Picture this.
You’re a kid in search of adventure in a new land.
On your travels, you meet a friendly girl on a ranch who you immediately hit it off
with.
She warns you of an ominous threat from the unknown.
Strange beings that appear in the night.
That they come for the cows.
That this year, she’s going to try and stop them.
She tells you to meet her in the barn later that night.
Her stories seem a bit paranoid and perhaps even delusional- that is... until they appear
in the night, just like she said they would.
Inching closer and closer...
The
Legend of Zelda Majora’s Mask is my personal favorite in the series.
It’s drenched in a noticeably darker setting amongst some pretty colorful characters and
is packed full of creepy elements.
One such quest takes place on Romani Ranch, where you have to help Romani- that’s the
girl, defend her farm against aliens, or ghosts.
Doesn’t- doesn’t seem to be a solid conclusion on that one.
Suffice it to say, she refers to the phenomenon as “them”.
They are characterized by their two glowing eyes, thin arms, and long claws, slowly levitating
towards the barn.
If you fail to help, they abduct the cows and Romani herself, returning her a day later
with no memory of what transpired and with a noticeably different personality.
With the creepy ambience set on by the music that plays introducing these mysterious creatures,
the encounter in itself is bone chilling enough, but what’s truly unsettling is what they
were inspired by in real life...
At 7:15pm on September 12, 1952 a group of kids in West Virginia- Edward and Fred May,
and their friend Tommy Hyer (aged 13, 12, and 10 respectively), witnessed a bright object
cross the sky, coming to rest on land belonging to a local farmer, G. Bailey Fisher.
They ran home to tell their mother they had seen a UFO crash land in the hills nearby.
Together, the mother, the neighborhood children, Eugene Lemon- a State National Guardsman,
and his dog traveled to the Fisher farm to investigate what the boys had claimed to see.
Lemon’s dog ran ahead out of sight and suddenly began barking, returning moments later with
its tail between its legs.
After reaching the top of the hill, the group reportedly saw a large pulsating ball of fire
about 15 meters (50 ft) away.
They also noticed a pungent mist that made their eyes and noses burn.
Lemon then noticed two small lights over to the left of the ball of fire, underneath a
nearby oak tree.
Shining his flashlight in their direction, he revealed a large creature that was reportedly
around 7 feet tall, with a black body and a dark, glowing face.
It’s head was long and shaped like a spade.
It didn’t have human eyes and was covered in what looked like a dark exoskeleton that
resembled a shadowy dress.
It was reported to have also had long, stringy arms, protruding from the front of its body
with long claw-like fingers.
The creature began to glide towards them, emitting a shrill hissing noise, before changing
direction and heading off towards the red light.
The group, fled in panic.
Shortly after, a Mr. A. Lee Stewert, co-owner of the Braxton Democrat, a local newspaper,
conducted a series of interviews with the witnesses and later returned to the site with
Lemon, where he reported to have smelled a “sickening, burnt, metallic odor still prevailing”.
Local Sheriff Robert Carr and his deputy Burnell Long searched the area separately, but were
could not report on any trace of the encounter, other than the smell.
The next morning, Stewert returned to the site and discovered two elongated tracks in
the mud, as well as traces of a thick black liquid.
Based on the premise that the area had not been subjected to vehicle traffic for at least
a year, he immediately reported the tracks as possible signs of a saucer landing.
This was later debunked as likely belonging to a 1942 Chevrolet pickup truck driven by
local Max Lockard, who had gone to search for the creature himself after hearing the
news prior to Stewert’s discovery.
Afterwards, two investigators, William and Donna Smith with the Civilian Saucer Investigation
(abbreviated to CSI) gathered numerous accounts from witnesses claiming to have experienced
a similar 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 Clarksburg
Hospital for three weeks.
They also gathered a statement from the mother of Eugene Lemon, 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.
Another witness claimed to have had seen a flying saucer taking off at 6:30am on September
13- the morning after the creature was sighted.
Afterwards, several members of the original encounter group reported that they had been
suffering several symptoms which they believed to be related to their exposure to the mist
emitted by the creature.
The symptoms included irritation of the nose, swelling of the throat, and Lemon reportedly
suffered from vomiting and convulsions throughout the night, and had throat pains for several
weeks afterward.
A doctor who treated several of the witnesses reported that their symptoms were similar
to those of victims of mustard gas.
However, similar symptoms can also be commonly found in victims of hysteria, which can be
experienced after exposure to traumatic events.
One paranormal investigator from the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (also abbreviated to
CSI) concluded in his 2000 report that the circumstances surrounding the Flatwoods incident
all had valid explanations.
This man was Joe Nickell, known by some as “the modern Sherlock Holmes” and famous
for exposing the forgery of the purported diary of Jack the Ripper.
He proposes that alleged alien encounters are the result of misinterpreted natural phenomena,
hoaxes, or a fantasy prone personality.
Nickell concluded that the bright light seen in the sky on September 12 was likely a meteor,
as on that same night, a meteor had been observed across the states of Maryland, Pennsylvania,
and West Virginia- mistakenly reported as a crashing aircraft by observers, approximately
11 miles southwest of the Flatwoods sighting.
Nickell also proposed that the pulsating red light was likely an aircraft navigation beacon,
as there were three visible from the area of the sightings and finally, that the shape,
movement, and sounds of the creature described by witnesses closely resembled what could
have been a barn owl perched on a tree limb.
Nickell went on to argue that the initial sighting of what was likely a meteor, although
to the group, a UFO, caused a heightened state of anxiety that gave them a distorted view
of what was to follow.
A number of other investigators have reached the same conclusion, including the likes of
the U.S. Air Force.
Skeptics have also proposed that sightings of another cryptid phenomena known as the
“Mothman” are based on similar experiences involving owls.
Other theories range from the Flatwoods group witnessing the impact of a meteor, which had
resulted in a man-shaped cloud of vapor, to bearing witness to some kind of covert government
aircraft.
This creepy phenomena has certainly struck an interest in the local county of Braxton,
where the town of Flatwoods is located.
As of 2015, five 10-foot-tall chairs in the monster’s image have been erected in various
towns across Braxton county in an effort to increase tourism.
And they’ve worked.
In 2016, Governor Earl Ray Tomblin officially declared September 12 as Monster Day.
And today, there exists a new adventure tour campaign in which participants are challenged
to document each monster chair scattered around Braxton in an effort to prove the existence
of the monster that has been nicknamed “Braxxie”.
And in Japanese UFO culture, the influence of “Braxxie” can be found in various video
games and media, the likes of which include Amagon for the NES and the anime series, Sgt.
Frog.
But other than in the media, real sightings of the Flatwoods Monster have not been reported
since the original events in 1952.
So what do you think?
Is the Flatwoods Monster real?
Whether you choose to believe or not is entirely up to you.
The world is a vast and mysterious place, and there is what seems to be an infinite
plethora of the world left for or us to explore.
Though we may fear the unknown, we live everyday to better learn and understand these fears.
And in doing so, we may gain a better insight into understanding ourselves.
Thanks
again for watching everyone.
Click on the left painting to watch last week’s episode of The Grim Gallery.
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My name is Blue Lavasix and as always, I will see you in the next video.