The Bizarre Case of The Flatwoods - Frametown Monsters
The Bizarre Case of The Flatwoods - Frametown Monsters
Compiled by Bill Knell
The Flatwoods Monster (also known as the Braxton County Monster or Frametown Monster) is a cryptid sighted in Flatwoods, West Virginia and Frametown, West Virginia, respectively. It is believed to be of extraterrestrial nature.
The entity was initially reported as being about 10 feet tall and 4 feet wide. It appeared to be some sort of robotic suit or spacecraft rather than an organic being. It had a 'cowl' in the shape of an ace of spades behind a red round head. Set in the head were two eyes, described as 'portholes', glowing green-orange and the size of half-dollars.The 'body' was a metallic armored structure lined with thick vertical pipes.
Discrepencies exist in the actual color of the armour, some claiming it to be black while others saying green. The existence of arms is a similar matter. Most state the monster was armless, while others claim it posessed small, "toy-like" arms.
The Frametown Monster, believed to be the same creature from Flatwoods, bore similar pipe-lined metallic armour from the waist down. From the waist up, however, the other being a reptilian humanoid.
At 7:15 PM on September 12, 1952, three little boys witnessed a bright object cross the sky. The object came to rest on land belonging to a local farmer. Once they saw the thing land, the boys went to one of their moms houses, where they reported seeing a UFO crash land in the hills. From there, the boys and a group of locals went to the farm to try to find whatever it was that the boys had seen.
One of the locals dog ran ahead out of sight and started barking, and moments later ran back to the group with its tail between its legs. After traveling about ¼ of a mile the group reached the top of a hill, where they reportedly saw a large pulsating "ball of fire" about 50 feet away. They also saw (and smelled) a mist that made their eyes and noses burn. A farmer then noticed two small lights over to the left of the object, and directed his flashlight towards them, revealing the creature, which was reported to have emitted a shrill hissing noise before gliding towards them, changing direction and then heading off towards the red light. At this point the group fled in panic.
Upon returning home, the mother contacted the local sheriff and a news reporter. The reporter conducted a number of interviews and returned to the site with the farmer later that night, where he reported that "there was a sickening, burnt, metallic odor still prevailing". The sheriff and his deputy searched the area separately, but found no trace of the encounter.
Early the next morning, the reporter visited the site of the encounter for a second time and discovered two tracks in the mud, as well as traces of a thick black liquid. He immediately reported them as being possible signs of a saucer landing based on the premise that the area had not been subjected to traffic for at least a year.
After the event, investigators associated with Civilian Saucer Investigation, obtained a number of accounts from witnesses who claimed to have experienced a similar or related phenomena. These accounts included the story of a mother and her 21 year-old-daughter, who claimed to have encountered a creature with the same appearance and odor a week prior to the September 12 incident; the encounter reportedly affected the daughter so badly that she was confined to a hospital for three weeks. They also gathered a statement from the mother of the local farmer, in which she said that, at the approximate time of the crash, her house had been violently shaken and her radio had cut out for 45 minutes, and a report from the director of the local Board of Education in which he claimed to have seen a flying saucer taking off at 6:30 on the morning of September 13th (the morning after the creature was sighted).
The day after the Flatwoods incident, a couple taking a leisurely drive through the mountains of Frametown, West Virginia, at dusk were met with a similarly horrific experience. Their car came to a sudden stop and refused to start again. Shortly thereafter, a putrid sulfiric odor filled the air. The couple, circling the vehicle in hopes of spotting the culprit, spotted something far worse than they could have imagined. From the waist down it was similar to the Flatwoods Monster, but from the waist up was a reptilian humanoid. This creature, thought to be the same creature sighted in Flatwoods, is known as the Frametown Monster.
More indepth…
The Flatwoods Monster has not hissed at boys in the little village of Flatwoods, West Virginia, since Sept. 12, 1952. People grin about it now, but it scared people plenty back then, including the eyewitnesses: six boys aged 10 to 17, a dog and a Mom.
“One of the boys peed his pants,” said John Gibson, a high-school freshman at the time, who knew them all. “Their dog (Rickie) ran with his tail between his legs.”
The encounter made the local and national news, scaring a wider swath of people. Then it prompted a U.S. Air Force UFO inquiry, part of a project called Project Blue Book that dispatched a handful of investigators around the country to look into such claims.
It also became a local legend, a Southern spook story that defined the tiny village of less than 300 people for more than six decades. To this day, tourists come out of their way to Flatwoods—secluded in the low, timbered Appalachian hills of central West Virginia—to visit its monster museum.
It was dusk when they saw it. The May brothers Ed, 13, and Freddie, 12, had been playing in their schoolyard with their 10-year-old friend Tommy Hyer. After noticing a pulsing red light streak across the sky and crash on a nearby farm, the three youngsters ran to grab the Mays boys’ mother, then high-tailed it up that hill to check out where the light had landed. A few other boys, one with a dog, showed up too. They ran back down—in sheer and credible terror.
“Seven Braxton County residents on Saturday reported seeing a 10-foot Frankenstein-like monster in the hills above Flatwoods,” a local newspaper reported afterward. “A National Guard member, Gene Lemon, was leading the group when he saw what appeared to be a pair of bright eyes in a tree.”
Lemon screamed and fell backward, the news account said, “when he saw a 10-foot monster with a blood-red body and a green face that seemed to glow.” It may have had claws for hands. It was hard to tell because of the dense mist. The story made the local news, then got picked up by national radio and big papers all over the country”, said Andrew Smith, who runs the Flatwoods Monster Museum and the Braxton County Convention Visitors Bureau. “Mrs. May and the National Guard kid ended up going to New York to talk to CBS,” Gibson said.
“Those people were the most scared people I’ve ever seen,” said local newspaper publisher A. Lee Stewart, in that 1952 news story. Stewart himself had marched up that hill with a shotgun after witnesses told what they saw. “People don’t make up that kind of story that quickly,” Stewart said then. But rattled eyewitnesses weren’t the only reason the story took off.
LIFE magazine, probably the most popular publication in the nation at the time, had, just a few months earlier, published a credible story about flying saucers. LIFE dropped a bombshell headline:
“HAVE WE VISITORS FROM SPACE?"
“The Air Force is now ready to concede that many saucer and fireball sightings still defy explanation,” LIFE’s summary headline said. “LIFE offers some scientific evidence that there is a real case for interplanetary saucers.” The story, filled with credible accounts, including from eyewitness Air Force pilots, appeared in April 1952—just five months before Ed and Freddie May climbed that hilltop.
Feddie and Ed are still alive—and still standing by their story. They are in their late 70s now. They are no longer talking to reporters.
One writer who told the story was Gray Barker, a Braxton County native who investigated the Monster—and then became one of the more prominent UFO writers ever. It was Barker who wrote about Flatwoods, then introduced the “Men in Black,” after he heard that two Air Force investigators had shown up in Flatwoods, posing as magazine writers.
“The universe is a mighty big place,” says Joan Bias, news editor at The Braxton Democrat, a local newspaper. “I can’t imagine we might be alone in it…”
The U.S. Air Force later revealed that they’d done UFO research and investigations since 1947, collecting thousands of stories, investigating some with a skeleton staff.
About this one, they concluded that bright but common meteors had streaked across the eastern U.S. at dusk that night, seen by many in Baltimore, among other places. And the monster with the claw-like arms? Likely an owl, they said. No one believes the government and for good reasons.
Kailey Fields offers readers fresh and very human fiction stories that are unique, yet relatable.
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