The Black Flash: US Mysteries

Between the late 1930s and the end of 1945, the people of Provincetown, Massachusetts, were terrorized by a mysterious figure that became known as the Black Flash. The first people to report seeing the Black Flash were children, and so the adults dismissed it as a product of their overactive imaginations – but then they began seeing him too! 

Described as a tall figure, between eight and ten feet, wearing a long black cape and black hood, the Black Flash was often reported chasing residents while making strange sounds, and jumping over impossibly tall fences. 

The first adult to see the Black Flash was a woman called Maria Costa. She was walking through town when he began chasing her, while making a strange buzzing sound, like that of a giant insect. 

In 1945, four policemen confronted the Black Flash in a school playground. The police told the figure to surrender or they’d shoot, but he just laughed, jumped over the playground’s 10-foot fence and disappeared. 

There are slightly different versions of the incident that ended the Black Flash’s reign of terror, but they all go something like this: in December 1945, the four Janard children were home alone when they saw the Black Flash advancing on them in their backyard. Terrified, they ran inside their home but then the Black Flash began turning the doorknobs, trying to enter.

The oldest boy filled a bucket with hot water and ran upstairs. He opened a window and emptied the bucket of water over the Black Flash’s head. The Black Flash cried out and ran away — and was never seen again. To this day, nobody knows if the Black Flash was a supernatural creature or an athletic local playing a mean hoax.