Big Food and Beyond with Cliff and Bubo. These gays a favorites, so
like say subscribe and read it five star and greatest on USh Today listening watching
Relim always keep its watching. And now your host's Cliff Barrickman and James Bubo
Fay. Well, okay, without much further to do, let's welcome our
guests, doctor John barn Chock. He's written, actually, he's written written
a couple books, quite a few books actually, but this the book we're
talking about today, is called Grasping Sasquatch Prepping for Scientific Field Research. It
is an updated reprint of his previous book that probably a lot of you have
out there, called Psychological Horizons and Scientific Bigfoot Research. But this is the
new version and he's publishing it through Hangar one Press, which is Doug Hide's
great publishing company out there. So when this comes out, the new version,
there's going to be links, there's gonna be QR codes, there's gonna
be all sorts of doodads and bells and whistles embedded in the book to further
enhance your reading experience of it. So, without anything else to say,
here's the author of Grasping Sasquatch prepping for the scientific field research Doctor John barn
Chock. Doctor John, thanks so much for coming on Bigfoot and Beyond with
Cliff and the Bobes. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I'm
honored to be here and really excited about talking with you guys about this book.
Thanks for coming. Yeah, I really appreciate the invite. Very good.
Now, don John, I don't I don't think I've ever met you.
I certainly don't know you, but I don't. As far as meeting
people, I have a hard time with that one too, because I meet
hard too many people to remember. But it seems to me like you've been
in the game for quite a long time, this bigfoot thing, and yet
you're still swimming around in it. So where did their journey in the Bigfoot
land begin? So? I I reached a point in my life where I
was kind of cleaning house and decided I wanted to get back to things that
I enjoyed and that were a priority for me, and so I started living
in North Georgia, where I do. I started looking for places to fish
because I grew up trout fishing as a kid, and I just started going
on the internet for trout fishing maps, and I came across this map of
the United States with circles in a lot of the states, and I thought,
oh, that must be the you know, the number of streams that
that fish there or whatever. And I clicked on that circle and lo and
behold it was the BFRO expedition page. And so you know, that's the
first time I had encountered that. So I checked that out, and I
got on Laurie Wade's one of her last one of her last well, I
think it was her last expedition for the year. I don't know how many,
about eight years ago, and I've been doing it ever since. I
counted up the hours actually actually in the woods, not setting up camp,
not traveling to the side anything like just when we leave base camp and go
out and start looking, and I've got over three hundred hours of just looking
in the woods through expeditions with Lorie Wade and Charlie Raymond. I feel like
a lot of the people in both those groups have been my mentors. And
so I actually started getting into bigfoot kind of because I was looking for fishing
maps and figured, well, if I can fish and look for bigfoot,
you know, I'm killing two birds with one stone, and that's all the
better. Absolutely, I'm an advocate of killing as many birds as possible.
But you know, it's funny. Fishing is kind of the gateway drug to
big footing in a lot of ways, not only because a lot of fishermen
trout fishermen specifically, or salmon and fishing. You know, it gets you
out in that right kind of habitat, walk in the streams, and you
know, these people stumble across footprints occasionally, these people stumble upon some unseen
entity tossing rocks into the river in front of them and scaring their fish away
and all that sort of stuff. And even for me growing up in southern
California, down in Long Beach, California, I worked in fishing tackle stores
most of my life until I became a teacher, you know, so that's
basically from sixteen to about twenty six years of age, I was working in
fishing tackle stores. And it struck me a few years after I started bigfooting
how similar the two things were and my reasons for doing both, because at
the end of the day, I mean, I do like eating fish,
don't get me wrong, but that's not the primary driving force behind my addiction
to fishing, or my previous addiction to fishing. I've kind of kicked that
habit a little bit. I do love it, but I can't call myself
addicted anymore like I certainly could at one time. But for me, even
a saltwater fishermen, I really liked the idea of seeing something that is usually
hidden, because fish, in my for my dollar, are the most beautiful,
you know, if I guess family of animals, you know this type
of animal in general, fish are just amazing and beautiful, and they have
iridescent colors that can't be seen anywhere else really, and their their their habits
are unseen. And I kind of see a lot of this similar fascination with
bigfoot because I I'd like to see them, I'd like to learn about them.
And you know, even even the methodology of getting these things, you
know, like in a boat, you put out some chum and then you'd
make casts, right like if you're fishing tunas or something by CLT. Patty,
So you put out some chum in the water which attracts the fish,
and then you cast. And I noticed the same sort of thing happening in
my night investigations with Sasquatch. We make some noises at vocalize or knox or
something like that, which is kind of like the chum, and then we
make casts, which is basically doing night walks, going out and coming back
to camp eventually, very very similar approach in a lot of ways. So
it's kind of funny that fishing brought you to the same weird hobby that all
of us share here. Yeah, And in hindsight, I didn't realize this
until I started getting into Bigfoot. But for a while I lived in Albuquerque,
New Mexico, and we'd go fishing up in the Hamis Springs Mountain,
and I had one of those experiences where I'd have about a mile or two
walk back into this canyon and then this cascading stream, and I'd see some
fish in this deep hole, and I'd sneak up on them and I'd get
one cast in, and no sooner i got one cast in, a big
stone came splashing down in the middle of this hole, and I'd look around,
you know, the stream wasn't about but about five feet wide, couldn't
see anybody. I'd climb the rocks down to the next cascading pool and I'd
get about one cast in again blush, another big rock would be thrown in
and that hole would be destroyed. And that happened to me repeatedly on this
one stream, and I always thought it was just some jerk, you know,
kind of following me, trying to destroy my fishing. But when I
got back to the trailhead, there were never any cars when I arrived or
when I left, and I never saw any other human beings. So I've
begun to wonder if that wasn't a bigfoot encounter. Did you know they were
there? Did you know that they have in the Arizona Mountains. You know,
it doesn't surprise me that they're in the Arizona Mountains the New Mexico Mountains,
not at all, because you know there are very squatchy areas there.
At the time when it happened to mean, no, I was at that
point, I had no Bigfoot never crossed my mind when that was happening.
Now you have a PhD in psychology, Am I correct in that? Yeah?
I got a PhD in counseling psychology, and my specialties were in neuropsychology
and pain psychology. So I did a lot of psychological assessments, helping neurologists
differentiate between the different kinds of dementia, assessing brain damage from traumatic brain injury,
and then working with the patient and the family on dealing with the adjustment
of a brain injured person in the household in any PTSD or trauma associated with
the accident. Now, how does your studies, how did your professional expertise
translate into Bigfoot research? So when I started doing expeditions, I realized that
in Lori's group and in Charlie's group, they're doing a lot of scientific using
a lot of scientific principles in terms of being systematic and recording notes and making
sure we're not stepping on each other with provocations and all that. But I
also also saw areas where things the complete science wasn't being done. And so
you know, in psychology, although some people consider us a pseudoscience, but
especially in neuropsychology, for example, we use tests different kinds of instruments to
determine things like emotions and IQ. And if you think about psychology and you
think about emotions and IQ, it's almost a perfect fit for Bigfoot. Because
we can't directly touch somebody's intelligence. We can observe that their work product and
said, boy, you know that was done by a genius. But that's
the behavioral phenomena or the behavioral manifestation of that intelligence. It's not the intelligence,
the raw intelligence itself. Even with EEGs, we can't capture that raw
intelligence. We can only measure the phenomena or the behavior associated with it.
Similarly, emotions, I mean, because we all experience emotions, it's easy
to forget that we can't feel another person's emotions. Again, we can hear
them, we can see them, we can see the pain on people's faces.
But again, what we're observing there is we're observing the behavioral and emotional
manifestations of an emotion, not the raw emotion or actual emotion itself. So
subjects like intelligence and emotions, they're kind of a little bit of an enigma
because they can't be directly touched or seen. And it occurred to me that
that's kind of where we're at with Bigfoot. We've gotten really good at being
able to see and capture their phenomena, which is the behavioral manifestation of Bigfoot,
the footprints, the vocalizations there, you know, tree breaks, I'm
sure your listeners are familiar with the variety of signs of bigfoot that are out
there, but we're having a hard time direct directly capturing and measuring bigfoot,
and so I think psychologic science gives this a way to get some numbers and
actually do some experiments and statistical analysis on these phenomena, so that we can
move from just qualitative observations and we can move into the area of doing quantitative
analysis on experiments with the phenomena and capture bigfoot statistically and experimentally in that fashion.
I know that's a mouthful, but oh no, I smell what you're
stepping in, man, I get it. Yeah, it makes a lot
of sense. We need to be I think as a community, the big
community really does need to step up because I don't see the science being done.
I see little bits of the scientific process being done, but a lot
of the science happens after you gather the data. So talking to a witness
is one thing, but then what do you do with it. It's not
research until something's done with the data. It's just a bunch of gobblegook,
a bunch of numbers, a bunch of data, essentially, and it's piecing
through that and making sense out of it and looking for patterns that I think
is the real research part of it. And you're suggesting that since sasquatches are
reluctant to be directly observed, and we can use some of these other tests
that psychologists have brought up to maybe push the ball a little bit further down
the court to that extent, what do you suggest, like what would be
a very very simple example that anybody can do. Who's listening to this that
is kind of along the lines of what you're suggesting. Just by way of
clarification, I'm not suggesting using existing psychological tests, but I would put it
to you that every time you go out into the woods and you do a
provocation a tree knock and effect, what you've just done is you've created a
test to see if you're going to get a response back to that tree knock,
and what kind of response are you going to get? And so I
have this in my book and I covered this in my podcast. You know,
a simple tree knock experiment and comparing say, tree knocks to stone clacks.
So you go into the woods, get yourself settled. If you can
use some time for a baseline just acting naturally and normally, so that you're
doing what you normally do and you see if you're getting any any sign or
responses just doing that. But once you've got that baseline study settled, make
a tree knock noise and start timing that tree knock and set a time limit
on it. If we don't get a tree knock back in or any kind
of response back in ten minutes, move on to another provocation. So do
your tree knock and then wait if you if you get a tree knock back
or some kind of response back, record that the time it took from the
time you made the tree knock until you got the response, what the response
is. If you didn't get a response, you've got to record that as
well. You can't just record the successes. You got to record the failures.
But then after if you get nothing in that ten minutes, then do
a stone clack again. Time from the second you start did the stone clack,
start timing and see if you get a response. Let's say you get
a response from the from the clacking of the stones, but you don't get
a response from the tree knock, So you record your response for the clacking
of the stones, and that does it. You don't get any any other
activity for the rest, so you move on to another spot. But you
don't know if the response you got to the stone clack was a delayed response
to the tree knock or was it because of the was it because of the
stone clack. So this time, in this place, you do your stone
clack first. This is called a counterbalance design. You do your stone clack
first, make your recording, and then the tree knock second, and then
another stone clack and another tree knock, So you're alternating the order of the
provocations, and you're recording all this data, all the results or lack of
results, and then that gets reduced down to ones and zeros. Your two
independent variables are the stone clack and the tree knock, and you're doing them
in a counterbalanced order to allow to control for what comes first and what comes
last. Because in humans, we either respond to the first things we hear
or see, or we'd better remember the last things we hear or see,
So there are order effects in our own cognition, and so you try to
control for those in that experiment by alternating which stimuli, which provocation comes first.
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and beyond with Cliff and Bobo will be right
back after these messages. Cliff, I can't tell you how good it makes
me feel to hear you say your comment about very little research, scientific research
is being done, because boy I hammered on that so much on my show.
Because the next step, as you said, once you get that raw
data, once you record the number of results you got to tree knox and
what kind compared to a number of results you got to stone clacks and what
kind, you can then compare those two results to see if you got more
responses to tree knocks or you've got more responses to stone clacks. But we
can already do that, but you can eyeball, well we got we only
got fifteen responses to tree knocks, but we got twenty three responses to stone
clacks. But you don't know if that's what's called a significant difference. You
don't know if that is in fact by significant difference, we're talking about statistically
significant difference that rules out random occurrence and chance influencing those results. And so
I think we're we fall down as a community is we don't know how to
do the experimental design, and even more importantly, we don't know how to
do the statistical analysis as a community. And it's that statistical analysis and experimental
design that brings the science into psychological science. So not only can we say,
yeah, twenty three is more than fifteen, but twenty three knocks is
significantly more than you would expect given that you've got our twenty three stone clack
responses. Is significantly more than you would expect given fifteen three knocks. Is
this making sense, guys? Yeah? I think so. Now now as
you're speaking, my wheels are turning, of course, you know, because
I'm always looking for ways to better up my game, and I think psychology
would be the perfect science to consider this side of things that that is coming
into my head here, How does one account for in this in these sorts
of experiments, in the simple experiment that you just laid out, how does
one account for maybe unknown variables, like, for example, the two that
came into my mind pretty quickly were, how do you know there's a sasquatch
with an earshot to even reply? And also how does one account for the
mood of the sasquatch at the time, like maybe he's not being social or
maybe the sasquatch is observing you, either audibly or visibly, probably audibly,
I'm guessing, and they, oh, that not came from those people,
are I'm not going to answer that, They're not going to fool me.
How does one account for those sorts of variables in the simple experiment like this
or does that just make the experiment not simple any longer. Well, that's
a very good question to your first point. You know, obviously, as
people who have been out in the field and had I myself have not had
a Class A encounter, but I had a couple butt puckering Class B encounters
that left no doubt in my mind that we're dealing with something out there.
But you know, over the years of doing expeditions, you become familiar not
only with specific areas where they live, specific habituation areas, but I feel
like I've also learned, you know, what makes a place squatchy, what
makes a camping area, or what makes a particular location squatchy. So you
know, I think you're starting in a habituation area for starters, where you
know they live. I'm not sure how to account for the mood, except
to say that if you really want to do this experiment right, you need
to do it at a variety of locations throughout the United States and throughout the
region. And in doing that, the you know, repeating that experiment throughout
that area. But in doing that, that begins to randomize or randomly distribute
the mood, if you will, of the bigfoots. Because you're repeating it
so often in so many different locations, at least on a theoretical statistical level
and experimental design level, that begins to randomize mood. It's kind of like
it's being randomly assigned to different locations or times depending on the mood of the
sasquatch. I just want to throw in here, I thought the other element
you were going to speak to was human, because you know, one of
the things that even when I've heard the only I've only heard one tree knock
that was attributed to bigfoot. But even after you hear that, because you
didn't see them making that tree knock, there's always you know, do we
even know that it was a big foot making that tree knock? How do
we know it wasn't a human making that tree knock? And in this experiment,
the tree knock versus the stone clacking, you can account for or factor
in, if you will, the influence of humans making those sounds, simply
by setting up that same experiment in a in an area that is isolated from
bigfoots but thurround it by humans. And you can repeat that same procedure in
your human area as you did in your sasquatch area. And then you can
compare the responses that the number of responses you got to stone clackes and tree
knocks in the human area compared to the ones in the in the Sasquatch area.
And let that tell you and inform you as to is that in fact
sasquatch phenomena. So I think psychology gives us away through experimental design to factor
out that human influence in a variety of situations or phenomena that we experience.
Now, what about the idea, and I believe this to be true,
that that Sasquatches perhaps have some level of local culture. And by by what
I what I mean by that is something as simple as this. The ones
out there at bumping you know it by bumping that they yell a lot,
right, So those ones up there tend to yell a lot. The ones
at Bluff Creek almost never yell. Really, I spent a lot of time
in Bluff Bobo, even more so than me. I've heard a lot of
knocks there, direct responses whatever I'm doing. But I think in all that
time I've I've heard less than a half dozen vocalizations. And we're talking,
you know, twenty thirty years of going there on and off, you know,
sometimes for two weeks at a time or more. So, I mean,
I attribute those things, and of course this is an assumption. I
realize that to some sort of cultural difference, just like I think that another
cultural difference would be that the Sasquatches on the ridges near my home in my
particular area don't tend to vocalize and tend to be quite slinky, you know,
very ninja like, because they're living closer to town, you know,
whereas the ones further out in the wilderness areas have less to lose by making
noise or that sort of stuff. I think I believe, at least in
that that cultural difference might exist, And of course that in itself deserves an
experiment or two, or five or twenty. But being a science in a
scientists in psychology, what sort of precautions or elements can you build into an
experiment to account for those or or is that just something that might arise out
of the day later and then have to be dealt with. I think you've
kind of answered your own question in that you know you're gonna do it location
by location, region of the country by region of the country, and in
doing so, I think there you may be able to find support for that
hypothesis. If you you know, if if in the in the south,
you know, you get more tree knocks, then you do stone claques.
And I'm not saying this would be the case, but in the Northwest you
get more stone claques, and you see the pattern. You see a pattern
consistently of you know, south southeast three noox tree, Noox tree, Knox,
but you're seeing stone clack stone clack stone claes or vocalizations, vocalization vocalizations
in the north north West. I think that then begins to give you information
about the different ways that those sasquatches in that region respond. And once you
can narrow it down to a region, then you begin to study that region
closer, and then I think you can get to the level that you're looking
to get in terms of the culture or the you know, the traditions within
the tribe or whatever the case may be. So I think it would arise
from the data. Yeah. Yeah, So I did answer my own which
I very often answer my own question if i'd think and talk out loud long
enough. So yeah, yeah, awesome. Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and
Beyond with Cliff and Bobo. Will be right back after these messages. Now,
John, you mentioned a couple and I'm going to quote you here but
puckering class bs. Yes, well, we got to hear about those,
which you mind sharing those with this please. I've got two, the first
one, and again I've signed non disclosure agreements, so I can't give you
this specific location beyond saying this was a location in Tennessee. But I was
part of a group of sixteen. The whole expedition. This was a Lori
Waite expedition. The whole expedition had probably about forty people in it. But
as you know, no doubt, we break up into smaller groups of three
to five. But we were going to hike midway up this mountain to this
old cabin, and then we were going to send one group before one direction,
another group before another direction, another group of four I think down the
mountain and then one group stay at this cabin. So I got into the
group before who was supposed to climb up this deer path to the fire road
that's on top of the mountain, or as high as we could go on
the ridge on a fire road. And we got out there. We were
supposed to head one direction and another group was going to head the opposite direction
on this fire road, and we were going to kind of meet in the
middle. Was the plan. Unfortunately, we took a wrong turn. We
took a left and started heading up when we were supposed to take a right.
But we were headed up there a guy by the name of George Wrigley,
who is one of my mentors, I consider one of my mentors.
And we're walking up and it had rained hard the previous night, and it
was windy this night, but otherwise it was that it was dead silent.
All you could here was the leaves rustling in the trees and the water running
off the mountain. And I said, George, you know, you see
you told me multiple times that when a bigfoot's in the area, all the
other all the other creatures kind of shut down and it gets real quiet.
Is this the kind of quiet you're talking about, because I had never experienced
this quiet before. And he said, well, he said, usually when
you get this kind of quiet and there's a bigfoot in the area, you
get you know, the hair standing up on your head, or you're feeling
you're being watched, or that spidey sense, I think is what a lot
of people call it. And none of us were getting that. So no,
John, I don't think this is it. Long story short. We
walked about miles three miles up this road. We didn't see any activity of
wildlife. But we finally got in touch with the people we thought we were
going to meet, and they had seen pigs rutting on the fire road.
They had seen they had spooked some turkeys, both broosting in the trees and
from the ground, and they had saw all kinds of deer. And we
didn't see any wildlife, nor did we hear any creature sounds creatures as in
kitmunks or squirrels, you know, no sound in the forest whatsoever. So
we start walking back, and on these walks a lot of the members had
interest in hypnosis, and so we were talking about hypnosis and how that could
influence people's perceptions of bigfoot and George I said something, and George stopped on
his heel and we were walking single file. I was about five feet behind
him. Five feet behind me was Brave Heart. I called him Brave Heart
from this incident and then Mark Oglebee and God, I can't believe I'm walking
on Braveheart's actual name. It'll come to me. So George stops, pivots
on his foot to walk the five feet to ask me a question. And
in the time it took him to do that, he got the letter J
he said. And when he got the jay out, we had a tree
push over versus fall. Since we didn't see it, but it was explosive.
It sounded like a bomb went off right on top of us. And
then immediately after that it sounded us to god, guys, it sounded like
a landslide was coming down on top of us. It sounded like logs and
rocks were tumbling from the peak above us down towards us. And you know,
when things are running tumbling downhill real fast, oftentimes they'll hit a rock
and they'll become airborne and there'll be a silence, and then you can hear
him hit the ground again. And continue tumbling. That's what we were hearing,
and it seemed to surround us, and so George and I we we
scattered like cockroaches to try and get clear of the landslide. We've got it
recorded. It lasted fourteen seconds. Mark Ogilby, who was in the back,
he scattered like a cockroach. And Braveheart. I had his name,
and I lost it again. Dan Keggley is who I call brave Heart.
Dank Keggley. He chose the fight response. He pivoted. He pivoted on
his heel and looked up the mountain and went to pull out his cave bar
knife, and he was ready to take on whatever was coming down at us.
But nothing ever hit the no rocks, no trees, no logs,
no small stones. But what did hit us, and what settled over us
was a cloud of a loam. If you've ever had if you've ever worked
with loam soil, it has that distinct almost a manure smell, but it's
not a manure smell. Looking up the mountain, we could see just that
the particles of loam coming down on top of us. I smelled it before
I saw it. So we spent thirty forty five minutes trying to debunk that.
Couldn't find anything to explain it. So we put two sticks in an
x standing vertically where this happened, and we had a couple hundred yards hike
to that deer trail that we took up to get to the fire road.
We start well after that. Immediately after that happened, the folks from the
cabin called down, called us and said, did you hear that tree three
fall? Hell? Yeah, you know, just about happened right on top
of us. So we start walking back to that deer trail, and as
we're walking back to the deer trail, the guys from the cabin again call
us. They say, are you guys on the deer trail or are you
guys on the forest road? We're still on the fire We're still on the
forest road, the fire road. Okay, then for out. So we
get to the deer trail and we're about midway down the deer trail and the
guys from the cabin call us again and said, are you guys on the
fire road or are you guys on the deer trail? Why do you keep
calling us and asking this? Well, when you guys were on the forest
road following behind you, we saw some red lights and now that you're on
the deer trail, it looks like there's some red eye shine or red lights
right behind you, and so of course we all pivoted up. We pivoted
and looked up the deer trail up the mountain. We didn't see any red
lights. So we got to the cabin, which was the Midway base camp,
and we're sitting relaxing and all of a sudden, all of a sudden,
somebody says, did you see that red light in the woods. No,
we start looking and to make a long story short, over a period
of about twenty five twenty to thirty minutes, we didn't keep track. We
watched fifteen to twenty what we believe were infant Bigfoot doing that peeping thing where
they'd peep out one side of the tree and you could see and I'm going
to call it red eye glow rather than eyeshine, because is this there.
It was an overcast night, there was no moon, there was no ambient
light to shine on these eyes, So I think of this as eye glow.
You're saying, fifty to twenty of them you said yes, and there's
an explanation for that. So we watched these peepers for about twenty to twenty
five minutes, and that many bobo and we were you know, it was
amazing. So I was the oldest in the group, but the other guys,
the other guys were in there, I think late thirties, early forties.
We were determined to get back up there the next day. We didn't,
but a young buck went up there. We told him to look for
the X, and he looked for the X, found the X, and
he found a full print. He didn't have a casting kit, never cast
it. He runs back down to base camp and get somebody who's an expert
in casting. They go back up to that print, full plasticle print.
They cast it a print right near where we had put the X, right
where we had what we thought was aligned landslide. And as they're waiting for
the cast to cure, they decide to look down the downside of the fire
road. We had been looking up from where the sounds were coming that night.
We never looked the opposite side down on the fire road. And they
look down the downside of the fire road, and I'll be darn if it
didn't about eight to ten feet down it leveled off onto a plateau, pretty
pretty long and wide plateau, and they say they counted about forty infant bigfoot
prints on that plateau, eight feet below the roadbed. How big was How
big was the cast? The one that you cast? A big one,
it was seventeen and a half inches long and I think seven inches wide.
How big were the small ones? Nobody cast those, okay, whether four
inches or seven inches or I didn't see him myself, so I couldn't tell
you. But they found another print, but it wasn't castable. Right on
the edge of the down drop to that plateau and fifteen feet up the tree
there there was a fresh bark tear. So we either experienced. In hindsight,
I think what might have happened might have been And again no science here,
this is just experience. But I think when we stopped, it was
like we might have stopped right next to the nursery or the playground, and
I think we were bluff charged. I don't think it was a landslide because
the sound and the power of that that landslide coming down on top of us,
it was loud, and if it was a lion slide. Something should
have hit the ground, so I think in hindsight we experienced a bluff charge.
And then when we got back down to that to that midway cabin,
I think maybe, I don't know, maybe Mom and Dad took the infants
to to spy on the bigfooters. So that was one of my butt puckering
class being encounters. The butt puckering part when that landslide sound started. I
love the guy pulling the knife to try to fend off the avalanche. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, Tennessee, Tennessee's that's where we got the most tree
shot outs of it. Where we went from this show every time me what
he we got at least two or three Wow. Yeah. And I was
back in a different location in Tennessee here a few months ago and heard some
tree pushovers as well. Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and
Bogo. We'll be right back after these messages. Do we have time for
my other buckering experience? Yeah? I hit it, love to hear it.
So this was early on in my second year of expeditions with Laurie.
She's always kind enough and you know, just an incredible lady. Puts on
an incredible expedition, as does Charlie Raymond. Just give both of those guys
a plug. Just awesome. But she brings in, as does Charlie,
she brings in guest speakers on most of her exped editions. And the guest
speaker she brought it she brought in was Scott Carpenter. May he rest in
peace. So you know, Scott, of course was talking about Niphelum and
talking about his experiences with bigfoot and cloaking and things of that nature, and
it was fascinating to me, but I still walked away, very skeptical of
them cloaking or disappearing right in front of your eyes. So about a month
later, fifty minutes from where I live in Rome, Georgia is a wildlife
management area called John's Mountain Wildlife Management Area. So I thought, what the
heck, I'm going to take myself in my little mini trailer and my dog
and see if I can't find a spot that looks squatchy. So I was
successful in finding a spot that looked squatchy. Got there in the daytime.
It was it was such that it was right off the road, not deep
in at all into the woods. I was probably thirty feet from the road
where I set up my camp. But there were there were ridges on both
sides of this campground, and the ridge if you're facing from the road in
towards the campground, the ridge on the left had a creak running into the
main river just across the street, and these ridges followed went went back probably
a mile, and then probably two miles past that was this big untouched mountain.
And so during the day, my dog and I looked for sign.
We couldn't find any Prince couldn't find any evidence. So time to cook dinner.
And just as we're finishing up dinner, my dog, it was a
pit bull mix, was just I had him tied onto a rope, was
just lounging on the ground, and all of a sudden, he sat up
from laying down, sat on his hindquarters, stuck his nose straight up into
the air to the sky, and sat there for three to five minutes,
just like that, sniffing the air. And when his nose came down,
he started snarling and growling and barking like he wanted to tear into something,
just going off. And I had never seen this dog do this. I
couldn't see anything it was dusk. At this point, I couldn't see anything
in front of me. His nose, his nose, those was down and
looking. It was like he was barking at something in front of us that
he was sensing that I couldn't. So I finally got him calm down.
I said, okay, Red, let let let's go check it out.
Well, I went and got my headlamp and moved forward to towards the road.
And he wouldn't come with me. He crawled under, he crawled under
his trailer or trailer. He would not come forward with me. And I'm,
you know, for the first time thinking about Scott's Scott's presentation about cloaking,
it was like, geez, is my dog seeing or sensing something that's
there that I can't see. So, even though I had my headlamp when
I walked forward, I walked forward with my hands out in front of me
for that Maybe they do cloak and I want to walk away into one with
my So I walked forward with my hands out, didn't bump into anything,
got to the road, looked up the road, walked up the road a
little bit, walked down the road, walked back into the camp. So
I didn't see a darn thing, so got read my put my rave pit
bull out from underneath my trailer and sat down next to the fire, right
where we were when he started barking. And we weren't sitting there but thirty
seconds to a minute, and I started hearing this bush rattling to my at
my two o'cloth and no sooner the bush started rattling. He and this bush
was probably I was just there a couple of weekends ago, probably about twenty
yards away from me. This bush starts rattling. My pit bull gets up
orients on the bush, puts his nose up into the air again, but
this time only holds it up for five seconds. And when he brings his
nose down again, he starts into what's like an attack mode, but maybe
it's a fear mode, because he wasn't moving forward, but he was growling
and snarling and snapping at something in that bush, rattling that bush. And
as this is going on for maybe fifteen twenty seconds, all of a sudden,
I hear above his growling and snarling and snapping. I hear that's when
mud butt buckered, and I stood up, and the dog's growling and snarling
and snapping was going on, as was the growling coming from that bush.
And I went out, got to my car. I had a smith and
Western forty five military police handgun, got that out and for the first time
ever, I chambered around and no sooner that clicking sound from chambering around in
a pistol happened, it got silent. The growling, the growling stopped,
My dog settled down, and everything just shut down, like a switch was
thrown when I when I cocked that pistol. Yeah, it seems like a
gun's cocking and like the first little zip of a zipper just shuts them down,
like if you zip your sleeping bag or ten if you get on zip
it, or if your chamber around or you know, hit the you know,
hit the slide on a shotgun pump something like that. That just seems
like just boom, just dead. And to clarify, I'm not I carry
a gun for personal protection, not for bigfoot. My it is all about
providing a pathway to scientific proof so we don't have to kill one. So
I am of the no kill philosophy. But I wanted to clarify you that
given that I talked about talking a gun. Yeah, well, now if
that's the goal, can you paraphrase the pathway to discovery without a type specimen?
And the second part of that question, I guess would be, don't
you think that after discovery, if it can be done without a type specimen,
they would go get another one. Anyway, I've thought about it the
other way around a lot, because I don't think a body is going to
suffice. I think we're going to need two or three bodies for verification.
And on top of that, then we still don't have those phenomena necessarily scientifically
tied to the Bigfoot, and so there's still more work to be done to
scientifically, you know, link Bigfoot to all the these occurrences. Just because
we've proven its Bigfoot, that Bigfoot exists, we haven't proven that Bigfoot is
causing a lot of these phenomena. So the path for the past sixty years
we've been doing empirical observation. And empirical observation is the first step in a
significant scientific discovery. But usually what happens after you do step one in the
scientific method, which is empirical observation, you move on to step two,
which is developing a hypothesis based on that empirical observation, and then step three
is designing an experiment to test that hypothesis based on that empirical observation. And
then step foward is analyzing your data with statistics and you know, presenting it
for pre review and beginning the cycle again, reiterating, reiterating the experiment if
it comes out positive, other people doing if it comes out positive. But
it seems to me that as a community, guys, we have gotten stuck
in this runt of the observation. We're continuing to go out there, spend
money on photographic equipment, flear, radar, lidar, and we're still trying
to capture Bigfoot with a photograph or with a recording or through their phenomena.
But we've got to we know what their phenomena are. We have all kinds
of hypotheses, but in our field we call them theories. You know,
it seems to me, as a community, in terms of the scientific method
we skip. We've gone from observation to theory, and we skipped hypothesis testing,
finding a hypothesis, and then theory testing before we call something a theory.
We're going from our empirical observations to what we think Bigfoot is doing,
and we begin to call that a theory. So the pathway to using psychologic
science to prove Bigfoot scientifically is to use the entire scientific method, but using
experimentation. So you go from your observation to your hypothesis. Your hypothesis is
used to generate an experiment, and in that experiment you try to control for
human influence, the influences of other possible creatures that could be producing the same
phenomena. You include ConTroll variables in your experiment, and and that's where then
photography is going to come in and become scientific when it's being used within that
context of an experiment and providing convergent validity. Think about tag X. If
they had set up either a recorder or if they had set up a camera
where next to that tag and a glimpse or a sound of that least that
they tagged, that could be convergent evidence. That could be evidence that says,
yes, this was likely a sasquatch we tagged, rather than the uncertainty
that's involved with that. So so you do your you set up, you
design your experiment, you deploy your experiment, you analyze your data and then
you complete the scientific method. It's just that what psychologic sciences can bring to
the research field that isn't going on in the research field right now, because
we're still stuck in this empirical observation kind of rut. It's bringing we're still
studying the phenomena, but it's bringing experimental design and statistical analysis, and so
now we can get key values to know how likely is this study occurred as
a result of random error. We can control and measure human responses to things
like pree Knox or pre structures, and we can factor that out of the
bigfoot data and see how much Bigfoot date, Bigfoot influence is still left.
We're just not moving forward with this experimentation and the statistical analysis as long as
we're just going out there doing observation. Yes, but even if we had
strongly indicative results from well designed experiments, don't you think that there would still
be a need to go cllect specimens and kill a couple of these things.
I would, honestly, I would hope not. Oh, I hope not
too. Don't get me wrong, I want to put that out there.
I hope not as well, But we do. I mean the science is
also stuck in a kind of Victorian mindset about that, I think, right,
right, so, I think you know so my analogy is how many
targets? How many arrows do you have to hit the bulls eye with before
you can say this is being produced. The first step, of course,
is unidentified species. Okay, how many? How many arrows have to hit
the bull's eye before we say that, if we can prove that pre knots
are produced by an unidentified species and not human, that tree structures are produced
by an unidentified species and not human, if we can prove that. You
list the phenomena, the stone clacks, the vocalizations, each one of those
represent an arrow that we're trying to hit the bigfoot target on, and if
we can hit, if we can get seven or eight or nine of those
arrows in that bull's eye, I think that should be enough. I may
be optimistic, but I mean you think about the word intelligence. Nobody questions
the validity of intelligence. It's commonly accepted. Again, yet we can't see
it. Over over the years, we've been able to prove that unseen intelligence.
We've been able to prove those unseen emotions, or you can't directly touch
them emotions, and I don't see why I couldn't, couldn't or shouldn't be
the same for bigfoot. And again, the other important thing that I'm including
in these designs is convergent validity. You know, going out and just getting
a you know, the clearest picture of bigfoot you can isn't going isn't scientific,
It's just not scientific. But you get that picture. Within the context
of some of the experiments that I'm talking about, you get that picture.
I don't know that we're going to get them knocking trees. I don't even
know that they use knocks or they they use a stick to knock on trees.
But we can design experiments so that although we're measuring one variable, we're
using other control variables to prevent the influence of certain things and to rule out
other things through the experimental design and the statistical analysis. And I think if
we keep hitting that target, it's going to become undeniable. Now, something
that might be fuddle that is that the vast majority of bigfoot data is stumbled
upon by citizens, by the non bigfooting public. Does that data have value
or do you have to have a strictly designed experiment behind it. I think
it has value, but we've got to do more with it, at least
the statistics. Every statistic course I've ever taken taught me that in ordered,
we're trying to prove causality. We're trying to prove that bigfoot caused that print
to be there. We're trying to prove that bigfoot cause that free break,
or bigfoot caused that tree structure, or that bigfoot that was bigfoot powling.
So we're trying to prove causality. And the only way that you can scientifically
prove causality is through experimentation. So at some point we're going to have to
start doing experiments. And again, as I said earlier, even if they
have a body, we're still going to have to do experiments to link these
phenomena to Bigfoot scientifically. But we can we can take self reports, anecdotal
evidence. You know, BFRO, I'm sure you know better than I as
a pretty large database, and there are other people out there that have database,
and we can encode those reports. We can assign numbers to certain aspects
of those findings and begin to look at commonalities and differences within and between those
reports. So that's called descriptive statistics. I don't think. I don't think
anyone's even done that much. Taking a big database of reports, assigning numeric
values to them so that they can be statistically analyzed, and then look for
the trends. How many are roadside sidings, how many are sightings back in
the woods, you know, how many involved whatever, you know, whatever
kind of phenomena, And we could numerically reduce all those sightings and statistically analyze
them, and that would give us a better description, I think, and
a more accurate description than what we rely on now, which is opinion and
memory and experience, because those go through our perception, and our perception is
by design biased. We are biased machines because we've got to use our perceptual
processing. So the anecdotal evidence can have descriptive statistical value to help us better
understand what people are seeing and what people are reporting. But if we want
to prove causality, we're either going to have to find one hundred percent correlation
in that descriptive data, or we're going to have to run experiments. Because
when something when there's a causal relationship going on, there's one hundred percent correlation
in that causal relationship. And the good news is is we already know some
answers to causal relationships. We already know that tree knock knocking on a tree
doesn't cause a bigfoot to respond with a tree knock sound, or why do
you say that that doesn't make any sense. They do respond to tree knocks,
you're right, but they don't respond one hundred percent of the time.
Sometimes you make a tree knock and you get a response, other times you
don't. And so there's a correlation between a tree not making provoking with a
tree dock and getting a response, but there's not a causal relationship between us
making a tree dock and getting a response back. And I think a lot
of the bigfoot phenomena are going to be of the same ill. We're going
to be able to show a course relation, but it's not going to beyond
your percent causality. And that's where you need to get into the experiments.
Certainly, there's a there's piles and piles of data, and of course this
is another example where John Green, you know, is ahead of everybody because
he did such a statistical analysis with his sixteen or seventeen hundred sidings I think
in the late nineteen seventies, with a very rudimentary computer, you know,
he did a little bit of this, and again far in front of the
rest of the pack, I guess, but the call has not moved much
further down court. So hopefully with the publication of your new book, then
more people reading it, maybe bigfooters will up their game and start designing experiments
that can be done out in the field. And that's what science is all
about. Develop a hypothesis, develop an experiment to see if you're right or
not, and then circle back around, no matter if the answer is yes
or no. If you get oh, that does support my hypothesis, I'm
going to keep on developing more experiments to see if I can find a situation
in which I'm wrong. And of course, if you are wrong right out
of the gate, then you have to go revise your hypothesis. That's one
thing I like. I like a lot about things about science, but one
thing I particularly like about science is that you're always trying to prove yourself incorrect,
because I'm wrong an awful lot, and every time I'm wrong in science
is actually a victory. And I love that. I love that. I'll
be getting a novel. That's the case. Nice? All right? Well,
hey doctor John, where can people find your book, Grasping Sasquash Prepping
for Scientific Field Research. It's going to be released under Hangar one Publishing Doug
Hichicks Publishing Company. I'm sure it'll be available on hangar you know. I'm
sure it will be multiple ways to obtain the book. Okay. And you
also briefly mentioned about a podcast that you did. Where can people listen to
that if they want to learn more about what you're saying, but more in
depth in that this are one or one hour, you know, interview with
you. So I had a podcast that I just completed about four weeks ago
called Grasping Sasquatch Stories and Science, and kind of format would be what I
would. I would tell a story, relate it to some kind of encounter,
sometimes mine, sometimes other people's, and then we'd relate that to science
and how the scientific aspects of it and how in some cases we might design
experiments around it. And that we even discussed how to tell if infrasound is
if we're psyching ourselves out or are we responding to the actual infrasound as an
example, of another experiment detailed in my book, and so those are also
there's those are on YouTube and as well as untold Radio, and they can
be downloaded on all your major podcast channels. Fantastic, and I'm sure the
lovely and talented Matt Prue will put those links in the show notes below for
all of our listeners to make it nice and easy for people to go check
out what you're doing. Yeah, I got one last quick question for what
are your colleagues other psychologists think about your work? Get any feedback. I've
never been I've never felt the need to hide my interest in Bigfoot because I
was a psychologist, i was already pretty I've always been upfront and unapologetic about
it, and so most of them take, you know, as you would
expect with anyone you tell. You know, the whole gamut of response is
from laughing at you, to a furious skepticism to a real interest to some
believers, and so it you know, it's been the full gamut of stuff.
I've certainly never had it held against me for what it's worth. That's
good to hear, and I'm glad to hear. You're not a coward.
You're out there in front send I believe in this and I'm researching it.
What you see is what you get with me, and I'm so I'm pretty
upfront about steph. Thank you John Brenchak, author of Grasping Sasquatch Prepping for
Scientific field Research. We really do appreciate your time and your expertise and sharing
a little bit about your experience with us, and just good luck with the
book. Really excited to have it out. Yeah, John, thank you,
Thank you, Bobo, thank you, Matt. I really appreciate this
opportunity, and again I'm honored to have it. Thank you very much.
All Right, all right, thanks John, that was great. Good look
at the book. Okay, folks, thanks for joining us this week.
We appreciate it, y'all checking us out, and until next week, y'all
keep it squatchy. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Bigfoot and Beyond.
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