The following is an article printed on Friday, November 18th 1966 titled 'Eight People Say The Saw 'Creature''
POINT PLEASANT, W. Va. (UPI) - Eight people say they saw a flying near this Ohio River Community, a dog could have fallen victim to "it." and now a Kanawha County gravedigger saw "brown man" fly past him last weekend.
Kenneth Duncan of Blue Creek near Charleston said he and some other men digging his brother-in-law's grave on Saturday when something that "looked like a brown human being" buzzed past.
"It was gliding through the trees and was in sight for about a minute," Duncan said. Four other men helping to dig the grave didn't see it.
The "thing" described as a huge bird - like creature with eyes like "red reflectors" and a wing span of 10 feet, first was reported to police by Steve Mallette and Roger Scarberry and their wives who said they saw it three times last Tuesday and early Wednesday about five miles north of here.
Four other persons also told Mason County Sheriff George Johnson they saw it in the same general area.
And a contractor, Newell Partridge , who lives 100 miles to the north, said he feels it may have had something to do with the disappearance of his $350 German shepherd dog, Bandit.
Partridge said he sighted the "thing" in a meadow near his home in Doddridge County about 50 minutes before the Point Pleasant sightings.
Partridge said his television set "began acting like a generator" and Bandit "started carrying on something terrible."
Partridge said he shined a flashlight into the field and saw something with eyes like "red reflectors." The dog's hair stood straight up, he said and the animal went into the field.
The dog never returned. Partridge said and there was no trace of it in the morning.
Johnson said he was not discounting the stories he was told but said he feels what was seen was nothing more than a "freak shitepoke." a large bird of the heron family.
The shitepoke, sometimes called a shag, is the smallest heron in the Western Hemisphere. Officials were at a loss. however, to explain how a shag could fly at 100 miles per hour as Scarberry and Mallette said the creature did.
