The views and opinions expressed by the guests of Sasquatch Experience do not necessarily reflect
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As always, listener discretion is advised. We got someone or something growing around
out here? Does a legend walk among us working in the forests of our
world? Did you see what it was? Was it a person or an
animal? Or I can't go? Oh, I know that my thunder light
came on and I get happened to glim and see this thing running across the
yard. A good fight man or something looks like a man. I don't
know what it was. For over fifteen years, we've talked with scientists,
researchers, investigators, and witnesses trying to gain insight and proof around the exist
distance of this mysterious entity. Jesus, Hello, get somebody out here.
What's going to announce? There? Got a bittures about six foot right,
I don't know, easy announce there? Yeah, I'm walking right out.
Oh okay, and yeah, got it's bigger? Okay, what's he doing
in your yard? We're gonna do join us as we continue into the investigation,
of the Sasquatch Experience, and well here we are tonight, folks,
Squad Experience Monday, January eighth, twenty twenty four as a major system once
again hitting across the looks like the center of the country right now, vance
and starting to get hammered. Henry's off tonight due to some very bad weather
in Mississippi, so we wish him the best. But we have a good
guest for you tonight, and of course our menagerie of co hosts from all
over with varying experiences. It's going to be a good show tonight before we
get kicked off with our guests. Just a couple reminders social media Sasquatch Experience
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of stuff happened on X lately. I don't know what it is, but
folks like its. X has become a weird place. It's where all we
do ideas. But that's our people, that's our people. Yeah, and
you know, w On Baker's chair still squeaking away. You can help support
the show and get Baker a better chair by going to Patreon and for his
little two dollars a month, support the show you don't have to, but
you get it mostly add free after the fact, so that's a pretty good
deal in itself. So guy, man, we got a good guest tonight,
as you can see down the bottom corner. Eli Watson, you know,
more famous than us, which I didn't think was possible. Eli is
a California native on the search for sasquatch and other worldly mysteries. He is
the host of the podcast Cryptid Campfire, a member of the Small Town Monsters
production team, featured in Mysteries and Monsters Beyond the Trail of Bigfoot and currently
working on Bigfoot Road to Discovery, now available on small Town Monsters on YouTube,
and his adventures have taken him to remarkable places, and tonight he joins
us on the Sasquatch Experience. Eli, thanks for taking the time and your
globe trotting down with us here tonight. Hey, well, thanks for having
me on. I want to give you guys props though this is probably the
most clever title. I can't believe no one's went for it yet, but
Sasquatch, my dear Watson, that's you, guys, hands down best.
That's all up here, buddy. It'll cost you if you want to use
it money. I give this work freel like, make that the title of
your book if you'd like to, you know, you can just put so.
Eli, We are really glad you joined us tonight. We have a
a lot of questions for you. But you know, more importantly, you
know, are you finally taking a little downtime, you're working on something else,
or you're just getting a little time to relax in between all these videos
Seth is making your sleigh away on I am taking I'm well, how do
I put this? I'm beginning to work on a new project. It's something
that all hopefully debut at Monsterfest. I don't want to say what it is
in case it does doesn't come, doesn't work out that way. You know,
things are always in flux until they're out, you know. Yeah,
so it's not Sasquatch related, but it is cryptid related. So it's something
I've filmed. Cool. Actually, a lot of the British Columbia content already
came out last November, but everything except for what I filmed that's been a
secret project for some months now, and by the time it comes out will
be more than a year. So wow, that's a that's a long time
from filming to to getting it out there. But no, I understand the
need for sequency, and you know your secret's safe with us, no winking,
gentlemen. But if you haven't checked it out folks on YouTube right now
you can go see Road to Discovery. I've liked that. You know,
you're chronicling what's going on up there in the nesting area with the Olympic Project.
How did you get before we jump into that, how did you get
into Sasquatch cryptozoology? What was your push into the field of study. Well,
it's remarkably not very special. I grew up in southern California, and
as you know, it's not Sasquatch country down here, although I have made
quite a few documentaries on that, But growing up I certainly hadn't heard of
sasquatch down here. But I grew up with shows like Monster Quest and Lost
Tapes and then later finding Bigfoot, And that's kind of I can't really point
to a moment where I can say this is where I learned about Sasquatch.
It just felt like something that I always knew about. There's sasquatch lockness,
monster in the Chubicabra for me, it was kind of the trinity, which
is weird because mostly most of the time people would say Sasquatch, Lockness,
and Mothman. But I wasn't really into Mothman being out here in California.
And then in twenty eighteen, I was working at a movie theater and I
was got real close with someone there and we were just talking about Bigfoot all
the time, and I said we should start a podcast, and I remember
he just kind of laughed and walked away, and I was like, oh,
that's a well shot, my shot. And he came back a few
days later and was like, hey, I've been thinking about what you said.
We should we should start a podcast, And so we agreed we needed
one more person because we couldn't just you know, we wanted to appeal to
a broader audience than just you know, going straight into yeah, you know
Patterson Gimmelin film and stuff like that. We wanted to lead people into it.
So we wanted to bring someone else in, and so we brought in
Jasmine May with who's actually here in the chat tonight? I think the first
comment on Facebook and and also my girlfriend I should say that, but and
yeah, so that's how Cryptic Campfire came to be, and so so it
kind of started off as a hobby for me, and I found myself getting
really really into reading the books and really really just wanting to do interviews and
interviewing people. And then I interviewed Seth and I went to film school,
and I wanted to make films. I've always wanted to make films, wanted
to make films longer than I've wanted to look for Sasquatch. And when I
found out about Seth is when I found out that, oh, it's possible
I can make films and not be enslaved to the Hollywood system and make things
about make movies about what I want to make things movies about. And that
was when I did the podcast, the Crypticampfire Interview with Seth, and then
he invited me out to the On the Trail of Bigfoot the Discovery shoot in
April of twenty twenty one. So I flew out and did that and that
was my first time working with small town monsters. That led to me working
on Beyond the Trail. Now everything's coming full circle as I'm doing the kind
of sequel series to that movie with Road to Discovery. Yeah, it's really
good, and I like how you touch back on some of those subjects.
You know, I've known Seth a long time since he did Minerva, so
I've been a small Town Monsters fan and supporter before the first kickstarter, I
guess. So I've really enjoyed seeing all the different filmmakers come come in and
put their own little mark on the movies. And there are distinct stylization differences,
you know, And I think I appreciate what you're doing because what you
seem to be doing with this is really really documentary work. Like it's a
lot of if folks are expecting scary camera you know, camera work and music,
and they're not going to get that, they're really going to get I
think what maybe truly you and Alex both, I think you a little bit
more in this a true caste of what the research is really like. And
I think it's important people see that because you know, with Finding Bigfoot and
other shows, though they're great shows and people you can say what you want
to out there about them being entertainment, it puts asses in the seats.
So people want to watch the rest of the stuff we're putting out there,
and they they you know, it brings an audience in to listen. What
you do is distinct, and I really appreciate it as a as a researcher.
From a researcher's perspective, I think you're really showing what it's really like
out there. In fact, those guys go a lot harder than we do.
Don't don't let me fool you there. They they really are some remarkable
gentlemen in the Olympic and then ladies in the Olympic project. Mmm, well,
thank you. Yeah. That was the main goal for this series more
than anything else. I think it came just the way the show came together
and the scheduling of the filming, And it's different from anything else that I've
made, and you know, because I made mysteries and monsters for the majority
of last year, and that was I wanted it to feel like this big
epic adventure that you were learning along with me. And certainly that's one aspect
of it is this research can feel adventurous and spectacular, but I that show
is a lot to produce. It's a lot to kind of maintain that upbeat
feeling. And so with Road to Discovery, I wanted to pursue something more
relaxed, more grounded, and you know, I wanted to return to this
kind of old school vibe with it. You know, the I point to
the Sasquatch documentaries of the seventies and eighties and even the nineties, and they're
like a genre of their own because they don't really reflect the time period they
were made in. You watch Sasquatch Odyssey and compare it to like other documentaries
made in the nineties, and they're not the same. They're they're not.
It's like Sasquatch Odyssey is its own beast. So I kind of wanted to
replicate specifically those documentaries, and I mean it ended up becoming more or less
its own thing in the end, which it always does. But I'm I
was very worried at the release of the first episode that people would find it
boring because there isn't those big jump scares. There isn't any scary moments.
It's just a very informative thing. But those are not the le that you
really want involved in this whole genre to begin with. If they're there for
the jump scare, those aren't the people that you want in that in that
circle. You want the people in there that are really looking on the scientific
fact and looking for all this nuance evidence in my opinion, any right,
because I mean, yeah, that's a good point. You know, there's
a lot of this research and a lot of what you find is not exactly
the most exciting stuff in the world. But and what I really try to
paint a picture and road a discovery is that the sum of all the parts,
you know, is what makes it compelling. And you have, you
know, Chris Spencer's audio. If you take one audio file, that's not
going to convince anybody, just one sound, you know, But you have
all of this audio that's recorded over two years, plus a footprint find,
plus the nests themselves and plentiful reads, food sources, and you put all
of that together and suddenly it's like, oh, this points to something being
here. You know, the sum how would you say the parts the sum
is greater than the parts? Or is that the second butchering? But you
make a good point with that though, Like I learned so much from listening
to Chris talk about forrests and the ecosystem that those little tidbits and like somebody
said, the nuance, the nuance about it is what attracts me and if
I'm learning and I've been in this field a long time and I'm still learning
things and interested in that, there's still a market for that. And now,
Eli, you do have you are telling the story though with the personalities.
You know, You've got Shane, You've got Chris, you know,
you've got you know, Rebecca. I think they're really good people to have
on here because they do add a little bit to the story. You know,
you go back and you talked about Sasquatch Odyssey. You know, if
you took out the four horsemen of that documentary, what would it be yep,
right, And that was really I think the first documentary that didn't so
much associate with the subject as it is the people involved in the subject.
And you know, if you did something like that, now, man,
you've got the picks of you know, a cast of characters. You'd be
doing shows for years with all the interesting people in this field. So you
were at monster Fest last year you saw most of them, and that's you
know, there's a lot to work with and I think you're doing a very
good job of that. I've only seen the first two episodes, but they're
very strong and I hope it stays that way, and I do enjoy the
audio and the you know, the real tidbits that you're putting in there that
do tell the story of what's going on in that area. Thank you.
I appreciate that. Vance Baker, Matt, you guys got questions for you.
Loan Oh, I've got lots of questions, but I don't want to
hog the whole show. I wanted to save. I wanted to save one
question because Shane Courson is going to be on our show in February, and
I brought this topic up a couple of shows on the Sasquatch experience. The
nesting site that you visited, I was rather curious, is it Could it
actually not be a nesting site, but perhaps maybe a burial site. And
I'm wondering if you even have given any consideration to that at all. Uh
hmm. It's funny. I would say the biggest blunder in my series so
far has been not to include, for whatever reason, what the Olympic Project
thinks that the nest site is. As far as a burial site, I'm
not sure if it could be. I can't say with one hundred percent certainty
that it's not, but I think the that I mean, the first nest
site that they found had seven nests in it, and I mean, I
don't know if that would mean that there's seven sasquatches buried there, but I
think what they think think it is, and Shane could probably explain it better,
is that it's probably a birth inside where they make the babies. Well.
And that's really interesting too, because I've often brought up the point of
a female human will give up a lot of screens while giving birth, and
I'm sure maybe then a female sasquatch would screen quite a bit in the dead
of night if giving birth, or during the day, and you're recording these
sounds, who's to say that that's not actually giving birth. There's so many
aspects to all of this that we don't have answers to, but boy,
it sure is interesting. You can point to the very fact that the nests
themselves are made out of huckleberry as opposed to any of the other plants there.
Huckleberry leaves were used by Huckleberry leaves were used by Native Americans, I
think, as to give two women during childbirth because it helps stop the bleeding.
And oh, so there's an interesting aspect going on there. Oh,
I didn't know that. You look at the the gap between when the two
nests were found, because there was the original nest site found in twenty fifteen
and then again found another nest site found in twenty twenty. Well, if
you're applying what we know about other apes to sasquatch, you would probably look
at orangutans because orangutans live mostly solitary lives, but then get together for childbirth,
and they give birth every four to eight years, So a gap of
five years would make sense in this scenario. You know, so they're not
building nests all the time, they're building them every few years when one is
born. So huh that sounds slid though, Yeah, right, right,
yeah, I don't. I mean, that's all them too, and Shane's
Shane will probably explain it way better than I can. But it's when I
heard it, I was like, well, I don't know what else it
could be, right, but now think about that. You're taking known science,
right, medicinal properties of plants, you're taking known gestations of apes,
and now you're wrapping it in to this unknown scientist. Is exactly what we
should be doing in this study right, and to me, that's that's incredibly
remarkable that we're able to draw these parallels. It's incredibly cool. And I
look, I you know, just that little tidbit you gave me. I'm
really looking forward to more of this eroaded discovery and seeing what the guys from
the Olympic Project are doing. Not that I'm k not going anybody else's research,
including our own mat but these guys are getting out there. You know,
they're rocking some you know some you know field time, they're making it
happen, and then you got you know, Eli chronicling it all. It's
it's amazing. I can't wait to see. Are there going to be any
surprises, anything that's going to make us go when we watch this documentary.
How many episodes are there currently the back Well, the third one just came
out yesterday, and then there will be a fourth one coming out later this
month, and then at least five, at least six, and then I'm
going back out in March to film some more. So it's going to be
ongoing. As to how many there will be, I don't know because there's
a lot to cover, and you know, I will say the fourth episode
that comes out later this month. Is still about the Nest site, but
eventually I move on from the Nest site because they study different areas as well,
so we get into all the other stuff. And when I went out
there in September to film it, we spent two days out at the Nest
site and I said to them, oh, this will be a quick,
you know, follow up to the movie, like what have you guys been
doing since then? And instead, you know, just one episode about the
nests and instead it's turned into four. Well, don't knock it, you
know, it's it's creating content and that's what it's all about. Matt Baker.
You guys got any questions? Yeah, you know what I just caught
like a real quick bit of this on one of your documentaries. But could
you give us the whole story about the mouse camp? Oh, Miles,
yeah, mouse camp? Yes, no, Miles Right. Well, back
in April of twenty twenty one, during my first shoot of Small Town Monsters,
it was me and Alex and we were camping down at the Nest site
and they had made that camp, you know, and all of this is
like logging tear. There's no trails, there's nothing, so they kind of
cleared out an area where it was flat enough for us to camp, and
they didn't have a name for it. And as the story goes, because
I was asleep for the whole thing is I went to bed before everyone else
did because I was tired. I had actually gotten sick. So we spent
I flew into Washington, me and Alex drove up to Rainier, walked around
in the snow, and then we came to the nest site and it was
raining. And when I woke up the next morning, I was sick.
And I was sick for the rest of the trip and brutal to camp and
be like congested and coughing sucks. And I was also trying to like impress
Seth and Alex and try to get a job, so I'm like pushing myself
really hard, you know. So on the second night, I went to
bed before everyone else because I was just I was exhausted, and I laid
down. An hour or two later, I guess Alex unzips the tent and
there's a mouse trying to climb out. The mouse had been trapped inside the
tent with me, and so the as a way to poke fun at me,
the members of the Olympic Project decided to call it mouse Camp. Oh
my god, mm, don't feel bad, Eli, Baker misses most of
our shenanigans on camping trips when he takes his allergy medicines and passes out and
he misses everything, sleeps ask watching counter once he takes it as long as
as long as it doesn't wake up in the middle of night, starts staring
at me and I'm pretty good, right. Question jar from Jeremiah Eli.
He wants to know what is your favorite part of the Drumming for Bigfoot documentary?
Yeah, the Drumming for Bigfoot documentary. Well, I for anyone who
doesn't know, Drumming for Bigfoot is a documentary I think, also made directed
by Peter Vaughan Putkammer, who also who made Sasquatch Odyssey, and both documentaries
feature Henry Franzoni very prominently. And here's what's funny is gosh it would have
been September of twenty twenty one. I interviewed Henry Franzoni on camera and I
didn't know anything about him and drumming for Yeah, Drumming for Bigfoot is not
the official name. I think. I think the documentary is just called Bigfoot,
if I'm not mistaken, Hello Todd. When I had actually spent the
night before at Chris Spencer's house with Rebecca Slick and Yeah and Chris, and
I told them that I was going to go interview for Franzoni, and they
showed me for the first time drumming for Bigfoot, and I was like blown
away. But the number one thing that got me was how Franzoni himself says
Sasquatch. He says Sasquatch and he still says it like that today. Sasquatch.
Is he from you know, Connecticut? No? Oh, yeah,
I cry, who knows, right, let me read it. I just
bought his book and I've known since like way before all this. There was
like a virtual internet Bigfoot conference, and I've known Henry a long time.
So I have his book and I'm looking forward to checking it out and reading
it. He's an interesting cat, guys. If you're not familiar with him,
check him out. Definitely change some views over the years. Any other
question from you, guys. We do have to take a quick break because
I told Seth Edwin this commercial, so wit go in a minute. Let's
go ahead, thirty two seconds, fifty eight seconds, and we'll be right
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Yes, grab the way. It's the Golden Globe. What you know it
is award. I don't have one of those. I'd like to thank the
Academy. I want a golden yet. Yeah. After that brief commercial,
welcome back Sasquatch Experience, Sean Palker, James Baker, Matt Arner, Vance
Nesbitt, also known as Chatty Cathy, and our guest tonight, Eli Watson.
I did take this g enormous, obnoxious, sound isolating thing coconut off
my love cup of my microphone so we could go back to something a little
bit more normal looking, and I'm glad you're here focused a little bit better
too. Good. That's important. How that worked? I really don't thing
anyhow, back to the important thing. Our guest tonight, Eli Watson,
joining us the creator producer of Bigfoot Road to Discovery. We've been talking about
that for just a few moments here. You know what, Eli, I
guess my question for you would be what keeps you going? Now you've been
out in the field, you've been doing you know, what keeps you attached
to this? Missie? There has to be something that keeps you focused and
wanting to keep doing this uh money not working at a convenience store by far
the best job I've ever had. I don't know, to be honest,
that the Sasquatch subject is a strange thing to me, because this has happened
at least twice now in my life to where I'll become really burnt out on
the topic and I'll hate it, and I'll hate Bigfoot and I'll hate everyone
in it. And then the stars aligne and I'm sent on a quest in
the Pacific Northwest and suddenly everything flips and I'm in love with Sasquatch again.
And every time that I don't, I don't, and I get deeper and
deeper into it that way. And so it's like every time I begin to
try to get away from this, it sucks me back in. And it's
I guess that's what they would call the curse of Sasquatch, right, It
will take over your life. So in many instances you're correct on that I've
had my my spells away and have somehow found a way to get drawn back
into it, usually in some sort of really cool sighting report that's happened locally,
or somebody reaches out one day and says, hey, we got something
we really want you to look at. And then then thing, you know,
it's been three or four years and your back rade to where you started.
Oh yeah, I know for a fact at some point in my life,
because I'm twenty five, it'll probably happen at some point, or I'll
swear off Bigfoot forever and then I'll go hiking outside and I'll see one.
Yeah, you know, right right, That's how it works. Kind of
leading into that. Now, there's a couple of encounters that we saw that
you kind of went through in the in the series. You know. The
one that that really kind of came to mind was when you and Alex were
out in Utah. And I believe that you have to, you know,
something pretty close to you. Guys, what has been, whether it's on
camera, off camera, your best experience that you've had or the best encounter
that you've had out there. Hmm. I guess for me, the two
most notable encounters happened in the same year in twenty twenty one. One was
in Bluff Creek, California, and the other one was in Utah. And
I don't know, I guess it would be the one in California because of
just how wild it felt, and that was really the first time I heard
knocks in person. And so we went up to this location called Laired Meadow
up in Bluff Creek, and Roger Patterson had been there, and you know,
all the big timers had been to Laired Meadow and casted tracks and casted
what they believed to be Patty's tracks up there as well, and it was.
It was Me, Alex Tait, Hieronymous, Jonathan Easiley, Ron Reid,
and a couple other people from the Bluff Creek Project. And so we
kind of split up into three teams to where we had Ron, Ron Reid,
his dog Bandit, and a bunch of other people out on the main
road. Me Alex or Me and Jonathan easily went out to this like patch
of trees out in the middle of the meadow, and Tate and Alex went
into the woodline on the far side of the meadow and kind of the goal
was to get you know, situated, wait out for a few minutes,
and then Alex's group in my group would do knocks back and forth to each
other, which I think is an interesting approach. You know, I don't
know if a single one off knock would really work as much as like having
two knocks, you know, to respond to each other, because I mean,
you got to ask the question, if they're doing knocks, what are
they knocking too? You know, they're not just doing it. So we
did a couple knocks back and forth to each other, and then Alex and
Tate said that they had something thrown at them from behind, either a branch
broke or a rock was thrown at them from behind. And then I guess
from where I was facing, Alex and Tate were off this direction, and
then the road was off over here, and from the direction of the road,
it just like exploded and there was like five or six knocks. We
were like, what the heck just happened, and so we kind of waited
around and nothing else happened, and then we saw Ron Reid and everyone else
coming from down the road this way, not from where the knox had come.
The knocks came from where the cars were, but everyone else apparently had
walked down the road, and so we're not no one was at the cars
when those knocks happened. So everyone went back to the cars and left,
and us four we stayed. We went back out on the main road,
and we just kind of stayed and we listened for a minute. And it
was really bizarre because it was a full moon, so we could see up
and down the road, but you know, under the trees, it's real
dark because of the shadows. And we heard something take a few steps on
the right hand side, and then something take a few steps on the left
hand side, and then it kept going and getting closer and closer to us.
And that was actually the first time I was actually like getting nervous because
there was something there, and you know, it's not a bear, it's
not a mountain lion. There's two things paralleling us getting closer, taking turns
on the side of the road, and that Alex actually went out and spoke
to it and he said something and that's when it stopped. And we didn't
even hear it leave. It just stopped. And so I don't know if
they left or I mean, we stayed there for probably another half hour,
nothing happened, didn't even hear so I don't know what would have happened if
Alex hadn't said anything, or or what, you know, I just don't
know. But it freaked me out, was that the same was that the
same night that the you guys recorded the whoop Yeah where the dog. The
dog was acting really kind of funky. Yeah, yeah, he got separated
because actually, you know what's funny is Ken Gerhard showed up earlier that day
and he had been doing he was part of that Trinity Alps giant Salamander expedition,
and I guess they just decided to come to Bluff Creek because they weren't
finding any giant salamanders. And we were walking kind of the road looking at
the location where Jerry crew would have found tracks, and I guess Bandit went
off and roamed by himself, which I guess is something that he does and
then he always comes back just fine, but this time he came back tail
tucked between his legs and was just freaking out, you know. And then
we got back to camp and Jonathan easily filmed himself and that's when a whoop
happened during he was filming that, and I think someone else said that they
hurt a knock or something, but I can't remember. But yeah, there
was just weird things happening, but kind of disparate, and like even though
we're there for Sasquatch. None of us were really like putting all the pieces
together, you know, so it's just kind of bizarre. But yeah,
that was the same night, so something wrong with them. It's real funny
how that happens. You know, you're out there with the express purpose and
intent of trying to solicit some sort of activity and that it happens and you
find yourself completely unprepared on your work. It's what happened to me. It's
just happened to others. So you're you're not in a an island upon yourself
in that one. It's happened to the best of us, and it's you
know, it's just one of those damn things that makes you empathize with our
witnesses even more that when they experience something and sometimes with experience far more dramatic
than what you or we've experienced, and you know, we expect to be
able to get so much info out of them. It's really difficult to you
know, sometimes bring them into it and you have to get that on video.
Is that ben a challenge to you? At times you get people that
are so emotional you got to shut it down and you have to give them
time or you know, how do you deal with that on a shoot.
I haven't dealt with that completely, I guess, mostly because I haven't been
around anything too too dramatic. I guess. Well, I kept thinking about
this and how strange it was. I guess. I don't know. I
don't know what I'm trying to say here, but I haven't had to deal
with it. There is something I'm anticipating talking to a couple people about in
regards to Road to Discovery that will probably be very dramatic, and I don't
know how well of an interview it's going to be, right, But I
also haven't interviewed anyone who was like or who have had a sasquatch experience recent
so recently that they were still very very moved by it, you know,
it's always been a couple of years have passed and things like that, and
so they're able to kind of control that emotional response to it. But it's,
uh, yeah, I don't know. I don't know what it would
be like if I saw it, you know, I haven't seen one,
so but if I might poop myself or something, I don't know, all
right, right, understandable, I don't know if that is all your question,
but well, yeah, I get it. I kind of wanted to
take things a little bit different direction here, a little bit more lighthearted.
Eli. I'm thirty years plus, you're senior. I appreciate the fact of
what you do. But what I appreciate one of the one thing that I
appreciate greatly when you do these videos with small town monsters. It's the good,
bad, and ugly pancho that you wear. Dude, that is so
bad ass. In my world, I just can't get enough of this.
I'm like, I'm looking at guys geared up in you know, twenty twenty
three, twenty twenty four, all their gear, and here's Eli. He's
got a poncho on, and I'm just waiting for you to throw that thing
over your shoulder and pull out a forty four and say no, I'm the
ruler of the day right now. And you might laugh. But you know
what some finds it's old school stuff that is the most deficient in what it
is that you're doing. And I give you total kudos for that whole that
whole idea of going into that environment with that that that makes my day.
I love to see that. Thank you, sir. I appreciate that that
that poncho is alpaca. Mm hmm and hm. I got that actually on
the same trip of the story I just told. We drove up to Oregon
right after we did that documentary big Foot Mountain it's called, and we went
up to government camp there on Mount Hood and there was all these vendors there
and I saw a poncho and I saw that poncho and I was like,
I want it, and I bought it and for a decent price too,
and the owners actually took a picture of it. They asked me what I
did for a living, and they were enthralled that I looked for bigfoot.
They loved it. They put it on their website as a bigfoot hunting poncho
in my picture together that way, that's awesome. All that comes together.
M My biggest takeaway from this interview, vance is that you're impressed with Eli's
outfits. Dude, I have since the first time I saw him on any
of these that poncho, and I'm like, dude, that is so bad.
I would do that. I just don't know if I've got the balls
to do it. But Eli does it and it fits imperfectly me. I
probably look like a moron doing it, but you would he like doing it.
No, I could just see him throwing that poncho over his left shoulder
and pull am out of forty four and say, yeah, really you want
to f with me? Okay, let's go. I'm more likely to pull
out a forty five. Doesn't matter, Yeah, does didn't matter. It's
just that that's part of the that's part of the whole environment of what it
is that you're doing, and that's that helps build the whole case of what
it is that you're trying to discover. Actly have fun while doing this,
and you can see it and what you do. And I think that's also
an important element that we lose sometimes and all this, that this should still
be about fun as much as it should be about discovery science. You should
still have that element of fun about it. Yeah. One more thing about
Vance's question is I don't know if I could pull off the the bald head
Robert Morgan. Look, now you're doing more of a clast. You've got
more of the clinic East would think going on. I'll give you that the
memes are going to start flying tomorrow now. Of I'm sure, Yeah,
I'm sure. They are. Now who keeps saying that there's not enough evidence
for the exits a big foot. You're out there, you're doing this.
What do you say to them they're not I wish I could say they're not
paying attention. But it's not that it's there. There is evidence out there.
I don't think people are coming forward enough with it. I guess like
one of the things with this series Road to Discovery is that, sure,
the members of the Olympic Project might have talked about some of this stuff on
a podcast, but there's they've given me access to footage that's never been seen
by the public before, you know, and it's and going through it and
placing it in chronological order and stuff, and it's like what you guys are
finding stuff that's even more incredible than what you guys have been saying on podcasts
and shows and stuff like that. But it just requires I don't want to
sound conceded, but it requires the right person to tell it, you know.
And because presentation is everything no matter what it comes to, you know,
even if you're presenting sasquatch evidence, there's still a bit of marketing when
it comes to it. You still need to present it in a way that
makes sense, a way that's logical, easy to follow, in a way
that will quite frankly, convince people that this is real. And again it
comes down to it's not. You can't just look at one piece of evidence.
If you look at one footprint, anyone can say, oh, it's
fake. If you look at a thousand footprints, it's harder to say that.
If you look at a thousand footprints and fifty audio files, one video,
couple photographs, you know, and suddenly you're building a case. So
I think, I guess it's not quite an answer to your question, but
I think what we as Sasquatch researchers need to do is to either publish a
book or create something that just displays the evidence of what we've found so far.
And I guess you know, one thing I will say that is a
step in the right direction is Chris Spencer's audio project, because he's working with
squatchro Metrics and they're putting together a report of all the audio that Chris recorded
over a two year period in the nest site. And so I mean,
what you have is a very small amount of suspicious audios. They'll call it.
They don't call it, you know, sasquatch audio because he didn't see
a sasquatch make the sound, So you know, you can't say that that's
what it is. It's suspect audio. So but that's a step. We
need more things like that. So I love how that's presented by the way
the just the correlation of data and the squadron metrics. It's again when you
talk about presentations on the presentation, I think it's articulated very well. Go
ahead, man, So you have been to some of the most remote places
in the United States. You've been up to Canada, Alaska. Where are
some of those international go to places that you would love to go and investigate.
M definitely would love to get to Nepal and look for the Eddie up
there and kind of retrace the steps of Tom Slick and Peter Burn and those
expeditions that the unfortunate unfortunately named Slick Johnson expeditions. I know, right,
yeah, yeah, but that you know they went to the r Run Valley.
I think it's called the Run Valley, and that I would love to
go there, I guess. I don't know. Lake monsters aren't necessarily my
thing, but you know, luck nests is obviously a place I've never been
to. Would love to get out there. Oh, Australia. I've been
thinking about the Yawi a lot lately. I would love to get out there,
especially because, yeah, there's reports of Yawi nests having been found,
so I would love to take a look at that. And then it's I've
been thinking about the map Inguari a lot as well and whatever that is.
And I know there's people who look into that, and so you know,
I'm half Solvadorian, half Central American, you know, so it's like I
feel like I could blend in that culture well enough to where I can get
in and you know, start looking for that as well. You know.
So that's what I would say. Those places a lot of things out And
then yeah, that's my hesitation from going out is all the things that can
kill you out there. That takes some cojones, my friend. I'm I'm
more worried about more than anything, if I were to go to South America
and look for the map in quarry. Because funny enough, Shane Corson was
just down here in so Cow not too long ago, just before Christmas,
and we went to the San Diego Zoo and one of Shane's favorite animals is
are snakes. And I'm not a fan of snakes, but we spent a
lot of time. We spent a lot of time at the Reptile House,
and you know, I'm there looking at these like micro enclosures of like many
forests and stuff, and I look in there and I'm like, oh,
I don't see the snake. Shane's like, there it is. And then
you see this twelve foot long snake curled up in the corner or up in
a tree, and it's like, oh yeah, by the way, it's
you know, venomous and it's got poisonous skin, and it's like, yeh
see, I would have just died right now. I would have looked down
and safe died, you know. So yeah, that's what I'm nervous about
is really jungly places. You know, like it's a real fear yep,
but you know, people survive down there, So people do it somehow.
They do. You're right, You're right, they do. Rattle are my
biggest concerned Matt and I's research area happens to be also close to the last
place there was a fatality from a rattlesnake bite in Pennsylvania, So that,
you know, just gets my blood pumping even more when we're out there.
Warning at least they're courteous sometime sometime. Yeah, I love that one there.
The guy was actually getting firewood at night and he stuck his hand into
the wood in the and the rattlesnake struck him. So yeah, we're we're
super super careful when we go up there. That's crazy. Yeah yeah yeah,
So how can we get you out with it? Eli, Yeah,
come on down to our neck of the woods and dodge the rattlesnakes with us.
Honestly, I would go, I just buy snakes. I'm good,
I'm all, I'm all set up for this. Scott says, Chris's work
is excellent. He has put so much work into an extremely tedious project,
but great data. Yeah, absolutely, it's I really concur with that.
And you have more experience other than we do, Youl. Yeah, I
mean Chris has an obsessive personality. He will sit there for hours on end
and go through audio and I don't know if I could do that. Order.
Yeah, it is all order, but I've noticed it in myself,
and I think every researcher has it. There's some aspect of it that's obsessive
in some way, right, you know, even just the fact that we
keep coming back to the topic of Sasquatch. You know, how much of
that is us subconsciously wanting to get back to something that we know and scratch
that itch, and how much of that is the Sasquatch curse? I don't
know, but you know, I you know, history, archival data,
that's my that's my bag. I love going through people's different accounts and stuff.
You know. One of the things I'm actually kind of trying to work
on now is piecing together what happened during the nineteen sixty Bluff Creek expedition where
John Green, Reneda Hindon, Peter Burn, Ivan Sanderson, and Tom Slick
were all there in Bluff Creek and there was no official account of it,
but there are bits and pieces throughout John Green's writings, Peter Burn's writings,
to Hindon's writings, Sanderson's writings, and I'm trying to collect those all and
kind of piece together what happened, because I know what happened is everyone got
together and it was extremely optimistic, and then everyone left hating each other,
so right, exactly, I was just going to ask if that's the one
where everybody left and we know absolutely nothing if they found anything on that trip
besides the fact they hated each other. Yeah, so kind of in that
same vein here, And I'm gonna ask this question in honor of our host,
who cannot be here tonight, Henry May. Is if you were going
out to say like Area A, and you have no internet service, you're
gonna be up there for two weeks, three weeks? What books? What
big foot books are you bringing up to read? Ooh, good question.
The one I'm reading right now. Actually, I would highly recommend, which
is map Pruit's The Phenomenal SaaS great book, very good and I can't understate
I can't overstate that enough. It's extremely well written, and I've recommended it
to a couple of people who uh well. Back in September, I was
also mixing around with a group of people who are not of this Sasquatch world,
and everything I did to them seemed extremely bizarre, and the only thing
I could do was recommend them this book. Book. I said, this
book is it will convince you. If you're a skeptic, it will convince
you. So that one probably Sasquatch The Apes among Us by John Green.
It's also fantastic reed, and I don't know if I had to pick one
more, man, I don't know that you would have to, I mean,
improve it. They definitely capitalized on being able to encapsulate the entire genre
of the whole Bigfoot thing to begin with. So yeah, I totally agree
with what it is that you're saying. Without Yeah, I guess I don't
know if you said this in the question, but if I were to bring
a third book, it would be it would have to do something with the
region itself that I was in. Okay, you know, so no,
very good answer to that question. Yeah, guys, we've hit that point.
Well, we do have one more question, Eli Jasmine says, tell
them about the coat you want to buy. Yes, there's a mountain town
up near me that sells coats and flannels and things like that, and I
bought a flannel from them years ago, and it's really nice flannel. You
know, it's like it was like sixty bucks, so you know, it's
like high quality stuff and it's lasted me taking it on every single expedition.
I wear it if it gets cold. It's just a. It just I
mean, it's a basic pattern, red and black. You know, we've
all seen it, yep, yep. And I was in there just recently
around Christmas time because it kind of have a nice Christmas vibe going on up
there. And went in there and saw this rain coat that's like it's got
straps for your legs so it won't get tangled up in bushes and stuff,
and it's got not one, but two concealed carry holsters built into the jacket.
I was like, whoa, you know? Pocket nice? I like
that. I mean, it's it's it's a really nice jacket, and you
know, it's three hundred dollars, but you know it's gonna last like thirty
years, you know. And I don't have I wouldn't even say it's a
jacket. It's more like a trench coat. You know. It covers your
entire body like a duster. Like a duster. It's it's Western in style.
So I'm continuing the Western trend here and getting a nice thick duster jacket
that'll keep me dry when it's wet out. Well, they're having folks.
They answer to the question everybody wanted to know, you've been listening to the
Sasquatch Experience with our guest tonight, Eli Watson. Eli, any final words
of wisdom for the listeners out there. I want to say thanks for everyone
for tuning in and this has been a fun show. And go watch Road
to Discovery if you haven't check out. We all have to Discovery and if
you're a squad member you get to see it in four K, which means
it looks even better. So get out there and check it out and a
free and vance man. Anything else from you now? I think there's a
great night. Yep. Keep doing what you're doing. Eli. I have
a lot of envy when I go to work on a forty hour work weekend,
I'm like, how does how does Eli do this? This is crazy?
He's living the life I want to live. So good for you,
man, I'm so happy for you, and I watch everything that you have
done. I've watched everything that you and Seth have put together, and boy,
it is so fulfilling. It is very entertaining and it is very INFORMEDIV.
So kudos to you, sir, well, thank you. Yeah.
I definitely Eli. We we have so much respect for for you, for
Alex. You know, really, I think you know, with your on
the Trail series with the two of you, really elevated you know, the
uh, the whole you know, education and documentary film style that we really
need for this field. And you know, you guys are great. So
and I've said this many times before, I said, I said, in
the next like five years, it's going to be people going out there with
the with the high end cameras that are going out in the wild, such
as you and Alex that hopefully, you know, we get some great proof
from you guys. So please, you know, keep doing what you're doing.
And uh and and again we we give you much respect you. I
hope that would be cool to film they've foot one day, because not only
would I get to have a sighting, but you would be able to hear
me crap myself. That's the way to that's a way to close about how
about it? Hey? Van? Sinceendri's here not here, why don't you
go ahead and use his closing words? Oh y'all be good or be good
at it, but good god, all right, folks, we'll see you
next week. Good night. Alrighty, you've been listening to Sasquatch Experience.
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