ITS: The End Of The Story

ITS: The End Of The Story

by Alfred Lehmberg

...Remember the end of the story? We'll get there in a minute.

The beginning of the story, one recalls, revealed individuals selected of a pool from which astronauts would later be drawn.  These selectively sieved persons, highly trained, intelligent, and brave, were ordered to fly out in state-of-the-art jet aircraft to meet with their inevitable opposition. Only, forgetting they must have acquitted themselves gloriously whatever their fate, most of them had never signed on for this brand of opposition. 

See, they'd fly right into the teeth of the unknown unknown: unidentified flying objects. That's right, UFOs. That's where the data seems to go, even if off our established rails. Some of these pilots and crew, by the way, were never again seen, man or machine. Poof.

Well acknowledged Standing Orders were to shoot "noncompliant" UFOs down, remember, wherever they were encountered... and "non-compliant." Laughable, but those were the orders of the day.

A conjecture, reader, that shots were never fired at UFOs is just ludicrous beyond the testimony of at least one four-star General. He reported "many men and machines lost" in certainly countable armed rejoinders, a testimony to how serious the official responses to UFOs actually were. Disclosure of a sort, eh?

A leader for the Air Force's official investigatory body wrote of "other, more lurid duels of death." He minced no words as he otherwise complained of the lack of proper funding for his effort. UFOs must have been "investigated," of needs. Where did the real money go? I digress.

Feschino and Friedman hold blow-up of a Newspaper headline 
published during the Summer Of Saucers, 1952.

It's no leap to conjecture an aerial engagement where early official admissions, recorded losses, and numerous eye-witness accounts bear out data pointing to exactly that. Gird barbarian loins, pilgrims, for undeclared and secret (even as announced!) airwar with ET in 1952. Such would appear to be so. 

...Sounds crazy. Yeah yeah. Sure sure. No apologies, here. 

We had our own aircraft losses, unexplained... or badly explained. We know about them. Verily, we had ours crashing into schools and subdivisions! 

Yet... chasing UFOs? The report, this writer recalls, was that the unarmed aircraft above crashed with an unejected pilot (?), due to fuel starvation... only... the aircraft explosion and fire testified to a profundity of fuel (it appears also to this former Master Aviator) and the area was hazarded to firefighters a result of exploding munitions.
So... 

But wait! How about similar "downed aircraft" incidents involving supposed occupants of those UFOs aforementioned? They're being shot at, after all. ...And on that subject of alien defenses, one can say what one will about alien "countermeasures," superior to "mere human" munitions... but 10 pounds of high explosive on the business end of a 2.75 folding fin aerial rocket arriving at point of impact, just under the speed of sound, must complicate even ET's physics!

Cut to Flatwoods, West Virginia in the same year... at the end of our story, now. September 12th. A warm Indian Summer evening and some kids are playing football in a valley schoolyard. Abruptly, a flaming fireball (a distressed alien craft?) coasts low and slow over their heads from the east-north-east, hangs a 90 degree left turn to the south, and then lands behind the trees on a hilltop of the old Bailey Fischer farm. 

This spot is well known to the locals and only a short distance away. The kids will run and get one of their mothers, who will think to bring a flashlight, then all will troop up the hill to investigate. Someone said UFO in the excitement (it was the season for them after all) but "downed aircraft" was on everyone's mind.  

Who would have thought, "both"? ...A creeping low fog gathered as they made their excited accent up paths and through gates...

...Our very "highly strange" incident would ensue.

May confronts the monster...

Enter Ivan T. Sanderson. One of the first few named researchers on-site only five days after the now very much-renowned event of that night of the 12th, he was a reputational worthy and not one to reflexively dismiss the high strangeness surrounding the event as too impossible to seriously regard. That was not this investigator's style.

It's what ITS did...

No, Sanderson was no credulous buffoon fluffing a bizarre occurrence for an edge reputation, an initiative so popular today. He liked getting to the actual bottoms of things. He was a man very highly regarded.

He was a well-out-of-his-armchair, world-class educated, and literate literary who wouldn't be cowed or bullied even by the likes of a forceful John Nebel (An earlier and more credible Art Bell) in a radio interview regarding this, our... end of the story. The reader will recall that this was the end, as ends were had.

The end of 1952's "Summer of Saucers," flap. Flatwoods seemed to bring everything to a close. The end of official open-mindedness and forthcomingness as cover-up became the increasing order of the day. A consequence of secret wars? ...Not; however, the end of the well-publicized orders to shoot UFOs down. Those orders may have yet to be rescinded.

Here's what ITS had to say on the subject:

Notice the sequestered witness drawings...

Later on, it would be proffered by gloating members of a disingenuous skeptibunky intelligentsia that Flatwoods people didn't know their own night forest fauna, were poisoned by hallucinogenic ground gas  (?) absent before or since, or that West Virginia "hillbillies" won't know a simple meteor from a space invader. Sanderson didn't think so. 

Sanderson, plainly not a sufferer of fools, found everyone he spoke to, examined, or interviewed to be precise, moreover, accurate, intelligent, and considered. Listen to the short Youtube interview above. He was emphatic about this.

No, this story happened, beginning, middle, and end. But for one Frank C. Feschino, Jr. we would know none of it and would have forgotten all of it. Spin up on this story. It's the future after all.

flatwoodsmonster.com

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