Houston’s Batman in the 1950s
The Bayou City has a Spider-Man and a Batman featured on the news and social media today, but did you know of a non-DC superhero version of a Houston Batman in the 1950s?
Long before Batman became a fixture of blockbuster movies, television shows, and comic book fandom, a Houston family reported seeing something that sounded like the Caped Crusader right in their own backyard!
In June 1953, the Houston Chronicle published an actual article headlined “‘Unearthly Batman’ Terrifies Watchers,” describing a strange nighttime sighting on Houston’s North Side. Witnesses claimed the entity possessed large, bat-like wings and hovered silently above the ground before vanishing into the night.
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According to the June 18, 1953, newspaper report, three people sitting on the front porch of an apartment house at 818 East Third Street said they saw an unusual figure perched in a pecan tree.
The witnesses described what appeared to be a winged man surrounded by a strange glow.
One witness was 14-year-old Judy Meyer, who told the Chronicle, “I saw it.”
Another witness, 23-year-old housewife Hilda Walker, said she was sitting on the porch when the bizarre event unfolded.
A ‘Man With Wings’
The newspaper reported that the figure appeared to be about 61/2 feet tall and was dressed in what witnesses described as gray or black, tight-fitting clothing.
Walker offered a possible explanation for how the strange sight first appeared.
She said the group suddenly saw a huge shadow about 25 feet away across the lawn. At first, she thought it might have been an enlarged reflection of a moth caught in a nearby streetlight.
But then the shadow appeared to bounce upward into a pecan tree. That was when the witnesses said they looked up and saw the figure.
According to Walker’s account, the “man with wings like a bat” stood on a branch for about 30 seconds before the light surrounding him slowly began to fade.
Then, the figure disappeared.
The experience apparently frightened Judy Meyer, who screamed as the strange light went out.
Then Came the ‘Loud Swoosh’
The story didn’t end with the disappearance.
The witnesses told the Chronicle they immediately heard a loud swooshing sound over the rooftops across the street.
Walker described it as sounding like a white flash or a torpedo-shaped object.
Another witness, 33-year-old Howard Phillips, a tool plant inspector, said the figure looked like a man in a tight-fitting uniform and compared it to a paratrooper.
Phillips admitted that he had previously dismissed stories about flying saucers.
“I’ve heard so much about flying saucer stories and I thought all those people telling the stories were crazy,” the Chronicle quoted him as saying. “But now I don’t know what to believe.”
Phillips said that after the strange figure disappeared, the group saw another flash of light rise from another tree and “take off like a jet.”
Houston Police Investigated
The witnesses reported the incident to Houston police according to the Chronicle, and police said they were investigating. Of course, the 1953 newspaper story never established what the witnesses actually saw.
But it’s a fun piece of old Houston history, particularly because the witnesses’ description of a mysterious man with bat-like wings appeared just a few years after Batman’s debut in movie theaters in the 1940s-era Batman serials, but before The Batman 1960s TV show on ABC, while the character was becoming increasingly recognizable in American popular culture.
In a 2018 Texas Hill Country article, writer Max McNabb covered the Houston Batman and compared it to the Mothman of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, that was seen later in the 1960s. This bizarre sighting later became the movie The Mothman Prophecies starring Richard Gere.
Bat specialist Suzanne Jurek once told Channel 13 that, “If there were a bat as tall as a man, his wingspan would have to be 18 feet or more from wingtip to wingtip. It’s not something that you would easily mistake.”
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