That Charming Man: Indrid Cold Reconsidered, Pt. 8
Harold W. Hubbard, Thomas Monteleone, and Other Lanuloose Ends
Going mostly unmentioned in narratives about the contactee Woodrow Derenberger and the largely human-looking ET Indrid Cold is Harold W. Hubbard, the coauthor of Derenberger’s 1973 book, Visitors from Lanulos. Hubbard was a “technical division director” of the Sebring, Ohio UFO Research Division (UFORD)—a group that at one point was meeting at Petrucci’s Spaghetti House in town.1 Derenberger assumedly met Hubbard from UFO community interaction, but the circumstances are not exactly clear to my knowledge. Regardless, they must have struck up a friendship because Hubbard was credited as the main writer on Visitors from Lanulos from a story “related” to him by Derenberger. As mentioned elsewhere, Taunia Bowman-Derenberger would later write that “Hubbard had—at the last minute—edited out some of the most intriguing aspects of the case” yet simultaneously “exaggerated” the story.2
Whatever the case, Hubbard appeared to buy into Derenberger’s story when interviewed about it in The Cincinnati Post in 1974. Planning on giving a talk about the book, he relayed to writer Pete Gianutsos that “there are persons from other planets living and working in the United States and other parts of the world today.”3 Hubbard’s interactions with space people were not just secondhand through Derenberger—he claimed that he “personally went aboard one of the space crafts (sic) and met with its crew of two men and a woman.” Indeed, it appears that like Derenberger, he was given messages through “an advanced system of mental communications” from a smaller spaceship “launched from a mother-ship orbiting in space.”4 Many of his assertions to the Post reporter contain details that also appear in Visitors from Lanulos:
Don’t bother trying to identify them (the ETs). They don’t have small horns growing out of their heads, or one eye, or other deformities pictured on TV. (…) They’re people, like you and me, with one big difference. They’re highly intelligent and at least twenty-five thousand years ahead of us technology-wise. They’re here, mapping and photographing the world and taking an inventory of our natural resources, ore deposits, and other metals which are in short supply on their planets. And, they are a peaceful people who believe in God. Their mission is to eventually meet with earth people and barter for the resources they need. They will trade us their highly advanced technological skills and information for the resources.5
These details—as reported in Visitors from Lanulos—are covered in part six of this series where I hypothesize that Derenberger might have been witnessing reconnaissance of some sort. Interestingly, the motivations of the ETs are similar to those disclosed to UFO researcher Olavo Fontes by purported Brazilian Naval Intelligence officers. Whether Hubbard (or Derenberger for that matter) actually experienced these shocking events or was trying to sell his coauthored book is unclear, but he seems genuinely enthusiastic about the UFO subject. Although it most certainly did not come to pass, he expresses hope that the truth of the matter will be revealed: “I look for Sen. Barry Goldwater to open extensive and in-depth Congressional hearings on the whole matter around July of (1975).”6 Goldwater does pop up in the UFO field, but not unveiling any secrets. As a brief final word on Hubbard, a man claiming to be his son alleges in the comments of a John Keel: Not an Authority on Anything post that Hubbard (and Derenberger) were hounded by government “wire taps” and “surveillance” due to their writing of the book, but obviously this source is not completely reliable.7
Another incident in the Derenberger saga came about while interest in the story was still a hot topic. Covered somewhat glowingly in several John Keel articles was the “corroboration” of the Indrid Cold story by a young University of Maryland psychology major named Thomas Monteleone, a man who claimed to have a UFO experience remarkably similar to Derenberger’s own. Calling into a D.C. area radio show that Woody was appearing on, Monteleone gave details of his own trip to Lanulos. Derenberger alleged that much of what the man reported was accurate to his own visits to the planet. In various interviews with Harold Salkin, John Keel, and Dernberger himself, Monteleone spoke of Vadig, a supposed spaceman who had initially flagged him down on an interstate, looked remarkably human, drove a “large black sedan,” wore spiffy suits, and took him on a trip to Lanulos where he saw some “real lookers.”8 Sound familiar? These stories were entirely lies, an apparent joke, but were promulgated across several lectures on the UFO circuit before Monteleone eventually came clean while being sure to “ridicule (…) those foolish enough to believe him.”9 Derenberger’s willingness to go along with the Vadig claims definitely did not help lend credence to his increasingly outlandish story, serving as another brick piled onto a wall graffitied with text reading “HOAX”. Monteleone would later monetize his tale-telling ability and go on to become a semi-successful fiction writer. More recently, he would reveal himself to be a person of questionable character who was booted from the Horror Writers Association for violating the organization’s harassment policies—complete with alleged racial slurs.10
The world of Derenberger and Cold is a complex one to untangle. There are so many outlandish claims, suspicious characters, and tangential fragments of ufological weirdness that it becomes increasingly difficult to decide which threads have genuine relevance. While this series has tried to wrestle with different facets of the Derenberger story, the narrative is ultimately marred by unproven tales of space travel, telepathic communication, and interstellar nudist colonies. As Jerome Clark writes: “We may safely conclude that Woodrow Derenberger’s tales owe far more to human invention than to extraterrestrial intervention.”11 I agree with this sentiment but cannot help but wonder if the human intervention was entirely the work of Woody himself. Considering the weird connections to the Air Force, strange behavior from NICAP individuals, and the omnipresent yet overall unclear Union Carbide factor, I am left wondering if the start of Derenberger’s journey to Lanulos was a misinterpreted psychological operation. Not to be understated is the fact that Derenberger’s initial encounter was witnessed by other observers, indicating that the story had some basis in reality. Keel would write in The Mothman Prophecies:
People who had driven that same route the night before came forward to confirm that they had seen a man speaking to the driver of a panel truck stopped on the highway. Mrs. Frank Huggins and her two children had reportedly stopped their own car and watched the object soar low over the highway minutes after Woody watched it depart. (…) Another young man said the object had frightened him out of his wits when it hovered over his car and flashed a powerful, blinding light on him.12
The former of these was not just Keel spinning yarns, although he may have gotten the name incorrect: Larry V. Murphy of The Parkersburg News also reported on the sighting of a woman named Mrs. Hudgins and her two kids around the same time and location as Derenberger’s.13 The latter corroboration might be referring to testimony given by Delmar K. Sears who, along with a companion named Chester Clegg, spotted odd lights in the vicinity of Derenberger’s initial sighting days after the Indrid Cold story hit the press.14 Sears, interestingly, was a color lab worker at Borg-Warner Chemicals (not a far cry from Union Carbide) and a former Air Force weather observer.15 Sears wife also put forth some interesting scuttlebutt to the NICAP investigators:
Mrs. Sears, who was present for most of the interview, added that a woman neighbor of her hairdresser's stated that she and her husband traveled on Interstate 77 about 30 minutes before Mr. Derenberger's incident. She recalls having a strange uneasy ominous sensation come over her when they were in the same area where Mr. Derenberger later had his experience and that she asked her husband to leave that road right away, which he did. As soon as they were off the road, the feeling left her. She had never had a similar feeling before in her life.16
This information indicates that there was something abuzz in the Parkersburg area even before Derenberger’s encounter, perhaps tendrils of high strangeness working their way through the entire Ohio Valley region. While there may have been paranormal elements to the odd events taking place in West Virginia, here at Getting Spooked, we tend to take the view that military or intelligence operations may be integral to understanding UFO encounters and high strangeness flaps. Notably, this explanation is still reliant on human invention, just not entirely on the experiencer hoaxing, hallucinating, or having a legitimate brush with the supernatural. In the case of Derenberger, who Cosmic Ray Keller feels “lost control of his own narrative,” there is ample room for a hypothetical operation early in his experience which was buttressed by various bizarre possible obfuscation tactics17—such as the invitation to Cape Canaveral where Derenberger was told that the government was aware of flying saucer occupants, or the visit from a supposed U.S. Air Force soldier who warned him against getting hypnotized. A strange human element has weaved its way through Derenberger’s complex story, but as the decades have passed, Indrid Cold has found himself merged with the Mothman tales into a viral Appalachian urban legend. In the next installment, I look at other depictions of the supposed Lanulosian, examine why his particularly human nature has been forgotten, and argue against the urban legend-ification of Indrid Cold.
Thank you for reading Getting Spooked. If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve read, consider recommending it to a friend. Become a paid subscriber to directly help the continuation of this publication and you will be granted access to over a dozen archived articles. Email me at gettingspooked@protonmail.com with any questions, comments, recommendations, leads, or paranormal stories. You can find me on Twitter at @TannerFBoyle1 or on Bluesky at @tannerfboyle.bsky.social. Thanks to Rich Reynolds at UFO Conjectures for linking to the recent “State of the U(fo)nion” article. Until next time, stay spooked.
“UFO Organization Gets Salem Member.” The Salem News. 26 May 1970. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-salem-news/132369954/.
Derenberger-Bowman, Taunia. “Introduction.” Visitors from Lanulos. Point Pleasant: New Saucerian Books, 1971. 2014 eBook. Page 11.
Gianutsos, Pete. “Expert says your neighbor may be from space: But don’t worry…our celestial visitors are peaceful.” The Cincinnati Post. 13 November 1974. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-cincinnati-post/132370138/.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Skinner, Doug. “Visitors from Lanulos.” John Keel: Not an Authority on Anything. 14 October 2009. https://www.johnkeel.com/?p=73.
Clark, Jerome. The UFO Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition. Detroit: Omnigraphics, 2018. eBook. Page 957.
Ibid., page 958.
Glyer, Mike. “Thomas Monteleone Ousted By Horror Writers Association.” File 770: Mike Glyer’s News of SF Fandom. 31 January 2023. https://file770.com/thomas-monteleone-ousted-by-horror-writers-association/.
Clark, Jerome. The UFO Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition. Detroit: Omnigraphics, 2018. eBook. Page 960.
Keel, John A. The Mothman Prophecies. New York: Tor, 1975. Page 52.
Murphy, Larry V. “’Spaceship’ Account is Substantiated.” The Parkersburg News. Date unknown. Gray Barker UFO Collection, Clarksburg Public Library.
Derenberger, Woodrow W. “Appendix: STATEMENT OF DELMAR K. SEARS AND CHESTER CLEGG (to NICAP).” Visitors from Lanulos. Point Pleasant: New Saucerian Books, 1971. 2014 eBook. Page 136.
“Delmar Karl Sears.” Find a Grave. 4 August 2010. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/55864587/delmar-karl-sears.
Derenberger, Woodrow W. “Appendix: STATEMENT OF DELMAR K. SEARS AND CHESTER CLEGG (to NICAP).” Visitors from Lanulos. Point Pleasant: New Saucerian Books, 1971. 2014 eBook. Page 140.
Keller, Raymond A. “Lessons Learned from an ET Contactee: The Derenberger Report.” Rense News. 9 July 2021. https://rense.com/general96/lessons-learned-from-an-et-contactee.php. (Not the greatest host site, but it’s good to have all installments of Keller’s series in one place.)