Encounters with the Unknown—Alternate Perceptions Magazine, September 2024
Encounters with the Unexplained
Did Short E.T.’s Phone Home from our local Beech Creek back in the 1930s?
by: Brent Raynes
Back in 1983, while gathering area folklore for our local weekly newspaper The Wayne County News (Waynesboro, Tennessee), I was writing a column entitled Odds and Ends. In the October 27th issue I wrote the following story:
Recently, in the course of gathering local folklore from Wayne Countians, I came across a ver-ry intriguing story.
The setting was Beech Creek Road, sometime around the mid-1930s. Joe (as we’ll call him) was attired in his Sunday best as he was returning home to Leatherwood Branch after a visit with his girl on Green River.
It was probably early autumn, and around 9 o’clock as Joe traversed the first stretch of Beech Creek Road from Highway 13. A sound like a bullet passing close by his ear disturbed him to think that someone might be shooting and have come so close. Then Joe noticed two small lights up ahead, just over the ground, on the right side of the road. He rationalized that they were probably just fireflies, although marveled at how they remained level, like a pair of eyes. Then the two lights seemed to merge together and became a single “washpan” sized light. It was at about this time that Joe heard another curious noise. Something like the motor of a sawmill shutting down.
Then, when it was too late to turn back, a brilliant white light appeared at the roadside, and Joe was astonished, to say the least, to see a group of dwarfish men, perhaps 8 to 10, who were looking at him from around what appeared to be a round table. They were, he would later decide, the ugliest men he had ever seen. Their faces were slightly flushed or reddish in complexion, and their skin was wrinkled and whiskered, and some had beards, and apparently they all had pretty long noses. They also had some sort of clothing on.
In terror, Joe threw his walking stick at the “little men.” Although the “men” did not make any threatening moves, Joe didn’t think they looked too friendly. After that he ran like the devil was on his heels because, quite obviously, at that moment, he wasn’t too sure that he wasn’t.
Several hundred yards later Joe’s next fully conscious recollection was of picking himself up off the ground at the foot of Smith Branch Hill. His clothes were badly torn from his frantic escape from the unknown.
“Since then, I’ve thought if there are such things it could have been people from another planet,” a niece of Joe’s told me as she related the remarkable account. “He died wondering about it.” I later interviewed Joe’s brother who also recalled the “little men” story and how his brother had returned home that night, badly shaken and hurt. Unfortunately, Joe can’t tell me the story himself for he passed on some ten or so years ago, but living family, friends, and relatives well becall his bizarre tale of terror and wonder. Don’t you?
Joe, by the way, was described as a Christian and truthful man. He was first troubled by this experience for he thought it might have been an “omen.” For years he had nightmares about the experience. Although Joe and his brother visited the location of his encounter soon afterwards, in daylight, his walking stick was nowhere to be found. Perhaps it is on display at a museum on a planet light years away?
Author’s additional remarks:
The area where “Joe” had his experience, in the vicinity of Smith Branch Hill, has had a history of reported tragedies. For example, reportedly back in 1899, at the bottom of Smith Branch Hill, a young couple, Harold Fleit and his young bride Vana, who had emigrated from Austria and settled here in 1882, disappeared mysteriously, along with two of their young sons. The mystery began when a neighbor, a Thomas Lomax, paid a visit to the Fleit home as Mr. Fleit was to have slaughtered and dressed out a hog for him. Harold Fleit had a smoke house and a blacksmith shop. However, finding the front door of their home wide open, Lomax walked in and found the kitchen table set with floor plates. The food was still warm, but no one was in sight, except for the youngest, 1-year-old Martin Fleit, who reportedly was sitting in his highchair smiling and unharmed.
Despite Lomax’s immediate search of the house, outbuildings and the surrounding property, and in the days that followed with the help of the best trackers and finest hunting dogs in the area, no trace of the missing family ever turned up. Martin was adopted by a family in Giles County.
Locals regarded the old Fleit residence as “haunted” and reportedly many Beech Creek residents avoided going near it. In April 1936, a massive tornado struck this area, killing several people and totally obliterating any traces of the former Fleit residence.
A young mother was murdered in January 2010 on property around the base of Smith Branch Hill. Her mother-in-law and father-in-law were found guilty in her death.