U.F.O. sightings used to be a common occurrence at the Barbee Lakes area.
And no collection of lake folklore is complete without the "lake
monster" legend.
"U.F.O.s heard about for the first time at Tumble Inn" P.V. Sheridan: The Tumble Inn
had an apt name because there were always a lot of people around. When I was
little, I’d hear people talking while they were playing cards, and that’s
the first time I ever heard about U.F.O’s. Scared me to death; I was laying in
bed, and I was about three or four years old. Probably about 1950 or ’51. They
were talking about people seeing little green men in cigar-shaped flying saucers
that people had seen, and somebody said "Well, in Look magazine
there was a whole story about them, about one that had a red face and was about
nine feet tall they’d seen in West Virginia," and I was haunted by that
image until I was about twenty-five years old.
Young P.V. standing outside of the
Tumble Inn.
"Flying saucer lands at Whittaker’s corner"
Betty Sheridan:
A friend of
mine, Mary Brindle, she was at Whittaker’s corner, the corner right up at the
lake, and a flying saucer landed there. And she saw it. Her mother and her both
saw it. And that’s another two stories. That happened in about ’48.
[Did they see anything come out of the U.F.O., Grandma?]
They did, but they never told us what they saw.
Is it a
flying saucer?
Or just a weather balloon?
"Weather balloon resembles flying saucer" P.V.: I remember when I was a
really little boy I was out swimming in the lake (I did that about twenty-four
hours a day), and that Snack Shack was always crowded with people (young adults
who looked really old to me in those days) and they were all pointing up in the
sky, pointing out a flying saucer that they could see. And I remember one man
saying "No, that’s just the weather balloon." I remember that it
caused quite a stir. I was really intrigued by flying saucers in those days.
"Swamp monster in Barbee Lake"
Betty: Somebody
did say one time that they saw a Loch-Ness-type monster. Somebody saw one once
in Barbee. It would only come up so often. That’s the truth!
There could
be a monster in this swamp!
"Strong turtle pulls up
anchor in Barbee Lake" P.V.: I
can tell you one time I was fishing with George Hoffman. I got a bite, and
whatever it was, it pulled up the anchor and pulled our boat. Whatever was on
the other end--it was probably a turtle or a giant catfish--pulled the boat and
broke the line. I don’t think it was a lake monster. Just a turtle.
