Braxton County sits at the geographic center of West Virginia, and the small town of Flatwoods marks the precise spot. The county lays claim to the title as a whole, and you will see the slogan on the side of public buildings, on county-fair posters, and on the chamber of commerce stationery. Sutton, the county seat, was first settled in 1792 and incorporated in 1860. It is named for John D. Sutton, an early resident, not for the John D. Sutton who later pushed for the Droop Mountain battlefield park - those are two different men. The population at the 2020 census was 876, which is roughly what it has been for the last century. The town sits along the Elk River where I-79 and US-19 cross.

The dominant feature of the modern landscape is Sutton Lake, the reservoir created in 1961 when the Army Corps of Engineers dammed the Elk River for flood control. The lake stretches 14 miles upstream from the dam and is, regionally, the focus of summer outdoor recreation - fishing for muskellunge, bass, and walleye; boating in pleated coves; campgrounds along the shoreline. The dam itself is one of the larger earthen dams in the eastern United States. As with Summersville Lake to the south, the impoundment came at the cost of drowning farms, hollows, and a cemetery or two. The names of the displaced places survive only on old maps.

Sutton's modern identity is shaped less by its history than by its location on Interstate 79. The town and its smaller twin, Gassaway, plus the cluster of chain businesses at Flatwoods to the north, together form the largest highway-services stop between Charleston and Clarksburg. For drivers heading south to the New River Gorge, Sutton is the last reliable place to gas up before a long rural stretch. For drivers heading north, it is the first place to stop after that same stretch. Mid-Mountain Lanes, the bowling alley at exit 67, has been a fixture since the 1970s. The Braxton County Airport handles light twins on its 4,000-foot runway.

The county was contested during the Civil War, with both Union and Confederate forces moving through Braxton on raids and counter-raids. The most preserved engagement was the Battle of Bulltown in October 1863, where a small Union force in a hilltop fort repelled a Confederate attack. The Bulltown Historic District, off WV-19 in nearby Burnsville, preserves the earthworks and several mid-19th-century structures. Costumed interpreters work the site from mid-May through mid-October. Each fall, reenactors stage a recreation of the battle. The interpretive trail is about a mile long and includes the original trenches and the remains of farmsteads that pre-date the war.

Which brings us back to the green-armored ten-foot something in the pasture in 1952. The witnesses included a National Guard mechanic, two young men, and three boys; their account was widely covered in the regional and eventually the national press. Skeptics quickly produced rational explanations: the descending fireball was a meteor seen across multiple states that night, and the ten-foot apparition with glowing red eyes was almost certainly a startled barn owl in the gloom, its silhouette interpreted through Cold War nerves. Believers were less satisfied. The town has chosen to embrace the ambiguity. There is a Phantom of Flatwoods museum, a green-armored mascot, and an annual Flatwoods Monster Festival. Whether the Phantom was real or not, Sutton has discovered that a good ghost story can be at least as durable a civic asset as a Civil War battlefield.