– – You can call him the Flatwoods Monster, or you can call him the Braxton County Monster, or you can call him the Phantom of Flatwoods…just don’t call him early in the morning or late for dinner, ’cause this nine or ten foot tall reptilian monster gets cranky, and just might emit some noxious fumes in your direction that could act like mustard gas, burn your respiratory tract, and ruin your whole day!
In a golden oldie incident going way back to September 12th of 1952, the Flatwoods Monster event was still cool, representing as it did a Close Encounter of the Third Kind! Back even before Elvis made it big, a large, pulsating ball of red light hovered above or rested on the ground in the town of Flatwoods in Braxton County, West Virginia. The apparent pilot of this craft was described as being about ten feet tall but reptilian in aspect, with bulging red non-human eyes, a red face that glowed from within, and a green body clad with green, pleated skirt-like apparel that may have been a booster. Some accounts describe the creature as having no visible arms, while others attribute short stubby arms ending in two claw-like fingers that protruded from the front of the body. Clearly, this alien would have had a hard time finding a date on Saturday night, even in West Virginia.
When startled, the creature is reported to have emitted a series of sharp hisses and a thumping sound that emanated from within its body, ejecting for good measure a thick mist of noxious substance that irritated the eyes and noses of witnesses. An oily residue of this substance was reportedly found on the faces of two of the witnesses after the encounter, another reportedly getting it on clothing.
Now MonsterQuest reports that other sightings of the Flatwoods Monster have occurred since ’52 and in other regions, although Flatwoods remains the epicenter. Most recently, three such humanoid creatures were seen by a lone deer hunter who was understandably freaked out by the whole experience. In their investigation of the sighting area, MonsterQuest investigators questioned whether a release of gases from the underground may have caused hallucinations and the reported fireball associated with the appearance of the monster. Their investigation found no sign of radiation or gas leaks. Chemical investigations of a black plastic-like substance found indicated that it was a natural, organic material like wood.
In a tangent, the episode questioned whether the creature seen might have been a human-alien hybrid, and dragged out the Starchild skull, a freaky 800-some-year-old artifact that we’ve previously considered in an earlier post here. The expert working with the Starchild skull found it to be that of a human child with modifications that were intentionally inflicted, very possibly as part of a cultural practice like cradle-boarding.
So what in the final analysis do we have?–As usual, not much of anything, but it was a fun trip, and it was good to have seen physicist Stanton Friedman again, who made a brief appearance on the episode! It was also concluded that witnesses from the original and later sightings of the Flatwoods Monster were most likely seeing the same thing…and I’d rather meet with the grays than reptilian extraterrestrials, wouldn’t you?
– – Sock monkeys seem to be going through a renaissance lately. I’ve always found sock monkeys vaguely unnerving, and I’m not sure that I entirely trust them, feeling that there’s more to them than meets the eye. This impression has been heightened for me by the Kia Sorento “Joyride” commercial featuring a life-sized sock monkey together with his equally-unlikely companions that include a robot, a teddy bear, a knobby orange thing called “Muno,” and “Mr. X.” 
FOXSYLVANIA 
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