Flatwoods ‘monster’ might be turned into a movie

By Mannix Porterfield

Move over, Mothman?

If the money comes in to finance a movie, you might not be the only weird West Virginia creature memorialized on film.

An independent filmmaker in Los Angeles says he would gladly handle a movie about the Flatwoods Monster — provided someone can put up sufficient financial backing for the project.

It was back on Sept. 12, 1952, that the 12-foot metallic oddity, emitting a sulfuric odor, horrified a gaggle of children and adults on a summer evening, after a fiery streak was spotted in the sky along a steep hillside in Braxton County.

A legend was born, unleashing torrents of speculation and inspiring a book by Frank Feschino, a star player in a Sept. 7-8 gathering in Charleston devoted to unidentified flying objects.

Using their own funds, Thomas Dickens and his partner, David Burke, are completing a feature-length film titled “Alien Gray Zone-X,” due to be released no later than next summer.

“This could be a great motion picture that could be done that could basically compete with Hollywood films,” Dickens says of a possible Flatwoods movie.

Dickens spoke glowingly of “Alien Gray Zone-X,” using such superlatives as “amazing” and “groundbreaking” to describe it.

“And that’s not just because of the special effects, but there’s a lot of human drama to it,” he said.

“There’s a love story and a lot of great fight sequences that use stunt people trained in fighting. There’s a message to it. Most films, and I don’t want to give away our ending, kill the aliens, but ours is different.”

Given the funds, Dickens would do the same for the Flatwoods Monster.

“I would love to do this movie,” he said. “My partner is interested. However, at this time, we don’t have the budget to do it.”

If he ever gets such a project launched, Dickens wants to work with Feschino as a part of his team for technical advice.

Feschino believes the monster was a space alien, part of a contingent engaged in a fiery sky battle with U.S. Air Force jets off the Atlantic Coast. The author also is convinced that UFOs continue to buzz the Braxton County area, since it is on a direct flight line to the White House and the regional terrain affords ample space in which to conceal craft.

“Basically, we would do everything,” Dickens said. “Write the script. Do pre-production. Design the creatures. Based on a true story, we would use the best research and witnesses to get the idea what this creature would look like. But we have to get a budget. We would be able to do the entire film.”

Dickens hopes to attend the September summit at the Capitol Theater in downtown Charleston, coming less than a week shy of the 55th anniversary of the Monster’s appearance. This also is the 60th anniversary of the Roswell incident.

Promoter Larry Bailey is promising attendees “hard evidence” to show UFOs are piloted by extra-terrestrials.

If a Flatwoods Monster film were made, Dickens said, he would envision some scenes on site, provided landowners are willing to grant access, including a depiction of what Feschino feels were aerial warfare between alien craft and U.S. jets.

In fact, that is the theme of Feschino’s latest book, “Shoot Them Down.”

Richard Gere starred in “The Mothman Prophecies,” a film dedicated to a moth-like creature said to roam an abandoned plateau near Point Pleasant in the area of an abandoned TNT site left over from World War II.

Unlike Mothman, a precursor to the 1967 collapse of the Silver Bridge that claimed 46 lives, no violence has been linked to the Flatwoods Monster.

A 17-year veteran of the film industry, Dickens says he strives to compete with Hollywood productions in quality.

“We don’t want to make anything that looks low-budget,” he said.

“We use people who look very professional. We use people that look like they have universal appeal.”

Bailey says he has attracted so much interest to his UFO gathering that he might expand it by adding a Sunday matinee, since the Capitol Theater has a seating capacity of only 660. As things stand now, Friday’s show runs from 6 to 10 p.m. with Saturday billed from 3 to 7 p.m.

An art contest supervised by Heritage Towers will reward children for the best depictions of UFOs or aliens.

Besides Feschino and Flatwoods eyewitness Freddie May, the two-day event will feature lectures by world-renowned UFO expert Stanton Freidman, who says the government has engaged in a cover-up since the 1947 incident in Roswell, where many believe the Air Force concealed the bodies of aliens after their craft crashed in the New Mexico desert.

Since the first Register-Herald story was published about the gathering, Bailey said he has been besieged by media outlets across the nation, including live radio remotes in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, Calif., Brownwood, Texas, Bridgeport, Conn., and Lincoln, Neb.

“We’re getting contacts from everywhere,” he said.

Eventually, the summit could evolve into an annual event, rivaling that of Roswell, now a mecca for UFO believers, Bailey says.

Skeptics are welcome, but they could find themselves hard put to counter Freidman, a nuclear physicist who has appeared on a number of cable television networks, the promoter says.

“Stanton has won two debates,” Bailey said. “They were with people that were scoffing or trying to tell everyone the UFOs were just meteors. He has some hard evidence that he uncovered under the Freedom of Information Act. That’s some of our hard evidence.”

— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com