Steven LaChance Blog

I’ve always been drawn to stories that whisper of the unknown—the kind that make you glance over your shoulder, as if something unseen might be watching. The legend of Indrid Cold is one of those stories that sends a shiver down my spine—a mysterious figure whose unnervingly wide grin and glowing eyes seem to linger long after the lights go out. Many say that when he appears, chaos isn’t far behind.

The story began in 1966 when Woodrow Derenberger recounted a bizarre roadside encounter in West Virginia. According to Derenberger, a mysterious stranger emerged from a metallic craft and communicated telepathically, introducing himself as Indrid Cold. Though he appeared strikingly human, there was an undeniable otherness about him. He spoke of a utopian world called Lanulos—a realm free of war and suffering, as if lifted straight from a ‘60s science fiction novel. Yet Derenberger wasn’t alone in his experience. Similar accounts soon surfaced: figures with fixed, eerie smiles emerging from the shadows, silently watching, their presence marked by an unsettling aura. While some dismissed these encounters as mass hysteria, others sensed that something far stranger was at work.

John Keel, author of The Mothman Prophecies, once remarked, “We are all swimming in a sea of mystery, and sometimes the waves get a little rough.” In many ways, Indrid Cold is one of those waves—a ripple in reality that challenges our understanding of the world. One witness in Point Pleasant recalled seeing him standing under a streetlight, his unnerving smile fixed in place, shortly after a reported Mothman sighting. And then the Silver Bridge collapsed. Was Cold watching, waiting, or even orchestrating these events?

Indrid Cold’s legend isn’t confined to West Virginia. There are earlier accounts—one from 1901 in Wales described a “gleaming man” who vanished after probing deeply personal fears, and another from 1966 in England detailed a visit from a grinning man in a silver suit just before a sudden power outage. Local descriptions often portray this figure not as an ordinary person, but as an ominous presence—a harbinger of misfortune.

That smile, in particular, has become the subject of numerous chilling accounts. Witnesses describe it as fixed and unnaturally wide, as though etched permanently on his face. In one unsettling case from the 1970s, a woman claimed she saw him standing silently in her apartment, his laughter echoing in a void before he vanished. Two days later, her brother died under mysterious circumstances. “He wasn’t human,” she insisted, noting that he even carried a faint scent of burnt wires. These fleeting glimpses, the strange sensations, and the tragedies that seem to follow paint a picture of something too vast and enigmatic to be easily understood.

So, what is Indrid Cold? A monster? An alien? A prophet? Some speculate that he may have been connected to the Mothman sightings—a dimension-hopping trickster involved in events beyond our comprehension. Others tie him to ancient folklore, comparing him to Celtic Aos Sí or Navajo skinwalkers, beings said to appear before disasters strike. One chilling account from 1966 even reports that Cold allegedly stated, “I’m here to watch the show,” just hours before a couple mysteriously disappeared. Was this a cryptic reference to the Silver Bridge collapse—or a hint of something even more ominous?

One thing is clear: whenever Indrid Cold appears, chaos seems never far behind. House fires, car crashes, and inexplicable tragedies often follow in his wake. Some believe that entities like him feed on fear, and that his unyielding smile isn’t one of benign humor but a foreboding promise—a reminder that some mysteries might be best left unexplored.