On the Trail of UFOs: Dark Sky

Open your eyes.

It's even hard for me to believe that I've seen it,

but you don't forget,

and I'm nervous now just talking about it.

I got the shakes.

Well, can we start from the very beginning?

As far as, you know, right before you saw the craft,

what were you doing? Who were you with?

In the beginning, I was in the house.

I think, I was eating.

My cousin went out on the porch

and he come back in and... He come back in,

"You gotta see this. You gotta see this." That's what he said.

So, everybody went out on the porch,

and that's when we seen the craft or whatever it was.

It was... Like I said, you had to see it.

It was the biggest thing I've ever seen.

But it looked like it was drawing something on the power lines to me.

You know, I'm ten years old, so I could be, you know, a little off,

but, it looked like a diamond.

But it was red. Like, red,

and in the center of it, it was a little bright in the center,

but then, like pulse, like, you know, outward.

And that's why I thought it was drawing something from the power lines.

- Did you hear anything? - Not a sound.

Can you show us where on the ridge you saw it?

This big tower right here.

It was probably 50 feet away from the top corner.

- One of the points of the craft. - Mm-hm.

Well, the whole top of that hill was covered.

And like I said, it was big as a building,

whatever it was.

You said you saw something a couple nights later.

Can you go through that?

I was out at the end of her house.

We lived in a mobile home,

and I was at the end of the trailer.

There's a field, like, this way on this hill,

and there's a big boulder that sticks out of the hill.

There was something standing, and I walked closer to it,

and it looked like somebody in a hazmat,

'cause the headpiece was wide,

and they were about like this.

But, you know, it looked like a human.

I mean, the other features,

but... And being a kid,

stupid kid, I had a BB gun

and I started shooting at it, but it didn't move.

And then, I turned and turned back, and it was gone.

So, there was something there.

After that, I was, you know... I was afraid to go outside.

And... at night anyhow.

But it always came between, I think, eleven and one o'clock in the morning.

It was, you know, very on time,

I'll put it that way, every year.

You saw it three times.

Your mom saw it five times.

What was the timeframe between

the first sighting, the second and the third for you?

It was always the same time at night.

And it wasn't long after that we moved.

I moved back to my hometown.

And then, I swore that I'd never come back to this road.

But the diamond shaped thing,

you just... you can't forget it.

I still have dreams about it.

Every once in a while, I'll have a dream

that that's in it.

And, like I said, you felt... you felt static in the air.

I don't know if you've ever felt static in the air,

but it's like the whole area was, like, static electricity.

Copy.

What do you see when you look up?

Darkness? Light?

Maybe a haze so thick with manmade chemicals

that it hides the stars?

I live in Las Vegas.

It's a city that's always shining,

so, at night, when I look up, I don't see much of anything.

My name is Shannon LeGro,

but maybe you already knew that.

Which means, you probably also know that I collect stories.

Stories about the bizarre and unexplained.

Currently, I'm collecting stories about UFOs,

or UAPs or flying saucers,

or whatever you want to call them.

I'm in West Virginia, the Mountain State.

A place I've never spent much time in,

but whose connection to the unusual is inescapable.

You see, despite its reputation as being out of the way,

West Virginia has been tied to the UFO phenomenon for over a century.

Want to know why? Well, so do I.

In search for the truth behind the existence and origin of

these strange objects

people are seeing over our heads,

most have stopped looking up.

But here, in the heart of Appalachia,

taking a second to stop and stare and stare into the dark sky

might mean the difference between just another boring night,

and having an encounter with something that will change your life.

As a kid, did you get a read that

it's a weird state, that strange things happened here?

Um, yeah.

Especially in Moundsville.

Can we talk about your your sightings?

The things you've experienced for yourself?

The one main one that I'm pretty sure it was something, my opinion, weird...

Mm-hmm.

It was a very clear day like it is today.

My pap and I were out shooting hoops in the backyard.

I was probably between ten and thirteen.

I went to shoot the basketball up,

and out of the left corner of my eye,

and it is something, like, reflecting in the sky.

And I paid more attention to it after, you know, I noticed it.

And it looked like

a mirror.

Like a light was reflecting off of a mirror.

And there may or may not have been smaller, like, little detail,

where it might have been multiple different lights

or it might have been different panels of something reflective.

So...

Did you hear anything when you saw it?

No, but my pap saw it, we both saw it,

and then... That's when my grandfather shared with me

an experience he had when he was younger.

And he said, "I was out playing in the front yard,

and I looked south, and above the ridge line,

it's, like, this dark gray, brownish looking disc

came over the hill

and stopped, and then it went straight up

in the air, and then it disappeared." So...

Did you get a sense that what you were looking at was like a solid object?

It looks like a solid object.

Have you ever wondered what it's purpose might have been

in that place at that time?

Being where it was at,

and how high it was, it's hard to tell.

Are there any, like, mines, or caves in Moundsville or in that area?

Oh, yeah. I mean, Moundsville was a coal mining town.

Wheeling, pretty much, is, too.

I know there's a lot of old coal mine shafts under Moundsville.

There's a lot of underground streams,

a lot of unused coal mine shafts underneath Moundsville right now,

that have water running through them to the Ohio River, so...

So, West Virginia is larger than I was expecting.

It's defined by its backroads and hills and hollers,

and by a history that feels ancient.

I've only been here a short time,

but in that span,

I have already learned about sightings around the state of strange craft,

lights in the sky,

and even heard whispers of government cover ups.

I've always thought of myself as simply a collector of stories,

but this time, I'm trying to dig deeper

to piece together some of the clues

that are laid out with each eyewitness account.

But to start analyzing the case laid out before me,

I want to understand the people who live here,

the culture of the area.

That's why I'm in Wheeling.

It's a bustling industrial town on the Ohio River

that is known as the City of Lights today.

It's original moniker, though, was far darker.

Native Americans called the land where wheeling sits, "Weelonk"

which meant "A place of the skull."

So named due to the decapitated heads

that lined its bank to ward off those

attempting to make a home here.

When the area was eventually claimed by European settlers,

they made the questionable decision

of sticking with the name "Wheeling."

A fitting origin story

for a town that acts as an entryway

into the Ohio Valley.

So I mean, as far as West Virginia, have you grown up here?

Yeah, I grew up here.

My paternal grandparents came over from Ireland in 1905

and built the farmhouse that my family still lives in today.

And how did you end up in Wheeling?

You know, that's a good question.

Uh, family lore is that we came in through New York,

and we, kind of, traveled around for a little while,

but it seems like people from the British Isles

are attracted to this area,

and I think it's because it's the same mountain range.

We have a common bond here with these mountains.

It's like the bones of the world almost.

How long have you owned the restaurant?

Uh, we've been in downtown West Virginia for six and a half years.

What about, you know, weird stories?

I mean, you're probably familiar with Mothman,

and everybody is, but what about other stories in the area?

Point Pleasant does the Mothman Festival every year,

and they've been doing that for a long time,

but I feel like, especially recently, it's really caught hold of

the cultural zeitgeist in the state.

But the supernatural stuff is really strong in Appalachia.

Um, I spent some time down in Canaan Valley

in the Davis, Thomas, West Virginia area.