hundred yards. In fact, it blinded me when I got out of the patrol
car to look at it, and I couldn't see for about twenty minutes
afterwards."
West Virginia
Several
Grinning Man reports were made in 1966, during the same period as
the Point
Pleasant, West Virginia
Mothman sightings.
These reports were recorded by John A. Keel in chapters 5 and 10 of
his book
The Mothman
Prophecies.
- The first encounter happened on November
2, 1966, a man named Woodrow Derenberger
was driving home in his panel truck after a hard day of work. As he
drove up a hill outside of Parkersburg on Interstate 77, he heard a
sudden crash. A vehicle was speeding behind him, and it suddenly
cut in front of him and slowed down. Derenberger looked in
amazement as the vehicle that passed him looked like "an old
fashioned kerosene lamp chimney,
flaring at both ends, narrowing down to a small neck and then
enlarging in a great bulge in the center." The "thing" blocked the
road, and a door slid open on the side of it. Then a man stepped
out, the man was around 6 feet tall, with long dark hair combed
straight back. His skin was heavily tanned. He wore an outfit that
was made out of some sort of "glistening green material," similar
to the outfit worn by the other Grinning Man that was encountered
in Elizabeth, New Jersey by the two boys. He was grinning
broadly.
The man spoke to Derenberger telepathically and said his name was
"Cold", and went off asking him strange questions, and the two
talked for a few minutes. Then the strange entity said that he
would visit Derenberger again, and he got back in the craft, and
left.
- Another case described in chapter 10 in the Mothman Prophecies book, happened in the
home of the Lillys, a family living in a rural section of Point
Pleasant. The Lillys were witnessing strange lights in the sky
right above their home at least every night, as well as
poltergeist-like manifestations inside of their home.
Mrs. Lilly said "We've seen all kinds of strange things...blue
lights, green ones, red ones, things that change color. Some have
been so low that we thought we could see diamond-shaped windows in
them. And none of them make any noise at all." Automobiles near the
Lilly home would stall unexplainably, and kitchen cabinets and
doors inside the Lilly home would slam inexplicably in the middle
of the night while everyone was asleep. Their living room door,
which was chained and snaplocked at night, was sitting there wide
open the next morning as if someone had opened it somehow from the
outside. They would hear loud metallic sounds, "like a pan
falling", and Mrs. Lilly said she heard a sound like "A baby
crying" throughout the inside of the home. It seemed to come from
only a few feet away from her in the house, but there were no
babies in the home and she never saw anything. One notable fact is
that the
Mothman was known to utter a cry
that sounded similar to a baby crying or woman screaming.
John A. Keel, who personally investigated and questioned the Lilly
family, asked them "Did you ever dream that there was a stranger in
the house in the middle of the night?" Linda Lilly, the daughter of
Mr. and Mrs. Lilly then confessed her story. She described how she
woke up one night and saw a very large figure towering over her
bed. "It was a man, a big man. Very broad. I couldn't see his face
very well, but I could see that he was grinning at me."
Mrs. Lilly said that she heard a terrible scream that night, and
Linda ran into her room screaming "There is a man in my room! There
is!" She refused to sleep alone ever since the encounter.
References
- Keel, John. A (2002) "The Complete Guide To Mysterious Beings",
chpt 14:The Grinning Man, Tor Books, ISBN 0765345862
(reprint)
- Coleman, Loren (2002) "Mothman and Other Curious Encounters",
chpt 7: Keel's Children, p133,146, Paraview Press, ISBN
1931044341
- Coleman, Loren (2007) "Mysterious America", chpt 20: Mad
Gasser Of Mattoon and his Kin, Paraview Pocket Books, ISBN
1416527362
- Keel, John A (2002) "Mothman Prophecies", Tor Books, ISBN
0765341972 (reprint)
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