That Charming Man: Indrid Cold Reconsidered, Pt. 2
Tad Jones, the Sphere, the Threats, and Astronaut Boot Prints
In January 1967—a few months after Woodrow Derenberger’s first encounter with Indrid Cold—Tad Jones of Dunbar, West Virginia also found himself caught up in the realm of the strange. Like Derenberger, Jones’ encounter occurred while he driving along a major West Virginia highway—albeit in broad daylight at 9AM. Like many witnesses to unconventional phenomena, Jones was reluctant to speak on his sighting: “I hated to report it because I knew I’d be kidded. (…) I don’t believe in little green men or visitors from outer space, but I do believe in what I saw.”1 The craft completely blocked the roadway with its approximately 25-foot diameter, enabling Jones to capture an impressive glimpse of the object from a mere ten feet away. He described it as “completely round like a ball” and appearing to be made of “dull aluminum.” Further:
It had four wheels and at the bottom of the ball was a propeller-like apparatus which was revolving noiselessly. Near the top was a round window. Two antennae protruded from the top. In the middle of the object was a protruding flange, or seam, which indicated to me that it had been connected together in some way. I looked up at the window but didn’t see anyone.2
The object then ascended into the sky gradually before shooting out of sight. Jones noted that the craft “had no exhaust, (…) left no odor” and was completely silent.3 After the incident, a “shaken and puzzled” Jones reported it to the local police and newspaper stories soon followed.4 But the weirdness engulfing West Virginia was not finished with Tad Jones.
The following morning, someone had slipped a piece of paper under the door of Jones’ Dunbar home. The Charleston Daily Mail, possibly quoting Jones, reports the note as saying: “We were here and if you don’t keep your mouth shut, we’ll be back.”5 He assumed that it was just some local pranking him. A few days after that incident, another note was placed under his front door, this one even more threatening. On a piece of burned cardboard, it relayed the same message as the initial note with the added implication that there would not be another warning. Both notes appeared to be hastily written in charcoal. Tad Jones was either a hoaxer with uncertain motives, the victim of an odd prank, or someone really did not want him to speak about his UFO sighting.
Fortean journalist John Keel also talked to Jones following the various odd incidents and described him as “urbane, intelligent, (…) articulate” and “one of the most impressive UFO witnesses” he had ever met.6 He recounts that Ralph Jarrett, a local UFO investigator, received a phone call that consisted of only weird beeping before the line went dead—a strangely recurring theme in the area at the time. Jarrett then saw the newspaper story of Jones’ encounter and decided to investigate. Keel writes that through Jarrett and Jones’ conversations, they came to the realization that the UFO had appeared right above a major gas line. When Jones drove past the same stretch of highway a week later, the strangeness continued:
(Jones) came upon a man standing by the road in approximately the same spot where the sphere had hovered. Thinking the man was hitchhiking and was stranded in this isolate stretch of road, Jones slowed his truck and call out to him, “Want a lift?” The man did not reply but merely waved him on. The next morning, this same man was in the same place but this time Tad did not slow down. (…) “He was very tanned,” Jones recalled, “or his face was very flushed. He looked normal and was wearing a blue coat and a blue cap with a visor … something like a uniform, I guess. I noticed he was holding a box in his hand. Some kind of instrument. It had a large dial on it, like a clock, and a wire ran from it to his other hand.”7
Keel checked with local gas companies to see if anyone was “walking the line” but was told they had no one doing this work. Later on, weird tracks were found around the spot, including those of a large dog, a single naked human footprint, and a collection of prints that looked as though they came from the ripple-patterned soles of astronaut boots.8 “Obviously, the Martians and Venusians buy their equipment from the same companies that supply our space program,” Keel wrote.9 It seems remarkably possible, given the odd assortment of “clues” left at the scene, that someone was trying to confuse a UFO witness and the subsequent investigators.
Before much more could be uncovered in the matter of Tad Jones’ experiences, he seemed to fall off the face of the earth. Gray Barker noted that Jones had vamoosed from the area in his exploration of the WV high strangeness, The Silver Bridge.10 When Barker asked investigator Ralph Jarrett about this disappearance, he “seemed reluctant to answer.” After some pushing, however, he conceded that Jones “had indeed vanished, along with his family, apparently in the middle of the night—for the neighbors had not seen them move out.”11 Barker writes that Jarrett seemed to think that the disappearance had little to do with the threatening notes, but would not elaborate much further: Jarrett had promised to stay quiet on Jones’ behalf and Barker was only given “a few generalities and hints” about the vanishing.12 So what eventually incited Tad Jones to slip out of the area and stop talking about his experiences? It has remained more or less a mystery.
Of note in Andrew Colvin’s research regarding the West Virginia high strangeness of the mid-to-late 60s is the detail that Jones was a former Union Carbide employee before becoming the manager of a Cross Lanes, WV appliance store. Indeed, Union Carbide, a major American chemical producer, employed a large number of people throughout the entire Ohio River Valley. One such plant was located at the Institute Industrial Park, remarkably close to the spot Jones had his initial sighting. Further, Ralph Jarrett, the main investigator of Jones’ encounter, was also employed by Union Carbide as an engineer. He knew Tad Jones in the years prior to his sighting because of this shared employer.13 The company’s influence over the region’s populace cannot be understated, and Colvin’s West Virginia roots make him more of an authority on this front. He noted that his father was also a Union Carbide employee and “told (him) there were guys talking about blowing up the plant” in this turbulent period of time. Furthermore, “there were even Mothman witnesses who had visions of the plant blowing up,” highlighting just how large the company loomed in local consciousness—prophecy or no.14 To make matters even more complicated, our old friend Woodrow Derenberger also had a Carbide connection: Derenberger “was employed as a welder at the Union Carbide Corporation mining and metals division plant in nearby Ohio, until the union went on strike there several weeks” before his encounter with Indrid Cold.15
Indeed, like Jones, Derenberger went from Union Carbide employee to appliance salesman. Colvin is correct to emphasize the curiously harmonious circumstances—were the two men targeted because of their status as former Carbide employees? The company at the time was a major contractor in the midst of a Cold War military tech battle. The Charleston site specifically housed major Research and Development facilities for craft propulsion and rocket fuel.16 It is possible that Tad Jones witnessed a test of a classified project—one that that he was not supposed to see—and was persuaded into silence via unorthodox methods. It is worth noting that Jarrett, who investigated Jones’ case and was one of the few to speak on his disappearance, remained a Union Carbide employee for several years after the strange ordeal. Further, Jarrett became a major figure in the local UFO group circuit, serving as president of Charleston’s “UFO Investigators”—an excellent position to be in for pushing local witnesses to less earthbound conclusions. Was he so interested in Jones’ sighting because he worried about a secret propulsion technology reaching the broader public’s knowledge? Despite the rather earthly description Jones presented, Jarrett was soon using the sighting as evidence that his “flying saucer detector” worked by detecting the hovering spheres’ magnetism.17 This claim seems to obfuscate the fact that the object had a visible propeller—magnetism had little to do with its flight according to Jones. Jarrett’s phone issues bring into question the idea of him being in on this speculated operation against Tad Jones, but that story comes from one place: Jarrett himself. Regardless, if the continuation of Woodrow Derenberger’s experiences with Indrid Cold was a similar form of obfuscation or operation, the keys might be found in the oddly human elements of his otherwise fantastical ventures with the Cold crew.
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Connor, Charlie. “DUNBAR MAN SAYS OBJECT BLOCKED I-64: UFO-Spotter Finds ‘Keep Mouth Shut’ Note.” The Charleston Daily Mail. 20 January 1967. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-charleston-daily-mail/127331839/.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Keel, John A. The Mothman Prophecies. New York: Tor, 1975. Page 96.
Connor, Charlie. “DUNBAR MAN SAYS OBJECT BLOCKED I-64: UFO-Spotter Finds ‘Keep Mouth Shut’ Note.” The Charleston Daily Mail. 20 January 1967. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-charleston-daily-mail/127331839/. (The contents are slightly different when relayed in John Keel’s The Mothman Prophecies: “We know what you have seen and we know that you have talked. You’d better keep your mouth shut.” [Page 97])
Keel, John A. The Mothman Prophecies. New York: Tor, 1975. Page 96.
Ibid., page 97-98.
Ibid., page 98-99.
Ibid., page 99.
Barker, Gray. The Silver Bridge. Seattle: Metadisc Books, 1970. eBook. Page 62.
Ibid., page 65.
Ibid.
Ibid., page 63.
Colvin, Andrew B. The Mothman’s Photographer II: Meetings with Remarkable Witnesses Touched by Paranormal Phenomena, UFOs, and the Prophecies of West Virginia’s Infamous Mothman. Seattle: Metadisc Books, 2007. eBook. Page 197.
Keller, Raymond A. “Lessons Learned From A Contactee: Woodrow W. Derenberger (1916-1990).” Phantoms & Monsters. 20 July 2020. https://www.phantomsandmonsters.com/2020/07/lessons-learned-from-contactee-woodrow_21.html.
“Union Carbide Expands Rocket Propulsion Activities.” Missiles and Rockets 10, no. 23. 4 June 1962. Page 39. https://archive.org/details/missilesrockets1011unse/page/n273/mode/2up?view=theater.
Martin, Dan. “St. Albans Machine Detects Unidentified Flying Objects.” The Charleston Sunday Gazette-Mail. 5 February 1967. https://www.newspapers.com/article/sunday-gazette-mail/127436264/. (@seriations has a thread on this article on Twitter if the site is still breathing.)