Have you ever seen something you couldn’t identify or explain? As a mystery reader—and writer—I’ve always been intrigued by things I can’t understand. An abandoned house holds secrets I’m not privy to. Where would that overgrown path take me? What’s inside that discarded box?
I wrote Mabel and the Little Green Men—Book Three in my cozy mystery series—out of my perpetual fascination with unanswered questions. Writing it was a fun ride—and I hope it also delivers a fun time, with some suspense and a lot of laughs, for my readers.
Having spent my life in the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania, I live smack in the middle of an area known for all manner of weird sightings, especially up in the mountains and down into neighboring West Virginia. Sadly, I’ve never seen a UFO—though my best friend (lucky girl!) has seen them twice. But I figure there’s still time—who knows what might appear in the night sky when I take my dogs out into the yard before bedtime?
As the US government has increasingly released records of documented UFO sightings, speculation about their origins has become more widely acceptable. Are they caused by natural phenomena, scientific experimentation, government research—whether ours or foreign—or might they be coming from somewhere beyond Planet Earth?
It’s fun to wonder—I enjoy visiting little museums and festivals devoted to memorable local sighting reports and am amazed at their diversity. Point Pleasant WV, for example, has given us the eerie Mothman. Many believed the mysterious and widely sighted figure came to warn of disaster. And in fact, Mothman sightings ended shortly after the tragic 1967 Silver Bridge collapse, but left us with the Mothman Museum, a book by John Keel, and the movie Mothman Prophecies.
In 1952 outside Flatwoods WV, a group of teenage boys and one brave mom ran to investigate after a bright object flashed across the sky and seemingly landed in a field. The group saw a pulsing red light, and the oldest boy, then serving as a National Guardsman, turned his flashlight on it.
In the beam, they said, they saw a figure around ten feet tall with a red face and dark green robes topped by a pointed hood “like the ace of spades.” The figure reportedly hissed and glided toward them, at which point, they fled in terror. The Flatwoods Monster Museum in Sutton memorializes this incident.
Of course, not all UFO sightings involve reports of terrifying alien encounters. In a quirky departure from monster confrontations, tiny Kecksburg PA showcases the “Space Acorn.” In December 1965, a fireball crossed the night sky across six states and Canada, starting fires from falling debris, and producing sonic booms in Pittsburgh, before reportedly crashing near Kecksburg.
A local radio reporter claimed to have seen the object in the woods before the US military arrived to barricade the area. He reported the object was shaped like an acorn, roughly the size of a VW Beetle, and bore strange “hieroglyphics”—hardly your usual, ho-hum, run-of-the-mill UFO! Kecksburg celebrates the incident with a summer festival, a year-round gift shop benefiting the local fire department, and a replica mounted on the hill above the fire station.
For me, a fun part of Mabel and the Little Green Men was creating a famous 1958 local incident for the fictional village of Medicine Spring, plus the town’s own oddball UFO museum. Have you ever seen a UFO? Or enjoyed visiting a museum devoted to a local curiosity? These little roadside attractions dot the entire US—you might have one near you!
Susan Kimmel Wright is a child of the Appalachian Mountains. A former lawyer, Susan has published three children’s mystery novels and is a prolific contributor to Chicken Soup for the Soul books. Mabel and the Little Green Men, Book Three in her Mysteries of Medicine Spring series, is releasing in October 2023 from Mountain Brook Ink. Susan can generally be found nose deep in a book, out in the woods with her dogs, or online at links below. Please stop by!
The last thing Mabel needed was a flying saucer, not to mention a rash of similar sightings all over town. Her life’s already been upended by getting fired and moving to Grandma’s old house in Medicine Spring. So far, the deceptively sleepy village has delivered several murders-and romance with a handsome private investigator. Are little green men next?
While Mabel tries to get to the bottom of the apparent space invasion, she also gets herself caught between competing candidates for township supervisor. Small-town politics call for more diplomacy than she has-not to mention the ability to duck, run, and hide.
And unfortunately, her UFO investigation only raises more questions. Long-buried secrets surface, all tied to one night in 1958 and another seeming alien attack. But something more troublesome than any Martian invasion is on its way. A film crew descends, bent on producing a documentary on the historic UFO crash. Hordes of tourists follow, all infected with flying saucer fever. When an all-too-human body turns up at the alleged alien gravesite in a local cemetery, Mabel realizes murder is bound to follow her, whether of this world or not.
