The Smiling Man of West Virginia: Alien Stranger or Folklore Myth

The Smiling Man of West Virginia: Alien Stranger or Folklore Myth

A Rain-Soaked Road

The night of November 2, 1966, was like many others in West Virginia: damp, overcast, and quiet. Woodrow Derenberger, a sewing machine salesman, steered his panel truck along Route 77 toward his home in Mineral Wells. The rain pattered steadily, headlights stretching over the slick blacktop.

Then, the ordinary gave way to the uncanny.

Derenberger said he saw lights racing up behind him. Expecting a car, he was startled when the object swept past and swung broadside in front of his truck. It hovered just above the pavement.

“It looked like a big kerosene lamp chimney,” he told reporters later, “narrow in the middle and bulging at the top and bottom.”

From the craft, a man stepped into the rain.

Indrid Cold, the Smiling Man, in a metallic suit smiling too widely on a rainy West Virginia night.The Stranger Who Smiled Too Much

The figure walked with deliberate calm. Derenberger described him as tall, dark-haired, with slicked-back hair and tan or olive skin. He wore a shiny metallic suit that caught the headlights. And he smiled.

Not the quick smile of politeness, but a wide, fixed grin that never faltered.

The man never moved his lips. Yet Derenberger heard him speak, clearly, inside his mind.

“My name is Cold. I come as a friend. We mean you no harm. We wish you only happiness.” Derenberger watches from his truck as the Smiling Man communicates silently through telepathy.

Cold asked simple questions: What was this place called? Where was the nearest town? How did people live? Could he return again?

For ten minutes they spoke, one voice aloud and the other silently in Derenberger’s head. Then the man returned to his craft, which lifted smoothly into the night.

The encounter was over. But for Woodrow Derenberger, it had only just begun.

Panoramic view of Lanulos with futuristic domes and spires, glowing streetlamps, and families walking along clean avenues in a dreamlike utopian cityscapeIndrid Cold: The Smiling Man of Lanulos

In the weeks that followed, Derenberger claimed that Cold came back — sometimes in person, sometimes as a voice in his mind. He learned that Cold was from a planet called Lanulos, in the Ganymede galaxy.

In his 1971 book Visitors from Lanulos, Derenberger described what Cold told him of his world:

“The people of Lanulos wear simple clothes. They live as families and they are happy. They have no wars. They do not hunger. They travel as they wish, and there is no hate among them.”

Derenberger said he even traveled to Lanulos, whether in body or in spirit. He described cities of clean streets and kind people, homes full of warmth, and neighbors who welcomed him.

For him, Indrid Cold was not a monster or invader. He was an ambassador of peace.

Woodrow Derenberger giving his 1966 TV interview about the Smiling Man encounter.A Story Shared with the World

Derenberger did not keep his encounter private. The very next day, he appeared on WTAP-TV in Parkersburg for a live interview. Calm, steady, and insistent, he recounted what he saw.

The reaction was explosive. Reporters camped at his home. Cars lined the road, headlights spilling into his yard at all hours. His phone rang without rest.

Some came in curiosity. Some in ridicule. Some out of fear.

“I know people make fun of me,” he said. “But I would be lying if I said it didn’t happen.”

The ridicule was relentless. His children were teased. His marriage frayed. Work became difficult. By sharing his story, Derenberger paid a heavy price.

The Smiling Man watching from the roadside during the Mothman era in Point Pleasant.The Mothman Years

His meeting with Cold came during a season of fear in the Ohio Valley. In nearby Point Pleasant, people whispered of a winged creature with red eyes — the Mothman.

At the same time, UFOs were reported in the skies, and people told of being stalked by odd men in black suits with cold stares and strange smiles.

Indrid Cold seemed to belong to this larger web. Some Point Pleasant witnesses claimed they, too, saw a grinning man by the roadside — grinning too widely, watching without a word.

The story of the Smiling Man became part of the same haunted season that gave birth to the legend of Mothman.

Skeptical Views

Not everyone accepted Derenberger’s tale. Skeptics argued:

  • Hallucination: A tired salesman driving late in the rain might have misinterpreted lights and shadows.

  • Fantasy-prone personality: His later accounts of Lanulos sounded like utopian science fiction.

  • Hoax: Some suggested he fabricated the story, but the collapse of his personal life speaks against any profit motive.

To others, Indrid Cold resembled less an alien and more an archetype: a folkloric stranger with an unsettling smile, echoing old stories of trickster spirits.

Indrid Cold stands grinning in a shiny metallic suit on a misty West Virginia road, illuminated by car headlights, with ghostly trickster spirits in the trees and a glowing UFO hovering aboveFolklore Echoes: A Modern Trickster

For folklorists, Indrid Cold is not just an alien — he is a familiar presence in new clothes.

  • The Grinning Stranger: In European tales, devils and fae grin too broadly, unnerving travelers.

  • The Threshold Being: Like spirits who linger at windows and doors, Cold asked questions but caused no harm.

  • The Otherworldly Guide: His talk of Lanulos recalls journeys into fairyland, where time runs differently and utopias shimmer just beyond reach.

Cold’s smile may be less about extraterrestrials than about something deeper in human imagination — the ancient fear of the stranger who seems too friendly, too calm, too knowing.

Woodrow Derenberger’s Legacy

Despite the ridicule, Derenberger never recanted. In Visitors from Lanulos, he wrote:

“I have met the people of Lanulos. They are real. Indrid Cold is real. Someday, others will see as I have seen.”

He died in 1990, still insisting the Smiling Man was not a hallucination or lie, but a friend from another world.

Conclusion: A Smile in the Dark

So who was Indrid Cold? A man from another planet? A hallucination in the rain? Or a new mask of an old trickster who has walked with humanity for centuries?

What is certain is that Woodrow Derenberger’s story has never faded. It belongs now to folklore, carried alongside tales of the Mothman and the Hopkinsville Goblins.

Legends often begin on lonely roads. And sometimes, they begin with a stranger who smiles too much.

 

From a grinning man on a rain-soaked road to beams of light over a lakeshore, the mystery only deepens. Step next into The Buff Ledge Camp Abduction — and explore the Out of This World Collection, where artifacts echo every strange visitation.

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