Big food and be on with Cliff and Bobo. These guys are you favor
It's so like say subscribe and rade it. I'm star and me just go
on Yesterday and listening, oh watching lim always keep its watching. And now
your hosts, Cliff Berrickman and James Bubo Fay. Greetings, Bobo, how
are you doing today? Pretty good? Cliff? How's it going to do?
Not bad? Not bad? Just kind of in the after holiday?
Well, I guess the mid holiday thing, you know, because Christmas is
a few days ago in New Year's is this coming weekend, and of course
tomorrow is a huge holiday in my house, at least for me, it
is. It's my wife's birthday. So I'm super excited about that. Not
that that wouldn't be enough by any means, because that's enough to keep me
going all year. I just look forward to my wife's birthday almost more than
any other holiday. But coincidentally, it's all so John Wilke's birthday of all
things. That's right, Yeah, So don't neglect to send a text to
John Wilke if you're going to think if you're thinking about sending a text to
Melissa for her birthday. So yeah, Did you have a good Do you
have a good holiday? Bobs? Yeah, yeah, yeah, just I
got down here early. Had a family emergency, so I jammed down and
that's why I wasn't able to make it to the other day. So that's
pretty much kind of like the all consuming kind of thing, you know,
is sticking around, just been around the house the whole time. Well,
you know, you got to enjoy a family Christmas. That's kind of nice.
And southern California is a great place to spend Christmas. You know,
did it did it drop into the sixties? Did you have to put a
jacket on in the evening? I did put on a light hoodie and when
it was like eight o'clock at night, we went outside for a walk.
Yeah. I mean the numbers are what it's probably like, you know,
fifty nine or sixty or something. It was a little bit chilly. It
was like sixty seven. Oh my god, sixty Say it isn't true,
but you know that no matter what the number is, at nights, you
know, with that ocean right there, it does get a little chilly for
whatever reasony the humidity brings something out, you know. Yeah, I feel
especially if you're sitting around if you're not doing anything, just sitting there,
I can get cold for sure, Little wind. Well, we had a
good Christmas at the Barracksman household. I mean, my brother, of course,
is in southern California, so I didn't get the chance I spoked him
on the phone. I didn't see him or anything. And both my parents
are pasted, so it's just Melissa and I because Melissa's family's out in Pittsburgh
and we spoke to them of course, and all that sort of stuff.
But I'm really into Christmas nowadays, and it's not so much the holiday cheer
and you know, tree and all that sort of stuff. Although Melissa loves
that stuff. I just I like buying gifts for my wife. I get
it now, you know, I get it. I'm so excited about just
giving her cool things and just things that I enjoy. My favorite gift this
year that I had a chance to give her was an assortment of a variety
pack of pickles. That's Melissa's go to snacks. It's either two chips or
like like pickle chips, you know, sort of not chips chips, that's
not what I mean, but you know, like the cut slices yeah,
yeah, and then that that's what she'll snack on, and they say,
oh that's interesting, because yeah, that's not really my go to, but
she loves it, so I said, let's do this. So I got
a variety pack of weird pickle flavors for her and she's totally into it.
That was exciting for me. So yeah, I just just love spending the
day with her. We watched a couple Christmas horror movies. This this big
stinker from the eighties. It was it was called Oh you Better watch out.
What was the name of it, And of course there's two movies called
that. There's a more recent one, but this was an old one.
But that's Christmas at my house murder movies. We watched Elf Elf. Of
course, there's a bigfoot scene in there. Yeah. Yeah, a lot
of people don't realize that, but it's true. Also, I figured out
my dad might be Santa Claus or at least some kind of high Elf because
he's been living on the Elf diet for about three years now. Oh yeah,
the Elf diet. Candy ice cream and that's about it. Well,
your last name is Faye, you know, I know it's not spelled f
Euy but that's probably the root word of it. Oh yeah, it's the
same. Yeah yeah, And of course you know this is also for me
at least Lord of the Ring times, Lord of the Rings time. We
usually watch the entire extended trilogy between now in New Year's although we're a little
bit behind. We didn't get going on Christmas like we usually do because it
occurred to me that Lord of the Rings is also a Christmas movie because it
has elves in it. No, I agree, Yeah, yeah, it'd
be hard to argue that one down, I think. Yeah, so that
was a holiday. Melissa's birthdays. Tomorrow, we're going about the dinner.
I'm going to get her a cake because cake is probably her favorite thing in
the world, besides maybe me and the dog. Well, hey, Matt
Prude, I know you're lurking in the background somewhere. How is your Christmas?
Because you're down in like the tropics, aren't you. Yeah, we're
in the southernmost point of the US. And it was great Christmas Day.
It poured rain all day. It was torrential, so it's sort of like
a rainforest. So we didn't get out much on Christmas Day proper. But
it's been awesome, and I'm sure we'll be out in out on New Year's
Eve. It gets pretty wild, like thousands of people in the streets,
which isn't exactly my scene anymore, but we'll we'll walk around, do some
people watching and then come back. But it's been a great trip thus far,
fantastic. Well, at the end of the year is coming. At
the end of the year is fast upon us, actually, so maybe we
should talk about this year in general, kind of a retrospect sort of thing.
Everybody else seems to be doing it, so I don't see why we
can't. So we're going to talk about some of the big things that we
think are important from twenty twenty three. So we're going to kind of pool
our heads here for a second and just kind of go through what we can
remember from this past year, which is probably the hardest part of them all,
trying to remember this stuff, because I know that my sense of time
is very elastic, as I often say, and I'm I'm assuming that's true
for Bobo, although Matt pro it seems to be pretty sharp, so I'm
not sure about you. Matt. It seems like you have a pretty lock
tight memory system going on in there. So I've been thinking about some of
the things we might be able to talk about. And when I look back
at this year, right, and obviously it starts in January, I'm lucky
enough to have my Patreon, you know, my NABC Patreon stuff, because
I can look back at that and say, oh, yeah, we started
the year with doctor Meldrum speaking at the museum, so that was kind of
cool and stuff. But when I go through the entire month of January for
our museum members, there's a lot of stuff in there, you know,
a lot of footprint finds and stuff. I got some submissions from up in
Washington that I shared with the members. I have some historic you know,
personal correspondences from John Green and whatever else that I scanned and shared. But
of all the stuff that happened that year, I think or year that month
of the first month of twenty twenty three, for me at least, the
most significant thing was the discovery and first time ever publishing of historical photos from
high MBOM from nineteen sixty three. A woman named Edie Gardner had these photographs
because you know the nineteen sixty three High Palm footprints that Bob Timmis took the
originals are down there in Willow Creek. We have replicas here in the museum.
We have photographs from the Willow Creek Museum of the Originals here. But
no one ever knew these photographs existed. And Edie Gardner was the daughter of
the landowners where this incident happened. And the story of it is that she
moved from California out to West Virginia and her chiropractor happened like Bigfoot, her
chiropractors. Of course, Doctor Ruff's Jones, who is an author. He's
a great speaker. He's written Tracking the Stone Man, he wrote The Appalachian
Bigfoot. He's a good friend and excellent researcher. So when he heard Edie
Gardner talking about Bigfoot in these pictures, he kind of notified me and managed
to get us in touch and actually arranged to have her donate those photographs at
the museum. Yeah. Yeah, right, I'm super super stoked, super
stoked. Yeah, And they're really cool. Photographs are little black and white
photographs. They've got to be maybe three or four inches square or something like
that. And sure enough, they show the footprints of the Sasquatch in the
ground, and there's plaster in a couple of them, So nobody ever knew
that this little piece of history existed until Edie Gardner had to have her back
adjusted or whatever she had to have done. So thankful for that one.
So yeah to me, I mean, because a lot of my focus,
of course with the museum is the history. You know, we're endeavoring to
preserve the history of the subject because it's important now. But imagine after the
discovery of the Sasquatch, all this pre discovery stuff is going to be even
more interesting. Oh yeah, this is a really long discovery process. As
doctor John Binnerdoggle wrote in his book, this is a very long discovery process,
and all these little tidbits and historical nuggets lying around, they're just so
fascinating. It's one of my favorite things about working in the museum actually here
So yeah, the sad stuff, as I love the history, like I
always look at through the I look at it like I appreciate it, but
I also look at the lens of once these are recognized creatures that this will
be important. This particular case, the high impalm stuff is particularly important for
several reasons. Really, it was one of the earlier footprints, you know.
I mean, the first known Bigfoot cast that's still in existence at least
was obtained in nineteen fifty eight, so this is only five years later.
So there weren't a whole lot of footprints at all at this point. And
the fact that he got I think three or four of them. I think
it was three of these things. I could be wrong, might before I
have to check my records, but that did that increased the data set at
that point dramatically. But the sasquatch that was present at the time in High
Impalm in April of nineteen sixty three was the animal that was named Bigfoot.
It was the animal Bigfoot that the Jerry Crew cast. We're pretty certain of
that, like ninety ninety five percent sure. In fact, even John Green
and those guys were saying that back in the day they'd recognize the foot shape,
same size, same shape, same Hallix shape, all that stuff.
We're pretty certain it is either the same animal or at the very least a
very very closely related one because the foot is so similar in so many ways.
And if it is the same animal, well that's a long distance high
and pond the Bluff Creek. That's sixty sixty miles as the crow flies.
And I think it's safe to say that the big footprint belongs to a big
male because in all primates and sasquatches would be included in that. Obviously,
in all primates there's a significant sexual dimorphism, in other words, shape differences
between boys and girls, and in this case, boys are bigger than girls,
you know, the males are bigger than the females. So it's safe
to think it's pretty safe to say that if it is the same animal,
it's a big male. And there were other footprints found in the vicinity that
were smaller, about fourteen inches long, probably the female and distinctly different than
the female at Bluff Creek, which was Patty. So this is one of
the only points in the data set even to this day, it is one
of the only points in the data set that has physical evidence of a big
male or something moving at that moving to that distance, with females possible females
associated with it. Now it's a data point of one so far. Really
at the end of the day, and there's some other stuff. There's the
stuff from tom Shaye and Trimble County up there with Goliath and everything, But
this is the furthest that I'm aware of that we have actually have physical evidence
of a bigfoot moving. He probably just said he was going out for cigarettes
and never came back. Yeah, yeah, yeah, is that what is
that lipstick on your coll or is that is that deer blood on your collar?
It is so important to preserve that history because you know, we all
lamit to some degree, maybe me more than a lot of other people I
know, but I know you too lament it with me as well. That
a lot of the current cadre or cohort of you know, squatchers isn't as
familiar with the history as we would like them to be. And that's not
always their fault, because a lot of it does require sort of being dug
up and revivified and put into a new format because a lot of it is
in books, and a lot of those books are out of print, and
so it's hard for people to get their hands on that stuff. And so
the work that you're doing, and that Todd Prescott's doing, and you know
other people who are bringing that stuff back into the digital realm, it's not
even back into the digital realm for some of it. It's putting it in
the digital realm for the first time, so people all over the world can
see it. It sort of keeps that history alive in a way, and
it's really important work, I think, and I love seeing it too.
I'm a geek for all that stuff. Another gikybotuh speaking of historical things.
Obviously, all big fans of Mark Marcel And you know, he just was
nominated Bigfooter of the Year by Daniel Perez in The Bigfoot Times. Well deserved
in my opinion, Yeah, a little late, but but yeah, deserved,
definitely deserved. And so you know, he's done so much to preserve
history and it's still uncovering things. And I know he's hinted here and there
on social media about the Big Ape Canyon book that he's writing and submitting things
to an editor, So I will definitely be ready to read that when it
gets released. But I know we've touched a bit on that. But Cliff,
you probably know more about that situation than anyone other than Mark, having
spent so much time there. But dude, I know more than I'm allowed
to say. There's so much I'd like to spill the beans on, man,
but there's so many amazing things happening right now, basically right like the
last two months in the Ape Canyon scene. It is absolutely ridiculous. We
still got to get him on because there's other things that he experienced in and
around Bobo that Bobo actually, you know, for our listeners, Bobo lined
him up, but at the time Mark had connection issues like k microphone didn't
work at all. We actually tried to do an episode with him, and
we'll lock him down and we'll get the scoop on some of these other things.
We do need to have him on. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
He's so hard to nail down. He's like the probably the hardest guy
to nail down. Isn't that the pot calling the kettle black? Yeah,
it's gonna coming from Bobo. He's way worse. Well, I suppose,
because we do get you about every week or so, you know, stay
tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo. We'll be right back
after these messages. I know people always write in and ask what the status
of your documentaries are at the moment, Oh, yeah, you have any
updates? No, we just need to It's basically come down to we need
a benefactor. Well, I don't know. I mean, you do have
a lot of ears listening to you right now. What do you need attention,
Intel, sugar down. We're just we got most of it film,
but you know what we uh so, Yeah, it started out like guys
using different cameras and and then and then the editing. One guy was using
you know, Apple, the guy was using PC and they said it'd be
no problem transferring the files and we ended up losing. I guess it looks
like we've been looking back to their like hard drives and thumb drives and drop
box and all the different stuff, and we were missing audio and on one
camera for two whole nights, and then the sound wasn't as good as we
as we had hoped. Like this sounds pretty bad and we might have to
actually go up there again this spring and do some more shooting. We're gonna
we're gonna see. But yeah, it's just uh so, now it's getting
like the editing costs we got, we got the both of it done,
and it's a great story and we got really good stuff, but it's it's
definitely not complete. Then it's flip me is just you know, doing the
editing when he can. So you have most of the stuff filmed, you
have to do a little bit more recreation things. Yeah, and then and
then the red then the second half of it, you know, like which
is you know, distribution and all that other stuff. Man, that's no
problem. That's all said. Oh no, once we get it, dude,
we're the company that's backing us, that's putting it out, will have
us. We'll be like prominent, like we'll be when you click on Hulu
or whatever. We'll be on that first page. Yeah, that's such a
cool case. I know he Mark has talked about it a little bit in
other interviews, but obviously people don't ask him about it as much as they
ask about Ape Canyon, and Ape Can demands a lot of his attention.
But man, you know, because it's so funny, like not to keep
harping on online cynics, because I know we did that in the last episode.
But I do see people saying things like, oh, well, why
is everyone so hung up on these old cases? Nothing new going on in
sasquatry. But then there's so much value in those old cases because they weren't
inspired by websites or podcasts or television series like either of these people experienced exactly
what they said they did, or there's something else going on, and so
getting to the bottom of those is really important. And the fact that we
all assumed that, oh those have been you know, no pun intended,
they've all been mined and those minds are empty. And then for Mark to
come along and you realize like, no, there's so much more there to
find, or like cliffs work on the Bossburg case and these other famous cases,
and so, yeah, the history is really important. I know,
a lot of the younger, newer, up and coming sasquatch proponents or researchers
or enthusiasts should be super excited about that stuff. And a lot of them
are small town monsters. Has touched on a lot of that stuff too.
Speaking to documentaries, you know, they've done a good job of showcasing a
lot of that material too. So it's that's all great work. Yeah,
it's well, you know, because I mean a canyon is awesome. It's
one of the big three for me, you know. But up there too,
even maybe more compelling, is the sixth of the check Coo Indian Devil
Masker. You know, from the early, very the very first you know,
really big foot book Sanderson and you know, John Green and jat Place
and all of them had that was like a cornerstone, you know story,
and the story was wrong and Mark figured it out and proved and he's proved
the basis of it was true and he's proven that, but it was totally
off on location and some of the times and such. Well, yeah,
I think Ape Canyon because that hit the ap wire and that was one of
the first widely circulated Sasquatch stories, and so that's it's always had that prominent
position because so many people were aware of it, whereas the Checho Indian Devil
massacre didn't quite have the same coverage, you know, because it was earlier
in time and didn't spread as much locally. So I think you're right.
It's probably a more information rich case to some degree, as long as people
like Mark and dig that stuff up and find and it's really worth covering.
He actually, I say way it was him. We were filming him when
he made some pretty big discoveries, you know, like you're talking about like
digging out new things. I mean, people will be like, well,
that's that's that's really interesting. You know. Well, I think his work's
inspired a lot of people too, because I have friends, you know,
I don't want to spoil their projects because I don't know what they're going to
do with it. But like, I've got a really dear friend who's digging
up some old information on an old case that John Green just briefly mentions and
apes among us, and so he thought, oh, well, I'll look
into this, and I know he was partially inspired, like, well,
Mark, Marcel can do this, Like maybe I can find something too on
my own. And so he's been working on that and I think it's inspired
a lot of people. It's made me kind of reevaluate, like which old
cases, if I had the time and resources, what I want to dig
into. And there's a few. There's some from North Georgia, for example,
that we're mentioned in old print media articles that I think would be worth
looking into. So that work resonates beyond just you and Mark or whoever,
or just any one case that in the fact that it inspires the people to
do the same, and who knows what else we might find. You need
a certain certain wired brain to do what he does. I mean, to
the level and depth that he does is astounding. I mean, there's very
few people with that kind of tenacity and ability to sit out. I mean
days and days you can say, oh, I'll put some time in that,
but when you do days on, weeks on years on these little obscure
things that require so much digging in, you know, the old newspapers and
especially records. You know, he has a lot newspapers. Is great,
but he's you know, waving on the deeds and mining claims and you know
he goes pretty deep. Oh yeah, yeah, he's definitely to be commended
again, kudos for a big fit of the year. Well deserved, yeah,
overdue, I would say, I think he probably deserved that ten years
ago. Well, you know you were speaking about the Ape Canyon thing,
and that's funny because that's actually the video I'm working on right now. Like
I went to Ape Canyon with Mark and Brad of course his neighbor, and
then my friend Keith here at the museum. We all hiked up to eight
Canyon to go go poke around the if we can make it down to the
cabin site. It was ninety ninth anniversary. Then we went up there and
spent the night nearby. Because it's a national monument, there's no camping in
certain areas up there, so we had to walk a little bit out of
the way, and but we walked. We went up to the hill that
leads down to the cabin site. I didn't make it all the way down
this time. I just got about two thirds of the way down, and
I said, you know what, I'm feeling a little off. I'm feel
a little tired, like I just wasn't there. My mind was not there.
And I'll tell you, man, I want to make this very clear.
No one should go to the cabin site. Okay, it's extraordinarily dangerous.
Mark has done it like eight times or something like that. He's a
lot more comfortable with it than anybody should be. But like, that's the
kind of place where you literally one slip up and you are dead. Like
I'm there's no joke about it, man, That place is deadly. But
yeah, so I because I wasn't one hundred percent right there, I did
not choose to go down, or I chose not to go down. I
guess there's a better way to say it. Keith with me, by the
way, when we got to the very top, because you got to go
you got to climb this giant hill inside his palm dispute, and then there's
this one or two ways to get down there, and it's it's very dangerous
from the get go, from the very very top. Keith got there,
he's all fired up. He looks down, and about three or four minutes
later, we're tying off and everything because you know, we're not repelling,
by the way, I want to make that clear as well, because all
that stuff is illegal in that area without permits and everything. But we were
using ropes in the same sort of way people use hiking poles, like you
don't need them, but sure is nice to have it, you know,
So we weren't repelling or do anything like that. No, No, you
know en bolats and you know, garveiners and all that stuff. None of
that stuff was being used. You don't, you don't have to use that,
but man, if you, if you, you'd be ridiculous to go
down without a rope, which Mark did when he initially found it. By
the way, so Mark is ridiculous in a lot of ways. But Keith
was looking down he goes, no, I'm not doing this, No,
I'm not even I'm not even gonna start doing this. It took me two
thirds of the way down before I realized that, like, gosh, darning,
Melissa, give me something to live for, I'll never forgive you.
And then I turned around and came back up without a rope too, because
I couldn't. I couldn't use the rope, Say tied off, So I
was kind of scrambling up without a rope. It was gross. I didn't
enjoy it at all, But well I did, but I didn't. I
really didn't at the time. But yeah, So I went out there with
Mark and Brad and everything, and the culmination of that trip is Mark went
down to the cabin site. Now people have probably heard Mark talk on various
podcasts about how what his process of discovery and all that jazz. But one
of the things that clued him in that he was in the right area is
that in this spot, and by the way, there's no reason to go
to the spot, I guess, unless you're going to make a cabin to
mine gold out of in the nineteen twenties. But those those people in nineteen
twenties are cut from a different cloth. They're not like people today. They're
gnarly, clearly gnarly. But one of the things that clude Mark in that
he was in the right area were these stumps that can be seen in some
of the Oregonian photographs from nineteen twenty four behind the cabin, and Mark looked
into how they built cabins at the time, and if you're building a cabin
on a slope like this, one had to be built on the slope because
there is no flat ground there. You fell trees above where you want to
build, so you don't have to drag the trees around. You have to
drag the logs around. And so he located these obviously cut and harvested tree
stumps, and then he deduced that below that must be the cabin site,
and he eventually found it by using a metal detector and finding a few trinkets
around and stuff baling wire and a spoon and stuff like that. Most people
would probably know the story, or if you don't, I guess you can
go back and listen to one of our episodes something. He talks about a
lot of that stuff. But this time when he went down there not only
had the cabins and by the way, the cabin's gone, I should probably
see that the cabin's completely gone except for the support beams. Like the foundational
support beams there's a slight frame on three sides that is still present. If
there's another side, we've never found it barely discernable. When I was there
in twenty fourteen, it was barely discernible at the surface of the ground,
and only one of the sides was We kind of did a little dig in
and found the other ones with our hands. We felt, and it was
there this time. When he went down there, the entire cabin had been
buried basically by I guess the snow and whatnot. And this is just from
last year. I think Mark was up there last year and saw it,
if I remember right, the snow came down and kind of sluffed a layer
of dirt stuff above it. So literally the cabin is now buried, as
it probably gets buried every year or two or three, but it's been about
four to six inches of dirt has slept over it now and then. And
even those stumps I was mentioning which were I saw them, They were sticking
out of the ground, probably six or eight ten inches or more. All
of those are now completely invisible as well. So even if you were at
the cabin site, you wouldn't know you're there. There's nothing to see there.
But I guess the victory of this past year's trip was a Mark positively
identified the spring, the spring from where Fred took the shot at the Sasquatch.
Fred Beck took the shot at the Sasquatch when he's at the spring,
if you're familiar with the story. They positively identified that because every other year
that Mark had been there there the spring was there, but there was no
water in it, so he couldn't say that's a spring. So there was
no water in it until this year. For whatever reason, the hydrology is
a bit different to the mountain and there was water coming out of the spring,
so he positively identified that. I'll show the big eruption in nineteen eighty
had something to the little water spring flows around there. That's what Mark has
always assumed that the eruption kind of changed the hydrology the mountain and that spring
just kind of stopped given. But this year there was water in it,
so probably changed it. But I don't think it cut it off, which
is nice. But I guess the really big news this year as far as
Ape Canyon goes, is the rediscovery of the mine entrance. It was discovered.
I think this past September. I want to say the fourth, but
I can check the photographs. A guy named Brayden Mitchell, Braiden Mitchell,
and his brother Jared and his cousin Jake. They are the grandchildren of Betty
Mitchell, whose name before she's married was Smith, who is Leroy Smith's daughter
and Marion Smith's granddaughter. Marion Smith was one of the miners with Fred Beck
at the cabin when they got attacked. So the great grandson and his brother
and cousin rediscovered the mine entrance. Now, if that's not poetic, I
don't know what is. Man. And of course Mark had a hand and
Dad he told him where to look approximately, you know, and those guys
snooped around they discovered the spring on accident and trying to look around for this
thing. And they eventually made their way even further down than Mark had gone,
which is why kept and found it. Yet it is about seventy five
feet below them, I guess. But they eventually made their way and found
the actual mine entrance, which is absolutely fantastic. And I so stoked for
the guys, Braiden in those guys to have located it, because you know,
I mean, your great grandfather is involved in this historic event that's shaped
so many people's lives and you get to rediscover it. You're the first guy
to look at this since at least pre eruption. At least pre eruption.
The last person I'm aware of, and I got this information from Mark.
The last person I'm aware of that saw the mine entrance was somebody related to
one of the miners. I can't remember who. And it was like in
the middle late nineteen seventies, like nineteen seventy six or eight or something like
that, so before eruption. So it's pretty exciting, man. I think
that's probably one of the biggest things. It is unquestionably one of the biggest
things in Bigfoot that happened this year. Yeah, if people want to do
a deep dive into that. Like our good friends, you know, we've
had Mikah Hanks on this podcast and Micah, Jeff and Smoke you're really good
friends of mine. And they have a podcast called Sasquatch Tracks, and they
released an episode last month called Return to Ape Canyon Rediscovery of the Vayne or
White Mine, and and if they interview Mark as well as Braiden and Jared
and It's a really deep dive, super informative, great episode. Love those
guys, and so I would if people want to hear the whole story,
that's a great place to go. Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with
Cliff and Bogo. We'll be right back after these messages. You know,
I'm in touch with Braiden now that Mark has put us in contact to another
because I think I think I was saying this with talking to you about this
last week. Matt. I'm not sure, but twenty twenty four is the
one hundredth year anniversary. It is the centennial of the Ape Canyon event,
and of course we're going to be celebrating it every single moment of our lives
here at the North American Bigfoot Center. I'm setting aside a big section of
our wall for a new Ape Canyon display. We're gonna be retelling the story.
I'm gonna loop Mark into this talking about the rediscovery process and Brayden and
those the young young gentlemen who helped them out are allowing me to use their
photographs that they took at the site, so I know what they put it
out on. They put a couple of those things out online on some Facebook
page or something like that, so you'll be able to see those here in
the NABC, and then we'll be doing other things as well. We'll have
Mark down here for a talk at some point, or at least that's our
goal. We're making a We do a special North American Bigfoot Center coin every
year, so this is this year is going to be a centennial Ape Canyon
coin and yeah, so it's gonna it's gonna be a great thing. Man,
It's gonna be a great year. Super excited about the Ape Canyon stuff.
And there's even other stuff that Mark hasn't talked about publicly but I know
about because I'm helping them with it a little bit on the side. And
if we can, if everything goes well, you'll be able to check out
some really cool, amazing historic stuff that I can't talk about yet here at
the NABC on display in twenty twenty four. Cool. Huh, dude,
you don't know that half of it. It's going to be a rat.
Yeah, it sounds like a that's recent history. This just came out recently.
I don't know if we're going sequentially through the year, but that whole
huge art gallery found in the Colora Cliffs up there above Castle Rock Playblow.
So yeah, I mean they found those ones, and there's that one,
and they article they have a perfect picture of a sasquatch foot and they got
the little measuring ruler below, you know, the black and white squares for
every inch, and it's like a sixteen inch by like eight inch squatch footprint
carved in the rocks. Yeah. I thought that was a pretty remarkable image
because in one of the other images you could see clearly what we're intended to
be bear tracks, like a four paw and a hind paw, and they
look markedly different. And then you see other depictions of like human feet and
this is at the cool stuff there too. You know. Unfortunately it's kind
of defaced, but they're still historical value because I guess some famous like frontiersmen
or cowboys or whatever sign their names on that same wall, dated in like
the you know, different times in the eighteen hundreds, and so you can
see in some of those images where they were photographing like the frontiersman names,
you can also see those bear tracks and they're just so markedly different than that,
you know, very large, very broad footprint with the toes. I
mean it almost looks like one of the Bluff Creek casts or something. It's
pretty wild. Let's just said, looks like a ray wallash fake. Yeah,
it kind of does. Yeah. And of course he was talking about
a newspaper article that came out just a few weeks ago, from about mid
December sometime, talking about a find in the Castle Rock Pueblo settlement. It
is in Colorado, and these sort of things are called rock panels. I've
seen a couple of them in person. I saw. I was lucky enough
to go see the Wolfman panel down in Utah, kind of this inexplicable,
strange bipedal thing that's carved into the rocks alongside human beings which are terribly different
than the wolfman thing looks like. And they call it the Wolfman panel because
it has long sort of long fingers kind of interpreted as its claws and big
feet on it, and a very inhuman looking in general. I took a
photograph of it. I put it on the wall here at the museum.
It's pretty cool, but this particular panel is brand new. No one knew
kind of no one had seen it before basically or documented it. And sure
enough man, there is a really nice looking, very likely sasquatch footprint,
I think, right in the middle of it. It is square, the
toes go there is a slant to the toes, of course, but there's
five very clear toes going down the side of it. It is very very
interesting. And of course, and some of the other photographs of the panels,
you can see goats, you can see people, you can see all
this sort of stuff, and it looks very different than that possible big foot
footprint. Any know, if you've ever seen newspaper, rock or any of
those other panels down there in the Four Corners area, they a lot of
them have footprints on it. A lot of them have footprints on it,
and of course sasquatches are in the area. You gotta wonder how many those
footprints are depicted to be humans and how many are supposedly sasquatches, because certainly
the native people in the area are aware of bigfoots. And some of those
footprints look very human like, with the longitude of large and whatnot, and
some of them look very inhuman no longitudinal, large, very blocky looking.
The proportions are very bigfooty in a lot of ways. So yeah, This
is an interesting find and it'll be much more interesting to the scientists once they
catch up and realize that sasquatches are in factorial animals. They'll catch up eventually.
They're bound too. Oh yeah, well they're going to have to eventually,
I think. As far as other big news this year, we have
to mention the North Carolina State University study of an Oh God, yes,
Vegas. Yeah. People write in very often to ask if we have updates,
and you know, I think it's fair to say there's no updates that
have been released by the university or by Darby or Cut yet, so we're
all still waiting. But that is just a huge deal, first of its
kind. And once again, listeners should go back to the episode we did
with Darby org Cut to learn more about that study. But that's one of
the biggest deals in the realm of science that's willing to look at something like
this. You know, we don't know what they'll find, or if they
found anything yet, or if they will find anything, but it's a huge
deal. We do know samples have been submitted, though I've been hearing whispers
of this person or that person or this thing got submitted. I know I
think at least Doug is working to some degree with Darby with the legendmate science
too. Again, but I'm not really closely involved in all that except for
the things that I was helping Dug out with. But yeah, I think
we're all gonna be sitting on pins and needles for the first couple of press
conferences in that in that realm, I think, now, what about field
stuff, because I know I've been doing a lot of field stuff, and
I'll tell you that this year has been extraordinary as far as field work goes
in my life. At least I've kind of dubbed twenty to twenty three for
me at least as a year the handprint, because we've gotten an astonishing number
of handprints at this moment, just this past year. And not just me
either, friends of mine who are working this in similar areas, sometimes the
same areas as I am. Like, I can think of one investigator two
who work together. They go out together, so there's one team of investigators
in my spot here or one of my spots, and off the top of
my head, gosh, I think they've cast at least five handprints, well
at least four handprints, and I know that because I'm currently copying three of
them. I've got three of them under latex at this moment making copies either
display for the museum or to get doctor Meldrum or whatever. But yeah,
and some of their handprints have been very, very interesting. But that's them.
When I look at the NABC team here, I mean we cast one,
two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight eight
in a period of like two and a half weeks, three weeks. Crazy
it is, It's totally crazy. But you know, it was the same
area seventy yards apart, I might add, not that far apart at all.
I took you there, bo, so that that spot that we went
to. Yeah, and they were on the side of the road, on
the hill, on the side of the road, you know, like a
road is cut in the side of the hill, and so these things were
using our hands to go up, you know, up the hill basically.
So it makes sense, you know, if they're traveling uphill that they're especially
the steepness of this particular hill, that they would use their hands. And
you know, there's been a couple other fines as well. Just in fact
on on on December eighteenth, why I believe the date was Dave. I
talked about this at the podcast last week, but I think this year alone,
I think we've cast something like nine or ten hand prints, just just
my team. This is crazy, it's insane, insane. But you know
what that means to me, Well, I mean very very lucky, and
I have a lot of reason for gratitude. But besides that, besides that,
I remember conversations with doctor Meldrum and we're discussing. I was, well,
you know this particular siding it was down running on all fours, or
you know, I had this other thing where it went down and they noticed
that it was actually running on the knuckles at the time, and you know,
the conversations like that, and doctor meldrum comment is like, well,
you know, if they're down on all fours so often, you'd think we
would have more handprints. And I believe, and I don't want to put
words in Jeff's mouth or anything like that, I should probably ask them,
but I kind of took that as like, well, they're probably not down
on the ground that much, because who would have more handprints? But now
I'm thinking, well, gosh, we kind of have a lot of handprints
even from this one year, and it's not like they just started going down.
I think done on all fours. I think that what it is is
that, from my experience, footprints themselves are very, very difficult to notice.
I've said it a lot, but Sasquatch footprints are not with the John
Green books and the Crantz books and all that, like they skew our perception.
Those are extraordinary footprints. Those are extraordinary footprint and said are easy to
see because they're deep and clear and unambiguous. The vast majority of Sasquatch footprints
in the ground are subtle and most likely missed by anybody, but somebody who's
looking for them. Yeah, like I said, I must have gone by,
I must have looked at them a million times with like that's that's weird,
you know, like you know, just yeah, we're all so used
to looking for feet. Yeah, and then and then you when you bring
hands into the mix, almost nobody is looking for a hand. Uh.
In fact, I'll say that no one's looking for a hand. They see
something in the ground and they go what is that And they realize it's a
hand later, But they're not looking for a hand. Like they haven't they
haven't calibrated their brain to see that, you know what I mean. Yeah,
so I think that is the number one reason more handprints aren't found.
Yeah, yeah, you're right. I mean, I admit I'm fully guilty
that I must have seen I must have seen knuckle prints. And I still
try to ask this all the time people, and it's you don't get the
the straightest answers when people say they were running on all fours, like are
their hands out like palms down? Are they knuckles down? Oh? I
asked that. I asked that, and I think twice now the people saw
it clear enough that they said knuckles yeah. Yeah. But most of the
time you probably wouldn't even notice. I think that's the other thing I was
going to say is that that's what makes it really because you think, like
you'd think those are toes, but they don't. They don't match up right
because you're when you're looking at the knuckle, if they're looking at their on
their knuckles, that looks like a bear forepaw, you know, because the
middle knuckles like you know, the bear toe. I'm sure I've looked at
a handprint before, or a knuckle print, I guess you should call it,
or a fist print and and uh just thought it was like a messed
up you know, hand like a not a very good quality hand you know,
footprint, you know, or possible bear probably bear or something takes a
lot of time and a lot of weird interpretation. That'd be great to get,
you know, like some retire or you know, someone that did well
and cashed out early like that is really you know, they could spend time
in that area, like with good equipment and you know, like just be
out there at twenty four to seven. It's just a matter of being out
there, man, It's just a matter of going as much as possible.
One of those other investigators I mentioned in the area that are working with us,
we're kind of working on two coordinated teams going back and forth. They
saw one and they saw one in June, and of course I the year
or two ago, Nico saw one in the same general area too, So
two sightings in the last year and a half or something like that. One
spot and you know, a dozen footprints and hand prints. Not bad,
that's great. Oh, it's epic. It's epic. Yeah. I think
in terms of productivity in the field, certainly what the NABC is doing is
unrivaled, and especially this year for sure, because you brought up you know,
is anything going on in the field, And I think that's that's the
big show. I know, the Olympic Project are doing some really good work.
And you know, Chris had just published a report I think online it's
about seventy pages about a track find they were involved with, and then also
their audio work and continuing work in the nest site. But I think what
you guys are doing there is very productive and very informative. Well, it's
certainly the thing I'm most excited about, you know, because I mean my
hands are in the thick of it. You know, I was out in
the garage last night burning out some of the organic material as the cast is
drying. You know. Oh, well you should be. I mean that's
that's the thing about you know, doing a year recap. I mean,
obviously the work that you do is the kind of work that you're hoping will
you know, if fruitful, will have an impact and be counted amongst those
things. So yeah, I think you should definitely, you know, include
that it. Here's my favorite things that happened this year, and it's certainly
among mine too, you know, it's it's well earned. Stay tuned for
more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bogo. We'll be right back after these
messages. Well, let's talk about that Chris Spencer thing. Man, Let's
give a kudos where kudos are due, man, because that's that's pretty cool
too. Yeah, And I was lucky enough Chris brought all those the original
footprint casts to the NABC, so I had a chance to sit down with
them and kind of go over them. Except I've a fair amount of experience
looking at these things and the interpreting casts and whatever else, and I just
showed them like, well this could be this. What do you think of
that? And we kind of bounced things back and forth. I've got photographs
of all the original casts, and Chris is published all that stuff. Matt,
do you know where that that that report is available online? Because Chris
just emailed it to me. I don't know where to get it. I'll
make sure to put that link in the show notes for listeners. We know
something. A small newspaper article came out in April and the point of it
was that Clallam County. You know, they're right, Port Angelus's stuff is
now officially designated a refuge for Sasquatches. Cool. Yeah, totally cool.
Yeah. You know who's behind all this. A teacher is behind all this.
And she got her students and I think she's from the Grays Harbor County
area. I met her. She's been in the shop. She came in
and told me what she's been up to, and I said, you are
amazing. You're just awesome. Good for you. Yeah. So she's getting
her students kind of socially and you know, I guess, politically involved,
and they're writing to commissioners and doing all this sort of stuff saying, hey,
you should do this because it's free and it's cool and all this other
stuff. And it is and it empowers young people to be active in their
communities and you can make a difference and all that other good stuff that we're
always taught. I just love it when a teacher does this sort of thing,
like empowers his or her students to do good in the world, because
there's so many people out there doing bad in the world, but so little
bit of love goes a long ways, you know, and so these students
got it going. I think that's also happening. I think it happened in
Grey's Harbor County because of the historical events down there. Oh, which brings
up another thing that I was a highlight for my year. At least.
It took me ten years, and I couldn't have done it with that my
help, the help of my very good friend John Pickering, I was finally
able to sit down with Sheriff Dennis Hereford for a name. Oh yeah,
yeah, to me, that was huge for that was that? That was
huge? So jealous, Oh it was. It was so cool and he
was such a nice guy and he doesn't like to speak to very many people.
But because John put in a good word for me, I am forever
in John's debt. Uh. And of course you know, I've now given
those raw files to Matt prut Here to do his sorcery with. So one
of these days, when all hell breaks loose and neither one of us can
make it to the podcast, Matt will piece together some magic out of that
and we'll put it out there for our our our folks out here listening.
So oh, I'm definitely not going to miss that one. Yeah, And
of course I have transcripts of it as well. A friend of mine,
Susannah Branch is her name. She volunteers every once in a while here at
the museum. We have a couple of volunteers now doing really fun, cool
stuff. But Susanna's putting really fun for me because she's an eighty something year
old woman and she has some experience. She's a She worked for police departments
and various places down at Silverton for that's where she lived. I think most
of her work was down there. She worked for various sheriff's departments and police
departments, but she also worked for Peter Burn in the Bigfoot research project.
She was a volunteer for the Bigfoot research project. So now it's kind of
come It's like full circle, you know. Now she's volunteering for me.
So I think that's kind of fun and cool. That's a classic. Yeah.
Yeah, she just wanted to be involved in the subjects somehow. And
you know, every once in a while, every few months, I get
together with some friends of mine. They're generally most of them are quite a
bit older than me. They're like the Larry Lund and Joe B. Lark
crew, you know, like the people in their seventies. They get together
and they all kind of we all have breakfast together. So that's kind of
fun. And she's a she's part of that group now, so she shows
up to the meetings and they share war stories basically. So aw school.
Yeah, totally cool, a lot of fun. One thing I'm gonna do
when I'm down in Southern College, I'm gonna go do a night down at
least one night down at San Diego with Brian, the guest we had on
a couple of weeks ago in San Diego. I had a lot of people
that like, you know, write to the other that are that are you
know, skeptical. There's a lot of like the you know, like those
shoot holes and guests we have on stors. You should have said this to
the guy. You should have said that to the guy, and uh,
they're right saying that guy he's the real deal. That guy's tell the truth
absolutely. You know. I didn't get any negative responses like I don't believe
that guy or anything like that. It was all positive. It's very rare
nowadays. Yeah, we know we're quickly running out of time, but we
would be fools. We would be fools that I would despise if if we
didn't take this opportunity to mention in my opinion, the most important book published
this year it which of course belongs to the lovely and talented Matt Prutt,
the phenomenal Sasquatch. I think that was a book that had long been due
and filled a hole because a lot of too many big Foot books are just
kind of rehashing the stuff. Very very little is offered nowadays. In my
opinion, that gives us something new to chew on. But you know,
don't listen to me, man, We got map proot on the line.
Matt, do you think your book's important at all? Well, i'd like
to think so. I mean, obviously, when you take on a project
like that, you wanted to have an impact. I aimed as high as
I possibly could, and so I certainly would hope that it resonates with people
in that way, and that I came at least as close to the mark
as I tried. You know, I tried to get this dead center bullseye
just as high as I could read. So if it came anywhere near there,
I'll be more than happy and grateful. So certainly, you know,
I wouldn't have even tried to do it if I didn't think it would be
an important contribution hopefully for the year and even more hopefully for beyond that.
So hopefully. So that's gonna be that you wrote a classic. Proud that's
in. That's on every Big Footers you know of us have a list.
I mean, it's for everybody. I greatly appreciate. It's been nice to
see that included in some people's lists this year, and really really appreciate that
because you know, it only came out in the last half of the year,
so glad to see that really means a lot. Well, we've sold
over one hundred copies since we've got it in, so it's doing very well.
It's one of the top sellers at our bookstore by far. Oh very
cool. I'm so glad to hear that. Yeah, I've been driving people
there like, hey, if you want to get a signed copy, you
know, And once again like I just don't. I travel so much and
I try to be in the field as much as possible, and I just
don't have the infrastructure to do like personal orders, like keep something on stock
and manage transactions and shipping. You know, if I did, the orders
would just back up and nothing would get shipped for weeks. And so I'm
just grateful to have an outlet where I can sell signed copies and go through
the in ABC, which is, you know, in my opinion, like
the greatest institution out there devoted to Sasquatchroyd. So I appreciate you give me
that outlet very much. Well, I'll tell you you were the number two
selling book. Well, I think that's true. You were the number two
selling book in the museum, second only to Joe Beelart's book now, which
is the big Foot Highway Book. But you know, mind you that was
written about here. That was written about the Clacamus River, which is right
here, and it's been for sale all year. Yeah, it has been
for sale all year, of course, and Joe only outsold you by one.
The next round of copies that I send to you, I'll put some
masking tape over the word phenomenon and I'll just write Oregonian and we'll see.
Yeh, there you go a little about you pout eat me alive. I
know I lost by what I'd be reminds me of my fantasy football loss last
week. There's always twenty twenty four. You know it's funny. I saw
an article in the h oh god, what's that Sale Times, and it's
uh. Five audiobooks will change your mind about Bigfoot. What they went with
in the Valleys of Noble Beyond, of the Noble Beyond in the Search of
the Sasquad by John Zeta, and they had were Bigfoot walks crossing the doct
divided by former guests doctor Robert Pyle. And uh. Fourth was for younger
listeners, the Finding the big Foot book. That's right. Did you read
that? You didn't read that, did you? Yeah, that's me.
That's my melodious voice, I said, melodius not malodorous by the way,
uh voice. Yes, it says you're writing it says an article. Yeah,
Cliff Berckman right with youthful Gusto. I know, isn't that rad youthful
Gusto And that's my middle name being a Human Adventures in forty Thousand Years of
Conscious Consciousness by Charles Foster. Yeah, I added this Charles Foster book to
my wish list. I hadn't heard of him before. And then there was
that one, and there was another book of his that seemed interesting, So
I will definitely give those a read. So Seattle Times brought my attention to
something new. So definitely, and being a Beast was this other one?
Yeah, and so I added both of those, but I haven't read them
yet, but I'm looking forward to it. Well, you know, we're
pretty much out of time here. Why don't we jump over to the members
episode. We can continue our meandering conversation over there, Me Andrew, that's
a kind word for it. Thank you, mucho Gusto. Wait, what
is that youthful Gusto? I'm going to say mucho Gusto instead classic. So
yes, that wraps up twenty twenty three, because if we hear this will
be twenty twenty four, and we appreciate all the support this last year,
folks. And yeah, thank you. We're going to continue this conversation on
Patreon for loyal listeners. It's only five dollars a month. You can sign
up looking at the notes down below. You have Patreon member and until next
year, y'all keep it squashy. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of
Bigfoot and Beyond. If you liked what you heard, please rate and review
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