West Virginia Ghosts & Monster News
West Virginia almost
a UFO heaven?
Mannix Porterfield
Register-Herald
Reporter
August 10, 2008 10:50 pm
West Virginia prides itself as a land of majestic mountains, sparkling
streams, coal to feed hungry power plants, a unique place in American history and a fiercely independent people accustomed
to overcoming hard times with a resiliency unrivaled by anyone else. Now add another chapter to the 35th state’s
storied history - more documented UFO activity than any other place in America.
Even eclipsing Roswell.
For proof, author-researcher Frank Feschino points to his exhaustive study
that revealed three separate alien aircraft crash-landed a combined 10 times on the historic night of Sept. 12, 1952, the
benchmark of the UFO phenomena, when the “Flatwoods Monster” was born.
All of the craft escaped, although heavily damaged by hopscotching across
the rugged terrain of West Virginia, flying low to avoid radar detection, he says.
“They were damaged and puddle
jumping, and taking off — that’s what they were doing,” Feschino says.
On a steep hillside, a bevy of youngsters drawn away from a game of sandlot
football, along with some adults, were shaken out of their shoes by the spectacle of a 12-foot, metallic object that emanated
a pungent odor of sulfur and made sounds that reminded one witness of bacon sizzling in a fry pan.
Feschino has two books
published on the Flatwoods incident, and a third is a work in progress to be titled, The Flatwoods Monster — From
Myth to Reality.
Come Sept. 12 — the 56th anniversary of that riveting episode in Mountain
State folklore — Feschino and renowned UFO researcher-lecturer Stanton Friedman plan to headline the opening of a two-day,
second extravaganza, this one set in St. Albans, where the author says a craft landed in a frenzy of activity half a century
ago.
This year’s show is titled, Flatwoods Monster meets Mothman,
the latter a reference to a bird-like creature said to have haunted Point Pleasant just before the 1967 collapse of the Silver
Bridge. A key player will be Freddie May, one of the youngsters lured from a pickup game of football back in 1952 and a surviving
witness to the “Flatwoods Monster.” An illess kept him from appearing at last summer’s first such event.
Feschino gleaned up to 70 percent of his findings in plowing through the
Air Force’s official document on unknown aircraft, titled “Project Blue Book,” and finds its amazing that
Roswell, N.M., for all its reputation, is covered very little in government papers.
“You have some newspaper reports that say the Army captured the saucer,
but as far as the case itself, the official standing on the Roswell case is that it didn’t happen,” he says.
Based on “Blue Book,” 1952 was the high water mark for UFO activity,
with 1,501 reports and 303 officially listed as “unknowns,” and the largest concentration — 1,134 reports
— came in the summer months of July, August and September.
Officially, the government uses the term “flap,” describing
it as “a condition, a situation or a state of being, of a group of persons, characterized by an advanced degree of confusion
that has not quite reached panic proportions.”
For some reason, Feschino says, no one paid any attention to Flatwoods,
but the author invested 17 years of his life digging into the story, learning of 100 different locations where suspected alien
craft were spied in nine states, largely along the Eastern Seaboard.
“There were thousands of people who saw these things, up and down
the East Coast,” he says.
“What I did was to figure out the flight path trajectories. I worked
with all types of people — aeronautical people, pilots, astronomers, scientists, jet people, police officers, Air Force
people. They helped and assisted me by putting this whole mess of sightings together.”
Using his own master map, he pinpointed the flights unearthed by exhaustive
research.
“And over all the years researching the story, it just kept getting
bigger and bigger and bigger,” Feschino said.
“By using the ‘Blue Book’ as my primary source, I would
go into local newspapers and just pick up the trails. When I figured out what direction these UFOs were flying, I would go
from the Baltimore area and through Maryland, West Virginia and Ohio, and I picked up the trail these UFOs were flying that
night.”
On the critical night of Sept. 12, Feschino says, he learned of 21 hours
of sustained UFO activity, and West Virginia was the hub of it all.
“There were 10 actual crash landings that night
in West Virginia,” he says. “They’re all documented. This is what took 17 years to figure out.”
In order, some of those landings occurred when the first spaceship crashed
at Oglebay Park near Wheeling, at St. Albans, in Charleston, then up in a suburb named South Hills, back into the Watt Powell
Park area of the capital and in Cabin Creek, where the same UFO landed five times, the author says.
A second craft buzzed
the nation’s capital, flew over Virginia, then landed in Flatwoods at 7:25 p.m., where the local denizens christened
it the “Green Monster,” Feschino said.
Finally, a third ship hit the earth in a community called Holly, just outside
Flatwoods, took off and crashed a second time in Sugar Creek along the Elk River, lifted off again and then went into a third
tailspin at Frametown, the author said.
Some debris was scattered at the Flatwoods crash site and was shipped off
by an Air Force officer to Washington, including pieces of metal and chunks of an unknown, plasticlike material.
“I suppose if you went digging through some of these areas, you might
find something,” Feschino speculated.
Feschino cannot say if any effort was ever made by any of the alien invaders
to make contact with West Virginians or other earthlings, but says their ships ranged from the standard saucer-shape model
to the round ones with a flat side, to ones that resembled cigars.
Yet, his long-running and exhaustive research have convinced him that he
has unearthed the truth.
“I actually re-drove and re-enacted that whole night, driving all
through Braxton County,” he said.
“It took me years to do it. It was a cold case and I reconstructed
it.”
mannix@register-herald.com
Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.
Clarksbury Author Fueled America's 1950s Fascination with Flying Saucers
Friday, July 18, 2008 – courtesy Times West Virginian
The late Gray Barker inspired the “Men in Black” movie. The popular author from Clarksburg
wrote extensively about the Flatwoods Monster, Mothman and other weird subjects. In one magazine article after another, Barker
helped to fuel America’s fascination
with flying saucers in the 1950s. But that’s not all.
“I found that there was more to this guy than UFOs,”
said Bob Wilkinson, a notable West Virginia filmmaker who’s
now producing a documentary on Barker. “He’s a complex character.” As for the documentary, “It’s
a West Virginia product, so I’m pretty proud of that,”
Wilkinson said. Barker was born in the tiny hamlet of Riffle in Braxton
County in 1925. He went to nearby Glenville State College and got his
degree in teaching.
He taught for a while in Maryland but then came home to West Virginia where he booked films and managed theaters in the Clarksburg
area. “He would find these films that Marilyn Monroe was in as an extra, and he would acquire them for the drive-ins
and advertise them as Marilyn Monroe double features,” said David Houchin, special collections librarian at the Clarksburg-Harrison
Public Library, which has a room dedicated to the life and works of Barker. It is crammed with books, articles and manuscripts.
“Maybe he was the type of person
who could fool you and you never resented it,” Houchin said.
And fooling is exactly what Barker specialized in.
In
1952, Barker went to Braxton County
to investigate the infamous Flatwoods Monster.
Residents claimed to have seen a glowing object fly across the sky,
and went to the woods where it landed.
They said they saw a creature with glowing red eyes that smelled like something
they’ve never smelled before.
Barker’s report about the strange beast was published in “Fate”
magazine.
Houchin said this represented Barker’s “entry into the field of paranormal.”
That’s
when Barker began asking around in earnest and writing about extraterrestrials and UFOs.
Houchin said Barker was really
fooling his audience. He said Barker himself didn’t believe in these conspiracies, but would simply write about it and
pass it off as fact.
Houchin said Barker was “not profoundly committed to the limits of fact,” so he was
essentially writing science fiction.
This is the type of writing Barker did until he died in 1984 at the age of 59
in a Charleston hospital.
Throughout his career he
published his own UFO newsletter in Clarksburg and wrote multiple
books. His most-recognized book was his first one, “They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers.”
In that book,
a central element was friend and fellow writer Albert Bender.
Bender was the editor of “Space Review,”
a UFO periodical for which Barker was a correspondent.
In the last issue of “Space Review,” the newsletter’s
overall theme was that the mystery of UFOs was no longer a mystery.
It was reported that Bender was visited by three
men in black suits who had threatened him.
This story gave Barker the opportunity to poke fun at the situation, writing
that extraterrestrials were actually the “men in black,” which was the basis of his final book, “MIB: The
Secret Terror Among Us.” This became the inspiration for the hit 1997 movie.
Barker was published in many different
newsletters, including his own called “The Saucerian.” He also investigated the Mothman creature in Point Pleasant, which resulted in his book “The Silver Bridge.”
But besides his career
as a writer, Barker was living another life that was quite controversial at the time.
Houchin said there was a reason
Barker left teaching in Maryland. He said he was most likely
blackballed for being a homosexual.
“Either he hated teaching, or he was forced out,” Houchin said.
Houchin said Barker was a “smart guy in a pretty uncomfortable
situation.”
“He was leading the life of a clandestine gay man in Clarksburg,
W.Va., in the ’50s and ’60s,” Houchin said. “Barker was
reasonably accepted. Nothing serious happened.”
But despite a few run-ins with the law and his reputation around
town, Barker was very well known locally for his writing.
“He was that guy that came to your school and talked
to you about flying saucers,” Houchin said.
Houchin said too much alcohol consumption for too long probably contributed
to his death, though many suspected he had AIDS.
“It’s hard to say,” Houchin said. “We don’t
know.”
Houchin said Barker was never a serious UFO researcher, but was more a “folklorist” who would
hear other people’s stories and publish them.
“Barker was frankly lying to people about UFOs,” Houchin
said.
But he added, “Barker’s contribution to popular culture is significant.”
Ghost Hunters Meet Here to Discuss Local Ectoplasmic
Phenomena
By Mike Barajas
Athens NEWS Campus Reporter
July 17, 2008
Tom Moore and his brother James have been investigating what they call paranormal
activity for years
In Haynes Cemetery in West Virginia, they claim to have heard a voice saying,
“Mommy still needs me.” While investigating a house in Parkersburg, W.Va., they insist they heard footsteps loudly
stomping up and down the staircase, even though no one else was present. They wholeheartedly attest to doors mysteriously
opening by themselves, unknown voices caught on audio recordings, and the authenticity of photographs that have captured ghost-like
figures and orbs that can’t be explained.
Eight years ago, the Moore brothers founded the Mid Ohio Valley Ghost Hunters
(MOVGH) in order to investigate what they call paranormal phenomena in the area. “We’ve always been interested
in the paranormal, ghosts specifically,” explained Tom Moore. After years of ghost hunting, he and his brother wanted
to form a group that was specifically dedicated to just that.
“We decided that we wanted to become serious about this,” Moore said,
adding that soon afterward, he began approaching businesses and individuals about investigating paranormal activity at various
sites.
Along with members Joni and Al Rorick of the Athens area, the Moores attempted
to expand MOVGH to the region with a meeting at the Athens library on Tuesday night. Saying he’s heard multiple stories
of paranormal activity in the Athens area, Tom Moore, who did most of the talking for the two brothers, confirmed that he
has already done some investigations around town for paranormal “hot spots.”
“We wanted to see what kind of interest is out there,” Moore said.
Though MOVGH meets once each month in Parkersburg, he said that he’d like to see the meetings branch out to the Athens
area as well.
At the first Athens meeting of MOVGH, the Moores and Roricks explained the group
and how its investigations into the paranormal operate. While showcasing the common, everyday, low-tech equipment the group
uses for ghost hunting, Tom Moore explained how one can capture evidence of paranormal activity with a simple digital audio
recorder, camera or camcorder.
Group members also recounted stories of what they called past paranormal experience
to the 10 or so new faces at the meeting. Just this past week, Moore said, a woman on one of his ghost hunts felt someone’s
warm breath down the back of her neck, although no one was behind her.
Moore also explained electronic voice phenomena (EVP) at the meeting, which he
cited as being one of the main evidences of paranormal activity. He went through various recordings on a small, handheld audio
recorder that he said had picked up ghostly voices.
Moore presented fuzzy recordings of what he claims are EVPs from his investigations
at the Eaton tunnel near Parkersburg. The tunnel, which collapsed in the ’60s killing two men, is a supposed hot spot
for paranormal activity, Moore stated. In one recording, a voice, which he claims is a ghost, mutters, “Godforsaken
hole.” Moore said he believes it refers to the disaster in the ’60s.
That recording, along with others the group claims are EVPs, are posted on MOVGH’s
Web site. In addition, they have posted photos of what they claim show paranormal activity such as orbs, unexplained lights
and freestanding shadow figures.
Another spot the MOVGH has been dedicated to investigating is a sandstone Italian-style
villa near Marietta known as the Anchorage, built in the 1850s. The mansion was constructed for Eliza Putnam, wife of a wealthy
local businessman. The woman died shortly after the villa’s completion, Moore said, noting that many claim Eliza’s
ghost still haunts the halls of the Anchorage.
During public ghost hunts, Tom Moore said that some have seen a mysterious ghost-like
woman sitting on the staircase inside the Anchorage, who he explained is likely Eliza Putnam.
MOVGH now charges $15 for public ghost hunts into the building, with all of the
proceeds going to the Washington County Historical Society, which owns the building.
Joni Rorick stated that she’s used to dealing with skepticism about what
she thinks could be paranormal. However, she often hears and sees things that just can’t be explained, she stated, adding,
“You just don’t know, and that’s the whole thing – the unknown.”
Tom Moore insisted that being skeptical is a vital and necessary element to ghost
hunting. First-time ghost hunters will jump at anything, claiming it’s the paranormal. “They want to see what’s
on the TV shows,” he said.
Without a healthy amount of doubt, Moore said people will mistakenly believe that
everything they come across is a ghost or paranormal. If you aren’t skeptical, he said, “Then you’re out
chasing the wind.”
Members of MOVGH will continue to investigate sites they consider to be prone
to paranormal activity. While displaying what he considers proof of the supernatural, Moore stated, “There are always
people who don’t want to believe.
“You can either believe it or disbelieve it,” he said.
For more information on MOVGH, go to their Web site at www.midohiovalleyghosthunters.com
This story in its original form: Athens News (Athens, OH)
UFOs Inspire Documentary
7/12/2008
CLARKSBURG, W.Va. (AP) - A late West Virginia author whose UFO writings
inspired the "Men in Black" movies is the subject of an upcoming documentary.
Clarksburg native Gray Barker wrote extensively about the infamous Flatwoods
Monster, Mothman and other strange subjects -- fueling America's fascination with flying saucers in the 1950s. He died in
1984 at the age of 59.
West Virginia filmmaker Bob Wilkinson says Barker was a complex character.
David Houchin - a librarian at the Clarksburg-Harrison Public
Library - says Barker didn't believe in these conspiracies, but would simply write about it and pass it off as fact.
The library has a room dedicated to Barker's life and writings.
Flatwoods Monster Meets with Mothman at UFO Extravaganza
By Mannix Porterfield
REGISTER-HERALD REPORTER
Consider the show’s title for a moment.
If you’ve
lived long enough, it revives memories of those old 1950s-era sci-fi flicks, back when outrageous monsters from other planets,
or long submerged in the depths of an ocean, tromped awkwardly across the silver screen to do combat with one another or any
earthling that stood in their paths.
Actually, there’s to be no rivalry when the Flatwoods Monster teams up with
Mothman in late summer in the Kanawha Valley.
What is happening merely is a second running of a UFO extravaganza, one
that attracts the true believers from one coast to another, as well as some foreign disciples to boot.
“Everybody
is going to think it’s Godzilla meets Mothra,” show promoter Larry Bailey quipped, recalling the Japanese take
on American-made monster flicks popular decades ago.
In reality, the Sept. 12-13 event, planned at the new Alban Art
Conference Center in St. Albans, is designed to pay homage to West Virginia’s two most famous oddities — the Flatwoods
Monster that disrupted the pastoral setting of Braxton County in 1952 and the bird-like creature known as Mothman, whose eerie
arrival preceded the deadly Silver Bridge collapse in 1967.
While the two were never known to compete, it’s indisputable
they have been rivals for media attention for many years.
Mothman inspired a spate of books and magazine articles,
not to mention a Richard Gere film titled “The Mothman Prophecies.”
Arriving on a summer night in 1952
and thought by one writer to be part of a convoy of alien spaceships engaged by the U.S. Air Force in a spirited battle off
the Atlantic Coast, the Flatwoods Monster has garnered its share of notoriety. In particular, he has been the subject of three
books by author-illustrator Frank Feschino.
His latest effort, titled “The Flatwoods Monster — Myth to
Reality,” is the result of painstaking research the past 17 years in which the Florida resident takes a chronological
view of the first sighting and a floodtide of reports and newspaper articles that followed its brief visit to the hills of
West Virginia.
Feschino’s first book on the subject explored the basic facts, but in a more pointed follow-up,
“Shoot Them Down,” the Floridian went to lengths to show the “monster” was in fact an extraterrestrial
warrior sidelined when his ship was knocked out of combat in a savage 1952 air battle.
Now, in his third offering,
Feschino is letting the full string run out on the Flatwoods incident that put the little hamlet on the map after a bizarre,
robot-like entity that first mesmerized, then frightened away, a gaggle of youths playing football and three adults who accompanied
them up a steep hill overlooking their playground. Witnesses remembered a sound that resembled bacon frying in a pan and a
stifling, sulfur odor emanating from the “alien.”
“I go back to the very first day and I have information
from the day the event took place from all the reporters, investigators and newspaper accounts from around the world in a
chronological, straight order and bring the original investigators into it,” the writer explained.
“And
then I bring it right up to modern times.”
Feschino left no known stone unturned in quest of the truth of a subject
that has haunted since he first learned of it while attending an aunt’s funeral in the area nearly two decades ago.
“Basically,
it’s like a courtroom layout,” he says.
“It’s a fun book. It’s a really good read, an
easy read. It’s chock full of information that nobody has ever seen. I’ve been putting this stuff away for years.
A 12-year-old kid could read this book. Every step of the story is basically a segment of the Flatwoods story in a chapter.
Then I use all of the original investigators’ comments, tie them in with a section of the story, then I pull out all
the reporters from the 1960s. And I have the interviews with the witnesses.”
To learn as much as possible, Feschino
contacted reporters who handled the “Flatwoods Monster” phenomenon, among them Skip Johnson, formerly an outdoor
columnist with The Charleston Gazette.
Feschino has come to be identified so closely with the Flatwoods Monster that
Kathleen May, one of the adult witnesses, has jokingly referred to him as her third son. While back in West Virginia, he hopes
to drum up support for a proposed museum housing not only UFO memorabilia but that of the space industry as well.
Joining
the author at the St. Albans event will be Stanton Friedman, a nuclear physicist and UFO author, generally recognized as the
world’s foremost authority on the subject; Jeff Wamsley, paranormal investigator and curator of the Mothman Museum in
Point Pleasant; Chad Lambert, author of “Return to Point Pleasant”; John Ventri, MUFON director in Pennsylvania
and West Virginia; and Alfred Lehmberg, UFO Magazine columnist and author.
“I told the story like I’m the
ninth person there,” Feschino said of the Flatwoods incident.
St. Albans Mayor Dick Callaway takes an objective,
neutral position on UFOs, but is glad to see Feschino and Friedman co-hosting the second such UFO summit in his town.
“I
won’t say I believe in them,” Callaway cautioned an interviewer.
“I will say there’s a possibility,
simply because they can’t prove or disprove. They have a body of evidence, but there’s no jury returning a verdict
on that yet.”
Bailey worked with Wamsley, and the Mothman Museum curator agreed it would be a novel idea to have
both curiosities spotlighted at the 2008 summit.
“We had a good turnout last year, considering the Marshall-WVU
football game was on Saturday,” he said.
“We’re getting calls already. One man in California has
called. He drives cross-country every year for something. He’s 70 years old. This year, it’s going to be our show.”
Football
might not be a distraction this time around, but Bailey conceded the rising gasoline prices could affect attendance.
At
least for those piloting human-made vehicles.
No one has yet ascertained how many miles per gallon one can log with
a spaceship. Or just what it costs at the pumps at outer space stations.
Published: May 18, 2008 10:54 pm
TV Show Says Weston
Hospital is Haunted
WESTON -- The SciFi Channel television show "Ghost
Hunters'' has declared West Virginia's most famous mental hospital haunted.
Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson of The Atlantic Paranormal
Society visited the Lunatic Asylum West of the Alleghenies in March to try to debunk reports of unusual activity. People had
said they'd heard gurneys moving down hallways and screams from inside the former shock therapy room.
Using high-tech recording equipment, TAPS recorded what
sounded like female laughter and a voice that said "go home.''
Wilson also saw a shadow that looked like it was holding
its hands over its head and crouching before "being sucked out of the room.''
The Jordan family, which bought the Weston hospital
last year for $1.5 million, is offering ghost tours.
Posted Friday, March 21, 2008 ; 05:41 PM
Updated Friday, March 21, 2008 ; 06:44 PM
|
We get up close to the members
of TAPS!
Story by J. Turchetta
WESTON -- We have
told you that the Sci-Fi Channel's "Ghost Hunters" are at the Trans Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston this week shooting
an upcoming episode.
For those of you not familiar with the show, it follows a
group from The Atlantic Paranormal Society, or TAPS for short. The group travels the country investigating the claims of hauntings
and paranormal activity all across the country.
The folks from the Sci-Fi channel and TAPS were kind enough
to let 12 news tag along for part of its investigation.
Talking with Rebecca Jordan, who runs the hospital property,
trying to keep the filming under-wraps didn't exactly work out the way she had planned.
"The secret didn't even last through Sunday evening. They
pulled into the Holiday Inn Express and we got phone calls, "Is TAPS coming?" Then some of them followed them here to the
hospital." Jordan said of the fans that were gathering at the hospital to meet the group.
Doug Johnson, a tour guide and former employee at the hospital
says seeing TAPS investigate the 150 year old building has made him think about his own experiences.
Johnson told 12 News about some of the odd things he has
witnessed over the years. "When I worked here, scary wise, i saw a lot of shadows going across the halls and stuff."
So what was it like for the TAPS crew seeing the building
for the first time?
TAPS member and the groups tech manager Steve Gonsalves says,
"When you first drive up to this place you can't help but think it's haunted, it is all dilapidated and when you think of
a haunted, abandoned building in the movies, this is what you think of."
Gonsalves says the Trans Allegheny Asylum is the LARGEST
place TAPS has ever investigated. But the size doesn't bother the team, in fact, it makes them MORE excited.
Just as soon as the team rolled up to the hospital, it went
to work setting up all its equipment, including infrared cameras, digital video recorders and more.
Each episode features the crew from TAPS going on a tour
of each location to find the hot spots. And while the TAPS crew is busy in FRONT of the cameras, the production crew is BEHIND
them making sure to capture EVERYTHING the 7 person TAPS team does.
Because the hospital is the largest building the team has
investigated, they had to spread that investigation out to two different nights.
So now the question becomes did TAPS find anything? The answer
will be revealed when the episode airs in May.
If you are a fan of the show, the Ghost Hunters
will have a meet and greet session on Tuesday, March 25th. It will start at 2:30 and end at 3:30 in the afternoon on the front
lawn of the Asylum. |
Flatwoods ‘monster’
might be turned into a movie
By Mannix Porterfield
Register-Herald
reporter
— Move over, Mothman?
If the money comes in to finance a movie, you might not be the only weird West Virginia
creature memorialized on film.
An independent filmmaker in Los Angeles says he would gladly handle a movie about the Flatwoods
Monster — provided someone can put up sufficient financial backing for the project.
It was back on Sept. 12, 1952,
that the 12-foot metallic oddity, emitting a sulfuric odor, horrified a gaggle of children and adults on a summer evening,
after a fiery streak was spotted in the sky along a steep hillside in Braxton County.
A legend was born, unleashing torrents
of speculation and inspiring a book by Frank Feschino, a star player in a Sept. 7-8 gathering in Charleston devoted to unidentified
flying objects.
Using their own funds, Thomas Dickens and his partner, David Burke, are completing a feature-length film
titled “Alien Gray Zone-X,” due to be released no later than next summer.
“This could be a great motion
picture that could be done that could basically compete with Hollywood films,” Dickens says of a possible Flatwoods
movie.
Dickens spoke glowingly of “Alien Gray Zone-X,” using such superlatives as “amazing” and
“groundbreaking” to describe it.
“And that’s not just because of the special effects, but there’s
a lot of human drama to it,” he said.
“There’s a love story and a lot of great fight sequences that use
stunt people trained in fighting. There’s a message to it. Most films, and I don’t want to give away our ending,
kill the aliens, but ours is different.”
Given the funds, Dickens would do the same for the Flatwoods Monster.
“I
would love to do this movie,” he said. “My partner is interested. However, at this time, we don’t have the
budget to do it.”
If he ever gets such a project launched, Dickens wants to work with Feschino as a part of his team
for technical advice.
Feschino believes the monster was a space alien, part of a contingent engaged in a fiery sky battle
with U.S. Air Force jets off the Atlantic Coast. The author also is convinced that UFOs continue to buzz the Braxton County
area, since it is on a direct flight line to the White House and the regional terrain affords ample space in which to conceal
craft.
“Basically, we would do everything,” Dickens said. “Write the script. Do pre-production. Design
the creatures. Based on a true story, we would use the best research and witnesses to get the idea what this creature would
look like. But we have to get a budget. We would be able to do the entire film.”
Dickens hopes to attend the September
summit at the Capitol Theater in downtown Charleston, coming less than a week shy of the 55th anniversary of the Monster’s
appearance. This also is the 60th anniversary of the Roswell incident.
Promoter Larry Bailey is promising attendees “hard
evidence” to show UFOs are piloted by extra-terrestrials.
If a Flatwoods Monster film were made, Dickens said, he
would envision some scenes on site, provided landowners are willing to grant access, including a depiction of what Feschino
feels were aerial warfare between alien craft and U.S. jets.
In fact, that is the theme of Feschino’s latest book,
“Shoot Them Down.”
Richard Gere starred in “The Mothman Prophecies,” a film dedicated to a moth-like
creature said to roam an abandoned plateau near Point Pleasant in the area of an abandoned TNT site left over from World War
II.
Unlike Mothman, a precursor to the 1967 collapse of the Silver Bridge that claimed 46 lives, no violence has been linked
to the Flatwoods Monster.
A 17-year veteran of the film industry, Dickens says he strives to compete with Hollywood productions
in quality.
“We don’t want to make anything that looks low-budget,” he said.
“We use people
who look very professional. We use people that look like they have universal appeal.”
Bailey says he has attracted
so much interest to his UFO gathering that he might expand it by adding a Sunday matinee, since the Capitol Theater has a
seating capacity of only 660. As things stand now, Friday’s show runs from 6 to 10 p.m. with Saturday billed from 3
to 7 p.m.
An art contest supervised by Heritage Towers will reward children for the best depictions of UFOs or aliens.
Besides
Feschino and Flatwoods eyewitness Freddie May, the two-day event will feature lectures by world-renowned UFO expert Stanton
Freidman, who says the government has engaged in a cover-up since the 1947 incident in Roswell, where many believe the Air
Force concealed the bodies of aliens after their craft crashed in the New Mexico desert.
Since the first Register-Herald
story was published about the gathering, Bailey said he has been besieged by media outlets across the nation, including live
radio remotes in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, Calif., Brownwood, Texas, Bridgeport, Conn., and Lincoln, Neb.
“We’re
getting contacts from everywhere,” he said.
Eventually, the summit could evolve into an annual event, rivaling that
of Roswell, now a mecca for UFO believers, Bailey says.
Skeptics are welcome, but they could find themselves hard put to
counter Freidman, a nuclear physicist who has appeared on a number of cable television networks, the promoter says.
“Stanton
has won two debates,” Bailey said. “They were with people that were scoffing or trying to tell everyone the UFOs
were just meteors. He has some hard evidence that he uncovered under the Freedom of Information Act. That’s some of
our hard evidence.”
— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com
Copyright © 1999-2006 cnhi, inc.
Afterlife
sentence: Ghosts haunt cells of West Virginia Penitentiary
Mark Washburn, The Charlotte
Observer
MOUNDSVILLE, W.VA. - Convicts serving afterlife
sentences keep things lively in West Virginia's creaky, creepy old penitentiary.
A forlorn monolith of stone near the Ohio River, the West Virginia Penitentiary
was closed in 1995, a decade after courts ruled that doing time in its cramped steel cages, where sewage dripped from pipes
and bugs wriggled in food, constituted "cruel and unusual" punishment.
But some rogues still prowl the gothic fortress in spirit form, say visitors
and former administrators.
Paranormal investigators and amateur ghost-hunters are frequent visitors
to the 19th-century big house, which allows tours by day and night.
Whether tricks of shadow and gloom or something supernatural, visitors
have felt, seen and photographed strange things in the steel labyrinth embraced by sandstone ramparts and gothic turrets.
From a window in the abandoned confines of the third-floor administration
building where female prisoners once worked, a woman's face has been repeatedly sighted, peering into the silent prison yard.
A blurry, furtive apparition called "Shadow Man" has been glimpsed in the
psychiatric ward, the cafeteria and the catacombs.
But the granddaddy of them all seems to be inmate No. 44670, known in life
as R.D. Wall. He's been attracting attention for 76 years, long before the tourists came.
Grisly history
Annually, about 20,000 people are drawn to the old pen and get a history
lesson on its macabre executions and grisly violence, some of it imparted while visitors -- who dare -- stand locked in maximum
security cells. (They qualify for "I Did Time" T-shirts on sale in the gift shop.)
West Virginia, which split with Virginia in 1863 in the tumult of the Civil
War, began work on the prison in 1866.
Movie buffs may recognize the unusual gateway inside the entrance -- a
round, rotating cage with one open side, installed in 1894. A guard in a booth controlled movements of "the wheel," spinning
it with an old trolley motor to provide access to side passageways or the main prison area.
It was featured in an opening scene of the 1971 Jimmy Stewart movie "Fool's
Parade," about three discharged convicts who try to open a general store.
Visitors are led through the old dining hall, where inmates segregated
themselves by gang and race, the vast recreation yards ringed by 24-foot-tall walls and the wagon gate, a sally port for supplies
that still has a 7-ton door at one end.
There's the site of the "Old Men's Colony," where inmates too feeble to
protect themselves -- or their dinner plates -- were housed. When the prison closed, the youngest in that unit was 75; the
oldest 91.
And visitors see the old prison industries building, where road signs and
"Wild, Wonderful West Virginia" license plates were once fashioned. It has been converted into the National Corrections and
Law Enforcement Training and Technology Center, a federal institute for prison workers that holds mock riots for training
in the old cellblocks.
Those ancient cell houses are the stars of the tour. Stark and cavernous,
prisoners were housed in steel boxes stacked four tiers high.
"It was eerie in there," recalls Paul Kirby, who was health care administrator
and later deputy warden of the prison.
"Steam coming up out of the ground and constant noise, doors slamming and
clanging. At night it had an eerie quiet. Occasionally you'd see a rat run across the floor."
Savage vengeance
Inmates settled vendettas with savage vengeance.
"They wouldn't just stab you once, they'd stab you over and over and over,
just stab them until they couldn't stab them any more," says Kirby, now manager of the Moundsville Economic Development Council,
which operates the prison tours.
Exemplary prisoners got to live in the honors hall, a cellblock with liberal
privileges.
Squealers and convicted police officers were relegated to "Rat Row," a
block for protective custody, and didn't mix with the general population. Others lived in the New Wall tiers, completed in
the 1950s.
'The Alamo'
For incorrigibles, there was North Hall, dubbed "The Alamo." It was a prison
within a prison, 160 steel cells measuring 5 by 7 feet, the size of a walk-in closet.
Inmates sent here for violations of the rules, ranging from drug use to
murder, spent 23 hours a day in dingy, metal-screened cells, sometimes sharing their space with a roommate not of their choosing
because of crowding. Their art, slogans and graffiti are still vivid on the rusting walls.
Entering North Hall, Tom Stiles stops the tour to show the four cells fenced
off from the rest where the worst inmates were kept.
"Rusty Lassiter stabbed Red Snyder 37 times right here," Stiles says casually,
as though you should know them.
Inmates certainly did. Both were notorious troublemakers. They had shared
the prison yard the day before for exercise and seemed cordial enough. Next day, with two guards looking on, bam.
"You never know what happens to a guy's head locked in a little box 23
hours a day," says Stiles. He has coordinated tour operations for four years.
In 1899, the state took over executions from West Virginia's sheriffs,
and over the next six decades, 86 hangings were conducted at the prison, some involving celebrated scoundrels.
Like Harry Powers -- pudgy, bespectacled and unassuming. He selected women
from personal ads in magazines catering to the lovelorn. He romanced them boldly by mail. Then he killed them and buried them
on his farm in the Quiet Dell settlement, near Clarksburg.
"Bluebeard of Quiet Dell," newspapers called him.
In 1932, he went to the gallows. Whimpering.
Hangings were open to the public until the ghastly execution of Frank Hyer
on June 19, 1931.
"I was drunk when I did it," the restaurateur from rural Durbin proclaimed
by way of explanation before climbing the 13 steps to the gallows for beating his wife to death. "But I will make the sacrifice
and shed my blood for the crime."
It wouldn't be so noble. When the trap was sprung, Hyer was instantly decapitated.
Flummoxed prison officials insisted there was no problem with the rigging
of the noose. They surmised Hyer's substantial heft and soft neck were at fault.
Whatever the cause, after that, executions were invitation-only affairs.
'Old Sparky'
In 1959, West Virginia abandoned the gallows and switched to electrocution.
Inmate Paul Glenn, a skilled carpenter, built the electric chair dubbed "Old Sparky."
Though hailed as a humane improvement in the mechanics of executions, his
handiwork made him decidedly unpopular among his colleagues. He was moved to protective custody, then transferred to another
prison.
Nine men died in Glenn's creation before West Virginia outlawed capital
punishment in 1965.
"Old Sparky" is displayed in a museum room at the end of the tour, with
newspaper clippings describing notable executions.
Guides demonstrate a homemade electrical board used to test the electric
chair. They explain how three guards, picked by lottery, would throw a switch -- none of them knowing which of the three circuits
was hooked up to the chair.
Any officer who refused to take a turn in the deadly tableau was out of
a job.
Though riots and escapes plagued the old penitentiary in its later years,
one notorious convict tried -- and failed -- to get in.
Charles Manson wrote to the warden in 1983, asking to transfer to Moundsville
from California, where he was serving a life sentence in the Tate-LaBianca murders. Manson was raised in nearby McMechen and
wanted to be closer to his kinfolk.
"Would you accept me at your place," he asks in his scrawled letter on
display. "I got 9 lifes & don't want out no more. I'm a good worker & I give you my word I'll start no trouble."
When hell freezes over, said Warden Donald Bordenkircher.
Night tours
Night tours of the spooky old pen are Michael Parnicza's domain. He served
in the prison's medical unit for 13 years and now leads visitors on flashlight tours.
When he brings them into the catacombs beneath the administration building,
he tells the tale of R.D. Wall, whose first-degree murder sentence seems to last an eternity. R.D., as he's affectionately
known, was observed one day talking quietly to the warden. Word circulated he was a snitch.
R.D. worked in an old dungeon that had been converted to a tool room. Three
inmates butchered him there Oct. 8, 1929.
"Sightings started occurring in 1930," recalls Parnicza.
At night, tower guards would see a man at the back of the administration
building, above the spot where R.D. met his end.
"When they went to look, they'd never find anything," Parnicza says.
In that basement, it can get very cold very fast. Men sometimes emerge
with inexplicable scratches on their arms.
Women report feeling an unseen hand touching their hair.
Says Parnicza, who has never seen anything ghostly, but admits being spooked
now and then by strange noises in the pen: "Happens quite often."
Among the other mysterious quirks of the old pen is its neighbor across
the street, a prehistoric burial mound built about 2,000 years ago by a lost tribe called the Adena people. For $3, visitors
can tour the museum there and climb the 70-foot mound.
No one is quite sure how the primitive society moved the 60,000 tons of
earth required to build it.
Four stories above the door of the administration building -- the entrance
incoming prisoners used -- can be seen a large replica of the West Virginia state seal, the pen's ultimate irony.
It contains the date of the state's founding, drawings of a farmer and
a coal miner and the state motto: "Montani Semper Liberi."
It's Latin. Translated:
"Mountaineers are always free."
Bigfoot Mania Comes to WV
By Christian Giggenbach
Register-Herald
Reporter
Published: March 15, 2008
11:35 pm
Editor’s note: This is the first & second
parts of a two-part series concerning an international group’s effort to locate Bigfoot inside West Virginia.
Since
the infamous 1967 “Patterson movie” which haphazardly showed a tall, furry, long-limbed, human-like creature quickly
looking back toward the camera before lumbering away, millions have been swept into the legend of Sasquatch and the possibility
that humanity’s missing link may be free-roaming forested areas across the United States.
So much so, the term
Bigfoot today — and the compelling mystery surrounding the 9-foot-tall creature — has uniquely become immersed
in Americana and is enjoying new popularity courtesy of the technology age.
The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization,
an Internet-based community of scientists and journalists, has compiled the world’s most extensive database of Bigfoot
encounters and evidence which can be quickly accessed with the click of a mouse at www.bfro.net. According to the Web site,
the BFRO “seeks to resolve the mystery” and “derive conclusive documentation of the species existence.”
Next
month, about 18 BFRO members will take to the woods and search for such evidence in the abundant hills and valleys of West
Virginia. The expedition will be led by BFRO investigator Stephen Willis, a retired U.S. Army first sergeant and Webster County
native who told The Register-Herald he believes the Appalachian Mountains present a viable environment for the existence of
Bigfoot.
“A lot of people have this impression that Sasquatch only exists in the Northwest,” said Willis,
who has conducted 15 other searches. “But they are everywhere that you can imagine as long as there is a deer population
for food and shelter to protect them from severe winter weather.”
Willis, 56, declined to disclose the exact
location of this year’s search — an expedition was held in Greenbrier and Pocahontas counties in 2006 —
for fear that curiosity seekers and media could compromise the results. However, he did explain the group’s April 10-13
itinerary and its quest to document the creature.
“So far there are 18 members who have signed up to go and we
will be picking out some target areas and locations and basically be doing a lot of listening during the ‘squatching’
hours between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. when they are moving,” explained Willis, who has investigated dozens of sightings across
the state. “The ultimate goal of the expedition will be a daylight sighting with a reference mark in the video or photograph
to document its size.”
Bigfoot’s movement coincides with the movement of a primary food source —
deer — Willis said, and the elusive creatures organize hunts “using some of the same tactics as deer hunters.”
“They
will conduct drives and push the deer into the waiting arms of other Sasquatch just like deer hunters do,” Willis said.
“A Sasquatch can run in excess of 30 miles per hour and will grab the deer and fold it in the middle and break its back.
“One of our investigators interrupted a Sasquatch deer hunt and the animal threw rocks at him so the hunt would
not be interrupted. They will do the same thing if a fisherman gets too close to the area where they are nesting in the daytime.”
Willis
said the average creature can weigh up to 800 pounds, be about 4 feet wide at the shoulders, and have arms that are 10 to
15 percent longer than humans’.
“They are considered to be primates, but in my opinion they would be ranked
as pre-humans and come from a different link of the evolution chain,” Willis, who reported seeing one in northern California,
said. “I wouldn’t say a missing link, but rather a very smart ape.”
Willis said the creature also
has “scent sacks” underneath its armpits, just like a gorilla, and activates them when endangered or threatened.
BFRO researchers estimate up to 6,000 Sasquatches —
a Native American term meaning “wild man” — are currently roaming North America, including Canada and southern
Alaska.
California lawyer and computer consultant Mathew Moneymaker founded the organization and its popular Web site
in 1995.
More than 50 West Virginia sightings alone are documented on the Web site, including a Monroe County encounter
last August near Lindside and one in 1994 at Sherwood Lake in Greenbrier County.
Population numbers were derived from
“credible reports and track finds since the 1960s,” according to the
Web site, which also suggests the animal has a high fear of humans, and is a forager and nocturnal feeding predator with its
own language who “tries to avoid leaving tracks where possible.”
“In the daytime, they don’t
like to make eye contact and will melt into the woods to avoid everyone,” said Willis, whose wife Kathryn says she saw
two adult males in Greenbrier County in 2005. “But at night, the best weapon against a Sasquatch is shining a light
in their eyes. Above all else, don’t start shooting at one because they could become wounded.”
Part two:
The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, an Internet scientific community
charged with unraveling the mystery of Sasquatch, lists more than 4,000 sightings and trackings of the furry fellow throughout
the United States and Canada.
The Web site www. bfro.net has documented more than 50 sightings in West
Virginia alone since 1975, with a majority of them occurring in southern West Virginia. The most recant Bigfoot sighting occurred
last summer in Monroe County.
BFRO founder and director Mathew Moneymaker last week revealed for the
first time the approximate geographical area in West Virginia where the group’s April 10-13 outing is scheduled. The
group last explored a similar area in 2006.
"Our expedition will focus searching for Sasquatch in the Greenbrier River
region area encompassing a span of three counties," said Moneymaker, a law graduate and computer consultant from California.
Moneymaker began compiling his "comprehensive sightings database" in 1995
while still in law school. Since then, he’s received more than 20,000 submissions about sightings, but only about "one
out of four have credible enough evidence to document and post on the Web site."
The database, the first of its kind, gives a county-by-county breakdown
not only of sightings and trackings, but also first-hand accounts. Some reports are buffered with notes from BFRO investigators
such as retired Army Sgt. Stephen Willis, who will lead the Greenbrier River expedition.
Willis will most likely be searching for Sasquatch somewhere in Greenbrier
and Pocahontas counties, which lists five previous sightings. A 1994 Greenbrier eyewitness account documents a man and son
who saw "three creatures ripping limbs and bark from trees" at Sherwood Lake.
"I saw two very large black upright creatures ... it appeared they were
eating bark. The smallest of the two had an arm reach about 10 to 12 feet. The larger of the two was several feet higher,
later a third one stepped out. That’s when I told my son, ‘we have to run,’" the unidentified witness wrote.
"I grew up in the area and I spent a lot of time in the woods, and it takes a lot to scare me. Through the years, I stopped
talking about it because no believed me or my son."
BFRO officials said many encounters are never documented because eyewitnesses
fear they will be ridiculed after coming forward with information.
The Web site also documents a 1987 Nicholas County sighting by three friends
of a "7-foot tall, legged, hairy brown animal" at the "Krofford Hole on the Gauley River."
"I estimated by the tree limbs that it had to be over 7 feet tall," the
witness, known only as D.A., said. "I am a believer now and I will always be."
Moneymaker said BFRO officials are continuing to input information from
their expansive database onto Google Map, which he feels will allow him to glean even more information about the elusive,
legendary character.
"By mapping the most credible instances, we will learn more about their
behavior and use that to target their locations and possibly trick them to walk in front of cameras," Moneymaker said.
And what of his critics who say Bigfoot is just a hoax? Moneymaker said,
"We have been able to convert the best trained skeptic after seeing all the evidence. It’s not a magical thing or something
you can show in one photo; it’s a collection of things."
The state’s most recent Bigfoot sighting, a Monroe County encounter
last summer, purportedly occurred just northeast of Lindside near U.S. 219.
"I was walking up to the driveway after getting the morning newspaper,"
the unidentified witness wrote. "I saw a big, tannish brown creature that sort of had a bump in its back. Its fur was short
and clumped."
The witness said the creature also "banged on trees in the yard."
Willis visited the family and set up a trail camera, but "(it) recorded
three images, none of any interest."
Will the mystery of Sasquatch finally be answered in the Greenbrier Valley?
Moneymaker hopes that will be the case.
"Our group wants the rest of the world to know these animals are real and
we are out to prove the existence of Bigfoot," he said.
— E-mail: cgiggenbach@register-herald.com
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