Bigfoot Workshop with Wild and Weird

So, if you've been following this blog over the last week, you may be wondering why all the Bigfoot articles. I've unofficially dubbed the month of May to be Bigfoot Month! All throughout the month, I've been reading books on Sasquatch, watching documentaries, and listening to podcasts. Most importantly, on May 8th, I took part in the West Virginia High Strangeness Collective's Hands-On Bigfoot Workshop and Cook-Out, hosted by  Wild and Weird West Virginia!!

A group of Bigfoot and paranormal enthusiasts met on a beautiful, sunny Saturday afternoon at Kanawha State Forest for an afternoon full of excellent information, hands-on demonstrations, great food, giveaways, and of course, some really fun conversations, all culminating in an actual after-dusk Bigfoot investigation. 

After introductions, Wild and Weird member Wayne Barnes, gave a talk about the history of Bigfoot. I filled several pages of notes on interesting facts and tidbits. It seems like cultures all over the world have been telling stories of hairy man-like creatures since their earliest records were kept. After Wayne's presentation, Ron Lanham gave some really helpful tips on what sort of information to collect and what types of questions to ask witnesses when compiling a report on potential monster activity. I learned that Bigfoot encounters were classed under an ABC classification system, based on how clear the sighting/evidence is, much like EVPs are. 

Later on, Joe Perdue went over his recommendations of tools and equipment that every Bigfoot researcher should have in their pack. It was interesting seeing this broad range of items needed for safety and evidence collection. I was also pleasantly surprised that most of the recommended items were quite affordable and easy to acquire---you don't really need to spend a TON of money on equipment, especially starting out. Joe also took the group out on the trail, and showed us some things to look for that might indicate potential Bigfoot movement in the area. It was a great introduction on how to differentiate between man-made, natural, and 'unknown' disturbances, such as broken tree branches. We also got to observe some bear tracks!  Each person got to pour their own 'bigfoot footprint' cast and take it home, which was a really cool bonus. The best way to learn something is to just try it out yourself, so it was nice to get the opportunity to practice casting a print without having to worry about messing up a REAL print out in the wild. 

Dave Roberts and Ron Lanham wrapped up the educational lectures with an absolutely groundbreaking talk on the use of sound in Bigfoot research. With input from Joe, they discussed how they were using multiple recorders to record and triangulate sounds over a wide expanse.  Apparently, there's only about one other researcher doing something similar, despite the overwhelming potential that this system affords! I'm definitely interested in seeing more about this technique and its results.

Unfortunately, I had to leave before the Bigfoot hunt, but I totally feel like I got my $20 worth! Dinner included grilled hot dogs and BBQ, with Joe's own awesome recipes. Some really cool prizes, such as a 'Squatch Stick' and a giant collapsible bucket for plaster mixing, were given out, and EVERYONE received a signed Bigfoot art print and buttons featuring iconic Bigfoot researchers/images. 

Overall, it was an awesome experience. I love being around and talking with other paranormal enthusiasts, and I love having the opportunity to learn from such dedicated and experienced researchers, right in the field. Kanawha State Forest actually has reported Bigfoot activity, so it was neat to be right there in the area while examining footprint casts and hearing data that was collected there. The guys at Wild and Weird did a wonderful job. It was a well-organized event, full of top-notch information. I think that anyone, from beginning to experienced Squatcher, could have come away from this event with some new perspective and some valuable information. All viewpoints on the Bigfoot phenomenon were discussed tactfully and with an open mind, and I felt totally comfortable asking questions or expressing an opinion. 

If you missed this hands-on workshop, you're not completely out of luck. From my understanding, Wild and Weird West Virginia will be hosting similar events in the future! Feel free to follow them at any of the links below for more information.  As always, stay spooky, ya'll. 

Wild and Weird West Virginia Podcast and Website

Wild and Weird UFO/Paranormal Talk Facebook Group

Wild and Weird West Virginia Facebook LIKE Page

Wild and Weird YouTube Channel

The Braxton County Monster: A Wrap-Up

This past week, Theresa's Haunted History has been dedicated to sharing some newspaper articles dating back to the early 1960's involving a Bigfoot-type creature, roaming the hills of West of Virginia. For lack of a better term, these sightings were all lumped under the name, The Braxton County Monster, and for some inexplicable reason, local newspapers tried making connections between these sightings to the infamous Flatwoods Monster sighting of 1952. As terms such as Sasquatch and Bigfoot entered the public vernacular, hairy man sightings across the country started being classified under one big umbrella. Still, here in West Virginia, mentions of the 'Braxton County Monster' lasted well into the 1960's. Here are two final articles that mention the monster---neither of which actually were reported in Braxton County, lol.

On August 23, 1966 The Charleston Daily Mail ran this photo by Ray Wheeler. It showed a series of 2 foot long yellow footprints, which had mysteriously appeared overnight on Montrose Drive in South Charleston. They led from a sewer opening on the curb, went up a hill, and disappeared into a field.  Although alarming to local housewives, police surmised that the footsteps were made by a local fraternity/sorority or some 'mischievous youths'-----NOT the Braxton County Monster as suggested by the article's author. 

This second article is also from The Charleston Daily Mail, dated November 10th, 1967. For two nights, a Grafton mother and her two children were harassed by what they thought was a monster. The family saw two shiny objects, almost like eyes, in a field outside their house, and then some ONE or some THING tried to break in. Cpl. D.L. Lake suggested that it was merely a human prowler, using binoculars to spy on the family, and that the shiny objects observed were just light reflecting off the lenses of the binoculars. The 'peeping tom' was never caught, but again, the author of the article notes that the incident brings back memories of the Braxton County Monster. I think in this case, I'd rather have the monster, as opposed to some person spying on my family with binoculars and trying to break into my house!

Please be sure to check out ALL the posts in this Braxton County Monster Series!

Braxton County's OTHER Monster Seen by Delivery Driver

Braxton Monster Causes Car to Stall in Pocahontas County

New Martinsville Monster

The Braxton Monster: An Explanation

The Marion County Monster: Bigfoot or Hoax?

Flatwoods Wild Man: Original Braxton Monster?

Horror in the Woods: A Braxton Monster Prequel

Flatwoods Wild Man: Original Braxton Monster?

 

As part of my on-going deep dive into a rash of hairy man sightings from the 1960's being dubbed 'The Braxton Monster,' I thought it might be interesting to include this 'wild man' report from Flatwoods. Is this the original Braxton Monster? It certainly seems...monstrous! This particular article from the Evening Telegram (a paper out of Lakeland, Florida) is dated March 8th, 1919 and denotes a RETURN of this pig/kid stealing creature.

This report, and many others from the area, can be found on the Bigfoot page of the Braxton County CVB page. I've provided the transcription below of this creepy little story, and I'll let YOU decide whether you think it was a monster, or simply an insane man. Also, be sure to check back tomorrow as we wrap up this series of articles with two final stories!

Return of Wild Man Revives Old Terrors

Flatwoods, W. Va. – The belief that a wild man is still lurking in this vicinity, stealing and killing children and young pigs, is stronger than ever just now. A story related by Luther C. Douglas has dispelled all hopes that the terrible creature had fled to other localities. Douglas’ story follows:

“I was on my way home from lodge meeting,” said Douglas, “when I heard a noise near Ed Wiley’s barn, which is close to the road. I thought it might be a dog and paid little attention to it at first. Then, as I was passing a vacant house a short distance from Ed’s place, I heard a distant door slam and a wild-looking fellow, in rags and with long hair and beard that others who have seen him have described, came rushing out of the front door of the old house, brandishing a huge knotted club and uttering the most horrifying sounds I ever have heard.

“Being convinced by his actions that I was to be assaulted and possibly killed, I drew my revolver and took two shots at him. With this he turned and fled, screaming louder than ever. I didn’t pursue him. Not me. It would take a braver man than I profess to be to go on the trail of that horrible creature.”
The authorities are again agitating the question of taking some means to capture the much-feared lunatic, or whatever he is.

The Marion County Monster: Hoax or Bigfoot?

 

Downtown Worthington. Photo by Tim Kiser. Source: Wikipedia

West Virginia's Bigfoot sightings continued into summer of 1961 with what most people accepted as a hoax, perpetrated by the organizers of a county fair. However, to some people in Marion County, namely in the Bunners Ridge area near Fairmont, the monster was VERY real. Stories of some sort of hairy creature began in early August, with the monster being blamed for the destruction of camping tents and convertible car tops, attacks on cars, and even the death of a horse! No one, however, was as affected by the beast as much as a young man named Junior Dale Wagner.

Referred to as 'John Wagner' in another article, the 17 year old was coming home from his girlfriend's home on the evening of August 7th, 1961. Near the town of Worthington, he saw something that scared him nearly to death. 'Something brown and pretty big' came rushing at him from a nearby hill. Wagner took off running, running so fast that he ran out of his shoes, leaving them in the street. After about 300 yards, he panicked, looking for a place to hide, when he decided to enter the closest building by any means necessary.

Wagner dove head first through the glass window of the local barbershop, knocking himself unconscious in the process.  He also suffered bruises and cuts from the broken glass. He was found by Mayor Heisel Fox, who had heard shattering glass and moaning coming from the barber shop. Wagner was taken to a local hospital and treated for his injuries.

Apparently, the organizers of this rural fair never officially admitted to being behind the prank, but quite a few officials went on record stating that there was no monster in Marion County. Interestingly, newspaper media didn't bother with lumping these events in with the 'Braxton County Monster' sightings of the beginning of the year.  However, the Braxton County Monster wasn't completely forgotten, as you'll see in the upcoming days!

Stay spooky, ya'll. 

Weirton Daily Times. 09 August 1961

The Braxton Monster: An Explanation

 In the July 27, 1976 edition of the Charleston Daily Mail, a reader going by the initials of J.C., from St. Albans, wrote into the paper asking for some information. J.C. had recently seen the documentary, "Mysterious Monsters,' which mentioned that West Virginia was listed as having two sightings of Bigfoot. 

Unfortunately, the Department of Natural Resources had no records of such a creature, which at the time, was more closely associated with the Pacific Northwest than West Virginia.  However, the paper did have record of two incidents that seem to fit the description. 

The first is the Charles Stover incident of December 1960. Stover, a delivery driver, saw a hairy creature, about 6 feet tall, standing on the edge of the road in the Hickory Flats area of Webster County. 

The second incident involved W.C. (Doc) Priestly, who saw another hairy creature in Pocahontas County. While reported a week or so after Stover's sighting, Priestly actually saw the creature back in October of 1960, and claims that it raised it hair upwards, causing his car to stall. 

When these stories were published in various local newspapers, the authors of such articles tried comparing them to the 1952 sighting made by Kathleen May and others in Flatwoods, Braxton County. What Ms. May and a group of boys saw on the hillside would later be known as the Flatwoods Monster. However, what they described as a green, hissing, metallic-like THING is a FAR cry from the hairy humanoid monsters reported by Stover and Priestly.

Further, neither of the stories mentioned (nor several others that I'll be sharing over the next few days) even HAPPENED in Braxton County! Stover's experience happened NEAR Braxton County, but technically not in it. So why, as the article to the left states, were both of these beasts dubbed "The Braxton County Monster?"

Honestly, I don't know.  But, I can make some guesses. 

In 1960, most people weren't super familiar with the creature known as Bigfoot.  In fact, the term 'Bigfoot' had only come into existence two years earlier to describe the unknown beast believed to have left humongous footprints in Northern California. So, even those who were familiar with the concept of a hairy, bipedal creature, maybe didn't quite know what would later become a sort of catch-all term for these types of monsters. Others may have only believed that 'Bigfoot' was a single creature that lived on the other side of the country---surely it couldn't travel all the way to West Virginia. 

It's that idea of a single creature that can be applied to what was called The Braxton County Monster. I think that when Stover's report was published, it was a combination of a lack of a better term for the creature and a reporter, trying to be cute and perhaps draw a parallel to a well-known nearby West Virginia monster, just dubbing it the Braxton County Monster. From then on, ALL hairy creature sightings got lumped under this title. This largely applied to the events of 1960 and 1961, but as you'll see in upcoming blogs, there are stories from the mid-1960's as well that are still attributed to 'The Braxton County Monster.' 

Today, Braxton County actually does have quite a few reported sightings that would be classified as Bigfoot. You can read many of them at the Braxton County website! Also, Sutton (in Braxton County) will soon be home to a Bigfoot museum, so please follow them on Facebook for more information! 

The New Martinsville Monster

 

The Raleigh Register 12 January 1961

Today's blog post is the third installment of my 'Other' Braxton County Monster series!  So far, we've had Charles Stover's December 30th sighting in Webster County, followed by a report on January 5th, 1961 by W.C. Pierce in Pocahontas County, which actually happened some time the previous October. Both of these sightings were compared by the local newspapers to the 1952 Flatwoods Green Monster sighting, despite having completely different appearances. 

This third potential sighting happened on Tuesday, January 10, 1961 near New Martinsville, WV. A young woman, Mrs. Gene Chute, came home late, only to find a barefoot, long-haired, wild looking man in her house. The 'monster' grabbed her, but she was able to get away and run to a neighbor's house. Afterward, she was so unnerved by the experience that she was admitted to the hospital for treatment of shock. Obviously, no sign of the wild man was found.

The article's author does note that it isn't likely the Braxton Monster traveled this far north, but a tongue-in-cheek headline about the monster being on the move was still added to grab the attention of those following the story. It certainly grabbed my attention, but I'm not as quick to label this creature as a potential Bigfoot as I was the previously mentioned two cases. The witness makes no mention of the creature being COVERED with hair, nor does she comment on its height or foot size. I'd love to be able to track this witness down and see if she recalls any additional details that will help in solving exactly what attacked her that night in her own home. Until then, this is just an interesting story, and a small piece of the legend of Braxton County's Other Monster.

Please be sure to check out the first two articles in this series!

Braxton County's OTHER Monster Seen by Delivery Driver

Braxton Monster Causes Car to Stall in Pocahontas County

"Braxton Monster" Causes Car to Stall in Pocahontas County

 

Raleigh Register, 05 January 1961

"The Braxton County "monster" is back again and apparently branching out."

In yesterday's blog, I shared with ya'll a newspaper article from 31 December 1960, discussing a very strange experience with a hairy man-like creature, just outside Braxton County in the Hickory Flats area of Webster County. Charles Stover, a delivery driver for a bakery, was coming home from his shift around 11pm when he saw a creature, standing about 6 feet tall with hair all over its face and body, on the edge of the road. Local papers were quick to draw parallels between this sighting and the 1952 monster sighting, known today as the Flatwoods Monster...but completely ignored the more close resemblance of the creature to perhaps a small Bigfoot.

Less than a week later, a newspaper out of Beckley, WV reported on yet another very strange monster sighting, which again was compared to the original Flatwoods Monster as seen by Kathleen May and others, or even perhaps a bear...but not a Bigfoot. Bigfoot or not, this newest sighting of the hairy creature seemed to have a really unique ability!

W.C. Priestly of Alum Creek was driving along a backwoods road along the Williams River in Pocahontas County in October of 1960. As his car began to sputter and die, he looked to his left and saw a creature with long hair. The long hair was standing straight up, pointing up toward the sky. As another car approached, the creature's hair fell back down and it ran off, allowing Priestly to start the car and drive off. He notes, however, that a short time later the points completely burned out.

Now, its not completely unheard of to associate various forms of paranormal activity with electrical disturbances, but this is the first case I've heard of in which a hairy monster was accused of causing a car to stall with its HAIR. I don't want to speculate too much because this is already such a weird report---but what if there was something else causing the car to stall AND the creature's hair to stand on end? Something like a UFO, perhaps?  Maybe the creature seen by Charles Stover, W.C. Priestly, and others in the coming months, really was more closely related to the Flatwoods Monster than I previously thought!  

This story isn't over quite yet! A similarly described creature was reported in local newspapers a few more times in 1961, so please check back tomorrow for the latest adventures of the 'Braxton County...Thing'!

Be sure to checkout yesterday's blog, the first in this series:

Braxton County's Other Monster Seen By Delivery Driver

Braxton County's OTHER Monster Seen by Delivery Driver

From The Charleston Daily Mail, 31 December 1960
Continued below

Just eight years after the infamous events of September 12, 1952, the people of Braxton County and surrounding areas began to chatter about seeing...another monster?

On Friday, December 30th, 1960, Charles Stover was driving the backroads between Braxton and Webster Counties. The 25 year old was finishing up his route, delivering for Dutch Oven Bakeries, and was headed back home. At around 11 p.m., he was in the vicinity of Hickory Flats. As he came around a curve, he spotted a creature on the edge of the road, glaring at him. The creature was "standing erect, with hair all over his face and body." He estimated that it stood about six feet tall. 

Stover stopped his truck a short distance away from the creature, took another look, and found it still standing there, glaring at him before 'roaring off.' Understandably shaken Stover took off and didn't stop until he found a restaurant-filling station still open. He spilled his coffee as he nervously tried to explain to the men in the station what he had seen. They told him that eerie cries had been reported in the woods near that area over the past couple of weeks. Now, with an actual sighting, some of the group decided that this would be the perfect opportunity to witness this thing for themselves. They went home and armed themselves with rifles and shotguns, and traveled out to the spot where Stover had his sighting. Fortunately for the creature, all the men found were some upturned rocks and a couple of 'marks' in the otherwise frozen ground. 

NOT what Stover described

The next morning, Stover's wife reported the incident, which appeared in the Charleston Daily Mail and other papers. She wanted to emphasize that her husband was not drunk. He had really seen SOMETHING that spooked him so bad that he couldn't sleep all that night. She believed him, his boss believed him, and the posse of men believed him, vowing to continue their search for the mysterious hairy beast. 

But what was it that he saw? Obviously, a 6 foot tall, hairy man-creature absolutely does NOT fit the description of the 1952 Flatwoods Monster reported by Kathleen May and others. However, it does sound like a Bigfoot (well, maybe a juvenile or relatively small one). What I find interesting is that not one news source I came across ever used the term 'Bigfoot,' or seemed to make any connection between a Bigfoot-esque creature and what Stover witnessed. The term 'Bigfoot' was coined two years earlier to describe the mysterious creature that had left its oversized footprints in a wooded area of northern California. I guess its possible that the name hadn't yet caught on yet here in central West Virginia, or that local news media simply didn't feel like this WAS a Bigfoot. Maybe they just wanted to cash in on the notoriety of the Flatwoods Monster, which, according to the article in the Daily Mail, sent 10,000 to 15,000 visitors into Braxton County.

 Nevertheless, Stover's sighting wasn't an isolated incident. Over the next year, several interesting monster sightings were reported throughout central and north central West Virginia. Strangely enough, none of these additional monsters were given the Bigfoot moniker either---they were simply the "Braxton County Monster on the move." I'll be sharing some newspaper clippings from these additional sightings throughout the next week...so check back throughout the week for more monster madness! 

Mothman is Coming...to Inform You About Your Car's Extended Warranty

 

Happy Friday! I hope your weekend is full of spooky fun, and your phone is free from calls regarding your car's extended warranty. But, if you do get a call from an unknown number, maybe go ahead and answer it ...unless of course you WANT to be chased down the highway by West Virginia's favorite flying humanoid. 

Heehee, on a separate note, I've seen this artwork many times before the hilarious caption was added, but I never really took the time to look closely. I love the license plate (which hopefully I'm correctly interpreting as meaning 'Fortean') and the fact that the steering wheel is on the opposite side of what you'd see in Pt. Pleasant, WV, leading me to believe the artist may be European?

If you or someone you know is responsible for the original artwork, or for adding the bit about the extended warranty (which is cracking people up all over social media) let me know so I can give credit where credit is due. Stay spooky, ya'll.