The first detailed encounter with the figure who called himself Indrid Cold took place on a warm night in November 1966, on a quiet farm road outside Point Pleasant, West Virginia.
Woodrow Derenberger was driving home after a long day of work when a large, dark shape dropped from the sky and landed on the road ahead of his truck. The object was roughly the size of a car, metallic, and shaped somewhat like an old-fashioned lantern. It made no sound as it settled onto the asphalt. Derenberger slowed to a stop, unsure what he was seeing.
A door or hatch opened in the side of the craft. A man stepped out.
He was tall, clean-shaven, and appeared completely human at first glance. His skin was tanned, his hair dark, and he wore a metallic green coverall that reflected the light from the truck’s headlights. He raised one hand in a calm gesture, as if to show he meant no harm, and began walking toward the vehicle.
Derenberger later said the man never opened his mouth. The words simply appeared in his mind, clear and calm, as if spoken aloud inside his head.
The man introduced himself as Indrid Cold. He said he came from a place far away, though he never named it clearly. He asked questions about life on Earth — simple things about families, work, and the way people lived. His tone was polite, almost gentle. Throughout the entire exchange, he smiled a wide, fixed smile that never quite reached his eyes.
After several minutes, Indrid Cold stepped back, raised his hand again in farewell, and returned to the craft. The object lifted silently from the road and vanished into the night sky. Derenberger sat in his truck for a long time before he was able to continue driving home.
He told his wife what had happened. At first she struggled to believe him. Then the visits continued.
Over the following weeks, Indrid Cold returned several times. Sometimes the craft landed near the road. Sometimes Derenberger simply found the tall figure standing in the dark near his property, still wearing the same reflective green suit, still wearing that unchanging smile. The conversations remained the same: calm, telepathic, filled with questions about human life. Cold never threatened him. He never raised his voice. He only watched and smiled and spoke without moving his lips.
Word of the encounters eventually reached local newspapers and then wider investigators. Some people treated the story as another tall tale from the same stretch of land that had already produced reports of the Mothman. Others noted the similarities between Indrid Cold and the figure some witnesses called the Grinning Man — the same metallic suit, the same unnatural smile, the same sense that the face was only approximating human expression.
Derenberger never changed his account. He insisted the man had been real, that the conversations had taken place, and that Indrid Cold had seemed genuinely curious rather than hostile. Still, those who spoke with Derenberger in private noticed that he grew more withdrawn as time passed. He began checking the windows at night. He avoided driving alone on the quieter roads after dark.
Other people in the area reported brief sightings of a tall man in a shiny green suit standing near the tree line or at the edge of headlights. None of them claimed to have spoken with him. Most only described the smile — the wide, unmoving grin that stayed fixed even when the rest of the face should have shifted.
Derenberger eventually moved away from the area. He rarely spoke about the encounters in later life. When he did, he still described the same calm voice in his mind, the same reflective suit, and the same smile that never changed. He never claimed to know what Indrid Cold truly was. He only said that after those nights on the dark farm roads, he no longer felt certain that everything standing on two legs and wearing a human face belonged to the same world he did. Investigators later tried to place Indrid Cold among the other strange visitors of that year: the winged figure over Point Pleasant, the grinning man on the roads, the lights in the sky. Some thought they were all one story wearing different clothes. Some thought Cold was only a lonely man’s invention that had grown too detailed to put down.
Derenberger himself never claimed to have solved it. He claimed only that a tall man in a green suit had spoken inside his head, smiled without warmth, and come back more than once. After that, the quiet farm roads did not feel like farm roads anymore. They felt like a place where something from far away had chosen a single person to question, and might one day choose another.
The craft was never found. The voice was never recorded. What remains is the smile that did not reach the eyes, and the uneasy idea that a human face can be worn as easily as a suit.
