It was the second night of November in 1966 on the dark rural backroad of Interstate 77 leading away from Parkersburg,
West Virginia, when two glowing eyes of light pierced the shadows from the overhanging leafless trees. Mr Woodrow
Wilson Derenberger was trundling along to his home after a business trip to Marietta, Ohio and was musing on the
device sitting in the back of his panel truck.
His destination was the small town of Mineral Wells, a title that had always been a point of light debate with his waiting
-at-home wife -Ruby. Some used two words, whilst others called it 'MineralWells'. Still, with headlights of Woodrow's
truck penetrating the darkness of the country road, he wasn't dwelling on controversial municipality identifications, the
thick-set fifty year-old was thinking if some adjustment should be required to the household appliance behind him.
You see, Woodrow was a sewing machine salesman and he had high hopes that he could expand his vending practice
out of West Virginia, something the resident of Wood County believed could make Ruby either hesitant or happier about
their future. Resigning himself to the itching censorious voice in his head that the sewing machine needed some tweaking,
Woodrow slowed his truck, pulled over beneath the stark trees and got out to perform his nagging task.
With his fastidious undertaking accomplished, Mr Derenberger climbed back behind the steering wheel and peered out
into the blackness of the November night. Ahead was something that hinted he might not be alone, illumination that
Woodrow took to be another vehicle and from the volume of the unusual radiance, he guessed that it maybe a big rig.
Driving on and thinking the lights could belong to police officers attending a crash, the salesman heading for home suddenly
found himself arriving at a situation where discussions on Mineral Wells' correct moniker would certainly take a backseat...
along with his sewing machine.
Woodrow would later describe the oddly-shaped effulgence-emanating object as certainly not any conveyance usually
seen on these provincial routes. He was stated the floating craft was like “an old-fashioned kerosene lamp chimney flaring
at both ends, narrowing down to a small neck and then enlarging in a great bulge in the centre” laid on its side. A shape
that some would suggest was similar to what was photographed near the planet Mercury by Scott C Waring in 2018.
To many, this bizarre encounter would be enough, but Mr Derenberger's night was just beginning. That was when a door
in the side of the craft opened, a humanoid appeared and walked to the right-hand of his truck and asked Woodrow to kindly
wind down the window. “He looked perfectly natural and normal as any human being” Derenberger would relate to Ronald
Mains during an interview on WTAP-TV in Parkersburg, West Virginia, on the day after the encounter.
![[Image: attachment.php?aid=1464]](https://rogue-nation.com/mybb/attachment.php?aid=1464)
Woodrow Derenberger. The shape seen near Mercury.
However, considering the nocturnal situation, the extraordinary craft in the road and the arrival of a shadowy stranger in
a dark topcoat beside Woodrow's truck, one might think these were not an amusing circumstances. But the salesman's
visitor was grinning. Keeping his hands hidden beneath his armpits, the cheerful newcomer requested for the window
to opened via -as Woodrow declared, telepathically.
During this short parley, Woodrow believed he could see some kind of garment beneath the Stygian garment made of
glistening greenish material almost metallic in appearance. Maybe this distraction was the reason Derenberger didn't ask
the stranger why one needs laminated glass to be removed for extrasensory communication.
“He asked me to roll down the window and I done what he asked...” Derenberger would say during the WTAP-TV interview.
“...And this man stood there and asked me what I was called and I know he meant my name and I told him my name." As
the grinning pedestrian surveyed the anxious driver, he then asked "Why are you frightened?", adding "Don’t be frightened,
we wish you no harm. We mean you no harm, we wish you only happiness"
Gazing at the incredible hovering craft waiting over the road and soaking in what this genial figure was saying, Woodrow
learned the stranger's name. “My name is Cold. I sleep, breathe, and bleed even as you do” he advised the perturbed
salesman from Mineral Wells. It would be later that Woodrow would learn his grinning night-visitor's full name and where
he was from. Indrid Cold, a space-traveller from Lanulos -which as most of you know is 14.6 light years from Earth and in
the Ganymede galaxy.
..............................
After reporting his encounter to the Parkersburg police the next day, it wasn't long before the local media enthusiastically
grabbed the story and cajoled Woodrow to elaborate on his previous evening. Accompanied in an interview for WTAP-TV
with members of the state police, representatives of the Wood County Airport, the Parkersburg Police, and surprisingly
a representative from the Wright Patterson Air Force base in Dayton, Ohio, Woodrow Derenberger endured a thirty-minute
bombardment of questions regarding the grinning man who only wished happiness with thought-waves.
When the interview aired, some viewers and listeners came forward with claims that they had also seen a figure matching
Mr Derenberger’s description of Indrid Cold. One caller reported that a man matching Mr Cold’s description attempted to
flag him down, but he was too afraid to stop. Other people claimed to witness lights and “fluttering vehicles” on the same
road Derenberger said he talked to Cold on and several witnesses reported they had seen Woodrow talking to a man on
the same road.
![[Image: attachment.php?aid=1465]](https://rogue-nation.com/mybb/attachment.php?aid=1465)
Woodrow in an interview. The smile says it all.
Ruby Derenberger would be reported to have explained: "You should have seen him when he got home. He looked awful.
I thought he’d struck and killed somebody with the truck. He loves to play with the children, but not that night. I had to
shoo them out..." Continuing, Ruby added after Woodrow arrived home that night: "...He just sat there in the kitchen,
grey-coloured and saying, ‘You’re going to think I’m crazy,’ and ‘you’re going to laugh at me."
When told what had occurred, his wife did not laugh.
..............................
Alas like many news articles, the media brouhaha calms down and the microphones get packed away. But for Woodrow
Derenberger, Indrid Cold hadn't finished with him. The grinning man with hidden hands began to visit the sewing machine
salesman's rural home and with his new-found connection with the fourth estate, Woodrow regularly reported the sojourns.
As the months rolled by into 1976, his family would admit that they too had seen Cold and other odd happenings around
their home. These events included inquisitive locals showing up on the Derenberger looking for signs of the mirthful visitor
from beyond the stars. Eventually the toll of harassing phone calls and ridicule led Derenberger to seek medical attention
and it would have certainly been a relief when Woodrow's physician gave him a clean bill of health and found no evidence
of chemical imbalance.
With painful headaches and depression being a familiar companion for Woodrow through the following years, he decided
to write a book on his November night with the grinning Indrid Cold. 'Visitors from Lanulos' elucidated on the habits of the
Lanulosians and how they have no need of clothes and generally walk around naked, they have a fifty-six-person Guiding
Council whose members are elected every six months and on one occasion, took Woodrow to Venus where the residents
also shunned clothing.
Needless to say, Ruby divorced him and soon after, Woodrow felt it prudent to move away from the area to escape his
notoriety. We cannot verify whether the disintegration of their marriage was due to Woodrow's out-of-this-world belief
structure or Ruby just didn't like her husband patronising with jovial off-worlders who allowed their privates to be on show.
Which ever, Indrid Cold has a lot to answer for.
West Virginia, when two glowing eyes of light pierced the shadows from the overhanging leafless trees. Mr Woodrow
Wilson Derenberger was trundling along to his home after a business trip to Marietta, Ohio and was musing on the
device sitting in the back of his panel truck.
His destination was the small town of Mineral Wells, a title that had always been a point of light debate with his waiting
-at-home wife -Ruby. Some used two words, whilst others called it 'MineralWells'. Still, with headlights of Woodrow's
truck penetrating the darkness of the country road, he wasn't dwelling on controversial municipality identifications, the
thick-set fifty year-old was thinking if some adjustment should be required to the household appliance behind him.
You see, Woodrow was a sewing machine salesman and he had high hopes that he could expand his vending practice
out of West Virginia, something the resident of Wood County believed could make Ruby either hesitant or happier about
their future. Resigning himself to the itching censorious voice in his head that the sewing machine needed some tweaking,
Woodrow slowed his truck, pulled over beneath the stark trees and got out to perform his nagging task.
With his fastidious undertaking accomplished, Mr Derenberger climbed back behind the steering wheel and peered out
into the blackness of the November night. Ahead was something that hinted he might not be alone, illumination that
Woodrow took to be another vehicle and from the volume of the unusual radiance, he guessed that it maybe a big rig.
Driving on and thinking the lights could belong to police officers attending a crash, the salesman heading for home suddenly
found himself arriving at a situation where discussions on Mineral Wells' correct moniker would certainly take a backseat...
along with his sewing machine.
Woodrow would later describe the oddly-shaped effulgence-emanating object as certainly not any conveyance usually
seen on these provincial routes. He was stated the floating craft was like “an old-fashioned kerosene lamp chimney flaring
at both ends, narrowing down to a small neck and then enlarging in a great bulge in the centre” laid on its side. A shape
that some would suggest was similar to what was photographed near the planet Mercury by Scott C Waring in 2018.
To many, this bizarre encounter would be enough, but Mr Derenberger's night was just beginning. That was when a door
in the side of the craft opened, a humanoid appeared and walked to the right-hand of his truck and asked Woodrow to kindly
wind down the window. “He looked perfectly natural and normal as any human being” Derenberger would relate to Ronald
Mains during an interview on WTAP-TV in Parkersburg, West Virginia, on the day after the encounter.
Woodrow Derenberger. The shape seen near Mercury.
However, considering the nocturnal situation, the extraordinary craft in the road and the arrival of a shadowy stranger in
a dark topcoat beside Woodrow's truck, one might think these were not an amusing circumstances. But the salesman's
visitor was grinning. Keeping his hands hidden beneath his armpits, the cheerful newcomer requested for the window
to opened via -as Woodrow declared, telepathically.
During this short parley, Woodrow believed he could see some kind of garment beneath the Stygian garment made of
glistening greenish material almost metallic in appearance. Maybe this distraction was the reason Derenberger didn't ask
the stranger why one needs laminated glass to be removed for extrasensory communication.
“He asked me to roll down the window and I done what he asked...” Derenberger would say during the WTAP-TV interview.
“...And this man stood there and asked me what I was called and I know he meant my name and I told him my name." As
the grinning pedestrian surveyed the anxious driver, he then asked "Why are you frightened?", adding "Don’t be frightened,
we wish you no harm. We mean you no harm, we wish you only happiness"
Gazing at the incredible hovering craft waiting over the road and soaking in what this genial figure was saying, Woodrow
learned the stranger's name. “My name is Cold. I sleep, breathe, and bleed even as you do” he advised the perturbed
salesman from Mineral Wells. It would be later that Woodrow would learn his grinning night-visitor's full name and where
he was from. Indrid Cold, a space-traveller from Lanulos -which as most of you know is 14.6 light years from Earth and in
the Ganymede galaxy.
..............................
After reporting his encounter to the Parkersburg police the next day, it wasn't long before the local media enthusiastically
grabbed the story and cajoled Woodrow to elaborate on his previous evening. Accompanied in an interview for WTAP-TV
with members of the state police, representatives of the Wood County Airport, the Parkersburg Police, and surprisingly
a representative from the Wright Patterson Air Force base in Dayton, Ohio, Woodrow Derenberger endured a thirty-minute
bombardment of questions regarding the grinning man who only wished happiness with thought-waves.
When the interview aired, some viewers and listeners came forward with claims that they had also seen a figure matching
Mr Derenberger’s description of Indrid Cold. One caller reported that a man matching Mr Cold’s description attempted to
flag him down, but he was too afraid to stop. Other people claimed to witness lights and “fluttering vehicles” on the same
road Derenberger said he talked to Cold on and several witnesses reported they had seen Woodrow talking to a man on
the same road.
Woodrow in an interview. The smile says it all.
Ruby Derenberger would be reported to have explained: "You should have seen him when he got home. He looked awful.
I thought he’d struck and killed somebody with the truck. He loves to play with the children, but not that night. I had to
shoo them out..." Continuing, Ruby added after Woodrow arrived home that night: "...He just sat there in the kitchen,
grey-coloured and saying, ‘You’re going to think I’m crazy,’ and ‘you’re going to laugh at me."
When told what had occurred, his wife did not laugh.
..............................
Alas like many news articles, the media brouhaha calms down and the microphones get packed away. But for Woodrow
Derenberger, Indrid Cold hadn't finished with him. The grinning man with hidden hands began to visit the sewing machine
salesman's rural home and with his new-found connection with the fourth estate, Woodrow regularly reported the sojourns.
As the months rolled by into 1976, his family would admit that they too had seen Cold and other odd happenings around
their home. These events included inquisitive locals showing up on the Derenberger looking for signs of the mirthful visitor
from beyond the stars. Eventually the toll of harassing phone calls and ridicule led Derenberger to seek medical attention
and it would have certainly been a relief when Woodrow's physician gave him a clean bill of health and found no evidence
of chemical imbalance.
With painful headaches and depression being a familiar companion for Woodrow through the following years, he decided
to write a book on his November night with the grinning Indrid Cold. 'Visitors from Lanulos' elucidated on the habits of the
Lanulosians and how they have no need of clothes and generally walk around naked, they have a fifty-six-person Guiding
Council whose members are elected every six months and on one occasion, took Woodrow to Venus where the residents
also shunned clothing.
Needless to say, Ruby divorced him and soon after, Woodrow felt it prudent to move away from the area to escape his
notoriety. We cannot verify whether the disintegration of their marriage was due to Woodrow's out-of-this-world belief
structure or Ruby just didn't like her husband patronising with jovial off-worlders who allowed their privates to be on show.
Which ever, Indrid Cold has a lot to answer for.
Read The TV Guide, yer' don't need a TV.
