THE MONSTER THAT WAITED!

Flatwoods Colleagues Dave Spinks and Frank Feschino

THE MONSTER THAT WAITED!

[Rooted in Ridicule—Raised by the Relentless]

 by Alfred Lehmberg

…For half a century, the "Flatwoods Monster" waited. ...Chill. There will be no ominous music, only the music of the celebratory!

Still, it lurked in West Virginia's "hollers and the hills," waiting in the memory of one warm and quiet Indian-summer September night... when, suddenly, the sky tore itself wide open, and something wrapped in flames came down—came down with the force of a story refusing to die… even when government officials endeavored to bury it, cover it up, and even tried to hide it… forever!

The people of Flatwoods remembered, oh, and how they remembered, even when they pretended not to and had little desire to double down on a continuing embarrassment, admitting that they remembered! The witnesses recalled everything; however, even when they were told by officious authorities that they shouldn’t… (note the upcoming link!) 

...And the land remembered, too, because land always does, somehow... some collected memory of the persons living and breathing on it... especially when the land of that one particular farm in Flatwoods was, itself, left emotionally scarred and intellectually poisoned by an unusual, very highly strange occurrence on September 12, 1952!

On that night, remember, a seemingly damaged UFO (realistically conjectured to be the victim of UFO shootdown orders very publicly in effect at the time!), a UFO witnessed to be on fire from these conjectured attacks, went down on the “mountaintop” of the Fisher Farm at 7:25 pm! That's the history! 

Shortly thereafter, a 12-foot-tall metal-clad occupant departed its, thought crippled, ship! It would encounter a group of curious folks witnessing the event who had gone in search of the downed object they’d seen land! Abruptly, it put in its startling appearance! Enter, the "Flatwoods Monster." 

Also entering almost at the same time? Official and unending ridicule! It was the government's standard operating procedure... SOP.

We observe that memory, itself, becomes a fragile thing when the ridicule of it is weaponized. Ridicule, linked just above, came fast, and it came quickly. 

The newspapers mocked it. The broadcasters sarcastically smirked. The official voices—the ones wearing suits and carrying clipboards—dismissed, deflated, and denied it, as our “anxious agency mavens of  duplicity” will... we can observe! The eyewitnesses were treated as curiosities, then as embarrassments… and then as subjects of mockery. 

Moreover, this thing, this so-called "Monster," once seen in the raw terror of its huge and towering stature? ...It became a skirt-wearing punchline! A cartoon. A hallucination. A thing to be forgotten and pushed away into the shadows of cryptid woo-woo history that only the non-serious may write about. As a result, the small town of Flatwoods fell silent... and that silence deafened for decades!

There were no festivals, guest speakers, or bric-a-brac sales after 1952. No commemorations. No civic pride demonstrations. No annual retellings. …Just crickets in the hush of a beleaguered town that had been taught to doubt its own eyes… and be quiet! 

The "Monster" became an unfocused ghost... not because it was unreal, but because the immutable culture, and its official abandonment, demanded it! The story was not erased—it was shamed into non-being! By design! The government had quickly stepped in and executed a well-rehearsed job of covering up this UFO incident and “tamping it down.” Not the link above.

Flash forward forty years! Children grew up hearing only errant fragments of an old folklore tale. Adults grew old and died remembering only the fear and embarrassment they had lived through when curious visitors, vapid lookie-loos, and predatory “reporters” periodically trampled their town! 

The witnesses aged, carrying a truth that they were too scared to talk about for fear of being ridiculed again …And the "Monster"? Whatever it had been, wherever it came from, and whatever it symbolized or wanted, became a diminishing myth… a myth without a keeper.

Then, one day, a young man arrived in Braxton County, a man who was visiting some family members for a short weekend trip in September of 1991! ...And Lo! He would be a man totally unaware of what he was going to stumble into... the "Flatwoods Monster" affair!

This very sober and focused young man was not a “believer,” nor was he a “debunker”...but his opinion on "such that provokes that this anxious polarity" would soon change! ...What WAS this damned thing!

…As time passed, he couldn’t get it out of his mind! He'd keep coming back to it! 

His curiosity would get the best of him, finally, and he began what would become an intense investigation into the case! He visited the area more often… delved into what there was of the lore... and became, by increments, a total believer! This writer shares that belief, as the facts are hard to ignore… It’s hard to argue against the existence of the sun when it clears the horizon at every dawn! The closer you look at it... the brighter it gets. Over time, brighter and brighter!

He would soon become a cartographer of these forgotten things! He would become a chronicler of the unspoken… and it would consume him for the rest of his life.

Standing on the shoulders of persons like Ivan Sanderson, Kathleen May, and Stanton Friedman et al… he would see farther and in greater detail... discovering the shocking tie-in between Flatwoods and a very obvious if undeclared air war with ET. There is data!

Yes, folks, and lots of data… In July of 1952, the Air Force revealed it had ordered their fighter pilots to "shoot down" UFOs if they couldn't talk them down! As we would soon come to find out, there was also an overwhelming and shocking number of fighter jets and airmen who had nebulously vanished into thin air or died under mysterious circumstances during that era! Equally nebulous records of these "losses" were just not making sense!

Moreover, many of these fighter pilots were also decorated WWII and Korean War Aces… distinguished combat veterans who had survived horrendous air war battles abroad only to come home and die or mysteriously disappear in a highly strange one at home! 

Wait! What? Can it not be apparent to the reader yet that an air war of another kind was going on and being heavily covered up by the Air Force, right here at home! Didn't the Air Force think ahead and realize that these UFO might actually shoot back? Someone, please call the waiter for the effin' reality check! It's no stretch, reader, to suppose that UFOs ubiquitously overflying prohibited airspaces, civil and nuclear, and provoking (...excusing? We wanted one, remember.) these shootdown orders alluded to, MIGHT produce the crash of one of those air combat UFOs in Flatwoods' backyard! 

We remind the reader that this new young man, aforementioned, arriving on the scene was a college-trained artist who graduated from the "Paier School of Art" in Hamden, Connecticut, as has been recently written. Over the course of 4-years, he majored in illustration art; he studied portraiture painting, anatomical drawing, life drawing, was trained in various media techniques, and specialized in pencil drawing, akin to a forensic artist. We talked about all this! This would be KEY for Flatwoods!

Moreover, he would be a credible researcher with the stubbornness of a man who had decided that this critical truth deserved a second chance, especially when no one else was telling it, and no one else cared! He was just what was required: the right man at the right time! 

Later, we would come to find out that this man's art background combined with his research skills would play that critical role in revealing the true identity of the "Flatwoods Monster"! This intrepid young man’s name was, of course, Frank C. Feschino Jr. 

At first, he came quietly. So quiet and undetected, in fact, only a few people in the area knew he was even there. Truly… Flatwoods residents didn’t know what to make of him, at first… Frankly, he was treated initially as just another Carpetbagger as of old!

See, Outsiders had come before—reporters and curiosity‑seekers—but they had always taken more than they gave... were rude and presumptuous! Patronizing and objectifying! That was the report to Feschino! 

Reporters and writers had come to extract, not restore, and would cover the story as a joke… annually even, during the Halloween season, reporting it as a silly folklore tale. The townsfolk hated that. Every Halloween since 1952… laughter at Flatwoods’ expense. Ah, mirth!

At the beginning of his quest, Feschino was taunted, scoffed at, treated unkindly, and even physically threatened by some of the locals while asking questions in and around the Flatwoods, Sutton, and Gassaway areas. He was told, "We don't talk about that 'monster' round' here no more—got it!," and "Why don't you leave this story alone, boy, and git, we've had enough of your like already!" as well as, "We don't need your kind here—snooping around town and talking about no monster nonsense."

…But, things began to change when the locals started seeing Feschino more often, becoming a more familiar face. They would ask him what hotel he was staying at when coming into Braxton County. In other words, "Where you stayin' at when you come to these parts, boy?!"

Feschino explained that there was no need for a hotel because he had family in Braxton County and would stay with them at their horse and cattle farm in the mountains of nearby Frametown! That seemed the charm making a difference!

Flatwoods attitude slowly changed; then, the locals even warmed up to Feschino! He wasn't considered so much of an outsider anymore, once they learned he had "kin folk" here-abouts...! During the early years of his investigation, by the way, a computer-less era... "boots-on-the-ground" investigator Frank Feschino traveled to countless libraries and bookstores throughout West Virginia and across many surrounding states seeking information about the "Flatwoods Monster" incident.

Consequently, he sat at library microfilm machines for hundreds of hours, found many articles, and then copied them for his record. He bought every book he could get his hands on containing any bit of lore, information about the Flatwoods story, as well.

During his travels, Feschino also met several antiquarian book-sellers along the way, and went to many major book shows. The dealers he had met and befriended had saved him every UFO book and publication containing the Flatwoods story... and more!

Remember reader, this was a pre-eBay era, and Feschino was still able to scour the country, gather and accumulate a massive collection of material on the Flatwoods case… that no one even cared about or was interested in at the time! 

Subsequently, Feschino had amassed a huge collection of material...I mean a tremendous-sized assemblage of various newspaper articles, many original books, and other publications on the Flatwoods case. 

Though, as Feschino reviewed all of the information he had at hand, he found something very puzzling about the story! He discovered that it had been so badly retold so many times over the years that the story had become grossly distorted, inaccurate, and larded with absolutely overwhelming (and discrediting!) inconsistencies!   

Still working low-key, Feschino eventually met and interviewed many of the key witnesses who were involved in the incident! He sought to find the answers he had been looking for to set the record straight. He'd succeed to a degree!

During these early years, he encountered and worked with primary "Monster" witnesses Kathleen May and her son, also a witness, Fred May. A key point of the case that Feschino quickly discovered while working with them was that the so-called "Monster," was NOT a monster at all. Wait! What? Not a monster?!

The witnesses told Feschino that the well-known drawing of the figure, which had been seen in countless books and publications since 1952, was NOT accurate. This is a meaningful repetition of what has been recounted previously.

This giant figure, the patient reader will recall, was illustrated as a garment-wearing "monster" that magically floated, had a big round head covered with a cloth hood, was wearing a long-pleated skirt and had long skinny arms tricked out with obligatory (but nonsensical!) monster claws. No.

Illustrator Frank Feschino did something that the artist hired by the TV show did not do, nor had the time to do, or just really didn't care to do. Feschino sat with the witnesses on different occasions, NOT just one time… he talked with them effusively, he interviewed them relentlessly, and he listened exhaustively, as has been said!

He accomplished something that the previous original investigators, nor any other artist since that time in 1952, was able to do! No one was able to get a true and accurate portrayal of the "Flatwoods Monster," and illustrate what it actually looked like… except for Frank Feschino. 

This is key, reader, because Feschino was the one to change the skirt-wearing scary boojum monster, disconnected from any explanatory mechanism or story explaining its appearance, into a full-blown mechanism or mechanical contrivance (a weird one!) resulting from the landing of a craft associated with what was an air war of a sort ordered by the president... or maybe the reader thinks that the president wasn't read in as regard military orders to shoot UFOs down.

For several more years, Feschino continued to research and investigate the so-called "Monster" of Flatwoods... but at a much deeper level... and one might even say he went down “deeper into the rabbit hole”! He's go deeper if he could! 

Feschino continued to go back to Flatwoods, he came with new information; new documentation, he came with official military records, several maps to reconstruct the storyline… and he came with a determination that bordered on obsession!

As time passed, Feschino continued to befriend more locals, made several new contacts, and they began to take him seriously. They knew he had started to unravel a cover-up to reveal the truth, and moreover, he meant honest business. 

Proclaimed HERE with evidence! Frank Feschino was the very first having the audacity to say out loud: This story matters and must be faithfully told, or it will be lost forever! 

He listened. He documented. He respected. …He honored. He treated all the witnesses he had come to work with—not as oddities—but as human beings enduring something extraordinarily unfair… and being punished for it ever since. He treated the town of Flatwoods not as a spectacle but as a place with a deep wound that deserved healing. …And at last, Flatwoods began to thaw. Not bad for initially being assessed as just another carpetbagger!

Now, this writer asks an important question; where were all the people who now claim to be the “experts” and “aficionados” on the Flatwoods case? The "writers," the "authors," the podcast "storytellers," these “documentary” makers and noisome "naysayers"; where were they back then when Feschino was traveling thousands of miles to document this incident before the witnesses died… but carving the story out at all? 

This writer will tell you where they all were... They were nowhere to be found. They were nonexistent! Crickets! Some would too kindly call them "Armchair quarterbacks," while other truer researchers call them lazy hacks or even grasping plagiarists! 

Moreover, most of them had never even set foot on the Fisher Farm where all the events occurred that night, let alone document, photograph, and videotape the encounter area and entire farm, for decades, now! Feschino was first… AND last! The Fisher Farm is presently locked up tighter than a bull’s patoot in fly season!

Furthermore, the May family witnesses, Kathleen May, her two sons, and others who had been silenced by decades of derision—found in Feschino someone who believed their dignity mattered! They trusted him and had even taken him in as one of their own. This writer saw evidence of this. It was like The May family (or what remained of it when this writer got there) and the whole town of Flatwoods carried him around on a little three-cornered cushion. Feschino would not abuse this trust.

No. Feschino didn’t sensationalize them. He didn’t exploit them. He didn’t render them to props. He documented their testimonies and gave them back their story… and when a story is returned to its rightful owners, it begins to breathe again! 

The "Monster" stirred. Not literally—not in the woods, not in the sky, but in the cultural consciousness of a town that had forgotten that it was allowed to remember it, at all! Gradually, the "Monster" awakened, opened its eyes, took a deep breath, and rose. …And metaphorically speaking, the "Monster" looked in the mirror and saw the true reflection of itself once again... ...it had not been forgotten after all! 

The "Monster" became less of a burden and more of a symbol to the region. Less of a shame and more of a heritage. Less of a joke and more than just a West Virginia legend. …And a true story, when treated with respect, demands celebration!

So, in 2001, for the first time in the history of Flatwoods—for the first time since that fateful night in September of 1952—the town held a festival. A FESTIVAL!

This was an event that had never existed before! A gathering that no one had dared to propose! A festival that would have been unthinkable in the prior decades of provoked silence! An event that required someone to say: We are done being ashamed… and Feschino would organize a substantiation for his clear admonishment to the town of Flatwoods… that SHAME… was a thing of the past! 

Besides Feschino, Mayor Peggy Clise believed in this festival idea, too, and supported him 100 percent! The witnesses that Feschino was working with attended, stepping into public light for the first time in half a century!

…And the "Monster"? The one that had waited in the darkness for so long? It finally had an honored day of its own! 

The festival was not a carnival of fear. It was not a circus of mockery. It was not a sideshow. It was a reclamation. A cultural resurrection. It was a communal exhale after fifty years of holding its breath… And once the first festival happened, why, the second became easier. And then the third. …And the fourth...

Immediately after 1952 the base incident was written up in many books and publications, but the story was fragmented, inconsistent, and inaccurate. The story had become confusing, too puzzling, and was never told in its entirety. Moreover? The truth behind the government cover-up was never going to be known or even revealed.

Coming up to speed, no one had ever cared about the incident! No one bothered to put in the time nor the money required to uncover the truth to the depth that Feschino did! After he became involved in the incident in 1993, he’d spend decades investigating it, he’d piece the fractured story together, he’d write his informing books, and then he’d publish them... And that truth that this writer has been belaboring... that truth was finally revealed. 

The forewords and epilogues for Feschino’s books were written by his colleague, Mr. Stanton T. Friedman, who saw real substance in Feschino’s assertions regarding ET air war, and he devoted many years in attention to that project, himself, as well. 

Feschino's Government cover-up story, his rendition of the "Flatwoods Monster," his eyewitness interviews, his artwork, and photos are all copyright-protected in his books under American copyright law, which is standard procedure to properly publish a book and protect it, as anyone should know. Some seem to need a reminder.  

That said, after Feschino put the "Flatwoods Monster" incident back into the productive spotlight with his books, the publicity he garnered, and the attention his story received was overwhelming and effusive. Feschino's works would be featured in countless newspapers, magazines, and internet articles throughout the world!

The author has been interviewed by numerous radio talk show hosts including personalities Whitley Strieber, George Noory, Bill Birnes, Richard Dolan, Connie Willis, Alejandro Rojas, and Shadoe Stevens, just to name a few. Feschino also appeared on many West Virginia television news broadcasts, West Virginia PBS TV, and several West Virginia radio programs. He also guest-appeared at numerous lectures and did many book signings throughout the state of West Virginia, as well. He is, quite simply, THE subject matter expert as regards Flatwoods and its ancillaries. Accept no substitutes.

While building momentum through the media, Feschino also caught the eye of several conference promoters and subsequently traveled throughout the United States to spread the word about the "Flatwoods Monster." He was also featured in the first-ever "Flatwoods Monster" cover story with a feature article in UFO Magazine penned by this writer. 

Frank Feschino also appeared in a rather "unfocusing" episode of "Monster Quest" on the HISTORY CHANNEL with Mr. Friedman and Fred May, which featured the "Flatwoods Monster" and "Frametown Monster" incidents of 1952. Feschino’s been to all the rodeos, got the requisite shirts, and earned all the badges.

…And the "Monster"? Well, whatever it had been, whatever it had represented—it now became a guardian of identity rather than a specter of embarrassment. …And no matter what anyone believes happened on that night back in 1952, the "Flatwoods Monster" was positively thrust back into the public eye once again… indefinitely, this time!

The "Monster," the well-recognized (if false) original 1952 "Flatwoods Monster," had become a mascot, a tourism icon, a symbol of local pride! Businesses adopted it. Artists painted it. Children and adults wore it on T‑shirts. The town and local communities embraced what had been shunned… after once being told, ironically, to forget about it. Flatwoods became known, not for its ashamed silence, but for its world-shaking, if difficult to accept, story!

…But the deeper truth is this: The "Monster" did not rise on its own. It was raised!

Quite simply, it was raised (resurrected?) by a man who refused to let ridicule be the final word! It was further raised by witnesses who found their voices again, who weren't scared to speak out and stood steadily by Feschino, the sole man able to substantiate and actualize their truth... give them their voice! 

It was raised by people who decided that their past was worth celebrating! It was raised by the simple, stubborn act of remembering... and recollections are going to be more easily recalled when presented with the facts, which Feschino was able to iterate in documented abundance.

…And in this “remembering,” something extraordinary happened! The "Monster" became more than just a mythical incident. More than a sighting. More than a headline. More than just a West Virginia legend in a crass fabulist’s dodgy “woo-woo cryptid book.”

It became a testament to the idea that truth—even a highly strange truth, even an uncomfortable truth—deserves its place in the world! 

It became proof that communities can reclaim what was stolen from them. It became a reminder that stories do not die when they are mocked; they die when they are abandoned! 

After decades of ridicule and silence, Flatwoods stopped abandoning its story. …And the "Monster," patient as a West Virginia Blue Ridge, stepped out of the darkness and back into the light once again. …But this time the ridicule and jokes were left behind! This time, Feschino had pieced together the REAL story and unraveled the cover-up with his due diligence and incisive scholarship… and his fact-supported revelations! The Flatwoods story… and beyond, is his, by damn, in this old retired soldier's uncredulous estimation! Remember what this writer said about the sun.

Today, the festivals and events continue to carry on with another generation of folks taking the reins and keeping the story alive. The celebrations grow, and there is a Flatwoods Monster Museum in Sutton as well. 

The "Monster’s" image appears on signs, souvenirs, murals, and has its own chairs! It even has hamburgers and food items named after it. 

Now, a new generation of citizens from that area thrive because of it, only too often completely forgetting the man who helped resurrect the story 35 years ago... when local consciousness didn't give a rat's pa-toot about it, and who want to cast him off NOW as that carpetbagger aforementioned. ...This is as uncalled for as it is unfair! If he was a carpetbagger, he was one who ironically paid off!

Regardless, he remains woven into its fabric—not as a mythmaker, but as a truth-teller and history-restorer. Before him: silence. After him: legacy… legacy and profit. Yes, Frank Feschino spent the better part of his adult life on this story so as to tell the truth and so that future generations could learn about it. …Learn FROM it.

Its lessons are vast AND world-shaking, as has been mentioned! So, again, this writer must ask, what were all of the self-proclaimed current-day Flatwoods "experts, writers, authors, and armchair podcasters" doing while Feschino was conducting his substantive and all-encompassing investigations... for decades? Yes, the ones who ignobly profit off the "Flatwoods Monster" case and tell the public they have, "The Real Story of the Flatwoods Monster." Where'd they get that story?

Everybody is an “expert” now! One shakes one’s head…

The "Monster" waited fifty years for someone to tell the full and accurate story, truthfully! It sat quietly for five decades waiting to be resurrected. It found that someone. …And the town, the entire county… if not the whole of West Virginia to a degree… found itself. 

Today, in the hills of Braxton County, where the night sky still remembers what it saw, a 12-foot-tall so-called "Monster" knows that its waiting is over. It is home and recognized again. 

Thanks, Mr. Feschino, for not giving up on this fascinating story and for your many, many years of dedication and your SERVICE to Flatwoods AND West Virginia… service while others are content merely to profit… without the smallest word of appreciation or a line of credit to the guy who made any of it happen at all! 

Verily, the truth of the Flatwoods Monster, itself, its history, the recorded data of that history, and its documented audit trail… which Feschino spent the whole of his adult life ferreting out, making sense of, and publishing on… can only be measured chronologically “BF” and “AF.” …Before Feschino... and After Feschino. Smoke THAT if you need to... or should! Read on! 

The Cover-Up of the "Flatwoods Monster"!

Captain E. Ruppelt

The Cover-Up of the "Flatwoods Monster"!

[Official Duplicity, Standard Operating Procedure...revealed and examined... ]

By Alfred Lehmberg

 

In 1952, Captain Edward J. Ruppelt was the Chief of Project Blue Book at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio. His unrewarded and unrewarding tenure was the swan song of what was supposed to be a trustworthy “public face” on the “official” initiative that was the government’s  “information” conduit to a watching public… on UFOs... UFOs just NOT going away. 

This initiative began with the BEST of intentions, but as the nameless “pecuniary” and “status quo” realities began to impose and intrude from a perhaps "unelected," above? The more it was to become a closed institution of official “misdirection” and “duplicity”! This was revived from all that somewhat by Lt. Col. Robert J. Friend (1958 to 1963), but by then? The damage was done. 

The last two Blue Book chiefs were men of color in what was a highly racist military at the time. This reflects, sadly, the official UFO concern at that moment as it pertained to that information conduit aforementioned, to the public. ...This writer was in the military in 1969, and reports that it was still pretty racist, even then. There are receipts!

Moving on, the United States' brave UFO investigative initiative began as official Agency #1, Project Sign in 1947! It would go south quickly... 

Project Sign! This courageous lot suggested right from the start that these UFOs might be ET (cue the ominous music)! That refreshingly inspiring attitude very suspiciously gave way (predictably in hindsight!) to Official Agency #2, Project Grudge (1949), truly, its name way too on the nose. This project would include the folks who'd become infamous for adopting that reflexive posture of the debunking faux-skeptical crowd we’ve all come to know and love!

Agency #2, then, finally devolved into our Official Agency #3, Project Blue Book... a gelded record keeper at the last, no operations budget for investigation, and having to beg to rent the odd necessary car. In November of 1951, Ruppelt was appointed the Chief of Project Grudge at its dire end, name later changed to Project Blue Book, as was pointed out, and held that position until September 1953…

Only, back up a minute a bleedin' minute! What in blue blazes was Project Sign looking at (?!?)!? One must wonder about the anxious directives foreshadowing the provocation of its philosophy AND mission change from Sign to Grudge, then impotence going forward? Onward...

Back to Ruppelt, during his career and afterwards, he’d collaborated with pioneer UFO researcher and author Donald Keyhoe on UFO subjects... pervading... and on the  cases of the day... unfolding! We’ve written about Keyhoe before.

During one particular conversation, Ruppelt admitted to Keyhoe the facts about certain “strategies” that the government had directed be used to cover up UFO reports! Wait... what?

No, this is key, and the reader needs to “gird loins” wherever they’ve migrated! See, the entire issue is right here!

The following appeared in Mr. Keyhoe's 1973 book, "Aliens From Space." It comes from an uncontested and documented discussion between these two men; Captain Ruppelt and Donald Keyhoe… Ruppelt informed Keyhoe of the following: 

"We're ordered to hide sightings when possible, but if a strong report does get out, we have to publish a fast explanation—make up something to kill the report in a hurry. We must also ridicule the witnesses, especially if we can't figure a plausible answer." 

 Wait! What?!

“Ordered to hide sightings”? “Fast explanations”? “Kill the report”? “Ridicule the witnesses”? That’s as ethically dodgy as it is morally spotty! …Wait! One might presume that all that is done by our elected officiality and is only in the interest of a lay humanity’s sensibilities and their civil amity… you know, buyin’ food and cars, payin’ mortgages, and just tryin’ to get through their duty’s day… perhaps in the interest of safety and avoiding a disturbance of that peace aforementioned? [cough…].

This writer, 78 and a retired professional soldier who has observed how the cultural corporate clocks have turned… …doesn’t buy it either. We’ll forget for a moment that if we had jumped this imminent, eminent, and eventual ufological hurdle back in 1952… well, this writer, all of us, would have known nothing else.

Too, in a momentary digression not trying to allay fears of an "unknown"… any UFO "Disclosure" will be without regard to “cause of fact” or “consequences” of same, and beyond even the warranted suspicion and even seven decades of this writer’s honest intuition... that lay humanity is more served than disserved by a full-blown ufological disclosure… well, devil take it! A forthcoming officiality and Disclosure is required… or nothing means anything, at all!

Sincerely, the current “manor lords” and “corporate transnationals,” the ruling Epstein class, if the reader will, can perhaps be awash in a sea of upset pricey apple carts a result of failing mergers and lost fortunes… a straight-line consequence of these UFO disclosures… cat-birders denied their purloined and over-privileged powers & perks, powers & perks themselves denied by any human sensibility, sentient mores, or responcible ethics… flatly, a fairness restored a result of disclosure, in a short phrase… and that aforementioned intuition! Still, it remains!

These official ufological cover-ups happen with regularity, are the du jour official response to UFOs even today, and as a matter of course this is without regard to the “reasons,” UFO actualities are covered up… …and for reasons we won’t hair-split here! “Officiality” is doing it, be it resolved (!), and the evidence comes right from the provenance of the government’s own disingenuous department, or Project Bluebook’s “Standard Operating Procedure”… provided above!

J'accuse! See? PBB was at America’s official ufological nascency! Duplicitous, disingenuous, and dismissive from its second start… just a shiny “thing” or “mechanism” to explain and rationalize this “UFO thing” to the mooing and complacent public at large… not very respectful. One treats people like cattle and they only get cattle... and unrest!

We arrive at the observation that this “Official Conspiracy” pointed out here... was exactly what happened during the cover-up of the "Flatwoods Monster" incident in the years following 1952! Posted! 

Donald Keyhoe, it’s discovered, investigated the Flatwoods affair and wrote about it in his 1953 book, "Flying Saucers from Outer Space. He informs us of the following information through one of his many high-profile contacts in Washington, D.C.,

"I discovered that the Air Force had not ignored the Sutton [Flatwoods] report. To avoid public attention, intelligence had worked through the West Virginia State Police, securing all the details."  Securing all the details of what "officials" should be telling the public, that is… is a sensible read... 

He added, "Their check through the state police showed more interest than they had admitted." One wonders why THAT would be! Why lie about how interested you are unless… you’re interested!

You didn't see nothin', boyo!\

On the day after the Flatwoods incident, September 13, 1952, the State Police and Sheriff Bob Carr went to Flatwoods to keep the town in order! It was starting to be overrun by curious visitors and local newspaper reporters.

The officers “spoke” to the witnesses and reporters throughout the day and then returned to town on Sunday. Throughout the weekend, the West Virginia State Police told (dictated to?) several reporters what "they believed" to be the contributing factors of the events that occurred in Flatwoods that night. To wit: behold the heavy lifting the word “hysteria” will be required to do!

The following headline appeared in the "Charleston Daily Mail" on Sunday, September 14th, "Braxton Co. Residents Faint, Become Ill, After Run-In With Weird 10-Foot Monster." The article stated, "State Police laughed the reports off as "hysteria." They said the so-called monster had grown from seven to 17 feet in 24 hours." That sounded both reasonably patronizing and knowledgably dismissive… when it was neither. It was the Party line!

On Monday, September 15th, newspapers throughout West Virginia and the country reported the "Flatwoods Monster" story after being picked up by the "United Press" news service.  As can be seen, additional details about the State Police's involvement had been reported in many of those articles; the following are just a few of the many examples.

The headline of the "Wheeling News-Register" newspaper read, "Metallic Odor Indicates Meteor—Officers Shake Heads Over W. Va. Ogre Tale." Again, that sounded reasonably patronizing and knowledgably dismissive… when it was neither, remember!

No, that “party line” was continued in exacerbation! "State Police and a number of residents hooted at the reports as a product of hysteria." The headline article of the "Fairmont Times" read, "Police Say Braxton Monster Product of 'Mass Hysteria." It reported, "Police figured the smelly boogie-man was the product of 'mass hysteria.'" The headline of "The Wheeling Intelligencer” read, "Monster From Space Roaming W.Va. Hills - Police Discount Half-Man, Half-Dragon Figure Seen in Hills as 'Saucer' [wait for it...] Hysteria." The article stated, "Police laughed. They said the so-called monster had grown from seven to 17 feet in 24 hours. The 'flying saucer' officers speculated, might have been a meteor crashing to earth." 

"Nothing to see here, folks..."

The "Springfield News" newspaper headline read, "Space 'Thing' 17 Feet High Has Red Face, Very Bad BO." The article reported, "State Police said a number of residents hooted at the reports as a product of mass hysteria." It also reported, "Authorities said they believed the 'flying saucer' which Mrs. May's sons saw was a meteorite." The reportage just got sillier and sillier, but it kept to the talking points, and it followed Ruppelt’s reported script!

Remember, these quotes are but just a few examples littering the media of the time! This information also appeared in numerous other newspapers across the United States and world! “Mass Hysteria” remained the talking-point go-to meme, but! …From where did this dodgy explanation come but the offices of Blue Book… And who was it giving Captain Ruppelt his UFO marching orders regarding “tamp down” and “witness ridicule”? This writer is looking beyond President Truman…  

Was all this mendacious and disingenuous “official” pushback a mere coincidence, or is it tracking precisely with what Ruppelt reported as standard operating procedure regarding the suppression of UFO stories, to Keyhoe? The latter is more sensible than the former. The former makes no sense at all.

No… the aforementioned debunking encouragements made by the West Virginia State Police’s “dictations” to reporters and dutifully published in the press were actually that tactic implemented by the government… to kill the Flatwoods report! Let us reexamine the statement Captain Ruppelt made to Donald Keyhoe! 

"We're ordered to hide sightings when possible, but if a strong report does get out we have to publish a fast explanation—make up something to kill the report in a hurry. We must also ridicule the witnesses, especially if we can't figure a plausible answer." 

Noted! These dictating “debunking statements” that the State Police made from day one… were the same explanations that Project Blue Book officials used continuously throughout the duration of their cover-up with this case! SOP! Standard Operating Procedure! 

In January of 1953, four months after the Flatwoods event, Mr. Keyhoe phoned the Pentagon and spoke to Air Force public liaison Albert Chop. He was seeking an explanation concerning the Flatwoods case.

Keyhoe explains, "I was told what intelligence believed to be the facts." Here were the Air Force's answers, "First, the glowing object seen by Mrs. May and the boys actually was a meteor; it merely appeared to be landing when it disappeared over the hill." He continued, "Second, the group did see two glowing eyes, probably those of a large owl perched on a limb. Underbrush below may have given the impression of a giant figure, and in their excitement they imagined the rest." One is reminded of a male bovine's steaming excrement!

Example of a typical 10073 Card

Furthermore, the Project Blue Book, "10073 RECORD CARD" recorded the "Flatwoods, West Virginia" incident as case "#2078." They documented the following information in that report, "The West Virginia monster so-called. Actually the object was the well-known Washington area meteor of 12 Sep landing near Flatwoods." Note that!

…See, Feschino noticed something incongruous here, reader! Observe, the Air Force actually had two different conclusions about that alleged [and fulsomely debunked!] "meteor" which "flew over Flatwoods"! Chop told Keyhoe the Air Force believed, "it merely appeared to be landing when it disappeared over the hill" but then, in the Blue Book "10073 RECORD CARD," they report that the meteor made a "landing near Flatwoods." Mendacious SOPs are hard to keep straight!

Regardless, besides "securing all the details" of the "Flatwoods Monster" incident, the West Virginia State Police did have an ulterior motive for their visit to Flatwoods! Their visit to Flatwoods after the incident was actually a two-fold duplicity as the reader may have already seen!

Resolved: The State Police had released deliberate disinformation from the government to the public through the press by laughing at the witnesses and explaining the story off as "mass hysteria" and a "meteor." At that point, the initial debunking phase of the government's plan was implemented and the cover-up of the "Flatwoods Monster" incident had begun. Stage one complete!

Stage two? Subsequently, the effected reporters printed this disinformation in their newspapers, and the discrediting story spread like wildfire after it was picked up by the United Press. As a result, this disinformation was injected into the "Flatwoods Monster" case from the very beginning! Stage two complete!

This was an official mechanism causing the story to be debunked, downplayed, and so made non-believable… relegated to the ignorance and superstition of moonshiner hillbillies ensconced ignorantly in their backwoods hollows of West Virginia! The West Virginia State Police would continue to visit Flatwoods, as well as nearby Sutton, monitoring, and one presumes reporting, on the events unfolding in Flatwoods... for an extended period of time! The tamping "lid" was thought on! The toothpaste was on the way to being back in the tube!

…But, praise be, there was a rub! Feschino explains what happened when credible witnesses Kathleen May, Gene Lemon, and reporter A. Lee Stewart, Jr. appeared on the national TV talk show, "We The People" just four days later on September 19th! Yeah, just when the "monster" story had seemed to be simmering down as a result of the debunking in the press’s tamp-down, the three credible and cogent witnesses blew it all up for the entire planet when they recounted their terrifying "monster" encounter on live television! 

Donald Keyhoe recounts, "It was obvious they [the witnesses] believed the monster was real, and a dozen papers and magazines sent staff writers to Sutton for new angles on the story." As a result, named writers and researchers would become involved! 

It would then be discovered that the official reports just didn’t add up, pan out, or make sense! Feschino would discover that that was to be the hallmark of his investigation, across the board, after he’d picked up the dropped investigative reins from Sanderson and Barker going forward! 

Oh, and as a closing side note, is it just a coincidence that the "We The People" TV program was cancelled after it was aired the following week on September 26th? The Flatwoods Episode was the penultimate one! This was the most popular program on television, after all! The older reader may remember when the "Smothers Brothers" show was abruptly and inexplicably cancelled... it was bigger than that.

During an early phone conversation that Donald Keyoe had with Albert Chop, he explained what occurred after the Flatwoods episode was aired. He told Chop, "This could get out of hand," and added, "Why doesn't the Air Force squelch it?" Chop answered, "We've already said the object was a meteor." What did he mean by that?! Sounds like an admission to a lie for THIS writer!

Keyhoe replied!"A lot of people don't believe it. And the way it's built up is bad." Keyhoe writes, "'It'll die out,” Chop insisted. Keyhoe responded, "But people will remember it later if something breaks." Keyhoe also adds, "…For the monster story was having a serious effect, in addition to letters from worried Americans."

We The People's Dan Seymour

This television program first aired on CBS television from 1948 until 1949, when there were like two and a half, three channels! Then transitioned to NBC TV and was aired from 1949 through 1952. The final program, season 5—episode 13, was the last "We The People" show ever done. 

Did the watchful eye of the government actually pull the plug on this TV show because the "monster" episode revitalized interest in the suppressed story AND scared the hell out of the country? Too, did they begin to reason that an unconstrained media should not be able to tell a story to such a vast audience without some kind of content moderation? This time, it sure seemed to upset their apple cart of deception and duplicity as regards their “Standard Operating Procedure” eh?

See, a seed of doubt about any validity in this deception was planted by a pervasive and unconstrained public media, itself… as it pertains to the contrived, dismissive, and ridiculing publicity surrounding the affair… perhaps growing into what Feschino was able to ferret out, substantially, later on! Sincerely, Feschino’s the only reason we can get up to speed on any of it, at all, now. ...True by watch and warrant. Read on!

Feschino at the infamous tree...

 

Friedman on Feschino...

 ...For that dwindling crowd of nastily noisome naysayers who would dismiss Feschino's "1952 Air War with ET" assertions as a bad science fiction story? Here's the late Stanton Friedman on the subject...

Feschino As Required Key...

Prior Major Players in the Flatwoods Affair, all gone now...

Feschino As Required Key... 

...Or the whole story would have been lost to the hoary mists of official misdirection, nasty naysayers, the usual government cover-ups... and time!

by Alfred Lehmberg

Author and illustrator Frank C. Feschino, Jr. is a skilled artist who studied illustration, commercial art, and photography at Paier College of Art in Hamden, Connecticut. His bona fides were written in academic stone and immaculate… plus, as a student known for a certain perspicacious seriousness, he was highly regarded at this private school.

Trained to his craft by several world-renowned artists including Kenneth Davies, Rudolph Zallinger, Paul Lipp, and John Massimino, he excelled at anatomical drawing and forensic rendering. ...Keep that in mind. 

Feschino’s major course of study at Paier was illustration art. He studied trompe-l'œil style oil painting, acrylic painting, portraiture, anatomical drawing, and advanced pencil drawing techniques. All evidence of this can be found in the many compelling illustrations available, typifying his work. Feschino graduated in 1981, earned his four-year Fine Arts diploma from Paier College of Art, and then continued to hone his film, camera, and artistic skills. 

It was about this time, then, that Feschino began to investigate the "Flatwoods Monster" incident! This was while attending Phillips Jr. College in Florida during the early 1990s. There, he studied Film and Video production. He was trained by noted Hollywood steady-cam camera operator, Richard Davis.

Feschino would continue to research the Flatwoods Case for several more years, even writing a groundbreaking book that chronicles his investigation into that famous UFO close encounter case. Truly, his was an explosion of the whole affair. Even the copyrighting Library of Congress took unusual interest before granting his copyright... a curiously suspicious interest...

It is titled, "The Braxton County Monster—The Cover-up of the Flatwoods Monster Revealed." ...We’ll digress momentarily to inform the reader that this was a purposefully botched publication, all fault to the errant publisher, and is disavowed by Feschino at great personal cost! It contained hundreds of mistakes & mismatches, unapproved editing, and even unwarranted deletions of text, all very suspicious… besmirching, right off the bat, the scholarship and the stunning revelations of Feschino… who was suggesting, for the first time, remember, an associated and documented air war with ET!

 

Feschino and Friedman plus Paper headline blowup

Also? …To besmirch the STERLING reputation of one very eminent ufologist, Stanton Friedman, who had read the Feschino approved manuscript, so knew how it was supposed to be… and who put his reputation on-the-line for Feschino, writing fore and aft in that, what turned out to be, ruined (and ruining!) publication! Friedman would write, fore and aft, in all of Feschino’s subsequent books…

Summing up? Feschino was to have “final say” in the published content. He didn’t, and his story was very nearly destroyed, right there, out of the gate! …Again, all very suspiciously!

…Anyway, an indefatigable Feschino rallied, forthwith, and, suspecting that he wouldn’t get a fair shot in legacy publishing? He self-published the correct manuscript, himself! This book was later re-released into an "Updated and Revised" edition... as his investigation is ongoing.

The point? Ultimately, it was Feschino who investigated and reanimated the Flatwoods case, videotaped the original first-hand witnesses, wrote the reference book, illustrated the cover, did all the interior illustrations, maps… and took all the photos contained within it.

One of the first forensic Feschino renderings...

Most noteworthy, let us not forget that it was crack illustrator Frank Feschino, Jr. who actually sat down with the "Flatwoods Monster" witnesses in their homes like family and did unhurried police-style renderings of the so-called "monster"… all this setting the record straight... or straighter! 

Feschino... and the May family, all deceased now.
Sans Feschino, their story would have died with them.

It was Feschino who revealed or otherwise discovered WHAT the witnesses actually saw that night! ...That it was NOT an entirely living, breathing, if supernatural "flesh-and-blood monster," one even more dismissible than what had been portrayed, as such, for several duplicitous decades!

The famous drawing of the so-called "monster" from 1952, we'll recall, depicts a giant figure fitted in a silly garment outfit, covered in a hood with a tunic-type top, and wearing a long-pleated sweet-sixteen skirt, then tricked out with long skeletal arms and sharp claws. This was all “Public Domain” bupkis. A mislead! A distraction! A deflection! There would be other such!

Infamous "We The People" 1952 rendering!

Feschino was told by the witnesses that this original drawing of skirts, arms, and claws was absolutely wrong and the "thing" they saw didn't look like that, at all! They were rushed and pressured in its execution at the TV station and had little input on the finished product. Feschino would correct precisely that!

See? …And on the contrary, they informed Feschino that the nearly 12-foot-tall figure they saw was some kind of a metal "Space Suit" device that resembled a rocket, and that it was topped with a large helmet shaped like an ace of spades! That was the report from the start.

In likely reality, folks, the "Flatwoods Monster" was probably a machine functioning as some kind of silent… the witnesses don’t mention a “motive” sound, at all, suit! We digress, but imagine the raucous roaring sound of the amount of "leaf blowers" required to keep that huge thing aloft in a maneuvering hover, the cloud of dirt-road dust and debris thrown up in that blast… yet the witnesses, all seven, don’t even mention that… where they have clearer descriptions of everything else! It would have been mentioned, one reasonably suspects. No, from what remains, it had to have been a hovercraft or vehicle… some kind of encounter suit… but a quiet one apart from its reported sound of a strange electrical or "frying fat" sizzle. What a strange propulsion this thing must have had!

The Flatwoods Monster, REVEALED!

…This could be likened to a “manned” probe? ...The boggled mind struggles to wrap itself around SOMETHING!

On Sept. 19, 1952, first-hand witnesses Kathleen May and Gene Lemon went to New York to recount their frightening story to a nationwide TV audience on the popular NBC talk show, "We The People," and, as we have written beforehand, an artist hired for the TV episode talked for mere moments to Mrs. May and Lemon backstage in the studio before their interview. They “collaborated,” drawing an illustration of the "monster" to accompany the program, right there on the spot, from scratch! What could go wrong?!

Lemon and May

Sadly, as has been written, this less-than-salient artist, aspiring to wow the “woo-factor,” one can surmise, “misinterpreted” the witnesses' descriptions of the so-called "monster" …so drawing it incorrectly. This inaccurate drawing of the figure was then shown to a nationwide TV audience during May and Lemons' interview… so was then inculcated, reader, cemented into the minds of a credulous National audience…(and its researchers!) that “this,” this "skirted claw monster," was the true likeness of the "entity" in question. It would discourage, corrupt, and mislead other investigators for decades!

See? As a result of the initial artist's gross misinterpretation, the so-called "Flatwoods Monster" was portrayed INCORRECTLY,  and in a manner subsequently rejectable as a West Virginia tale of dismissible folklore, moonshine and hillbillies, so utterly discountable by the authorities. …Then Feschino was to take an interest, quite simply devoting his life to it! There was now a new sheriff in town!

Put more simply honing the point, were it not for the decades of Frank Feschino's singular research dedicated to this case... and the crafting of his forensic illustrations... those illustrations accurately portraying the so-called "Flatwoods Monster," finally... Well, we would all still be in the dark… stuck in that inaccurate mindset of 1952 and a fog of government cover-ups outlined in Feschino’s books! Almost lost... The Flatwoods monster… AND? (cue the ominous music!) ...That associated and pesky “air war with extraterrestrials” he exposed... All would be lost to the cloying fogs of mirthful myth and lurid legend.

A. Lee Stewart

Back in 1952, Mr. A. ‎Lee Stewart, Jr. was the co-owner and photojournalist for "The Braxton County Democrat" newspaper located in Sutton, West Virginia, as we’ve outlined before. Shortly after the "Flatwoods Monster" incident occurred on the night of September 12, 1952, he received a call from a West Virginia State Trooper in reference to Mrs. May's plea for help concerning her tumultuous encounter. We’ve written, as regards this, before…

Remember that at the time, both the state police and local police were out on previous calls (More UFO calls!) and so were unable to get to her home. Mr. Stewart, however, knew the State Police well, professionally, and had worked with them on numerous occasions. 

With his pro-grade camera always at his side, Stewart assisted the troopers at crime and accident scenes by taking photos for them! He'd do this while also covering the stories for his newspaper. Subsequently, A. Lee Stewart, Jr. was empowered by the State Police that night to respond to Mrs. May's call! Stewart was the first person of authority, then, to reach her home after the incident!

Our intrepid Mr. Stewart drove to the house and walked into a chaotic scene! Stewart organized the chaos and even led an armed posse of locals onto the Fisher Farm in search of the "monster"! That's some grit!

 

He was the first person to talk to the witnesses that night! He interviewed them over the weekend and had the boys, under some harsh third-degree duress, and separately, draw pictures of the "monster." Shortly after he left the house that night, he broke the "Monster" story to "The Charleston Gazette" newspaper. He’d be back. There was an astonishing story a'foot, and he was an old-school journalist!

His breaking story appeared in "The Charleston Gazette" in an article dated, Sunday, September 14, 1952. The headline read, "Did It Ride Meteor? Boys Spot Appalling Creature Near Flatwoods, Link It To Passage of Fiery Object in Skies." Reporter A. Lee Stewart, Jr. was credited with the byline, "Special to the Gazette," which was the information he had given to the newspaper. Feschino reports to have all these papers and articles…

The series of events unfolding in Flatwoods that night was accurately explained in his article, and the huge figure at issue was called, a "Thing," the "object," an "Appalling Creature" and "the Monster."

…But here’s the substantive rub! There was, STILL, no physical description given of the “Monster” or what the figure actually looked like! That would be a mystery until Feschino took an interest!

Later that day, a follow-up article on the incident appeared in "The Charleston Daily Mail." It contained information from reporter Stewart, as well as information from a Gazette reporter, an additional man who had driven up to Flatwoods to cover the story. 

This reporter also added information to the article, and reported, "Braxton Co. Residents Faint, Become Ill After Run-In With Weird 10-Foot Monster." It gave a description of the "Monster" and stated, "Having the shape of a man, blood-red face, bright green body, protruding eyes, and hands extended forward and appeared to give off an eerie light." It also added, "It had a black shield affair in the shape of an ace of spades behind it." 

Although this description of the figure was not entirely correct and didn't give a good visual image of its true appearance, the article did contain a small detail! It reported the huge figure was "metallic." 

METALLIC! Reported from the start!

On Monday, September 15th, The Charleston Gazette ran another article, "Braxton Monster Left Skid Tracks Where He Landed. (Special to The Gazette)." This was yet another article that contained additional information that A. Lee Stewart, Jr. had given them as he continued to interview the witnesses over the weekend. The headline read, "Braxton Monster Left Skid Tracks Where He Landed."

Most importantly, this article gives a more accurate description of its true appearance for the first time! The article states, "The Phantom of Flatwoods: Left tracks from six to eight feet apart. Wore a suit of green armor. Looked like a mechanical man. Was 10 feet tall, four feet wide. Had a blood-red face. Sported a black spade-like cowl, which extended a foot or more above its head. It had claw-like 'toy' hands too. And orange-green eyes the size of silver dollars, according to Mrs. May, a 32-year-old beautician who saw the 'thing.'" 

As a result of Stewart's exceptional reporting, the description he received from Mrs. May about the "monster's" true appearance was finally known and put into print! Sadly, Mrs. May's information was never seen in the press again! The monster would continue to wear a skirt for decades!

Meanwhile, the United Press news service had already picked up the Flatwoods story over the weekend, and on Monday, September 15, 1952, the Flatwoods story broke nationwide. That lit the fuse! The story went off like a bomb, worldwide!

The Flatwoods incident appeared in newspapers all over the country, but it only addressed the figure as a "monster" of indeterminate shape! As a result, the newspapers carrying the story ran with the "monster" angle, and their stories continued to portray it as a duplicitous “flesh-and-blood” entity. One can see the reason for the use of "inculcated" and "cemented," above...

Overnight, Flatwoods was put on the map as reporters, journalists, and investigators swamped the tiny town looking for information and interviews about the huge "monster" from Flatwoods. Since Mr. Stewart was the johnny-on-the-spot reporter who had interviewed the witnesses and broken the story, he was sought out and overwhelmed by the countless reporters and investigators seeking information about the incident!

Subsequently, "The Braxton Democrat" newspaper office in Sutton was also swamped and became the news hub where newspaper reporters from around the country met while covering their stories. 

Ivan Sanderson

Later that week, the "North American Newspaper Alliance" syndicate caught wind of the story and contacted world-renowned biologist, zoologist, and author Ivan T. Sanderson about the incident. They asked him to go to Flatwoods and write a news story about the affair! Shortly after, Sanderson left New York for Flatwoods with his assistant Eddie Schoenenberger to investigate the story.

Upon arriving in Sutton late that Friday morning, September 19th, they dropped their luggage at a motel and then repaired to Flatwoods. After arriving in town, Sanderson met five of the boys who saw the "Flatwoods Monster" and interviewed them. He was then escorted onto the Fisher Farm to the encounter site where he inspected the area for the remainder of the day.

Meanwhile, even he had interviewed some of the boys, Sanderson did NOT get to meet Mrs. May, Gene Lemon, or A. Lee Stewart, Jr. when he arrived in Flatwoods that Friday! They had already left town and were away on their journey to New York to be interviewed for the NBC talk show "We The People" later that night at 8:30 p.m. Again, Sanderson never met with the adult first-hand witnesses!

Sanderson and his investigation team...

On the following day, Sanderson and Schoenenberger went back to Flatwoods and conducted further interviews with the boys throughout the morning. They were also joined by members of the Charleston chapter of the National Speleological Society, and others, who Sanderson had called the night before to assist him with his work. This writer surmises that when Sanderson called, one came.

Sanderson also met with Gray Barker, who was in town investigating the case, as well. Barker, a native West Virginian, was born in Riffle, Braxton County, but was a current resident of Clarksburg where he was employed. He also went to Flatwoods to investigate the incident and was on assignment to write an article for FATE Magazine.

Gray Barker

Barker arrived in Flatwoods late Friday night and went into town Saturday morning. While in Flatwoods, Barker stated he "...spent 3 days subjecting these 7 people [Flatwoods witnesses], and other residents of the area to rigorous questioning." He added, "I had worked three days running down leads the story involved." Throughout the weekend, Gray Barker interviewed many of the locals as well as the boy witnesses, and he did manage to have at least 3 of them draw a sketch of the so-called "monster."

In his own writings, Barker states that he relied heavily on the testimony of 14-year-old Neil Nunley for most of his information. During his investigation, he also chased down other leads that weekend, going to other locations where objects were sighted on September 12th, and he interviewed those witnesses. 

On Saturday morning, Sanderson continued to examine the farm with his colleagues. They surveyed the area, mapped out the farm, obtained samples from the encounter site, and they took photos. Sanderson then departed Flatwoods with his assistant, Eddie Shoenenberger, following the leads of additional sightings reported in Braxton County the same night. We’ve written about those, too.

They traveled southwest of Flatwoods and investigated the locations where fiery objects were reported to have crashed. They were joined there by Gray Barker. 

Throughout the day, they interviewed witnesses, investigated the crash locations, and then wrapped up their investigations late Saturday afternoon. Gray Barker drove back into town while Sanderson and Schoenenberger drove down to Charleston to investigate the other September 12th sightings reported in the press! 

They spent most of Sunday interviewing various people. Meanwhile, Barker stayed in the area and continued to chase down new leads! He interviewed people throughout Sunday, by his report, then departed Braxton County, driving back to his home in Clarksburg.

Both Sanderson, and to a lesser degree, Barker, did thorough enough jobs while investigating the Flatwoods incident and the other UFO events that occurred on the night of September 12, 1952. They were the pioneers in this case and helped to put Flatwoods on the map, while covering the "Flatwoods Monster" incident…

Only, full stop! The reason for this essay is not the who, what, when, why, and where's of Sanderson’s and Barker's involvement in this case! The writer is not here to split hairs about their investigations in Braxton County that weekend! They did what they did, and it was FINE! It was a beginning, even if a doomed one. 

Their investigations, such as they were, have been covered in all of their writings and repeatedly told (parroted, purloined and plagiarized?) by numerous other writers and “Barker adherents” for decades... and to this day. 

No, this writer is here to raise a question concerning a key point that Barker and Sanderson never were able to derive after their exhaustive investigations! That point, reader, is a true and accurate portrait of the appearance of the so-called "monster." Let this writer explain!

As a result of his investigation and interviews with the boys, Ivan T. Sanderson did conclude the huge figure the witnesses saw on the Fisher Farm was not a "monster." On September 25, 1952, "The Pittsburgh Press" newspaper ran Sanderson's story about his Braxton County investigation. It was datelined, "SUTTON, W.Va. Sept.24." The headline of this "North American Newspaper Alliance" article read, "SAUCER REPORTS VALID, EXPERT SAYS - 12-Foot, Glowing 'Monster' was a Machine, Science Writer Says."

Sanderson's Report...

Sanderson concluded the following about the figure in question called the "Flatwoods Monster." He stated plainly that it "...was not a man, or a monster. It was some sort of machine like a diving bell." 

Here, Mr. Sanderson states that the so-called "monster" was actually a "machine." In reference to the "black, spade like cowl, which extended a foot or more above the head," and was mentioned in Stewart's article ten days before, Sanderson added that it had "a circular transparent window in front of it." This black cowl was likely an outer helmet encasing a red inner helmet.

Summing up! A. Lee Stewart's article accurately described the giant figure, "looked like a mechanical man" and likewise, Sanderson said "It was some sort of machine like a diving bell." Sanderson was also correct in his assessment that it "was not a man, or a monster." 

Furthermore, Sanderson also wrote a detailed account of his Flatwoods investigation in his 1967 book, "UNINVITED VISITORS." It appears in the chapter, "A THING ON THE GROUND."

He made the following statement about the "monster" encounter near the tree writing, "It was caught in the act by seven human beings, but, being 'fixed' in a pressurized suit, when it 'saw' that it had been observed, it headed back to its ship." Although Ivan T. Sanderson's descriptions of the 12-foot-tall figure are correct and accurate; he never fully comprehended what it actually looked like!

Moreover, Mr. Sanderson's book, "UNINVITED VISITORS," did NOT contain any illustrations of the "monster" from his investigation in Flatwoods that weekend. Yet, the private files of his investigation do contain 2 color drawings of the "monster" that were never published in his writings!

Sadly, one of those illustrations is an original depiction of the "monster" and it is, of course, portrayed incorrectly. This drawing looks like a kindergartener drew it and portrays the "Flatwoods Monster" as a block-shaped figure with a pear-shaped head sitting on top of it! Wrong! 

The other color illustration is a modified drawing of an incorrect garment-wearing, clawed "monster" drawing that was drawn and used during the September 19, 1952 TV talk show, "We The People." It also replicates the drawing and even shows the man standing to the right of the "monster" for size comparison! Wholly derivative of the false original... as the "inculcation" and "cementing" of that falsehood is itself illustrated.

                  

This "WE The People" episode was aired from an NBC studio in New York at 8:30 p.m. It featured interviews with witnesses Mrs. May and Gene Lemon. They retold their frightening story to a live nationwide audience that night. As a visual aid to be used during the episode, a large drawing of the "monster" was used to accompany them.

Before the show aired, an artist sat backstage, as described above, with May and Lemon! The artist talked to them while drawing the figure they described to him. Sadly, as outlined above, the artist totally misinterpreted their descriptions! He portrayed the figure as a scary "space monster." He illustrated it as a magically floating figure with a pointed cloth hooded over its head, wearing a long-pleated dress, and having long skinny arms and claws. This inaccurate drawing became the standard portrayal of the figure and has been seen across the world for many decades.

We’ll remember that a forgotten key figure, who also appeared on the program that night was the aforementioned  A. Lee Stewart, Jr. from the Braxton Democrat. He went to New York with Mrs. May and Gene Lemon, sat on stage with them during their interviews, and actually wrapped up the program, himself, by talking about his involvement in the incident!  

We note that there were other drawings of the so-called "monster" appearing in print and attached to Sanderson's name! One such article appeared in a small 1956 privately published newsletter called, "INFINITY" and dated, "Oct.-Dec. 1956."

The full title of this newsletter was "Barlow Studios International INFINITY NEWSLETTER," which was published quarterly in Waterbury, Ct. and edited by "Haughton Barlow." This newsletter featured an article giving a synopsis of the "Sutton Monster" aka. the "Flatwoods Monster" and a partial interview with Ivan T. Sanderson. Contained within this article are two amateurish drawings of the Flatwoods figure that look nothing like the figure itself.

Even by 1956, it is obvious that no one knew what the "monster" had actually looked like and was still showing silly drawings of it. Moreover, as a side note, even though this publication had a limited distribution for the time, the "monster" article was found by Project Blue Book officials and actually appears in the case file "#2078" for "12 SEP 1952." This indicates that officials at Blue Book were closely monitoring the Flatwoods case even after four years and were still recording it! 

When Gray Barker's article appeared in the January 1953 issue of FATE Magazine, it was titled, "The Monster and the Saucer." The article describes the "monster" on the title page, "The huge shape with the weirdly glowing eyes" and illustrates a black and white ink drawing of a pointy-headed Black man with his arms sprawled out! This is as far away from the truth as one could imagine. See, no one had any idea, but the first-hand witnesses... and Feschino had yet to pull that out of them!

Later, Barker published a small private booklet, "FLATWOODS, W.VA. 'MONSTER' - A Full Report " that is dated, "September 1953." He writes, "The cover of this issue illustrates the 'Monster' in quite an imaginative way, and is used only because it is the best art available at the time. That Cover is based on a drawing by artists [an artist] for the 'We The People' telecast on which two of the witnesses appeared.”

He continues, "It is the purpose here to report in greater detail, what I found out for Fate." The cover of this booklet replicates the incorrect garment-wearing, clawed "monster" drawing used during the 1952, "We The People" show. Again, wrong!

Barker explains, "THE MONSTER" and writes, "Towering over their heads, was a vast shape of something like a man. The face everyone agreed was round, and blood red. No one noticed a nose or mouth, only eyes, or eye-like openings, from which projected 'greenish-orange' beams of light." Barker continues, "Around the 'face' and reaching upward to a point (see cover) was a hood-like shape, dark in appearance." Barker then talks about the lower torso, "The [sic] also saw clothing-like folds around the body." 

In closing, he writes, "Was it a robot, controlled mechanically?" and adds, "...Or was it a man, or 'thing' in a spacesuit." These statements by Barker were probably made in reference to the description of the "eyelike openings,' from projected 'greenish-orange' beams of light."

Furthermore, Gray Barker also wrote about his Flatwoods investigation in his 1956 book, "They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers." It appears in Chapter 2 of the book and is titled, "Flatwoods, West Virginia." Here, Barker writes, "Three years have passed since some people were almost scared out of their wits in Flatwoods." He closes the chapter, "The excitement has about died down, but West Virginians in the reach of radio singer Cindy Coy still love to hear the inevitable ballad composed by announcer Don Lamb." The name of this song is "The Phantom of Flatwoods.”

Still, Gray Barker never knew what the "monster" looked like, aside from the simple drawings that were made by WTP and the young boys. This becomes even more apparent when he published his September 1959 UFO magazine booklet, "Saucerian Bulletin" issue #21. The front cover shows the same old rehashed incorrect 1952 drawing of the "monster," and is superimposed over the path area, near the Oak tree where the encounter occurred.  The back cover is the same photo of Barker standing next to the Oak tree. Again, it is obvious that Barker never knew what the so-called monster looked like, either, as his published works never gave an accurate illustration of what the "Flatwoods Monster" actually looked like!

Barker never knew what it was... 
and didn't connect the Air War with ET
angle as a cause...

The point, reader? These investigators, Fabulist Barker, credited only by the credulous, or First-drawer Professional Sanderson, credited by the planet as a world-travelled investigator, never sat down with any of the witnesses to do police-style rendering while conducting interviews with them… because they were NOT forensic artists and never in contact, moreover, with the adult first-hand witnesses, as has been pointed out! It was a forensic ARTIST that was required to blow the lid off, a forensic artist in an unrushed interview with the first-hand and cooperating witnesses! Forensic illustration is not art, per se, before it is evidence recovery.

 

One of many such stories!

Feschino would be that forensic artist! It was HE, after all who, in pulling that information so painstakingly from the witnesses, revealed the “Flatwoods Monster” at all ...AND its straight-line connection to an AIR WAR with ET during 1952’s “Summer of Saucers.” 

Before Feschino: folklore, confusion, and mockery. After Feschino: coherent narrative, consistent witness testimony, and accurate rendering. The late Stanton Friedman, as a result, with a host of nameable others, thought so, too! ...Accept no substitutes. Read on…

Frank C. Feschino Jr.

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