#Flatwoods Monster Museum

[eggcatsreads]

All the books I've gotten so far! I might get more once the Mothman Festival actually starts tomorrow, but these are all the ones I've gotten before then.

I saw the "Local Author" tag on these first two books, and spooky books are my forte, so I ABSOLUTELY had to grab Stix and The Hills Know by Breanna Leslie! Hopefully I'll have the energy to read them while I'm at this cabin in the woods,to really sell the vibe!

My mom wanted to know what on earth we were in West Virginia to find, so I got her Monsters of West Virginia by Rosemary Ellen Guiley at the Flatwoods Monster Museum so she could learn for herself.

While in Sutton, I also grabbed Sasquatch by Jeff Meldrum at the West Virginia Bigfoot Museum so I could learn more, since my Bigfoot knowledge is woefully lacking.

Today at the Mothman Museum, I alao grabbed:

Bridging the Tragedy by Bill (phD) and Jacqueline Kousoulas, since I have quite a few Mothman books but not this one (I even accidentally have two copies of The Mothman Prophecies by John Keel, with two separate names for them, lol!)

Cryptids, Creatures and Critters by Rachel Quinney, since I needed the art in person.

And finally, the Crème de la crème, Mothman Baby! by Elias Barks and Zoe Persico, as it was simply too cute to pass up!

(To quote Chris Fleming - "I know it's for babies, but I NEED it!")

Can't wait to dig in to these books, and hopefully I'll find more treasures tomorrow and Sunday at the festival

[eggcats]

Not to like, doxx myself but I'm in WV for the Mothman Festival!!! ❤️❤️❤️

And I obviously had to visit the Flatwoods Monster and West Virginia Bigfoot Museums!!! This is my third year in a row and I love it so much (the driving...not so much, lol).

[fullcolorfright]

Extraterrestrial Terror: The Flatwoods Monster

A short comic I drew a few years back about the 1952 Flatwoods Monster incident, in the style of the 60s-70s horror comics I was reading at the time

[deepdreamnights]

Excerpts from The Other Book, Vernon Chambers, Esq.. 1866

Pages form Chapter Six: Wanderers in the Wilderness. One of seventeen known copies of Chambers’ the Other Book recently came into the possession of the Uncanon Valley History Museum thanks to a generous donation by the  Melinoë Foundation. 

Top persons are currently working to decode Chambers’ unique shorthand.

Additional pages from the chapter on grey aliens may be seen in this post

In actuality, this is all AI-generated art produced with Midjourney, mostly with variations of the following prompts:

victorian naturalist's full body illustration of bigfoot, labels and notes, high detail, , ultrasharp detail

victorian naturalist's full body illustration of the flatwoods monster, labels and notes, high detail, , ultrasharp detail

victorian naturalist's full body illustration of a pair of disembodied ghost pants with eyes, labels and notes, high detail, in the style of victorian naturalism illustration, ultrasharp detail 

a victorian naturalist's illustration of goatman, labels and notes, high detail, ultrasharp detail

a victorian naturalist's illustration of mothman, labels and notes, high detail, ultrasharp detail

[creepyamericana]

Episode 37: Interview about the Flatwoods Monster with Adrew Smith

Hi everyone,

It's been...4 years to the day since my last upload. I feel 8 years older. This interview was conducted in May of 2020 remotely with the curator of the Flatwoods Monster Museum, Andrew Smith. He was gracious enough to speak with me for over an hour about the museum, the monster, the lore, and the legends. Please enjoy.

Introduction sound by Noanie Music

Link to the documentary Andrew created

Check out this episode! Also found where most podcasts are streamed.

[indigo-a-creeping]

So anyway, top surgery is scheduled for May 9! Anybody want to go explore San Francisco with me for a week (squeezing drains may be required a few times)? I've put out a few feelers, and have a couple of possible people to go with me, but nothing set in stone yet.

We had a hurricane come through today, but it went more to the north, so we just got a lot of rain and wind in the morning. Everything's back to normal now.

My (nearly) hairless guinea pig has had an eye issue since I adopted her, and I haven't been able to resolve it, so I took her to the vet and he said it looks like either an abscess or scarring. I'm giving her antibiotic eye drops and antifungal cream twice a day for two weeks. Hopefully it'll help! I was expecting the vet to take one look and say she needed the eye removed, so this is hopeful.

I've been struck with some terrible affliction for the past week. It's not Covid. Possibly a cold, but more probably allergies. Just so much snot. Coughing, sneezing, feeling awful. Can't taste or smell anything unless I manage to clear a passage in my nose, and it doesn't last long. It's been getting better in the past couple days, though yesterday I almost left work early it was so bad. Hopefully all the rain will clear out the allergens and I'll feel better!

I'm deep into planning my Nanowrimo project for this year, and thinking of trying to make it a podcast. I've been listening to a lot of queer post-apocalyptic supernatural (and adjacent) podcasts lately, and I have some ideas.

And next month I'm driving up to the Mothman Festival! So excited for that! I'll also visit the Flatwoods Monster Museum, the Bigfoot Museum, and the Back of the Dragon, among other things.

[raz-writes-the-thing]

hiya raz! idk why but when i read your 3 fun facts i immediately wanted to pair you with aziraphale. i’ve only seen one episode of good omens but i feel like he would appreciate your crocheting abilities :’)

no obligation to answer, i’m sure your inbox is full, but here are my 3 fun facts:

1: i have a degree in animation! i focused on character design, world building and storyboards/animatics

2: i love art history, art museums (museums in general actually, love a good science museum) but i’m especially interested in architecture, especially when i’m able to take good reference photos for my art.

3. i’m really into cryptids. of course the classics like mothman and bigfoot. but i’m also a sucker for the flatwoods monster and the fresno night crawlers. (and aliens, of course, but i wouldn’t consider those cryptids.) i think the folklore of each creature is so interesting, even if you don’t believe it, it impacts the local culture so much.

i hope you’re doing well! :3

-🐝

Omg ZIRA!! AAAH!! A perfect match for me tbh. Thank you so much for matching me btw <3 that's super sweet and so much appreciated. I am also okay, thank you. Chugging away as per the usual.

Now, onto your own match.. hmm...

Bucky Barnes from Marvel!

Bucky is awe-struck by your talent when it comes to animatics and story-telling. He's been around a good while and he knows a good story when he comes across one. He hasn't quite got the hang of social media but he'd definitely share all the posts of all your work if you let him. Bucky doesn't really get the fascination for history (given that he's been around for a lot of the modern part of it) but he does like art. There's just something about art galleries that he finds so peaceful. I feel like he'd get really into photography actually, and that he'd end up taking really good pictures and showing them to you and seeing if you wanted them as ref images. He's not so into cryptids, but he adores how into them you are.

[dailyunsolvedmysteries]

 Flatwoods Monster Terrified 6 Kids, a Mom, a Dog

The Flatwoods Monster has not hissed at boys in the little village of Flatwoods, West Virginia, since Sept. 12, 1952. 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.”

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, [17-year-old] 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.

“State police laughed off the reports as hysteria,” the newspaper story said. “They said the so-called Monster had grown from seven to 17 feet in just 24 hours.”

The U.S. Air Force doubted the claims of a UFO. They 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.

And so the Flatwoods Monster, also known as the Green Monster, also known as the Phantom of Flatwoods, who was reportedly seven feet tall, or 10 feet tall, or 13 feet tall, or 17 feet tall, became that most peculiar American invention.

[forestgradience]

Stolen Past

we dug deep in our garden grove found an old stone tablet with ancient unintelligible writing we did not give it to the museum the flatwoods monster appeared and made a crop circle in our ranch all we had to offer her was our old fashioned cheeses for the Writerscreed challenge " Reflections on a Harvest Moon"

[stormvanari]

Ripley Wolsteen (She/They) is an overprotective prairie popcorn member of the Titan’s Council who represents the Beast-Keeping chair. The demon is a hobbyist historian and paleontologist, with an additional interest for BI cryptids. She works with the Supernatural History Museum to exclude Belos from historical text, while uncovering long-forgotten secrets of the Deadwardian Era. Ripley’s kind was hunted down to extinction by a former Beast-Keeping Coven Head (NOT Eber); the white cloaks the Emperor’s Coven wears is made out of the wool of her species.

She has a palisman named Van, which resembles the Van Meter Monster. Unfortunately, it is snorted in the TAD AU, where Ripley’s loyalty is neutral (like Yurei) towards Belos.

_________________________________________

Additional text on images with corrections marked by brackets, if unreadable:

• Although she is not a Titan Trapper, nor has she heard of them, TAD!Ripley designed her bonnet to resemble [the Titan]. It worked [towards] beasts that are considered difficult to [tame].

• Scarf [of Van] turned into ribbon to secure Ripley’s bonnet.

• ”Tails” are longer for TAD!Ripley’s canon counterpart

• When lights are dim enough, Ripley lookin’ like the Flatwoods Monster (...if you ignore the antennae)

[paintingdragonfeathers]

I heard of Squonkapalooza last year but wasn't sure if it was worth the travel. I love cryptids, even did a trip through West Virigina last year to hit up the museums of Mothman, Bigfoot, and the Flatwoods Monster; I just couldn't tell if Squonkapalooza was a good sized event dedicated to the Squonk or more of a small town event for locals. Did you go last year? I saw your art and crafts at Otakon and would love to see to what you've done since.

I didn't get a chance to go last year for Squonkapalooza's inaugural event due to a scheduling conflict, and I was bummed I missed out. Alot of my local friends went and said it was a blast, and the fact that it's gearing up for year two is a promising start for this event. It's definitely all-cryptid related and not strictly Squonk--Squonk's probably the star since it is the PA state cryptid after all, lol. And thank you for stopping by at Otakon! I'm currently working on a cryptid themed novel myself which I'm planning to have available for the cons this summer.

[schnellergeist]

some pics from my road trip to point pleasant and sutton/flatwoods to visit the mothman and flatwoods monster museums!! super cool to go deeper into appalachia, so familiar yet so unknown and mysterious 👀

[labete-du-gevaudan]

The Flatwoods Monster Museum is located inside the Braxton County, West Virginia, Visitor’s Center. Admission to the museum is free but you can buy Flatwoods Monster merchandise! The collection has items from historical items from the sighting of the creature to toys and memorabilia that came from the sensational event. 

[rotwhyler]

im so sad cass, miri, and i didn’t get to go on our yearly spooky roadtrip this summer........i hope we can go next summer :’(

[lilblog-asatreat]

if ur still taking writing requests, i really love ned chicane and would be down to see your take on if he was around during the final arc. or maybe something set when he was new to kepler.

Straddling a branch about ten feet off the ground, Ned gets to work trying to tie the other end of the thin rope to the other end of the stick he has stuck through his creation. It's difficult work, made more so by the fact it's the dead of night and even the headlamp hasn't proven to be a steady source of light, but he is going to get this thing hanging off the ground one way or another.

He's so enraptured by his project that he doesn't hear the sound of footsteps crunching the leaves and twigs below him.

"Hello, I'm District Ranger Duck Newton, and can I ask what the hell is it that you are doing up there?"

Ned fumbles with the rope and almost slips off the branch again as the styrofoam dummy crashes back to the ground. "Uh, hello, friend- uh... Duck, was it?"

"Yeah, it's a nickname." Duck points his flashlight at the dummy lying in a heap on the ground. He picks it up and looks it over curiously. It's made up of a large styrofoam cylinder painted black with two red bicycle helmet lights for eyes. It has a large, black, leaf-shaped piece of cardboard attached to the top and two clawed arms made out of sticks attached to the sides. There's a wooden dowel sticking through the top, just under the leaf shape, that has the rope tied to one end, and a long skirt is attached to the bottom of the cylinder. "What the hell is this?"

Ned laughs nervously. "Oh, that's a uh... a prop! For a photo shoot I'm doing. It's getting close to Halloween, and I thought it would be fun to pose with a monster and post it on Facebook. Have you heard of the Flatwoods Monster?"

Duck looks back up at him and frowns. "The cryptid from Flatwoods, West Virginia? Yeah, I guess I... guess I kind of heard of it. Didn't they prove it was really an owl that spooked some folks though?"

"Well... yes! But I just thought it would be fun to uh- to take that spooky spirit and get some fun photos."

"In the dead of night?" Duck shakes his head. "Wait a minute, why am I talking to you while you're up in the tree? Come on down before you hurt yourself."

"Yes. Right." Ned starts carefully shimmying down the tree. "And what better time of day than to take Halloween pictures at night?"

"That's fair, but it's dangerous to be climbing trees in the dark, especially when the moon isn't out," Duck says.

Ned makes it down and rubs his still throbbing head. "Say, it is the middle of the night, why are you out here Duck?"

"I'm a forest ranger, and I got a call from some campers in the nearby RV lot who were concerned about someone yelling in the woods. Can I assume that was you?" Duck asks.

Ned grins sheepishly. "Yeah, I did fall out of that damned tree earlier. I'm sorry I disturbed the campers."

Duck nods then squints at him a little. "Hey, I think I recognize you. Are you that new fella living with Victoria in that museum she owns?"

"Yes, that is... that is me. Ned Cryptonimica Resident Chicane!" Ned exclaims.

"Well it makes sense why you'd be interested in this stuff. This isn't... just to be clear... this isn't some sort of promotional stunt you're trying to do? Victoria actually believes in this stuff, and I don't think she'd be too thrilled if you were taking shitty clearly-faked photos for clout."

Ned bites his lip. "No, of course not! It would be really disrespectful to go behind her back... even if it would help the business." He mumbles the last part defeatedly.

Duck sighs. "It's great that you want to try to help her out, but this isn't the way to do it. Tell you what. Since Halloween is coming up, I can hand out a few fliers to campers to go check out the museum in spirit of the holiday. Victoria is a sweet woman, and you don't seem half bad yourself, and I know y'all could use the money."

Ned smiles. "Thank you, my dear new friend!"

"But you have to promise not to go climb trees and yell at all hours of the night." Duck says with a smile.

"No, I can't promise that." Ned laughs. "I can try to stay away from RV lots so as to not spook anymore campers."

Duck shrugs. "Alright, that's something I guess. Why don't you go on home. And tell Victoria I said hello for me."

"Will do, friend Duck! Will do!"

[indigo-a-creeping]

The Flatwoods Monster museum was full of cool stuff!