It was October 1966, around 9:45 p.m. Two boys–Martin Munov and James Yanchitis–were walking home along a chain link fence below the elevated New Jersey Turnpike. On the other side of the fence lay some shrub brush and a steep, nigh insurmountable slope up to the road. It wasn’t until they stopped to rest that Yanchitis noticed someone standing over there, staring through the links at the house opposite. The stranger’s green suit reflected subtly in the streetlight.

“He was strangest guy we’ve ever seen,” Yanchitis would later recount. “He was standing behind that fence. I don’t know how he got there. He was the biggest man I ever saw.”

Yanchitis urged Munov, whose back was to the man, to turn around and look. 

“Jimmy nudged me and said, ‘Who’s that guy standing behind you?’ I looked around and there he was… behind that fence.  Just standing there. He pivoted around and looked right at us… then he grinned a big old grin.”

The two boys ran like mad. Later, their accounts to both the police and to John Keel (paranormal investigator and author of “The Mothman Prophecies”) would be identical. The man on the other side of the fence was over 6’2” and broad in the chest, with a black belt, beady eyes, and a smile to make your blood run cold. The legend of the Grinning Man had begun. 

A salesman sewn up

Three weeks later, on November 2, 1966, 50-year old sewing machine salesman Woodrow Derenberger was having an awful commute home from work. The evening was cold and wet, and he’d already had an incident where a machine became dislodged from the back of his truck. Now he had to drive infuriatingly slow down interstate 77 to keep from losing anything else, other cars zipping past. Imagine his frustration when something large and dark pulled up beside him, then swung ahead and cut him off. 

It was not a police car, nor some douchebag in a sports car. It was not a car at all. It looked like a kerosene lamp chimney, windowless, glistening black, 30-35 feet long–long enough to block off both lanes of the highway. It was not on the road so much as it was floating above it, a good 8-10 inches off the ground. Then a door opened in the side of the thing, just like it would any other car, and a man stepped out. 

The man was smiling. He looked like any other man, albeit unusually tan for that time of year. His hair was slicked back, and he sported a metallic blue suit under his dark blue overcoat. He approached the side of Derenberger’s car, grin stuck firmly in place, arms crossed with knuckles in his armpits. Then, without the man ever opening his mouth, he and Derenberger had a conversation. 

“He walked to the right hand side of the truck, and he told me to roll down the window. He asked me to roll down the window on my right hand side of my truck, and I done what he asked…he asked me, he said ‘Why are you frightened?’ He said ‘Don’t be frightened, we wish you no harm’. He said ‘We mean you not harm, we wish you only happiness.’ And I told him my name, and when I told him my name he said he was called ‘Cold’.

“…He asked me what the city of Parkersburg–he pointed to the light. He didn’t point but he gave the impression that he was pointing, and he asked me what that was called and I told him it was Parkersburg, it was a city, a town. And he asked me if most all the people lived in this city or town. And I explained to him that it was a place of business, it’s where we transacted our business but the people lived in communities, outline communities, most of the people…and again he told me not to be frightened, which I was.

“I was very frightened and as far as I can understand, this was all mental, there was no spoken words from him. I knew what he was asking me but yet he stood there and his mouth did not move. He had a smile on his face, he appeared very courteous and friendly, and after I talked with him a while, he told me, he said ‘We will see you again’.”

Derenberger sat, stunned, as the man climbed back into his vehicle and it flew away. When he finally got home to his wife, he was shaking so badly that she was the one who had to call the police. When asked later whether he believed if Cold would really come back again, Derenberger replied: 

“Well, I did believe it, but now I don’t know how to answer that honestly. Because I’m afraid he will. And I don’t want him to, but I have a feeling that he will.”

Friends for life

Cold did come back. He came to Derenberger’s house. Interacted with Derenberger’s wife. He revealed his first name was Indrid, that he was from another dimension, not unlike our own. He took Derenberger away for days at a time. 

Meanwhile, all the business with the Mothman was going on just down the road. The daughter of a family plagued by floating lights woke to find a broad, 6-foot tall man grinning over her bed. A strange man with a bowl haircut and unnerving eyes harassed a local reporter, trying to get more information about the people who were reporting–in droves–hovering lights in the sky. An identically described man visited the homes of several of those people, claiming to be a reporter from Cambridge, Ohio, though he had no idea where Columbus, Ohio (just a few miles down the road from Cambridge) was.

Derenberger went to reporters with his story. He gave interviews, wrote a book. The ensuing media blitz and harrassing calls eventually caused his wife to divorce him. She had said from the beginning that Cold’s agenda was an “evil” one. Derenberger lost his job, his home, his friends. Still, Derenberger continued to accept Cold’s visits. Continued to leave with him, though every time he returned he complained of debilitating migraines. This continued to his dying day in 1990, at the age of 79. 

Where in the world is Indrid Cold?

So what’s been happening since 1990? The thing about Indrid Cold (and his ilk) is that they look so much like everyone else that it’s difficult to say whether any alleged sightings of him hold water. Even those that have been reported have been few and far between. 

Blogger H. R. Zapruder said that he drove by a grinning man on the highway outside of Roswell in 2009. One person on Reddit claimed to be Cold himself. In an effort to get a handle on what might have happened to Cold–and all of the Grinning Men–the site Trust No More has put out a call for sighting reports. They give the following criteria to look out for:

• tall, wide body
• often described as hairless
• a green or blue one-piece suit that is reflective like tin foil
• strange-looking tan
• eyes set unnaturally far apart
• shallow nose
• can communicate telepathically
• causes confusions, fugues, and loses of time
• telekinetic or poltergeist activity
• seen near UFO sightings
• coming or going in a strange craft
• seen in people’s homes, standing over them as they sleep

The call has been open for about a year (at the time of this writing)–it will be interesting to see what comes out of it.  

But let’s be honest–if Indrid is out there, it’s not so much an issue of you finding him.  It’s about him finding you. 

What is the strangest pedestrian you have ever seen on the side of the road? Share your story in the comments below. 

IMAGE CREDIT: All Wikimedia Commons: The Sporting News for the baseball guy; Flicker user jd_09 for the lamp; and Michael J. Bennett for the stars that we can’t see here in the city. Joshua Earle for the featured image.