You're listening to the Panel UK Radio network and this is six Degrees of John
Keel. Hello and welcome to the six Degrees of John Kiel podcast. I'm
one of your hosts, Barbara Fisher. Today I am talking with Jason.
He is the podcaster behind the Esoteric Book Club. Hello Jason, Hey,
Weirdos. Hey, how's it going going Pretty good? Well? Great,
so, fellow West Virginia weirdo. Even though I'm an expatriate, I expatriated
to Ohio, which isn't very far, but you know what else, the
Ohio Valley. It's okay, yeah, exactly, yeah, exactly. I'm
in the extended Ohio Valley region. So when did you start being interested in
the weird weirdness in the weirdos and the things? Man, this is a
great story. It goes all the way back to when I was a child,
and as a child of the eighties, they had coloring books literally for
everything, and one of the things was, you know, cryptids and the
paranormal, and I think actually UFOs was even one of them. And I
remember seeing the Flatwood's Monster in there, and granted the illustration for that was
nothing like braxy that we've got today, but it still piqued my interest.
Excellent. Yeah, I remember some of the UFO ones from the eighties,
but by the time the eighties had rolled around, I was out of coloring
books, and because I was in high school in the eighties and you know,
I was I was doing like my own drawings and stuff. So but
I do remember seeing a UFO coloring book at the grocery store. So on
the pind site, the Flatwood's Monster illustration was just terrible. It talked about
how they went up on the hill and the illustration was like a pitcher's mound,
and the illustration of Braxy was a hovering like floating reptilian oh, with
its tongue hanging out, but it was hovering like a Mazy's Day float.
Oh. Yeah, I was horrible. No, that's terrible. That's that's
yeah. I don't like that at all. I don't like that at all.
And you know, you're like the third person who said that their first
big love was the Flatwoods Monster, and and that just makes me so happy
because it's it's one of the weirdest sort of shaped and colored entity creature UFO
thing, you know, whatever it is, you know, Robot ufo thing
hallucination. Well, I think that's what makes it work. Yeah. Yeah,
it's so unique that you can't forget that image. Yeah yeah, and
it's it's uh. I love that there were like these kids and one of
the moms went how many times do you hear about moms climate and the whole
idea of a picture's mound. People have not been to Braxton County the person
who drew that, because those hills are big, yes, super steep,
but she had. She went with the kids and they took flashlights, you
know, she was she was ready. And uh, but the but the
the fog. People tend to forget about the fog, the poisonous, bad
smelling, whatever it was that made the dog sick and the people sick.
I love that story, and uh, I think it's great that now we
have little you know, people are making these drawings and figurines and plushies of
the Flatwoods Monster right along with Mothman, because again, it's just an iconic
image at this point. One of the things that really blew my mind about
the Flatwood's Monster specifically is, oddly enough, how much the Japanese are into
it. Yeah, and I have no idea why you can find toys with
braxy like scaled up to fight Godzilla. Oh wow, they are just obsessed
with that creature for some reason. Well, you know, the way that
our modern take on it has come, it kind of looks feminine because it
has that pinched in quote unquote waste whatever, you know, trunk whatever,
and then it has the flared out part that looks kind of like a skirt.
It kind of has a little bit of the Dalek to it, like,
oh, you know that that whole hovering exterminate thing. You know,
it has glowing eyes because of course it does, and then that pointy hoodlike
business on the top of the head, and it just has a compelling shape.
And I think that that's part of why the Japanese, you know,
latch onto it, because that particular sort of female shape. You can you
can cutify, you can make it kawaii, or you can make it scary,
and you can have that whole gamut of different shapes and sizes and everything,
and it's really cool. I think my favorite ones are the ones they
have in the museum, and they're like these transparent they almost look like gummy
bears, but it's the Flatwood's monster. They're about three to four inches tall,
and their their eyes are bugging out. They've got beady little eyes,
and their mouths are open, and they have these peg like teeth. Oh
wow. And it minds me almost of Simpsons. Oh yeah, yeah when
I went there. Yeah yeah, yeah. A few years ago, I
went to the big Foot Festival, which is in the same town, and
I made sure to take a picture of every single one of those that they
had in the display case. That's amazing. I just and it makes me
happy because it's not like little towns in West Virginia have much reason for anybody
to go there. Like, you know, if you fly over West Virginia,
I have told people this for decades, that there's parts of it that
looks like there's no people at all. Well, you know, most parts
of it there are no people at all. Yeah. I was like,
but you know, there are towns down there in some of those places,
but you're not going to know it unless you fly over it at night,
and even then there's probably not enough light to towel. Oh yeah, unless
you're coming in for a landing. And really there's places that are a no
fly zone, sort of like Green Bank observatory. Yeah, they don't even
have cell phones that whoo. Sorry about that. It was a computer making
a noise there. That was weird. I didn't actually hear it, so
don't worry about it. Oh it's all in my headphones. Great, Oh
more fun. Yeah. Yeah, but yeah, Green Bank it's a no
fly zone, so you're not going to get any airplane noise anything like that.
You're not going to hear cell phones going off because it's a dead zone.
Yeah, yeah, it's a dead is Uh what is the name of
it? Not Green Bank, but the old hotel that you know used to
have a bunker under it. Oh, Greenbriar, Yeah, Greenbrier. My
brain just went mi, you don't need that thought, goodbye. Time to
get something right. Yeah, it's Greenbriar. It's the Greenbrier Hotel and it
does have a bunker under it that was at one time to designated as a
heidy hole for Congress in case of nuclear attack because it's it's within dry v
or helicopter distance of Washington, So that was one of the places where they
could run and then they could you know, restart the government quote unquote.
Now they give tours of it. It was a big secret when I was
growing up, except it wasn't because everybody knew about it. I mean West
Virginians knew. I don't know if anybody else knew about it and just never
asked us, but we knew about it because we all talked about it.
Well, it's kind of a funny story how that got revealed too. Jump
in. So there was a maid who was working at the hotel who accidentally
found this secret panel at one point, and I guess there was a protocol
in place, set up and ready to go where once it was discovered,
they had to gather all the employees together and they had a meeting and someone
rolled out one of those TVs on like the av cart, and they had
a VHS tape plug it in and it revealed everything. Wow, because one
the secret was out. That was it. Yeah, yeah, well now
they now they have tours now that everybody knows. I cannot remember who it
was, Oh yeah it was. It was one of my chefs in culinary
school had gone to the Greenbrier to judge a culinary contest and it was held
there in the kitchens of the hotel, and he actually got to go on
the tour and he was. He was, you know, very thrilled that
he got to go, And I said, oh, yeah, the thing
that you know, West Virginians knew about, but nobody else did, you
know. But I think at one time that was a no fly zone as
well. You couldn't fly over it unless you were in the government. Honestly,
it wouldn't surprise me. So I, you know, I don't know
about that now because now that everybody knows where it is, they probably can't
use it for that anymore, but not for the government. But it is
still technically a fallout shelter, so it is functional. Yeah, oh yeah,
it's it's it's actually really well well put together and shield it and all
of that. It's pretty interesting. I got to go through on that tour
when I was in grad school. Oh cool. Yeah, it's really strange.
It looks like the best way to describe it. Have you ever been
in like the access corridors to a mall or something like that, where it's
concrete that's all it is. It's just concrete walls, corridors, lots of
pipes and cables overhead. It's dimly lit. It's got those stereotypical light bulbs.
Hanging from a wire above. I got to see the broadcast room for
President Nice, and it is surprising how fake that whole thing is. It's
it's almost like just posters hanging up on the background on a concrete wall.
And the clocks that you always see that have all the different time zones.
It's literally just battery operated clocks hanging on the wall with a little handmade plaque
underneath. Wow, it's really surprising how we see all these cinematic things on
TV and it's very superficial, right right, Yeah, that's wow. I
love how you say, oh, it's fake. It's like the Turban show,
you know. Ooh, but the concrete corridors and the lights hanging I'm
like, yeah, no, no need to spice that up, guys,
No need to make that look somewhat homy No, because that's for that's that's
end of the world crap right there. And you don't need nice stuff for
into the world. You just you know, just because the president of the
free world is going to be staying there for extended periods of time. Yeah,
yeah, uh yeah. I've that's one of the West Virginia weirdnesses that
I always loved, and it was always fun watching the X Files with my
husband who was from Florida, and his whole family lives and lived in Florida,
and they were big X Files fans too, So you know, every
time one of the one of the hidden places was in West Virginia, they'd
ask is that you know? Is that there is there one of those?
There is that? And I'm like, Okay, there are weird things in
West Virginia. We have very quiet little offices for Defense Logistics, which is
a branch of the intelligence agencies. We have uh like little tucked away places.
We now have the FBI fingerprinting files in Fairmont. I want to say,
I think it's between Fairmont and Clarksburg. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
the yeah, and and that's there. Uh but you know there are small
places. But do they do they look like that? No, because that's
Vancouver. Its Virginia doesn't look like Vancouver. Yeah. I think the Ice
Center went in after X Files though, yeah, yeah it did. They
had they went to Wheeling at one point. I believe, yes, And
uh, like you said, it's Vancouver because it was in a pine forest
or whatever. But I remember watching that getting all excited and I was like,
oh, that is that is not wheeling. They are not down in
a flood zone or anything. No. No. And then there was the
I think it was the first X Files movie where part of it, or
maybe it was the second one, but one of them took part took place
in part of West Virginia and it was this freaking prairie and I'm like,
there is no part of West Virginia that there is. There is no place
it is that flat, nothing that there was nothing scraped by the glaciers there.
Nothing was just flattened out, squished out. No, no, no,
no, they no. Couldn't you have at least put some matte paintings
of you know, hills behind where you I mean, come on, And
it would have been so easy to do that because a lot of our hills
are you know, they're at a distance, so it's still pretty faded and
blurry and hard to see. Yeah, you just have to have this impression
of hills in the background. Yeah, but they didn't have any impressions of
any hills. It was it was flat out flat. And I just laughed
so hard. I mean, who's gonna know besides people from West Virginia truly,
and even people who've just driven through kind of aren't necessarily gonna, you
know, remember that. They'll they'll think, well, there's got to be
someplace here that's flat. Yeah yeah, I mean river valleys, yes,
but that's it. Most people I know who drive through West Virginia I have
two comments of one is man, these roads are really bad, followed by
man, these roads are really twisty mm yeah, they go straight up in
down too. Yeah. Yeah. I think what what Tim Renner said once
was, you know, driving through West Virginia. He's like, you know,
I'm from I'm from hills and Pennsylvania. He's like, and we've got
hills. He's like, but y'all do have mountains. He's like, there
there's actually yeah, they don't look like the rocky mountains, but their mountains
and and they let you know. And I was like, oh, yeah,
yeah. Have you done any any exploration in the woods and the fields
of the West Virginia looking for anything strange on your own? I mean,
I'm not going out howling for bigfoot or anything like that, but I do
a good bit of just wilderness hiking, camping, stuff like that. It's
actually part of my job. I am an outdoor educator. Besides having my
podcast. So I take kids out in the woods and teach them to make
observations and observe their surroundings, watch for animals, watch for signs. I
taught a tracking class this past winter. Oh cool. Yeah, it's a
lot of fun. Yeah, that does sound awesome, you know, and
it's and it's not like the way you know, I got taught when I
was a kid, which is, hey, it's wood's go in there,
play, don't get too far, stay with the holler and distance, take
the docks pretty much. If if something rattles at you, don't, don't
touch it, right, Yeah, it's like love than we're I'm that I'm
not at the elevation for rattlesnakes, but we still have to watch out anyway.
Yeah yeah, yeah, which man, snakes have been It's been wild
this year. I have seen way more snakes this summer than I have in
the past few years combined. That is interesting. And you're not the first
person I've heard say it. Lots of people in the Appalachian region has been
like, what is it with the snakes and wondering if the mild winter didn't
have something to do with it. I was wondering that too, because that
was that was the explanation that I've jumped on with. And it's possible that
there's plenty of food for them also because of the mild winter, so you
know, there's there's more toads and you know s rats and yeah, I
was actually just colting on this to the children the other day when we were
out in the woods. We've got a section of the property that has a
bunch of hickory trees on it, and there are so many little sapling hickories
coming up because the most just didn't need to dig up their cashes over the
winter. Yeah. Yeah, same around my house and the oak babies.
Oh yeah, we have lots and lots of chipmunks around you know where I
live in Athens, which is right next to the woods. We have woods
that literally just wind all through the town like everywhere, so we have these
green quarters that all of the wildlife you know, used to traverse through town
and that's cool. But we have all these chipmunks and usually they bury you
know, their food, and the and the squirrels bury everything and then they
dig it up. But this year I have so many baby oaks coming up
in my garden that, you know, because that's where they plant them.
And usually in the spring, you know, I get a few of them,
you know, and I just pull them up and toss them over the
fence into the woods and go, hey, if that town fruit hits the
dirt, there you go. You can you can go. It'll be great.
Yeah. But this year it was like thirty or forty of them,
and I have a small garden, so I was like, damn. So
like those little chipmunks must have been planting all of those and then didn't have
to eat any of them. Yeah, And I suspect we may be seeing
signs of the opposite for this winter. There's a lot of fruit germinating on
the trees hmm. And there's a lot of acorns that have already started turning
green and falling. I'm seeing a lot of indications that it might be if
not a bad winter, it might be early that could be in. At
this point, there's very little ability to predict anything having to do with with
weather. Oh yeah, but I do remember that last year. In the
fall here, usually the squirrels and the chipmunks go absolutely crazy with gathering things,
and they'll fight over nuts and have these you know, all but pitched
battles on a field over it and they'll run in front of your cars to
get you know, black walnuts and whatever. And they didn't do that last
year. They didn't argue with each other over anything. They didn't like go
completely insane and you know, grab everything to be buried, you know,
diving in front of cars, risking their lives. They didn't do any of
that. And then it turned out we had snow like two maybe three times,
and it wasn't negligible as far as as like sticking on the ground.
And this year we have so many ticks because of that. Yes, yeah,
they are terrible here too. Yeah. You know, I've almost petitioned
the mayor to say, hey, can we have guinea foul play if I
want? Yes, I want an entourage of them for every time I go
outside, and you know, I'll figure out a way to put harnesses on
them, and you know they can walk with me and they can eat every
tick that is near me. I hate ticks, but they're not into it.
So well, let's put a possum on a leash for you. I
would love that eat ticks, but I know they're immune to uh to rabies
and all kinds of diseases. Yeah, don't get them. Yeah, yeah
there, and they're I'm one of the people who thinks they're cute. Most
people don't, but I do. Our family are are possum people. We
like possums. I don't mind them until a hiss at me. Well,
they're scary, but they really can't do anything with you know, they can
just look scary and sound scary and and and then they can't really do much
to back that up. They're not like, uh, they're not like cats
that way, you know, no bobcats. You know, they hiss and
yew and it's like, Okay, I'm done done, Sorry, my bad,
I'm going to back away slowly. So have you run across anything weird
in the woods besides hissing possums. I've run across a bunch of just weird
stuff throughout my entire life. I'm sure Vouk has told you the Bigfoot story,
or at least that I have a big foot story. He said you
had one, that's all he said. He's very helpful this way. He's
my intelligence gathering arm of my organization. And I need to pay him more
because you know, he'll say things like, oh he saw a big foot
and boom, that's it. Okay, yeah, yeah, Well I also
alluded to it in the chat that we had going and it was I honestly,
at this point, I don't even recall what year it was. It
was. I'd say early two thousands based on like where I was living at
the time and all that. And it was during hunting season and specifically rifle
season, and I was on a power line on a hillside. So I
was at the top of the hill looking down watching for deer crossing, and
the people I was with they were doing a deer drive, walking through the
woods in the direction of the power line, trying to push them towards me.
Absolutely nothing came out, but at some point I did see a figure
standing on the woodline, kind of hidden in the shadows. Now, it's
rifle season, so you have to have a certain amount of blaze orange on
so that you don't get shot. Right. This thing was solid black.
And I'm not talking you know, black clothing. I'm talking the entire face.
Everything was shrouded in black. And this was around dusk, and I
sat there and it was far enough away that I could see that it was
clearly a figure, and I ended up looking through the scope of my rifle
to see what it possibly was, and I couldn't make out any any real
details. And I just sat there watching it for so long, and this
thing was just motionless. I feel like it was just watching me as much
as I was watching it. And at some point it just turned and walked
right back into the woods. Hmm. I've had a lot of people suggest
that it was a black bear, which, yes, there are black bear
in this area. But if you ever see a black bear standing on its
hind legs, they don't do it for that long. Well, they don't
do that for that, They don't do it for that long. But they
also can't really pivot. No they can't. They don't have the swivel.
No, their hips don't allow it. No, no, they Yeah,
their construction is not meant for standing upright. It's it's it's okay to stand
upright for a little bit. But it doesn't walk upright all the time they
wig humanoids do. It's a bear, you know, it's meant to be
able to pop up and look around and then you know, go back down
and run fast. Right. Yeah, And it does not have the hippie
swivel capability at all. Yeah. When everyone else showed up to pick me
up to driving back home, he said, oh, did you see anything?
Nope, time to got get out of here. There was not any
dear new it's time to leave. I honestly I did not talk about it
for probably three to four years. I did not tell anybody. I believe
that for sure. For sure. I've heard enough people with their sightings that
they're just like no. I feel like that was a really big turning point
for me, because even leading up to that, I would say, yeah,
sure I believe in Bigfoot. Yeah, yeah, he's probably out there
somewhere. But then you see it and it's just, you know, there's
that certainty that it's almost painful, like it's it's a shock to the system
that yeah, there it is. Yeah. Just it's a confirmation that you
can't really be prepared for until it happens. Yeah. So why do you
think he looked so featureless to you, like you couldn't get detail through the
scope? Well he was. He was fairly far away, probably about one
hundred yards, and my scope was it's good scope, but it's not you
know, a telescopic scope. Right, it's you're not a sniper, no,
no, okay, But he was partially in shadows, first of all.
And I'm saying he just because I again had no features. I have
no clue what to base his possible gender on. But it was certain animals
there. For one, you get into any amount of shadow, it just
turns black and it absorbs light as much as anything else, and it seems
like that may have been what was going on. Yeah, and if he's
an animal, and it was like, if this is a physical, tangible
thing, it's going to have to be camouflaged in order to live in the
woods without being detected. So that's just a natural adaptation I would assume.
Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of people who have seen them in the
clearings for electrical lines and that behave You're of coming to the edge and stopping
and watching. Is that's I don't know how many stories I've read and heard
where people say and then it stopped, and then it stood there, and
then it watched and I felt like it was watching me. And that's the
typical behavior for any animal that's crossing a power line. Oh yeah, yeah,
especially if they're intelligent. And yeah, that's I do know that feeling
of that sort of I guess it's ontological shock. It's like you may know
that there are quote unquote big hairy man things in the woods, but it's
not the same as actually knowing right it. It hits with a with a
visceral, almost violent shocked the stomach. To me, it hits in the
stomach and then you get this kind of queasy feeling of oh oh, no,
oh no. And I didn't have that with with Bigfoot. I had
it with the first time I saw a solid looking UFO, and then I
had it again when I watched one of the little weird lights in the woods
come up close, turn into a little fairy and then fly away. I
didn't like either of those. Uh, and that are you talking about the
red bird? Yes, where my mom sees the bird and it's like,
oh, it's a bird, and I'm like looking at it, going on,
I don't say no bird, m And I couldn't talk to her for
the longest time after, you know, the whole thing was over, and
I just couldn't, you know, for a little bit, even speak coherently.
And you know, she just kept going on about the bird as we
walked along you know, where'd it go? I don't And I was just
like, it wasn't a bird, It didn't go anywhere. There was no
bird. Yeah, I know, so well, you know, why didn't
you see the But I can't believe he didn't see the bird. It's it
was bright red. Oh well, I'm sorry, Ma, I didn't see
it. I just didn't see it. But I have not seen Bigfoot,
but I have heard something that we took to be Bigfoot, and it sounded
like Bigfoot recordings that were on the internet. So that was I have to
admit that I was briefly stupid and thought of walking into the woods toward it
because I so wanted to see what was making that racket. But I didn't
my dog that I had gone out to, you know, bring into the
house because she was like, I don't know her her doghouse was maybe thirty
feet from the woods. And then whatever it was was running back and forth
and thrashing about and shaking you know, young trees and hollering and hooping and
just sounding awful, was only like thirty feet past that man, and she
was terrified. And this dog feared no animal, no animal. She didn't
like people. She was afraid of people except for my husband and I and
MORGANA. She she was afraid of, you know, all people, but
but animals like deer, horses, big dogs, coyotes. She didn't didn't
care snakes, she feared nothing like that. But whatever was out there she
was terrified by. She she just she was having none of it. She
wouldn't look toward it. She wouldn't even like when I started to step toward
it with my hand on her collar after I had unlatched her, she just
she just froze. She just refused to go toward the woods. And then
I was like, Okay, yeah, you're right, this is stupid.
I have an X file special uh flashlight that's not working very well. Uh
and uh, if you're that scared of it, then I should probably be
scared of it too. So yeah, okay, let's go in the house.
Then the other dog wouldn't look at it either, and wow, Yeah,
Lirial was afraid of nothing. She loved everything except little tiny dogs.
She didn't like them, but she loved people, she loved animals, and
she just would keep her head turned and wouldn't look at it. And we
heard it from inside. We we were you know, you know, waiting
for the beans and race I was making to be finished, and we heard
this howl and we both thought it was our dogs and we were like,
what are they all in at now? Because they were huskies, so you
know, they would they would sing to the coyotes and stuff. And I
was like, I bet the coyotes are out again, and you know,
went outside and just stopped and I was like, oh, Zack, it's
not coyotes. And he came out and he was like, what the hell
is that? And you know, we stood on the porch listening and looked
at at you know, Lerial that that was the one that was you know,
her doghouse was near the porch and she just was not looking at it
and not having it. But you know, and I was like, well
we should bring Nan in. That was the one closer to the woods.
And Zack said, I'm not going to go get her. I said,
I tell you what, Go get the phone and go ahead and dial nine
one and put your finger over the green button to make it dial, and
I'll go get the dog. And so, you know, I went slowly
and quietly, and you know, got close founder hidden sheet she had hid
herself behind the heat pump, between the heat pump and the house and this
little, tiny narrow Yeah, she was having none of him. She did
not like it at all. She was terrified and she was shaking. So,
you know, I get out there and I'm petting her, and I'm
you know, i'd pop my head up and look and try to see.
And it was so close. I could literally watch the path of it running
back and forth, by the way the undergrowth and the young trees shook,
and it was just and the feet it was. It was not a four
footed cadence. It was a two footed cadence. And it was big.
Whatever it was was big. And the sound that's what got Zack. The
sound, because of course he's a musician and he was, you know,
recording music at the time, so he listened very carefully to the sound in
between going would you hurry up because I don't want to stand here anymore.
He said that you could hear the resonance from a very big body, like
whatever made the sound had a very large chest to make that kind of resonance.
And so yeah, I did grab the dog and you know, ran
back to the porch and he grabbed the other dog, and we all went
in the house and it still kept going for a while, and it got
to the point where it was kind of like we just wanted to cover our
ears. The dogs went into the basement. They were having none of this
above ground where we can hear it thing. And when it stopped, we
tried to eat dinner. We couldn't, so to hell with the beans and
rice. We're done with that now. And he we started looking up every
animal that we could think of and their sounds, and listening to sound files.
And you know, I listened to black bears. I went ahead and
listened to grizzly bears, even though I knew that we don't have those in
Ohio. I listened to elkin. Of course they have the silly whistling noise.
I listened to white tailed bucks, white tailed does. I listened to
wild boar. I listened to Ferrell hogs. I mean, I just every
damn thing I could think of. Cougars, even though we're not supposed to
have them. I listened lions because I do know at that time, crazy
people kept you know, many azures in Ohio because it was legal to do
so, you know, So I started looking up African animals, you know.
I look at it. And then finally, from upstairs, I can
hear Zach's doing the same thing. And he had his monitor speakers from recording
and he found a sound file and played it and it was the sound and
I was like, that that's it. That's it, Zach, that's it.
What is it? He's a big foot? That is a f you
know it isn't you know, because of course I was thinking that when I
was outside. But I was like, nah, you're just crazy. Yeah,
that's not what it is. And he said, Nope, that's what
it is. I'm like, it's a moose, right, it's a moose.
Somebody had a moose. He's like, no, it's big foot.
And it was actually one of Matt Moneymakers recordings from Ohio. Oh interesting,
yeah, and i'd I was like, okay, it was bigfoot. Then
that I was like, okay, now I have to eat because I need
something to ground my skull. After that, oh god. And the worst
part was and the reason that I was like, it's not bigfoot was because
a friend of mine and his wife had been visiting that evening, which is
why we were eating dinner at like midnight. Because you know, they hadn't
left and they had already eaten, so we just, you know, we
were polite and didn't eat. But he had said something, now that we're
all in West Virginia or in Ohio again, and we're all close to West
Virginia, you and I and Tom will have to get together and go big
foot hunting and go out into the woods. And he's like, I got
a new camera. It's great. He's a videographer. He's like, and
we can just go and uh, you know, Tom is like wilderness guy,
so you know, we won't like, you know, starve or anything.
And I said, well, what am I going to be doing?
And he's like, oh, you're just the bait, you know, because
you're the weird You're the weirdest magnets. So you just you just you just
go along. And I was like hmm. Then after he left, then
all this noise started happening, and I was just like, my brain was
like, it is not bigfoot because he just talked about that and that's not
right. Yeah. I was like, I don't want to believe that we
conjured that mess up. I don't know. And so for years when i'd
tell that story, I wouldn't tell that part of it. Then we had
just talked about it. Okay, So what time of year was this?
It was early spring enough that there was leaves, but they weren't super super
big, but there were leaves, okay. And follow up question, were
there any major life events going on for you at this time? It was
before It was fairly soon before I had a miscarriage. M hmm. Yeah,
yeah, And I wondered that, like, it wasn't that long ago.
When I thought about it, I was like, you know, when
did the miscarriage happen? Was it before that or after that? And it
turns out after I looked at dates and looked at calendars and you know,
looked at at journal entries, it was after that. Hmm. I don't
really have any direction to go with that. It was just mostly I remember
hearing it's a very keeyan thing to find out what else is going on,
And I remember like Joshua Cutchen and Timothy Renter both are very big into asking
about the expanded events around the singular happening, yeah, and try to build
an idea around that possibly, Yeah, And that that's the thing is,
you know, I remember talking with Tim about it years and years later,
I think, like last year, and I was like, Tim, does
this mean I or or my friend or all of us together conjured the big
foot? Or did the environment listen to what we said and then point the
direction for the big foot? It was like, you know, all of
it's woo, But I'm like, you know, did we dream it up?
Or I mean, what happened. This is why I don't talk about
going, you know, hunting for bigfoot very often, because I don't want
this to happen again, especially not here in town. That would be terrible.
Oh yeah. I think this is a situation that is sort of like
like improv. You know, the answer is always yes and yes. Yes,
there is no yes no, but so always well yes and or maybe
there's a lot of maybes, so many maybes. And that's basically what Tim
said. He said, maybe you did conjure it. Maybe it was already
out there. And the reason you all talked about it and it came down
to your friend's mouth is because he kind of knew it was out there.
Right. I was like, you know, whatever it was, I did,
you know, call him the next day and tell him don't ever talk
about that at my house again, we can talk about it at your house
and it can go to your house. Because I didn't like it at all,
and I actually did call bfr O and report it. I was like
that this is not a sighting, but this is something that sounds very much
like it. I actually talked with their investigator for about forty five minutes,
and Zach talked with him, and Zach was he was like, you know
what really kills me is I actually had my studio that looks out on those
woods set up to record. He was like, I could have just flipped
a couple of switches and stuck a mic out the window. And he's like,
I feel so terrible that I didn't do it, But I couldn't think.
Well, you know, people ask me all the time. It's like,
there was hunting season, you had a rifle, you had a scope,
why didn't you shoot this thing? And I couldn't be sure. Yeah,
you could have shot a person exactly. It would be an absolutely suicidal
person wearing solid black and hunting season it. Yeah, if you can't see
your target, I'm not going to shoot it. No, you're not supposed.
I mean, okay, people who actually hunt, who are ethical hunters
don't just shoot at whatever is moving. It is not done. And but
again it was that shock factor too. Yeah, it's like what am I
looking at the the ontological you know, gut punch of what what is that?
But yeah, I can't imagine shooting at anything that's that's bipedal, humanoid
shaped. I mean, I just I can't. And there's lots of other
hunters who basically said, you know, I saw it, I had my
gun, I had my gun trained on it, but it couldn't do it
because it looked like a person. It's it's too human. Yeah, it's
very clearly not. But it's too close. Yeah it's And that to me
is just a no. And then you know there's the possibility that, you
know, okay, if you did shoot it and it you know, didn't
do anything. Oh yeah, that you know, that's been that's been reported
by Stan Gordon and various other investigators for decades that people shoot at it and
they're sure they hit it, but nothing happens. And this was not very
far from the Chestnut Ridge. Yeah, this was maybe thirty forty five minute
drive from Chestnut Ridge, So we're in the same area that all of that
took place yea. In fact, now that I think about it, Kevin
Paul is working on his third book and he actually I sent this report to
him because it's not in Greene County, but it's on the border right.
And in his second book he had a report that was very sel. It
wasn't a power line though, it was a right of way for a gas
line. Yeah. Yeah, that all of those places are. You know,
there's so many episodes of strange familiars where people are out and they you
know, cross one of those places, or they're up at the top of
a ridge looking down through the opening and there's you know, some two legged
something or other whatever it is, lurking watching them. This honestly makes me
wonder about their eyesight because they very clearly are avoiding us. Well, they
do it from such a distance that I don't know, maybe we just stand
out that much, but you know, clearly humans do not belong in the
woods. But yeah, they're they're at a distance. They usually have a
clear line of sight if they're crossing these these woodcuts or power lines or even
cross a road. Oh yeah, you know, and and you know,
trees on one side, trees on the other hanging over you know. Yeah,
I think that's part of why there's there's so many descriptions of them walking
across the road and looking over their shoulder towards the traffic, you know,
as they go across, because well it's a clear line of sight. Well
that would also help avoid blinding by headlights. Yeah, if they have like
hyper sensitive eyesight, headlights could potentially blind them entirely, so over their shoulder,
they're really only getting indirect light, right, Yeah, And I do
wonder about that because if their eyesight is really good for night vision, then
yeah, then then even if a high powered flashlight would be bad, you
know, for them to my crappy X file style flight did not cause any
problem because it was you know, about to die. It's like, okay,
now we know we have to keep fresh batteries in the flashlight at all
times, so well we know those batteries end up in the TV remote anyway.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and uh most of the time. You
know, I've also heard of people whose batteries have been you know, sucked
dry by something or another when when they most need to be used. So
who knows. I've run into that too, And it's not during anything paranormal.
It's just fresh batteries. You go to use it and they just immediately
die. Yeah, And it's made me wonder like what is going on around
me because I've I've stopped and looked around the woods when that happens. Yeah,
Yeah, it's like, Okay, where is he? You know?
That happened? Yeah, And you know, it's interesting. I've been thinking
this for a while, but I've never really you know, articulated it.
But you know, all of the bigfoot sightings that are in the right of
ways or especially with the big power lines, there's a lot of UFO sightings
in those places. The UFOs liked to hover under or over the power lines
and travel along them. And I mean, my grandfather was of the opinion
that they were sucking electricity out and and he was not I mean, you
know, he was an atheist. He you know, he was not formally
educated. He educated himself, so he was always reading like you know,
encyclopediasm stuff. And when he would see things hovering over the power lines and
he said, you know, it had an orange glow. It was like
a sphere that was orange. And he said, in it it hovered over
there and it started to glow brighter over the power lines. And you know,
he had no reason to make stuff like that up. And in fact,
he's the person who taught me how to tell an airplane and uh a
satellite from anything wonky. You see your satellites they go straight, They just
they just go straight. They don't like disappear, they don't like zig zag.
He's like, in planes pretty much travel straight to Yeah, but they
had flashing lights most of the time, change color based on perspective. Yep,
and the and he said, the FAA lights are these here blah blah
blah blah blah, and uh if it would watch you know, a couple
hours go by and something goes zig zagging along. He's like, see that,
that's one of those. I said, So what do you think they
are? He's like, I don't know. I just call them them or
those. Well, let me throw this out there to you. What if
they're not sucking the power but they are generated by the electromagnetism that's generated from
these high tension power lines. Okay. And my feeling is is you could
be correct, but you have to have a human there exactly observe it and
help it come into being. I guess, yeah, to create it or
something. I've had this this pet theory that I've been tossing around for probably
five to ten years at this point, and until recently I couldn't really get
too much information on it. Have you ever heard of telric currents? Are
those the underground currents? Yes? The geomagnetic currents. Yeah. So for
the longest time, the US Geological Survey has done studies on this. There
was a map that you could actually look at and see the lines, but
it hadn't been done. I hadn't seen an update since like the sixties.
Right, it hasn't been updated for a long time. Yeah, Oh,
I have news for you. Is it updated now? It's updated? Now?
Good. I actually went to look for it in preparation for this show,
and it is a It almost looks like a weather model. So it's
got that color gradation based on the variances. And I'll tell you West Virginia
is like beyond red. Yep, it's up into like the pink almost white
color because it is such a high variance in electromagnetism. Yeah. And this
isn't the geomagnetism. This is in the atmosphere above the state, right,
so it's like everywhere around us. Yeah, and you know it ain't all
it ain't all cell towers because you don't need cell towers where nobody lives.
Yeah, that's true. Oh, you don't need all the cell towers in
the world. Yeah. And even based on the original maps. And I
had this theory based on just weird stuff that was happening in Man County where
I live. And even on the old maps you could see where there were
multiple lines that were overlapping over the county. And now I look at the
new updated map and it's just solid white. It is that is that is
interesting, and that is bizarre and you can actually see it follow the shape
of the mountain range. Yeah. Oh that is interesting. I'll send you
a link to it after we get off here. Yeah, definitely, because
I'm going to send it right on to Chris and go, Chris, plug
that into your map thing. Yeah, and then we'll look at you know,
West Virginia sightings and that will put them together and see what happens.
Oh yeah, yeah. And I believe parts of Ohio are pretty far up
there too. Yeah. Yeah. It is a weird also a weird place
here. There's all kinds of strange stuff, like there are sightings of spherical
balls of light going into and out of Lake Erie, for example. Oh
yeah, and that's that's been going on for a long time. I even
have an uncle who, you know, basically was sitting out on his dike.
Uh that sounds weird, But the Army Corps of Engineers built a dike
around the lake so that they could build houses right next to the lake without
the lake, you know, deciding to kill everybody and flood them out.
So it's just just a big old pile of rocks that just extends around chunks
of Lake Erie, and it's about I want to say, forty feet high
something like that. So when you get those big, big waves, when
there's storms and stuff, it doesn't destroy the houses. And so he had
a house. It was right, you know, you go out in the
backyard, which was this flat patch of sand and crap in crappy grass,
and then you went up the steps to the top of the dike and there
was the lake boom right there, and you could you could watch all kinds
of stuff. And he did, and he had a sailboat and he fished
and did all this stuff. And yeah, he saw a few weird balls
of light either pop up out of the lake or most of the time it
was go down in the lake. So yeah, this reminds me of something
I read in grad school. I had a book. It was the Encyclopedia
of North American or Native American Mythology, something along those lines, and the
entries were not expansive and they didn't really have a lot of cross referencing options
or anything like that. But there was something called a meteor fire dragon that
supposedly was an Algonquin story around the Great Lakes, and it was a blazing
light with a fiery tail that would go into the lakes. And the story
was that these lights or the dragons I guess, or whatever term they actually
used, because clearly it wasn't going to be dragon, they lived under the
waves to prevent them from fully combusting and burning up. Hmm. That's interesting.
Yeah. Now I'm trying to remember if the Shawnee people were one of
the Algonquin language groups. I think they were. But they have a creature
that is the most powerful creature in their spirit stories, and it's a water
panther. Oh yeah, yeah, So I wonder if it's related, because
you know, the dragon that sounds like you know, white people wrote it
down and said, well, we don't know what to call it. We're
going to call it a dragon. Well it's a flying surf and so clearly
yeah, yeah, yeah, but huh yeah. I think the water panther
is is based on a similar mythos because I believe it could fly and it
was a horned panther from what I remember, Yes, yes, yes,
which the rivers. I always wonder about that because I picture like, what
did the horns look like, because there weren't really animals around that had horns
in the way that we think of with cow horns. There were buffalo and
if you go far enough west into Ohio, yeah, you probably would have
run into them. There were forest buffalo here. Okay, we have a
ghost buffalo here in Athens, right outside of city limits. That was the
last forest buffalo and it was shot in he Actually this is interesting. He
actually had a federal Army guards who who were stationed twenty four hours a day
to keep watch on him. And somebody's you know, somebody was asleep at
the at the post or you know, was taken care of natural business.
I don't know, but somebody somebody, a poacher came in and shot him.
Oh man, that's sad. Yeah. Yeah. But there's there's a
street here in Athens that's original name was Buffalo Trace because that's where the buffalo
would travel from the hills and the forest down to the river and back.
So they made a street out of it. Nice. Yeah, that sounds
like a lot of the roads here where I if they're the roads are terrible
because they're so narrow. Well, it turns out they're all still the old
wagon train roads. Yeah, so these have not changed in you know,
three hundred years. Yeah. Oh yeah, there's there's so many dirt roads
around Appalachia, but particularly most of my experiences in West Virginia, and yeah,
they're still the old you know, settler trails and stuff like that.
And oh, these are the roads in town, Oh, like are the
original roads that were laid out during the founding and they have not changed at
all except to have brick laid down and eventually they were paved. Yeah,
that's true. There's a paved road in Putnam County, Route thirty five,
and you can tell that it was originally you know, a a just a
wagon track and there it still falls apart. There's parts that just slide down
the hill and they keep fixing it, and they keep putting up guardrails and
they keep sliding down the hill. So yeah, yeah, and it's like
every couple of years you look and it's like, oh, the brick is
coming up. Time to repave. Yeah yeah yeah. Appalachian roads, Boy,
we could do a whole show about that. There's some there's some fun
stuff and Appalachia well, there's so much that was based on roads and railways
and travel. You know, you've got crossroads, you've got all the tunnels,
You've got the covered bridges, all the water crossings. There's all kinds
of directions you could go with that. Oh yeah, and then there's the
abandoned mines. Those are always yes, those are great. There was a
mine on the property where I grew up as a child, and there were
some weird things on the property, but I never had any incidents with the
mine itself. M Granted, I wasn't supposed to be in the line,
but you know, there were fossils in the shale, so I had to
go in a little bit just to get fossils. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
of course I understand enough to avoid the bats, right, yeah,
yeah, yeah, no, I understand that if I had been a kid,
I would have done the same thing, because well why not. Yeah,
And the fossils were beautiful. They were fern fossils, and was the
really dark black ones that stand out and they have so much detail against the
gray of the slate. But they were so brittle, Yeah, so incredibly
brittle. Yeah. Yeah, shale is is delicate. And yeah, I
always used to find I was always distraught because I never found arrowheads at a
grandparents farm, but I always found fossils. And it was in part of
the state that was that was underwater, that was an ocean at one point,
so I was always finding you know, little little spiral shells and you
know, trial a bite bits and things and oh okay, so I roughly
know where you were then, yeah, yeah, yeah. The whole arrowhead
thing always disappointed me too. Like I know, in town, there was
I think it's still called Indian Park. It's a little, tiny, tiny
park and it was either an area where they did the flint napping or there
was a cash there because people my parents' age used to go there in the
sixties and seventies as kids and they could just take a trowel, stick it
in the ground and come up with an arrowhead. And it was a tiny,
tiny area, no bigger than I don't know, maybe twenty by twenty
yeah feet, Yeah, it's small. And then to the north of us
we had the Warrior Trail, and I was the the one. It's the
hm The Warrior Trail, if I remember, goes east to west from Ohio
to Seneca Trail. Oh, yeah, it goes north south, right,
Yeah, I do know that one. I remember that from West Virginia history
all of those many years ago. Yeah, and we were close enough that
from the hill where I lived I could look over to the next ridge and
say, okay, the trail is right over there. That's awesome. But
never found arrowheads, didn't really find any artifacts. Most of what I found
was maybe at best early eighteen hundreds pennies, yeah, which is still pretty
cool. Oh yeah, that's really awesome. Yeah. I the only person
that ever found like something truly truly old, and it wasn't in a place
that it was should have been there. My guests would be that somebody had
brought it there. But but my dad went under the foundation of the house
I grew up in for the first nine years of my life, and it
had been busted up into apartments. So he was in the crawl space under
the house and he found a scraper. Oh wow, that is is uh,
it looks like granite. Honestly, it doesn't look like flint. It's
not. It doesn't have that glass like sharp edge, right. But it
very very definitely was held in a hand. It could have been a hand
axe too, but it's gorgeous. And he found it and he pulled it
out and he's like, look what I found. And I really hope that
he does give it to the Cultural Center and Charleston at some point because it's
really old and really cool. But how he found it in like, you
know, just sort of laying there. Oh yeah, it's weird, you
know. I mean, the dirt had been dug about at some point.
But and his theory is that a kid found it and was playing with it
and took it under there where their parents didn't know that, you know,
they were under there playing in the dirt at some point before you know,
we lived there. I mean, it could have even been a groundhog just
tossing around dirt. Well, that's true. It could have been it could
have come out of a tunnel from yeah, a digging animal who was like,
what the what is this boulder doing in here? Get out? Get
out? Yeah, And it could be a still be a scraper even though
it's not flint, because from my understanding, once you get into the southern
part of West Virginia, there was no easy access to nappable material, but
there was a stone available that they could grind, and some of the artifacts,
especially from like the early Adena and Hopewell periods, there are these stone
artifacts that are ground stone rather than copper or flint neat, Yeah, because
Ohio has flint all over the place, right right, but you know there's
there's Uh. I still haven't found an arrowhead in our river, but I
have found pieces of flint that you know have that were worked. And then
there was that weird rock that just showed up in our house and we still
don't know how that happened. But okay, I got to hear that story.
Okay, so we were watching television and the kid Fox. How old
was he at that point? I want to say thirteen because that's about the
right age for the sense of humor. He walks to go to the bathroom,
which is like right next door, so you just have to walk out
into the the you know, hallway and boot turn and then you're in the
bathroom and right in the middle of the hallway is a rock and it's rounded
looking, and he was like, where'd that come from? And he picks
it up and he's like, hey, ma, hey, ma, I
found a rock. And I'm like, you're always find in rocks because I
had always have to go through his pockets and make sure there are no rocks
before I wash the clothes. Which, hey, that's fine because my grandmother
and my mother said, I hope you someday have a child that keeps rocks
and crap in their pockets. So yeah, that's why you're gonna have a
kid that's just like you. Yep, yep. I had to and that's
just how it is. So I was like, he was like, no,
no, no, it's right here in the in the in the center
of the hallway. And I was like, oh, so, you know,
I got up and looked at it, and he's and it looks it's
weird, it's carved, funny, he's but I don't know if it's carved,
And so it's a triangle, a rounded triangle round on the back,
and then there's a carved bit or maybe I can't tell. It's smooth,
so maybe it was carved at one time and then left in water and that
smoothed it. But he said, it looks like a coochie mom, and
it does. It looks like a vulval mound, like from the front.
Huh, like really looks like. I mean, the people I've shown it
to have gotten yeah, that's a couccie. And so it's name permanently in
our house is Coochie Rock. But I just I couldn't believe it. I
was I was just like, what the hell? You know, why is
it here? You know? We tried to come up with his so I
showed it to Morgan. Morgana, did you bring this in the house and
just leave it somewhere and then not tell me? And she's like nope.
I'm like, we're you. You don't remember this? And she's like,
nope, Zach did you know? He's like no, He's like And then
the kids said, well, maybe maybe it was stuck in the popads of
one of the dogs, but none of the dogs were big enough to have
popads that would encompass something that big. So, yeah, that's one of
the three rocks that have shown up in my house. And I'm guessing you
don't wear shoes indoors. No. No. And one follow up question,
was it warm when it was found? Yeah? You know, that's the
first thing Josh Kutchen asked me. And it didn't seem to be It seemed
to be ambient room temperature. Okay, yeah, No. I have recently
heard something fall from what appeared to be the ceiling of my kitchen. It
was a shard of glass and I had a cat in there with me because
you know, he was helping me make coffee and was, you know,
begging for milk. And I was like no, but he watched it fall.
I watched his head, you know, go down, and then he'd
sort of dove after whatever. My chink on the tile, and so I
leaned over it and I grabbed it and it was a shard of glass,
and that one was warm, and yet nothing was broken. No. Yeah,
see that definitely sounds like an apport. Yeah. Yeah, and I've
had the opposite. I've had things completely disappear when I dropped them several times.
Oh yeah, that's a that's always a thing. And I've had that
happened too, and that's a thing, and I don't like it because it
seems like, all right, who's down there? Who grabbed it? Yeah
it? Why did you want that? The one that really stands out of
my mind is, well, I have two that stand out. The first
one is a so I used to do leather working. Oh is it the
reenacting? I did historical reenactment in grad school because I was a history major.
It all went together. So I did a lot of leather work and
sewing to create my costume. And one day I dropped this really big leather
needle. Yeah, that's a triangular tip to pierce the leather, right,
Yeah, And I dropped it on a tile floor, and that is definitely
not something you want to lose because if you step on that, you're going
to have an enormous hole in your foot and you're gonna have to go to
the er because that one you can't just yeah, yeah, that's bad.
Well it bounced once. I heard the sound and that was it and never
found it. Hardwood floor, it was a would look lamon it. Oh
that's even worse because it doesn't really have the cracks that you know, it
could have fallen into and an old hardwood floor where you know they shrink and
floor two three times with a broom and never found it. To this day,
it's never shown up. Somebody was making shoes somewhere. Yeah, I
don't know. That's one of those. Just okay, I know, whatever
happens. And the other one it was I was working at a metaphysical shop.
I forget what exactly I was bagging up, but I was putting like
stones or it was something into little baggies for sale, and I went to
put this one in a bag, totally missed the bag. Somehow I heard
it again. It bounced one time on the carpet and vanished. Somebody wanted
that rock. Yeah, And that's kind of what the shop owner said too.
She's like, well it's theirs now, yeah, questioned it. Yeah,
it's it's like, don't don't get too you know, into trying to
find that. That's yeah. I I've lost so many pieces of jewelry that
way, so I have to be careful and like bribe the little critters that
and it's like, okay, now have have some have some things to eat?
Here, have things to eat have this rock over here that I bought
it at the rock shop special for you. Please don't steal my stuff.
But yeah, I've had a ring drop off my finger onto a hardwood floor
and disappear, and then it appeared at a friend's house. She she was
going up into her sewing room and it was right in the middle of the
floor, and she knew it had to have been mine because while it looked
like something that would be mine. She called and she's like, did you
leave a ring here at my house? And I'm like, no, I
all the rings that I had when I last was there are still here.
And she's like, oh, well, there's this ring and she described it
and I went, that's the one that fell off my finger and was nowhere
to be found in the bedroom. That is so bizarre. So yeah,
who knows what that is. There's a whole book called just one of those
Things, Yeah jots, and that's the book. The stories in that book,
man, like, you know, a letter falling from the sky and
landing on a person's lap. You know, people think that cannot possibly happen,
but and then you know, weird stuff happens. I think one of
my favorite stories out of that book is when they cracked open a piece of
coal and a toad jumped out, took a few hops, and then just
died. Yep, I remember reading that. I don't think it's in a
Keel book, but some somebody, one of the older authors wrote about it.
It might have been Charles, Charles Burletts maybe, oh, it could
be Fort. It could have been And it could have been Charles Fort,
that's the other person it could have been. But yeah, I read that
as a kid and was like, whoa. I read that. I was
just like, what the And that was the whole story, Like there's nothing
else around, It's just that short little burb and it's just like, what
the hell? Yeah, what did somebody? You know? Did somebody do
an autopsy on that little toad? Here's the toad weed? Yeah, it's
like did it dry up? Did it shrivel up? But I mean,
what what happened? Yeah? I have questions about this. I have many
questions. Why didn't you feel? Yeah, what species? What kind?
You know? Was it a? And then there's the the somebody found what
looks like a spark plug and coal. Oh yeah yeah, and that's that's
messed up. So that one I know they said it was metal or partially
metal, part part look ceramic. Now that one I it could also be
a fossil because and it would be weird to have like a crinoid fossil in
coal or shale. Yeah, but it's possible to have a fossil that has
very strong iron elements, so like the ones we have here where I live.
We've actually just been finding a petrified wood in a creek near an old
coal mine, and it is super heavy. It's orange, it's got a
lot of iron ore in the fossil itself. It's not metallic and it's not
magnetized. But I could almost see like a tree branch or a stem or
something like that with an extended core made of mostly iron that could look like
an old spark plug. Yeah, that's pretty cool. I like that.
Yeah, it's fun because the kids they go out and they play in the
creek and they just show up and they're like, hey, what's this.
Well, that is a piece of wood that's older than dinosaurs. WHOA,
Yeah, that's exciting. That is exciting the kids. Yeah. I think
more kids need to play in creeks these days. I just do. That's
that was my great joy growing up as playing in the ponds and playing in
creeks find in all kinds of treasures. I remember, because we lived on
a farm in the middle of nowhere, we had to have deliveries of limestone
gravel for the road. Right. Yeah, I remember as a kid learning
how to do a paleontological excavation because I had found a fossil in the gravel.
So I set up a rope grid across the road, blocking off this
whole area of study. And then my dad comes home from work and he
can't get through. I think, what is this? Yeah, so so
try explaining to a five or six year old, Hey, we need to
move these ropes so I can get through. But no, no, you'll
run over the excavation site. Okay, I hate to tell you this,
kid, but that's that's Oh it's already messed up. Yeah, it's it's
done been messed up. You know, one hundred miles from here, because
that's where these rocks came from. Yeah, Morgana is amazing. She has
this amazing ability to just look down and find a treasure. It's the weirdest
thing. We go on vacation and we get to the place we're staying and
she gets out of the car and there's a big, chunky, you know,
rounded gravel that's basically being used as mulch in a partition of the parking
lot, and there's a tree growing in the middle of it, and she
like walks over there and glances down and pops up with a fossil nice,
just like boop boop. There was. I was with her and Fox and
one of Fox's friends and we were digging around in the Hawking River and there's
a big gravel bed that is one of the places where you know, stuff
gets deposited from being pushed and rolled by the river and then also you know,
silt and stuff gets stirred up and then laid there, so you get
all kinds a neat old stuff. Hey, the kid looked down and popped
up with with an old medicine bottle. Nice, And I was just like,
hm, see there you go. You're always doing that. You're just
always doing that. Yeah. We found some some really cool treasures for Chad
and Tim to send home with them. When Tim visited, I was like,
Hey, this came out of the river and this is a piece of
a brick that's from the old asylum on the hill, and Tim didn't want
that one. He was like, Nope, you can keep that one.
Chad brick, why not, I know, right, make bricktopst out of
it. I'm sure that would work for something. Yeah, I can think
of quite a few things that would probably work for but yeah. So she
she just has this ability to just look down. Oh look there's a river
oyster shellll and oh it's still got a tinge. Oh look a crow feather.
Oh look, yeah, whatever, She's always fine and stuff that reminds
me. The other day, I had this weird knowing, I guess is
the way to subscribe this. I was visiting my parents and I went to
open the door to the basement and I'm reaching for the handle, and in
my head I get this idea. It says there's going to be a snake
on the other side. So I pause for a moment. I'm like,
okay, that's weird. Open the door and I'm looking because at this point
now I'm careful. I want to make sure there's no snake there. And
I don't see anything except a little tiny piece of paracord. I was like,
okay. My dad was just moving stuff around and he dropped it and
no big deal. Well turns out it was a little ribbon snake. Oh,
little tiny thing. But it's just one of the weird things. It's
like almost a statement from the snake itself. Yeah. As it saw me
approaching, it was like, hey, i'm here, Yeah, step on
me. Yeah, like totally don't tread on me, dude, Like no.
And I told my parents about it, and my dad's like, oh,
hey, that's cool. There was a it was a ring neck I'm
sorry, not a ribbon snake. It was a ringneck racer. Apparently there
was a fairly large one under the porch and it had had babies. Ah,
that's so awesome. Yeah, I like, I like harmless snakes.
I'm not as fond of rattlers and no copper heads, even though copper heads
you can usually just kind of go along, do your snaky thing over there,
just I'm not gonna mess with you. Rattlers can get kind of testy
though. Yeah. That's why I'm never upset when I see a black rat
snake, no matter how big it is. So these things they eat the
venomous ones, So yep, it's okay, yep, that's exactly how I
feel about them now, they'll still make me jump and possibly make a squeak
like a little girl because they're so big and they're moving, you know,
and for a second it's like, oh my god, you know, and
this is why I'm never going to Australia, because you know, they've got
too many things there that are too scary. And no, no, yeah,
they have birds there that want to kill you, so I'll pass.
They have birds. They have hunting spiders that kill birds, and they have
all the poisonous snakes in the world, and the saltwater crocodiles. Yep,
they got craps. They got all these big great white sharks. No,
there's just too much. No. Oh in the box jellyfish. Oh,
I forgot about those. Those are terrible too. There's just so many scorpions.
Nah, Nope. And then you nump over to New Zealand and there's
nothing, I know, weird, very weird. It's probably probably the uh
they sent everything over its Astralia just just you know, give it, give
it to them, just we don't want no. Yeah, yeah, I
saw, I was I was doing genealogy and I saw that one of my
family members. First off, that I have family on my mother's side.
That's name. Their last name is Snape. And I was like, well,
that's just okay, uh and moving along and uh. I also saw
that two of this woman's sons. Uh. One went to jail and the
other went to Australia. I was like, so, no, not only
do they have the last name Snape, but criminal activity was occurring. I'm
like, yeah, I leave it to my family, uh, you know,
because they got to be dishonorable in some way or something. And I
just I was like, so somebody did make it to Australia. Now I
wonder, you know, did they get there and get eaten by a bird
or a snake or a sark? Yeah, because of like our family just
does not have great looks. Well, I wouldn't be too concerned about them
being criminals because at that time they were sending everybody to Australia that they could.
Oh I know it was it was a debt thing. Yeah. The
one who went to jail was was actually a thief of some sort or another.
Yeah, but the tax thing they shipped people out, yeah yeah.
The other one was as a debt or so I ast not build debtor's prisons
will just give him to Australia. Well, could you imagine that, like
your brother, say, like murdered someone and he goes to jail. You
missed a payment on your taxes and they're shipping you halfway across the world.
How is this fair? Yeah? And that's a hell of a way to
colonize something too. I mean you generally you have a colony and you you
know, I want to colonize it in a colonizing kind of way. You
know, I'm just gonna send the flotsam and jetsam and just you know,
I'm just done with them. Yeah. And it's not like there weren't people
already there. Thank you, thank you, it's do we have to?
Can we not? Okay? I guess not. But yeah I read that
and was like, well, I guess Australia has some of my people there.
I wonder if they turned out well, uh, who knows? Uh?
What kind of uh have you had any other range you know, happenings
around you. I really love the snake telling you, dude, don't step
on me. Yeah, and that was a recent one too. I have
all kinds of weird stuff. If I told all of them, we'd be
here another two or three hours. Well, we can't do that, but
you can always come back. Yeah, yeah, I know you're looking into
strange light phenomena. Yes, so I have something that I meant it.
I was going to tell you anyway, so might as well do it on
the podcast. This was, and I can tell you exactly where it was,
what year it happened. It was at night. It was at an
old boy scout camp and I was there with a club from high school and
we were having a camp out there, and we were walking up this old
gravel road that looks over a field and on the far side of the field
there is a tree line that's on a slight hillside right, and it's not
super steep, but it's enough that you can see above the fence line by
the road to see the woodline. And we're walking back and it's night,
it's a full moon and everything, so we're out there without flashlights and we
see this light on the woodline and it stays completely level and it just travels
the full length of the field and disappears. And it was white blue something.
It was a very bright color. And we still I remember standing there
trying to figure out what this could have been and we were talking out loud,
me and my friends saying, okay, well there's no noise, so
it's not a four wheeler. Wasn't bright enough to be a four wheeler anyway.
It was moving way too fast to have been someone with a flashlight,
and it stayed too level to have been a flashlight. Yeah, it wasn't
a firefly. Even at a distance, it still would have shown up like
yellow, and it didn't blink, so it stayed solid the entire distance of
the field. It wasn't a laser pointer because that was the wrong color.
I don't know if you could even get a white or blue laser pointer to
go that distance, and even then you would see it as it travels and
hits the tree chops wouldn't like illuminate. So that was a really strange one.
So what year was that? That would have been the nineteen ninety nine
two thousand school year, because I was a senior in high school, Okay,
and I believe it was probably I want to say it was early two
thousand because it would have been after winter. Hmm. I like that.
Yeah, And that area has all kinds of legends. There is actually a
ghost story from that one too. There's a little old house that we would
use there, and like that house is apparently haunted and I have firsthand experience
with that. And there's the story of a witch that used to live in
the ruins down the street where we were visiting. And this is all on
this property that eventually became a boy scout camp. Huh. And it is
on a very large outcropping of limestone. Oh so all of this starts to
tie together. It sounds like something that there might be a little bit more
going on in this area. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean you've
got limestone, you've got a ghost light or whatever you want to call it.
And yeah, one of the things about those those weird little lights,
when they're traveling in a straight line, it's either slower then a person would
walk, or faster and they don't bounce, because that's the thing about someone
holding a light, right is of course, you know. And when you
said it was fast, I was like, I can imagine what it would
look like if it was somebody jogging with a flashlight. You know, it
would not be smooth at all. Well, that's why everyone's first instinct was
four wheeler. Yeah, yeah, even it was that even they they kind
of you know, because of course they're touching the earth, and you know,
the earth isn't perfectly flat, so they're gonna you know, bounce up
and down a little bit. You know. That never occurred to me.
Yeah. Yeah. And plus you'd hear the noise. Yeah, that's why
I ruled out so early. There was no sound. But yeah, yeah,
if it were out there, even if it were silent, it would
still bounce with the contours of the ground. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever you
had was something going from point A to point B on its business in the
evening, and that's what it was. It was something moving. My favorite
thing that I have found that explains these things, these weird lights, is
that they are bioluminescent owls. Okay, it's the stupidest thing that I've ever
heard in my life, but that they supposedly have some sort of fungus on
them. It is bioluminescent on their feathers, and they're white owls, so
that means they're barn owls, and they fly in a straight line and they
glow. And yeah, I told that to Josh when I found it,
and I sent him the the you know, quote from the book and he
was just like, oh my god. I'm like, yeah, I remember
hearing him laugh about that on another show. Yeah. I was like,
yeah, I was the one who brought the goodness to him. I was
like, this is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. One of the best
possible real explanations I've heard was and I don't even remember the name of this,
the documentary I was watching is bioelectric plasma generated through compression of limestone and
courts? Yes, yes, And it was on some sort of science documentary
I was watching, and it was in Scandinavia. I believe it was Norway.
They were studying this. It was either Norway or Sweden, and they
were they were geologists studying it. Yeah. Yeah, Hestelin, Norway is
one of the places that they've had geologists and physicists and you know, all
sorts of scientific people with tons of equipment set up, you know, and
they catch it and they have spectography and all of this. And one of
the the more sensible things has been plasma generated by the movement of quartz and
limestone. The problem is is they they have other things that have been sited,
so they have things like they'll have glowing humanoid shapes. Oh yeah,
yeah, yeah, and m and sometimes the little light guys will kind of
follow the scientists to their bunk house, you know, where they stay when
they're there. And well, see that takes us back to the observation and
the observation theory. It has to have humans to to manifest. Yeah,
yeah, and then when it has humans to manifest, sometimes it follows them
home like a puppy who's lost in the woods, and these things happen.
But yeah, Josh and I are going to talk to somebody who's who's been
there doing some of the studies and and you know, get some of these
stories because there's you know, there's so many possible explanations, none as good
as the owls. But I find it so fascinating that just about every paranormal
thing has something to do with lights. Yeah, and that's just amazing to
me. So tell me about this ghost story. Before we go, I
was wondering if you wanted to get into that. Yeah, I did too,
did This is an entirely different camp out that was going on. So
I was there at the same location in this house. I was supposed to
have been camping out in a tent that night, but I ended up getting
a migraine. So this very small house had a second story attic area,
and there were a couple of old cots and beds in there, and they
were covered with plastic like you do for like the sixties and seventies, the
plastic covering, right, Yeah, So the owner allowed me to go up
there and sleep on one of the costs because it was dark and dank,
and like he could keep other students from going up there and bothering me because
he understood. And I'm up there, laying down, and I've got a
migraine to a point where I can't quite sleep. Yeah, but I don't
want to be disturbed. And I hear the door to the attic open.
I hear someone walk up the stairs, walk over to the bed, felt
someone sit on the edge of the bed, heard the creaking of the plastic
as if they sat down, and they were watching me. I was turned
away, looking in the opposite direction. And I didn't want to be disturbed,
so I didn't. I pretended to be asleep, basically, right.
And then they get up. I feel the bed shift again, and I
hear them walk down the stairs, but I never hear the door close,
and I only realized that part after the fact, because later that night I
got up and I went back down to the main area where everybody was camping
out and having fun, and I was like, hey, I don't know
who checked on me earlier. I was still in a lot of pain.
I didn't want to be disturbed. I was, I was awake, but
you know, I was just pretending to be asleep. And the owner of
the house looked at me and says, I was guarding the door. I
wasn't allowing anybody to go up there and check on you. Nobody went up
there. Oh boy, this is not home too. This was There was
a kitchen, a living room area, and then basically two corridors leading from
one to the other, and then the stairwell going up to the attic.
That was and yeah, there's It's not the first time I've had something sit
on the side of the bed as if it were checking on me, but
that one had the most visceral reaction that I could, you know, you,
I could feel the bed, I could hear the plastic being I heard
the footsteps, the door, all of it. Yeah, so that was
a very concrete encounter. Yeah. So whatever it was, whether it's always
physical or not. Was at least partly physical, right, And I questioned
whether it was because, like I said, this is not the first time
I've had that happen. I questioned whether it wasn't something that follows me or
if it was something that was at the house. Yeah, that's a good
question. That's a good question. So is the house haunted or were you
haunted? Probably both? Yes, generally I think that that's the case.
And it could be another situation where because of the limestone and the terrain,
it'll loud whatever was following me to manifest. Yeah, yeah, I like
that. I like I do like the idea that there is energy needed to
manifest semi physical form. Because of course, these anomalous lights. Until I
took a photograph of one, for the longest time, I was like,
they're mostly probably in our heads, m because some people can't see them still,
and they can be standing right next to me and I'd be like,
it's right there. Yeah, you can't miss it. It's right there.
And it's not just the lights. It's like that bird that your mother saw,
and same thing happens with Bigfoot. Yeah, some people just cannot see
it. So what's happening there. Yeah, and then you know, but
once I took photographs of them, you know, I started out with just
you know, holding my iPhone up so I can see, Can I see
them through the camera? You know, and I would see, oh,
I can. And for the longest time, I didn't even you know,
I was like, I'm not going to take a picture of them, because
whatever it is, I don't want to pissed off, because it's like right
up the hill from my house. You know. It's like you don't take
creepy pictures of your neighbors because you don't want to upset them. But one
night I did actually take a photograph, and what it taught me was,
yes, there is light. There is something that is exuding some sort of
photons out into the world. The colors are different, so something about the
camera does not pick up what my eyes see exactly. So there is probably
some sort of either the lens is different or my perception is somehow different,
and so it's somewhat telepathically enhanced or something. Yeah, well that to simply
there's a different wavelength of light that you're perceiving as opposed to the camera.
Yeah, granted, that's a very scientific answer, but but that still makes
me think that. Okay, so maybe there are people who can perceive different
wavelengths of light through some unknown physical mechanism. Why not there's people who can
hear better than others. Like I can't hear if there are three or more
people talking to my vicinity, but I can hear bats. Yeah, and
not just like they're flapping wings when I can hear them. Yeah. Oh
that we have a story about that. In this house, Fox four years
has been saying, I hear something in that corner and it's at our TV
room and it's bats. I finally heard them, like this year, because
we turned everything off, and of course when we did that, they got
quiet because you know, they knew that the noise went away, so,
oh, maybe there's a predator here, so we'll be quiet. But then
they started talking again, and I did, finally, very faintly, hear
it, and the cats could hear it too, you know. But for
the longest time, Fox was like, what's wrong with you? Why can't
you hear it? I'm not crazy. I'm like, I know you're not
crazy. On it's it's not I said. It probably has to do with
the fact that mommy and daddy have old ears, and daddy's been playing loud
music for a really long time, so that's probably why we can't hear it.
But even even more, Anna couldn't hear it for a while, and
so the kid was just like, what good all day? I hear it.
It's okay, kid, I totally understand and I sympathize. I'm like,
yeah, yeah, welcome to my world. Only minds usually seeing things,
not hearing things. And yeah, yeah, poor kid, Well,
do you have anything else you want to pop out before we go, because
if we keep going, I'm going to ask you about other things. And
yeah, I'm just gonna have to come back. Yeah, yeah, you're
always welcome. As I say to everybody, I don't think I've ever not
said it to anybody, which means I have all good guests. Yeah,
well, I still need to interview you about the Hero project. Yep,
you do? You do? So I'll I will get with you then and
you can always come back. I'll see if I can get more gonna too,
because she she would have a lot of fun with you. She always
likes talking with other West Virginians and being like, hey, how's it going.
Perfect, excellent. Well, thank you very much, thanks for having
me. Well that's all for this week's episode of the Six Degrees of John
Keel podcast. If you have any questions or thoughts about the podcast, or
would like to come and talk about your experiences of the paranormal, you can
contact us at six d j K six seven at gmail dot com. We
promised to even answer you and we are always happy to hear from you.
Thank you,