*Special 2-Hour Show*

THE FLATWOODS MONSTER

*Special 2-Hour Show*

AUTHOR/ILLUSTRATOR  

FRANK C. FESCHINO, JR.

WILL BE A GUEST ON 

"MIDNIGHT IN THE DESERT" 

WITH HOST DAVE SCHRADER:

Monday, Jan. 21st @ 9:00 pm-11:00 pm Pacific Time

(Tuesday, Jan. 22nd @ 12:00 am/Midnight-2:00 am Eastern Time)

TO LISTEN LIVE: 

Midnight in the Desert - Late Night Talk w/Dave Schrader

FRANK FESCHINO, JR. THE AUTHORITY 

ON THE FLATWOODS MONSTER CASE

WILL BE TALKING ABOUT HIS INVESTIGATION INTO

THE SEPTEMBER 12, 1952 

FLATWOODS MONSTER INCIDENT

AND THE ACTUAL PROJECT BLUE BOOK CASE FILES

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS CASE 

GO TO FESCHINO'S WEBSITE:

Flatwoods Monster -- Home

TO WATCH FESCHINO'S DOCUMENTARY 

GO TO YOUTUBE:

The Braxton County Monster / The Flatwoods Monster

FOR INFORMATION ABOUT THE FLATWOODS "GREEN MONSTER" MUSEUM

LOCATED IN FLATWOODS, WEST VIRGINIA GO TO:

The Flatwoods Green Monster Museum

PROJECT BLUE BOOK: FLATWOODS MONSTER THE TRUE STORY Part One

WE INTERRUPT THE PREVIOUS 

PROGRAMMING FOR BREAKING NEWS!

PROJECT BLUE BOOK:

FLATWOODS MONSTER

THE TRUE STORY
Part One

by Alfred Lehmberg

On January 8, 2019, a new and much-anticipated HISTORY CHANNEL UFO series will be broadcast, if TV and internet hype is to be remotely believed, titled "Project Blue Book." ...And here we go... 

The website of the HISTORY CHANNEL states the following information about their new series [excuse the necessary brackets of this writer]: 

HISTORY’s [...and pause a moment to ponder the implications of that proclamation! Truth! Honesty! Good Faith!] upcoming new drama series [yeah... make that clear at the start...] ‘Project Blue Book’ is based on the true [and where is the provenance of that assertion?], top-secret investigations into Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) and related phenomena conducted by the United States Air Force from 1952 to 1969. Dr. J. Allen Hynek (Aidan Gillen), a brilliant yet underappreciated college professor [part of the "drama" one presumes, Hynek was very appreciated, kept his reputation, and made some legit bank, appearing in perhaps the touchstone UFO film, CE3K...], is recruited by the U.S. Air Force to spearhead a clandestine operation called Project Blue Book. Along with his partner, the debonair Air Force Captain Michael Quinn (Michael Malarkey), he is summoned to investigate UFO sightings around the country and use science to discover what really happened [...arms akimbo and eyes askance.]. However, when some encounters cannot be explained away and cases remain open, Hynek begins to suspect that he has been duped by the government into a larger conspiracy to cover up the truth [...as close to the facts as we shall sail has been this writer's experience.]. Set against the backdrop of the Cold War and rising Atomic Era, each episode will draw from the actual [...and the reader should note that point] Project Blue Book case files, blending UFO theories with authentic historical events [...note again!] from one of the most mysterious eras in United States history. [Well, they got that last sentence right... but to foreshadow our point, what is the provenance, good reader, of those "actual Blue Book Case files"?] 

Dr. J. Allen Hynek in the film CE3K. 

This 10 episode UFO series allegedly based on Project Blue Book casework was created by David O’Leary, also the writer and co-executive producer of this effort. Robert Zemeckis, one can read, is credited as the executive producer along with Arturo Interian, Jackie Levine, Jack Rapke, and Barry Jossen, supporting. Cutting to the chase interestingly enough, and at the focus of this writer's interest, the second episode of this series concerns the unarguably famous, "Flatwoods Monster" of West Virginia. This particular show will air on January 15, 2019. This writer will be watching. 

I say "unarguably famous" because this long lost "Flatwoods Monster" incident, occurring on September 12, 1952, was buried away and long-forgotten, even denied outright, until one individual, Frank C. Feschino, Jr., began investigating the case back in 1991. He became consummately interested in an uncomfortable tale substantiating itself more and more the closer he got to it. Not the usual case with affairs ufological. He's not alone. There are others interested. 

He has many credible luminaries of the UFO Research community as interested celebrants on the veracity of his effort. The reader might recognize the names Robert Salas, Richard Dolan, Stanton Friedman, Robert Hastings, and Whitley Strieber... just to start! Even hard-nosed "paranormalizers" [tm] the likes Jeremy Vaeni and Jeff Ritzmann are not entirely revolted with Feschino's assertion. Facts are facts functioning factually, in point of fact, and the likes of the preceding shall have no small respect for that. 

Ultimately, and for illustration, Feschino has become the top researcher and investigator into this close encounter incident since it happened back in the day, and he is still actively involved in the case as this piece is written. Exceeding far in advancement of respected peers the likes of Gray Barker, Evert Clark,  and Ivan T. Sanderson, he has met, video interviewed, and documented many of the key witnesses involved in the incident, as I've written before. 

He's produced books and articles about the "Flatwoods Monster," appeared on television, done countless radio shows, and traveled the country doing lectures and book signings about this singularly strange and compelling case. He has been indefatigable! 

All this? ...And he's pretty easy to find. He's no cloistered recluse. He's reasonable and not impossibly pecuniary... the reader can afford him... think of an Ivan T. Sanderson for the 21st Century to a degree. 

Yet, and here begins this writer's puzzlement. There is no mention of Feschino anywhere on the History Channel's website and nothing about his book, "The Braxton County Monster—The Cover-Up of the 'Flatwoods Monster' Revealed... which blows the hoary lid off the cover-up of the "Flatwoods Monster" case, in the first place... and where a  research has already been completed by the subject matter expert. It's somewhat like the story of the Salk Polio Vaccine told with no mention of or reference to Jonas Salk! 

The History Channel site does lateral the reader a loose link to a decidedly weak July 20, 2018 article written by one Roy Wenzl: 

"In 1952, the Flatwoods Monster Terrified 6 Kids, a Mom, a Dog—and a Nation. It prompted a U.S. Air Force Official Inquiry, part of an Initiative called Project Blue Book." 

No. This is just another uninformative and mal-informing article not mentioning author Frank Feschino or his substantive investigation into the Flatwoods case. This article, like the work of a plethora of other writers and their articles over the years, misses the point by the obligatory parsec and ignores the abject seriousness of the incident which Feschino uncovered during his very arduous investigation, invariably treating the affair like it was "an amusing little tale of folk history." It's ever been more than that. Air war with ET would fill the bill, one would presuppose. That would change everything... and everything is reluctant to change!

You see, reader, it was Feschino who that got a copy of the Project Blue Book microfilm reel for September 12 and 13, 1952 about 25 years ago and reviewed 170 pages of those documents for those two singular, and very particular, days.

Only, there was a major problem with these files! This created a crisis. The Blue Book documents photographed for the microfilm were actually copies taken from the original documents. The originals had been archived by the Air Force, and the copies were then edited with blackout lines to hide witnesses names along with other information they didn't want the public to know or see. 

The "Thermoflex" copy machine was a standard copier used in the 1950s. Cheap ink on these copies proved that they did not fare well over long periods of time. That wasn't good. 

You see reader, the problem was that these edited copies had actually been sitting around for enough time to be virtually unreadable! They were badly, almost illegibly faded by the time they were photographed for microfilm use and not the best reproduction resolution was to be found there. In other words, the degraded text of many of the documents was too poor to read easily, not without monumental difficulty! The writer is reminded of the Ramey Memo and its tortured, even computer-assisted, translation by Dr. David Rudiak.

Remains, Feschino, a trained artist and illustrator, persisted! He spent hundreds of hours over many years, enlarging, magnifying, deciphering and re-inking page after page of illegible Blue Book documents in order to be able to read them, at all! 

So, how does one reference files when it was quite likely they would be virtually unreadable by the time they'd get to them in the last year or two? Unless... they'd read Feschino's book? That's what the perspicacious person would do, read the paramount work available. Would anything else be even competent? One must be wondering where The History Channel did its research... This writer does.

Next: Provenance asserted. Cover-ups uncovered. Lingering meteors debunked.

"My Hoax!" ...Said The Grocery Clerk

The picture in question...

"My Hoax!" ...Said The Grocery Clerk
by Alfred Lehmberg

(Dedicated to Scott Santa, recovering from back surgery... one of the good guys and deserving a moment's thought.)

The 1952 Flatwoods Monster story was a hoax? That's the charge. 

On the 12th of September, the 66th anniversary of the stunning incident will arrive, but there remain those denying natterers and scurvy mumblers casting aspersion on the nearly seven decades of substantive history regarding the strange affair, and who would blithely maintain that the event had never occurred at all, still. How can we facilitate such butt-ugly cowardice?

Case in point: the late Bill Steorts, once of Sutton in West Virginia and one of the alleged Flatwoods "hoax" accomplices, "confessed" it all in 1977 in a newspaper article! This "confession" would be used to this day by those aforementioned natterers and mumblers—a device, a contrivance... somewhere for them to point away from their own cowardly inadequacies and intellectual failures—to Defame, Detract, and Deny what won't leap into a sterile test tube for a pompous science reductionist... the glad wearer of his largely empty triple "D" codpiece and herald of a baldly obtuse and too reflexively applied Occam:

"That evening in 1952, A. Lee Stewart and I went down to Heaters in Braxton County. On our way back to Sutton, we ran out of gas. We stopped at my father's store and gas station for gas. We noticed a disturbance across the road and went to investigate. There were small children all stirred up. Having a saw-off 12-gauge in the car, we went on the hill to see what was going on. The kids had been playing in the pasture field and some of Bailey's cows were in a nearby woods. Seeing that nothing had happened, we went on to Sutton."

"Being slightly intoxicated, we fabricated the story of the Braxton county monster. We called the Gazette from the Braxton Democrat office. (Stewart's dad owned that paper at the time.) The skid marks were made by Bailey's old Ford Tractor spinning its wheels - the grease was raked from under the tractor by tall grass. We drew the artist's picture of the monster."

"From there it just mushroomed, Kathleen May and her children went to New York on a TV show. Scientists from all over came to investigate. We sat back and laughed. My father knew what we boys were doing but his store was doing a booming business from the tourist trade…"

Gwin, Adrian "Was 'Monster' a Hoax - Are UFOS for Real? Hmmmm, A possibility" Charleston West Virginia Daily Mail December 7, 1977.

Wow! This was a first for me. I missed that in Feschino's book on the Flatwoods affair, and this is a vapid and toothless debunkery to be sure, as they will often be... ...but one so authoritatively written, reader! Not.

See, having witnessed just 30 minutes of a longer video interview showing the above implicated Stewart recounting an entirely different tale??? Well, one would never have thought that our A. Lee, a reported hard-nosed portrait of journalistic seriousness and a no-nonsense newsman of competent reputation, would be capable of such bald and unprofessional duplicity, eh? Yes, I'm reminded of Steorts' weak pea bouncing unnoticed from the implacable hide of Lee's charging rhino. 

Asa Lee Stewart with reportage of the time

To the contrary, reader. Here was an on-site and take-charge kind of man to have the involved key persons by their stacking swivels and at parade rest... a genuine newsperson getting a story... truth though heaven falls! 

Those poor Flatwoods people got a third-degree interrogation in a Nation still fresh from the paranoia of WWII and the burgeoning Cold War. Citizens didn't fool around so much with authority in those days, forgetting that authority didn't ask for it as much as is current... we won't digress.

Back to Stewart, moreover, he had some authority of Law enforcement, remember. They sent him out there in an official capacity!

Verily, when one puts the preceding together with the usual mistake of thinking that the Flatwoods Affair is a singular event, standing in and of itself, where "hillbilly kids get scared by a hoot owl," ...the mud of misunderstanding is raised further still! Though this would be mud raised in the tradition of the famous "Rendlesham," England UFO flap, then neatly explained by a "flaming manure spreader," wait... "prankster with automobile hazard lights"... wait... "a flying lighthouse"... wait! ...See how easy it is to raise the, even ludicrous, mud, reader? Flatwoods had its like...

• Roc-sized barn owls. [what!?] 
• Hallucinogenic ground gasses. [never before, not since!]
• Hillbillies "skeered" 'o 'haints and forest nixies! [Ivan T. Sanderson was emphatic that this was not so!]
• Misleading, misled, or mentally ill, eh? [...'cause anything else is the slippery slope to an anxious admission that much of what an accusing gaslighter "knows," is likely wrong!]

One comes to find that the Flatwoods incident was not a singular event standing alone, reader. It's the shocking reality that the September 12th, 1952 "Flatwoods Incident" is actually the end of a series of well-documented events initiated in the so-called Summer Of Saucers 1952, the biggest UFO flap in US history. 

Here was a mid-century summer accessorized by UFOs brazenly flying into prohibited airspace, countered by well-publicized orders to the military to shoot those UFOs down, and conjectured UFOs forced down or perhaps, like our American fighter craft, destroyed utterly or disappearing entirely! There are voluminous records... detailed files. This writer says true.

Again, one, threatening UFO incursions into prohibited airspace areas as early as May, then two, subsequent, forget well-documented orders issued to the military to "Shoot UFOs Down"! This is followed at last by, three, the appearance at Flatwoods in September of what was described at the time (by witnesses and the aforementioned Ivan T. Sanderson, a credible investigator early on the scene), as a crafted mechanism in the unenglishable form of a... 10 foot red and green hovering "monster," ...not a big hooded scary-fairy in a sweet-sixteen skirt!  This is busier stuff!

More apt representation... by Frank Feschino.

Was this then a prank by adult delinquent Steorts? First, ruining the peace of mind (physically and emotionally to some extent) of all the principals. Second, causing the deployment of a battalion-sized unit of the military to the area (outfitted from bazookas to pontoon boats and led by a video-interviewed Colonel Dale Leavitt), also looking for alleged "downed aircraft," (cue a justified spooky music). At last, a final third, the degradation of a compelling Flatwoods West Virginia story abundantly well documented by Project Bluebook records, famed researchers, named newspapers, and blameless eyewitnesses, still? To what end? What was served? Not an aggregate humanity is this writer's best guess.

Commander of Military deployed to Flatwoods, WV

"[Steorts'] glove don't fit [and] we must acquit." Such is abundantly so.

No... "Flaming Manure spreaders" or "Credulous Hillbillies" (and other merry pranksters!) have to fit all the reasonable evidence to satisfy Occam... even where they are the simplest model. That's the way it's supposed to work for everybody.

Still, I'd pass this on to Feschino whose well over 2-decade research effort, I'm sure, was to be devastated by this too-little-too-late correction to a fulsome record he's exhaustively ferreted out over the years. Maybe he would have a comment or maybe he'd hang up his foil beany.

Yeah... as it turned out? Feschino was able to keep his foil hat and make comment.

He directed me to pages 27 and 28 of his (Updated and Revised) Flatwoods Monster book (above). Here, A. Lee Stewart, Jr. reports to Feschino that there have been numerous such articles as Steorts' bland toxicity over the years: baseless attempts of unsupportable debunkery employed to tarnish a story only ever strengthened over time in official documents and investigation by the intrepid likes of, forgetting Feschino who seems able to string it all together like the upcoming were never quite able to do: Keyhoe, Sanderson, and West Virginia's own Gray Barker! He'd just never seen them in one place before and Feschino had copies of all of those contrarily "naysaying" articles in a big 3 ring binder. Daunting.

A. Lee Stewart goes on at some length in Feschino's over 60 minutes of video interview highlighting a very staid and stoic Mr. Stewart professionally recounting the bizarre tale like he was Joe Friday. Additionally, he comes decidedly forward in Feschino's books to address the "facts" of fanciful faux-reportage such as has been provided by Steorts' ilk. Off camera, Feschino reports that Mr. Stewart specifically branded the antagonist Steorts in the cited article as a "god-damned liar."

By account, Stewart's only association with the antagonist, according to an angry A. Lee, was stopping by Steorts' father's store in Flatwoods to ask where Mrs. May lived... no gas! He then used Steorts, being escorted by same to May's property a stone's throw away, and then going up the monster's hill that initial time.* That, and a ride home, was the total extent of their "association." They were not "driving back" from anywhere! Steorts had been picked up in Flatwoods.

Why would the antagonist lie? I don't know, that would be speculation... though many were I offer, encouraged by "officiality," and from the start... lying outright facilitating the fatuous debunker who would later be grasping at these desperate and ludicrous straws. There's your speculation.

No, the proverbial serving "fork" does seem called for. A demonstrated fraud, Steorts is done. The fat lady has sung and left the building.

See, remaining, Flatwoods may be the last act in an undeclared and secret air-war prosecuted during the biggest US UFO flap ever, a war with strict orders to shoot those UFOs down. "There were other and more lurid duels of death..." Edward Ruppelt, a Blue Book chief, reminds us from his book. What was going on?

Feschino expanded on a background. He would inform that the name of the Sutton newspaper co-owner and photojournalist is actually: A. Lee Stewart, Jr. 

Stewart's full name was "Asa Lee Stewart, Jr." He went by his middle name, "Lee." Lee was co-owner of the Braxton Democrat with his father.

In 1996 Feschino stayed at Stewart's house for nearly four days. Yes, he did show Stewart the 3-ring binder with the compiled contrary newspaper articles. In that binder was the newspaper article containing the Steorts hoax story where Steorts fraudulently claimed that they'd concocted the Flatwoods tale, together.

On that first morning after arriving at Lee's house, Feschino awoke, walked into the living room, and found Stewart reading that self-same research binder in his big recliner chair. Frank approached him affably and remarked about the incident in question and the collection of other newspaper articles in the binder. Contained in that binder, remember, was the article with Steort's interview claiming the hoax and Stewart as a shiftless charlatan. Tense. 

Feschino writes in his book, "As I looked at Lee, he raised his head, shaking it in sad disgust with regard to how the incident had been portrayed through the years. Moreover, he did not like the fact that he'd been grossly misquoted and badly portrayed, himself, not just by Steorts, but by fellow reporters, writers, and even some of the Flatwoods locals." One portion of their conversation was edited from Feschino's book manuscript: the segment when he asked Stewart about Bill Steorts' claim that they had both hoaxed the story. 

Feschino told me that Stewart shouted, call them incensed expletives in a huge agitation! "He [Steorts] is a God-damn liar," he'd exhorted among other more colorful criticisms. 

Frank explained, "Stewart was hugely pissed off and upset about that article where Steorts reported it was a hoax." Yes, Reader, Lee knew that it was not, as had been proffered in the perennial and ever-present misinformation, a hoax. Frank said to me, "I will never forget that look of revulsion on his face!"

This is the reason Stewart opened up his video interview saying, "...A lot of material that he [Feschino] has picked up and has given me and... we have gone over this... is NOT true."

Lee continued, "A lot of tongue-in-cheek, a lot of disclaimer material that has no bearing whatsoever on what actually happened at that particular time." You can hear him for yourself.

On page 28, Stewart states, "On the road out to Flatwoods, I passed Steorts' store and Bill Steorts was working at the store with his father ... I picked him up."

See, at about 9:00 PM that night Stewart got a call at his newspaper office in Sutton from the WV State Police (WVSP). Trooper Corporal Tribett asked Lee to go to the May house in Flatwoods and investigate... because a "Monster" was seen nearby on a farm!

The local Sheriff was unable to respond to the call (an "odd" story in itself!) and called the WVSP. These were also unable to respond... another peculiar tale... briefly all the police were officially out investigating sightings and downed aircraft reports! True! 

Stewart, a photojournalist, had worked at crime scenes and accident sites with the WVSP. He had taken countless photos and covered hundreds of news stories with the police, so he knew them.

Stewart left the Braxton Democrat in Sutton and drove to Flatwoods. Steorts General store was in Upper Flatwoods and just across the town line when driving in. Stewart did not know the exact location of the May house so he stopped by the market to get directions. Bill Steorts got in Stewart's car and they left the store.

Stewart stated, "He [Steorts] directed me to the house and, IN FACT, was there when I talked to the people. He also went up on top of the mountain with me that night."

Yes, Bill Steorts was actually at the May house and saw the hysterical group, which included seeing a bunch of sick and traumatized kids, Ed and Freddie May among others... and a vomiting Gene Lemon,  after Ms. May, all event principals. Stewart said, "It was sheer turmoil."*

Yes, Bill Steorts was also a part of the armed posse that went up onto the mountain that night to "hunt" for the so-called "Monster."

Stewart said, "So we left, the boys [Lemon and Nunley], Bill Steorts, and I. We were armed. We had a twelve gauge automatic shotgun and a couple of handguns. Two or three other people who lived right around there came up and went with us. They were also armed."

(For the record, Mrs. May's father, "Joseph Lemon," was actually part of the armed group!)

When the two boys directed the armed posse to the "tree" area of the encounter on the farm... they all smelled the horrendous sulfur odor that made the witnesses sick. The group also saw the two large tracks in the nearby pasture when they shined their flashlights and electric lantern around.

Stewart remarked, "We just spotlighted around because not one of us was inclined to hunt for something we didn't know what it was in the dark. We decided we would go back to the Mays."

At the house, Lee talked with the witnesses and told them that he would come back in the morning... with a tape recorder. He would do just that.

Stewart states, " I left the May residence between 10:30 and 11:00 and returned to Sutton. I took Bill Steorts home at that time." Less than a week later he would be on National TV describing the event with May and Lemon.

Additionally, in the misleading Steorts article, Steorts stated the following lie about Stewart and himself as noted in red above, "We drew the artist's picture of the monster." That's preposterous!

No, once again Bill Steorts got caught with his pants decidedly ankle-puddled.  It has been well-known for decades that the picture of the monster was drawn by a sketch artist in the TV studio of "We The People" in New York on September 19, 1952. Lying makes one a liar, reader.

Additionally, there is another specious lie and inconsistency in Steorts' fabricated story. He stated, "...From there it just mushroomed, Kathleen May and her children went to New York on a TV show."

Mrs. May's children did not go to New York with her for the TV show. Her two children, Freddie and Edison, stayed home in Flatwoods. Mrs. May was accompanied to New York by eyewitness Eugene Lemon and reporter A. Lee Stewart, Jr. All three of them were interviewed by the very popular "We The People" host, Daniel Seymour. 

At the time of Steorts' interview in 1977, no one, including him, knew the entire "Flatwoods Monster" story. Now, today, thanks to Mr. Feschino, we have hard facts and know magnitudes more about the case...

...You know...

Someone should landmark all this—establish a museum, perhaps. Even a shrine might not be too out of line, given the times and that forgetting's a crime.

Suggested are vast horizons beyond even the limits of shadows lit by our meager, at this point sputtering, fire, reader. These horizons speak to the need of memorializing the consequent. Did a downed ET aviator at Flatwoods signify a largely unheralded air war with ET? That's what glows in the forest, reader.

Grandad's Store would be historic and apt! It was lit up by the overflying fireball, after all. Permissions secured, one can easily walk to the environs where the event took place.

This writer jests. The understanding is that one John Clise of Flatwoods is making an initiative to start a museum similar to that described above. I offer that one gives it all support. It's consequent, even highly strange, and consequence deserves memorialization. Moreover, the reader can buy the book there! [g].

"Truth's gonna come out sometime!" The reader can be in at the ground floor. Take it in, in its nascent state, and watch it grow over the years! Dare I say help it grow! Smiling broadly, and observing that on the other side of our fear are infinite horizons of instruction and reward upon graduation from our child's crib... eternity and grace if we aspire to it... this writer will say no more.

Closing, Flatwoods was NOT a hoax, reader, as our grocery clerk wanted us to believe, inexplicably... No, this was a real occurrence, a felt presence in a stark existential.

Remains, what we can make from it... if we've the courage and imagination to reject our superstition and misinformed denial... to embrace a 21st Century alive with instructive threats and beneficent wonders... and not retreat from same in cowardice. That seems key.

Read on.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*See, Steorts knew what the truth was. Why'd he fudge?

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 low creeping fog gathered as they made their excited accent up paths and through gates... gates they'd hurdle on the way back down.

...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

Read on...

At The Gravesite...

Lieutenant John Jones

There were these fellows, brave stalwarts in the service of their duty, their honor, and their country. After their own Fourth Of July, let's pretend... it's now just some eight weeks later, September 12th, 1952... are you with me?

Walk with these men. Stanger steps are seldom taken. 

Fading in...you're a flight officer in the nascent Air Forces of the United States in 1952. This writer was four, then. You've been assigned to an airbase on the near-deserted azured green and frothy white coast of panhandle Florida. You are trained and educated to be part of the pool from which would later be drawn moon-walking astronauts. You're not arrogant, only appropriately confident; see, with few contenders of this Earth? You and your brothers would compete in an aspiration to rule Earth's skies. See links to the torrid tale at the conclusion of this piece.

As fate was determined, you go, and oddly, missing in action. It's ostensibly a "training mission," but it's the combat aviator understanding the difference between flying in training and then flying in combat. 

The only difference is the but slight increase of stuff in the air to hit... canopy breached, hot metal flashing through the plexiglass faceplate of your helmet and taking out a side of your face—churning your brain in the bucket of your headgear and then flopping down over your good eye. It happens in training. As it turns out, the evidence would point to you flying into some alternative training, Special High-Intensity Training, seriously strange and more terrifying, even, than that encounter with shrapnel or an enemy for which one is trained. 

Big sky, little bullets, remember, but then there is the unknown unknown really filling the void of one's unspeakable imagined loathing! See, you had never trained for what it looks like you were sent out to face.

Actual telegram received by the family...

Ultimately, your folks get the dreaded telegram, the well-known horror of the gold-star family. Notification that their son or daughter was missing and in dire straights or dead. There can be literally no amount of gold stars making the slightest difference... then add never getting a hint of the truth, your memory for them having been the dead guy blamed for his own misfortune and needless demise.  An errant pilot, erring.

All hopes, then, are coal to a mourning Newcastle... your folk's misery, abject. and then they hear from a man in support of the responsible for what has all the appearances of an Air Force cover-up...

There would be a small stone, quickly forgotten and overgrown. Beneath it lay forgotten dreams... and a sacrifice which has been demeaned.

After the Air Force had washed their hands of him and later on even denying his very existence to Field Investigator Frank Feschino (in two separate inquiries to different agencies trying to get to the bottom of the strange affair), he found the grave and family of Lieutenant Jones.  

Later on, and after many years, Feschino would return to the grave site and plant a few flags for 2018's fourth. He would have to give the plot a spruce up and brush time's detritus from the engravings...  remembering. Respecting.

Here lay not the man, one is reminded. His bones, aircraft, and radar operator were never recovered or seen again. He is but a memory wrongly remembered and dishonored for the convenience of suspicious secret keepers. This writer says true.

Frank C. Feschino Jr. would pose plot-side with a Newspaper article chronicling the 1952 affair. This affair would give even retiring Stanton Friedman pause, among significant others. Friedman would provide Feschino support, assist in the investigation, and write the fore an afts of all Feschino's books. 

One wonders why one couldn't be moved to call this an endorsement as close to a death-bed confession as respect and "an appropriate" allows, forgetting... live long and prosper Mr. Friedman! My point is that a guy with an unargued reputation is all in on the premise. Stepping down now as rather undefeated champion, seems he'd be more careful with a respected legacy... unless...

Regardless, Friedman would agree, I believe, pointing out the supremacy of data... unspun, it's truth.  That should mean something.

Respectful remembrance at the grave
of a forsaken hero betrayed by a
supposed need for secrecy. 

Seriously? Full-on air to air combat? An undeclared and secret air war with ET? ...Endeavoring not to presuppose, the perspicacious follow data for its leadership, it's shown. 

READ THE FULL STORY

Part I of VI

https://alienviewgroup.blogspot.com/2017/08/our-heroes-betrayed-part-i-of-iv.html

Part II of VI
https://alienviewgroup.blogspot.com/2017/08/our-heroes-betrayed-part-ii-of-iv.html

Part III of VI

https://alienviewgroup.blogspot.com/2017/09/our-heroes-betrayed-part-iii-of-iv.html

Part IV of VI
https://alienviewgroup.blogspot.com/2017/09/our-heroes-betrayed-part-iv-of-iv.html

Thinking you know, and knowing not, but pretending you know not when you do know are likely equally egregious, societally toxic, and just no way for sentient humans to live their lives.

Read on.