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 encryptids and other
things strange only deepened. That's why I'm so excited to share with you what
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Today. Hey everybody, this is Less Striding. Yes, yes, I
know, aka Surviving Man, and you're listening to Brian on Sasquatch Odys.
He guys, and welcome back to Sasquatch Odyssey. Thank you so much for
being with us for the show. It is Friday. I hope you guys
have had a great week. We have an amazing guest lined up for you.
But as always, before we get there, 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. You can give me a Brian at Parentimal
World Productions dot com. You can head over to the website check it out,
become a member there and help support the show. As I said,
we've got a great guest lined up. I got to talk to Roger from
Tennessee and Roger actually shared his encounter story, or at least a part of
it, on the stage with me there at the Smoky Mountain Big Front conference
back last month in July, and I invited Roger on the show to spend
more time because he had quite a few experiences to share and we only had
ten or fifteen minutes or so on the stage. I wanted to give him
the opportunity to come on the show and share his full experience. So I
know that you're really going to enjoy this. Roger is a fantastic guy and
just a really straight shooter. I really have enjoyed becoming friends with Roger and
his son Peyton. During the interview, Roger refers to a video. I'm
actually going to link to that. So if you want to see the video
and hear what we're talking about in the interview, head over to Paranormal World
Productions dot com. The link is right here in the show notes. Check
out the Sasquatch Odyssey blog at the top of the page, and it will
be the most recent episode. As soon as you land on the blog homepage,
you'll see it right there. But enough of that, I know you
guys are ready to get into it. Rogers on the line. He's ready
to go. You gotta sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.
Folks want to welcome our guests to the show. It is Roger from Tennessee.
Welcome to the show. Man. Thank you sir, been looking forward
to this one, me too. Man. I got to hang out with
you and meet you in Gatlinburg at the Smoky Mountain Bigfoot Conference. You and
your son Peyton were one of the bright spots in my weekend man, So
I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the show and share your
experience that you shared on the stage with me there. I know that was
not an easy thing for you to do. It's not easy for anybody to
tell their story in the first place, but especially to get in front of
fifteen hundred two thousand people on a stage and talk about your story. Before
we get into what got you into Bigfoot and talking about your encounters, let's
talk a little bit about the conference. I have been there. This is
the third year in a row I've been there. The first year I went
as a spectator just to check it out. The second year I went was
as a vendor, and then we were back this year and I was handling
the encounters and doing some of the stuff on the stage. So I've got
to see this progression. Is that the first time that you had been to
that conference, or had you and Peyton been to that before. That's my
first conference of any kind of like that, And because it was four hours
away, and when I first told him my story publicly, it sped up
a little bit and I enjoyed learn. I'll enjoyed learning what I could.
And when I saw the lineup, we're four hours away, let's make plans
to go, and we had a guy's trip. We don't he's twenty six.
You don't get to do that as much with your grown kids. And
we just made a weekend out of it. And I didn't know what to
expect when we got there. I had spoken to you on the phone or
texted, then some other people. It was nice to have some millier faces
and people. I think. We came back and chatted with you a couple
of times and in between what was going on on stage, and I was
blown away. And then the clock it kept ticking because three thirty was coming
up. And yeah, I came to you and I was like, right,
can I go lack just to see what everybody was doing? And I
was confident be my story. That wasn't. I just wasn't as confident and
meet and I appreciate you making me feel cumfortable and you did a great job.
You seem like a natural. Lets I guess you've been done this a
while. I've done it once or twice, man, once or twice,
and the mic canned off to Cliff was pretty cool. Actually, yeah,
I've posted that up on my stuff because Peyton texted it to me after you
guys filmed it, and people have really enjoyed that. That's been one of
the things that people have said, Hey, man, that was a really
cool way to hand off the mic to Cliff. And I was like,
yeah, how often do you get to do that, Cliff Brick? You
gotta do something less special, right, And it wasn't a setup. I
was snat pressed with him panning over to you. He didn't know what you're
about to do. You didn't know what you're about to do probably, and
it just worked out. Yeah. Some of those best moments in life are
unscripted. Man. It was full. It was a good time. I
really had a good time. I met so many great people and getting to
hang out with people like often again do you get to hang out with Cliff
Berrick Munnon. Renee Holland was somebody who really surprised me. You know,
I've talked about Renee on the show before, and I really didn't know what
to expect of course, you never really know what to expect with anybody,
but Renee was one of the warmest personalities that instant just connection with her.
I didn't hang out with Matt much. Matt was doing his thing, obviously,
and Cliff and I didn't really get to hang out much. We're actually
doing a show together over on another podcast because we're speaking together later on this
month. We're getting together, I think on the eighth as we record this
in about four days, so we'll get to hang out a little bit then.
But it's so funny because you get so caught up in what you're doing
and even people you work with, like I had Matt prut on for an
interview a couple of days back, talking about his new book that'll be out
in the next couple of weeks, and he produces the show for Cliff and
Bobo and he's Gatlinberg. Was really the first time they got to hang out
and so long because they're so far apart geographically. They talk on the phone
every day, but they don't ever get to see each other. So it
was really cool to see them hang out and get to hang out with Matt,
And that was a really great interview for you guys listening now, you'll
definitely want to tune in and listen to the talk with Matt Prude about his
new book, Phenomenal Sasquatch. You and I were talking about. You've just
got your copy and started reading it. It's one of the best reads I
have ever read, as far as any book really, but specifically in Bigfoot.
The legend me science book was one of my favorites with Jeff Meldrum,
doctor Meldrum's book, and Matt is one of the best writers that, like
you said, we were talking before natural writers and the way he handles this
subject and talks about this subject in this book. Obviously, this is not
an episode about his book, but I just want to throw that out there
because it's a really powerful book in my opinion, that everybody should read.
And I'm glad that you got a copy of it and are getting a chance
to read it, especially having an encounter yourself. I think it'll really for
you, in my opinion, put a lot of things in perspective that may
not already be there for you as an experiencer. Yeah, and I don't
think Matt really knows how good of a writer he actually is, but I
think he's going to find out after this. I think you're definitely right man.
Yeah, I'm thoroughly impressed. And like I told you before, is
it odd that I'm reading the book in his voice. I can't hear he's
reading it to me basically, which is cool. And we met him and
Cliff and I never thought when this got started, my son turned me on
to find a big foot. And there's a weird reason how that happened.
I tell you later that I would be standing here there talking to Matt Pruett
and I note some of this story. He lives in Middle Tennessee now,
and we were talking and just down to earth. Sounds like a great guy
with sharing stories with me. Cliff was you know, I was nervous before
I went on stage, and I had talked to him about it. It
gave me a little vice, you did. And you know when Peyton,
when he showed me that video, I looked at it several times. I
said, look at Cliff's face, as he's genuinely happy that I didn't pass
out. He was like, there you go. He was like I felt
like that anyway. So yeah, it was fun. Yeah, not passing
out as always a good thing. So let's get right into it. Man.
Let's talk about your interesting big foot. We talked about it a little
bit, but tell everybody and me, what guy you interested in the subject
to begin with? Was it your first experience or did it start earlier on
for you? I think I've been fifty two years old. I think everybody
when they were really young saw the Patty film. I don't think it was
stabilized. It was scared the crap out of his kids. And I think,
no, I know that when we saw it. I don't know if
it was on the news. We had three or four animal was growing up
in rural Tennessee. But in my mind there was one big foot to be
scared of, and it was out in California, somewhere out in Washington,
so that was a long ways away. I didn't really worry about it,
didn't think about it. My interest was forced upon me because I'm curious.
I like to learn new things or whatever, and this the it's the experience.
It just happened. And if I'd have been three or four minutes later
or earlier, I never would have seen this thing. It was just the
tim it. And after the sighting, we had no the local library was
in town. I was out in the country, so I had no way
of looking anything up. So it was put off for years. And I'll
tell you this how it got started back up. My son was about he's
twenty six now. He was about I'm gonna stay around thirteen or so,
and I'm gonna I'm cooking himself or lunch or something, and he's watching his
phone. Here's something on his phone. I didn't know finding Bigfoot existed.
I didn't know YouTube videos of bigfoot existed. And I'm in my late thirties
and all of a sudden, I hear something in the living room and I
freeze and I what was that? He said, Oh, it's this new
show. It's funny. It's finding Bigfoots. This is the how that Matt
Moneymacker. And I'm waiting a minute. What you just played is supposed to
be a big foot? He said, oh yeah. I said, play
it again, and then play it again, and I said, I didn't
need to talk to you. I've heard that a half a dozen times when
I was younger, but that recording doesn't do it justice because the first time
I ever heard it, I felt it too, which was odd. And
this was after the siding, not too long after the siding, and they
were a company had moved in and had started strip mining for phosphate and they
were tearing up the habitat back there. And years later, looking back on
a lot of this learning and reverse as I call it, maybe that's what
why I heard the screams in that area after that. But yeah, that
was one of those aha, old crap moments. I'm like, that's supposed
to be a big foot and yeah, and we had a talk. He
said, you gotta watch the show. When I watched the show and recognized
pretty quickly it was for entertainment, but there was some information that I never
had and things to look for and parts of the country that were in California
or Washington. The very first episode was in Sheer Deck of the Woods,
North Georgia, which kind of floored me. And it started there. That's
how it started. It started way back when I was fourteen, but it
didn't continue until I realized there were resources that I could go to and make
my own judgment. There's a lot of fake stuff out there. There's a
lot of people trying to get clicks, but you can filter through that if
you do put in the work, put in the time, So that's how
it got started. It was funny learning in reverse. I like that.
I actually wrote that down as you said it, learning in reverse. I
love that, and it's the kind of the same thing for me almost because,
like you said, I thought as a kid and I got interested in
the subject. I didn't believe that there was just one big foot, but
I believed that they only existed out West Pacific, Northwest and California in those
areas, very much like you. That's one of the reasons I started the
show was to document as many cases as I could in the southeastern United States.
I was born and raised in Georgia. I now live in North Carolina,
and people were having these experiences, and I knew that the people that
I was hearing those stories of jen Singh hunters and things that were guys getting
scared off the mountain by what they called boogers or wild men or whatever.
Now I know that to be what I believed to be a big foot or
sasquatch. So I wanted to document as many of those cases as I could
on the show. It's Gonna air As we record this on Friday, It's
gonna air on Sunday. I got the opportunity and the pleasure to interview Peter
Byrne, the last of the four Horsemen of Sasquatchery, last May, and
of course he passed away on July the twenty eighth, and I was going
through that and I remastered the audio today and I added a few things to
it for people to listen to. And that was one of the things that
Peter and I disagreed about, was because he doesn't believe and he didn't believe
that Sasquatch had ever really existed basically east of the Rockies. I figured out
that's probably not accurate, but he stuck to his guns. He was that
kind of guy. He was not going to budge from that. There's so
many people like you who have experiences that are in my neck of the woods.
We've had experiences here that I can't explain on the property. I think
there's definitely a there. And I think that Finding Bigfoot did a lot of
great things for Bigfoot. I think it did a lot of detrimental things.
I think it was one of those give and take sort of things. But
I was very pleased with the show, very much like you, that they
did cover pretty much all parts of the United States and say this is happening
in Florida, It's happened in Tennessee, it's happening in Idaho, it's happening
here, it's happening in California. So I think it was a really great
part of the show. I think it did a lot of great things,
like I said, and obviously gave people like you who had experiences and things
that they couldn't explain, somewhere to go to get some of that knowledge.
We've talked a little bit about it. Obviously, I've heard your story on
the stage in Gatlinburg. But for the audience, would you mind taking us
back and talking about your first experience, talking about your first encounter and tell
us where you were, what you were doing, and what happened to you.
Yeah. I hear people talk about you your mind before you saved one
of these things, then after, and it was nothing special. The day
it was a fall day, a leaves are off the trees. I grew
up hunting those woods I had. We didn't own but an acre, but
we knew a lot of the farmers and they liked me and my dad.
How you had the run of it you don't have to ask. There's several
hundred acres at it. So not having a neighbor kid close by, I
spent a lot of time in the woods and naively after dark without a flashlight
walking in when I was hunting. My dad started me out with a bad
gun at eight years old, and that's the woods I learned to hunt in
this different time. Now, after I showed him I could be saved eleven
or twelve, I would turn loose, go rabbit hunting by myself, or
hunting by myself, deer hunting. When't it he trusted me. There wasn't
a lot to do, but one thing. I would always keep an eye
on the fields behind our house. There were some hills, rolling hills,
open fields and woods. And just one day I just I stepped out to
the side across the there's an access to a cemetery that kind of went out
of our driveway and then you step into the neighbor's field there and it was
nothing in between me and the hill, which was about the base of it,
about two hundred yards one hundred eighty two hundred yards. Looked out there,
there wasn't even there wasn't a rabbit or a deer would ever. Okay,
So I'll go back to the house to my left, or the dry
creek bed that ran up, and there was a little elbow I called it,
where the woods poked out a little bit into the field and then turned
back. I hunted back there, and something stepped out right there at that
point. And of course the all the grass is green and this lush and
the color. And you always hear people say the first thing I noticed.
Now, that's not how it happens. You notice a lot of things at
the same time. And that's why you're mind twists. That's why you can't
comprehend what you're seeing, because you've got the size, you've got the color,
you've got all this going on. And that's the one thing you cannot
get across the people when you say seven foot seven, half foot eight and
nine, the mask that comes along with it, that's just you can't in
the thickness and all that. So I saw something step out under. It
was under a limb. Thank goodness, I had a little reference to go
back too later. It was about six or eight inches from the top of
the head to this limb, and I had seen my dad walked that way
tons of times coming back from Harting. He was five eight, so I
immediately knew whatever that was huge. Then the color I've tried to clean,
it's the people lately and the best now and come up with to put the
picture in her head. It's like the color of a Hershey's milk chocolate bar,
just a little darker. Not the rapper, but the actual bar.
And at that distance people that I don't know that they think it's a long
ways. But when you go, when you hunt or you shoot long distance,
or if you do things or you observe, you have a job where
observe things, at that distance, you could if my dad was standing there,
I could tell you what kind of boots he had on. I could
tell you his blue jeans as he got Khaki's own. Does he is camouflage
on? I could tell the belt line, neckline, hat or no hat.
Right, this was all one color, pretty much the same color all
the way. And I had the thought run through my head, like my
daughter to run, my daugher to leave, but I couldn't take them.
I couldn't take my eyes off of it. It was looking up the hill
and this was the shortest point to this Houthaffelfield that always had there in that
pretty much. And I'd walked that way several times, and I'm glad I
stayed because at that point, but it's something big. It's one color,
but getting to see the motion of its body and legs as it walked up
the hill in its thick grass. The old man that owned that place was
really he's really old, so they didn't bushog it as much on that hill.
He would pay somebody over a couple of years, three years to go
there to keep it keep the woods from taking over. And so when you
walked up through there and the grass was intertwined from the last growth and you
had to pick your feet up, you couldn't walk through it with your feet
that you had to pick your feet up. And my little fat tail had
to pick my foot up, throw it out to the side and over at
But I was already I'm six foot, I was already almosked that anyway,
knowing how I walked up through there, and other people I saw walk up
through there when it started to walk, just go back before it started up
right as I thought maybe maybe I should run or whatever, this thing turned
and looked at me and stay tuned for more sasquatch out to see wod right
back after these messages. But it didn't turn its head like we do where
you put your shoulder your chin over your shoulder, left or right. It
did turn its head, but it turned its shoulders also when it turned at
the waist a little bit, and the right shoulder came up, left shoulder
dipped a little bit, and it looked at me, and I'm like,
oh, no, I couldn't see any faceful features, but I was looking
at a monster in my head. But then I guess, because maybe that
I had been hunting those woods for six years or so, maybe it knew
me. Maybe it knew I wasn't a thread because I had some stuff happened
before this that I never put together until later. But so when it started
up the hill, it's motion that if the audience can picture a walking horse,
a Tennessee walking horse, when it throws the legs up and over.
It wasn't that exaggerated that high, but that was the motion. And when
it stepped over the grass, it had just a little body lane. Where
it would have took me three to five minutes to go that distance, it
went in a few seconds. And I told you before the whole this whole
encounter was only about twenty five to thirty seconds, which is a long time
when I hear these encounters. That's a I know somedayre a lot longer,
but that's rare. And my deciding factor on that I wasn't looking at a
human was when it walked up that hill, the way it dealt with that
high grass. I even now think I want to ask an expert now that
we know it down that I know that they have the flexible foot, would
that influence the body lean versus way we would have to lean. So if
it could step up in that front pad in the backpack to bend and not
put as much pressure on the killies tending like ours, could it walk with
a straighter back up the hill? Because I saw how it moved. I've
never got the chance to ask anybody that, but that's always been a question.
If I get a chance to ask somebody that knows I won't ask that
question. And it went on out of sight, and I stood there for
a little bit trying to wrap my head around it, and maybe standing there
to sip there's another one comes. I'm just it's just before I saw the
thing, and after it was totally different. I changed. I changed how
a hunted I would go in. I didn't care. I wasn't scared to
be anything. I would naive thinking twenty gage breakdown, shotgun and a two
dollars flashlight was a boss would. I found out real quick that there's things
out there that didn't know about, so that that doesn't go away. But
here's what I'll make it go away for a while. When my dad got
home, I said, hey, I gotta talk to you. What is
it. I think I saw bigfoot walk up that hill and go And I
didn't even get that out of my mouth. And he's laughing. He said
that was probably Beauford walking his farm. I'm like, Beauford's almost nine years
old. He can't get to the mailboxing back. You don't understand what I'm
saying. But yeah, and he had a little bit of his hell and
mom had experienced. Later, a couple of years later, he came back
to me and he's, how big was that thing that you said you saw?
And I said it was about six or eight inches or so under that
liamb up there and I had already measured. I had been up there and
I'm I can reach seven seven and seven six seven seven, depending on the
shooters I've got on. And I went up there and looked, and this
thing had to be anywhere from seven three to seven and six is already knew.
He took to tape measure up there, and he was denying the whole
time. There's no way, there is no way. I said, what
did you hear it sounded? How big did it sound? It was massive?
And it landed on two feet behind him in the road, jumped the
fence after breaking some trees, and ran towards him. It scared him enough
that he came and opened his mind up and asked me questions. So I
turned into the little nerd after that for a few years around growing ups from
farmers, hey you're seeing you're seeing a big foot? And I had to
stop that. When I got in my twenties coast, it was a little
more they look at you a little more funny. When you're a kid,
you can get by with it a little. But yeah, i'd ask people.
I got some looks that maybe somebody didn't want to talk about something,
and I got a few a handful of stories from people like you said,
when you know somebody that makes all the difference the world. The people listen
right now. They don't know me, they don't know you. They trust
you because they they've heard you, they've heard how you handled things. They
don't know me. And I'm not trying to convince anybody, But when you
talk to people that you grew up with and you know how they are,
some of them you can't listen to whatever they say. I've heard people say
they'll climb a tree just to get to tell a lie. But you've got
some people you can take it to the bank, and that's the people you
listen to. So that's how I got started. You mentioned that you'd had
some things happened before the siding and after the siding. Well, so let's
take the before the siding stuff first. You mentioned that in retrospect, which
happens all the time to people. I see it all the time on the
show, you haven't experience and then you start looking back on things that you'd
heard, maybe even things you saw that you just brushed off. What were
some of the things that you had experienced before you actually had the siding that
now you look back in retrospect might have been connected to possibly being a sasquatch.
So there's two that stand out. There's one that maybe if that I
will you mentioned, but it actually makes you think about things. So one
time I started hunting when I was eight. My dad saw a large buck
in this area, and so being a dad, he built me a stand
and put me up there at eleven years old, and he was say he
would hunt. Actually he was probably hunting where it was coming, where he
could catch it if it got away from him. So I was not scared
at all. And one day it was a feeling and I thought I heard
a low growl. Now we had coy dogs that had we had couties that
had mixed with a black lab and we had those and I wasn't scared of
them as long as I could see them, because you could actually even fire
a gun sometimes and not shoot something just to get their hearing. It hurts
their ears, so it wasn't really scared of them. But this was different.
And when it did it, and it was real low, it's almost
like I can't tell you that I did hear it, if that makes sense,
But something caught my attenion and I got this feeling it was just oh
no, and I was scared for no reason that I could think of,
but it got so bad that I yell. I started yelling for my dad
and he came and got me. He said, he said, you probably
run a big buck. All now I understand, But whatever that was,
I don't know. I can't tell you what it was. But fast forward
to just before the siding in East Tennessee, Northeast Georgia. Within the foothills,
you'll get snow, I imagine every now and then, we hardly get
it. Middle Tennessee. We had a perfect weather pattern coming in where Friday
night Saturday morning, we're gonna get two or three inches of snow, maybe
a little more deering hunting season and I'm like, yes, I'm gonna get
to go out there and I'm gonna be in the snow, probably not gonna
get anything, but it's it's just beautiful. So I had two places on
hunted. And this tree stand that I put up later was at a crossroads,
a deer crossroads game trail, and you could look at your watch and
know two dos and this was coming through at this time and whatever not scared
again, they go up this trail that the farmer had cut out years ago
to get his tractor from field to field through the cook woods short woods there,
and I just can't believe how pretty it is and the big snowflakes you're
falling. And when that happened, it's quiet. It dampened all the sound.
Yeah, you can sneak a little better, but you can't hear anything
either. So I'm walking up through there and I'm about it's been a long
time since I've been there. I'm gonna guess eighty to one hundred yards fromhere.
I had deciding later, so now I'm like, Okay, this field
is white. Should I go up the right side here along this dry creek
bed or should I cut across diagonally or go around and stay out of sight.
It's just in case they're deer in the wood. And while I'm scanning
the field, I look into the woods towards my stand and this what you
hear from a lot of people. This feeling of dread just locked me down.
And I don't mean, I don't mean it was a little bit.
It locked me down. And what I thought, this is crazy. And
I tried to take a step on my right foot. I couldn't do it.
And I look back into the woods again, I'm like, what is
this. I looked where my tree stay was. I couldn't see it because
it was dark in the woods there because of the snow all around. And
I had this feeling. It wasn't a voice, It's not a voice,
it was it was a feeling that if I went into those woods where my
stand was at not I don't know, fifty to seventy yards away, depending
on the their direction, I went, that I wasn't coming back out.
And that was a very real fear, and so I tried to talk myself
out of it. And then you get this jittery sit not like I was
gonna throw up, but just I don't know how to put it, just
a jittery stomach in this fear. And so I don't know what made me
do this, or even I couldn't do anything. So all I had was
what I was thinking. And I thought, if you let me go,
I will turn my right foot and go back towards the house and I won't
come back today. And it was like dis released. Everything released. I
don't know if it's a euphoric feeling or whatever you call it, but I
didn't feel the weight. I didn't feel the jitter in this I didn't feel,
and I did exactly what I promised, got back to the house and
my mom and dad was like, what are you doing back? You were
all excited and didn't want to talk about it and never talked about it for
a long time. I said, oh, it's too cold out there,
which my dad looked at me funny because usually didn't matter. I'd come back,
so can wet thirty degrees And they're like, you're gonna die, You're
gonna catch in pneumonia. So he didn't ask me any questions, and years
later I told him what happened. But then you taught learning in reverse.
You look at these documentaries and you see where they're measuring infrasound with a line,
actually measuring it and asking a guy, hey, what do you feel?
And they can lock down a predator, scare him to death and they
can't move and heat and this seat I knew I had read that part.
This is the part that got me think of the reporter, the guy doing
the documentary or the scientists was talking to him. He said, what do
you feeling like? He said, yeah, my stump feels a little jittery,
and I'm like, oh crap. It was like when you lean up
your clienter, wait a minute and learning and reverse. So I don't know
that's what that was, and I'm not saying it it was because I don't
know what it was, but it's possible that's what it was. And it
was not too far from where the sighting was a little bit later, so
I don't know. I've heard people say sometimes I wished I had enough thing
what I saw, but I'm like that, but I'm glad I saw the
motion that it used to get see. If I never had walked up that
hill, if I didn't have the experience in that area, it wouldn't have
meant anything to me. But because I had that experience of using some of
mats, be we're traversing this field of death grass. So when you walk
gonna asphalt, concrete or whatever, you use your muscle different and it doesn't
you get used to that. But when you have to do a motion that
you're not used to, it'll wear you down pretty fast. So, like
I said, if I hadn't, if I'd been one of those kids that
had a notari and set on accounts all the time, then I wouldn't have
got as much from that thirty seconds as I did. If that makes sense,
It makes perfect sense, man. And I know you mentioned that you
had some experiences later on with the ohio how vocalization, and that you and
Pete had some experiences. Would you go into a sort of fast forward mode
and get into some of those encounters. Obviously you've been learning and reverse,
so when you had these experiences later in life, you had a lot more
to work with, so you were a lot more present in the moment.
So let's talk a little bit about what happened during those and then what you
think was going on. We can thirty there were thirty five years between that
siding, and we're talking like twenty maybe twenty nineteen, twenty twenty. My
mom and dadd sold that acre and bought a farm. They had one hundred
forty three acres five miles down the road. It had all the food and
water you could think of. I never had the first experience. I never
had anything. Note, none of the feelings like I had before, none
of the sounds, nothing. And like I said, it don't go out
of your mind and you change. I built a real sturdy blind out of
scrap wood, knowing that probably it wasn't gonna save me. It's gonna let
me know something's trying to get me. If it was trying to get me
from behind, right, it's gotta tear something apart to get through me.
Which there you go again. But didn't have any experience at all. Stayed
out in the woods there. We had a pond there, pished at night.
And you're talking about gents ain't hunted. That's how big the hills were.
I know what when you talk about gents ain't nothing. These guys are
going brewery and steep places to go. So when you said that, I've
done that, and I know what kind of terrain that they that gens ain't
rose on normally, and it's not the easiest thing to get to. So
anyway, I did all that there, and there was five hundred acres behind
me that I could use when I wanted to. No experience. So anyway,
fast forward, Peyton comes home. He says, hey, I got
somebody that said I could hunt their place, and I got you permission you
can go with me. And what it was just mainly for us to spend
some time together. So I'm not going out in the woods without a gun.
I know it probably won't do any good against something that big or whatever,
but there's little creators that'll bite you. That's just what we've got them
for. So we were hunting, well, we were scouting. I said,
we got to go scout this place. We got a couple of weeks.
Do a quick scouting and go check the fence lines for crossing, go
check the water sources, the food and all that. Get an idea of
the ridges and on. And we're walking to the backside of this place,
and we're talking about it's on the south end of this county, extreme south
end, and you're talking about rural. When he brings up his hunting out
that the housa erst for in between. So we're not thinking about anything.
We're being scouting quiet, we're not being hunting quiet. We're going along and
all we start up this little rise in this little stretch of woods behind this
pond, and I noticed a tree break. Okay, but tree breaks that
happen. But something there's reasons either somebody rides one down like a kid,
are doing it a bend. And we had any storm in ninety four,
and I learned a lot about trees and how they handle pressure. During that
oy storm, and some bends, some snaps, some come up by the
roots. Some are made for that and they handle it well. So I
saw this sapling. It was I don't know, three or four inches,
maybe five, but it was absolutely just snapped at about the five foot more
give or take, and its splintered, high pressure snap, not a bend,
not a bend, and a split down it and then it gave way
a break, short clean break. It was pretty needed. It was still
green white colored in the inside. When I saw it, I pulled headed
me and Peyton. We'd watched the less strow stuff and tied and playing this
and that, and I'm like, I look, I'm thinking that's what that
that's what they said that was. So we stopped and I said, look
around. We could not find any reason. No other tree had fallen.
There was no marks, there was the bark wasn't scuffed where it could have
been a tractor or a front endloader. There was. It was intact other
than it was snapped and laying over. And what happens next is all at
once. I stepped past that so called marker up the hill. Page's looking
up the hill. I'm at three o'clock his three o'clock looking at the tree,
and I stepped up the hill sideways and turning, but still looking at
the tree. My phone was in my pocket. We're not saying anything,
and seriously says, I don't quite understand. And I grabbed my pocket right
quick because we're in hunting mode kind of. And I look at him up.
What right is this is happening? A rock about the size when you
make a double fist together. A rock. I could see it in my
peripheral and it landed and it hit another rock and bounced and rolled a little
bit and just stopped in the on this downslope and their seedter ticket just fifteen
yards away or so, maybe twenty. And I looked at Peyton, and
I'm thinking fast, like what is this? What I do? What's my
next move? I got my kid with me, and he's old enough to
take care of yourself. But if I'd been by myself, I'd have been
scared. Then I'm thinking, whatever it is, I'm gonna take it head
on and let him get away or whatever that stuff cross your mind. The
fact that was going through my head was not normal either, because if you're
you have a rock thrown at you, something has to have thumbs to do
that. It's either a person or it's something with a thumb, and that
rules out a lot of stuff. You, Maddie, you know how it
sent your humor is? He said, Are we just going to ignore that
we had a rock thrown talks to us? I said, no, Peyton,
I'm trying to cook up what the next move is. And I think,
I said I and we talked about it, and we didn't feel threatened.
Two backs. I didn't feel that dread. Let's put that way.
I said, I think we need to back down the hill facing it,
whatever that is. Don't run, don't trigger anything. We get far enough
away, we'll get out of here. We'll talk about this in the truck.
And that's what we did. We were talking about it. He said.
The rock wasn't thrown at us like a baseball. It was talked at
us. He said, I saw it come. He told me that it
came through the seedar, through the top of the cedar in an arc.
So if something had been thrown at us, it would have skipped more than
two or three times. Is it hit and rolled it didn't skip. There's
a difference. You were ex police officer you hear things. Some people can
tell things by just hearing them, whether it's a football where it's something fail,
where it's you know, I have to say he's pretty observant and I
have some of that too. And when we discussed it, we decided that
this whatever was tost and maybe it was whatever it was trying to get us
to leave. But by a year later we went back. We didn't go
up to that part. We hunted the rest of the We were hunted during
the season, stayed away from that side of that hill. Did smell a
few things that did have that death smell, but it was more like a
wet dog mixed with decay. And I had a seat with me, a
fold out seat, and we were walking in that morning before daylight. I
told him where I was gonna set up at and just out of his way.
We were walking together and I just stopped folding my seat out and sat
down and stay tuned for more se squatch out to see right back. After
these messages, he kept walking. He went up to the top of the
hill, got to stand hit the radio, said I'm in, I'm okay,
it's okay, ten four, Just keep be careful. I'm sitting there,
and I get the moving around just a little bit as it gets starts
getting daybreak or whatever. And this breeze picks up and hits me in the
back of the neck, just a light breeze, and for a split second,
two seconds, maybe I get a will of this. I'm not dead.
Death is. It's different, like decay, like something just funky and
then with a wet for wet dog smell. But it was there and then
it was gone, and I'm slow. I'm slow up here sometimes and I
thought, man, I'd sat down here in a spot where something they had
blow it to me. I want the movie. Then it was gone,
and I was like, wait a minute. If it's dead, it's not
gonna be moving. And the wind didn't changed. So I got on the
radio. I said, Peyton, we got something going between us. Keep
your head on swivel, just keep look down my way. I don't know
what it is, but it's funky. He spent up that a couple more
times over the years. But we went back to that location of the rock
throwing incident a year later because I thought about it a walk. Not think
about that, right, So I said, here's what we're gonna do.
We're gonna go up there in the off season and be still. It was
fall, but we're gonna go up there, and we're not gonna be quiet.
I don't want to slip up on something behinds and down again. I
want everything in the woods. No, we're there and I'm carrying me a
gun and you're carrying your gun, and we're just gonna walk and look.
Our first goal was to go up the side the other side and come around
behind that cedar tree that that little dick get there. I was expecting it
to be a lot of thick cedars up hard to move around in. We
were walking up the edge of this field to the right of the property and
there's a big opening that we've been through a few times, just the natural
natural game trail, but it's like cows used it and everything before. And
there's this cross made out of two cedar trees. And I look at him
like what the hell, and his eye he's what is this Because we've watched
those shows. So I snapped the picture of that and I'm like, this
is nuts. So we didn't go past that though. We lacked our list
and last night, so we went up and around and when we went behind
that cedar tree thicket. It was wide open. There was a bowl back
there that was as far as you could see the top of that ridge,
and it was just as big, NOAs woods perf good hunting woods, because
you could see forever. Of course, we always talk about stuff after,
during and after, and I'm like, you know what if we'd walked fifteen
to twenty more yards, this whatever that was, couldn't got away from us
without us seeing it. That was totally the opposite what I was thinking.
I said, maybe it was maybe we did peru that reaction, but that
Brian, I don't know. I'm not an expert. I just know what
happened. I've had air quote tree breaks before where a lot of people would
say, hey, I just heard a tree snap. But you can hear
the difference when something stepped on and when something snapped if you're listening. And
so the one time I thought back, and I'm like me and my cousin
we had I shot a deer and lost it and we found it at night
and we were we located the deer, and I had this tree snap,
and then I got to thinking about it playing it back. No, that
was a something that could have been a mountline or something coming in for that
to get that deer, and it was something big, but it was a
footstep and the subtle differences in in that. But you can tell also,
you can tell we've got a place we go to now that we had stuff
happening. I'm not saying anything about anybody. There's a lot of inexperienced people
that misidentify things, and that's okay. That's how you learn. If you
ask somebody knows. I'm sure you've been sitting around with squirrels dropping nuts on
top of your head and you can hear them. You can hear if something
falls out of a tree like that, it'll usually hit a leaf or a
limb coming down and it falls straight down. Now, if they start rolling
out to you, then you've got other issues. We've got another piece of
property through family that we've had some crazy stuff happened. I actually I've got
a about a five minute video and Mark Newbill took it a couple of weeks
ago actually and went through it and we heard we had some sounds that we
had this bright idea of the gift because we'd heard some footfalls and some we'd
smelled some tomatoes sitting there at night. Had some strange things happen there.
For about six weeks, we had a lot of activities, not eveny sighting,
but enough to make us keep going back. And this next part I
joke big Foot don't like oranges, apparently because I thought it's something. I'm
sorry five games I made something mad. So it was either the apples of
the oranges or it maybe because we were going in there too often too.
But I have a video with audio, and you've got a tree snap.
You have what what we thought was a boulder that was tossed. There's a
huff and a growl, and an iPhone is pretty good. But as far
as for sounds, it's it doesn't catch the you know how loud it is.
So I was really impressed that Mark pulled these sounds out of there.
And he had the I don't know what is it a grouse or some kind?
Yeah, and so what it does? You know how it works.
It'll tell you what it's not a lot of times or what it is,
but depending on where it falls. He called me, he said we need
to talk. I said, okay. He said some of this stuff,
he said, it does sound like a tree break as I know that's what
it was. And he said, but these howls that you're talking about,
he said, there's two of them, and you respond to them. You
and Paint both respond to them. And you're right. You say it's not
a it's not a coyote. That's strange, he said, But there's two
that you don't hear. I'm like, oh, and now this is his
this is what he told me. I'm not he said. The way this
works, he talked about the number of the range that stuff falls in a
corridor slamming or woolf for a cold year old bull or whatever. He said.
It's none of that, he said, But what it falls into the
range of is what we usually look at film that we think it is more
or less legit, and compared to other sounds that people say are legit,
he said, it falls in that range of what we think would be a
bigfoot. And so I sat down on the bed and I'm like, well,
at the time, I was pretty sure there was something big. We
could hear it walking, and it may be more than one because the calls
are two different directions. I was watching it for the first time. The
duration of the call is almost the same every time, but it's different,
and I never had heard anything like that. And from Mark to tell me
that I don't know. I'm trusting him with his nut reading the numbers or
whatever, and I assume he's done a lot of this. Somebody told him
I had it and he contacted me. But it's on I'll share it.
I'll share it to you. I've got it on YouTube. I'll send you
the link afterwards and let you listen to it and what he did the old
five minutes so you can see our reactions and here be there with us.
So he's got the video running too at the same time. And there was
a few things that happened before. That is why I turned the camera on,
because that hoof growl, there was so much a volume of air coming
out of what it sounded like two nostrils that it's scared. He did me
a favor and took out some cuss words that I didn't realize. I said,
and here I again, I've got my son out there and this is
going on. And we got back to the truck and plugged it in to
turn the speakers wide open. And when I started hearing those sounds, I
was like, yes, they may not be that clear, but men,
that's what we heard. That's all I needed. I didn't need anybody to
hear it. We caught it, We got it on film. It's scared
to crap up of us. It happened, and you saw how big he
is. He said, I'm not going back in there again. But anyway,
we've had some strange things happen. Then some of it goes along with
the research we've done in reverse and everything. And since I told my story
is the first time and you've probably dealt with this more than me. But
I was astonished at the amount of local people and people contacting me and saying
hey, not only hey, I saw or heard something, or I found
this or that, the ones that say thank you for telling your story because
I can't tell anybody because of my child. But the main thing is it
made me understand what I heard and what happened to me. Then they're like,
hey, word, I need to go look, and they trust me
because I cannot. I wouldn't do that to anybody. You lose your trust,
lose trust, that's all you've got. My dad told me, all
you have. He's the only thing you own in this world is your reputation,
and then no amount of money can get it back for you. People
that want to listen those sounds. I'm not telling you what it is.
It says, hey, this is here. If you're an expert, you
tell me what it is. But we got it. That's all you can
ask for. Because if I had a clear picture right now, one in
my backyard hanging out with me, wouldn't nobody believe it? A picture in
a video. They're not going to prove anything to these skeptics or the scientists.
You know what it's going to take. And until that happened. I'm
gonna make a prediction tonight, whatever the date is, because I've seen some
stuff. I've been trusted and showing some stuff on phones and stuff like that
people will not share because of the naysayers. They're gonna pick it apart.
They're gonna call them liars, they're gonna whatever. I've seen some things on
trail cams that I could see the veins, the tendons absolutely stunned. Look,
I'm skeptic. I saw one. I have stuff happened to me.
But my first thing is to rule out or try to explain it away.
And then if I can't explain it away, then I've made Hey, Brian,
who do you think this is? If I know somebody might know,
that's how I try to do this. And I'm make a prediction tonight that
once science proves that it's for real, you're gonna see some amazing video pictures
come out because those people that are holding the back right now because the trolls
on Facebook and on social media, they're hurting their self. They want to
learn all this stuff. But it'll tell you prove yourself to people that you
can be trusted and that you're in this for the right reason. You'll never
see it unless you go get it yourself. And that's just my prediction now.
May be wrong, and y'all can laugh at me ten years both.
And I'll tell people this. That was my first convention, whatever you call
it. And we were sitting at a table because they didn't have enough place
to sit over to eat, and there was this older man. He was
there. We got to talking. Peyton went to the restroom and I said,
why are you here? Are you a fan of the show? That's
what I started. When are you fan of the show or whatever? He
said, No, he said, actually I had something to show Matt Moneymaker
and he's coming to my place. He took they took my information down.
There was the clearest trackway on it, like a tarred chip road. You
live in North Carolina, you know what a torret chip road is. You
know, in the summertime when they get hot, if a dump truck comes
out there there, they'll they'll mash it down a little bit. It gets
soft because the heat. Something walked out of it after a rain walked out
of his driveway he was walking his dog. There was about twenty tracks.
The left foot was clear as they it had some kind of gray clay ash
type fine stuff on the foot. The right foot wasn't his defined, but
there was. He said. It was about six foot in between the strides.
By the time he got researchers there was a couple of weeks, had
rained on it a couple of times, but it was so compacted into that
tarred chip, I don't know, asphalt or whatever it was. Still you
could still see it. And I could clearly see left right, left right,
And I was just stunning and what this man had and it. He
wasn't a big footter, he said. He showed it to Matt and Matt
eyes got big. So where do you lived? He said, fifteen minutes
from this convention sent which might have been fifteen miles. It takes me two
hours to go fifteen miles in the mountains. But but yeah, seeing that,
there you go again. I'm not trying to be convinced. I was
so glad that Peyton got to see that, because he's heard things, and
he said things happen to see that. There was these nobs people out there,
And I tell you what I want to listen to. Somebody hid the
story told to me and this guy never I asked him, you ever watched
to find him midfoot? No? You ever look at YouTube? No you
ever do this? No, he wasn't a researcher, wasn't. He just
had an experience that was pretty pretty awful. And he didn't know about the
screams and all that. So that's when he came to me. When he
heard me at work. They found out that I had talked on a podcast
or whatever, and I expected him to laugh at me. And the first
thing they said in office and he needed to talk to Jimmy. I'm like
to I, why do I need to talk to Jimmy? And Jimmy said
he saw a big foot and I said, y'all need to talk to Jimmy.
So I go to him. And he was in the military thirty five
years ago. He said at Procidan. There's a edc over Colonna, Tennessee.
They were guarding the train tracks the entrance to the base there. And
he said there was five gunner stations and there was four of the guys with
him. There were singles and they were guarding the tracks, he said,
Roger, and the moon was bright enough. We were you know, we
didn't have any lights or anything. We're sitting there being quiet. He said,
I saw something coming from the left. It was on the tracks,
walking in between the tracks. And I told you their story and he said
it was huge and I got to looking at it, and he said the
only thing could be was a big foot. And he said, this is
nonchalant, he said, and it must have been a female because they had
a baby. It was carrying a baby. You know. Me, I
was like, I'm like, if you watch, he shows you what you
know what he was. He know, he didn't know anything about the end
of this, and he had talked to the other guys and they confirmed what
they saw, but they decided not to tell anybody. So anyway, he
was talking and I'm like, I'm gonna ask him a question he's not expecting.
I'm gonna get his reaction. I interrupted him. I said, how
was she carrying the baby? And he'd leaned back and he said, I
guess caring is the wrong word I've been using all these years, he said,
because the baby was latched on to the shoulder, holding on, and
she just had her hand under it to keep it from just in case it
fail. And I was thinking, yes, if he'd been lying, he
would have made that up. But he even thought herself, maybe I've been
using the wrong word all this time because she wasn't carring it that baby.
It's been fun, it's been interesting. It's been a little scary too,
But once you get into it, like you, I heard you today talking
with Byron. Do you hear these sounds? You hear things that you think
maybe what it is. It's like Peyton, he wants to know and he
don't want to know. He said, yep, he said. He said,
I'm I'm different. He said, I'm I want to see one and
I'm done with it. I'm doing other stuff. He said, once I
confirm it in my head, I don't know anymore. And then he gets
to listen listen all this other stuff with the woo stuff and everything, and
he's like me, I keep an open mind because he said something that was
very smart. He said, Daddy, I gotta keep an open mind to
that, because he's an animal person, always has been Steve, from Steve
watching Thieve Irwin growing up to studying animals. He can say, hey,
you've ever seen a main wolf from South Africa away or whatever? And they
look like and I'm like what, and he will tell me something like just
as random fact, we were coming back from the conference, he said,
I gotta keep an open mind because we heard some stuff like that up there
too. And he said, and the reason I got to keep an open
mind is he said, can you imagine the first floe would come back?
After saying a chameleon Trying to explain to his buddies, he said, if
a chameleon and an octopus can change colors, what can some of this other
stuff do that we don't know about. And I'm like, holy crap,
that's a good way looking at it. Like I said, I have some
coffee, so I'm probably talking too much. No, that's been great man.
And to his point we've talked about that so many times on the show
is I don't necessarily think some of the high strangeness or the woo part of
Bigfoot that enters in some of these encounters is that far out there, because
we don't know what these things can do, and what they can't do,
and frankly, what they are. So that's why I keep an open mind,
even when it's really out there, like one of the recent shows that
I've had. We won't get into that, but people have some really out
there strange experiences, and I don't close my mind to any of that.
I think it's possible, like you said, chameleons and some of the other
things that exist in nature. The first time that somebody saw a platypus,
can you imagine trying to go back to your fishing buddies and saying, Hey,
I was fishing in this weird little thing that laid an egg and it's
crazy man. That's probably where cave growlings came about, because they laughed at
I'm like, then we could find it later from your previous work experience,
I could see something you could see something. It's like witnesses. If you
have seven witnesses, you're in trouble. If you've got two, you're probably
gonna be. Okay. I could see something and I describe it, and
I'm gonna have a lot of words and I'm gonna describe. Then I'd say
I saw this bubble. Then you have the guy that says, Brian says,
did you see a big foot? He said, and it was big,
And that's it. And we interpret things differently, whether it sounds or
whatever. And that's why you've gotta be you gotta rein it in sometimes because
everything's not a big foot, everything's not whatever. And you can get that
way if you're out here in the woods. Even knowing better. Sometimes I've
learned so much about other animals in the last six months that's worked it to
me. I've had to go I've heard stuff and had to go look at
YouTube and Peyton's and notes that's or whatever. I'm like, no, and
he's to go right to YouTube. So yet listen, he's right on top
of it. So I didn't know it make that sound. So I'm learning
a lot doing this, and as long as it don't get torn to pieces,
I guessed it to be a good It's okay, But I don't go
into this. I know I'm not gonna get that piece of evidence it's going
on. If you got out here like Cliff and all these guys that are
actually casting foot prints, and I've never found a foot print, I wouldn't
know unless it was just real obvious. It's more or less still just trying
to learn things and spending time in the woods when my signe and my wife
she'll go sometimes. And like I said, I don't need convincing. I
really don't know why I'm doing it. You get cooked on it a little
bit. For me, man, it's just the stories and the connections with
people. I love meeting people and having conversations with people, Like I met
you and Peyton for the first time in Tennessee and we became fast friends,
man. And it's really about the connections that I've made with people that have
followed me throughout this, and I've talked about it so many times on the
shows. I've met people I'll probably be friends with for the rest of my
life that I would have never even had the opportunity to talk to. We'd
never have met had it not been for this show and Bigfoot, So if
nothing else comes out of it, in my opinion, for me, for
the rest of my life, I will continue to meet and hang out with
some of the coolest people on Earth. Man. So I really appreciate you
coming on and sharing your stories. Man. I had a blast hanging out
with you guys and the Smokies, you and Peyton. Like I said,
we're up. I like for my weekend and I can't thank you enough for
coming on and spending the time that you spent tonight sharing your information and your
stories. Man. I appreciate you allowing me too, because because some of
this of us, this is like therapy in our way where you get it
out there, or there may be people that hadn't heard my story maybe people
that have. And it's all in the timing because, like I said,
before twenty twenty five years ago, people couldn't talk about this stuff because of
obvious reasons. But shows like Monster Quest, Find the big foot Sasquatch Odyssey,
whatever, it's normalized it to a point where gives people a little more
confidence that they can come to Brian and say, hey, I need to
tell you something. And you probably get people that say I want to tell
you something, but I don't want to be on the area and you might
can relay it, but those are the pieces of the puzzle I was talking
about. You can say, hey, this was in certain county in Alabama,
but if you have researchers, then say what time of year it was,
what was going on? It may be that piece that they need.
So yeah, it's it's a little freeing. And I appreciate you for and
allow me to talk about this. And I know there's some people gonna be
like piece of beloved or whatever. But if you want to know, find
these places. You A lot of these people are going to public land.
Go talk to these people before you judge them, because there's some very intelligent
people doing this way above my level. But that's how you learn. If
you're around people that are dumber, then you you're not gonna learn anything you
actually get down there with them. So if you were going to learn how
to play the guitar, what do you do? You go to somebody that
knows more than you did. That's how you do it. It's good for
me because most everybody knows more than I do. So I've been a good
spot right now. They say you don't gotta go home, but you just,
Oh, I don't want to be alone the world out that I'm trying
to try that time everything Come right back, ride baby my joy for me,
Joy, stay right now, I'm coming right away. Days sassoutout for
me, come talbot about things and uses us and use us and uses