Hello everyone and welcome to the first ever episode of the Cryptid Cocktail Party.
My name is Dave, I'll be your host.
And today I am...
Oh no, that's not good.
I gotta tell them what the show's about, right?
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Hello everyone and welcome to the inaugural episode of the Cryptid Cocktail Party.
My name is Dave.
No, I fucked up again.
I got it.
You ready?
Let's do this.
Hello everyone, welcome to the very first episode of the Cryptid Cocktail Party, a show
where I talk to my friends, have a few drinks, and make them listen to me rant about cryptids
for a half hour to an hour.
I'm your host Dave and joined today for the very first episode is my good friend, Colby
Clark.
How you doing, bud?
I'm doing good.
Hi there everybody.
Hi there David.
Yeah, you look good.
Well, thank you.
Yeah.
It's just me, you know, just still, still, you know, just chugging along, living, you
know.
You look like a roofer from Danvers, Massachusetts right now with the Carhartt hat on.
Nice.
Yeah.
You know, being a contractor, you got to assimilate, you know, you got to blend in, look the part.
Is that what it is?
I got a Carhartt hat.
Yeah, I got a couple.
You got a couple?
You have multiple Carhartt hats?
I got different colors, man, you know.
No, I mean, I guess.
You got to accessorize.
I know.
You got that Carhartt drip.
I like it.
Well, Carhartt's like actually, apparently like it's in fashion now.
It is.
It is in fashion until you got to drive a fucking big truck or something.
Did you know that Carhartt has a, Carhartt has a like a street wear like branch off of
Carhartt?
Oh, OK.
Nice.
I only know this because we, we went to San Francisco recently and Allie wanted to get
a bag to carry like our wallets and passports and shit in.
And so she got like, you know, those like really tiny like strap bags that like everyone
wears.
It's that, it's Carhartt, it's camo.
It's pretty sick.
Nice.
Anyway.
Hell yeah.
They make quality stuff, you know, we're looking to get sponsored here.
Are we?
By Carhartt?
Well, I guess I'm going to, if I'm going to go fucking hunting for cryptids, I guess I
need the best gear.
And who makes the best gear?
You do?
Carhartt.
There you go.
Boom.
Sponsor us, please.
All right, so like I said in the intro, this is Cryptid Cocktail Party, a show where we're
going to have a couple of drinks.
I'm going to talk at Colby about cryptids, because I feel like if you're talking to anyone
about cryptids, aliens, high strangers, you're never talking to them.
It's mostly just talking at them.
Right.
Understood.
Yeah.
Hit me.
Colby, you're not a cryptids, aliens type guy.
I know you like the X-Files.
I know you like, what was that other one?
Twin Peaks, like that kind of stuff.
But you're not like a big.
I mean, I don't go like looking for the information and like diving deep into the interwebs or
anything like that.
I haven't really read any cryptid books or anything like that.
I'm sure there's a wealth of knowledge out there.
I'm definitely interested.
And that's what intrigues me about this podcast for sure.
But yeah, and the X-Files, I don't know how we got wrapped up in X-Files watching that.
It's Twin Peaks too, but yeah, I'm interested in the spooky.
Yeah.
It's not something you're not going to, you wouldn't kick out of bed for eating.
You know what I mean?
Like you're welcome to it.
No.
Yeah.
We eat in bed all the time.
Most of our meals are eaten in bed.
All right, Colby.
Well, I gave you two options before we started recording and you chose option one for what
we're going to talk about today.
So today we're going to travel not only back in time, but down to the South.
We are heading to West Virginia.
Right there.
I'm going to edit in John, John Denver singing that part.
Take me home.
Yeah.
Place where I belong.
Yeah.
So today we're going to talk about the Flatwoods monster.
Are you familiar with the Flatwoods monster at all?
Never.
Never?
Never.
Not even once, Kev?
No, not even once.
Save your save, save your Boston accent for later because that's going to come into play.
Yeah.
I don't know.
It just came out.
All right.
So you're ready to dive in.
I'm going to give you so much fucking knowledge.
I spent forever writing this and by forever, I mean, I did about two hours of research
and then wrote down basically what I read.
I just plagiarized this whole thing.
Oh, perfect.
Okay.
All right.
Yes.
Yes, I'm ready.
All right.
So on September 12th, 1952 in the small village of Flatwoods, West Virginia, four young boys,
Eddie, Freddie, Teddy and Nettie, not really.
Come on.
How do I become friends with all these people?
Four young boys, Eddie and Freddie May, who are brothers, Tommy Hire and Neil Nunley were
playing whatever the 1950s version of Pokemon was outside of the Flatwoods Elementary School.
I don't know what that would be.
I think they were actually playing football, but in my mind, it's funnier to imagine them
playing like Jax or whatever that stick ball game, the one with the cup and it's like attached
to it.
Yeah.
I don't know where it could physically hurt you.
That's the 1950s small toys for you.
Dude, that was a lawless time.
Let's all just be honest.
I just gave kids shit that could hurt them like have fun.
I mean, we had to know better.
Our fucking playgrounds are made out of twisted steel inside of rocks.
So right.
The fuck out of that?
You know, they got what do they got now?
Like rubber?
Yeah, basically.
Nice.
All right.
Kids these days.
So it was around 7 p.m. It was almost full, fully dark when all of a sudden they see a
bright red light streak across the night sky and then crash onto a hillside, which belonged
to G Bailey Fishers.
It was right on this farm.
So the boys were joking about it being a flying saucer and alien invasion.
One of the boys said that was most likely a meteor and that they should go retrieve
it and bring it to the geological society like a fucking intergalactic narc.
I'm going to guess that was Neil.
That sounds like Neil has a Neil's a fucking nerd.
I don't really know that for to be true, but his name is Neil.
Right.
He read a couple too many books early on and his friends started picking on him.
He had to own it.
Well, I think I think what I read was, you know what I read was I think one of their
teachers or something said that if you see a meteor, that's what you should do.
So I mean, don't alert the wrong authorities, you know, because they're just going to cover
it up.
You want to alert the right people, you know, the geological society.
Maybe maybe he was right.
Maybe he was like, yeah, let's inform a scientist.
You would think, but it's not what happens.
Fucking Neil, fucking Neil.
Either way, the boys interests were piqued.
So they decided to investigate as all small children do when they decide to when they
see a fucking something crash into the side of a hill.
You run towards it.
Yeah.
So the May boys home was on the way.
So they popped in to let their mother, Kathleen, know what they had just witnessed.
And they were setting off on like a standby me type adventure to go poke dead alien bodies
with sticks or some shit.
I don't know.
But Kathleen being best mom ever, she was like, oh, hell yeah, I'm in.
Just got to make a quick phone call first.
Hold up.
Now, Colby, who do you think she called upon hearing that her two sons and their friends
just witnessed a fireball crash into the side of a hill on a farm?
Was it A, the police?
B, a 17 year old boy?
D, the Air Force?
Loaded question.
Oh, wow.
I mean, if I'm pulling this thing apart, the police, they got nothing to do with the sky.
The Air Force is like the police of the sky, right?
Or Marines in the sky.
I'm really hoping that she called the Air Force.
I think that's the best answer.
But I'm pretty sure she called the 17 year old boy.
Why would you put that in there?
Well, she called upon a 17 year old boy named Eugene Lemon, who, to be fair.
Yes, he lemon all these people names.
They're all names are awesome.
So good.
But to be fair, he was a national guardsman at the time.
And so she called him to escort her, these four young boys and their family dog onto
someone else's property to investigate a crash.
That was a twist.
That was a twist in your questioning, because you could have said a member of the National
Guard who happened to be 17 years old.
Yeah.
But also, was the 1950s a different time?
I thought you can you join the military 17 in 1950?
Yeah, it was probably like as soon as you can see 50 yards away in the scope of a rifle,
we're throwing you out there, son.
I feel like it was harsher.
Well, I think at this time was I think the Korean War was happening at this time.
So maybe they loosened up on there.
Like I don't know.
Anyways, so this amateur team of ragtag segregation era paranormal investigators were approaching
the crash scene.
They noticed this mist hanging in the air.
Now this mist, it burnt their eyes, mouths and lungs and was they said it smelled like
sulfur or burning metal, which not going to lie right then and there, I would have bailed.
Yeah.
If not before that, then yeah.
Yeah, I wouldn't have gone to begin with.
Like, okay, my eyes hurt.
I'm going to go wash them out.
Yeah.
But anyway, so they continued on to the site.
And when they did, they could see what appeared to be some sort of craft.
It was emitting a bright red pulsating light.
And by this time, the family dog noped out.
He's like, fuck this and bales.
But the group, the group pressed on when one of the boys noticed two glowing orbs off to
their left.
So Eugene shine the flashlight into the direction of the one lone oak tree that was sitting
in the field and what they saw would change their lives in the town of Flatwoods forever.
Colby, what do you think they saw?
So is around the orbs.
They saw orbs and then they saw they saw they saw two orbs standing by an oak tree.
They shine the flashlight over.
What did they see?
A flat footed beast of the flat footed monster, alien nature.
And also when he hit the woods, he became part yeti.
Yeti.
I don't know.
I get like a real woodsy vibe right now.
All right.
Well, anyway, so standing there, being in the light of the flashlight was a 10 foot
tall creature with bright glowing eyes, a spade shaped head and long claw like hands.
It didn't appear to have any legs.
It just seemed to kind of like hover there above the ground.
The May brothers later on both agreed that it didn't appear to be living, but rather
mechanical in nature, kind of like a like a Cronenberg version of Rosie from the Jetsons.
Right.
Yeah.
You said spade shaped head like.
Yeah.
Like a spade.
Here, I'm going to I'm going to text you.
Dang.
I'm going to text you a photo of what they saw.
And I just want to get your opinions on it.
Not going to lie.
It's not a good looking creature.
It.
Hmm.
If I if I was like 10 years old and I saw this, what do you think?
What are your first thoughts on this beast?
That's fucking wild.
Right.
So, Colby, describe what you're seeing right now.
I mean, the first one is the most horrific, nightmarish, black and white photo of R2D2
on a playing card with a dress on.
Is that what you're taking away from it?
Yeah, that's what I'm going to.
I'm going to call that one.
OK.
The second one seems more like human like, I guess a little bit in the face, but still
very, very strange.
Yeah, like there's there's probably never I don't want to say alien, but there's never
been any aliens that have been like this.
Right.
And this isn't like a typical.
No, this is like a weird one.
Yeah, this isn't like your normal gray alien, you know, that you would normally say this
is something.
It didn't appear to be living.
It appeared to be almost metallic, a mechanical type creature, I guess, which.
OK.
I mean, at that point, would you call it a monster?
I don't know.
But I guess that's not for us to decide.
No, no monster inside of us.
The third one, though, boy, what?
Come on, that seems like animalistic in nature, almost like almost like an owl with, you know,
like the feathers on the neck, chest area.
And then they keep putting them in a dress.
Him, it's probably.
It's asexual.
It's a robot, man.
It can't be just just sticks the spade in.
That's how he.
See, my my first thoughts on looking at is that it reminded me of the aliens from Independence
Day, almost that same style head and stuff like that.
OK.
Obviously, Independence Day didn't come out for another 50 years, but you can kind of
see that inspiration.
Well, anyways, right.
Let's move on to the story.
So at first, the creature didn't seem to notice the group.
OK.
And as soon as Lemon, being the fucking 17 year old, he is once he's shown his flashlight
on it, it turned its gaze to them.
They said that the eyes almost look like portholes, like they were almost empty and the light
was emitting from inside of the creature.
So at this point, terrified, Lemon dropped the flashlight and fell backwards.
As that happened, the monster sprayed a sort of oil onto them, like an extraterrestrial
like bukkake video before unleashing a high pitched hissing sound and gliding towards
the group.
And at this point, this is when they decide we should probably like.
Get up on out of here.
Yeah.
Well, you know, yeah, it wasn't the the burning I missed or the fucking house size UFO.
No, it was when they were actually in danger.
This group of people has no sense of self preservation.
And I love it.
It's 1950, man.
They're right.
You know, it's it's different time.
It's a very different time.
That's that's absolutely horrifying.
Something started spraying like a was that thing that got Newman in the Jurassic Park
type oil.
I'm out.
That's when you'd be out.
Not any time before that.
I'd be curious.
It's 1950, man.
You know.
Why you keep saying that?
What does that mean?
We haven't found that many serial killers yet.
People aren't as protected.
That's fair.
We're curious.
We want to know.
So after they get sprayed with the goo and the monster starts coming at them, they run
back to the may home as fast as they could.
At this point, everyone's sick in the house, devolves into chaos.
Everyone's puking, coughing, crying.
They're covered in space.
Jizz and no one knows what the hell they just saw.
You know that scene from Family Guy when they all take Ipacax here and they all just start
puking on each other?
It's basically that inside this household.
So Kathleen, the mother, immediately gets on the phone and calls the sheriff's department,
which I feel like she should have done from the beginning.
But whatever.
She calls them, let them know what they had seen and that there were some boys there who
probably need to see a doctor.
I brought some small boys with me.
It was the smartest choice at the time, I promise.
Well, apparently there's a very busy night in the West Virginia skies because it seems
like the entire police force was out investigating other crashes reported throughout the county.
A hitchhiker had called in to report something crashing into a hill.
Another person reported seeing something similar not too far away.
Like shit was popping off in West Virginia this night.
So with no one to staff, they send a local reporter to the house.
I don't know.
But apparently this is something that the police have done ever so often.
It's a small town, so it's not like they have like a huge police force.
So I'm sure this dude is happy.
I didn't get his name.
Every report, every story I've read about the Flatwoods Monster, they're all different.
So I just chose my favorite one and kind of based my research around that.
OK.
Either way, he interviewed everyone, went to the spot where the sighting had happened.
But the ship, the fog, the monster, nowhere to be found.
However, a later investigation of the site revealed what looked like to be an imprint
where the craft was.
And the ground did smell odd.
A national guardsman who went out and investigated said it smelled almost like mustard gas, which
is, I mean, the symptoms that they were experienced kind of lines up with mustard gas.
I don't know, I've never been mustard gas, so I can't really tell you.
But they also found what appeared to be skid marks leading from the oak tree where they
spotted the creature down to where the craft would have been.
But besides that, it's as if like none of it had ever happened.
So it's really just the testimony of these small children and this woman.
Now, Colby, no good UFO story would be complete without a good old visit from the men in black.
Awesome.
OK.
Cool.
So soon after the incident, two men in very nice suits arrived at Mrs. May's doorstep
saying they were reporters from a neighboring city and wanted to do an interview and see
the area where the sighting had occurred.
So she brought them to the farm.
Also, this is someone's farm.
Where the fuck is the farmer in all this?
They don't bring him up.
He's not.
He's never mentioned in this at all.
He's smart.
He's a smart man.
You know, he was the first one that was like, all right.
I guess I'm not a farmer anymore.
I'm going to pack up and head out of here.
Bail.
He's like, all right, I'm out.
Throw the baby out of the bath water, you know?
I mean, I guess.
But anyway, she brought him to the farm.
They investigated the site.
There was still some oily residue on the ground and they were just like raw palming that shit.
They were just touching it with their hands, getting all of their suits.
Did not did not care what it was, which seems pretty reckless.
But also, I can't believe that would be protocol.
No, this is early.
Early M.I.B. is that was that what it is?
Yeah, they were just just kind of forming some stuff.
They were really just curious.
No, I got you.
All right.
So as they go back to the maze home, where they question her some more and they say they
want to sample the oil, which I mean, they could have easily got from the fields.
So she offers them up the dress she was wearing the night of the incident because it was covered
in the Martian splooge and she hadn't washed it yet.
This is she gives it to them.
They're like, hey, thanks.
So listen, look, we're not reporters.
We work for the Pentagon.
Thanks for the dress.
Don't tell anyone about this.
We'll get the dress back to you, promise.
And then they just left.
So yeah, like I said, they said, don't tell anyone about this.
But I want you to think back to a few minutes ago.
Who did the police send to the house the night of the incident?
A reporter.
So soon the story was everywhere.
All right.
Local newspapers, local news.
Eventually the national fucking spotlight was shown down on Flatwoods, Virginia for a while
after this.
But ever since the sightings in 1952, the creature has never made another appearance,
but his presence is felt all around the region and beyond driving tourism to the area with
museums, ice cream shops.
They even built like these giant chairs in the image of the monster.
But the Flatwoods monster or Braxy, I guess, as the locals call it, has been featured in
a bunch of pop culture, movies, comics, video games, most notably the Legend of Zelda Majora's
Mask and Fallout 76.
Now even though the May brothers, who as far as I know are still alive to this day, have
said that they wish it had never happened and that they could forget the whole thing,
it seems as though the world isn't quite ready to move on from the legend that is the Flatwoods
monster.
Also, she never got her dress back.
Son of a bitch.
Is that why they put the dress in all the photos?
You think they gave it to the Flatwoods monster?
They're just poking at her.
It was like, yeah, I remember that dress.
So Colby, that is the story of the Flatwoods monster and the legend that precedes it.
What did you think?
That's cool, man.
I don't know.
I mean, Russian activity, possibly, you know, and they just never sent that creature out
again.
They're like, well, that was didn't work out well, did it?
Well, apparently, sometime later, Kathleen May said in an interview that she received
a letter from the Pentagon saying that it had been that that night, apparently they
sent out five experimental rockets, one of them crash landed.
And what she saw was one of the pilots or something like that, which, OK, I don't buy
that.
It always is, though, isn't it?
Right.
Yeah.
Whether you're a human or a human from the future.
It's never really an alien, you know?
Yeah.
But it's funny that you brought up when you're looking at the photos that one of them looks
kind of like an owl, because that was another popular theory was that what they saw was
actually just a barn owl sitting atop a branch.
Right.
But that doesn't make any sense, either, do do owls just like fucking piss oil all over
you and screech?
I guess they do screech at you.
But I don't know.
I don't mean maybe it's just the perfect storm.
Right.
You see an owl, this thing shoots a completely different thing is like spewing oil everywhere.
And then over here, you got something else.
And it's just all these things at once.
Is that what you think happened?
I think I think the government set it all up, man.
I think they they they threw this all out there.
And I think it was like a 1950s version of Dwight.
It's just like, you know, let's let's see what they do.
Oh, you think it was like him like setting the fire in the office?
Yeah.
And then he's like, oh, shit, well, I probably shouldn't do that again.
I don't know.
Well, anyways, there's having to be an owl there.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, Colby, thank you so much for listening to my story.
I hope you enjoyed it.
I hope everyone listening enjoyed it to me.
Yeah.
Our first episode in the books, I think it went pretty well.
I'm still getting used to the whole reading and writing scripts.
So if I stumbled a few times, I'm sorry, everyone, please don't abandon us.
I think it'll get better.
Maybe Dave's literacy is going to shoot through the moon after this.
All right, well, thank you, everyone, so much for listening.
Thanks again to Colby for joining us.
Be sure to tune in next week where Colby will also be joining me for option two of the two
options that I gave him.