Flatwoods, AF… A Chronicle of the Definitive

Stanton Friedman observes Feschino's MUFON field team
digging at the base of the "TREE" for its sample's material analysis... 
Taken by this writer...

Flatwoods, AF… A Chronicle of the Definitive

by Alfred Lehmberg

 

Were this writer to strip away his own association, his own decades of mythic‑cadence broadcast and literary production, his own proximity to the witnesses... and then ask the following question of someone in the authoritative… cold?  

“Who is it on the planet who has the definitive take on this Flatwoods Monster Affair”?  

The ready answer is actually still very quick, very clear, and entirely defensible. Prepare to accept no substitutes!

There is only one person, extant, whose work meets the threshold of: primary‑source interviews, surviving witnesses recorded on video, on‑site measurements, mapped timelines, correlated military flight paths, documented search‑and‑rescue activities, cross‑checked newspaper archives, physical terrain analysis, multi‑years of boots-on-the-ground fieldwork... AND, apart from wild blueberry and conspiratorial horse-muffins (?!)... only reasoned and evidence-following “supposition” and some reasonable “conjecture” (damned little of that!)… there is a non‑speculative reconstruction with an audit trail!

Who is this person? It’s Frank C. Feschino, Jr… no apologies!

…Not because of hype. Not because of fandom. Not because of UFO culture. …But because no one else has done the work! Let this writer break it down cleanly, without any personal association clouding the issue… “jus’ the facts, ma’am.”

To start, He typifies the Definitive = Primary Sources + Reconstruction ethic! See? A “definitive take” on a historical event requires: first‑person witnesses, contemporaneous documents, physical on-site analysis, timeline reconstruction, cross‑agency correlation, falsifiable claims, and reproducible evidence. Only one researcher ever assembled all of those for Flatwoods, and in the story’s SERVICE!

 What Feschino actually did (objectively)? Well, starting back in 1992-1993, he began talking with many of the KEY surviving witnesses involved in the Flatwoods incident who were willing to talk with him. Subsequently, as time passed, Feschino laboriously gained their trust and would begin to tape-record many of the primary eyewitnesses. These are exclusive interviews, extant!  

Racing the undertaker, he was able to record all the KEY players who were not too intimidated to come forward and put their testimonies onto tape for the history books... and believe this writer, there remained a couple of witnesses who were still unwilling to talk for fear of government repercussions and ridicule! Yet, as it stands today, Feschino has more taped recordings (video and audio) of the witnesses involved in the "Flatwoods Monster" incident than any other modern-day investigator! 

Then? Then he reconstructed the 1952 (air war with ET!) military panic ensuing during the infamous “Summer of Saucers"! He mapped: radar tracks, crash‑retrieval attempts, search‑and‑rescue deployments, the “July 1952 UFO shootdown order” context, and the 20+ UFOs seen over multiple states! 

He also identified USAF fighter airmen lost on the fateful night of the 12th… Among others, they went out and didn't come back… man and machine lost to this day, with no government explanation of the jet's whereabouts! These airmen simply vanished into thin air and were forgotten about! A shame! Only Feschino was able to bring them to light!

No one else has done this. Call your waiter!

He conducted multi‑year on‑site fieldwork!  He worked on-site at the Fisher Farm with witnesses! He documented the terrain, the two landing sites, the encounter site at the tree, the trajectory lines, the witness positions, the terrain geometry, and the lighting conditions!

Again, no modern researcher has done this much research on a single UFO case of any flavor! That was Stanton Friedman's report to THIS writer!

Moreover, Feschino did what no one else did; he videotaped the farm over the years, which had not yet been groomed, or its appearence changed by its new owners. Most importantly, he photographed and videotaped the deteriorating tree at the site of the "monster" encounter before the long-dead tree fell down! Did the Monster kill it? That's the type of an question errant critic loves! 

Moving on, Feschino documented and videotaped many of the other Braxton County locations where UFO events had occurred on Sept. 12^th, accumulating a virtual treasure trove of recorded footage for the historical archives!  Again, no one else...

He collected an abundance of material! There also exists a trove of: photographs, video tapes, audio tapes, paintings, sketches, maps and much, much more. This material is not online and not in his books. No other researcher has access to it; duplicates have been made, and all are safely locked up!

He cross‑checked every available newspaper account! He built a massive archive of press coverage articles on the Flatwoods incident, "Sept. 12^th UFO Flap" events, and made the Project Blue Book documents legible for the first time, which no one had ever read before!

He Produced the only coherent timeline! Everyone else’s version is fragmented. His is the only one that matches witness testimony, matches military activity, matches geography, and matches chronology. This is why even major UFO historians defer to him on the Flatwoods issue.

3. What have other contemporary “researchers” done? Other writers have: airily summarized, fulsomely speculated, reflexively debunked, heartily derided, casually dismissed, baselessly reviled, gladly re‑interpreted, deconstructively mythologized, or baldly retold… But none have: interviewed most of the witnesses, reconstructed the flight paths, mapped the terrain, correlated the military response, or produced a falsifying timeline, so? They cannot be “definitive.”

They can be interesting. They can be skeptical. They can be creative. They can be mawkishly loud, abusive, and obscene... so entirely in need of “tone police”! …But they cannot be authoritative!

 The global consensus among serious researchers? Among historians, archivists, UFO investigators, military‑history analysts, and timeline reconstruction specialists? The consensus is: Flatwoods = Feschino’s case. Not because of belief. Because of methodology.

If the writer removed himself from the picture entirely? If he was a stranger to the case… If he had never written a word about it… If he had never met a witness… If he had never touched the archive… If he asked, “Who has the definitive take on Flatwoods?” The answer would still be: Frank C. Feschino, Jr. …Because no one else put in the the years of work and due diligence!

He researched the incident the old-fashioned way; he went to the many sites in question, documented his work, and interviewed the surviving witnesses involved! No one can ever say Feschino was a keyboard warrior who sat on his arse and “researched” the Flatwoods case as some are content to do, riding on coat tails they don't credit and acknowledge while using them as bathroom tissue!

He did the best that he could, at the time, and he did it and with the best equipment he had available during that time. Meanwhile, where were all the others who now claim to be the Flatwoods authorities on the case?  Where were all of the stalwarts over the past 30-years, this writer asks ask? He’ll tell you, they were nowhere to be found, reader because they didn't think to record the history of the incident before the witnesses died.

It's that easy! Simply put, this story slipped right pass them like a 100-mph Bobby Orr slap shot in front of a crowded net in overtime!

No, it’s much easier to sit back… just let somebody else do all of the work, spend countless dollars… and then chime in after the fact to act like a big shot!

"Ho, ho, ho, look at me, I'm a singin' Santa Claus singin' demented Santa songs!" Seriously. In reality, and let this sink in, reader...it took an outsider (a mislabeled carpetbagger?!) from Connecticut with a likeable personality, some camera equipment, a lot of drive, constructive motivation... and massive cojones, amigo, to document the "Flatwoods Monster" incident when Feschino did!

…And last, if not least, but in closing? Let's give a well-deserved shout-out and special thanks to West Virginia paranormal author, stalwart, and good man, Mr. Dave Spinks. He is a highly-respected man in the community, a veteran boots-on-the-ground investigator who also helped to keep the REAL "Flatwoods Monster" story up front and center in the spotlight where it rightfully belongs! Lead constructively, follow sentiently, or get out of the way, responsibly... Read on!