Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Cryptid Cocktail Party, a show where we have a few jokes, share a few laughs, take a dive into the unknown. I'm your host Dave, joined as always by my wonderful co-host Sarge. Hey, everybody. I'm not touching my penis right now. Okay. And we're also joined by a special guest, my cousin Devin. How you doing, bud? I'm good. How are you? I'm doing fantastic. I'm actually very hung over.
And I was pretty much beer pressured by these two clowns to go grab beer. So now I'm drinking again. Thanks guys. I appreciate it. Anytime. I take no responsibility for this. This is not my fault. All right. So it's I'd all lie solely on Devin. Yeah, Devin, you're a bad influence on your cousin. That's fucked up. Oh, as I've been here that our whole life. That's something new to me. All right. I feel like I can't be a bad influence on my cousin on my cousin because she's 12.
That's the most like impressionable time to be a bad influence on someone. I feel. No, I couldn't. I couldn't. She is like she is too pure. She's like an extremely good student, very successful. And if I were a bad influence, my aunt would probably have me killed by some shady individuals. She's very well connected. You do live in the area where there are probably a lot of shady people that will do harm to you. Yeah, we're not far from Providence. We're not far from Providence. Yeah. All right.
Devin, question for you, bud. Are you like are you a cryptids guy? I don't think I really don't know that. I dabble, I don't think I've ever like fallen down a huge hole of like checking them out. But like I did go to the in Portland, Maine. There's the Cryptid Museum. Oh, yeah. Yeah. To a stroll through that once. I feel like we need to go to that museum and film some content in it. I don't know. The person who runs it, I've talked a lot of shit about on this podcast.
So I don't know if I'm sure my pictures probably have like behind a register like I do not allow on premises. Gotcha. Gotcha. It's a go in with disguises. Yeah. I'll just put on a fake mustache over my real mustache. Exactly. Hello, sir. I am here to observe the cryptids, please. Oh, good sir. No, it's it's run by the fucking Bridgewater Triangle guy. The fuck's his name? Lonnie Coleman. Oh, yeah. I've already pissed him off, too.
Yeah, Devin, we don't make a lot of friends on this show, apparently. I mean, I did it in a completely separate podcast, but he did get very mad. We had made fun of him extensively because he is a knob and he he sent us an email requesting that we cite him. And I'm like, really? After everything we said about you, you want us to cite you? You got a buddy. Make sure that everyone knows that you're the knob we're talking about.
I guess the good thing that I've already been to the museum now, because now just by association, I'm probably going to be added to the list. Definitely. Devin is now blackballed from all cryptid going for it. All right, guys. Well, today, I said I got I think I got a pretty good episode. We kind of touched on this last episode with Matt. We talked about this cryptid in passing. Crypt, Sarge, you seemed like you wanted to dive into it. So I decided fuck it. We're just going to do it today.
You probably don't remember what it is. Oh, no, I don't. I don't. You made the right choice. I've had I've had a long, long couple of days because it's Labor Day weekend and work has been exceptionally busy. So while I haven't been drunk, I've wanted to be. Well, you're here now. So yeah. You know. All right, guys, let's do it. Today, we're going to be traveling to the great state of West Virginia, specifically the area just north of Fairmount. It's home.
It's home to the world famous snack, the pepperoni roll. Are you guys familiar with the pepperoni roll? Yes, I've had one, actually. I don't think I've heard about it, but I'm intrigued. It's a big thing. So I didn't know this until I actually went to West Virginia. I had an odyssey with a friend of mine for a TV show that never happened. And we went down to Atlanta to host what could only be described as the saddest award show I've ever been to. It was in a high school gymnasium.
No, auditorium. Excuse me. Anyway, we stopped in West Virginia and these wonderful, like just the coolest people I had ever met, like had us come in their house. They had like a little fishing shop in their home and they had given us pepper rolls. Pepperoni roll or whatever it is. Yeah. And it was the most amazing thing I had ever eaten in my entire life. I got to tell you, if you ever get the chance to go to West Virginia, you have to try this. They're not all kissing cousins down there.
Some of them are just normal people with good food. Isn't it just cheese and pepperoni? Like just cheese and pepperoni in a roll, right? It's essentially a small calzone, but it's so good. I was just picturing a hot pocket. Yeah, I saw a picture. We're not doing it any justice. And to be honest with you, Hot Pocket stole their idea from West Virginia. Okay. Well, it's so good.
We're going to be heading to Fairmount, West Virginia, home of the world famous pepperoni roll and also director and producer Robert Tunnel, whose credits include the Paula Abdul straight up music video and Colt Troma film, Surf Nazis Must Die. But as much as I love Paula Abdul and pizza rolls, like we are not here to talk about them today. Troma's made some real classics. We're going to be talking about the vegetable man, AKA the veggie man of West Virginia or either of you.
Oh, I'm so happy about this. I don't think I've ever even heard of that. Now I remember. Now I remember us talking about this. And I remember thinking to myself, if there is anything in the world I am completely unafraid of, it would be Veggie Man. Because all I can picture is just broccoli with legs. Dude, just wait. It gets wild. I'm not going to lie. Yeah. My first impression off that name is like the Jolly Green Giant that you just like buy the vegetable can. Exactly.
Exactly. Because you I mean, you're kind of far off, but not really that far off. I'm sure the veggie man is like he's like this weird scientific experiment. And every time you come upon him, he's just like, please kill me. Or it's like some guy who just kidnaps kids and is like force feeding them vegetables. Like your mom said, eat the broccoli. Now it's time. Just like the most fucked up serial killer he doesn't kill. He just makes you eat vegetables. Well, it's like that. What's like?
What was it in the movie Seven where he force feeds that guy all the pasta? Oh, yeah. Not pasta. How dare you call it that? It was spaghetti. Was it spaghetti? Oh, yeah. I don't know. All right. So the story goes that one late afternoon in July of 1968, West Virginia native and U.S. Air Force veteran Jennings Frederick was bow hunting for woodchuck in the back country just outside of Fairmont, West Virginia.
And if I'm being honest, that is the most West Virginian sentence I think I've ever written on the show. And I've written a lot about West Virginia on this show. It paints a picture. You're thinking about the kind of guy we're dealing with today. Yeah. But but anyways, unable to bag anything, Jennings decided it was probably time to call it and head up back, head back out of the woods.
As he was about to leave, he heard a strange sound that he described as, quote, high pitch jabbering, much like that of a recording running at exaggerated speed. So like Alvin and the chipmunks, chip bets kind of, I assume, chattering like or like my 15 year old daughter after a little bit of coffee. Yeah, pretty much like that. Jennings glanced over to see where the noise was coming from in there.
Standing before him is what some have described as one of the weirdest entities ever described in cryptozoology. I would describe it as one of the goofiest, but hey, you know, differing opinions, right? Anyways, according to the book Alien Meetings by Brad Steiger, Jennings stated that, quote, suddenly there it was, a being with semi human facial features, long ears and yellow slanted eyes. Its arms were no bigger around than a quarter.
Its body resembled the stock of a plant in shape and color, for it was slender and green, end quote. Such a proper way to describe a cryptotentative. Suddenly there it was. For it was slender and green. Suddenly there it was is also how I start every letter I write to Penthouse. He also noticed that this little shop of horrors knockoff had what appeared to be three very thin, seven inch long fingers with the tips ending in what I guess would be like needles or thorns.
I don't know how you would describe it. He said they were almost like syringe like in shape and like where the first knuckle on like a human hand would be was like a suction cup. So like went down suction cup and then coming out of the suction cup was like a thorn thing. Does that make sense? I'm just picturing asparagus. Just some guy with asparagus on the ends of his fingers. It's pretty much.
Yeah. But and actually, basically we're picturing Ace Ventura in the second movie when he like turns around from the buffet table and he's just covered in vegetables and everything. Yeah, it's pretty much that. Now, I mean, like, don't get me wrong. Like I would immediately like piss myself if I saw this human sized like stick bug like screaming like one of the Chippettes standing in front of me.
But I feel like as soon as the fear subsided, I could probably take this thing like I'm not like strong by any means, but I could easily fuck this thing up. I feel if I mean, if I was armed with a bow, I would just immediately be thinking about like how much lemon and butter I would need to glaze it before I cooked it. But also like you could just snap it in half like a fucking celery stock because it literally is just a celery stock. Yeah, it's nothing. It's not.
This is not an intimidating monster. I don't know. Well, luckily, broccoli. Well, luckily for Jennings, this creature did not attack. In fact, it did the opposite. Obviously, Jennings is probably feeling a lot of feelings right now as any of us would. But he managed to calm down and listen to the creature's cries and somehow was able to decipher what it was that it was trying to communicate. And I don't know how.
I don't know if he like slowed it down in his head or if like the creature was like telepathically able to give him the ability to like understand it. It's unclear. It was never said how or why. But what it was saying to him was, quote, You need not fear. I wish to communicate. I come as a friend. We know of you all. I come in peace. I wish medical assistance. I need your help. End quote. Yeah, no, I got medical assistance right here. See this this pot over this flame?
You should just hop in here. You'll feel better for sure. I promise. It's like a hot tub. How are we feeling so far? We've got the description. It's clearly emaciated in need of help. I still want to eat it. I'm still hungry. I'm literally and even though you've described it, what I'm literally picturing is sentient broccoli. Yeah, there's just like artist depictions of this thing. And it's far more terrifying than that. But I guess if you're not a salad monster, I just want to cook it.
Yeah. Devon, how you feeling? I mean, so yeah, like like picturing it. Yeah, it's probably it'd probably be pretty spooky to run into if you're not expecting it. Yeah, yeah. But like also at the same time, like so he had enough time to like decipher what it was saying. And that wasn't a short like sentence or phrase that you translated. It's like now I'm picturing them like just kind of like chilling like you like saw him. He was afraid for a second.
Then they're like sitting on some logs, just like hanging out, like trying to like communicate to each other a little bit of charades to like break down the pieces. It's hard to be it's hard to be concerned about a creature that is a set. Their greatest foe is Hidden Valley Ranch. You know what I mean? Well, like I said, so the creature reached out to him again. I don't know if like it was telepathically how he was able to like decipher what this thing was saying.
But anyway, so the creature needed help. So Jennings helped the creature the best he could and they became best friends and nothing bad happened after ever. The end. That's a lie. Just kidding. Before Jennings could even say anything. I said that not knowing. I was just hoping because that was the end of it. I was going to be very mad at the salad monster. No, before Jennings could even say anything in response, this creature pulled a full on Benedict Arnold and betrayed him.
The veggie man whipped one of its long spindly arms in his direction, wrapping wrapping it around him with incredible strength, leaving Jennings unable to move. And much like Chekhov's gun, those needle fingers with the suction tips I talked about earlier, they're now in play. It used its thorn like appendages to penetrate Jennings skin, sending in an excruciating pain up his arms. Looking into the creature's eyes, he noticed that streaks of red started to leech into its large yellow eyes.
The colors began to swirl together, rotating in like a circular pattern, which caused Jennings like to fall into almost like a hypnotic trance kind of because the shooting pain was almost immediately gone once like that shit started going down. I did not expect this to go into full penetration. Yeah, he's still getting he's still getting drained. He's getting drained right now. The worst kind of getting drained, though.
Jennings claimed that even though he wasn't in pain, he could still feel the blood being drawn out of his body by this flowery phlebotomist. This is why I don't donate blood. Yeah, no, we talked about this earlier. Remember, we're talking about phlebotomists. You get that right vein and you were talking about how you can kind of feel the blood coming out even like. Yes. Yeah. But I feel like this you would feel. How could you not? Because they weren't like needles size.
They were like thorn size. It sounds like it sucks. So as so like just picturing this as like this like swirling hypnotic gaze in the eyes, though, like is that like the blood that it's drying out of him is like absorbed up into the eyes and then like turns into an effect. I have no idea. But it's weird that it did kind of happen simultaneously with the blood being drawn out. I mean, the way they talk about like if it reminds me like the Hypnotote eyes from Fruturama. Fruturama.
Like that was my first thought. Hypnotote is easily my favorite character by Matt Groening for sure. Oh, it's brilliant. Yeah. Now, he says that Jennings says that the process he claims only lasted a little less than two minutes. Then as soon as the creature got like its fill, it released Jennings and then sprinted up over a like a steep embankment, leaving the hunter standing there stunned and now without the creature's hypnotic gaze in like extreme pain.
Like as soon as this thing looked away from him, like all that pain came shooting back. And along with the returning pain, Jennings felt a swell of panic come over him and he got the hell out of there, as I'm sure any of us would. What you got to have? Feels a little delayed. Yeah, I feel like that should have been the response before it was close enough to grab him in the know. One of the things that Jennings left out of the story was the raging erection he had as well.
He is a vegophile, so it did. It did give him like a half job gratification. It took some of his blood. So it's just a half job, but he's still going to go home and beat it like it owes him money. I just will see. I don't know how long how long the like the whole encounter lasted again. Like, I don't know if like he heard the chittering, looked up, saw it, and then the thing like immediately like fucking got the message across to him telepathically or something.
And then because he didn't have a chance to respond to before he fucking got wrapped up in like ivy or whatever the fuck. Yeah. Then got drained. So, I mean, I'm sure the fear was there the entire time, but he was also being hypnotized by fucking hypnototodized. I have no idea.
No, as he was racing away from the scene here to low, deep humming sound coming from the direction that like the creature ran off to, he assumed the sound must have been coming from the creature ship, but he never actually saw UFO. So like, who the fuck knows? So he immediately went to alien on this one, like just in his mind was like, no, that had to be an alien. There's no way the broccoli monster just lives in the woods of West Virginia. Yeah. He just immediately assumed.
But it's West Virginia, man, like there's shit fucking going on all over that state. It's a nightmare. I'm familiar. I did drive through it. It is a terrifying place. Those nice, lovely people that I met did not belay my fears because as I was driving through West Virginia, after I had met those folks, my car was attacked by what can only be described as baseballs of hail. Oh, yeah. It was insane. I've never seen rain that that bad in my life.
What does it have to do with monsters in West Virginia? Maybe that's who is throwing the hail. Well, West Virginia is just a terrible place. Like don't go there is what I'm trying to say. Oh, you're just saying in general that state. Yeah, in general, there's a bad things like if that hail is any indication of the kind of creatures they have, I don't want to go there ever again.
You know, like as nice as those people where I never want to go back if I have to deal with broccoli monsters and hail. That's true. I mean, you also got Mothman, Grafton monster, Flatwoods monster. It's not a safe place. There's a whole reason. That's why fallout 76 is placed there. Yes. Because if you're in West Virginia, you're not surprised when you see a deathclaw. That's phallus.
Now like we see with a lot of encounters like this, like these weird one off either alien or cryptic sightings, Jennings decided, you know, I'm just going to keep this to myself because the amount of shit people are going to talk about me if I tell this story, like just isn't worth it. Oh, for sure. Absolutely. Yeah. So that's what he did. He kept to himself.
He told his friends and families, like friends and family that like the puncture wounds on his hands were caused by a briar patch and then just like went about his life. It'd be more believable if he was just like, you know, I got some really bad math and. Started picking at his skin. I tried to fight some kitchen knives. No, but he ended up finding again, like we see very often like like living with the secret for so long was starting to take its toll.
So he decided to tell his story to author famed paranormal and UFO researcher and one of the best to ever do it. Gray Barker, who took his story and published it in his March 1976 newsletter, which brought this story to the world. And now I'm telling it here to you to find lovely gentlemen. Now it's important to note that while Gray Barker is a well-respected, like it was well respected in the community of like paranormal encrypted research, he was known to be a bit of a prankster.
So OK, like how true this story is, I have no idea. But even if it wasn't him that like broke the news or I still would have no idea how true the story is, because this is the only encounter anyone has ever had with the veggie man as far as I know. But it is impossible to be afraid of the. Yeah, impossible. But there you have it. That guys is the story of the veggie man. I'm going to start with you, Devin. How do you how you feeling about this? Questions, concerns, comments.
Let's open the floor up. So you actually answered my one question right before this was I was going to ask if there had been any other sightings or like anyone else to like at least back it up a little bit. No, this is all just make believe. I'm assuming. I don't know how true any of it is. And like so some people obviously like whole hog believe in this thing. Others are obviously a little bit more skeptical because it's a fucking Edward Scissorhands veggie monster.
Yeah. And the reason why, too, is that Jennings guy apparently it's not like. The first weird encounter he's had with stuff and even his mom, my sex tape. I guess like weird encounter I've had with stuff. It had his mom claim she saw like a UFO over a house with like an alien like dangling from it like I don't know. Just an alien floating around in the UFO hanging brain over West Virginia.
I guess he's hanging out of the UFO like and a fucking what are those things called like a harness just like fucking hanging there. I don't know. I don't know. But this. Yeah. Like dangling from UFO UFO. Pretty. But yeah, no, it's a pretty good. Sarge, what about you? You got any questions, comments, concerns? I am not in any way surprised this came out of West Virginia. Based on my experiences there, this tracks completely.
And I think the only thing I'm not surprised about is that there weren't more people with guns trying to hunt it. True. Well, I feel like if you had told people right away, then it would have gone down that road that we see time and time again of just like armed civilians. Yeah. The villagers coming out of nowhere with guns. Because those are my favorite stories. Whatever. Like I saw a monster than the whole town rallies together to just fucking murder it. Yeah. Welcome to America.
If you are a cryptid, you are not safe here. Yeah, no, you will immediately try and get like it's like fucking that GIF of Danny DeVito is like, so I just started blasting. It's that over and over again. Yeah. But this is giving me like Mantis Man vibes. Yes. Like kind of like that. Are you familiar with the Mantis Man, Devin? Not really. I think I recognize the name from my I've probably heard it in passing, but I don't know any specifics.
Well, apparently you can camouflage like the predator, but also he has the most immaculate calf muscles you've ever seen. Just the way the feature to have the way the story was written for the Mantis Man, it's almost sounded like Sarge said earlier, like like a like a letters to Penthouse is like, yeah, and it's his strong calves. You know, the guy who was writing it was literally like he was like mopping his brow while doing it.
Like there's a very well worn bottle of Juergens next to him, a pile of Kleenexes. He is just on it. Yeah, I say wiping his brow or something else. It was written one handed. Yeah. Either way, there's definitely a one hander right there. Oh, shit. All right. Well, that's the story, guys. That's our episode. I appreciate you guys coming on. There's twists and turns.
You kind of thought I kind of, you know, when I was researching, yeah, I thought he's like just going to ask for help and then we're going to be friends. Nope. He's going to fucking drain you of all your life essence. So it is like the life out of you. Yes. From the way the story started, I thought it was like, oh, I ran. It was just going to be a story of like, hey, I ran into this weird thing, but then it just went away and we were like we were buds.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know you had to be an asshole about it. Exactly. That's what makes me mad is that the thing was like, oh, no, bro, I just need some help. I just please help me. I'm going to suck the juices out of you. It almost also made my sex tape. I am not the one sucking the juice. But anyway, you got it. Yeah. I think I think it almost would have been better if the creature just didn't say anything at all.
Like if it just attacked him, like it didn't give him that false hope of like, no, man, it's cool. Cool. We're cool. And then fucking proceeded to fright. I'm not even scared of this creature. I just think it's a fucking asshole. Yeah. It's pretty pretty dick behavior. Yeah. On this guy's dick behavior is absolutely right. Yeah. Shit. All right. Well, thank you guys so much. I don't know if you want to plug anything. I don't know if you have something you want to plug. Not really.
I say I am I am much more of a lurker than anything else when it comes to the Internet. So I'll just remain in anonymity. Gotcha. Expert in camouflage. Just watching people shower. I get it. Yeah. Sarge, I know you have some stuff you probably want to plug. You know, just I'm going to keep beating this drum until the election. Please buy my coloring book 999 at Sages Super Normal dot com. You can't beat that price with a sack full of bagels.
If you don't like the coloring book, you can just use it as kindling to start a fire or or don't give it to children. Just throw it away because if children get a hold of it, it's going to it's going to answer a lot of conservatives said us liberals are trying to do. But yeah, please buy my coloring book at Sages Super Normal dot com and use it to calm yourself down because America is a terrifying place right now. It is. All right.
And then if you want to follow us at a involves an Instagram, a cryptic cocktail, take the cryptic cocktail party. We have a Patreon is five dollars a month. I don't really do much there, but you can, you know, support the show, help us out, you know, cover some of the costs. Yeah. Please just donate some money to pay for this because it's expensive to talk about vegetables and people. Inflation man. Thanks, O'Biden. Inflation. Yeah. Oh, Biden. All right. Yeah. So that's Kamala. Why not?
Yeah, it's your fault, too. And you know, let's throw it is Donald Trump. All politics is all your fault that we're doing this. This isn't a political podcast, Sgt. All right. Yeah, exactly. That's why I'm throwing them all in there. I want to know what you know. This is a bipartisan effort. Yeah, that out of the way. Devon, would you like to say goodbye and I love you to the audience audience? I barely know you, but I love you and I hope you lead wonderful lives. That was too much, Devon.
Just just just the I love you part. You know, I don't know how to hold it back. I come on too strong. I push people away. You know what? You're a good person, but you have to remember, we don't know everybody in the audience. So like we might love them, but we would also frown upon their behaviors. Stop masturbating to the sound of my voice, you fucking weirdos. Right on.