MQ's Fear of Getting Real and Alfred Lehmberg: 'Sandbagged by Monster Quest'

Alfred Lehmberg writes about last week's Monster Quest episode about the Flatwoods Monster on our blog UFO Proletariat. It's reposted below.

It seems Monster Quest has always been timid around real cryptostuff; I don't mean Bigfoot -- of which Monster Quest has done many episodes of -- but the high strangeness and certainly esoteric angle in the cryptid realm. As I posted before, the Mothman episode wasn't all that much; and any conspiracy or so-called anti-government/infrastrucure perspective decidedly unwelcome (as made clear by a producer of the show I spoke with.) For more on that, see My Mothman Monster Quest Moment, on my blog Mothman Flutterings. Even the Bigfoot stories stays away from the weirder side of Bigfoot lore; high strangeness, UFOs, so much more.

As to the Flatwoods episode, what a shame MQ didn't use the opportunity to do an authentic story about one of both UFOlogy and cryptozoology's classic and fascinating cases. The Flatwoods story could take up several episodes on its own without doing something ridiculous like bringing in the 'Starchild' skull.

And why they need to trot out skekptics like Joe Nickell all the time -- well, at least he didn't say the Flatwoods creature was an owl. Or did he?  He did say several other ridiculous things however. Not unexpected, but terribly annoying and insulting nonetheless.

As to Alfred's piece below, I want to comment on the following by Al:

Feschino, who deserves better than this, was fit to be tied. See, he's telling the culture changing real story. Nickell and company shill for the guys insulting the reader's intelligence and obscuring real history. Case in point "Mass Hysteria" as touted by Dr. Nickell... is a clueless dodge.

Feschino is Frank Feschino of course, author of the well researched and excellent book Shoot Them Down! - The Flying Saucer Air Wars Of 1952
As Alfred points out, there is a real story that goes beyond a "monster" in the Flatwoods case, but sincerely exploring that story would indeed be "culture changing" as Al puts it, and we can't have that.

Flatwoods, Sandbagged By MonsterQuest (by Alfred Lehmberg)

Folks, regarding the recent History Channel MonsterQuest episode of March 10th featuring Fred May, Frank Feschino, Stanton Friedman, and other witnesses from the town of Flatwoods, West Virginia: I was the bearded fellow, the only one, I think, associated with the Flatwoods segment exclusively. I wore the UFO Magazine hat. I was working with the Helium Balloon and assisting Feschino vis a vis the sighting at the hunter's camp in deep forest beside the spring fed stream. My one spoken line, used apart from where I actually said it was, "Frank, there's a hot spot up there...," or some such... all that said:

Folks? You can quote me!

I have no idea what that program was about! Why, apart from Joe Nickell who was decidedly true to form, I didn't even recognize who was involved in it!

This is _real_ irony, reader, given I was at Flatwoods for a week during the shooting —and I do mean shooting— of the MQ program. Moreover, I have an appropriate intimacy with all the principals shown on the Flatwoods segment and have better than a layman's understanding of just what occurred in and around Flatwoods that Indian summer night in 1952.


Ladies and Gentleman, let me digress to say that, entirely apart from what the Reader saw on a "flawed" MonsterQuest, THIS is what occurred on that one night in Flatwoods in Flatwoods: http://paratopiary.blogspot.com/


I remind the HONEST reader that this referenced map data is supported by Project Bluebook, named Newspaper reportage, and first person witnesses in that order of numeracy.


The History Channel, one finds, had the time, opportunity, and all the requisite data to produce a stunning program about the infamous Flatwoods affair. What the History channel did instead, reader, was to contrive to manufacture a senseless "mash-up" of two entirely unrelated cases from what could be most easily be "faux-discredited" in either of them. Suggesting this bogus relationship, one not even remotely tenuous, is the program's kiss of less-than-mediocre death.


Sincerely, none but those entirely honest with themselves dare call this very poor, contrived, and inauspicious telling of the Flatwoods story a blithering incompetence, a fatuous cluelessness, or a distorted propaganda! More irony is revealed given Feschino, Friedman, and I had to sign sworn statements indicating our contribution to the program was true as we knew it to be true. The History Channel reportage of same, paradoxically, was not.


See? Flatwoods was the tail end of the biggest UFO Flap in US History: The 1952 "Summer Of Saucers" chronicled by Frank Feschino, Wendy Connors, various other authors, and an un-sifted Project Bluebook. Reader! It was _not_ about "Lizard Monsters" allegedly lurking the woods for 60 plus years, and to this day. This is the distortion prosecuted by the History Channel.

And this! The intrepid MonsterQuest documentarians wrongly called the more honest Stanton Friedman a "doctor" and made the dissembling (to be kind) Dr. (degree immaterial) Nickell look "reasonable" in contrived comparison! Glowing eyes? Not before or since. Ground miasma? Not before or since! Mass hysteria? Not before or since! Noxious weeds? Not before or since! Roc sized barn owls? Not before or since! How could they have got things so canted and wrong!

I'm sick at heart and really ticked off... Feschino, who deserves better than this, was fit to be tied. See, he's telling the culture changing real story. Nickell and company shill for the guys insulting the reader's intelligence and obscuring real history. Case in point "Mass Hysteria" as touted by Dr. Nickell... is a clueless dodge.


Why? The witnesses at Flatwoods, a gang of playing children and a couple of young adults, presupposed a meteor, predominantly, on the Fisher farm in the hills above the school that evening. They'd heard about them recently in school. Nickell _dissembled_ when he reported they expected "monsters"... They did not run up a hill armed with only with a flashlight to look for "monsters," Reader! That only happens in the movies and Joe Nickell's facile imagination! They went up the hill to pick up pieces of a meteorite!


No, the Flatwoods story was not remotely told. The historical facts regarding the "Flatwoods Monster" incident are distorted, once again, by a soap-selling TV show.


Tune in to the actual story, cited above, to tune _up_, sincerely. See, it's not a story about a giant lizard in a "hover round" "attacking" a group of Flatwoods residents with a harmful gas. The gas, remember, was actually an exhaust emitted from pipes surrounding the lower torso of the body. The lower torso was part of the propulsion system of this giant "metallic" structure propelling it and causing it to hover. Moreover, apart from the gas, the "Flatwoods Monster" never made any aggressive or threatening maneuvers towards the witnesses during the encounter!


More crass inaccuracies?


The nearly 60-years of "sightings" reported by the MQ show were not all "monster" sightings, as the over-edited Feschino and Friedman footage seemed to intimate, but were UFO sightings! This is what the two researchers reported on. _UFOs_, reader! Not _monsters_!


The "Flatwoods Monster" incident, the Snitowsky "Frametown Monster" incident and the Frametown Hunter incident are the documented entity sightings, reader. These, and other "monster" sightings... never occurred again! It's UFO sightings that are ongoing! This was the actual report and testimony of Friedman and Feschino!


Other "real" entities documented on record in the Flatwoods area are as follows:


Dec. 30, 1960. Hickory Flats, WV, Located in Webster County and just across the southern Braxton County border - Witness Charles Slover, 35 years-old, was driving a delivery truck and sighted a 6-foot tall hairy biped, man-like creature near the road. This was _unreported_ by the History Channel.


Dec. 7, 2005. Braxton County, 7-8 miles from Flatwoods. A wildlife trap camera took a photograph of an unknown entity that has been called the "Braxton Beast." This was _unreported_ by the History Channel. Meager and unrepeated stuff!


UFO sightings _abound_, reader, on the other hand... not "monster" sightings! A UFO sighting that occurred in Holly, Braxton County on Nov. 8, 1957 was documented by Jacques Vallee in his book "Passport To Magonia."


Holly is located near Flatwoods. In Case #437, Vallee reports that Hank Mollohan and eight other local witnesses saw an elongated object that was 12-metres long.


More UFOs! Frametown Area, 1990: A Frametown couple saw several UFOs over the area of the Middle Ridge area southeast of Frametown. When one of the witnesses walked outside of the house to get a closer look, one of the UFOs flew into the back-yard and shot a bright beam of light down towards the witness. This Frametown incident was documented and broadcast in 1990 by a national TV show of the time, Current Affair With Maury Povich.


In 1991, Feschino documented crop circle rings in Frametown, WV., which were recorded by Colin Andrews. Throughout the early 1990s, Feschino also photographed and videotaped UFOs in the same area of Middle Ridge southeast of James Knob.


OTHER MONSTERQUEST DEGLECTED POINTS


The Sept. 12, 1952 "Master Map" of UFO locations was not shown. The flight-path trajectory of the "Flatwoods Monster" UFO was not shown or mentioned. This was the Washington DC. to Flatwoods, WV UFO flight-path. Check the included link for same.


The Colonel Leavitt Interview was not shown or mentioned, nor was there any mention of the sizable West Virginia National Guard involvement in and around Flatwoods.


There was no reference that the USAF had heavily documented the Flatwoods incident.


The First person witness-journalist John Barker interview was not mentioned.


Well respected reporter and first person responder A. Lee Stewart, Jr., who broke the national story, was not mentioned. The drawings of the metal piece that he found on the farm were not shown.


There was no mention or reference that there were strange metal and black plastic-like pieces found on the Fisher Farm by the locals, shortly after the incident.


The five known drawings made by five of the boy witnesses who saw the "Flatwoods Monster" were not shown." Despite being separated by Stewart the drawings are astonishingly similar!


The "Flatwoods Monster" color illustrations painted by Feschino from eyewitness descriptions were not shown.


The 1996 Fred May pencil drawing of the "Monster" was not shown. It depicted the figure as "mechanical." This was a point errantly avoided by MonsterQuest!


The Flatwoods reenactment segment did not show the actual "mechanical" figure as described by Mrs. May and Fred May. The incorrect 1952 "We The People" mock-up, which depicted the arms and claws was shown instead... and then senselessly compared to the "Frametown Monster."


Finally, the Star child skull and the entities in Flatwoods/Frametown were errantly compared. These cases have no relationship to each other, what so ever, all respect to Lloyd Pye! I'm sure he would agree.


I'd hoped for the best regarding the History Channel. What happened?


"Hollywood" happened, reader... corporate manipulations apart from, and not interested in, telling the real story... These contrive a mash-up between two unrelated cases and, "highlighting" what was "explainable," work to "faux-discredit" both... actually. We were sand-bagged, imo.


The only good thing... the Flatwoods story was broached, at all, in a no-nonsense manner by Frank Feschino, Freddy May, John Barker, and Stanton Friedman! People are eventually going to wonder where the "lizard monster" (sheesh!) came from and how it came to be in Flatwoods at all. That story? Again, right here: http://paratopiary.blogspot.com/


I personally apologize to the people of Braxton County, Frametown, and the town of Flatwoods specifically, that the story was not portrayed as it was related to the production company. We regret their time was wasted. It's not Frank Feschino's fault that the creative control was well out of his capable hands... as it will be on _all_ these programs. You pays yer money and takes yer chances. We all got burned. All the credible stuff went to the cutting room floor.


Rest assured, though, MonsterQuest at least showed enough to get interest kindled in _other_ quarters. There's a lot of life left to tell the story, still! You can bet Frank Feschino will be banging the Flatwoods drum, verily!


I remain firmly in his corner! There are many rounds left in this fight. Frank is strong and as focused as he ever was!


Closing, Flatwoods and Frametown residents write to tell me that the James Knob site east of Frametown is still ufologically active. Right _now_ reader.


Well, I suspect that if ET had swooped in and landed on the pasture that night while Friedman, Feschino, and myself were all up there on James Knob - and the Monster Quest people had shot miles of film of it? THAT footage would have languished on the cutting room floor with all the other pertinent material, too.


Tha MonsterQuest program regarding Flatwoods was a dissembling hypocrisy... and a shame!

One last point, in the dodgy MonsterQuest "cooked" portrayal, Fred May, Stanton Friedman, and Frank Feschino seem to indicate that Big Lizards in "hover-rounds," plus other monsters, still lurk dangerously in the West Virginia mountains around Flatwoods. No reader. They are not. Nothing these men actually reported to the film crew made that indication.


Sincerely, be disabused of the notion that dangerous monsters haunt your hills and forests! Fred, Frank, and Stan made _no_ such intimation. I was _there_. I _know_.

A Constrast in Chupies

(Such a weird bit of synchronicity -- I had just finished this piece, checked out the Anomalist, found the following link to Micah A. Hanks Gralien Report to his excellent chupie article: Blood-Sucking Chupacabra to Blame for Farm Deaths? !!!!)

Over ten years ago, when I first heard about the chupacabras, images of the creature weren't easy to find. There were no actual photos or video of the creature, though some supposed real ones, like this one:

The story that I recall accompanying the above image was that a custodian in the Los Angeles area (I think) had found it.

There were also the "alien" chupacabra renderings:

Along with the stories. Red glowing eyes, spines on the back, jumping extremely high or "flying," found on rooftops, trees, going over fences. Claw like hands, bipedal. And the dead animals found in the creature's wake: chickens, rabbits, etc. were found to have been desanguiated (completely drained of blood) with only two deep puncture wounds in their necks.

The stories of the chupacabras, originating from Puerto Rico, soon "jumped" and stories of the creature started to come out of Florida and Mexico. And I remember short news item from Coast to Coast, via Art Bell, that there were reports of chupacabras in Oregon!

(Stories of the chupacabras, while new to some of us in the United States, were not new to others. Puerto Rico has a history of blood sucking creature lore, for example, as Micah Hanks discusses in his recent article on chupie.)

The above stories of the chupacabras involved: bipedal, spiny backed, high jumping, red eyed, blood sucking creatures. Often an alien from space component accompanied these stories; speculations that "chupie" was an alien, or alien "pet." Other speculations: that the creature was a government experiment gone horribly awry. More prosaic explanations offered: an undiscovered bat, or animal of some type unknown to science.

But in none of the above accounts the chupacabras was said to look like a hairless dog or raccoon.

For whatever reasons, the evolution of the chupacabras story has morphed from the glowing red eye spine backed bipedal creature to a mangy dog like creature, at least here in the states. Monster Quest has gone with this idea:



There isn't any comparison between the two creatures and yet it seems to have taken off; that this hairless, canine type animal is a chupacabras. One question is, why have the chupie stories morphed?

Something that is as important as the chupacabras mystery is the fact that there are hairless beasties found in the southwest. These are real creatures (and I'm not implying the earlier chupacabras are not) and, whatever they are, they are. Something is causing animals to loose all their fur; what? Why are there seemingly a large number of animals with this condition? Something's causing them to loose all their fur. And if these animals are hard to identify: fox, dog, coyote, raccoon, etc. what are the implications of that? Does this mean it's simply a matter of difficulty in identifying completely hairless creatures? Or is there some type of mutation going on? Are parasites, pollution, diet,  or some other cause responsible for these cases of mange, or whatever it is?

These animals currently being called chupacabras are not chupacabras, except in local lore parlance. What is causing a large population of animals to lose their fur? It's a symptom of something, a signal that we seem to be ignoring.

Related posts:
Two Chupacabras


Visit my blog Regan Lee Oregon

Monster Quest and Exotic Pets

This week's MQ was about big cats in the North Eastern part of New York. Sightings of large black cats, attacks . . . and good evidence they're around, from the claw marks in tree bark, prints, etc. Theory is that the cats seen are black leopards, escaped from, or let go, by their owners.

The most disturbing thing about the program is the fact that people insist on keeping tigers, leopard and other big cats as "pets" -- MQ even showed a man who kept cougars and sold baby cougars as pets! Aside from animal rescue places, animal reserves, and a Sigfrid and Roy kind of thing, no one should, no one needs to, have big cats as pets.

Many owners have been attacked by their "pet" tiger, lion, etc. This is a surprise? You try being kept in a cage for years and see what happens. It is literally criminal that it is legal to keep exotic animals as "pets."

I realize MQ isn't in the business of being political; it's entertainment. And it's implied in various MQ episodes that keeping wild animals as pets is dangerous, stupid, and to a lesser degree in their implication, cruel. But I would like to see more of a definitive statement towards support of legislation that outlaws keeping exotic animals as pets.

Two Chupacabras

Tonight's Monster Quest was about Chupacabra. One thing I've noticed about MQ is that they avoid the darker side of things, or maybe conspiratorial side of things is a better way of putting it. What I mean is, when I first heard of Chupacabra in Puerto Rico ten years ago or so, I was on it! I was fascinated by the stories; and I kept returning to one possible explanation for Chupie sightings: some Dr. Evil experiment gone horribly awry. We're getting into some odd territory here, but there are American military and government bases there that are very secretive, a history of high strangeness and UFOs. The Chupacabra activity just came up from nowhere; suddenly, there they were. (Not quite actually; there is a history of goat sucker and vampire type beings in the folklore of the region.)


I remember seeing this image just about ten years ago. It was one of the first available on-line of the Chupacabra; the story I read that accompanied this image was that a school custodian found it and photographed it. I don't remember if that was in the U.S. or not; though I think it was, an L.A. school. This screams "fake" very loudly; but it is interesting that it looks a bit like the Texas chupies.

The Chupacabra stories "jumped" from Puerto Rico after a couple of years to Florida, and Mexico, . . . I remember years ago hearing Art Bell say there was a case in Oregon! No matter where the Chupacarbra attacks occur ed -- Florida, Mexico, Puerto Rico, etc. -- the description of the being stayed the same. And the description made sense, given the types of attacks. A strong being, bi-pedal, that could leap or jump quite high, seemed to have speed, luminous eyes (ethier because it seemed to be nocturnal, or the red glowing eyes are an added bonus to the overall Fortean high strangeness of the creature), these seemed to match the kind of creature that could be capable of desanguinating the poor victims. Strong, fast, lithe.


This image has been around for some time as well. The reports from Puerto Rico ten years ago say the creature looked like this.

Roughly eight years later, stories of Chupacabra started to come from Texas. But what's strange is that the description of this so-called Chupacabra differs quite a bit from the "original," -- yet the animal deaths caused by this Texas creature appear to be the same as teh ones in Puerto Rico, etc.

Well, MQ found that the Texas Chupie seems to be a dog/coyote/possibly wolf hybrid. With mange. Maybe. But what's strange is that it isn't just one creature like this, but a few, and from different areas. The fangs are strange as well. It doesn't add up, but there it is.

With the Texas Chupies, it could be that the hybrids, because they're hybrids, contaminated each other with mange, or . . .I"m just speculations. More like thinking aloud here, since I'm no wildlife expert and really don't know. What we do know is they exist; and, the animals they killed were killed in a weird enough way that only raises more questions. The fact that these UADS parallel the earlier Chupacabra deaths just adds to the mystery. It isn't enough to say the Texas creatures are "just" canine hybrids of some kind, which seems to be the case, for there are added elements of high strangeness that makes this a Fortean mystery.


The Texas chupacabra. Image from:maryvisbal.blogspot.com
/2007_12_01_archive.html

It could be that these Texas canines have nothing to do iwth the deaths at all; and the 'real" Chupacabra remains hidden.

So, is the Texas "chupie" the Chupacabra? It doesn't seem like it, yet the fact the victims seem to have been killed in the same way is curious.

New Bigfoot Threads on JREF

Two new Bigfoot threads on the JREF; check the sidebar on your right. 18 threads now over there on how Bigfoot doesn't exist. Gotta love it!

It's Trigger Happy Hog Killin' Time!

(Update: as you can read in the comments below, Lesley of Debris Field remarked that the image above is of a canned hunt, not a hog in the wild. Don't get me started on canned hunts. . .)

I'm a fan of Monster Quest, and was looking forward to the new season of episodes. The new season opened with Mega Hog, about giant hogs loose in the wilds of Texas and Alabama.

Lots of images of huge dead hogs, killed for no reason I could see, except that they were there. The hogs, that is. One guy, no spring chicken as they say, with a broken leg, drives out to where a giant hog was seen. So he drives out there, by himself, with his broken leg, hobbling about with his crutch, to kill him a hog, which, if I remember right, he did. Whoo hee.

Obviously, giant hogs running around are dangerous, and I sure as hell don't ever want to run into one. But there's something so sad, exploitative -- so full of blood lust -- about intentionally going out to shoot yourself some damn hogs. The one that really sickened me, which I commented on at the time, was the little kid, with his huge fancy weapon (looked like a missile launcher to me, not that I know what one is or looks like) all happy faced over his big kill.

Christ almighty, it's a sick world.

So there's some discussion at the beginning of the program about the hogs: are they "real" big giant hogs running around, or are they escaped pen fed pigs who got big by being in the wild? Seemed like a moot point to me; especially since they proved, by comparing skulls, the hogs were of the pen fed for eatin' (no, I don't eat pork) kind.
I mean, a giant hog in the wild is a giant hog; who cares where it came from?

I turned it off not more than fifteen minutes or so into the program. Too many groups of very excited men scrambling into trucks, armed with guns or rifles or who knows, things that kill, to go kill some pig. Just because and all, I guess.

There was something about one team going out to collar one of the hogs so they could track it via camera, etc. That sounded interesting but I just couldn't handle watching anymore of "Let's Go Kill Something Just Cause We Can" crap.

Maybe the show changed its tone later on but I couldn't take anymore.

Very disappointed in the show.

Run, Bigfoot, Run!

Here's hoping Bigfoot stays hidden . . .

I’m conflicted. I enjoy watching television shows about Bigfoot. I’m right there with the field researchers, making plaster casts of prints, setting up game cameras, and tromping through the crunchy woods at night with night vision goggles strapped to my face. I’m interested in the evidence collected, and the conclusions on the analysis.

At the same time, I cringe when I see investigators coming up with twists on how to attract Bigfoot. Hanging CDs in the trees or wind chimes, playing recordings of animal sounds, pheromone traps, and so on. At some point, the idea of actively looking for Bigfoot changes from interesting to intrusive, as well as pointless.

I always have the feeling that Bigfoot is well aware of the team about to descend on its territory long before the team gets any whiff of Bigfoot. For that reason alone, the chances of Bigfoot being found seem slight.

For the people who’ve seen Bigfoot, no proof is needed. After all, they’ve seen it! (Although, for some of them -- naturally I can’t speak for any witness -- proof might be welcome, if only to prove to family, friends and community they’re not lying or crazy.)

What of the aftermath? Bigfoot is found to exist; now what? There are laws already in place in some areas protecting Bigfoot. For some unfathomable reason, this irks many a scofftoid. If we waited until after Bigfoot is found to create and implement such laws, there’s a window where harm to Bigfoot could be done, with no legal consequences to the one doing the harm.

Then there’s the issue of habitat; varied, it seems, since Bigfoot has been reported in many diverse areas all over the U.S. The time, money and creaky process of law will be a circus, while Bigfoot remains vulnerable and the less ethical and moral will be out in droves hunting down the creature.

So, I’m conflicted. I love the search even while hoping Bigfoot is never finally found. I like the elusive photos that are tantizling; just enough but not quite enough to satisfy. I like the continued debate over footprints (for example, see the JREF forum for endless debates over the usefullness of prints) and the weight it gives to Bigfoots existence. I like the personal experiences of researchers and witnesses; they remain elusive and “just” anecdotal eveidence which all too often is not valid for skeptics and others alike.

These kinds of things keeps Bigfoot in the shadows, which is where I hope it stays. Some may get glimpses, but never enough to bring out into the harsh light of “discovery.”

Monster Quest: All Female Bigfoot Team

Tonight is Monster Quest on the History Channel. 10pm, I think 7pm Pacific but check your listings. Tonight's episode: Bigfoot in Washington state, and an "all female" research team.