Today, I want to tell you about a journey that I've been on for
most of my life. Ever since I was a kid, I've heard tales
of bigfoot and wild men while spending time with my friends and family. As
I grew older and read more about the paranormal, my interest in encryptids and
other things strange only deepened. That's why I'm so excited to share with you
what I've personally become involved with the Untold Radio Network. The Untold Radio Network
is a live streaming podcast network that airs a new show every day across all
podcast platforms, YouTube, and more. They have eight different shows on all
sorts of exciting topics such as bigfoot, cryptids, UFOs, aliens, and
much more. I even have my own show called Weird Encounters, where I
talk about all things strange. This is more than just a podcast network.
It's a community that allows me to meet so many amazing people who share their
stories and experiences with strange. If you're interested in hearing more of these stories
and learning more about the paranormal and encryptids, make sure you check out the
Untold Radio Network for all kinds of exciting shows. It's free to subscribe.
So what are you waiting for visit www dot untold radionetwork dot com. Today.
Hey everybody, this is left Drive. Yes, yes I know aka
Survivor Man, and you're listening to Brian on Sasquatch Honest either and welcome to
Sasquatch Pots. Thank you so much for being with us for the show.
It is Friday. I hope you're having a great week. We have an
amazing guest lined up for you. But as always, I want to start
by inviting you. If you've had an encounter and you'd like to be on
the show, shoot me an email and get me a Brian Apparentimalworldproductions dot com.
Get head over to the website, check out the blog, become a
member there and help support the show. I got to sit down and talk
to Jacob who had some really interesting experiences at work in the woods looking for
snakes, which is an interesting story in and of itself, I think,
and then on a BFRO investigation where they had some really interesting vocalizations in the
pine Barons of all places. I'll let Jacob tell you all about that in
just a second, really quickly. If you haven't joined us over on Facebook
our group Bigfoot encounters and field research has reached over eight thousand people at this
point. We'd love to have you join us. There's a button right here
in the show notes you can click. It'll take you over to Facebook and
you can join the community there in the Amazing Conversations. Also, if you
haven't signed up for the Bigfoot weekly newsletter that goes out every Sunday, there's
a button right here in the show notes that says get our newsletter. All
you have to do is click the button. It'll take you over to Paranormal
World Productions dot com. You'll get a pop up window to sign up or
the newsletter. If the pop up doesn't work for whatever reason on your device,
just scroll to the bottom of the homepage and you will see the newsletter
sign up up there at the bottom on the footer. But enough of that.
I know you guys are ready to get into it. Jacob's on the
line, He's ready to go. All this left for you to do is
sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. I want to welcome our
guest to the show. It is Jacob from New Jersey. Welcome to the
show Man. Thank you Brian for having me. I am glad to have
you. So let's get right into it. Let's talk about this bigfoot thing.
Let's talk about the weird paranormal stuff. What got you interested in the
subject to begin with. I grew up in southern New Jersey. As a
kid, I was always interested in the full aspect of cryptids, grew up
on watching Monster Requests. New Jersey actually has a magazine called Weird New Jersey.
I was always reading the books and reading all the magazines that they put
out. Basically, in a nutshell, We're in New Jersey is a magazine
produced by two people who are on paranormal shows on History Channel and Travel Channel.
Basically, they write all sorts of some of the abandoned places, some
of the paranormal places in the state. They do deep dots with some of
the local lore and folklore in the state, like obviously the Granddaddy of New
Jersey Kryptis, which is the Jersey Devil, talk about Big Red Eye in
North Jersey, some of the creepy haunted roads up in the state. A
lot of that stuff drove me into learning about it, and I was always
the kind of a weird kid in class. I would go to the library
and look at the Ufo books, the Lockness Monster books, all that good
stuff. Obviously, the granddaddy of all that stuff was a Bigfoot. I
always haide a fascination with it growing up. My grandmother grew up in Ohio,
and she would tell me stories as a kid of all the history and
all the tales that she was told as a kid growing up there. Basically
from the young their age, I was interested in it. Getting older and
stuff, I lost that interest to some extent because obviously you go to school,
you go to work, you lose interest in that type of stuff.
It wasn't really for a while that I didn't really think about that stuff,
and growing up I was always I wanted to say, skeptical, like I
love a good fairy tale, I love a good story. But all that
stuff to me, for the most part, was just you know, this
is just fun stuff, cool stories to kind of keep imagination alive and keep
going out in the woods a little creepier at night. But I never really
took it too seriously going out and reading that stuff or looking into that type
of fiction and folklore. So I would say I had a pretty key interest
in it from a younger age going into adulthood, a lot of my other
hobbies overtook my interest in that type of stuff for a while. Basically,
the Jersey Devil in that type of stuff was all great story. I loved
reading about that stuff, but in my eyes, it was all fiction.
Didn't really take any of that stuff seriously. For the most part. I
actually had more interest in ecology and reptiles and amphibian is actually my biggest thing
growing up. So when I was getting older, I did everything in my
power to try to find a career in herpetology learning about that type of stuff.
So a lot of that stuff kept me out in the woods and kept
me interested in moving forward with that type of stuff. When I was going
into twenty eighteen, I was doing some volunteer work with the state. I
was basically tasked to go out and look for areas that could potentially have some
rare and endangered animals out in the pine barrens of New Jersey, which is
basically my stomping grounds for the most part. The pine barons are basically a
one point one million acre pine forest in the southern portion of the state.
Fun Factory has a seventeen trillion gallon aquifer underneath it that is some of the
Earth's cleanest water that it's actually protected by the United Nations for the most part.
The colage of the pine barrens picture like a beach, the dunes on
a beach, You know how there's all sorts of little pills and stuff cover
that in pine and oak forest, a blueberry, huckleberry understory, flowering plants,
and all sorts of cedar streams and cedar swamps completely taking over the landscape.
When I was younger, this stuff fascinated me. I was obsessed with
going out there and trying to get lost. And you just had this ecological
landscape, this huge forest that was in the center of four major US cities,
and you have New York City above, you have Philadelphia to the west,
you have Washington, d c. And you have Baltimore to the southwest.
So there's a huge belt in the huge population centers all around this section
of the forest that surrounded by almost fifty million people. So in my eyes,
it was always fascinating to see how all these animals and these habitats ribus
survive over time and basically survive the urban sprawl and suburbs and all that.
So I spent a lot of time out there researching and doing that type of
stuff. I was out there with a friend of mine. We were going
to an area that we looked at on Maps for a while. Basically,
this is it's called a paleo dune, and a paleo dune is a larger
dune. It's a higher elevation landscape. Basically, if you looked at it
on Google Maps, it's like a sandy bald area. It had pine oak
forest, very wet. It was actually in a wetland area, so and
our eyes, that was basically where we wanted to go to look for these
rare and endangered animals. For the most part, you were tasked to go
out there and document any sort of rare and endangered snakes that might be out
there because they were in decline. It was in the vicinity of a roadway
which may or may not have been under threat by construction. We get out
there, it is about an hour and a half hike into this section.
It is completely flooded. It's got greenbrier, campbriar, all sorts of stickers,
all the lay in. We had knee boots and the water was almost
coming over. So it was definitely a pretty taxing pike to get out to
this section of the forest. But we were determined. We got out there.
We basically walked up on this dune. It was beautiful. It was
mid June of twenty eighteen. Blueberries were completely budding, tons and tons of
liking and flowering plants were around as green as it could be out there.
Basically, what we did was we got our stuff together and we had it
all out and we're going to go hike. And the dune was work where
one section went off to one of the main roads and dirt roads in the
Pine Barents and also Cranberry farm, which cranberry is a huge industry in the
Pine Barrens. It's like the number one export of fruit or any sort of
food. And the other four went deeper into the state forest. We basically
decided to take the route deeper into the state forest. We walked down the
trail and we were heading down basically looking for any sort of signs of anything.
To the right of us, there was like this wetland area. I
don't want to call it like a swamp, but it was basically an area
that gets wet that time of the year. The Pine Barrens is weird with
them because a lot of the lowland areas will get completely flooded and soaked late
spring in early summer. Once July, all this rolls around its bone dry.
I walk up and there's actually this very old hunting stand. It's about
twenty feet up in the tree and it's not like a hunting stand that you
would get at Walmart, the ones that you sit in, And this is
like a full on shed up in the trees, like it was totally made
up with nails and boards and all sorts of stuff. And it freaked me
out for a second. So I'm like, you could probably live in that,
And I was a little bit freaked out. Actually, in the pine
barons, we have these they call the people the rednecks out there and stuff,
the people that had the pinies. So I'm like, oh, man,
I hope that some piney with the rusty chainsaws that come out of the
woods, because after us, I'm already getting like this weird feeling, like
I don't know if they should be here. This is a little weird.
But we kept going forward. My friend walks off and use the bathroom or
whatever. I'm still looking at this shed and I'm looking around, because I'm
looking for any sort of boards or any sort of cover that might have been
underneath the shed that snakes might be using. I'm looking at it. I'm
just thinking, man, I just hope there is no one else out here,
because when you're out in the woods, especially in the vicinity of where
we're at, people who are living out there are probably trying to be away
from people for a reason. I'm just hoping that and just stumble upon some
weird dude out there. So I'm looking up at this and I start to
hear what sounds like this bipedal crunching about sixty seventy yards into the wetland area.
I'm listening and all this fear culminates to like panics. I start yelling
out to it. I'm go, oh, is anyone there. I'm trying
to get whatever this is attention, because in my mind there's no doubt that
there's a person coming back to the shed, because that's all I thought about
my mind as a person. So I'm looking and looking in the trees,
seeing I see anything, and all I remember is seeing this first spit second
not long enough to get a really good book at it, long enough to
known't imagine or anything, just greasy, sleek black bord go from tree to
tree in the swamp. I'm looking at it. It goes for another couple
seconds and it just stops. In my eyes. I think I just saw
some greasy, hairy dude. Somebody does over scowered in weeks, and I'm
pretty sure I saw the top of his head or his hair or whatever.
I back out of there and I start to head out, and I'm freaking
out because at this point, I'm like, this has got to be a
guy stalking us or something. I grabbed my friend and he's looking down at
something, and I'm like, let's go. We got to get out of
here. I'm panicking at this point. Basically this hour and a half like
in Turns until forty five minute like that the Clark, because we were rush
and we were getting out of there. It was pretty terrifying, and I
think that would probably be my first brush with something that I couldn't playing at
the time because there was no reason for anybody to be out there. Okham's
Raiser came into play, and I thought the first thing in my head was
like, this has got to be a person, And obviously I can't say
for sure what it was because I never saw what was walking. But in
my eyes, there could only be two things out there that's walking by ipatially
like that. It made no sense for a person to be out there.
So I always call that kind of my first rush with something unknown that maybe
opened my mind to the possibility of more things that kind of shocked me.
A few weeks went by and I thought that was a person. It wasn't
really until I saw another newspaper clipping in the Pine barns. In April,
there was a class a sighting in more the northern Pine Barren region that actually
got a lot of traction a lot of people. It was all over the
news that Alady was driving home with her husband and her dog. She was
actually looking out the rear view mirror. She saw the thing jump across the
road behind her, probably one hundred george behind her. I've always looked at
that kind of weird. Why would you say that it jumped from bo in
her rear Vietnir, Why would it have not been in the front if someone
was making up a story. So I was always like a little bit intrigued
by that. That's when I started having the thoughts in my head, like,
there's no way, is there a possibility? What I experienced was what
I thought it was, And obviously I was getting a little bit nah,
there's no way. So I would say for the most part, I was
just trying to taught myself out of that thought. I thought of that for
a while, but I didn't really pursue anything. It wasn't one of those
encounters that made me want to do any more research, but it was that
little thing in the back of my head. Did I really experience what I
experience? Did I? I wasn't really too sure. A few years would
to go by. I was looking online on Facebook and I saw something about
a BFROL expedition happening in the New Jersey Pine Barns. I was like,
I should probably knock it off my bucket list. At the time, I
was I would say on the about that type of stuff. I was very
skeptical of a lot of the stuff. But I watched the shows, and
I'm thinking, as I watched the shows, these people are definitely reacting to
some coyote hals or some alhoots or whatever. I'm not even thinking that they're
even experiencing anything related to Sasquad. So I'm like, let's just go on
it and just see what happened, see what these people are reacting to.
Maybe have a little chuckle to myself, you know, maybe I'm not crazy.
I saw a person and it wasn't a big deal because obviously bigfoot expeditions
attract the craziest people out there. So I spent the money to go on
the expedition. Not the best financial decision at the time, but I really
wanted to knock that off my bucket list. Basically, I went. I
never can't before in my life. This was like my first time ever,
and I'm an outdoors person, but I do a lot of day hugs,
so I get there. The person who was running it, say was Eric
Spinner. He's a researcher for New Jersey. Basically, he was very helpful.
He helped me set up my tent because I never saw up a tent
before. He was very cordial, kind of introduced me to everybody because I'm
the new guy. I'm getting myself set up and you know, the guy
next to me in the tent, you know, me and him start talking.
Pretty normal guy at first, he is, Yeah, the government released
a bunch of dog men and bigfoot. Oh no, what did they get
myself into. I was like, I'm going to regret this. This is
going to be bad. This whole expedition is going to be like this.
I was just beside myself with everyone on this expeditions crazy. I get myself
set up with the BF for expeditions just like a check in thing where everyone
gets together, they introduce themselves, they go over with God. I'm interested
in the subject. If they've ever had any sightings, there, any stories,
heard some pretty compelling stories from people. Then basically we have a dinner.
Usually people try to cook or they'll bring food to the expedition. I
was blown away by how professional a lot of the people were. They all
had walks, they all had therms. They even had bionic ears, which
is like the large I don't know how to explain it, but think about
a large bowl, but you have headphones and you can hear a thousand times
better than you can with your naked ear without any sort of help. Like,
all right, these guys definitely put in a lot of money for this
stuff, so I'm definitely pretty interested by the fact that these people are so
die harready Gung Ho about this stuff, but obviously I was still very skeptical
about everything. I was like, this is a lot of money for just
going out in the woozard. Here's some owls and foxes and stuff. I
wasn't really taking it too seriously at the time. Night one on the expedition.
Every expedition is about three nights. It's usually at Thursday night, as
Friday night, Saturday night, and then Sunday morning, which you know,
nothing really happens on Sunday. Some people will choose to stay an extra day
just because usually there seems to make more activity when everyone leaves. We got
out and the first night we did something called a pied piper routine, which
is where you will have a group of people go up the trail well and
you'll have another group to the side of the trail watching them with They will
basically watch and see if anything's following them, because a lot of times they
say that they'll follow in parallel. And groups of people and watched it went
out the trail and there was a fork in the trail. Another team went
this way, my team went this way, and I was with the runner
of the expedition. So we get up the trail and we're hanging out this
intersection. We're probably a good five hundred yards away from the other group.
We got walkees and everything, and we're just sitting out there shooting the crap,
just listening. The runner of the expedition shows me the bionic gear and
he's having me test it out. Don't move your feet around so much because
in the headphones it'll sound like ten thousand times louder and it'll completely mess up
to the audio. We're sitting out for an hour and a half just listening.
We didn't really have much happen that night for the most part. The
first night, heard what could have sounded like coyote in the distance. It
was like a distant howl, and that's something that sounded weird. It was
almost like chatter for a second, but it was so quick and maybe one
word, if that's what you want to call it. But it was fleeting
and just out of my hearing. So I put it away and didn't really
think about it too much, and basically we headed back down the trail and
headed back to camp probably around two o'clock. It wasn't like they're up there
all night. I actually headed home that night because I had to work the
next day, but I was going to come back because I'm only about forty
five minute drive away from the actual campground that we were staying at. I
headed back, came back the next day and actually took a date, like
with some of the attendees there. Encountered that I told you about that her
about in April with the road crossing in the rearview mirror. We went to
go check that out because in our eyes, that would be cool to go
to an actual setting location for a Class A. I should have said the
year September twenty twenty one is when this expedition took place, so this was
three years prior to when this expedition took place. So we get out to
this area and we're walking down the trail. It's a nice warm day.
We get to the setting location. We're walking through some thick stuff along the
creek and suddenly there's this huge splash in the swamp. And stay tuned for
more sasquatch out to see we'll be right back after these messages. It turns
out as a bunch of ducks that came down and scared the crap out of
us. So we get to the area. You whooped around, and you
know, I didn't see if anything happened. One of our guys did fall
into the water on the way back to the car. See you told me
it's an expedition until somebody falls in the water. So we got that out
the way pretty quickly. But we got back to camp, sat around,
eats, some food, hung around the bonfire. Beautiful September night. Stars
are out. It's pretty crazy out there. You got in the middle of
New Jersey or the middle of the pine bearings. The stars are as clear
as they could be. We're just sitting out there, We're talking and everything.
I'm trying to get ready for that night. The plan was where we're
going to go to this area called Capon, the person who runs the capond
and it's basically this really tiny like pond alongside of the huge old Cranberg Bug
and this is an area that he had a lot of activity in the past.
That was going to be our second night up. I'm almost on a
suit in the chair and it finally ready to go. So we get out
there. Like I said, at this point, I saw more questions and
answers. I'm not convinced at anything. We get out to this spot picture
a dirt road and then to the side of a smaller horse traw Our vehicles
were totally scratching the sides of the thickets and it was totally miserable getting all
the way down there. We finally get to it and it's this clearing next
to this ponds. Basically, what the exhibition leader likes to do is she
wants to sit out there for about forty five to minutes to an hour,
just staying silent and not really talking and letting the forest settle down after the
noises of the vehicles moving through and everything. He tries to keep everything as
silent as possible after that because he wants to would so readjust hermit per se.
We had about setting people with us. We all closed the truck door
silently. We walk down the trail and have it circle where we're all sitting
in a chair and just watching each other's backs and just trying to stay as
silent as possible and just listen. So about an hour goes by we're still
sitting there. I can't remember if there was another team across the Cranberry Bog
because there was another really big hot spot across from it that a lot of
people talk about. We actually went there the next night. This was another
area where he had a lot of activity. We're just sitting there listening.
She goes to me, it's like, you want to do a localization,
and I'm like, bye, golly, yes I do. I'm the new
guys. So I'm like, I'm gonna do a loop and just see what
happens. I unleashed my inner hower monkey and I just did this the loudest
wop I could possibly do, just to see what would happen. Right after
I did it, I got three woop responses coming from the Cranberry Bog area.
It was like one ladder woop and then a less loud loop and then
work wid er woop. Almost something was moving away when I did it,
so it was just like totally moved away from us. I was totally taken
back by that. I was like surprised. I'm like, okay, that
was weird. Maybe I didn't hear it right or whatever, but that definitely
sounded like a whoop. Maybe it was something else because we were next to
the Cranberry Bob and thinking maybe it was a goose possibly, So I put
it away and didn't think too much about it, sat back down, and
I start to hear. And this messed me up a little bit because this
was at the time I had no answer for what I was hearing. But
I start hearing this chattering I want to call it was on the edge of
my hearing, and I would hear it when the wind picked up a little
bit. It was almost like the wind helped the sound of the chatter get
to my ears faster. It sounded like what they call sanurai chatter, and
this here sounds It sounded like two things having a conversation with each other.
I know a rackcketting chatter sounds like I know a lot of the animals at
night will make chatter. This was very deep. It was something popping very
quickly. It was under my hearing at the time. Nobody else was really
hearing it. I feel like it lasts a lot shorter than I remember it,
but it might have been like five or six seconds of hearing this.
I've talked to some people afterwards. I think maybe one of the persons possibly
heard it once again, all I was the only when heard it when I
was listening. That kind of got me questioning stuff a little bit. I
was like, that's pretty weird. It sounded like the Sierra sounds. It
was very distinctly two things having a conversation with each other. I'm not even
going to attempt to try to say what it sounded like, but it was
definitely something two things having a conversation for sure. The rest of the night
really nothing else really happened to. One of the attendees actually has this insane
banshee like screen. It's lows, so she does that. She has something
in the distance. Respond that sounded weird. Sounded like almost an Ohio how
type noise. But once again, it was just so out of hearing it
was barely in hearing grange, so I could barely pick up what it was.
We're probably out there till about one o'clock and we you hit the road
and we head back to camp. They're pretty close to the vicinity of the
campground. This is about a fifteen minute drive from the campground, all down
dirt roads and stuff. You have that thought in your head when you winging
your tent. Man, these creepy sounds I'm hearing out here. Man,
We're not that far away from them. I really hope these things don't come
into camp or anything that's apparently what has happened at this campground before they would
actually have stuff come in and investigate. It was deeply on my head getting
back to camp and everything. Saturday rolls around and it's the last night of
the expedition. I get up, we make breakfast, day goes by.
We're all just connecting. We're taking day hikes, we're doing day scouting,
which a lot of the times is what people do during the day on the
expedition, so they'll go out pull day scout, just check stuff out.
For me, I was looking for snakes. I was going to some of
my spots looking for snakes around there, so I wasn't really even doing anything
they put related. I was just out and enjoying the time I was there.
Saw some pretty cool places. There's actually a place not far from that
called Devil's hair Brush. It's basically this huge bog that has a whole bunch
of dead trees in the middle of it. So it's actually a pretty cool
geological formation out there, so I want to check that out. And got
back to camp probably around four o'clock, five o'clock before it got dark.
Same thing. We just ate dinner, hung around the campground, just got
to know each other a little bit more before it ended. Basically, we
got ourselves ready for the final night ops. I think we headed out around
nine o'clock to this spot that we're going to go to. The bluecation that
we went to for the final night operation was a place called the Bowl.
The Bowl was an area that has had a lot of activity. Tons and
tons of white sour seen there. Supposedly ords the guy who runs the expedition,
and that's one of the main areas of research. It's this place called
the Bowl. They'll see like red pin dot lights there, so it's a
really funky place supposedly. So we get to the Bowl and basically there's three
teams. There's a team that was going back to Capond that we were at
night prior. There was a team actually all females in the center of the
bowl, and I was on a team that went to the dam and was
kind of monitoring the lake or the fanburry bog there. We're gonna have thermals
and we're just going to scan the shore lines and just look at everything see
if we can't catch anything on THEURM. We're all set up it's messed up
at the time because we were using the girls as baber se. We'll try
to see if things you would come in and check them out. We were
all at the dam and it was pretty dead for the most part. For
most of the night, it was around like eleven o'clock. Nothing's happening,
haven't heard anything, nothing on the radio. We kept shotting beavers slapping their
tails in the water nearby, so that was like the only action we were
really getting. So, you know, we're sitting there talking about all sorts
of stuff under the sun, everything from the research. Everyone was staling politics.
Started to get my ear tapped off by one of the guys about how
my generations and stuff fup for everything. I'm like, can something please just
happen, get me out of this conversation, please, I'm getting my ear
talked off by him. And then all of a sudden, we get this
radio call in from the all female group at the bowl. They were just
like, hey, can you guys come back to the bowl. I forgot
her name. She's having a conversation with one, so I'm thinking of conversation
she's talking with one. What like in my head, I'm thinking, like
what are you talking about. I was so confused at the time. I
didn't know what she was talking about. I'm the new guy, apparently,
so I was gonna be the one going to the bowl with one of the
investigators. There. We're going down the trail and basically how this trail goes
and it goes up like this, and then there's a turn and then you
can see the bottom of the bowl. Once you make that turn, it's
about one hundred yards from the dam to the actual bull itself. We're walking
down the trail. Once we get to this bend in the trail, right
where we're able to be seen by the all female group to the left of
us, we have these two loud power knocks just bam, probably not even
fifty yards away. Obviously, I was freaked out by that. I was
totally took off guard by what I heard. I started pointing over there,
and pointing is something you don't want to do in expeditions, according to some
of the people who run it, because then might what the Sasquatches know that
you see them when you heard them, or something that may borrow them from
wanting to do anything else. I didn't understand that at the time. But
I was like, I'm the new guy, not fit question, and he
was like, don't point, don't point. I'm like, all right,
knocks nine o'clock. You're supposed to say nine o'clock, ten o'clock, six
o'clock. We finally get to the bowl. They're all standing looking up at
the top of it. I don't really describe how the ball was, but
it's basically this topographical formation where it is like a bowl, where it's really
high on three sides. There's a road that runs next to the top of
it, and behind the lowest side is a sweeter swamp, so it's a
very dense hardwood fares steps to the So we're all looking up at the bowl
the top of it. She's like, one of the women's go ahead,
I'll whoop again. She does this really soft like woop, very soft,
just very gentle. I'm listening, and I hear, probably about one hundred
yards away, something responds to it sounded very similar to what she said.
It was a whoop, and then it would knock, and then she did
it again. She whooped, and it got a little closer, and it
whooped again, and it would whistle and it would go back and forth.
Probably another dozen times it would just woom, and it would either whistle or
it would not, or it would do a double whoop or something. Actually,
a couple of weeks later they actually had another paranormal group come down there.
They had the same type of activity happened with this thing whooping, because
at first they thought it was like a goose or something that was out in
the woods. But this thing was clearly coming in closer when we would woop.
I mean, it was getting to the point where you can almost hear
rustling moving around and stuff. I'm just spinning off what it could be,
and I had no responses for what it could have been. This was clearly
something whooping like making that whooping noise wasn't the nowl foxes and kyotes don't really
make whooping noises like that. So in my head I'm thinking, like,
Okay, there's only two things this could be. This is either a person
messing with us, which at the time I thought was a possibility, or
this is what we're here to see or experience. In my head, I'm
thinking, okay, it's last night. They want us to get our money's
worth. I'm thinking there's got to be a person out there messing of some
of the attendees, messing with us, trying to get us to get us
to come back and spend some more money. In my head, I'm thinking,
all right, that's probably what it is. But I'm listening and I'm
like, this is really good. They must have this guy must have a
walkie. There must be another guy saying all right, now move closer to
this way. So I'm thinking, there are they like talking to each other
and I'm blestening. They're not. I'm not hearing anything. So then a
few minutes goes by and we're still looking up the where the top of the
bowl was. One of the attendees was like, I see eye shine.
I'm like looking around, I'm looking at the top of the bowl. I
look. I see our cars part to the left and I'm like, oh,
that's just the red security lights and she's like, no, look to
the right of that. So I scan from the cars to the right.
There's a large pitch pine tree. I'm looking and my eyes are adjusting,
and I just see these two royal blue what I can only describe as these
like reflective saucers looking from behind the tree. And it went from behind the
tree to the other side of the tree like this, and it would like
crouch down a little bit and move left and right looking. This probably lasted
for about five seconds or so. Just I'm watching this thing moving around,
and I'm just blown away by what I'm seeing. I couldn't explain that to
the people. What I was seeing in this moment. The reflective eyes like
a blue royal blue color. I can only describe it as the moon reflecting
all of them, very reflective. Definitely, we didn't seem like anything coming
from within. I'm watching this. I'm just completely blown away from what I'm
seeing. So this went on for about five seconds. I'm taking it back.
I'm just thinking, Okay, how the heck did somebody pull that off.
That's when the thought started come to my head. Maybe they didn't.
Maybe you're actually having a legitimate experience with this. Basically, I kind of
catch my breath grouping after seeing that, We're sitting there selecting ourselves, and
the whooping whatever was up the top of the hill stopped, but the cuar
swamp behind us, we started to hear something moving closer to us. We
started to hear what sounds almost heavy breathing. I started hearing these moaning sounds
coming from the swamp behind us. It was something clearly from left or right,
moving closer. And the time, I'm thinking, are we getting slangs
right now? Did that thing at the top of the hill. Was that
like distracting us so that these things were moving in behind us? And obviously
I have no idea that's what they were doing. My head, that's what
I'm thinking. They're really working together to surround us right now, check us
out from behind. I was listening. I wish I brought a recorder.
You know, a huge new guy mistake. I totally dropped the ball on
that one. I can't even describe them to save my life. That sounds
that we were hearing. It was definitely not normal. I never heard anything
like that in my life. Clearly something moving closer to us to check us
out. One of the attendees apparently said that she felt rocks pebbles sit in
the back of her back. I'm not one hundred percent sure that's what she
really experienced, but she said she was feeling like something was hitting her from
behind. So as this is happening, we're getting ready to end the night,
trying to get out of there and get back to the cars. They
decided to take a walk down the road a little further away. Same thing.
They described that. They were walking down the road and they heard what
sounded like a very low, very somber how moving away, as if it
was saying goodbye. At the time, I wasn't really sure what they heard.
They headed back to camp. I was just beside myself. I really
didn't know what to think. I was just beyond questioning everything that happened that
night. It spiraled me into looking into it more and trying to do as
much research on the topic as possible as somebody who's skeptical, as somebody who
tends to know a good amount about natural sounds and native animals and stuff.
This wasn't anything that I would pay somebody a thousand bucks to tell me what
it was. It was definitely not normal as somebody who skeptical. I had
to be skeptical my own skeptics at the time. Maybe the most logical thing
that it was what you experienced, Like maybe it wasn't people or anything.
I told my family about it and about what happened. They're telling me like,
oh, it was probably people. It was probably people that got paid
to go out there, I don't think, so it didn't make sense.
There was no people out in these woods. There's people on our team who
had fears, who had therms, people are very loud. You're not moving
through the woods in the dark without being extremely loud, or hitting trees,
hitting all sorts of undergrowth and thorns, You're going to be very easy to
hear whatever we were hearing. This was definitely something that was adapt to moving
at night, moving around. I was definitely questioning everything. Like I said,
it was one of those rare things. Just like both options for what
this could have been almost made no sense because obviously sasquatch or bigfoot doesn't exist.
It's not supposed to be something that israel in my head, there's no
way that could have been what I heard. At the same time, it
would have made no sense of those people either, because despite the pine barons
being very open and most of the time you're able to move through it pretty
quickly, there's some thick areas too. This is definitely one of those areas
where there's a lot more thickets and thorns and greenbrier. It was definitely something
that stuck to my head to this day and e spearheaded me into doing more
research into it and looking more into it, doing a lot more research on
the folklore of New Jersey just recent sightings. It's pretty shocking to see what
people will report. I've always asked myself too with this topic, why New
Jersey. New Jersey is actually the most densely popular to see it in the
country. I think we have about ten million people in the state of New
Jersey. I've always wondered, how would these things even exist with the amount
of human traffic car traffic, Because any given weekend or day, you have
thousands of people all throughout the Pine Barn shriving around, whether it's off roading,
hiking, kayaking, canoeing, there's always a good amount of people out
there doing something, especially on the outskirts of the suburbs, some of the
town city areas. You have a lot of greenways and green belts that are
pretty much scattered throughout the state where you have waterways, gas pipelines, power
line cuts. So do you have that ability to move throughout the without being
seen? That's if they exist. You have the ability to go under the
cover of night move to these areas without being seen It's pretty crazy how in
New Jersey, especially how predictable people are. We wake up eight o'clock,
go to work, sit in traffic for an hour, head home around five
o'clock, you eat dinner around six, and then go to bed at nine
o'clock. I'd actually done door toash some of the most populated areas in the
state. If you're there at two o'clock in the morning, there's nobody else
on the right. I've delivered plenty of fifty dollars, talked about orders the
stoners at two o'clock in the morning, there's nobody out there. Definitely think
that there's that ability that something could go unseen and undiscovered if they're just able
to understand the basic human patterns and how we function and how we focus.
Especially at three o'clock in the morning. At night, there's nobody out in
the woods, really, just crazy people like custom and research. It's definitely
interesting looking at the maps. I'm sure you're familiar with Big Flip Mapping project
and all that other stuff. They have great information about greenways and green belts.
A lot of the sightings I've seen do come from river corridors, power
line cuts. There's definitely plenty of data to some extent of them moving around
and moving from place to place on powerline cuts and green belts. Like I
said, it's definitely something that has been extremely interesting. It's gotten me out
in the woods a lot. I do continue to do research. It's very
basic, you know, going out in the woods and sitting. I do
need to buy some recorders and get out and do more things like that.
I'll tell you another thing that actually happened to me recently. This was last
year. I was out in one of my research areas that I've been checking
out for a while. Right on the wall for River, this beautiful hard
widow forest that runs up again. So it's actually probably within mile away from
some really heavily populated areas, so right under the nose. If you looked
at it on maps, you would actually see it's almost like a wall of
green right alongside a major population center where it's just suburbs and towns for miles.
And stay tuned for more sasquatch out to see. We'll be right back
after these messages. How it goes is there's this huge power line cut that
goes through and then right it it's on all arts and all waterways and everything
like that. It's a really interesting area to go to. So I came
out here. I wasn't even really doing any bigfoot stuff. I'm trying to
make it a habit to go out early morning, take walks in the woods
and just see what I could hear. See if I can't pick them anything,
even if it's going out there again, owls and b canon, coyotes,
just going out listening. I parked to this place we call this plot
the one Weed Bridge, me and my friend to go there and do research.
I did this triangle loop where I would go up the loop, go
all the way up, come down that there's a tread that went along a
cedar swamp that takes me back to the swamp where I parked that or the
bridge that I parked that. So I started out walking around four point thirty
in the morning. This is a Wednesday morning, So I went out there
where there should be nobody out there that early in the morning. I'm not
down that people go out there, but it was not a weekend or anything
like that. So I go down probably halfway through the hike, and I'm
less saying I hear like some distant coyotes or dogs barking and howling in the
distance. I get to this area known as the Ford, where it's a
really skinny, shallow section of the Mulka River. This is actually a section
that samurai chatter was actually heard out before. Supposedly there's a couple other instances
where people hurt by pugle footsteps. Since actually about a mile or a half
away from another class state siting, supposedly. So I'm walking along the river
and I decided to do like a outroot because there's a good population of bar
owls along this section of the river into the Cedar Swamp. So I do
a couple of these into the swamp. I don't really hear anything. Nothing
happens. The first time I go up the trail a little further this point
that goes into the Cedar Swamp. I do another one. I hear what
sounds like a small animal moving around in the swamp. I'm thinking to myself,
I just spooked a small fox or a little possum or raccoon or something,
because whatever it was sounded small at first. And I started to hear
this thing something closer to me. I'm listening it's bipedal footsteps. Again,
So I started to panic a little bit, like, oh, now,
what did I just do? This thing is moving closer. I forgot to
describe it. There's a small canal that runs along the swamp itself that this
thing steps in the water, I'm gonna just book it and get out of
here. Once that happens, I hear the splash, so instead of running
away, I turned my camera on, I turned both of my flapslights on.
I just last the spot where I heard it at I'm thinking, I'm
either gonna get the best footage i've whatever ever, or there's nothing there.
I shine down there, I'm shining all around. I'm looking. There's nothing.
You can see the water still moving after something stepped in there, but
I could not catch anything. At the same time I put my light on,
this bar owl just goes off. If you know what a bar owl
sounds like. They had this sound where they'll actually like it sounds like a
screech at first. So of course, when I'm at the height of being
as scared as I was, this thing screeches and goes to I almost have
a heart attack when anything happened. That was just totally the worst time for
the alley go off. Funny story, I'm backing away from that. At
the time, I'm scared because I did have something walk up on, you
know, if something was coming to check out. It was totally something my
beetle d of taking the trail a little further. There's this nice, wide
open sand road that I could have taken where I would have had better visibility
in Cae if something was following me or something, I had much better visibility.
Then there was this dirt bike trail. So what do I do.
I take the small enduro trail instead, where I'm surrounded by bake trees and
totally worse. Sure I could have taken the entire time I'm walking back to
my car, I'm looking behind me and obviously nothing's following me. It was
just one of those moments where all of that just culminated into this terrifying encounter
that it's probably the main reason why I don't really try to get in the
woods alone anymore, or at least you really never know. And it's not
even necessarily due to bigfoot or anything. People. It's people, wildlife,
it's stuff you don't want to be alone. Running into some weird, funky
people that were any sort of wildlife. The pine barrens is very safe as
far as wildlife, because the worst thing you're going to encounter is either a
tick bite or a possibly But for the most part, there isn't much out
there that's gonna harm you. That's definitely some of the experiences I've had out
in New Jersey. I do continue to go out and do my research.
My friend does a podcast. Actually that's my research buddy bag I go out
with. I definitely try to spend as much time researching everything that's happened in
the state. As far as folklore goes, obviously everyone is about the Jersey
Devil. I don't really believe in the devil too much, but it's a
great story. I can certainly tell you that if nobody's heard of it before.
Basically, in the week seventeen hundreds, there was a family known as
the Weeds family. Mother Weeds had about twelve children. The story goes,
she found out that she was pregnant and she's got another baby. This is
gonna be her thirteenth child. In a fit of rage, what she basically
said, let this one be a devil, or let this one be a
demon. So the day comes where she goes birth to the baby. It
comes out perfectly. There's very different variations of the story. It depends on
you ask how the story went. People say it came out look being like
the Jersey Devil. Some people said it came out looking at the normal baby,
which is probably the most popular one. After being out for a while,
began to grow these leathery bat wings, grew a tail, it grew
this goat looking head. It grew and got big, attacked and killed the
mother, and the attacked some of the midwives that were there and killed some
of the people there. Some people say killed everyone, but some people say
it just flew out the chimney into the night sky. That's probably the biggest
story as far as folk work goes for the Pine barrens. I've always found
it fascinating how people will report seeing the Jersey Devil to this day. I
think that it's a culmination of rumors disdained for the Leeds family at the time.
A lot of people don't realize this, but the Leeds fan was very
must disliked back then. They had a story made up of them, were
stapegoaded as being these devil worshippers and that's basically how it seemed like the Jersey
Devil story was formed. Let's really interest in looking at some of the folklore
in the state, of all the things that goes into some of the local
legends and folklore. I've always been fascinated with the Jersey Devil story, but
I've always figured that it was just folklore. Like you said, it had
something to do with the family. It's a cool story that somebody made up.
When I hear the Pine Barons, just in general, I think most
people have this experience because of some of the folklore, and we've heard the
Jersey Devil, it just evokes this immediate reaction to your core. Oh it
happened to the Pine Barons. So it's really mysterious. But I think it's
very interesting some of the things that you experienced, for example, on the
BFRO expedition. I think a couple of things that you said really stuck out
to me, and it resonates with me because I've been in your position as
a very skeptical person about this. I've been on expeditions in the past.
It's interesting unless you're in those positions to say I'm skeptical. But sometimes Ockham's
raisor Leans towards you're really having the experience that you're having. I don't know
if this is something you went through before you went on your expedition. People
were reaching out to me saying, hey, man, what if you have
an experience when you go up with Todd? How are you going to handle
that? Have you considered how you're going to respond if you see one of
these things? Or I have an experience. So I really had to recalibrate
and say, you know what, because I was really very much like you.
I don't know if you went into this thinking it, or maybe you
had those moments during the expedition. I thought I was going up there to
be hoaxed. I've got to go get my quote unquote money's worth. I
figured this would be the perfect time for Todd to hoax somebody, because I've
always said I thought Todd wanted to bring me up there. He wanted me
to have experiences, and then he wanted to come back and tell my audience
about all the great experiences up to further his business. That's a smart business
decision on his part, right. I had to recalibrate myself and say,
there is a possibility that there may be sasquatch in that area. If I
have an experience, I have to lay my preconceived notions about Todd and what
he might do or who he might have out there trying to fool me,
and consider that I might actually have a real experience. I believe I did
have a couple of real experiences there, because once you get in those situations,
and once you get into the areas, very much like you I COM's
Razor tell you, it doesn't make sense for a person to be out here.
We were almost twenty miles deep in the middle of the woods, in
the middle of nowhere when I was at Radium. There's nobody else out there
but us. When it becomes one of two things that's making these wood knocks
or making these samurai chatter sounds that I heard and recorded when I was up
there in Radium, then you have to say, if you remove the human
factor, it really only leaves one thing. When you came out of that,
in particular with your BFRO expedition, once you came back and you had
time to really think about things that went on and reflect on that when you
walked away from that. Sitting here now, a couple of years later,
How do you feel about that expedition? Do you think you really had experiences
with bigfoot while you were out there. I can't really say one hundred percent
that experienced bigfootsus I never saw bigfoot, but everything that happened to be on
expedition certainly lined up with what people described with bigfoot encounters, whooping, knocking,
and definitely resonate with your experience in Canada in that area. Obviously,
we were not as deep in the woods as you were. I've and radiant,
but the Pinemarns is still a very remote pace at night, and you're
not going to have people out there who are just gonna be running around looking
for bigfoot research or trying to spook them or anything. Looking back on it,
I do legitimately believe that I encountered something. We as a group of
people, we definitely experienced collectively what I do believe was sex squatch activity.
Obviously without seeing one. That's the closest I can really say to it.
You have to think while you're out there, and you're out on expedition,
like you're probably going to have people who are going to look at you thinking
you paid all that money. That's a lot of money that could go into
someone's pocket. You got to understand the circumstances of where we were at.
It was very hard for people to just sneak up on a bunch of people
armed with thermal cameras. It's not very forgiving as far as being able to
just run through the woods at night and sneak up on a bunch of people
and not be seen. Is it possible, Sure, but it would have
to be like playing like a navy seal ambush or something. I mean,
I'm skeptical about a lot of the stuff I hear and all that stuff,
But when you have this encounter, and you have this experience, it certainly
does raise that antenna. Like man am I being too skeptical to the point
where it actually sounds more crazy to say that it was people. Because I'll
tell you this now, Brian, this was not an animal. This was
not any native animal woop bang or howling or whatever we've heard. I'm pretty
good with animal sounds, and some of the noises of animals I can fix.
And foxes. I know fox makeim screening. I know that rauccoons chatter,
I know Kayati's will how and tits will sound terrifying. I believe me.
I've heard of paka kayti's take them namel before. It was the most
horrifying noise in the world. Bar owls actually make a monkey chatter type sound
where if you looked it up, it sounds pretty freaky. It sounds almost
like samurai chatter. This was none of that stuff. This was totally something
that was being made with lips and a tongue, and something was definitely responding
to our calls and something was up be coming closer. Like I said,
even to this day, I got in the woods and if I hear something,
I will immediately, Oh, it's a bar owl, it's a fox,
that's a kayti. It's pretty simple, especially with the small amount.
We don't have a huge diverse ecosystem of mammals and birds out in the pine
barrens, especially any large ones that you might hear at night. So yeah,
I definitely leave that expedition thinking to myself that this was an experience of
some kind. And at this point I said, I don't really care what
people think about it. It's like I said, I even have to look
in the mirror, like, man, do you think you're just a little
bit overboard with this type of stuff, and do you really think that this
is probably not exactly what you experienced. I tend to look back on it,
and I think, no, I experienced what I experience. It's not
just the fact that I experienced my experience. Hearing people who don't know each
other experiencing a road crossing on the same road around the same time of the
year, five years apart. How does that even happen without them knowing each
other. How is it that people will go out put their livelihoods on the
line to say they experienced something, Because you got to think a large amount
of people. I'm sure there's people out there who are legitimately have never experienced
anything. That's fine. I welcome skepticism of every kid. I would rather
be in a room full of skeptics and a room full of bel years,
because I would like to have my mind change. I would like to have
somebody say, oh, you know what, there's actually a migration of these
type of birds they go up there at that time of the year. Maybe
that's what you've heard. So I woke them all sorts of stuff like that.
But like I said, this was something that looking back on it,
it definitely seemed very unlikely that it was people. It was definitely something that
seemed like it was more or less activity. I've never seen a bigfoot.
I think I've had two possible Class B sightings, and then the eye shine
on that expedition at this quitt iniceable to this day. Like I said,
until I see one, I'm never going to say I fully believe in it.
But man, it's my ears and eyes open to the possibility of it
from what I experienced on that expedition. For sure, I'm somebody who will
certainly put aside any sort of belief to look at the most logical reason.
I'm a scientifically based person. I've done work with snakes and wear animals and
stuff. I looked to think of myself as scientifically minded, but it's almost
gotten to the point where your own skepticism can get in the way of really
making any sort of progress as far as research goes. So I'm very open
minded. At the same time, I do question everything I hear from my
owneers from other people's experiences, not that I disbelieve them necessarily, but human
hearing and human eyes are flawed. It's hard for you to remember exactly what
happened. I'm sure there's some details I missed on my expedition that maybe I
didn't have in my notes, but I made sure that once after that expedition
happened, I wrote down as much as I could from that night so that
my brain was as fresh as possible from everything that happened was on that piece
of paper, and nothing was skewed, nothing was messed up, because man,
if I'm not going to bring a recorder with me, i'd better write
down exactly what happened. Truthfully, That's what I did after that expedition,
for sure. Very cool stuff. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing
your experience, Jake. I've had a blast talking to you. Thank you.
Thanks for having me on, Brian. They say you do go,
you can't stay, and I don't want to feel world out. Chart this
chart, that chart everything. Call me right back, ride back the joy
for me, enjoy staying right there, Come in right away. Yes,
still stas stass ss st st state still cost games in states, US sets
us ness never him