If you've spent any time listening to Bigfoot podcasts, it's all but certain you
know about tonight's guest. I say that because he's been hosting Bigfoot podcasts for
almost as long as any of them have been around. Of course, I'm
talking about Matt Knapp. Matt, thanks so much for coming on, glad
to be here, Thanks for having me. Well, it's great having you.
I'm just glad, being the busy man that you are, you're willing
to come on and talk with me tonight. Oh yeah. Between the two
of us, I think we go NonStop all the times. We're pretty fortunate
to be able to do this finally, Oh definitely. Yeah. Like I
told you behind the scenes, I've been wanting to have you on the show
for years now, so I'm tickled pink to finally be able to have you
on. But having said that, before you accepted the fact that sasquatch were
really out there, Matt, you were a card hearing believer in ghosts another
supernatural phenomena. How was it that you believed in the existence of entities you
couldn't touch, but refused to believe in ones that you could actually touch.
You know, I've always been a pretty skeptical person, believe it or not,
which is funny considering, you know, the line of work I'm in,
so to speak. But I've always been the type of person that I
really need to see something myself to fully, you know, go all in
on it. And growing up, I had lots of paranormal experiences in the
house that I lived in, and really just in general, Oklahoma can be
kind of a weird place and it's not uncommon or run across somebody that's experienced
something. So I actually grew up having those paranormal experiences and everything, and
whenever it came to Bigfoot, it really interested me. It really grabbed my
attention. And then whenever I discovered that people were actively going out and looking
for it, including people in my own state, it really blew my mind.
I was fortunate to be introduced and meet a lot of really great people
right out the gate, a lot of experienced people who had been in the
Bigfoot world for years and years, and they told some amazing stories and I
got to know those people on a personal level, became friends with them.
Some are even extended family I would consider that. So it was hard for
me not to believe them. I mean, they were so genuine with their
stories, and like I said, they became friends. So then it's not
just hearing a stranger tell you a story, it's a friend telling you.
And I still just remained on the fence. I wanted to believe them,
but I had to see for myself, and I started going out with them,
and yeah, I had my world change forever. I had a sighting,
had an encounter with these people out in the field, saw it with
my own two eyes, and the rest is history. Yeah, for someone
who wants to learn the ropes when it comes to Sasquatch, I can't think
of a better group of people than the ones that you got hitched with.
I've got tons of questions for you, Map, but before I start throwing
the match, you please tell us a complete story behind your first bigfoot sighting.
Sure it was in Sulfur, Oklahoma, in the Chickasaw National Recreation Area,
which is I believe Oklahoma's only actual national park. There might be one
other, but I'm pretty sure that's the only one, or at least it
was at the time. This area is sitting right on the southern border of
Sulfur. I mean, you're right in the town of Sulfur itself, and
you drive directly into the park from the town and it has a long history
of bigfoot sidings and reports. Lots of tourists flocked to the area during the
summer months. There's a large amount of medicinal springs there. That's kind of
what the park is famous for, its natural springs, and people have been
going to this set of springs since the eighteen hundreds. I believe it was
Native American land prior to that, and I want to say the Chickasaw tribe
sold it. I'm trying to remember the year. It slips around, but
they sold it to the United States government for a national park. That was
the agreement. Yeah, So we were having kind of an informal outing there.
It was just more of a meet and greet with a lot of people,
but we were going to go looking around and everything. And we had
gone out the previous night and I had experienced for the first time rock throwing,
just some tiny pebbles being thrown on the hood of the car that I
was actually leaning against at the time. I watched one of the pebbles hit
the hood of the car and bounce up and actually hit me in the stomach
and fall back down on the hood of the car. That was pretty convincing.
You know, I'm standing there staring into the woods. They're just on
the other side of the vehicle, and I'm like thinking to myself, you
know, well, what can throw a rock through the trees. I mean,
it can't be a raccoon, it can't be a squirrel. And over
the course of the night, we actually could see rocks flying over our heads
and landing into the creek, splashing into the creek behind us. It was
a really amazing thing. But that second night, we were in the parking
lot of a nature center that's ran by the park rangers there. It's just
kind of a rock building that tourists can go to and buy postcards and look
at some different animals on display. You know, nothing like a zoo or
anything like that, but they have a few live animals, like some rattlesnakes
and stuff. And this parking lot has some trash cans sitting in a center
medium of it, and big Foot has been seen digging in those trash cans,
so we thought that would be a good spot to go. And one
of the people there had a gin three night vision scope at the time,
and now back then, this is two thousand and two, if you had
a GIN three night scope, that was similar to having like top of the
line flear today. I mean, everybody wanted a chance to take Gin three
night vision out into the field, and we were fortunate enough that one of
our members had one. The party that I was with was kind of spread
out all over the place, and I had hung back with this other guy
that had the night vision scope. There was a couple other people there,
I believed myself him and two ladies at the time, and he was kind
of standing off at the edge of the parking lot by the tree line.
And at the edge of the parking lot there there was about a fifteen foot
area kind of grass that they kept cut back and everything before the tree line
started and then it was just thick woods. And he called me over to
him and he said, hey, look through this and tell me what you
see. And I pull the night vision scope up and he kind of directs
me where to look, and I see, eyeshine, these two bright glowing
eyes in the night vision and I'm looking and I'm trying to focus in on
it and figure out exactly what I'm looking at you know, my mind's going
through the roll of ducks. Is this a deer? Is it a bear.
I've never heard of bear in Oklahoma, but maybe we have some down
here. I'm not really familiar with this area. And I'm looking and I
noticed that surrounding the eyes that are looking at me is a face. Not
an animal, but an actual face. And I can see from about the
middle of the forehead down to just below the bottom lip. It's in between
these two branches. The face was covered in hair, like just a human
man if that you grow your facial hair out, you know, and don't
shave. It had that sort of hair pattern on the cheeks and the beard
line and everything. But one of the distinct things about it that really stood
out to me was the brow ridge. It was very thick in the middle
and kind of tapered off towards the sides. Not like drawings or movie depictions
of Bigfoot. It wasn't like a separated brow ridge. It was all one
solid piece, and the hairline actually started where our eyebrows would start. There
wasn't a visible forehead bare of skin, you know, It was just all
hair covered, and the hair pattern kind of grew back over the top of
the head. From what I could tell, I couldn't see if it was
a conical shaped head or a rounded head, but it had the appearance of
if you remember the old Universal Monsters Wolfman Lawn Cheney's wolf Man. The hair
pattern was similar to that kind of afro wish, not what I was expecting
a bigfoot to look like. So this whole time, like, I'm taking
this all in, trying to see as much detail as possible, but I'm
still just confused us as to what I'm even looking at. The eyes were
larger than a human. Like I said, they were reflecting the ambient line.
I guess in the night vision. They're extremely bright. They're kind of
almond shaped. I didn't see any ears or anything. The jaw line was
very prominent and very broad. It was actually the bottom of the jaw stuck
out wider than the temples on the sides of the head. The nose bridge
was very thin and kind of scooped, and then there was a squatty,
flat nose slightly upturned, not so much as like a primate like an ape,
but not facing downward like a human completely. The nostrils were really broad,
looking compared to a human. The top lip was very thin, thinner
than the bottom lip. And one of the main features that just really grabbed
my attention was it looked like it had an underbiked like the bottom jaw stuck
out farther than what it should have. It seemed the hair on the face
was thinner, and then it just gradually got thicker and thicker and flowed into
a beard. And that's really all I could see. Well, I pulled
down the night vision scope because at this point, I'm kind of freaking out
a little. I can't believe I'm actually seeing this. I know that we're
not like nobody knew we were going here, nobody could have gone there and
hoaxed it or anything. Everybody was accounted for, and it's just blowing my
mind. And I pulled the night vision scope down and I look at the
guy and I was like, oh my god, that's a face. Is
that one of them? And I pulled the night vision scope back up to
look at it some more, and he's saying, I saw a face too,
That's what I was seeing. And whenever I look back to where the
face had been, it's gone. And the spot where I had seen the
face between the two branches. The bottom branch was now closer to the top
branch, so I think it had been like holding the branch down or something
a little bit, and was like peeking through the branches at us. And
then whenever I looked away, it took the opportunity and let go of the
branch and took off. But I never heard anything running off through the woods
or anything else. But that night. Previous to that, we had heard
some things walking around in the woods. We had smelled a weird musky skunk
type smell in the area a couple of times, and we had done not
myself, but other people I had with had actually done some vocalizations trying to
draw these things in. So whenever you put all those pieces together, and
I mean I know where a fact what I saw, the picture is still
ingrained in my mind to this day, and it's been over twenty years.
And that was it. There was no turning back after that. Yeah,
that's an understatement. Look how deep you are into all this now? Oh
yeah, yeah, still just as passionate about it as I was back then.
Well that's pretty evident, No, I believe you in the dictionary mad
Next to the words skeptical. There shouldn't be any words. There should just
be a picture of you. And with that in mind, what do you
think was really throwing those stones at you before you saw that sasquatch through the
fleer or did you already believe in their existence before that? You know,
at that point, I wasn't totally on board with the idea. I didn't
really know if I could believe these people are not it felt like I could,
and like I said, they all seem very down to earth and very
genuine. They were older people, they weren't young people, and typically it's
your younger people that make up stories. Not always the case. Obviously,
We're definitely in a field where older people makeup stories too. But I've been
raised by my great grandparents actually, and they were country folks, and so
I related to these people very easily. It was easy for me to talk
to them. It was easy for me to shut my mouth and just listen
and absorb their knowledge and everything. But I had only known them for maybe
about a year or so at that point, so I didn't really know what
to think. You know, I wasn't just going to take their word for
it. So whenever the rock throwing started. I mean, that whole weekend,
even if I hadn't had the sighting, was still very impactful. And
with the rock throwing, I mean, there's a few possibilities, you know,
maybe a squirrel dropped one from overhead in the trees, or maybe a
bird flew over and dropped it. You know, crows and things like that
will sometimes pick up shining rocks and everything, But this was just continuous,
and I knew from the trajectory of that rock hitting the hood of the car.
I mean, I saw it. The car itself was like an old
Lincoln, if I remember right, one of those big, old boxy boats,
and it was kind of a light blue in color. And so even
at night, this rock silhouetted against the hood of the car was easy to
see. And it wasn't thrown hard or anything. And I assumed that whatever
through it had to have been fairly close, because I saw it hit the
car. It landed on the hood maybe a foot away from me, and
bounced up and just hit my stomach and fell right back down on the hood
and I picked it up. And I was standing there with somebody else at
the time who observed it too, and I was like, did you see
that? And he just kind of grinned. Now, this guy's from the
area. He had his first sighting years previous to that inside same park,
so it wasn't anything big for him. That was an old hat. But
to me, it was just mind blowing. And with all the rocks being
thrown and hearing them hit the creek and seeing them in the sky flying over
our heads and everything, the only conclusion I came up with is it would
have to be either a big foot or a person. It's got to be
one or the other. And from that point you have to decide, Okay,
well, what are the chances that a person. It's nobody from our
group, and I'm not the only one seeing it. Everybody's seen it,
and I'm not the one, you know, freaking out alone. Everybody's really
excited about these rocks being thrown, so it didn't seem like anybody with me
was in on it. So that would mean somebody else would have to be
responsible. So they would have had to have a park like five miles away
and walk through the woods in the dark to get to where we were and
know where we were inside the wooded area, just to come out there with
a bunch of rocks and start throwing them at us. I mean, I
just don't think the odds of that being the case are very good at that
point. So, you know, that one just really puzzled me. It
left me scratching my head, and it definitely made me think, you know
what, there's there's something to this, something's going on. And then that
following night, you know, I had that siding through the night vision scope
and that just confirmed everything. For you to go so far in such a
short period of time talking about being a skeptic toa next thing, you know,
you're being pelted with stones, and later that night you have a full
blown siding, your head had to be spinning. Oh yeah, yeah,
for sure, for sure. I mean the processing of trying to understand and
just really comprehend everything. I mean, my mind just started racing with thoughts.
If this is out there, then what else is out there? Well,
obviously if I can go out and look for bigfoot coming from Tulse,
Oklahoma, then the government has to know about these things. You know,
other people have to know about these things. All these people that say that
they've seen them, at least some of them have to be telling the truth.
I'm certainly not the one person in the world that's seen one, but
the idea that that's what I was out there looking for, and you know,
it's confirming all these other stories that I'm hearing from the people that I'm
with. It was quite a bit to take from a mental aspect, for
sure, But you know, I never let go of the skepticism. I'm
still skeptical to this day. I'm very skeptical about people's stories, about their
claims, about their reports, about videos, photographs, evidence of any kind.
I still just pay it like I would have any other time back then,
is just I let the evidence lead and see where it goes. Has
your skepticism ever come back to bite you in the butt due to the fact
that you're a podcast host? Oh sure, sure absolutely. For years,
part of the podcast approach that I had was just sticking with people that shared
the same opinions and beliefs I did at the time, and back then that
was strictly flesh and blood. I was under the firm opinion that these things
have no types of paranormal abilities. People who say that are either lying or
mistaken, and I just shut the door on it. Now, fast forward
a few years, quite a few years, I started thinking about things and
I was like, well, you know, I grew up having paranormal experiences.
That's basically why I'm here to begin with. In the big Foot world,
I've seen things that I can't explain, that have no scientific explanation that
nobody has any reason to believe me. I wouldn't expect anybody to believe me,
So why am I shutting the door on other people that are saying things
that I just haven't experienced myself. I don't think that's being fair to them,
and it's not being fair to the actual research process, the investigation process
trying to answer these questions about this being whatever it is. So I kind
of changed my approach and I started opening the door to anybody, regardless of
what their story was, and just letting them have a platform to share their
experiences and everything. I'm definitely, i would say, more open minded than
I used to be. Whenever it comes to those sorts of things. I'm
not going to discount it or just credited out the gate because I didn't experience
it. But I still catch myself from time to time putting those skeptical goggles
on whenever I'm hearing stuff, you know, and I have a problem personally
being kind of reactive to things. I've got a knee jerk reaction sometimes,
and I need to back off and take a breather and process things a little
bit and look at them again before I just go with my first instincts and
evaluation of things. Changing your approach to all this it couldn't have been easy.
So I think you deserve a lot of credit for doing that. I
think that was a wise move. Well, I appreciate that. Oh you're
welcome just stating the like it is. How do you think they're able to
throw rocks with what could be almost considered to be pure normal accuracy? You
know, that's something that I've actually thought about quite a bit, not just
the accurates. I mean, I grew up playing in the woods, and
you try throwing a rock through the trees. It just doesn't work. You
can't throw stuff through heavy cover. You can't. You know, even growing
up around people that hunted and everything, you know, you don't shoot through
cover. You don't shoot through brush because even bullets will ricochet off the tree
limb. So how does something pick up a rock and throw it through the
air and not hit you, but come close enough that you know there is
actually This made me think of a situation where I wasn't there, but a
lady I knew that was part of this group, Vicky. They were,
I want to say, in Alabama at the time, on an outing,
and they are all kind of sitting around this camp fire at base camp.
The camp itself, the fire pit and everything was on top of this hill
and there's a big steep drop off that goes down to this river, and
it's all completely foed and they're all sitting there around the fire, and all
of a sudden, this rock about the size of a golf ball comes whizzing
through the air from the drop down by the river. So whatever through the
rock was down below their line of sight, and this rock zinged you could
hear it coming through the air, she said, and hit the tree right
behind her, right above her head and fell to the ground, and she
showed me the rock. She took the rock home with her, but it
had some serious force and some serious accuracy. I don't have an explanation for
how they do it. I don't even have an explanation. Like I said,
the rock that hit the car in front of me was probably about the
size of a marble. So how does something you know that. I know
they're not born ten feet tall or anything, but typically we envisioned them as
a very large creature. And how does something with those large hands like that
have the manual dexterity to pick up a tiny pebble like that and throw it
with that kind of accuracy. Everything about these things create more questions than answers.
The rock throwing and their accuracy is just another one of those questions that
I don't have an answer for. It is really hard to figure out.
I don't care how much you practice throwing baseballs, footballs, stones, something
with a shape that's not an even shape, that just makes it even more
difficult to throw that item accurately. I don't care how much time you spend
practicing throwing those items to be as accurate as possible. There is a limit
how accurate you're going to be on a reliable basis. Some people are just
born being able to throw balls and objects with a lot of accuracy. Other
people aren't. But for sasquatch to be able to cons instantly time and time
out through whatever it is they pick up, so accurately. It just it
just doesn't make sense at all, not at all. There was actually a
situation where a group of researchers. Now I can't vouch for these people.
Again, I wasn't there. This isn't the group of people that I was
associated with, But quite a while back, they had a situation where they
documented while they were out in the field something throwing these It was grass.
It was like tall weeds that had been pulled out of the ground and kind
of bundled up, almost nodded, and thrown at them while they were out
there observing. I don't know if they had night vision or if they actually
saw something throwing the things, but they had these basically grass knots that were
about, you know, the size of a lemon, or so we'll say.
And they said that the claim was that these had been thrown at them
at night. And I saw pictures of them, and the first thing that
crossed my mind is, you know, grass doesn't weigh anything. How did
something throw knotted up grass that far because it would have had to have been
out of their range of sight in the dark at least, so fifteen twenty
feet. I don't remember exactly how far away they said it was, but
it was quite a distance, And I was just thinking about you know,
if you go out there and pull a weed out of the ground and throw
it as hard as you can, you know it might go five feet or
so. It's most likely you're just going to land at your feet. But
if they were telling the truth and their documentation was correct, again, how
did these things throw that grass that far? Yeah, it just doesn't make
sense at all. You believe there's a good reason behind all the sasquatch activity
in the Sulfur erie where you had that first size, Matt, What do
you think that reason is? You know, I think these things are attracted
to certain areas for various reasons, but in the Sulfur area specifically, like
I was talking about the medicinal springs earlier, these springs, there's a few
of them in the park even that have signs displayed that list out all the
different minerals that are found in that specific spring and the amounts of the minerals
and everything. And over the years, I've found that Bigfoot seems to hang
out areas where there's large amounts of mineral deposits and other minerals constantly being churned
up to the surface from underground a lot of times. You know, you
find this in springs, You also find it at the base of mountains.
You also find it at strip mining pits and things like that. So I
think that it's one of the reasons. I think another reason is there are
multiple springs in the area that run constantly year round, so there's multiple water
sources there. I think another aspect of it has a lot to do with
the tourism. These things were most likely there long before we were, and
in this particular area, you've got this park that's protected from outsiders, a
huge amount of forests, and then you have tourist season that comes in where
you have just this fluctuation of people coming in. I mean, I believe
they have something like during the summer over a million visitors after the whole season
is said and done with. And these campers usually come there from out of
town, not real familiar with the outdoors, and it provides them an excellent
opportunity to people watch, to observe us. I think we're a huge form
of entertainment for them. It also provides them a lot of trash opportunities,
free meals, whatever else they do. With the trash. Maybe they're just
interested in digging through it and seeing what's there. But there's just so many
reports in that park of them digging through trash cans and being seen digging through
trash cans. So I think it's just a location where they've gotten used to
being around people and seeing people, so they're more brazen and they don't worry
about staying concealed as much as they normally would. And then you've got the
water and the minerals and everything along with the free meal opportunity. So I
think it's just a collection of a bunch of different reasons in that area.
Yeah, for the reasons you laid out, it does make good sense if
they would call that home because not only does the place have a lot of
resources in the way of food, animals, vegetation, and then it's got
moving water, but it's got those minerals as well. They can't spray deep
woods off on their bodies, so that's a huge advantage to people to use
that salt from the water to accomplish the same goal. So yeah, thats
actually whenever I go camping down there, we would actually drink from some of
the springs that were safe to drink out of, and it worked as a
natural insect repellent for us that mosquitoes and ticks and stuff would leave us alone.
And I'm sure that would be a great benefit for them as well.
You know, yeah, just imagine all that here and you don't get to
go home and sit on the couch where there aren't ticks and fleas and other
bugs like that. So yeah, it just makes sense they're going to do
what they can to solve that problem. Your first sighting shook you up quite
a bit, in your opinion, is a more frightening to have a sighting
through a fleer or with the naked eye? I think with the naked eye.
I'm a firm believer that if you're looking through a viewfinder of some kind
that, for some reason, that creates a separation psychologically. It's kind of
like whether you're looking through a camcorder or looking at your phone as you're trying
to video something, or looking through a flair or a night vision scope or
something like that. I think it creates this mental separation where it feels like
you're just observing it and you're not actually participating in the event itself, which
is totally false, because we know you are whenever it comes to fleaar,
even more so because the flair changes the image. You know, you're just
seeing the heat signatures, and so it's it again, feels like you're separated.
You're just watching something like you're sitting there watching something on TV or something.
I think seeing it with your own two eyes would be far more traumatic,
depending on the situation, and have a much greater impact on the individual
at the time than viewing it through fleaar or any other kind of device.
Of course, seeing with your own two eyes that does give you a lot
more information about what you're looking at. But seeing a sasquatch through a fleer,
like you said, that does create a sense of separation, but also
there's kind of a lack of information at the same time, and sometimes knowing
more is actually better than knowing less. So that's all's kind of unsettled,
unsure which way you felt about that. Yeah, it also gives you an
opportunity though, to say, well, I think it was, but I'm
not sure it looked like one, but I don't think it was, or
it might not have been. So you do have that exit in place if
you want to take it. Unless you're a researcher, then of course every
time it's a big boot. Isn't it funny though, how many researchers,
when they beat the bushes for years upon years, when they finally have that
first sighting, the first thing they want to do is just run and get
out of there. Yeah, yeah, I think that's just no matter how
you plan it out, you know, everything always looks good on paper.
I think Mike Tyson said something along the lines of everybody's got a plan until
they get hit in the face. And that's sort of what a big foot
sighting does, you know, hit you in the face that it does.
These guys, in so many ways looks so similar to us. What do
you think it is about seeing them that causes so many eyewitnesses to be so
rattled? You know, I don't know. You hear so many varying claims
and descriptions. You know, if you go by what I saw through the
night vision scope that night, it looked. Everybody always wants to know,
well, what do you think they are? And you're right, they do
look like another human, But at the same time they don't look quite human,
or at least that one didn't. And then I've heard people talk about
seeing them and that if you shaved it and put clothes on it, you
could walk it down Main Street and nobody blink an eye. There's one being
seen at a casino in Oklahoma in the parking lot area, and there's a
pretty famous casino story with Bigfoot in Oklahoma, and this was the same casino.
But the casino video that everybody hears about is just one event. There's
been many sightings in that parking lot and some of the people saw one there
for a while that they said looked handsome, if you can imagine that,
And that's one I would like to take a look at to see, because
I can't fathom the idea of one of these things looking handsome to somebody.
But you know, whenever you're seeing these things and just encountering them in general,
even without seeing them, you start to realize that these things are acting
a lot like people. I mean, they're very human in their behavior,
way more so human acting and appearing than an animal. And I think that
messes with us. You know, as humans, we always have that huge
human ego that goes with it. You know, we're at the top of
the mountain, we're special we're different than everything else, and then we see
something else out there that makes us realize that, like, well, oh
wait, you know we're not the only ones. There's something else out here
on two lugs that's extremely intelligent and walking up right. But I think it
messes with us and we don't know how to process it. It really does
make you wonder how many times people have seen a sasquatch and just mistook it
for a person out there in the woods. Yeah, for sure. I
mean that would be your first instinct, though, especially a person who's not
into Bigfoot or a non believer, and they find themselves in an area where
Bigfoot or at say, you know, it's a family camping for the weekend,
or you know whatever, maybe it's just somebody going on a nature hike.
If they see one, they're probably just gonna think, oh, well,
that's probably just another camper or another hiker, or a homeless person living
in the woods. There's some old hermit out here. You're not gonna go
to Bigfoot as your first thought unless you get a really good look at it
enough to tell that whoa that is definitely not a person. But usually a
witness only gets a glimpse. You know, it's just a leading moment in
time where you catch moving out of the corner of your eye and you might
turn your head enough to see something disappear into the tree cover or whatever,
and a lot of people would just automatically go to a person. You also
hear a lot of people go directly to Oh, well, that must be
a bear. It was probably just a bear. Well, the problem with
that is, you know, bears don't usually walk around on two legs,
not as much as bigfoot does. And bears don't have shoulders, you know,
it goes head and slopes straight down to their Torso a bigfoot has very
distinct and broad shoulders, very much like a human, completely different shape than
a bear. And I think from the time we're born with teddy bears and
seeing bears on TV and cartoon bears and everything else, I think humans know
what bears look like. So it really surprises me whenever you see these news
articles and you hear reports about people saying, well, it's probably just mistaken
bears. They're probably just seeing bears, and I have to question, well,
how many people are seeing what they think is a bear, but it's
actually a big foot because that's just where their mind automatically goes. Well,
that it's a lot easier just to explain it away that way. A lot
of these people, they'll say anything and do anything they can to poo poo
the existence of these guys. So that's just a very easy way to explain
it all way in my opinion, Oh for sure. For sure, it's
a very frustrating. One of the big reasons that I do what I do
with my podcast, and as you know, you do the same thing,
you know, providing that platform for people to share their story where people won't
call them crazy or try to discredit them or tell them that they're wrong about
what they saw. Yes, a shame has to be that way when you
consider the trauma so many of these people go through just by having the experience
of seeing something out there that in their minds shouldn't exist, and then when
they try to get help and reach out to people and talk about their experience,
it's just explained away it was just a beer or your eyes were playing
tricks on you, when in fact they clearly saw what they saw. Yes,
just to shame, it has to be that way, Yeah, it
really is. I've recently made friends with some people in the UFO world,
you know, the online UFO community, and they talk to a lot of
experiencers and stuff in that community. And there's a lot of parallels between the
Bigfoot world or the crypted world, and the UFO world and the paranormal world.
We're actually all part of the same group, if we would realize it.
But in the UFO field, they actually do have a group of professionals,
you know, therapists and doctors who actually talk to and help witnesses deal
with their trauma. And trauma is a very big part of all of this.
You're seeing something that's not supposed to exist, and because of that,
you yourself feel crazy, and everybody around you makes you feel crazy. And
I wish there was more compassion from outside the Bigfoot world, within the nonbeliever
sector, and within the community itself. I wish we did have professionals that
could talk to some of these witnesses and help them work through some of their
issues that they face, you know, from the trauma of having an encounter.
I'm glad you brought light to the fact that not only is it a
problem with people outside of the community when you have a sighting and reach out
for help, but also people inside the community can also be a huge problem.
So it just really is awfully unfortunate. Of all the sightings and encounters
you've had, mat which one is most memorable? Oh? Man, it
actually wasn't a sighting as funny as that sound. I haven't had just a
huge number of sightings or anything. I've had a few glimpses over a large
amount of years. But there was one night in particular we were insult again,
and at this point I was pretty far into it. I had been
researching for a while at this point, and we had set up camp in
our same location that we always did, and we were waiting for other people
to arrive. Over the course of the weekend. It was myself and two
other guys that lived there locally, and we turned in probably around oh I
want to say it was around one thirty or so at night, and we
had three lanterns propane leanards hanging from trees and on a lantern post, and
we filled them up with fuel, turned them up and left them on because
the people coming in from bound to state, we didn't know what time they
were going to get there, and we didn't want them arriving in the dark
because they're gonna have to like set up their tent and all that. Well.
I woke up at some point in the middle of the night, and
it was one of those times whenever you wake up suddenly and you know that
something's going on. You must have woken up to a sound or something,
and you don't really know what's going on yet, but you know that you're
awake for a reason. It was very sudden, and I thought that the
people must have just gotten there or something and maybe shut a car door or
something, and that's why I'm awake. So I'm lame. They're listening.
And I hear very soft footsteps on the pea gravel next to my tent.
The whole campground where the tent sites are has this real small pea gravel,
and you can, you know, hear crunching under your footsteps and something,
I mean, I thought it was a person was walking very slowly right next
to my tent. I was right there at the tent wall. It was
just on the other side of my tent, maybe not even two feet away
from me. And it's walking very quietly, and it's walking from behind my
tent down the side to the front of my tent. I had a big
eight by twelve tent at the time. Then I heard another set of footsteps
coming from the other side of my tent, but in front of the tent.
So these two individuals are basically to meet with one another at the front
corner of the tent. So I'm laying there listening because I'm just again thinking
it's the people and they're probably just walking around trying to be quiet. I'm
still trying to wake up a little bit, and I hear the sound of
my car handle snapping back down like somebody had lifted it up and let go
of it. My car was parked maybe eight feet away from my tent,
very close by, so at that point I'm thinking, oh my god,
somebody's out there still in our stuff. So I kind of, like,
you know, sit up. And that's whenever I notice that there was no
light, none of the lanterns were on, and I could hear whispering out
in front of the tent. I could hear these people whispering. Well,
I had a gun with me, just for own personal safety. I wasn't
trying to shoot a big foot or anything like that, but I did have
a firearm with me. So I got my firearm and I put my boots
on as quietly as I could, and I sat there for a second,
thinking, like, what am I gonna do? As soon as I hit
that zipper, They're gonna know I'm coming out all this tent. I'm not
gonna go out here and fire my gun in the dark, even though I'm
armed, I'm kind of scared. I'm not gonna lie. Well, I
had this spotlight land on the floor next to me, so I decided to
pick up the spotlight. I pointed towards the front of my tent, and
I just flashed it a couple of times, just to let them know that
somebody's awake. I do that, and I listen, and I don't hear
anything, nobody running off. Nothing. Well I started yelling, not really
yelling, but you know, calling out my friend's name, Chad, trying
to wake him up to let him know what's going on. Well, the
other guy's name is also Chad, and he's a couple tents over. I
end up waking him up instead, and I say, hey, meet me
out front. He didn't ask any questions, he just said okay. So
then I ends up the tent and come spilling out. I've got my spotlight
on, I've got my gun in my hand. I'm doing like the whole
you know, shying the spotlight crossed over my arm with the hand holding the
gun pointed, looking around. I don't see nothing. There's no movement,
there's no sound, there nothing. It's just completely still out there. And
I'm just like, what is going on? And I walk over to my
car and I shined the spotlight through the window. Everything's just laying there and
nothing's disturbed. Doors are still shut. Well. The other Chad says,
what's going on? I said, I heard somebody out here and they tried
my car door. He starts shining his splashlight around. We're both walking around
nothing, don't see anything, don't hear anything. And he says, are
you sure? And I said, yeah, I'm sure. Look all the
lanterns are off. So he goes and he starts checking the lanterns and sure
enough, all three of them were turned off. They were turned to the
off position, and he checked them. They all still have fuel in them.
I think he said about a quarter of the fuel was gone. So
it had probably been like maybe two hours three hours since we had gone to
bed. I'm not even sure of the time. Well, at that point,
the other Chad wakes up and he's sitting up and I can see him,
like the tent doors open and I can I'm looking at him, and
he goes, did you check for tracks? And I'm like, well,
no, I didn't check for tracks. You know, why would I check
for tracks. It's people. They tried my car handle, he says,
check for tracks. So I'd go over by the side of the tent and
I shine the spotlight down there, and vic there was tracks about I don't
know, twelve thirteen inches long. You could see all five toes, a
clear impression pressed down in the gravel. I don't know what kind of weight
it would have taken to leave tracks in this gravel. I mean, walking
around, you could see the gravel disturbing anything, but this would clear five
toes. You could see where it walked on the side of my tent.
I thought, well, there was another one. I shined my light over
there. There's another set of tracks, just like I had heard. And
then the tracks went between my tent and the tent next to it. It
stepped one time in between the tents and then was off on the other side,
this would have been Like I said, my tent was eight by twelve,
so it cleared eight feet in one full stride between the two tenths without
making any sound or let me now, they just vanished. And that experience,
we actually did call a park ranger. The other Chad got on his
phone. He called the park rangers office because before we saw the tracks,
you know, I'm thinking people, So he's reporting it. The park ranger
comes out. He walks in on foot. He parked his truck at the
gate. He walks in on foot with no light or anything. Scared the
crap out of us whenever he came up to the tent and he told us,
I walked in. There's nobody here, there's no vehicles in the park
or anything. So the only possibility if it was people. They walked seven
miles through the woods to get to our campsite and didn't use a flashlight,
didn't take anything, they were barefoot, and then they left without making any
sound. So that event right there, I mean, I firmly one percent
believe it was bigfoot. I believe they somehow knew not only how to turn
off the lanterns, but to do so to remain hidden so they didn't cash
shadows or anything and would have the advantage of the darkness. And that blew
my mind. That took their intelligence level to a whole new area. Not
only that, but the whispering back and forth to one another trying the car
handle. It was hard for me to process all that, very hard.
I didn't go back out into the woods for three months after that. I
know there's hunters who have had crazy, crazy, aggressive encounters that have kept
them out of the woods forever. So I'm not trying to downplay what they
went through or anything like that. I'm just saying, as an active researcher
who was spending more time in the woods than they were at home at that
time, I didn't go back out into the woods for three months because I
was just too scared. I didn't understand what I was dealing with at that
point. It changed my entire perspective on my research and what I thought about
these creatures. Yeah, it's all too easy to think that they're just normal
beings out there that can do what a normal animal can do nothing more.
But when you find out the extent of what they really can do, it's
awfully unnerving. So I understand what made that experience more frightening than any of
the other experiences you've had. The mad I'm kind of lost on that because
you've had some pretty frightening ones. Yeah, I think I think it really
just had a lot to do with the lanterns being turned off. I have
a hard time with the talking, the whispering back and forth and whenever they
do things, anything they do that it's something that we do because I don't
understand how they learn it, how they figure it out. Obviously, with
the lanterns, they could have observed people turning them off over the years,
and so maybe they learn that. But language, being able to talk,
having your own language, whatever it is, that's something that has to be
taught. You know, there's rules to language, you know, the meaning
of the words, the pronunciation of the words, how you put them together.
All of that stuff, and the talking stuff involved with Bigfoot has always
really bothered me because of all those factors, it completely puts them on a
path. I mean, as humans, we think we know everything, and
I know that we don't. I know that we're not write about everything,
but we have a pretty good understanding of a lot of things. And language
is one of those things, and language isn't the first thing that pops up
in a society. There are steps that you go through before you ever get
to the language point as a group, which means if they have reached that
point, then they've already gone through all these other points. So that means
there's society and culture and you know, all these other aspects to them to
their existence that we don't know anything about at this point. That means if
these things are responsible for the limb formations, for instance, that that's not
just them twisting a tree or snapping a branch for a territorial marker. That
means these things are using that as a form of communication. It's an intricate
language, and there's intricate meanings behind those things that we don't understand yet that
we don't have the ability to translate yet. It means that they probably have
some sort of religious belief, some sort of spirituality, not just self awareness,
but defining themselves as individuals, having names for one another. The list
goes on and on, and it would take a person a lot more intelligent
and knowledgeable than myself to explain it all. But all of that just really
it made me reassess and rethink everything about them, and that was pretty disturbing.
I mean, it's the difference between going out and having a standoff with
a bear and living to tell about it, as opposed to going out in
the woods and catching a bear talking to another bear. So I guess that's
probably my best answer as to why it had that effect on me more so
than anything else. If we knew how far these guys were or are,
a lot of us wouldn't even go back into the woods again. Quite possibly.
So yeah, I'm sure they don't get nearly enough credit for how advanced
they actually are. Like you said, Matt, you host a podcast called
Bigfoot Crossroads Radio. What can you tell us about it and how to listen?
Well, Bigfoot Crossroads is pretty much eyewitnessed based. You know. I
have people who have had encounters and experiences on and let them tell their story.
It's mostly focused on them, you know. I do ask them a
few questions and participate in the conversation. I like to keep it very laid
back, very unstructured, and just kind of let the conversation go wherever it
goes. There's no certain amount of time or no number set of questions or
anything like that, and I never know what questions I'm going to ask until
i'm on there. Sometimes I'll make a few notes, but that's really it.
I keep it pretty loose. It did start out as just bigfoot stuff,
but because of my own personal experiences and my own interests into all different
kinds of unexplained phenomenon, I've started having other people on talk about other things
besides bigfoot. Especially. I have found that a lot of people who have
a bigfoot experience have experienced other things as well, and vice versa. Very
seldom do you run across someone who's just had a big foot encounter and that's
it. They've never experienced anything else. Now, it does happen, not
to say it doesn't, but for some reason, it seems like there's a
lot of people out there that once the doors open on one thing, it's
open for other things, and you find that they've had all these really fascinating
experiences. So I'm kind of expanding out into those areas. But I'm still
gonna stick, you know, with bigfoot is the main focus that's never going
to go away, and I'm still going to keep it witness oriented and use
that as the Foundation, anybody that wants to listen to it. You can
find it on pretty much every major podcast platform out there where you listen to
podcasts at You can find it on YouTube, but the easiest thing is probably
just to go to Bigfoot Crossroads dot com and you can find links to everything
there. It's a great show. Well, I can't sleep at night.
That's my go to. If you only knew how many nights, how many
hours I've spent listening to your episodes. Yeah, I wouldn't do that if
you didn't do such a great job. I appreciate it, man, I
appreciate it. And you're not too shabby yourself, sir. Well, thanks,
I try. I try. You used to produce and host a show
called Bigfoot Outlaw Radio as well. Those episodes are still available, But how
can we listen to those episodes? Well, you know, I ended up
archiving all those episodes and people call it a paywall. I call it a
members area. It's on the YouTube channel. I think it's like three dollars
a month or something, and that gives you access to the entire archive a
big Foot out Law Radio. I did that for a couple of reasons,
mostly because the YouTube stuff. I was having problems with copyright strikes. Actually,
a company's algorithm was picking up on some of the video loops I used
on it, and it was just flagging all my videos and I was going
to lose the channel possibly. So I worked it out with the company and
that didn't remain a problem for me or anything. I wasn't doing anything wrong,
you know, it was just a computer software glitch problem. But I
realized at that point, you know, well that's a little dangerous, and
a lot of bought channels were actually stealing the content and uploading it on their
own YouTube channels. I'm sure you've experience into that yourself. So I talked
to a Bear, Jim Grant, one of the other members of the Bigfoot
Outlaws, and we discussed it and decide that it was probably just better to
archive everything and put it where you had to access it through financial means,
and that would prevent people from stealing the material and causing problems with the algorithm
and give them a nice safe place. Like I said, I've got all
the past episodes up there going back. I've even uploaded some of the old
blog talk shows from like two thousand and eight, i think but yeah,
that's where you can find them. Just go to the YouTube channel and click
on members and it should lead you through it. What I said about Bigfoot
Crossroads holds true also for Bigfoot Outlaw. I'm a member of your podcast,
and yeah, that's one of my go to us as well. When I'm
in bed and can't sleep. Okay, well, let's put on another episode
of Bigfoot out Law and just listen to it. And it's always a great
time. If I have a nickel for a time, I've listened to those
episodes. I wouldn't be surprised if I've listened to some of them twenty thirty
times. Oh wow, Yeah, I mean Baron Coombo were my co hosts
on there. They kind of took the spotlight with that show. Two guys
that have just, I can't say enough tremendous amounts of knowledge whenever it comes
to this subject. And you know a lot of their techniques. I tried
myself on my own in the field and they paid off. So the guys
know what they're talking about. I've never ran across anybody that's actually tried some
of their techniques correctly at least and had anything but positive results from it.
Those guys got some great stories, years and years and years of experience,
and we brought on a lot of great people, you know, the big
Foot out Laws, Dan and Vicky and the whole gang over the years,
and like I said, we were pretty much like a host knit family for
a long long time and had a lot of experiences in just years and years
of knowledge and stories to share, and all that stuff is available. Well,
like I said, I can't say enough good things about that show either,
because I'm a regular, that's a fact. Well, Matt, I
can't thank you enough for coming on and sharing those experiences with us. I
really appreciate it. Oh yeah, thanks so much for having me on.
Man, it's been a long time coming, and hopefully it won't be the
last. Well I hope not. Yeah, I definitely hope to have you
back on again. And for anyone listening who wants to be able to check
out Matt's channel, Bigfoot Crossroads, and then of course that'll have a link
in it Bigfoot Outlaw. I'm going to put a link to that in the
description of tonight's show. But having said that, Matt, thanks again so
much and have a great night. That's it for another episode of big Foot
Eyewitness Radio with Vic Candiff. If you've had a sasquatch encounter and would like
to be a guest on the show, please go to Bigfoot eyewitness dot com
and submit a report. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks for listening,
have a great night.