FAIRMONT, W.Va. — A lesser-known encounter with an extraordinary Mountain State cryptid is still capturing the imagination of West Virginians a half century later.
On a warm July day in 1968, in the hills near Grant Town, West Virginia, Jennings Frederick was hunting for groundhogs when he heard a high-pitched noise that morphed into a telepathic cry for help
According to Michael Strayer, a children’s author and co-host of the "Mothboys" podcast, a mysterious being, which is now known as Vegetable Man, spoke mind-to-mind with the astonished hunter.
“The creature told Jennings Frederick telepathically: ‘You need not fear me. I wish to communicate. I come as a friend. We know of you all. I come in peace! I wish for medical assistance: I need your help.'”
As Frederick began to run, a tall humanoid creature with yellow eyes stalked out of the brush and grabbed his arm with suction cup fingers. Frederick said it hypnotized him as it drained his blood through its fingers.
Strayer described the event in more detail during an episode of the Mothboys podcast, which covers news of the strange in Appalachia, notably lore associated with the Mothman sightings.
“He feels needle-like fingers go into his arm and start siphoning blood,” Strayer said in the podcast. “He looks up at the creature’s face, and the creature’s eyes start twirling different colors, putting him into a hypnotic state where he doesn’t feel the pain of the blood being suctioned from his arms.”
Description of the Vegetable Man
Approximately seven feet tall, the Vegetable Man, according to Frederick, had semi-human facial features and a plant-like body, with a tuft of hair on its head
Once the creature had drained him of enough blood—the experience lasted only a minute, according to Strayer—it tossed Frederick to the ground and ran away in jumping strides.
The pain returning to his arm, Frederick lay on the ground and heard a whirring sound, which he said he believed was the creature’s aircraft taking off.
Admittedly, Strayer says, the tale of Vegetable Man is brief, and the creature was never seen or heard from again. However, the story is remarkable for its singularity and its association with a peculiar UFO researcher.
“The only encounter that has ever happened with the Veggie Man was a man seeing it while hunting and getting blood sucked out of his arm,” Strayer says, noting that the encounter may best be categorized as extra-planetary. “Some people call it a cryptid. I would be more on the side of an extraterrestrial or an alien visitor.”
He adds that world-renowned paranormal investigator Gray Barker reported the encounter in the March 10, 1976, issue of his newsletter, though many researchers take Barker's recounting with a grain of salt, as Barker was known for his hoaxes.
“Barker was the guy who cracked open the case,” Strayer says, sharing a drawing from the newsletter, which featured in the article “The Vegetable Man: A semi-abductee?”
“Veggie Man made the cover. He [Barker] had an artist draw up a sketch of what the Veggie Man looked like."
Barker may best be known as a writer and researcher who popularized tales of the Mothman of the Ohio Valley and the Men in Black associated with extraterrestrial cover-ups. However, Barker had admitted to carrying out hoaxes.
"I think that people are kind of skeptical of it because it’s Gray Barker, but I believe," Strayer says. "Why not, you know?”
In fact, the encounter with the Vegetable Man was not the first paranormal encounter of the Frederick family. According to Barker, Frederick's mother had an alleged encounter with a small, green creature and its flying saucer in 1965.
“Obviously, Gray Barker is tied to the story,” Strayer says.
“He and Jennings Frederick had a long-standing relationship where they wrote to each other, because that is not Jennings’ only encounter with weird stuff. His family has had weird encounters, but some people think it’s a fake story because of Gray Barker’s tie-in.”
The Vegetable Man becomes a children's book
Strayer wrote about the Vegetable Man in his book “Curious Creatures: The Vegetable Man,” though not as a mysterious creature of suspect purpose but as a hero who just wants children to eat their breakfast.
“I actually wrote the first book about the Veggie Man. Funny enough, I made it into a children’s story, which wasn’t easy,” he says.
The story follows the creature as it flies over West Virginia, its favorite place to patrol, when it realizes it has forgotten to eat breakfast and needs to make an emergency landing.
“It lands in West Virginia and is looking for any kind of help,” Strayer says. “That’s where the encounter starts to happen. He gets his food, which is blood, and as it takes off, it says, ‘I hope the human knows that I didn’t want to hurt it. I just needed help.’”
“Essentially, I took this story about a cryptid and put it in the alien’s point of view,” he says. “That book was a lot of fun to write, and people who enjoy cryptids and aliens really like it.”
As part of the Mothboys podcast, Strayer also organized Veggie Man Day in collaboration with the Frank and Jane Gabor West Virginia Folklife Center at Fairmont University.
“It’s just a way to celebrate all the folklore of West Virginia,” Strayer says, though of all West Virginia cryptids and monsters, he says Vegetable Man is the most obscure. “You’ve really got to be a cryptid or alien enthusiast to know about Veggie Man.
'We’re trying to get his story out there more. It still might be a little too strange for some people, maybe, but I love the story and I do everything I can to try to get it out there.”
Coincidentally, Grant Town is also home to the Grant Town Goon, a Bigfoot-like creature, and other hauntings, many of which are included in the West Virginia ghost story anthology Telltale Lilac Bush, by Fairmont State University professor Ruth Ann Musick.
The Vegetable Man was featured in the Fallout 76 video game, but no other sightings of the creature have been reported.
“It’s just another strange thing that West Virginia has,” Strayer says. "It’s another cool, strange story that people like to tell, and it’s another cryptid to add to the list."
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