(From Saucer Smear)
The January 2003 issue of Fate Magazine was a
memorable article in the "Fifty Years Ago"
column - namely the one written for their Jan.
1953 issue by the late Gray Barker, concerning
the Flatwoods, West Virginia Monster. The
long-winded title is "The Monster and the
Saucer: The huge shape with the weirdly glowing
eyes was seen by seven witnesses. Was it an
alien life form?" Of course our answer would be,
"Probably not", but then again, who knows? The
article was probably reprinted at this time
because of the Flatwoods Monster convention
which took place in September of last year, as
reported in "Smear".
All we know for
sure is that this piece in Fate was Gray
Barker's first venture into reporting publicly
on the Unknown. He lived just a few miles from
Sutton, in Clarksburg, W.Va. - and in fact his
boyhood home had been even nearer the town of
Flatwoods. From this sensational first article,
Barker went on to publish "The Saucerian" UFO
magazine for many years, which briefly merged
with our old "Saucer News" around 1970, Barker
also published dozens of off-beat books through
his Saucerian Press, and he even had a
best-seller of his own with a real publisher, in
1956, called "They Knew Too Much About Flying
Saucers".
Barker Was, in a
way, a protégé of Ral Palmer, who was a
co-founder of Fate, though both these
outstanding men are now nearly forgotten. It is
doubtful that these two giants of the off-beat
world ever actually met each other, though they
worked closely together for a very long time.
Flatwoods, though
now barely remembered, does have one important
thing over Roswell, New Mexico: Something
sensationally strange really did happen there,
which really scared the %#@& out of these
country folks. We will never know for sure what
it was!...
