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Lamp-Inspired Monster Chair.

Lamp-Inspired Monster Chair

Field review by the editors.

Gassaway, West Virginia

This is the first of five Monster Chairs that appeared in and around Flatwoods in 2015-2016; it was completed in May 2015. All five were built by Allan Johnson, a local woodworker, then painted on-site by Andrew Smith, director of the Braxton County Visitors Bureau. Smith, with a fine arts degree from Fairmont State University, patterned this chair after the ceramic Braxton County Monster Lamps that we're first produced in the area in the 1960s. You can tell by the painted-on yellow vent holes in the Monster's shoulders.

Each monster chair is ten feet tall, the same height as the Monster itself, which briefly visited Flatwoods and terrified the locals in the late summer of 1952. Three steps at the front of the chair lead to a platform seat between the Monster's outstretched arms, big enough to hold several panic-stricken-posing people at once.

All five chairs have the same wooden design, but Andrew painted each slightly differently, with the first chairs being truer to the Monster's reported appearance, and the last being examples of Andrew more-or-less winging it. "We figured if they were all the same, why would anyone visit more than one?" he told us.

Also see: The Monster That Wouldn't Die

Lamp-Inspired Monster Chair

Address:
364 Little Buffalo Rd, Gassaway, WV
Directions:
I-79 exit 62. Turn right onto WV-4. Drive a little over a mile, past the 84 Lumber on the right, out of town. Turn left onto Little Buffalo Rd (look for the green WV Forest Products sign), cross the river, then turn right onto the gravel road. Follow the gravel road for a quarter mile; you'll see the chair on the right, facing the river.
Phone:
304-765-6533
Save to My Sights

Nearby Offbeat Places

Flatwoods Monster MuseumFlatwoods Monster Museum, Sutton, WV - 3 mi.
West Virginia Bigfoot MuseumWest Virginia Bigfoot Museum, Sutton, WV - 3 mi.
Classic Monster ChairClassic Monster Chair, Sutton, WV - 3 mi.
In the region:
Indian Head Rock, Cotton Hill, WV - 42 mi.

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