Summary
On November 12, 1966, Kenneth Duncan reported seeing a strange winged humanoid while helping dig a grave at Reamer Hill Cemetery near Clendenin, West Virginia. Duncan described a brown, man-like figure emerging from the trees and gliding through the area for roughly a minute. The incident occurred three days before the famous Point Pleasant encounter and was later retrospectively incorporated into the developing Mothman legend.
Additional Notes
Duncan was at Reamer Hill Cemetery with four other men preparing the grave of his father-in-law, Homer Smith. According to later accounts, he noticed a brown humanoid figure moving through or above the nearby trees. He reportedly watched it glide for about a minute and later said that it did not resemble an ordinary bird, but appeared more like a man with wings. The four men working alongside Duncan were Robert Lovejoy, William Poole, Andrew Godby and Emil Gibson. Although they were present at the cemetery, the more detailed reconstruction of the case indicates that they did not independently observe the figure before it disappeared. At the time, the encounter apparently attracted little attention. Its significance increased only after Roger and Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Mallette reported their much more dramatic encounter near Point Pleasant on November 15. The Clendenin sighting was then reinterpreted as one of the earliest events in the same wider Mothman wave. That retrospective connection is worth preserving carefully: Duncan described a brown, winged human-like figure, but there is no clear indication that he reported the famous glowing red eyes or the detailed body shape associated with later Point Pleasant reports. So it is best treated as an early possible Mothman-related sighting, rather than certain evidence of the same entity.
The Location Today
Clendenin is an inhabited West Virginia community. The reported winged-humanoid sighting is linked to a local setting, not a maintained or clearly marked visitor site.
- Environment
- Forest, Cemetery
- Time of Day
- Day
- Evidence Level
- Witness Report
- Visiting the Location
- Unknown
- Ownership of the Location
- Unknown