The Grinning Man: Who Was Indrid Cold?

On November 2, 1966, Woodrow Derenberger, a traveling appliance salesman from near Mineral Wells, West Virginia, said an unfamiliar vehicle blocked his route home. A dark-haired man in glossy blue clothing approached Derenberger’s truck, smiled, and communicated without visibly moving his lips. The visitor, Derenberger said, called himself Cold. By the following afternoon, Derenberger was describing the encounter on W T A P television in Parkersburg. That surviving recording is the strongest piece of evidence in the case—not because it proves an unknown being stood beside his truck, but because it preserves his account before decades of books, films, UFO conventions, and online retellings reshaped it. This episode follows the road encounter, the immediate police report Derenberger said he made, and the press coverage that turned a smiling stranger into a “spaceman.” It also examines John Keel’s later decision to connect Cold with a reported grinning figure seen by two boys in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and with the wider Mothman wave in the Ohio Valley. The evidence leaves several possibilities open: an unknown external encounter, a misidentification, an altered or subjective experience, a deliberate invention, or a story that began with one event and grew through publicity and folklore. No photograph, physical trace, named road witness, or official finding confirms Cold’s existence. Yet the early television interview remains: a man, speaking within a day, using his hands to describe something no camera recorded on the road. This podcast uses artificial intelligence in its research, writing, production, and narration. Episodes are editorially reviewed before publication. #UrbanLegendsAfterDark #DocumentedUrbanLegendUfoContactNarrativeAndEvolv #IndridCold #WoodrowDerenberger #GrinningMan YES OR NO: Did Woodrow Derenberger encounter a real unknown visitor???????