Beckley is Full of Beasts!

Eyewitness sketch of the Beast of Beckley
Source: The National Cryptid Society

My mom grew up in Beckley, West Virginia and my grandparents continued to live there up until their deaths in 1997 and 2005. As a kid, I spent a LOT of weekends and summers at my grandparents' house, where they fostered my love of all things weird and spooky. I didn't realize it until becoming an adult, that the very place where I learned so much about the paranormal was actually a hotbed of Fortean phenomena! Not only are there multiple locations with a haunted history, but the area has a high number of UFO reports as well. And, from what I've realized just recently...

Beckley is FULL of Beasts!

It probably all dates back well before the 20th century, but the general public first heard about a monster lurking around Raleigh County back in 1934. Although it was sighted for several years before and after, late Spring of 1934 was the year of the Fireco Varmint. 

Fireco is a small community, located about 14 miles south of Beckley. In May, newspapers began running the story about a strange creature being seen and harassed by locals. Described as being anywhere from 2-4 feet tall , 6 feet long, and with yellow-gray hair, this small but swift beast was known for attacking animals and being immune to gun shots. It was seen by two brothers, Thomas (18) and Lawrence (23) Roark, spotted the creature one night around 9pm and fired upon it with no results. The creature was seen in the same area later on by witness, Berlin Shumate.

15 year old Willis Wooten came across a headless dog and found tracks that were as big as a man's hand nearby. Wallace Bowling, however, had one of his cows attacked; the creature was found with its stomach split open and its intestines spilling out. Miraculously, the animal survived the attack with the quick help from a veterinarian. 

By the summer of 1936, the Fireco Varmint was back, but it has grown to 10 feet long, and was also snatching the heads off full-grown hogs. So, what in the world were these citizens seeing, and what was killing their pets and livestock?  

Some say that the Fireco Varmint never left the area, and perhaps has even been sighted in modern times, but the newspapers largely gave up on documenting the unknown creature. However, in 1959 another monster showed up on the radar. Well, kind of.

The Raleigh Register
23 October 1959

In October of that year, the local newspaper ran a couple of articles about the 'East Beckley Monster.' Residents in that area were convinced that something was stalking their neighborhood. Newspaper offices were flooded with calls, but the Beckley Police Department adamantly denied the existence of anything supernatural. When residents brought up the fact that the police were out late one night shooting at what they believed to be the monster, the police calmly explained that it was simply a pack of wild dogs. 

Oddly enough, none of the newspaper articles mentioning the beast bothered to actually describe its physical characteristics in any way. I really wish they would have, though. If we had some sort of description, we might be able to link it to the Fireco Varmint or even to ANOTHER Beast of Beckley that would appear on the scene decades later!

On March 9, 2019 the website for the National Cryptid Society published an account submitted by a user going by the name of Raven. Raven and Raven's family had seen a mysterious, terrifying beast near their Beckley property, dating back to at least 2001-2002. It was Raven's little brother who saw it first. Around 8 pm one summer evening, their mother got a call from their grandmother saying that they needed to come pick the little brother up from her house. She only lived a very short distance away; in fact, they could SEE the grandmother's front porch from their own house. Usually, the little brother had no issues in going back and forth by himself, but this time, he had seen something that had scared him BADLY. 

When they finally got him to talk about it, he described a black creature with yellow eyes. The beast stood taller than the boy's father (who was quite tall himself at 6'6'') and smiled at him with sharp teeth. Even at the rate the Fireco Varmint seemed to 'grow,' it seems unlikely that THIS beast was the same 'species.' 

Not long after the brother's encounter, Raven and a friend decided to look for the beast themselves on the grandmother's property. Raven, feeling uneasy, stayed back while the friend went down over a small hill. That would prove to be the wrong course of action, as Raven soon noticed crouched in the brush, a dark creature with not two, but FOUR yellow eyes staring back. The friend also reported seeing the beast, and the two quickly got out of the area when the creature roared at them and picked up a branch. The next day, the two friends returned to the site and found claw marks in a tree where the beast had been.

The last time Raven personally saw the creature was in November of 2014 after returning home late one evening. Looking out the window towards where the cars were parked around 3 am, Raven noticed the outline of a horrific creature that was pitch black, humanoid in shape, and thickly built. It was tall...at least 6'8'' by estimates. After staring Raven down for a few minutes, it ran off. 

Raven's brother had seen the beast as recently as a month before the story was submitted to the website, and it was reported that even after Raven moved away, screams and roars continued to be reported in the area. However, the creepy part is that wherever Raven went, the beast seemed to follow. From across town to even vacationing in South Carolina, Raven could FEEL the beast nearby. 

The Beast of Beckley seemed to be more active in the summer months, and would sometimes be accompanied by unexplained lights in the woods. Skeptics tried to pass off the sightings as a black bear, but I think that some of the reported behavior suggests that not only was this NOT a black bear, but perhaps a creature not of this natural world. Since that report was published, at least one other independent witness has come forward and claimed to have seen the exact same thing in the general area. 

Are we dealing with multiple 'types' of beasts, reported over the span of nearly 100 years, or is there some thread connecting the Fireco Varmint, the East Beckley Beast, and the Beast of Beckley together? I'd love to know YOUR thoughts, and if you've had an encounter with an unknown creature in the Beckley/Raleigh County area, please let me know in the comments below...or find me over on Theresa's Haunted History of the Tri-State FaceBook!  

Sources and Further Reading:

The Fireco Varmint-Theresa's Haunted History Blog

Legend of Beast Resurfaces Near Fireco, WV-WV Explorer

The Raleigh Register. 23 October 1959

Beast of Beckley-The National Cryptid Society

Wild Man Attacks Train Near Morgantown

Opekiska Locks and Dam
Source

Last December,  I had the opportunity to head up to Sutton, WV and attend the Yeti Festival, hosted by the West Virginia Bigfoot Museum! While I was there, I purchased a copy of Louis R. Petolicchio's awesome book, The Wild Man of North America: Historic Newspaper Accounts About Encounters with Wild Men, Feral Humans and Other Curiosities. I was pleasantly surprised to see the following account from March 3, 1905 included in the book. The Daily Telegram, a newspaper based in Clarksburg, WV, reported that passenger trains coming through Opekiska, a small community in Monongalia County, located along the Monongahela River between Fairmont and Morgantown, were being attacked by a wild man! After one man was arrested, the attacks continued, scaring both train personnel and passengers so badly that they refused to go after the wild man themselves. 

I think this is a really interesting story in the annals of wild man lore, because to me, there is no mistaking this wild man as anything other than a normal human, possibly suffering with a mental illness. Despite being described as a 'giant,' by today's standards, his estimated height of 6' is about average for a man, and the fact that he was able to shoot a gun (given that it was the same 'wild man' in each encounter) would be more indicative of a human being than something more...animalistic. But, that does bring up a fascinating point...was this Lynch fellow involved in the first incident, and a separate 'man' involved later on? If so, why was Lynch trying to flag down the train? Was he trying to escape the true wild man? And just where did this wild man come from? In many stories where the wild man is clearly a human being, it is suspected that he is an escaped inmate, of either the prison system or the insane asylum, or has otherwise witnessed something so horrible that he takes to the wilderness and becomes feral, slowly losing his human identity which is replaced with more animalistic characteristics. I'll be completely honest: while I love this story as another one of WV's oddities, I'm a little disappointed that this is not an example of a wild man story that is clearly an early sighting of what we'd call a Bigfoot or Sasquatch today.  Anyway, I'll get more into my theories of Wild Men, both from a historical perspective AND a modern one, in another blog, so until then, enjoy this strange and fascinating tale from right here in the Mountain State. 

WILD MAN ATTACKS TRAIN

Giant Creature in Human Form with Bristles on Face Is at Large Near Morgantown

03 March 1905

The Daily Telegram (Clarksburg, WV)

The citizens of Monongalia County are thoroughly aroused over the strange and murderous actions of a man in that country, whose identity has not been established so far and whose capture seems a remote possibility, unless the state authorities organize a posse and force him to surrender.

Only a few days ago as chronicled, a man was seen standing on the track in front of a passenger train nearing Morgantown.  He was violently waving his hands.  The train did not stop and he was compelled to step aside to save himself. As the train was passing he fired several shots at it.

Later a fellow Lynch was arrested suspected of the deed and is yet held. But after his arrest the matter of trying to hold up passenger trains continued and Thursday afternoon at Opakeiski* as the passenger train was coming toward Fairmont a strange looking man stoned it.  The train stopped after having run him and the brakeman went back to arrest the fellow, but as he approached him the fellow showed fight and the trainman grew so nervous over the man's strange appearance that he returned to the train.

By the time he boarded the train, it had started again, but the brakeman called upon the passengers to volunteer to go with him and capture the giant--as he was at least six feet tall and wore a beard all over his face which looked more like a mass of bristles than whiskers. 

The passengers were not sufficiently alarmed over the attempt made by the fellow on their lives to organize themselves into a posse and pursue him. 

*You can read the original newspaper article as it appears in the Daily Telegram on the Chronicling America website, located at THIS LINK.

Book Review for West Virginia Cryptids: A Visual Guide for Traversing the Mountain State

Title: West Virginia Cryptids: A Visual Field Guide for Traversing the Mountain State

Researched and Written by: Les O'Dell of WV Cryptids and Strange Encounters

Art and Design by: Mark Randall-Creative Artist

Copyright 2021

Amazon Purchase Link

Last month, the stars aligned for me. Spectral Research and Investigation scheduled a holiday dinner and investigation at the Haymond House in Sutton, WV. A few weeks after we confirmed our date, it was announced that the West Virginia Bigfoot Museum, also in Sutton, was hosting the first annual Yeti Expo that same weekend! And, if you know me, you know I can't walk away from any paranormal event without at least one or two new books for my paranormal library. One of the books that came home with me that weekend was West Virginia Cryptids: A Visual Field Guide for Traversing the Mountain State, by Les O'Dell and Mark Randall. 

I kept meaning to pick up a copy of this book, but I didn't want to necessarily order it. I had planned on purchasing a copy either at the Bigfoot Museum, or through one of the events that Les O'Dell was going to be at throughout 2021. But, things kept coming up, and I never got around to, even though I was really excited about adding this new title to my own shelf.

I've been following Les and his work with WV CASE for several years now. He's an awesome researcher of all things paranormal, but has really made an impact on the local cryptid, especially Bigfoot, research scene. In addition to collecting reports from all over the state, he actually goes out to where these sightings have occurred and conducts actual field research. His work is on display at the Bigfoot Museum, and can now be found in the book, West Virginia Cryptids!

It's not a huge book, but there's a lot to it. I feel like for the low price of only $10, you're getting a steal. Not only are you getting a look at some of the weird and wonderful monsters that have been spotted throughout West Virginia, but you're getting a collection of full-color, full-page illustrations by the awesome artist, Mark Randall. His spooky, stylized illustrations pair perfectly with the well-researched descriptions of creatures such as the Grafton Monster, The Vegetable Man, The Polk Gap Monster, and many more. 

Anyone who is interested in collecting Fortean literature of West Virginia, or who is interested in cryptozoology in general will want to add this book to their collection, but I think West Virginia Cryptids would make a GREAT gift to give to a teen or someone else who is just now entering this strange, strange world. The visually striking pictures are awesome and the text is short, sweet, and to the point. Les has managed to sum up each monster's history in a way that gives all the necessary details without being too wordy, boring, or overwhelming to the casual reader. I know I really enjoyed it, and so did my 12 year old son. It has already gained a place of prominence in the section of my library dedicated to West Virginia paranormal non-fiction.  I'll be eagerly looking forward to new works and collaborations from these two! 

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