The Falkville Metal Man
Images of the Falkville Metal Man taken by Jeff Greenhaw. Source: The Z Files
In 1973, Jeff Greenhaw, Falkville Chief of Police, received a call about a UFO in a field outside of town. He went to the scene and saw a figure standing there that was slightly taller than 6 feet and was wearing a reflective material that looked like "rubbing mercury on nickel".
The Legend of the Falkville Metal Man
It all started on a October night in 1973, when the young Falkville Chief of Police, Jeff Greenhaw, received a call that would change his life forever. He was told about a UFO in a field outside of town. Greenhaw recently sat down for an interview with Red Water Filmworks and shared his story.
At first, he thought he was dealing with "an idiot". But things got weird real quick. He described seeing a figure, slightly taller than 6 feet, wearing a reflective material that he couldn't identify. It looked like aluminum foil, but there were no pieces left behind. The figure's head and neck seemed to be joined together, and the suit changed color depending on the angle of the light.
Greenhaw said the figure's movements weren't human-like and reminded him of the robot in "Lost in Space". He took four photos of the figure with his Polaroid 2 camera, but there was no response when he tried to talk to it. The figure then ran away at speeds exceeding human capabilities. It didn’t move like a normal human but seemed to bounce as if it were on springs.
Greenhaw chased after it in his patrol car, reaching 35mph through a paddock but still failing to keep up with it. Eventually he lost sight of it after crashing his vehicle.
Greenhaw kept the photos in a safe place for several years, but they were stolen along with his service revolver and a shotgun 10 years later. He filed a police report but life became difficult for him after the encounter.
People he thought were friends turned out to be untrustworthy and he isolated himself from the public for years. He and his wife raised five children, and he says that his wife and God were the only things that kept him going.
Greenhaw never sought financial gain from the encounter and has had a difficult life because of it. He has been isolated and ridiculed by many, but he remains a believer in the Falkville Metal Man.
Was the Falkville Metal Man a Hoax?
From what the reports say, it was very dark in this rural area after 10pm, with only Greenhaw's truck lights shining. It’s possible that some pranksters dressed up in a 1950's sci-fi movie style costume, called in a fake UFO sighting, then ran off pretending to be the metal man. Greenhaw, who was in the dark, filled in the blanks of what happened, thinking what he saw was real.
Ufologists hold the belief that the Metal Man could have been a robotic probe from an extraterrestrial landing vessel, while skeptics assert that the entire event was a mere hoax staged by Greenhaw and an unknown associate, possibly a child due to the entity's small stature.
Some speculate that the appearance of the creature was achieved by wearing a tin foil costume, while others suggest that it could have been an asbestos fire suit coated in reflective aluminum that was used to create the creature's distinct appearance.
The images captured by Greenhaw were collected and sent to Walt Andrus, a director of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), for analysis. The analysts concluded that the incident was probably a fabrication, inspired by the recent Pascagoula case and the subsequent media attention surrounding it.
One thing that seems to point towards the encounter being real, rather than a hoax, is that a UFO can be seen in some of the negatives of Greenhaw’s pictures even though he never mentioned it himself.
Do you think the Metal Man of Falkville is a hoax or a potential alien encounter? Let us know in the comments.
If you enjoyed this article you might also be interested in the story of Sam the Sandown Clown or the Levelland UFO encounters.
