Big Chimney UFO Sighting (1975)

Artist rendition of Big Chimney UFO (Screenshot from In Search Of S1E21: In Search of UFOs)

It's no secret that my paranormal interests lie more with ghosts, spirits, and hauntings than they do UFOs, cryptids, conspiracy theories and other aspects of this huge and fascinating field.  Still, that's no excuse for not realizing that West Virginia is home to another quite famous UFO sighting!  The 1975 sighting in Big Chimney (Kanawha County) hasn't quite gotten the same attention as The Flatwoods Monster of 1952 or the Mothman/UFO flap of 1966-67, but the Center for UFO Studies based in Chicago once called it one of the top 5 best UFO reports of 1975.

As part of my stay-at-home activities, I've been binge watching the old Leonard Nimoy show, In Search Of, on YouTube.  Today, I was startled to see that in Season 1 Episode 21 entitled In Search of UFOs a man by the name of Carroll Crihfield of Big Chimney, WV was featured.  On June 12, 1975 around 9:30 pm, Crihfield and his wife allegedly saw a diamond shaped craft with bright red and white lights just off 119 North between Big Sandy and Clendenin. On the show, Carroll was given a lie detector test by Criswell Security of Wheeling.  And while it was admitted that a lie detector test wouldn't prove whether or not there actually WAS a UFO, it did show that Carroll at least believed he had seen a UFO.  No deception was detected.

I knew there had to be more to the story than just this 8 minute snippet, so it was off to the (online) newspaper archives for a better understanding of the story.  From what I can piece together from different newspaper articles, here's what happened.

On the evening of June 12, 1975, Carroll Crihfield, a chemist at the FMC plant in South Charleston, was driving along Route 119 from the family home at 4606 Marlin Drive in Big Chimney. He was with his pregnant wife, Betty, and his two sons, Jerry (16) and Jeff (12). The family was on their way to Roane County to visit Carroll's father on that clear evening.  Around 9:30 pm, Betty first spotted a flashing red light in the sky.  They thought it must be a plane, but the light seemed to hover in one spot.  They could see the light, still unmoving, for about four miles, when they lost sight of it behind the hills.  They saw or experienced nothing for another few miles before rounding a curve in the road and coming upon quite the sight!

The Charleston Daily Mail
01 October 1976

To the left of the road, about 100 feet up (40 feet above the tree line) and only about 40 feet from the highway, they saw a 'split-diamond' shaped craft as big as a house and charcoal gray in color.  The family could see what looked like legs in the shape of a cross.  Startled, Carroll ran the car off the road slightly, but regained control.  They drove on about 500 feet down the road until they could find a place to turn around.  By the time they turned around and drove back to where the craft had hovered above the trees, it had vanished.

The next day Carroll made a report to the Air National Guard and to the Federal Aviation Commission, but nothing really came of it.  Six weeks later, however, Carroll was on vacation from work and sitting around idle at home.  He decided to hop in the car and drive out to the location of the sighting to see if there were any sheared tree tops or any other evidence of what he and his family saw that evening.  When arriving at the location (located near the Little Sandy Creek Bridge) he was shocked to find four large patches of blackened/burned grass and a burned log.  It was then that Carroll realized that this craft must have actually landed!  I assume that's when a state trooper learned of the case and made a report to the Center for UFO Studies in Chicago, founded in 1973 by J. Allen Hynek.

By April of 1976, a film crew from Alan Landsburg Productions was sent out to Big Chimney to interview the family.  Carroll himself insisted on taking a lie detector test, which was shown on the In Search Of program.  Carroll's two sons also took the lie detector test with the same results:  no deception detected.  In one of the newspaper articles I read, it states that Dr. Edward Zeller of the University of Kansas was sent to collect and examine soil samples from the landing site, a site that Crihfield days that over a year later won't grow grass and is avoided by dogs. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything about the results of the soil tests, and really, that's about all I could find out about this case.  I would like to point out, however, that despite the spin of the program on UFOs and his insistence to take a lie detector test, Carroll Crihfield did not believe that he saw an alien craft that summer evening.  Rather, he states in a newspaper article that he believes what he saw belonged to the US government and was a new, stealth aircraft of some sort.  What do YOU think the Crihfield family saw?

Resources:

In Search Of: UFOS's Season 1 Episode 21 on YouTube

In Research Of Podcast March 9, 2020

'Big Chimney Resident Featured on TV Show.' Charleston Daily Mail, November 4, 1976

'Seeing is Believing' Says Chemist: Big Chimney Man Cited for 1975 UFO Report.  Charleston Daily Mail. October 1, 1976