The journalist for The Intelligencer was named Dent Williams, and 69 years ago he reported on Page 1 that a monster from outer space had arrived in Wheeling by flying saucer.
The landing “set tongues wagging and telephones burning” because “anxious residents attempting to confirm the rumors, but in true Hollywood style, the monster apparently vanished without pausing to light a single cigarette with his fiery breath.”
The callers, according to the report, wanted to know if a “horribly burned body of a woman was found” and if a police officer had been burned on his arm.
One member of the then Wheeling Police Department, Detective Howard Millard, countered the rumors by replying, “The only green-eyed monster I ever heard of was a jealous woman.”
“’Bashful Billie’ was his nickname because no one could find it,” said Jordan Cline, the founder of The Paranormal Hub on Facebook. “Back in those days, there were a lot sightings up and down this valley, but the government was putting squash down on it. They didn’t want people to panic by confirming what people were seeing were really UFOs.
“They wanted to keep it hush-hush so they would use the ‘demonized’ for anyone who reported a sighting to place a stigma on it. That way, other people who saw what they saw wouldn’t say a word because they would have been ‘demonized,’ as well,” he explained. “They wanted other people think of the witnesses as crazy, but then there was the report of a flying saucer crashing in the area of Vineyard Hills.”
Peaked Curiosity
Science fiction films and television shows became very popular in the 1950s-1960s with movies like “The Man from Planet X” and “Earth vs. The Flying Saucers” and TV programs like “Star Trek” and “Lost in Space.”
But it was the 1956 release of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” that provoked memories of “The War of the Worlds, a radio drama from 1938 broadcast by CBS Radio and narrated by Orson Welles. Intended as a Halloween prank, the broadcast caused panic concerning a reported invasion of Martians.
But ‘Bashful Billie’s’ alleged crash supposedly was witnessed by nearby residents, according to Cline.
“There were people that saw that crash, and there were people who heard noises and smelled what they smelled from that crash area,” he reported. “And, back in the 1950s, that was the time when people were hearing about the Mothman, and about the Flatwoods Monster down in central West Virginia. There was even a book that was written about all the encounters that were taking place back then, and TV and the theatres were packed with science fiction back then.
“There was one story about a saucer crashing on a road near Parkersburg, and the alien was stopping people,” he continued. “But the stories disappeared as quickly as they were told because the government didn’t want anyone taking those stories seriously. The government told everyone that the stories were only rumors and that they were jokes.”
The eyewitnesses apparently told the Intelligencer reporter their accounts of the scene, causing many others to wonder out loud, but again, it was all excused.
“Within the stories about ‘Bashful Billie’ there were reports of a badly burned woman because someone saw that, and other people wanted to know if it was true. The next day that, the Wheeling Police called it all a joke,” Cline researched. “But what was that? Was there a badly burned woman? Was it a creature from outer space? Was there something out there that we don’t know about? Was it a government agency testing a new plane?
“People wanted to know,” he said. “No one knows those answers so, the newspaper reporter called whatever it was, ‘Bashful Billie’ because they thought he was hiding. The article in the newspaper pretty much made light of all of the reports and eyewitness sightings. That reporter tried to make it into a joke with his writing, and the newspaper came out with that drawing that made the thing look like a dragon wearing a barrel or something like that.”
Recent Wonderment
Cline has co-hosted paranormal radio shows and podcasts in the past, and he has interviewed an astronaut, Capt. Edgar Mitchell, who described what he saw during the Apollo 14 mission in 1966.
Mitchell is not the only government official, however, who has witnessed something too advanced to have originated on Earth. A report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligencer, published just one month ago, states that the federal government discovered no evidence of aliens but did acknowledge 143 reports of unidentified aerial phenomena” since 2004 that could not be explained.
“Back when that ‘Bashful Billie’ crash allegedly took place near Vineyard Hills, we didn’t have the access to information that we do today, so the government had a much easier time covering things up,” Cline said. “But these days, the government had no choice to admit that the recent sightings are a mystery to them. They can’t hide that information anymore. Even astronauts have admitted to seeing things while in space.
“Now we have pilots with the Navy and Air Force offering first-hand accounts of what they have seen and what the craft was capable of doing. The best the government has come up with is, ‘We don’t know.’ It’s the only thing they can say now,” he added. “It’s likely that is the only thing they will ever admit to.”
