COLONEL DALE LEAVITT--Revisited

...Close to retirement as Commander of the West Virginia
National Guard. What could he have known he wouldn't
share with Feschino, and what could have slipped out anyway...

COLONEL DALE LEAVITT—Revisited

by Alfred Lehmberg

Late last century, the constant reader will recall, Frank Feschino, Jr. interviewed retired Colonel Dale Leavitt. This is the storied commander of the West Virginia National Guard, we can recollect, who was involved in the "Flatwoods Monster" case of 1952. The constant reader needs little reminder.

Feschino video-interviewed the retired Colonel at the various locations where the incident had occurred on the now-infamous Fisher Farm at Flatwoods. Though, it was not until this seminal interview; however, that exotic, new, and corroborating information was to be revealed! 

See, it was thought until this time that Leavitt's only participation in the Flatwoods case was but for crowd control in the days following the unsettling incident of the 12th! Documented, of course, is the matter of the extreme interest generated by the press! Thousands of people visited the subject farm in oncoming days. ...But Leavitt's role was to the contrary! Leavitt was there for much more than merely that! 

Leavitt and his near battalion-sized National Guard outfit were actually in Flatwoods shortly after the "monster" incident" at the direction of the Air Force (!!! more on this momentarily) and also in nearby Frametown as it turns out, to investigate an alleged "airplane" crash as we've written about before. 

Remember that late on the night of September 12, 1952, Colonel Leavitt received a call at his home from Washington, D.C. and was ordered to Flatwoods by the United States Air Force, and out of all protocol the constant reader is reminded! The Air Force Top Brass won't just call directly on the WV National Guard, out of the blue! That's not the way things work. No, heralded by this strange lack of "red tape," something undefinably "twitchy" was afoot!

At about 1:30 am on September 13, Leavitt went to the Fisher Farm with some 50-odd armed troops, to start, and cordoned off the farm from public access. Leavitt also examined the farm, directed the collection of samples and debris from the tree area where the encounter occurred, and had the surrounding field combed. He... found stuff!

Leavitt told Feschino, "They called me on the phone, and asked me to get them what they wanted and I told them I would send it back to them. I did. I came up here and got it. I dug some dirt and all that sort of thing... leaves off the tree and sent them in." Colonel Leavitt also stated, "I got some of this 'oil,' the little bits of this and that to see what it was." Meaning, he was finding stuff that he didn't know what it was? He also told Frank he took "some of the wood" from the nearby (now famous!) tree where the encounter occurred. He would discover other things.

Feschino videotaping his interview with Colonel Leavitt at
the site... tree and famous overhanging branch in the back.

Feschino asked Leavitt, "Where did you have to send all this? Did you send it to Washington?" The Colonel answered, "...The Air Force. That's what they wanted me to do." Feschino asked, "Now, when these samples were sent out, they were sent to Washington directly?" Leavitt answered, "Air Force people, that's who wanted..." Frank respectfully interrupts and reiterates, "Now, they contacted you?" Leavitt answered, "Yeah." Frank asked, "Through Washington?" Leavitt, "...Yeah and they wanted to know what it was."

Colonel Leavitt stayed on the Fisher Farm for "about 45 minutes," but left his troops there departing for another location in nearby Braxton County, Frametown, to investigate another subsequently reported incident, as has been mentioned. That incident involved an alleged "plane" that was witnessed to be "on fire," which had been seen crashing into a wooded area around Frametown along the Elk River... where it was reported burning, still! This was a real report! They had the guy!

Leavitt would set up a group contingent of troops throughout these Sugar Creek and Frametown areas to search for any "crash survivors"; he then proceeded back to Flatwoods with some 50 additional troops to investigate the apparently more imperative "monster" incident on the Fisher Farm. Evidence of the "burning airplane crash" at Frametown was not immediately presenting itself!

Leavitt had gone to this Frametown crash area subsequently, as it was taken to be the more serious, one would presume... vis a vis its "burning airplane crash"... though it remains odd that it would not be a civil search and rescue effort responding to a civilian "plane crash," but an armed military loaded for bear, reader, from boats to bazookas... and how did they know to brings the boats? Consider, where and why does one send the war hammer... when a dust-pan would have sufficed? 

Leavitt was there with his over-kill contingent of troops to search for "crash survivors"?! Some salt was required! 

No, they were lookin' for the twitchy shiznit! The reader will recall that UFOs were ordered shot down, at this time, and there were UFOs festooning the skies for hours... and some of these UFOs were acting like they were in distress... Frametown and Flatwoods are two cases in point! 

Leavitt then proceeded to Flatwoods with his 50-odd more troops to investigate the "monster" incident on the Fisher Farm. There was found near Frametown to be no evidence of any "burning" OR "crash" as we'll see. All the real activity would be back at Flatwoods.

We would remind the reader that the following transpired when Feschino asked Colonel Leavitt how long his troops stayed on location at the Fisher Farm that night. 

Feschino, "Now how long was everybody up here, a total time?" Leavitt, "Well, we had about 50 people here, and I don't know how long... Well, they stayed the night." Shocked, Feschino responded, "They did?" Leavitt replied, "Yeah. To see if something else was going to happen!" One wonders what Leavitt had been briefed had the possibilities for a potential "happening"!

Concerning the alleged plane crash that Leavitt investigated with the original group of troops at Sugar Creek in Braxton County around Frametown, Leavitt told Feschino, "We didn't find anything." 

Uh-huh... well, given that there was a UFO in the sky for almost every minute of a contiguous near 24 hours on September 12th, in distress or not, there is offered a plausible reason that a crashed plane wasn't found. 

The "flaming object" seen going down earlier and "burning" was actually a UFO, perhaps shot up by the United States Air Force, which had crashed, self-repaired, and then already taken off by the time the area was searched. No evidence of a reported burning crash was found as we've pointed out...

Furthermore, Feschino discovered this this Frametown UFO, which was damaged evidently, had actually crash-landed twice along the Elk River, only a few miles apart! It first crashed in Sugar Creek, then took off (it must have; it was reported crashed and not there on inspection) followed the Elk River and crashed again in nearby Frametown some eight miles away. It would take off again... or all this was a mirage of mass hysteria?

Leavitt stated the following about his troops along the Elk River looking for a crashed craft, "They had to fan out and try to find that airplane... but there wasn't anything there..." This damaged UFO had actually crashed two times and already taken off by the time the entire area was searched along the Elk River by Leavitt's troops. No one had made the leap that there were two crash-landing sites in the same area because airplanes don't usually crash... then take off again!

Colonel Leavitt expressed his opinion about the "Flatwoods Monster" incident and the alleged Frametown plane crash he'd  investigated in Braxton County that night. He stated, "Something was a cover-up [here in Flatwoods]! There was something down below too, but I don't really know what it was." By "down below," The Colonel meant geographically down in Frametown. He had a documented witness reporting a burning plane crash! Yet, he could find nothing! That would perplex this writer to his dying day.

Colonel Leavitt's exclusive interview with Frank can be read in its entirety in his book:  The Braxton County Monster Updated & Revised Edition... The Cover-up of the “Flatwoods Monster” Revealed [Expanded] (Please avoid Amazon, get it at Lulu link above so Feschino can realize more of what is and has been revealed... the fruit of his arduous labors. Thanks.)

A decorated hero of WWII and returned home, Leavitt's day job was at a Texaco Station, explaining the quaint uniform. But Captain Dale Leavitt commanded the Contingent of WV National Guard headquartered at Gassaway, WV and he was the man of the hour on site answering fate's call. He would eventually command the whole of the West Virginia National Guard.



 

Alfred Lehmberg, The UFO, AND Ching Chow

Alfred Lehmberg? Alfred Lehmberg is a 76-year-old poet warrior/warrior poet... ...as these have been called for, and for some 60-odd years, too. He is left-handed. That has been his way.

He is, further, a retired military aviator and decorated veteran of air combat with a summa cum laude degree in education and a college-earned "Most Distinguished Student" award, for Art. Husband, father, and grandfather married fifty years this year... we'll cut to the chase! 

Lehmberg is an unabashedly passionate advocate for sane UFO research and its abundantly called for and fulsome disclosure. That disclosure concerns, of course, those factual informations and data points pertaining to same and then collected for decades by an unelected officialdom... so, that "disclosure" for a damned good reason. In short, because inattention to the stark reality of the UFO, as he has professed for decades, seems unintelligent, unprogressive, unimaginative, and unbrave. He feels the UFO is ignored, minimized, or sidelined at humanity's peril. 

Lehmberg has dedicated decades of his life, at some cost, to exploring the mysteries of unidentified flying objects and their many ancillaries, their observable validations and sensical justifications... their eldritch lessons and obscure revelations... their cryptic appeal to humanity's sad lack of humility and some pushback on our unwarranted and deconstructive "scientistic" [sic] hubris? The reader should gird loins at this point.

Lehmberg would prefer the "scientific," acting without hubris. More of that. He feels that hard science is not a religion, its saving grace! If religion were science, Lehmberg has come to believe, it would be working scrupulously to disprove itself, eh? Loins girded?

Sought? Humanity's realization at long, long last that it is itself the only salvation that it can ever have? It was not God running up those stairs of the Twin Towers and the suggestion that God inspired those who did is ludicrously disingenuous...

That authoritarian religion is and has ever been a disingenuously employed and horrifically mendacious ruse ever perpetrated as a too readily used and malicious control mechanism employed criminally by abject psychopaths so that their lurid lickspittles can work to nefarious ends, ends wholly unjustified and of the cruelest means? 

Finally, that God is just a base invention constructed to serve "his" inventors? That's what THIS citizen learned in 76 years of life experience and accredited college.

His thoughts on UFOs are multifaceted, consequently, as a result of these gross seasonal observations and the accounting of the strange accouterments of those seasons... (some seventy-odd revolutions of our turning wheel, as mentioned) ...and then? 

He is well-publicized and has been deeply informed by years of personal investigation and close contact with key figures the likes of Richard Dolan, Robert Hastings, Frank C. Feschino Jr., and the late Stanton Friedman... These are Lehmberg's ufological (there will be no apologies for that word's use) equine quadrature and monumental Rushmore! 

Like them, Lehmberg attempts to observe the intrinsically difficult to observe. He humbly contemplates the UFO's obvious reality, these realities pointedly not subsumed by humanity's obstreperous hubris (wholly unwarranted as aforementioned...), and he makes a real exploration of aspiration into our aggregate humanity's lack of any humility concerning its (our!) own reality... and the wholly avoidable consequences for that obnoxious lack of humility... actually hobbling humanity, is this writer's observation. Lehmberg intuitively suspects that our sincere humility would bring those saucers down.

Lehmberg has been burned by, and so is shy of, any arrogance in every form, his own and that of others. His own especially. Consequently, he finds it difficult to tolerate it in those others as he refuses to tolerate it in himself. ...It is the way.

He's a loose cannon, if of small caliber, and a literary "Hotspur" as Bill Birnes once observed. Truly, he will settle for a Pyrrhic victory where that victory is required in good sense's service. Wrongful insult, inappropriate dismissal, or unearned disrespect for Lehmberg's germane interests and thoughtful expressions precipitates only that "from hell's heart would he stab at thee"! He would offer no apologies even as he admits to any error. ...Admitting you're wrong is a step up, still.

Concluding this portion... "Aspiring to great and honorable things," as was pointed out to him by Suzanne Taylor, "brings mighty forces to one's aid." Lehmberg quotes his father, Alfred Junior, who said, "I know not what course others may take, but mine is changing, now."

Here are some key aspects of Alfred Lehmberg’s cogent perspective on UFOs:

He has an appreciation for "accepting Open-Minded Inquiry"—wholly selfless though organized, objective, constructive, comprehensive, flexible, acceptable, specific, and then thoughtfully funded. 

Lehmberg approaches UFOs with a certain intellectual modifiability (required perhaps as a result of new information), recognizing that there are genuine and quantifiable unknowns in our skies. That's a good thing he believes! 

That the greater darkness will always be revealed by humanity's increasing light is preferred to the eventual boredom the antithesis precipitates, logically! The conquered absence of that "always greater darkness" would get boring! It's why one must pity God, it is supposed. 

Lehmberg further believes that dismissing all UFO sightings as mere misidentifications or hoaxes is premature, unscientific, deconstructive, and... cowardly, to make the point fine.

• His stance encourages massive investment in rigorous scientific investigation and a willingness (a bravery even!) to explore those unconventional possibilities openly, exhaustively, and with inventive humility! Even Occam will complicate the hypothesis necessarily of needs... ...and said so!

• "Government" Secrecy and Cover-Ups: Lehmberg is critical and suspicious of "official" secrecy surrounding UFOs. He contends that there has apparently been a deliberate effort to suppress information and maintain a veil of secrecy, a secrecy perhaps better pierced of reasonable needs and vital cause for the intuited benefit of aggregate humanity. We are not served avoiding our appointment with this metaphorical cosmic dentist or kicking this ufological can down the road as we have, and senselessly, since 1952 when the offical "disclosure" was actually made! Had we addressed all this then it would be last century's news and most of the planet would now have known nothing else! Where could we now be?

• He advocates, therefore, for greater transparency and that "release" of classified UFO-related documents... buoyed with the intuition of decades of personal experience and its accrued sentience aspiring to sustainable selflessness... that an aggregate humanity is better served, thereby.

• Finally, the substantive reality of the physical UFO's study is not served by a duplicitous and so mendacious reinvention of a ufological approach or paradigm into such as is typified by the disingenuous "UAP", for instance, which doesn't even have to BE there at all. Lehmberg feels we don't need new answers! We need new questions while facing the answers THERE and plain! 

The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH): While Lehmberg doesn’t endorse the ETH (the idea that UFOs represent extraterrestrial spacecraft employed by an alien entelechy) as exclusive, he acknowledges its greater plausibility based on the seven categories of evidence extant that the ETH must be the best starting analysis.

Seven evidentiary categories

• He believes that some UFO sightings defy conventional explanations and may indeed involve advanced technology from other civilizations.

• Human Consciousness and Perception: Lehmberg explores the intersection of UFOs with human consciousness. He suggests that our perception of reality may be more fluid and malleable than we realize. This consciousness and perception may be enhanced chemically or technologically.

• He considers the possibility that UFO encounters involve altered states of consciousness or interactions with non-material entities, if entities, still.

Spiritual and Philosophical Implications: Beyond the physical aspects, Lehmberg delves into the spiritual and philosophical implications of UFO encounters.

• He views UFOs as catalysts for expanding our understanding of ourselves, our existence, our consciousness, and our very necessary human interconnectedness. Could the alien not unite humanity?

• He views UFOs as harbingers of the elevation, advancement, and enlightenment for human beings in an evolving universe of science, sense, and pragmatic sentience. This is his strong intuition.

In summary, Alfred Lehmberg’s thoughts on UFOs blend scientific inquiry, a provoked skepticism toward official narratives, and a pragmatic willingness to fearlessly explore the extraordinary... AS ordinary! Of course, grasp can equal but must never exceed reach or catastrophe is begged! Those are our current events, that result of our reach exceeding our grasp! Consider nuclear weapons...

No, we have to know where we put our feet before we put them there! Currently, we shuffle too fast and beyond our means. An avoidable catastrophe looms with our inattention, arrogance, non-science, and our increasing reliance on an ever-failing and untestable faith. ...Religion may not be our salvation... to the contrary, it may be the death of us.

UFOs are, by definition, change, Lehmberg feels, and point to realities of much more breadth and scope—potential and expansiveness for everyone, it is surmised! At the same time, it gets no easier for him to maintain a façade of normalcy regarding the cowardly denial of the niggardly few comfortable in the seats of cat-birds or those "satisfied," but self-enslaved with a hypocrite's faith! 

Accordingly, it becomes increasingly more difficult to tolerate these garden-variety "noisome negativists," these hubristic piss-wits who laugh up damp sleeves at that which they have no capacity to understand, no aptitude to accept, no ability to incorporate, and no skill to recognize! Consequently, Lehmberg seeks his own questions though the answers offend him, shock him, or shame him. 

In the first place it's not always offense, shock, and shame. In the second, there is, many times, joy beyond the shame, satisfaction beyond the shock, and fellowship, good readers, beyond the offense. 

Lehmberg offers lauded writings and illuminative interviews found on the internet and these may continue to contribute to the ongoing dialogue about UFOs and their significance in our world. The sole axe ground will be the one sentiently progressive and aspiring to the courage of conscience. Woke... in a word, as he aspires to that conscience, and without conscience? Well, primary histories have shown that without this "conscience"? Humanity is bestial. 

Oh, to close... there's original music, art, and poetry, too.

On the subject of Ching Chow: those expressions are succinctly made in the following panel. ...But as a prologue, one might concern themselves more with the destinations achieved in each panel than with the mere appearance of the humble guide appearing in same. 

How does he get there? Where does he end up? What ARE these moments in spacetime captured in portraiture? What can be found there? What does the observer see? Racism? Bigotry? Stereotype? We say, no. That's not our table.