Speaker 1: Again. They had literally said, no one will be out here.
Will we pass the guy? It's a hiker and he's
got four or five dogs with him. He's wearing a hoodie,
he's got a pack on his back, and he's walking
with a ridiculously large walking stick, like four inches in
diameter and about like eight feet high or something like
this massive walking stick he's walking, which is just if
you're a hiker, that's just dumb. That's wasted calories. That's like,
what are you doing? And the host says, go ub
and turn around and come back. So I did that,
but I'm thinking, like, this guy is gonna think we're
coming back like to him for some reason. So I
went up and turned around and came back. It was
a minute because I timed it. Later in the trip,
we get back and we get out of the car
and this guy's nowhere to be seen. Now we're on
a ridgetop, we can look on both sides. This guy's
nowhere to be seen. It's not about where he went,
it's about how fast he got there. Man, Like, we
should be able to see him.
Speaker 2: People went to and pro fared about their little affairs,
serene in the assurance of their dominion over this small
binning fragment of solar dripwood, which, by chance or design,
man has inherited out of the dark mystery of time
and space.
Speaker 3: Well, hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of Into
the Fray. I am extremely excited to welcome on this
guest today. It is mister Timothy Renner of the Strange
Familiars podcast. He is a podcaster, an author, an artist,
a musician, and an experiencer. And he has a brand
new book out. It is called The Keystone, Hagstone, Fairies
and other Mysterious Entities of Pa. Tim Welcome on the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: It is so long overdue. I don't know why it's
taken this long to have you on, but I am
very happy that you are here. So I wanted to
mention also your other books, because yes, the Keystone Hackstone
is now finally out. We will talk about how long
that took you to write. I would imagine quite a while,
but people also probably know you besides Strange Familiars podcast
is where the Footprints in High Strangeness and the Bigfoot
Phenomenon Volume one and two, by the way, written with
the wonderful Joshua Kutchin. So a lot to cover here,
and that is just in the state of PA. Right
that the Keystone Hackstone is ceturn In.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I had to. I had to limit it somehow.
It's three hundred and fifty six pages. Yeah, but we're
outside the state lines. We were gonna get unwieldy here.
Speaker 3: Like if you go on the entire East Coast, you're like, well,
I guess I can do fifteen volumes if everyone.
Speaker 1: Wants them, right exactly. I was trying to do that
with the historical big Foot books I was doing. I did,
and I did California, Oregon, and Washington State in one book.
I meant to do the whole country. But it's just
it's so overwhelming. I'll get back to them one day,
I hope, because I love these old articles of there's
some in the in the Keystone Hagstone which are not
about Bigfoot, of course, they're about other strange things. I
love collecting those old articles and stuff, but it's just
it's so hard, and then you know, there's just so
much out there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, especially on your side of things. A lot of old, old,
old history out that way. And yeah, so Bigfoot in
pa is another one of your books, Beyond the Seventh Gate.
I think that come out twenty seventeen or eighteen, something
like that.
Speaker 1: I'm sixteen, twenty seventeen and there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then this one. Maybe we need to have
you back on for this one, because this seems very
interesting to me. The book is titled I Have Never
Minded the Loneliness Hermits and their Stories. How did you
even just really quickly, how did you even get into
maybe possible writing a book about that?
Speaker 1: So it came oddly enough through bigfoot right. So in
these old articles, bigfoots called, you know, often wild man, right.
And my wife bought me a postcard. She sees an
old photo collector. She collects like photos from the eighteen
hundreds and stuff. And she found this postcard one day
and she says, here, this looks like a wild man
and she just gives it to me. It was a
hermit and it said his name was Billy Woodroff. Said
Billy Woodroff, the hermit, you know, from Connecticut or something
like that on the and I sat it next to
my desk and it just just got overwhelmed by other
research stuff. You know. It's just paper after paper on
top of it, and one day I pulled it out, like,
who is this guy? Had a few minutes and I
started doing research on him, and he has this incredible life,
like he fell in love with this woman and she
broke his heart and he went away, took a vowe
silence and carried the garretype photo of her for the
rest of his life. And it's just this incredible story
about this guy. And he would he would hand out
hollyhock flowers silent to anybody who passed his house because
that was her favorite flower. There's this wonderful story and
it just got me fascinated, and I started collecting more
photos of these hermits and more and more and more,
and at some point I had this massive collection of
hermit photos. Well what am I gonna do with these?
And I really it was to me, it was a
tribute to these men and women who lived this way
and who you know, many people would take for forgotten people,
but their stories are out there. And I guess there's
this idea of second death. You know, you die once
and then you die a second time when everybody forgets
your stories. And to me, it was like, I'm saving
these people from a second death, and there was a
lot of research, and that book took a long time.
I think might have taken four years out of my
I really wanted to write a book a year. I'm
trying to keep up with my co author Josh there
and I'm not doing very well in that. But that
book took so long to research because these are, you know,
real people, and I wanted as much as possible to
get their their lives right. But yeah, I just fell
in love with with the hermit and you know, I
traveled around and visited where these hermits were lived in
this cave or that cave, and I just you know,
it's the whole thing. So it's not paranormal. But Josh
calls it paranormal adjacent. He so that's paranormal adjacent.
Speaker 3: Absolutely it is. I think that is so fascinating. I
always bring up the story of Christopher Knight the North
Pond Hernament. I mean, he was what twenty seven years
long in the wilds. That's it's incredible. I mean, granted
he had to come in and do a little burglaring
to get some items during that time, but yeah, to
really go down the route of screw this, I'm out.
I'm going to just go into the wilds and live there.
There is something quite attractive and romantic about that.
Speaker 1: And of course, because Bigfoot can't leave me alone that
first term at William Woodriff, when I look up his story,
there was a wild man flap around Connecticut where he
was living by himself in the woods, the Winstead Wildman.
It's very intense historical account where like people were shooting
at this thing with guns and stuff, and you know,
it wasn't reacting and you know, scaring people a lot.
And anyway, there's a story. At some point, this ragged
old hermit, who I can only assume is William Woodriff
because he lived right there, steps out of the woods
and someone mistakes him for the Winstead Wildman. Doesn't shoot
him or anything, but he scares these people and so
he becomes part of this or this Bigfoot story kind
of becomes part of William Woodriff's story. I thought it
was very neat how these things, you know, kind of
weave together like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they do tend to intersect, don't they. You're like,
I can't go through one book without Bigfoot pop and
his hairy head.
Speaker 1: He's got to tap me on the shoulder, it right, You're.
Speaker 3: Not going to forget me, Tim. All right, Well, let's
let's talk a little bit about this book. I've chosen
a few different cases, stories, whatever you want to label
them as. Let's let's start off with a very simple question.
When you've probably about five hundred times at this point,
I apologize, But what in the world is a hagstone?
Speaker 1: So? Yeah, well, actually I like answering this because it's
the title of the book, and I'm sure people are
keystone hagstone if they don't know. So, hagstone is any
rock with a naturally occurring hole in it, and there's
a lot of folk who are associated with them. They
can heal people, their defense against witches. But one of
the things attributed to them is that if you look
through the hole, you're supposed to be able to see
the other world of the fairies. So the keystone keystone
is Pennsylvania is the Keystone state. So the keystone hagstone
is basically it's what you look through to see the fairies.
My book, you know.
Speaker 3: How many of those of you found over the years.
Speaker 1: None in Pennsylvania, believe it or not, but I found
many in Indiana and our last trip to Indiana, I
was picking up hagstone one after another.
Speaker 3: Really, I wonder why that is. Why would there be
such a proliferation of them in Indiana but none in
your home state?
Speaker 1: I different geology, I suppose, I don't know.
Speaker 3: That is very cool. And I like this because part
of the book starts out with here's like, here's what
I did not include because you're like this, this thing
is large enough. Here's what I didn't include Bigfoot, dog Man,
which you admit that there may be a book coming
out about UFOs and then aliens and ghosts. So single ghosts, right,
the spectral hordes isn't there, which is incredible, but not
just single ghost stories. So and I'm sure, I mean
you be and you and your incredible research, you could
do a you could do a book on I mean
you've already done Bigfoot obviously, but all of these things. So,
and I don't if this is a I'm we're not
talking about this then don't of course. But the dog
Man book is that is is there certain things in
line before you get to the dog Man Book or
is that just kind of a thought.
Speaker 1: At this point, most of the research is done. I
just there's a personal story in there. So there's this
great story about uh in Pennsylvania. It's called Their Wolfman's
Grab that the Wolfman's Grave, and it pops up in
a lot of werewolf and dog man books so people
might be familiar with. It. Basically tells the story of
this shepherdess May Paul, who all the all the sheep,
all the other sheepherders, their their flock was getting attacked
by wolves, but she was being visited by this old
man and her her sheep were never attacked. And the
townspeople really didn't like this guy. They're like, who is
this guy? He's hanging around May Paul, this beautiful young lady,
like he's an older guy, Like what's going on with that?
But May was always like, no, no, he's my friend.
But of course they're saying, well, why isn't her flock
being attacked by wolves? So they they start to come
up with the idea that this guy is a werewolf. Well,
this is around Lin Mountain in I think it's Northumberland County, Pennsylvania.
So one night this farmer sees this big gray wolf
around hanging around his farm at the Baseinline Mountain, and
he shoots it and doesn't really want to track it
at night. So in the morning he follows the trail
blood and at the end of the trail of blood
he finds this old man dead and they buried him there,
and that spot's called De Wolfman's Grob loved this story,
always fascinated by it. And I found a fellow who'd
written a newspaper article on it in the nineteen eighties,
and I tracked him down and I called him up
and talked to him a bit, and I said, do
you know where it is? He said, yeah, I know
where it is. I can show you where it is.
Come up and buy me lunch. I'll show you where
it is. So I drove up one day, we had lunch,
and he showed me where this is. And he was
shown it by a guy, I think, an octagenarian in
the seventies I think, showed him where it was. So
so it's really the you know, passing this this lure
on and he's like, yeah, you know, I can't really
put it together. You know, they say it's in the
eighteen hundreds, et cetera, et cetera. Well I found information
that places it a bit earlier than that. Uh So
and connects. So May Paul was a real person. And
there's a story of her I found unconnected to this
where someone meets her in an inn and she's wearing
a chain with a wolf's claw around her neck, So
completely unconnected to that story. If you do the genealogy
on the Paul family in that region, you will find
a ton of women with either the first or middle
named May. So she like this May Paul must have
been very important. And she was a heck of a
woman too, because she used to run sheep on the
Susquehanna River. She put them on barges all the way
down to Baltimore and then come back alone, like and
this is in the seventeen hundreds, so like self woman. Yeah,
and she was noted like that. She's noted to be
the most beautiful woman in Pennsylvania as well, so she's like,
you know, here's a beautiful woman on her own, you know,
driving sheep in the seventeen hundred. She must have been
quite a force, like so real person. You know, I
don't know if the wolf was real, but a real
person who wore a wolf's call around her next to me,
that's pretty interesting connection there, And of Wolfman's Grub is
a real place. I've been there, so there's sort of
this personal story that I have woven into that. So
it didn't really fit in this book anyway. So I
just had to do a little bit more research on
the dog man end of things. I've got the werewolf
and covered with the traditional stories in Pennsylvania, and then
that book should be ready to go.
Speaker 3: Oh I can't wait for that one. Well, I think
you should come back for that when that comes.
Speaker 1: Out, then I would certainly do so.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you're if you're a big movie buff,
but do you have a favorite werewolf movie?
Speaker 1: Not a huge werewof guy, I mean a movie guy.
I am a big werewolf guy. I'm trying to think probably.
I don't know. Nothin's coming up to the top of
my head. I'm not great with pop culture stuff. People
ask me, all, have you seen this?
Speaker 3: Oh, that's that's good. That means you're you're out, you're
doing things, You're you're staying.
Speaker 1: I'm excited about the the Robert Eggers Werewolf movie coming
up though. I'm very excited about that because I love
his stuff absolutely.
Speaker 3: The tone in his films is insane, and perfect and
it's just so well done. What a what a creative person?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I I have a feeling that will quickly
become my favorite wherewith movie. Yeah, the trailers look amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, Well, let's dive in. Let me grab my notes.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: One thing that I love on my show is anytime
anything comes up that is of a subterranean vein much
because I think that, uh, splunkers and going into caves
is terrifying. Uh, I can't. I'm I've one of my
favorite book on the planet is The Descent and and
just the thought of whatever's down there beyond caves spiders,
which is a huge no for me anyway, any kind
of spider, but anything subterranean I'm automatically in. And we
are going to start off with Tommy Knockers and where
they tend to hang out and what they tend to
do to the people that are working in said minds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, they're one of these fairy creatures that
is capricious. I guess we could say they are sometimes
good and helpful, but if you cross them or you
don't treat them right, they can they can be quite
the problem. According to the lure, and they can call
as well, they'll hide your tools and stuff like that,
but they could do as much as like cause cave
ins and stuff, depending on how how Henri I guess
they wanted to be. These were Cornish and Welsh people
brought the Tommy knockers with them. And when I say
brought with them, they brought the lure with them. I
don't think that Tommy knockers hid in their in their
luggage on the way over. But it's interesting to me
how the corps follows people, and you know, I believe
the people aren't encountering these things. There's an article if
you want, I'll read it from a guy in the mine,
you know, talking about how seriously they took this.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this is a letter written to a guy who
wrote for Washington, DC paper, and he was a Scottish man,
and it says, dear Mac, you have such a good
Scotch name, so I'm aware you will be giving a
bit of your valuable time to hearing about something that
is causing a deal of bother and argument among the
lads in the coal mines. There's a cornishman called Walter
Andrew who has a great store of knowledge about the
Tommy knockers. These little creatures are kind hearted little people,
and will give a man a warning of a cave
in or an explosion by tapping on the face of
the shaft. Sometimes we coal miners think we haven' a
friend in the world, but we always know that the
Tommy knockers are looking out for us. Many's the life
that has been saved by these wee things, and they're
knocking well this. Walter andrew is pumping water out of
an old sump when along comes another big cousin, Jack
and says, the companies ought to put radio in every
level of the mine so we could have music when
we were working. Walter Andrews stops pumping and looks as
if he would be at the other man's throat. Would
you drive out the few tommy knockers we have left,
he yells, with all this squealing and blathering coming right
through the earth. It's bad enough for them as it is.
With one of these radio boxes with a great din
filling the mind, how could we hear them knocking? Even
if they weren't panicked and driven away. The day would
come when we'd all be caught in a cave in
with never a word of warning from the little people.
The other man was strong headed, and we had to
tear them apart and quiet them as best we could.
Since then, there's been such a great bellowing and arguing
among the men that three times the pit bosses had
to stop it. Yesterday a powder monkey stole the picks
of two of them to keep them from bashing each
other with them to have a bit of piece. It
was thought best that I write you, and which would
be interested to tell us if there be a likelihood
that radio could come into the great blanket veins where
the Tommy knockers hide, and calls them worriment. And then
the newspaper reporter writes, being somewhat unschooled in both coal
mines and Tommy knockers, and I do not feel quite
up to this. Perhaps we should make it in an
open forum. Can anyone tell what the radio is doing
to the little people, particularly the Tommy knockers. It's a
little kind of humor there at the end, but the letter,
you know, it seems quite they were quite concerned about that.
Speaker 3: They were very serious about that, yeah, and even sticking
up for them and saying, why anytime you hear the
word bother. You know that it can be kind of
one of these old school words like don't be such
a bother, don't bother them, don't bother me. I love
that and anytime, and I know that people get they
can be a little bit up in arms when you're
using super old newspaper articles. They can sometimes get a
little fantastical in their tellings, but it doesn't mean that
we should just throw them out right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's my favorite article in the book, which we
can tackle now or later, is a great example of this.
If you want, I'll just read it now, No, go ahead,
and we can talk about what it means to for
this to appear in one of these old articles. So
the background of this is that a reporter heard some
strange things were happening in a little area in Burkes County, Pennsylvania,
and he went there to see what was going on,
and he stops by a local inn and he asked them,
you know what's happening. Basically this it's a long article
going to start in the middle, so basically it starts
where he's talking to the people. In the end. It
seemed an important matter to mister Miller, who emptied his
mouth of a large quid domesticated tobacco, he said. Last Tuesday,
Missus Daniel White, her daughter Susan White, and Mary Hart's
three in number went down to the huckleberry strip on
Miller's farm for the purpose of gathering berries. They were
there but a short time when they were startled by
stones and clubs being thrown in the bushes. There was
no person to be seen. After the first throwing, everything
was quiet. The women folks then heard strange screeching and
unearthly noises resembling the hum of the steam engine. They
were frightened almost to death, and stood riveted on the spot,
white with fear and trembling. Then of a sudden the
air seemed filled with light and transparent shadows that flitted
about under the trees and above the heads of the
frightened females. Then came slaps, quick and sharp, and the
young ladies frequently received smacks from the sides of their faces,
while Missus White received a hard blow in the back
with a large piece of tree bark. The folks could
not run, but were obliged to stand still and take it.
They were with the spirits for nearly an hour before
they could get out of the woods and hurry on
towards home. They came back terribly alarmed and frightened. Miss
White was considerably bruised about the sides, she having been
struck several times. I inquired whether the woman had so
stated the case. Yes, yes, answered several men in the barroom.
This comes directly from missus White, who would not tell
a lie for the world. A friend of miss Hart said,
I know miss Hart's very well. She's a very sensible
young lady. She returned from the burying party very much frightened.
She did not receive any injuries, but she saw spirits
running about through the bushes, screaming and making unearthly noises.
What did she say the spirit resembled, I inquired, The
young man continued. She says, the object she saw had
human faces, white flowing gains, and war long hair. They
were comparatively small and very indistinct, so much so that
she couldnt make out who they resembled. Certain was she, however,
that they were the spirits of human people. One kissed
her left hand, which still bears the mark. It is
red and a dark streak is on the outside of it.
Eighteen seventy three that article's from so we have today
the benefit of podcasts and books and all this accumulated folklore.
This reporter, writing in eighteen seventy three did not have that.
That article is like a checklist of things that happens.
They're going berry picking. We know that's a big thing.
They hear strange noises, things are being thrown at them
from unseen sources. In they go back. Later in the
second part of the article, they go back with the men.
They have a bad smell. When they go back, you
get this humming sound which accompanies UFO and fay and
all these other things. All of these things. It's like
one check after another. The mark on her hand, which
is you know that's in fairy reports, but it's all
you know, reminds one of implants, you know, alien deduction implants.
You know, the fact that this reporter has a checklist
of this like weird phenomena. You just go down and go, wow,
berry picking, this, this, this, this, He didn't. I absolutely
believe there wasn't the kind of comparative folk or at
the time he would not have known to put that
in there. That's something very strange and very real that happened,
and that's that's the case. Same case with a lot
of these historical bigfoot articles. They didn't have Sasquatch chronicles
to listen to back then, they wouldn't know what to
put in. But they're talking about these things climbing on roofs.
Such a weird detail. Oh it climbed on my roof.
We hear it again and again it climbed on my roof.
That's weird. I mean, I've been on several calls where
people like, yeah, it was up on my roof, and
they're like they live in a trail or or a
house of I'm like, this thing would destroy your roof,
you know. But there's certain like, no, it was on
my roof. But again, weird detail that's coming up in
these old articles and new you know, uh, glowing eyes
and bad smells and the way they react to dogs,
and then they seem to know what guns are, et cetera,
et cetera. So it's coming up. In the eighteen hundreds,
when I published my historical book, there had been one
book that published historical Bigfoot articles, but I think it
had been out of print for many years before I
did mine. I truly don't believe people are going through
these old historical articles and making a checklist. Go, Okay,
when I go on Sasquaest chronicles, I'm going to talk
about this, this, this, this, and this, so it corresponds
with these old articles. Now it's a pattern. It's a
pattern of things that we can look at, you know. Well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and especially the way that people like myself and
you and Wes would talk to some of these folks.
I mean, we really take time with people and flesh
things out. So yes, they could have a general idea
of rock throwing and climbing on roofs and whooping, But
when you really start to flesh it out, that's I
think when you could quite easily tell if someone is
full of a whole bunch of hot air.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And I mean I think I could, you know,
if I want to, just because I know the elements
to include, I could. I could probably type up a
pretty convincing Bigfoot encounter. Now, but I have the benefit
of all these sources, right, Yeah, we spokes back in
the eighteen hundreds, did not. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 3: We have hundreds and hundreds of episodes of our own shows,
let alone all the other podcasts out there to pull from.
Do you think it's it was less taboo back then
tim to share a strange encounter like that.
Speaker 1: Probably not, Probably not. I think I think podcasts especially
have made people a lot more comfortable about talking about
I know, even in the time since I've been doing it,
maybe you've noticed it too. People are a lot more
willing to talk about it. When I first started, you'd
ask somebody, you know, be at a party or something
like hey, anything. We're never having feeling like, no, you know,
what are you talking about? You know, now people seem
a little more willing to talk about things. I do
think it's because people hear podcasts and stuff. They just
hear more people talking about it and it seems like okay,
So yeah, I think probably back then it was maybe
not so. And it also depended on your culture. Like
I know, so we have a Welsh speak like a
town where they still speak Welsh or they still have
services in Welsh on Sunday there, and I knew these
people brought their folklore with them. It's a slate mining area,
I know they had, you know. So I went down
there and I'm talking to the Lady Historical Society and
I said, you know, how do I get these stories
in the Welsh, I know, they have fairy stories. And
she said, you'll never get the Welsh to talk about this.
And I talked to my friend brother Richard from Ireland,
and he said, yeah, he said, it's just the character
of the people. He's like, Welsh don't tend to talk
about Irish people talk about it freely. They'll talk about it,
you know, sort of openly and more easily at least,
but the Welsh people just for whatever reason, it's just
they don't talk about it a lot. They don't share.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I wonder if that's a respect thing for the spirits
or whatever it is that they would talk about if
they did, or if it's they feel like it will
compound the activity somehow that there is unwanted.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I probably all of the above, you know, and
maybe a little bit of like the outsider coming in too,
you know, right, yeah, you.
Speaker 3: Know, yeah, absolutely well. I mean, and you know, to
answer probably my own question, I mean, look what happened
at the Salem witch trials. If you start to even
have a whisper that there's anything strange about you, look
what happened.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, and collecting these old newspaper counts too,
is you sort of get to know, especially when i'm
you know, I'm just using Pennsylvania papers. You get to
know the character of the paper. And some some papers
were very open to this stuff, and they would report
on it very matter of factly, like this happened, you know,
this guy said this. Some are much more skeptical, and
they would express that either through making fun of it
or accusing everyone of being drunk. You know, what's what's
the whiskey like over there in Harrisburg?
Speaker 4: You know, whatever?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: And some were you know, some combination of both, but
you get you really get to get the feel of
the newspaper. And certainly, like I said, certain newspapers were
very open to just sort of reporting this stuff and
leaving it that without much judgment or or trying to
worry about seeming skeptical, which I think is for newspaper men.
I think that was very important, you know, to like
to see their skeptical and like, I don't believe in
this stuff, but I'm telling you what the people are saying.
Speaker 3: You probably got to a point where if you'd come
across a certain newspaper, you you you already knew what
was going to be saying and the types of buzzwords
that we're going to be in there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of times you can say, oh, this
is this paper does not like this stuff. They're going
to be making fun of it.
Speaker 3: For sure.
Speaker 1: It happens today too. You know. That's you know, the
news stories that can't they can't do a story about
Bigfoot or UFOs without playing the X Files theme, and
you know, yeah, it's like still happens.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course we're all I'm well, not all of us,
but I'm I've even been guilty of that kind of
a thing. But that's also because I do. I am
a movie buff. So if I have a movie theme
or something that even if it's in a conversation or
if I'm posting something on Instagram, all I'll look for
you know that they say, oh, put music with your post,
and then I find a movie to go and I'm like, well,
it's not fake, it's you know, so I'm guilty of
that too.
Speaker 1: Well, the other side of it is important, very important
to keep a sense of humor about this stuff. You
have to be able to laugh about it too.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Oh huge, amen on that. Okay, so next up
we are going to go to the little folk and
the Albert Twitch and this is this is an entity
that has its own darn festival out your way.
Speaker 1: Yes, I some have called me the Princess of the
Albertwitch Day.
Speaker 3: That is a wonderful title.
Speaker 1: I was say there every year. I think I may
have made it up, but I'm there every year. I
love I love Albert Twitch Day. It's it's just a
wonderful day if you are in the area. It's been
moved to Wrightsville, Pennsylvania, just across the river from where
it was, but it's such a fantastic day. It's family friendly,
but it's just I just have a great time there
every year. So I do recommend if anybody's in the
area in the first Saturday of October in south central PA,
do stop by because you will have a great time.
It's just a great day. But yes, we have our
own festival dedicated to these little hairy things, which not
so much anymore. But when I was first kind of
digging into them, a lot of people are like, oh,
they're just juvenile bigfoot because they're little hairy things. But
they're never seen with adults, you know, and they don't
have the same body proportions. They're very skinny. People report
them very very thin and hair covered and depending on
the report, glowing eyes and stuff. But yeah, they seem
to be very slight of build.
Speaker 3: And something that stuck out. And oh, something else I
want to mention about your book is it is an
incredible lesson in the breakdown of words and where things
come from. And you're like, the first part of the
word means this, and the last part of the word
means that. There is a whole lot of schooling that
goes on. But I mean, it's an easy read and
it's a fun read. But boy, there is a whole
lot to learn from your book.
Speaker 1: Tom Well, I'm very interested in the source of these
kind of names and when again, when I first got
into this, people said, oh, it's a Pennsylvania Dutch thing.
It comes from apple snitch, and I'm like, the Pennsylvania
Dutch are very practical people. They don't do a lot
of like it just didn't feel right to me, and
so I started researching. Well, alb is German for elf,
so like, right there it is, it's an elf. And
then like there's a verb it's like end twinchin or
something It means to like escape in a gliding fashion,
which I thought was super interesting to consider how many
reports we get to these things. It look people say,
look like you want skis or something, so it's it
comes from that Somewhere in there. I think Alba twitch,
but there's also an Elbadritch, a bird you know that
was in Germany and is also in Pennsylvania Dutch Lands,
so you know, it's very close to that name. It
could have been someone, you know, German immigrants saw something
weird and said, oh, we used to call the weird
thing back in Germany and Elberdrich, and they called her
in Elberdritch. Over time it turned into Albertwitch. I'm not
exactly sure you know how it got there, but it's
certainly related to that. It's definitely comes from the Pennsylvania
Germans that.
Speaker 3: Were and the Susquehannock Indians had images of them on
their war shields. I find that fascinating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So what I found is that said they had
the images of I'd heard this, by the way, before
I ever did my research, that they had images of
them on their war ships. What I found is people
said they had images of little devils on their war shields.
We can assume, because how often these things are called devils,
that they may in fact have been talking about the
same thing. I think they probably were. And again other
researchers besides me it said, yeah, they had these images
of them on their war shields. I couldn't find the
specific you know thing that said, yes, they had little
harry men on their warshields. I did find a quote
that said they had little devils on their warshields. Can
assume it's probably the same thing.
Speaker 3: I love this. I found this sentence. It says some
old hunters are said to know their friend, their friend
call specifically and could call them from the woods, which
is the opposite of because that's what they do. You know.
It's the old saying. You don't you don't whistle back,
and you don't follow the dang whistle into the woods.
And some hunters are like, I got you.
Speaker 1: The welcome whistle, yeah, which I would love to know.
I'd love to find an old hunter who knew that.
And I can't whistle very well, but neither I could
record them doing it. Maybe it's probably.
Speaker 3: Good you can't whistle, tim because that's the saying, right
as you don't whistle back at him.
Speaker 1: But the folk wars there. You know, the folks was there.
So you know, it's so so interesting the uh and
they are related to to Puck Wedgies. I found a
couple of stories of like variant of Puck Wedgy names.
One is in Maryland, just just south of here, still
along on the Susquinda River. I think it's like called
they called him like Puck Widgemannini's or something like that.
That some variant of Puck Wedgie again talking about the
same kind of little things right along the Susklina River. So,
and then one further up north where they it was
another variant on Puck Wedgie. Uh. So, you know, certainly
related probably to the Puck Wedgy little people thing.
Speaker 3: So before we move on to another subterranean subject, there
is a wonderful gentleman named Randy who listens to both
of our shows, and he brought up he listens a
lot to yours and knows a lot of your your
personal experiences, and he told me to ask you about
your albatwitch and the spying incident.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I'm I'm not sure this is an albatwitch.
I saw a face it probably, I guess you could
call it an albatwitch. I never said it was an
albatwiz reported I told another local researcher I saw this.
It got reported as an alba twitch, but I never
I don't think I ever used the words albo twitch.
It had a monkey like face, somewhere between a monkey
and a humor. I was at a local place one
night with some friends and we were just taking a
walk and strange stuff started firing off around as we
started hearing noises. There was a sound. We kept cheering,
and it's like, Oh, that's a motorcycle, and then it
would turn from a sound like a motorcycle being driven
at a distance. Then we'd turn into something else, and
then we turned back into a motorcycle sound, where we
really couldn't decide what this was. It sounded like a
motorcycle that turned into a cry, that turned back into
a motorcycle sound. We heard it several times. Every time
I hear, Oh, that's a motorcycle, and then wait a minute,
no it's not, and then it sounded like a motorcycle again.
There was something that followed us through the brush, which
someone identified as it was a buck from the calls
that was making. But it literally walked beside us for
probably a half mile, just making these calls, like right
through the brush. So a little bit odd behavior for
a buck. I don't think I smelled like a female deer.
And we got to the end and I had to
relieve myself. So I was standing by a tree and
my friend had his car headlights on kind of to
the back inside of me, so I couldn't see super well,
but I could see. And as I'm relieving myself, I
see this little face and I originally estimated it was
three four feet off the ground, it was much shorter
because I went back within a couple of days and
I was like, oh no, it was much shorter. I'm
like two and a half feet that kind of thing.
And just this little face was very pale, but I
could see no body around it. So if you told
me ill it was just like a ghost with a
floating face, I couldn't. I couldn't argue that it was
dark though, so it could have had jet black fur.
And I'm just seeing the face and it sort of
out from behind this tree and it's looked at me,
and I'm cussing at it and I'm trying to get
it to go away because I'm in a vulnerable situation here,
you know, like not wanting this at this moment. Yes,
but it's it didn't care like it didn't it seemed
like it didn't care. I literally locked eyes with it.
It had beady, like little beady eyes. I was expecting,
like like whenever I draw a big for that, putting
nice big, you know, eyes on them, and this thing
had little beady black eyes, and I was just but
it didn't care. It wasn't making any like real expression
at all. It didn't seem to be reacting to me.
And then it either turned and it was all it's
it was body was all black and and you know,
just became one with the night and in a sense
and just walked off or it disappeared. I can't tell you,
you know, I don't know. I saw it sort of
do that, and then it was gone. So I'm I
zip up, and I jump right down the bank and
I'm looking. There's nothing there. But my one of the
two guys I was with was about twenty yards away
relieving himself, and he says, oh, I just heard something
across the creek. So I told this other researcher and
he goes out there the following day. I couldn't for
whatever reason, I got there like two days later or
something to look around. He went out the following day.
This is in early April. It's still quite cold to
be in the water in Pennsylvania in early April, and
he said, oh, I didn't see anything, but I found
like somebody's kids were must have been wading in the
water there, sou. I found little little children's footprints all around,
and I thought, yeah, I like, who's got their kids
in like cold water? This is a cold creek, you know,
that's going by, and it's like in April and Pennsylvania.
That's okay, it's possible. It's possible, right, But he and
he just wrote up, yeah, some kid was playing in
the water. I was like, I don't know, a little footprints,
but I never I don't think you even photographed him.
By the time I got there, they weren't there, so
I never got to see the footprints.
Speaker 3: I just love that you're there's this weird little thing
down there and you're just like, listen, dude, I'm trying
to handle business here, like.
Speaker 1: Just yeah, oh, I was tossing my head off. I
was like, because I'm not fit, like I've been attagged
by a rabbit raccoon before, you know this thing. I
don't know what's happening here, Like I said, I'm in
a vulnerable position. And I was just like no, no,
and I let some I usually don't don't curse too much,
but my listeners, I was recording. My listener's got to
hear some choice. Aludio, You're like.
Speaker 3: You will not hear this often, so enjoy exactly. Tim
Blues in his SISA, you said, monkey like face, you
know what, like a gibb in like if you could
put a label on its top, but.
Speaker 1: Like it didn't. It had a hooded nose. I was
really focused on the eyes, like, really really focused on
the ice. It had a hooded nose closer I would
put the close the nose closer to a human than
like a chimpanzee or something, but otherwise kind of kind
of chimped like in the fact that it was sort
of bear like you know around here, and it had
I would almost put that colors like sort of that
off white maybe tannish color that you see on chimps too.
I mean it was dark and but and the lights
were shining on, so it wasn't like a super bright
white face or something. But it did seem to have
some some tannish color to it. Somebody suggested, oh it
was it was a possum. I see possible every day.
This was not a possum. This this is a very
clear like face face. But you know, beyond that, I
can't tell you much.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 1: I was so focused on those eyes, and I've tried
to draw it and I can't get it right. I
tried so many times to draw it, and I just
every time like, that's not it, that's not it. I
got the eyes kind of right, but it's something about it.
I'm just not getting it.
Speaker 3: Do you get the sense or or maybe your initial
reaction would be the right one, that it was something
el real or it was something flesh and blood?
Speaker 1: I at this point I don't leave a lot of
I mean flesh and blood. I know, I know how
we define, right, But as far as something that there's
a bleeding popular a breeding population of, I don't put
much stock in that for any of the stuff anymore. So,
you know, what are they? Where do they come from?
Where do they go? That's the big question with all
this stuff, right. So yeah, I mean if someone said
it was a ghost or something, I wouldn't to argue
too much with, you know, an odd looking one, but
you know it's it's again, I can't tell if it
ran away or disappeared, because it just disappeared into the night,
literally into the darkness.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So, but yeah, I don't leave much, especially alat tweets.
We don't have a breeding population listenings here. We would
know for sure it's something other, you know, whatever it is,
it's something other. If indeed this wasn't alb yeah.
Speaker 3: Or least you know, once they pop in from the
fifth dimension. While they're here, they do leave hair, and
they do leave scat, and they do leave footprints.
Speaker 1: So that's that's the mental that's the mental hurdle, right
And and me, as someone who's who's very much on
that side of things, people call it WU I've kind
of you know, reclaimed the words sort of jokingly, but
it's you know, to me, I've just eliminated so many
other possibilities. I'm just like, well, and I don't know
that their dimensional, I don't know what they are. I
just know they're not like normal animals. Yeah, but yeah,
it's like they do leave hair, and they do leave footprints,
you know. They they they have a physical presence at times.
It's why I never never blame somebody when talking Bigfoot.
If somebody saw they had a roadside crossing, or a
hunter saw one like Walpolo's tree standards, and I never
blamed them for saying, no, it was a natural animal,
because what they saw was a physical presence and it
looked to them like a natural animal. Never never blame
them for that at all. That's that's it makes logic.
But that's the real the real hurdle to get over
is how can these things be sort of ethereal and
then but yet they leave these physical marks?
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: I do often point out that in the nineteen fifties,
the way we hunted ghosts was to put powder down
and wait for footprints to appear, kind of doing the
same thing in the woods with Bigfoot, just saying just
using mud instead of powder. But and then the rotting
smell gets me too. It makes me wonder, if they're
here for a short time, if they're able to assemble
the body somehow, and they immediately begin de king, and
I think about that wolfed Skinwalker rant where they blew
part of it off and they said it was rotting immediately.
And I wonder if that smell we get isn't just
it immediately decaying from however they form their bodies, it
immediately starts decay. And that's why footprints end in the
middle fields. You know, it's just gone all of a sudden.
Speaker 3: Well, I like that thought. Maybe the second they get
here the time or starts. So that's that is an
interesting point. I've not heard that before. I that's fascinating
and would make a lot of sense. And I have
to say, I know you would agree if I took out,
if I omitted any interviews that I had where there
was anything, you know, anything strange in relation to a
big Foot siding, whether what it did or what was
around it, or what was found before or after or during,
I would have three quarters of the Bigfoot episodes not
on my playlist.
Speaker 1: Yep, yep. And especially when someone has repeat encounters. Yeah,
if they have repeat encounters, I can promise you things
are getting weird. They're going to see lights, they're going
to have poltergeist activity in their house, They're going to
have maybe a UFO too, all kinds of apparitions, often
of you know, humanoid or human rather apparitions, human seeming apparations,
things like that. Other stuff's going to come along with it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's just it's the company they keep. As I say,
do you.
Speaker 3: Think that I've talked to so many people, I know
you have to where a lot of times it's a
UFO sighting for whatever reason, that seems to be the
catalyst to begin, uh what ends up being, as you say,
this laundry list, and it can and then it starts
to run the gamut of all of the subjects that
we cover for a lot of these folks. And I
don't know if that is tied to their genealogy. You know,
they're they're oh, I used to hear my grandma and
then my mom talk about it, right, and it follows
the maternal lines or paternal lines, and then it seems
like there's this kickoff point and it may not happen
until they're middle aged. Sometimes oh yeah, and then a yeah,
and it just the floodgates open.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, this absolutely happens. In the old folk wore,
they would say, once you see a fairy, you know
you will see more fairies in the flesh and blood
Bigfoot world. They say, well, once you see one, you
know what to look for. Sounds like the same thing
using different language. Uh yeah, And I think, look, I
think this is a human experience. And you know as
well as I do. People will tell you I've never
had anything like that happened to me, And then you
get them talking in about ten twenty minutes, I'll say, well,
there was that UFO that one time I saw No, so,
something did happen to you, you know, or you know
I saw my grandma's ghost and II she died. Okay,
that's a thing. You know, something did happen to you. Yeah,
So most people do have something. Most people do have something.
And when I started Strange Familiars, I was wary of
the multiple experiencer because like, oh, I don't know, I
really wanted people to believe right. I was concerned about
the quote unquote reality of the topics and I was like,
I don't know if I want to do a lot
of that. But then over time I just realized there's
so many Yeah, there's so many. And I'm not going
to say it's more common for people to have multiple experiences,
but it's certainly common, like there's a lot of multiple
experiences out there. Is it family?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think sometimes it can be passed down the family.
There seems to be some sort of genetic component to this,
but I love to go out that. I don't think
there is anything as like people with superpowers as regards
this stuff. This is an experience. It's available to all
of us. I believe it's like drawing and music, and
I use those two because I do both, but they're
different from me. So drawing, I have kind of a gift.
I can stop drawing today, I don't have to practice
for two years. I can pick up my pen. I'll
be right where I was. I won't lose a thing. Music.
If I don't practice, it's gone, it'll go away. So
one is just sort of this gift that I have,
and the other is the skill I acquired by practice, practice, practice.
Some people will have this naturally and it's just going
to happen for them. Other people, you're gonna have to
practice at it. You're gonna have to go if you
want it. And again I know that you want it,
like I always say, like it's your life's gonna get
weird at best, At best, your life will get weird
when you start messing with this stuff. At worst, it
can get really crazy. And people have done some wacky
stuff as regards this, so be careful what you wish for.
But if you're the kind of person like I am,
where you're going to go out and experience this stuff,
nothing's going to stop you from it, do it carefully. Uh,
and and take all the precautions. And I'd say read
the folkal or because our ancestors were they knew what
they were doing, and that's why that information comes down
to us. But in any case, it's available everybody. Some
will have to put themselves in the haunted places, maybe
several times, maybe a lot of times before it had
happens for them. But I think it's available to everyone.
You sort of have to, you know, you have to
practice it in that way. You have to you have
to be in these places and open yourself to the experience.
And again, I think I think it's there for everybody.
It's just some people have just come so easily too.
I've been around those people. It's just like things are
just popping off.
Speaker 3: It's like wow, yeah, and uh, you know, once you
you have somebody on and they they have a battery
of experiences and it can run the gamut. I I
tend to ask the question, you know, maybe what's one
thing that you would want to see, or what's one
thing that's definitely on the note would you want to
have that happen again?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: And I think it's usually split fifty to fifty with
people that they've been bit by the bug hard enough
to where they go, well, I haven't had anything that
bad yet. That's keeping me out of the woods. And
they move next door to me where they'll have less
of that kind of a thing, and then others where
they're going camping every single weekend and it's a huge
part of their life.
Speaker 1: Now it's addictive. That's the other danger with it. Like
I'll just use the general term of spirit contact. I
think they're all maybe some form of spirits. Again, I
could be wrong. It's asked me. In two weeks, I
might feel differently, but right now I'll just use a
shorthand term. Spirit contact is addictive. And when you get
this stuff, it's it's like so amazing and so powerful
that it can become addictive. And people have ruined their lives. Yeah,
people have ruined their lives with this stuff. There's one
of the old school Bigfoot researchers. I forget which one.
You know, he was so into this. At some point
his wife said it's me and the kids are bigfoot,
and he said bigfoot. And I always said that he
made the wrong choice. That's not don't do that, you know,
don't do that. You need your family, you need yeah,
and you need to be other things in your life
other than just just the paranormal.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I forget was that. I don't think it was one
of the four Horsemen. Was it that did that? It
was some or somebody just after them. I forget who
that was.
Speaker 1: I remember, Yeah, I don't want I don't want to
speculate because yeah, but I've heard the story several times
and I was just like, yeah, that's the wrong choice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know. Someone said. They're screaming at their phone
right now. They're they're like, yeah, how do you not know, Shannon?
Uh So, Okay, let's go subterranean again. And I hope
I pronounced this right. But the the Cobalds.
Speaker 1: The yeah gobald Yeah. So these were the German little
people and they kind of were the sort of German
version of the Tommy Knocker. But you could have house
Cobalds or mine cobalds and they would. The house cobalds
were sort of these helpful household spirits, and with any
of these things you have to sort of treat them
nice or they might you know, sour your milk or
mess up your house. According to the lore, the mine
Cobalds were very much like the Tommy knockers, and that
they would, you know, leave tributes to them if they
were nice, you know, they could help you out if
they were feeling anree they could hide your tools or
even call the cave in. Again, they came along with
this other German thing they called the ladder Dwarf, which
was no good at all in the minds, and he
would just knock the steps out of the ladders out
behind you, they said. And uh, so you didn't want
you didn't want the ladder Dwarf. But yeah, these are again,
you know, these come with the different people. These were
the German miners had these. Uh. Cobalt is named for
a medal. There was another creature named Nix, which was
definitely no good, and Nickel, Nickel and Cobalt the medals
are named for these entities, not the other way around.
So they actually sort of named the medals after after
these entities, a sort of tribute to them. You know.
Speaker 3: Oh, I that's see them learning, learning things at every
every turn. That's fascinating. I have no idea about that.
And it says and I I'm right here, because when
I'm angry, it's not a good thing. An unfair an
unfed cobalt can become extremely angry, and then they hide
things and they end up in some cases pushing people
from their homes.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, the household spirits. Yeah wow, you didn't like.
That's why, you know. And I've written extensibly about gifting
in where the footprints end, and that's why I'm real
cautious with people when they're like, yeah, I'm gifting food,
I'm like, maybe, don't like once you start again. This
comes from folklore, and I'm a big folk wore guy
because I believe this is, as I said, lessons handed
down to it from our ancestors. And things get exaggerated
over time. You know, maybe maybe an eight foot creature,
you know, over hundreds of years becomes a fifteen foot creature,
you know, you know, glowing eyes become you know, eyes
as big as plates with you know, filled with fire
and things like that. So they get a little exaggerated.
But I think the the information there how to deal
with these things is is very true. And they're basically
if you start feeding these spirits and you stop, that's
when there's problem. So that's why I always say, like,
don't like warn people, like, don't do if we've already
started doing, so you're in it. Now you're kind of
on the hook. Now you got to keep feeding food.
But if not, you know, yeah, leaving little trinkets or
you know, always tell people try not to fill the
woods with plastic crap. But you know, if you leave
a little piece of wood or or a pretty stone
or something, that's that's natural. People have had very interesting results,
very very interesting results with that. I don't see a
problem with that. But it's the food thing gets weird,
and again that comes back to the folk or where
people will be like, oh yeah, I forgot to feed
the household brownie, and they destroyed the whole farm. They
completely wrecked my house. You know, I forgot to leave
his beer out at night and just everything was destroyed.
And they let the animals go, you know, the animals free.
Speaker 3: So is it the brownies where you're supposed to leave
the saucer of milk?
Speaker 1: I think they were one of the milk ones. I
think you could leave beer or milk. Yeah, I know
Perrecto you were supposed to leave milk on the roof
for her. So there's there's another roof thing. Yeah, so yeah,
that's it's different to different folks were for different creatures.
But you know, the idea is there.
Speaker 3: I don't care what entity your creature it is. Anytime
the roof is involved, it creeps me out a little bit.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 1: That's another level, such a strange detail. And I've tried
to parse out, like what does this mean? Because you
find it with trolls and of course Bigfoot and all
these other entities. What does it mean? What does that mean?
Is that are they trying to tell us something? Right
like you walk on the ground and we walk up here.
I don't know. I have no idea what it could
possibly mean. Yeah, and again I've been in houses where
they have slate roofs where like something, you know, we're
talking to something have to be what eight hundred pounds?
Some of these things it would break those slates. You know,
I can't get up on a slate roof. I used
to do telephone work and we had to be very careful.
We're working on slate roofs. You can easily crack the tiles.
They're great roofs, but they can The tiles can crack easily. Trailers.
I've worked on top of trailers and dented trailers, you know,
just running cables on top of trailers. I've dented the roofs.
And when people tell me they live in trailer hunds
and these things are on the roof, like, how I
mean I believe them. I totally believe these witnesses. But
they're hearing it up there. How is it not leaving
a gigantic mark, you know, or.
Speaker 3: Just falling through and he's sitting next to you on
the couch. All of a sudden, you're like head of.
Speaker 1: Those right, Yeah, that's what That's something I wouldn't want.
So we asked people what they would and what they
wouldn't want. Things that creep me out are my shades
are pulled every night. Every night they come down. I
do not like the idea of something looking in my window.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Thank you for saying that, because I talked
to so many people, and I lived in the Seattle area.
I lived in Kent and then I you know, I
would commute to Seattle. But it was a big thing
in Washington State where I mean pitch black. You could
see them walking around the kitchen, sitting at the table
like this is making me uncomfortable. How are you not
uncomfortable right now?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean and those stories and I'm sure
you've heard a thousand of of where somebody looks over
and there's just a creature looking in the window. No,
thank you. If I'm out in the woods and I
see one, I think I'm ready. I say, I'm ready
that we'll see I think I'm ready for that experience. Fine,
I'm there, I'm there. But when I'm here in my
place and something's looking in the window, no, no.
Speaker 3: No, no, I mean that said. Okay, so say you can,
you can pull the shades and you feel relatively safe
in your home, as you should. Would you want to
live on an active bigfoot property? I realize, and you've
already said you probably wouldn't be gifting, But would you
want to live in a place like that?
Speaker 1: That's a really good question. I don't think so. I
like visiting these places, having the experiences, and then coming
home I had And people often ask me like, do
you ever feel like you bring anything home with you?
Only once? Only once, and I banished it real quick,
knew you were not to be here go and haven't
had any issues with it, but holy water in the
whole deal, just in case. But yeah, so yeah, I
want my home to be my home. If you ask
like ghost hunters, A lot of them, you know, won't
investigate their own house. And I totally get that. You
got to live there, you live there, you know, you
want some peace at home, So yeah, probably not. I'd
love to have a property I owned and I could
go to any time I wanted, that had repeat encounters,
But I'd like having a peaceful home.
Speaker 3: I get that did you have any and you probably
wouldn't know for sure, of course nobody does. But did
you get a bead on possibly what that was in
your home that you brought home?
Speaker 1: Well, this ties into something you wanted to talk about anyway.
With our big Philip experiment, it seemed to have something
seemed to have come home with me, and I don't
know if it was that or something else it it
corresponded with, So I guess we might as well talk
about that now. Yeah, So the Bigfoot experiment I came
up with for for strange familiars patrons. I wanted to
come up with an experiment we could do together. And
if people are familiar with the Philip experiment from the
nineteen seventies, these these folks essentially created a spirit in Canada.
They created a ghost, they gave it a backstory that's
historically impossible, and they started doing sciences and over time
they started having contact with the spirit and they you know,
fairly well documented case, very very interesting. And me, being
the henree sucker that I am, I thought, well, if
if I believe bigfoots of spirit, maybe we can we
can you know, Philip experiment a big foot into existence.
So I jokingly called it the big Philip experiment. We
immediately realized, if we put this in the woods, everybody's
going to say, well, something was there anyway, So let's
put it in a town. So we put it in
a town. So my thought was, you know, if we
get tree structures inside this town, or if we get
you know, people start hearing things or you know, whatever
you know, And I specifically said a wet footprint on
the concrete would be amazing, right, anything like that, then
we know we've done something. So the idea is to
source intentions. So it's it's you know, all the strains, familiars, patrons,
and we're trying, you know, the intention is to manifest
this this entity in this town. The town remains unknown
or unnamed rather because what we gave it a fake name.
We call it auto Berg our entity. We named otto
because people could easily come in and start faking stuff,
right and then you know, look, this isn't going to
be an experiment that any scientist is ever going to accept,
but we want to keep it as clean as we can,
you know, and and not have you know, hoaxing if
we can. So we've had some really interesting results. The
the thing I asked for from the beginning was a
wet footprint on the concrete, without even thinking that to
see that wet footprint, I would have to be there
within moments of before it evaporated. Right. See, I was thinking,
like something stepped in a puddle and then stepped on
the concrete and I would see that. I hadn't really
thought it out. A year had gone by, and we
were sort of trying to decide as a group, are
we going to continue this, are we going to change it?
How are we going to work on it? And I
went down to this town and I'm looking around and
I see there's this ruin where we've had some stuff happen.
And in this ruin on the ground is a footprint
in paint on the concrete. Now this is like, it's
kind of cartoony, you know, someone could have painted it,
but it's a quote unquote big footprint on the concrete
which had to have been wet when they painted it,
so it was a wet footprint on the concrete. So
I literally got I asked for not exactly in the
way I imagined it on the literally at the last day,
like should we continue this experiment? And here's this footprint.
And it didn't even hit me at the time. I
took a phot Oh that's neat, took a photo of it,
went home, and then I was looking at I was like,
wait a minute, this is exactly what you asked for. Exactly.
So it's sort of an isolated town and it is
surrounded by woods, and of course most of the activity
is concentrated right on the edge of town, right up
beside the woods. It wants to be in the woods,
you know, bigfoot in a Bigfoot I guess it wants
to be in the woods. We keep apprized of the town,
like through different groups and so forth on different social media,
and townspeople started reporting that someone literally asked, what's with
the demonic wolf house around town? So that happened. We
were doing are you familiar with the Estes ghost box?
Speaker 3: Yeah, explain that though for folks it may not be
familiar if you would, so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's basically you have your normal ghost box, which
is cycling through the radio, but one person's wearing headphones
and they're just getting it through the headphones with a
blindfold on, so they're not getting any information other than
what's coming through the radio. And a second person is
questioning and they can't hear what's coming through the radio.
So you're asking questions. The person with the blindfold and
headphones isn't hearing the question. So if you start to
get answers that seem to correspond, it's very interesting and
it seems less random than just well, you know, running
a ghost box and thinking you can answer really interesting.
We've had some really interesting things with s DE sessions.
One of them, I had the headphones and the blindfold
on and I didn't we were live streaming it, and
when I came out. Whenever I do that, by the way,
I don't I lose track of time. It's very translate thing.
I think I'm in it for fifteen minutes to be
We're like, no, you've been under for like an hour
and a half. What how is that even possible? Whenever
I came out of it, my friend Bricks, who was
there with me, said that was insane. She' said there
was something running around behind you in the brush the
whole time. So I was just sitting on a bench
with like some a little bit of woods behind me,
and she's and I listened to the playback and you
can hear her saying no, no, She's just saying leave
him alone. No. So, you know, we've had some really
cool stuff, really interesting stuff. There's some questions, you know,
are did we create something or is there are there
spirits out there that are willing to be whatever you want?
My gut feeling is it's probably the latter. It's still interesting,
it's still fun, but I think there are probably a
lot of entities out there that like, oh, you want
me to be a big foot, Sure, I'll be your bigfoot.
I'll take all that attention you're willing to get me.
That's probably what's happening. But it's still interesting and it's
still fun. But the night that I thought it followed
me home. So I had I made these wooden coins
with this with the intention of using as gifting coins.
But they have the emmaculate heart of Marry on one
side and a little image of Mary on the other.
I happened to be Catholic, and I was using these.
I was kind of leaving them out and I specifically asked,
or someone did when we were down there, do you
want coins? And it said yeah, And then somehow through
the s S box it indicated like, no, not that one,
not the wooden coin in your pocket. I want like money,
like like real coins. We left a quarter and I
always keep that Mary coin in my right pocket. I
have several of them, but I always keep one in
my right pocket. And I get home and it's gone,
It's absolutely gone. I'm like, wow, I guess I lost it.
Speaker 2: And then.
Speaker 1: I was on a zoom call with Clint of all people,
and I'm talking to him and suddenly he jumps back
and what the heck was that? I'm like, what are
you talking about?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 1: And he said, he said he just saw this huge
orb go right behind my head. I was in right
where I'm standing out. He says, he just sees this
orb go behind my head into that room. Well, that
night here, I am not following my own rules. I
had the window open and no shade drawn, and I
heard something right outside this window that sounded massive right
after that, and I was just not having it. And
then so I was like, no, whoever you are, whatever
you are, this is not for you. You go back
to where you came from. Did the whole holy water thing? Like?
Bless the house, all the windows and doors and everything.
Just not having it again. I like that. I like
a peaceful home. I don't want this stuff in my home.
And the next day that coin reappeared in the shorts
I was wearing the night before, but in the left pocket.
It completely came back. So and then no more problems
around the house. So I don't know, do you know,
do I banish something to have something to do with
that coin? The coin thing really freakin out too, because
that had religious symbols on it, and then it disappeared
like this is really dark. I'm like, I don't know,
I hesitate to I don't go to demon very easily,
you know, you know, to me, it was just like
it's just something, It's just something's around. I don't know,
but you know, I asserted my You know, you're allowed
to You have your own space, you have your body,
your house, you have a your own domain there, and
you're allowed to assert that. I always tell that to people.
You're allowed to tell things to go.
Speaker 3: You know, I find that fascinating that just in case
you wanted to dismiss it in any way, shape or form,
it puts it back in the left pocket, and that's
not the side that you would ever put it in.
So just in case, right, to me, how do you
know how to do uh cleansings?
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just I'm just doing well. So Brother
Richard's a Capuchin friar who comes from Transmulias many times,
and he sent me many protection prayers. You know, I
get holy water from the local church, and you know,
I just go at it with that same I usually
I don't have one on now, I usually wearing the
same Benedict metal, which is a basically an exorcism around
your neck. If you're wearing a blessing Benedict metal, you're
usually fairly protected. But yeah, it's just so, I'm just
using stuff from the Catholic tradition. And I like to say,
I really like to point this out. It works for me.
But there's something about the stuff that responds to belief
in any form. You don't have to be Catholic, you
don't have to be Christian. It works for Wickens, it
works for Muslims, it works for Jewish people. It seems
to be something about belief or something. There's something about
that or a spiritual authority or maybe just authority over
yourself and you're in domain. I don't hoscilytizing. I'm not
trying to convert anyone. It works. You know, you don't
have to be Catholic. It works whatever it. You know,
it's about belief somehow, so people like New Age stuff.
If people believe in it works just as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like you said, the intention in asserting the dominance
for something. I don't have this problem because I'm mostly
like paranormal bear spray. I can go to some very
active locations and nothing happens, and that's probably me. But
do you with your show? Let's just take your show
as a cross section. If you know ahead of time,
I would imagine to a certain extent, Like myself, I
like to know as little as possible. I just like
a bullet point list because I like to be surprised
while I'm talking to people. It just seems like a
more natural conversation. However, if you know of a certain
subject matter they're going to cover, or a certain experience
experiences that they've had, do you then make sure that
you have that necklace on, or do you have certain
things set up in your studio, or do you say
some kind of a prayer beforehand? Do you have protocol
for that?
Speaker 1: Not at all? And in general, don't like I don't
come home and do a cleanse after these things. Really
just it hasn't been an issue. I don't worry about it.
It's not something I don't generally worry. I've never I've
been some crazy places and never felt like I brought
anything home. It was just that one time.
Speaker 3: I wonder what it kicked off? Then? Why you had
that hitchhiker? It happened. It happens stance.
Speaker 1: Then I don't know. And look I'm pointing to auto
Berg and that whole thing again, because the coin appeared
and disappeared. I'll tell you Clinton, I have some strange
energy the two of us together, and it's just odd.
Stuff will happen even when we're just talking on the phone.
So it could have been him or a combination of
two of us. I don't you know. I can't say
exactly what it was.
Speaker 3: I mean, I wish I could say that's really cool,
but I've said it so many times on my show.
Just like you said, with the Bigfoot property and then
being able to go home where the Bigfoot aren't doing
one of these outside the window, that's a big bag
of note. Is anything in the house that's not cool?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, even when I'm sleeping, like I need a tent,
like I sleep with dudes who's just like, oh, just
throw a tarpup, or you know, I'll sleep under the stars.
I want a tent. I know it's a piece of nylon.
I know if something bigfoot or not even a human
anything wants to tear through that nilon, they can. Yeah,
it's the idea of just having just not looking up
and seeing something look at me as I yeah, yeah,
I just I like that little bit of fabric there.
So even when I'm camping out, I want I want
a little wall between me and whenever it else is
out there, even though I know it's not protecting me
from anything, but it's a you know, it's a little delionation.
You know, this is my area, that's yours.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm right there with you. I mean, talk about
a brown pounds moment. You know, you're just like in
a hammock and you look up and there's just something
leaned over you. No, thank you?
Speaker 1: Yeah right, No. At least we had my buddy Chad
and I had something come into camp. We were in
a place called Pneumonium. We were staying there. He's staying
under a tarp, so he's open. I had a tent.
I woke up at oh my gosh, I think it
was like three thirty in the morning, needing to relieve myself.
This is an ongoing theme apparently. And I hear wood
knocks like I had the presence of mind to turn
on my recorder and you can literally see in the
stereophile in one channel you hear this hard like like crack,
like something almost like a baseball batter on a tree
or something real like crisp crack. And then from the
other direction you hear thud, like like in my mind,
it was like somebody taking a nice hard stick and
hitting a tree and the thud was like something was
covered in bark and maybe like a little bit wetter
or like like you know, kind of more of a
punky thing. And you just hear food and then clack, thud.
And this goes on for like thirty seconds. And I'm like,
I'm sitting there and i can hear Chad snoring, and
I've heard so many of these experiences where people can't
wake other people up, and I'm thinking, I'm going I'm
going through this alone. I'm like, I have to I
have to pee. And I'm like, come on, I could
just happen right outside, you know, not right outside my tent,
but I would say within fifty yards, and it was
loud enough. And finally, after about it was probably only
about thirty seconds to a minute, but it seemed like
an hour. I hear Chad say, do you hear that?
I was like, oh, thank god, yes, I hear that.
So we got up and heard this thing walk around
us all night. Saul. At some point I looked over,
It's like, is there somebody? Like we're six miles out
in the middle of the woods is a place called
Pandemonium in Tuscarora State Forest in Pennsylvania. We there wasn't
anybody else camping there. In fact, the park ranger stopped
by during the day and he's like, are you You
can't get cell phone service or anything out there. He's like,
you guys, okay. He's like, I'll come back in the
morning and check on you. Like, yeah, we're fine. But
we walked around specifically to make sure there's nobody else around.
But it's I'm looking. I'm like's somebody have a truck
over there? Because I see these red would look like
break lights. And Chad's like, no, you can't even there's
that's the woods. There's no you couldn't put a truck
in there. So you know, we're seeing red light. I mean,
they looked like they were breaking next to each other.
Looked like eyes. I'm not saying their eyes because I
didn't see them attached to anything. We hear this thing
walk around walk around all night. The weirdest thing is
I kept going. So we lit the fire, you know,
and and at this point we're just like, we're we're
not leaving. We're here till daylight, so we might we
lit a big fire, and we're just kind of there
listening to this thing or things. I don't know if
it's more than what. Literally just circle our campsite again
and again we could hear it go through the brush.
We could hear when it hit the gravel where the
cars were parked. Walk around and back into the trees
again and just circle, circle, circle. But I go onto
the edge of the light kind of to look into
the woods as best I could, and I saw what
looked like a white face or a white man. It
really looked like a white mask, almost like a you know,
the comedy tragedy theater mask. Yeah, it kind of kind
of looked like that very plain face, though it didn't
have a big smile or a frown, and very plain
expression on a tree back in the woods. And I thought,
this is that must be the moonlight like hitting a
blank spot on the tree or is Like it was
so odd that I didn't even tell Chad. I just
looked at it and like I'm seeing something. That's the
moonlight hitting a bare spot on the tree. That's something
and in the morning I'll see what it is. In
the morning, I looked, there's nothing like that there. I
have no clue what that was. So that was very,
very bizarre. We're hearing that like the uh just these
siren kind of calls. It sound like the Ohio calls
and stuff. We're hearing that owls that are like a
half octave too low. Just crazy stuff happening all around
us all night. Daylight finally comes and we're like, we're out,
like we've had enough packing up. And I had hung
my pack by para cord around a tree, and I
reached around untie it and I pulled my pack around
and in the para cord there was an old bed,
an old rusty beds that had been wound into the
para cord. So something or someone with hands had to
twist this thing into the para cord, and I, thankfully
Chad saw me pull it around. We looked at each
other like what the hell is that? And we look
behind this tree and there's ferns on the ground that
you can just see this wake in the ferns where
something walked right up this tree, right over an old bedspring.
There's an old bedspring there. Must have grabbed a spring
and twisted on there. Now, if this was a human,
you don't. It's not a good thing to show up
in somebody's campsite, Like, don't do that. Don't walk into
somebody's campsite at night. We were armed. It would not
have been a good thing for them. So either a
very brave, very crazy human or something else, something else
with hands, You tell me. But that was so shocking.
And then we realized right where it twisted on it
had a perfect view of where Chad would sleep. You
could just sit there at that tree and just watch
him sleep. So it's like, wow, like this is so crazy.
Like so that was that was super intensely But that's
why I like having a tent around me.
Speaker 3: Does Chad tent? No?
Speaker 1: No, he still doesn't.
Speaker 3: Chad Chad is brave. Do you tim Do you find
that your activity varies or is more or less depending
on the iterations of people you take out or go
out with.
Speaker 1: It seems like it. It seems like certain people, certain
combinations of people will fire off things, and certain combinations
will fire things in a different way. And Chad and
I have a like. I always say, I've walked many
miles with him in the woods, and I've grown to
trust his his sense with this stuff. He's one of
the people that just has it. Like if you know
that scene in was it the Avengers movie where the
Aliens coming, you see Spider Man and his the hairsticks
up on his arm when his spider sense. Chad has
that with a parent. We'll just say look and his
hair will be standing straight up and I'll know something's
going on. Like he literally has like where his hair
stands on end. So I've just grown to trust him,
after you know, years and many many miles we've put
on our boots together. I trust his instinct. So yeah,
but there's other people too that you know, and it
seems like some people, some combinations will kind of kill it.
You know. My buddy Sarah and I I love him
to death, arivee from where to the rogue. But we'll
we kind of shut stuff down when we're together. Not
a lot happens when we're together, you know. So is
that me him is the combination of both of us,
I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I find that fascinating, and that's a pattern I
try to pay attention to. When people have a whole
list of things going on, I try to write down
who they're with every time and see if that's even
a factor. And sometimes it is, and sometimes it seems
to not be.
Speaker 1: One of the things we found and people can test
this out if again, if you're interested in doing this stuff,
because I'd like to know if it works for the people.
And I did a show and I think we called
it three go out for that reason is three people
and try not to like really like talk about your life,
like go out to one of these places, but forget
about Bigfoot or forget about ghosts, or forget about whatever
you're you know, the objective is and just talk about
your life and honestly the more sort of personal like
you know, it's your friends. Hopefully you're not just you know,
going with three strangers or two strangers, but you talk
about you know, your personal life. And if we are
experience with this has been like you get involved in
these personal talks and then again all of a sudden
things start happening. So you know, it'd be interesting for
other people to try it. We've had luck with that
and it doesn't have to be three. We've had luck
with two, we've had luck with four and five, but
three seems to be a really good number. It's like
a really like nice number. So I'd be interested for
other people to try it and see if it works.
Three people. Forget about bigfoot, just talk about your life
and see what happens.
Speaker 3: That is, Uh, that's pretty fascinating because I as of late,
I've talked a couple of times to a gentleman who
had a very strange experience while out camping and for
purposes a bigfoot admittedly, but there was there was three
of them and a couple of them got ill, and
one of them was not, but he was doing some
kind of weird stuff and oh it was Kevin.
Speaker 1: He was he was on Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I mean the second you said in threes,
I'm like, oh my gosh, well Kevin is a great
example of that. So yeah, yeah, uh do you uh well,
sorry one more. Uh I'm the worst with this, but
random question before we get to a little bit from
Spectral Hordes chapter is is that then kind of your protocol?
Not that it's a protocol, but is that how you
guys usually run these kinds of things. You're not going
out whooping into the forest and knocking on things. You
just kind of go out and just just chat. You
just build a fire, you just eat, just be there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I like to hike, so Chad and
I will usually cover some ground. We'll usually walk and talk,
you know. But yeah, I mean that's what it is.
We're not doing a lot of hooting and hollering. Let
it come to you, I guess. You know, it seems
like if you're too thirsty that can have a negative
effect sometimes too.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, and maybe that's when the when the others
come in, maybe the dark others see you as even
more of a beacon and they're going, oh, they really
want this bad. So not only am I gonna mess
with you while you're out in your hammock like chat
or just in a little pup tent, but I'm gonna
go home with you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it could be. Yeah, I think the
there's a matter of what you bring to it as well.
When I first started doing this, look, it's always scary.
You're in the wizard night, you know, there's always an
element of it being a little creepy or scary. But
I'd say, over time, I've gotten way more relaxed. And
again this was advice from brother Richard. Hey, you're going
to get some measure of what you bring to the
stuff back from it. And I started applying that and
I started going out with a much calmer kind of sense.
And part of it too is, you know, having done
it for over a decade, now, you know, I've not
really ever gotten hurt. You know, We've been bluff charged
several times and never seeing whatever it is that's charging,
it always stops, you know. So I don't know if
it's just over time you just get more relaxed, you know.
But I try to go out with a more relaxed
attitude and just a better attitude in general, and I
find I'm happier and the experiences are less of that
like like super like intense kind of fearful stuff, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because very quickly you can have one of those
experiences where we've all heard that is a forest frolicking
ending experience for some people. And that's really sad because
some of these folks are hunters or they love to
go camping, and they don't do that anymore, and that's
that's terrible.
Speaker 1: I have wondered with some of those, especially with the
hunters and stuff, if they weren't the people that were
previous to their experience saying, no, this is impossible. I've
been in the woods all my life. This doesn't happen,
and they're confronted with something so shocking because it was
an impossibility to them, If it doesn't just completely rock
their world. Now, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know
that we could ever know that or have enough research
to father. But I do wonder that sometimes, because you know,
it's a strange thing. Some are really like, no, I
loved hunting, and I'll never go in the woods again.
I'll never step foot in the wood again.
Speaker 3: That's really a good point. Those might have been the
same people that they just would laugh that stuff off
like complete bs.
Speaker 1: That's a great pot I wonder about it. I wonder hmmm.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, let's let's talk about at least one
portion from Spectral Hordes before we go to kind of
because at the end of the book there's more these
and sometimes these are some of my favorite encounters and
stories that come on. If is the one you can't
quite put in a box, and we're going to cover
one of those before I let you go. But okay,
there is a portion about night ladies, and these aren't
quite the kind of night ladies that I have in
my neck of the words.
Speaker 1: So that was a delionation that there's a term that
claude like a toae. So he was he passed away,
I mean, he rest in peace. He's a excellent folklores
from France, and he wrote a number of like great books.
You can't go wrong if you pick up a claued
lek a Tooe book. But one of the ones he
wrote was called Phantom Armies of the Night. It was
about the wild hunt and ghostly armies of the dead
and so forth in Europe. So I'm using that as
a sort of a source for a lot of the information.
But the categories he broke down that was one of
them called them night ladies because they're not always witches.
Sometimes they were just these sort of women from folklore
that he thinks maybe preceded with the modern sort of
witch archetype that we have. But they would gather in
the night and they would go off to you know,
what we would now call the sabbath and so forth.
So he just caught him nightly, so I just used
his designation for this. But yeah, mostly in the form
in Pennsylvania, they're going to take the form of witches though.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and some of these are I mean, it's it's
quite dark when when they said what these ladies may
have been doing murder, cannibalism, reanimation of the dead, which
I've always found, you know, fascinating. If you have that
kind of power, that is not that is not the
kind of witch that you want to be messing with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and well, one of the places they gathered was
is hex Andcophill, which is translated from Pennsylvania Gium would
be witch's head called the Witch's Head, which is a
really interesting place. There's tons of legends associated with it.
If I can visit the places that I write about,
I do. I've been there, super interesting place. Didn't have
anything particularly weird happened to me when I was there,
But that doesn't mean nothing weird happens there. I always
say that just because just because nothing weird happens to
you doesn't mean weird stuff doesn't happen there. But there's
it's associated with witches gathering, and there's all kinds of
ghost stories there and weird, you know, headless hunters and
headless dogs and just lore after lore after lore of
this little I mean, it's a big rock, but it's
essentially a little place. It doesn't take up a lot
of space on this hill. And to have so much
lore concentrated in one place is super fascinating. And it's
you can You can go there. It's technically a nature preserve,
but they don't really publicize it much, and there's not
a lot of clear trails that lead to it, but
it is public land. You can go there.
Speaker 3: And before we go to the fish Man, Uh there,
there was a little a portion it says in Somerset County,
there is a historical marker noting that quote lore tells
of witches casting spells in the area unquote. I love that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's for Hexa Barger. So I actually have the
I knew we were going to talk about this, so
I pulled up the actual marker. So this is Hexa
Barger aka Hex or Witches Hill Lord tells of which
is casting spells in the area thought to be named
after reputed which Prissy Rugg in early eighteen hundreds, and
that that's an actual historical marker.
Speaker 3: That's super cool. Have you been to that one?
Speaker 1: I have not been to that one. I need to
make it out Western PA. I haven't done a lot
with I need to get out to the Western Pennsylvania
a bit more. I've been there a few times, but
I haven't really done any like super deep exploring there.
Speaker 3: All Right, now, we're going to go to York City, PA.
And this is the fish that walks like a man.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I love this story. This is I've actually printed
this probably in three of my books.
Speaker 5: Now. A.
Speaker 1: I love the Susquehanna. I live near the Susquehanna River.
Speaker 2: It's I just.
Speaker 1: I love this river. It's a huge, giant river. I
call it the Mighty Susquehanna, and there's all these weird
stuff associated with it. I love to hike by the Susquehanna,
which is Chad always likes to go to the mountains,
always like go to the river. See he calls me
a river rat. But you know, I just love I
love the hiking along and everything.
Speaker 4: So this is.
Speaker 1: Walks like a man. Strange animal alarms Pennsylvania residents along
the Susquehanna, York, Pennsylvania, October twenty second. People residing along
the river midway between cly and Goldsboro, are mystified and
some alarmed over the sight of a strange creature that
has its aboat in the Susquehanna. Thus far but two
men and their wives have seen the thing. As it
was seen in broad daylight. More credence is given to
the story than would be if it had been seen
at night, when people are more prone to see quote things.
The strange creature, whether fish or animal, is described as
being as large as a man when seen. It came
up out of the water erect like a man walking,
and is described as looking like a man without arms.
Those persons who have seen it declared that they are
not the victims of an optical illusion. This places it
a few miles above an area called Toad Road, which
I've written two books about, and which there are legends
of a toad man being at in the So the
Cador's Creek runs along Toad Road, and that meets the Susquehanna.
Really not far from Toad Road at all. A short
distance from Toad Road it meets the Susquehanna River, So
we're not far from Toad Road, and they are legends
of a toad man in the Cador's Creek there. So
how different as a fish man and a toad man,
you know what I mean? You get into this stuff.
It's very very interesting. We're talking, you know, a couple
of miles apart that people were talking about these things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a man without arms, I would instantly go that
might be on my no list. No, thank you, Yeah, yeah,
that'll stick with you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very very strange, and like I would if we're nowadays,
i'd find these people and get more information.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's the one bad thing about these newspaper You can't
track these people down, say what did you see? You
know it's from I think that was from like early
nineteen hundreds, like nineteen fifteen or something. These people are
going gone, so you can't get any more information like
what did it look like? Did it have scales? Did
you know? Tell me more? Frustrating sometimes, Oh, it definitely is.
Speaker 3: Well, Tim, Since it's our first time having an end
depth discussion, I would like to ask you two of
my favorite questions for usually anybody, and since I just
said seeing the man without arms would probably be on
my no list. What is an entity or creature that
is one hundred percent on your no list. You'd never
want to see your encounter.
Speaker 1: If these dog man encounters are as people say, and
most of these reports seem to be pretty intimidating at least,
and people come away very terrified, I could do without that.
The stories of them getting right in people's face and
growling and things like this. Yeah, I don't need that.
If I get to see one at a distance, maybe
and it doesn't take notice to me, sure, sure, I'll
take that. But the encounters or people are up close
and personal with them, that sounds like something I would
not want.
Speaker 3: Yeah, then your your river rat or hiking with Chad
days maybe a little less after something like that, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean i'd hope not, but it could be. Yeah,
it could be.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 3: So last question is, then the flip flop of that
coin is what's one creature, entity, whatever subject matter that
you would absolutely want to see or encounter.
Speaker 1: So do we have time for a long answer?
Speaker 3: Absolutely?
Speaker 1: Okay, short answer, bigfoot. Long answer is, I don't know
if that gets to be true. Because of this, I
have seen things in the woods very quick, things that
are probably too big to be well, definitely too big
to be in the woods in New York County, Pennsylvania
so fast. I can't tell you what it was. It
was just big and gray and black. I can't say
for sure it was. I've seen eyeshine, great big eyeshine
where I heard a sound. I was with my buddy.
We're at this place and we try to keep our
head lamps off, but at the end of the night
we always say, well, you know, we're done. Whenever we
decide to go, we'll wait for one more noise. We'll
flip our headlamps and see if we can see anything,
and then then we'll head out. We had decided to go,
and we heard what I call a gorilla grunt like
it was, and it seemed like it was in the
brush rate in front of us. We're standing in a
parking area basically looking into the woods. It was like,
but I can't get that. I can't get low enough
of it, but so low, and it backed us both up.
Of course, we flip our lights and we don't see
anything because it's just brushed there. But I turned to
the right and there's this abandoned road that leads down
into the woods, and I light up eyes and these
things are huge. I mean just they look like the
fifth sized eyes glowing white or reflecting white, and about
eight feet off the ground. And my buddy James, and
I said, James, look at that, and it turned its head.
You could literally see the eyes turn and I presume
walked away because I said, oh man, you missed these eyes.
And right as I said that, I presume it looked
back over its shoulder. That's what it looked like. I
couldn't see anything, but the eyes come back around. He
got to see him when they turned came back, thankfully.
That was pretty amazing. I don't know what that was
attached to, you know, I guess bigfoot. It looked bigfoot sides.
I don't know. So I am lucky enough to be
invited to Pine Ridge Reservation to collect bigfoot stories. And
I get there and our hosts are are driving us
around and we're outside of the town of Pine Ridge,
out in the hills and stuff. It's very beautiful. Saw
wild horses out there, just gorgeous lamb and we're driving
through there and they said, no one's ever out here,
but we just want to show you the land. They
literally said, like nobody's gonna be out here, and We're
driving through the hills and it's just gorgeous, like ponderosa
pines and all this stuff, and you expect to see,
you know, Clint Eastwood riding over the hills, you know,
in this poncho or something else, look like that kind
of landscape. And they get done showing us around, and
I said, hey, can we come back tonight and go
back out there? They say, oh, sure. So came back
at night and we're driving up to this ridge and
again they had literally said, no one will be out here.
Will we pass the guy? It's a hiker and he's
got four or five dogs with him. Looks to be of,
you know, normal height. I'd put him, I don't know,
around six foot, I don't know. He looked, you know,
roughly normal height. He's wearing a hoodie, he's got a
pack on his back, and he's carrying walking with a
ridiculously large walking stick, like four inches in diameter and
about like eight feet high or something like this massive
walking stick he's walking, which is just if you're a hiker,
that's just dumb. That's wasted calories, that's like, what are
you doing? And so I'm like, that is just so dumb. Like,
that's odd, and they said, no, one wan't to be
out here. And I look over the guy as I
drive by him, and I was like, I specifically made
a mental note, Oh he has my facial hair, so
he wasn't a native guy. That's odd. And the host says,
go up and turn around and come back. So I
did that, but I'm thinking, like, this guy is gonna
think we're coming back like to him for some reason,
you know, maybe this isn't like, maybe we're gonna scare him.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to, but it's I don't live there,
you know, And I'm just doing what the host said.
So I went up and turned around and came back.
It was a minute because I timed it. Later in
the trip. We get back and we get out of
the car and this guy's nowhere to be seen. Now
we're on a ridgetop, we can look on both sides.
This guy's nowhere to be seen. And I turned to
John and I'm like John, my buddy, John. I'm like John,
we should be able to see this guy, right, And he's, oh, yeah,
Like where did he go? And it's funny because one
of our hosts was a skeptic he was like, literally
the only skeptic I met the entire time I was there.
The other was a believer, and he's they were a
married couple, and he says, well, he just went down
that trail there, and I said, it's not about where
he went, it's about how fast he got there. Man, like,
we should be able to see him, and he's like, ah,
I'm sure he just went down the trail. So we
hang out there and it gets dark, wind picks up
a lot, like it was windier that night than any
other time we were there. And he gets out of
spotlight the host and he's shining around the field and
he hit something in the field that was jet black.
When he was spotlight hit this thing, I literally jumped like,
what is that. His wife's let out a scream. She
literally screamed. And to me, this black thing looked it
looked like mouthman like crouching over in the field or something.
Says very bizarre. Didn't move, it was stationary. And I'm
looking at and I'm like, what is that And he's like, oh,
somebody left some car seats out in the field. Well,
he lives there, and I just thought he knows what
he's talking about so out of my mind it went.
We stayed up there for a little while longer and
go back to the hotel and I go to sleep,
and I have this dream and in the dream everything's
the same. We're driving up. I see the hiker. He's
got the big stick. I don't know if the dogs
are in the dream or not, but in any case,
I turn around and come back and now the hiker's Bigfoot,
and the staff makes sense because it's the right size
for Bigfoot. I wake up and I tell John. I'm like, John,
this is like I had this cool dream, like whoop
about the hiker, but it was Bigfoot. It made sense,
you know. So we go off and the next day
we're collecting more stories and we're visiting this woman. She
was the wife of a very well known medicine man
from the Lakota. He had passed. But we're talking to
her and she invites us in her house. Wonderfully sweet woman,
and she says, so I hear you want to talk
about Bigfoot. Yeah, And she said to me, you look
like Bigfoot. Didn't think anything of it right then put
something together later on, Oh okay. She tells all her stories,
great stories, of course, and at the end she says,
have you ever seen And I said, to zactly to you,
I don't know. I've seen these eyes shine, and I've
seen this big thing, but I can't say that i've
seen it. And I won't say until I see it,
until it steps out in front of me and I
see it, and I'll tell you I've seen it. Otherwise
I'm going to tell you I don't know what I've seen.
I've seen something big and fast, I've seen eyes laid up.
I don't know what I've seen. So she said, have
you ever thought about asking him? And I said no,
but I will. She said, yeah, just ask him, Say
to ask him if you can see him. Okay, when
we go about the rest of our week and collecting
all these stories and just wonderful time, and everybody was
beautiful and wonderful. And is the last like full day
and night we were there, they they had a little event.
We bought food into the community, made food, and they
taught us how to put up a traditional tepee. It's
amazing once in I don't know if you have this experience,
but you realize how lucky you are sometimes, you know,
and to be there and to like be taught this
and just be on the code of land and just
like it just was amazing it, just like I couldn't
believe how lucky I am. And they said, hey, you
built the TP you can stay in it tonight if
you want. So yeah, okay, sure. So we come back
that night and we're hanging out and talking and stuff,
and at some point I just walked away, not hundreds
of yards away, but maybe fifty yards away from people,
maybe twenty yards away, I don't know, just to be
by myself. It was my last like full night there.
And I'm looking at these geological formations they call pascas.
They're kind of like white hills, and I'm looking at
this paul Huska. And earlier in the day, this really
cool guy told me the story about being paced by
a bigfoot down that paul Huska. So I'm literally looking
at at the place where you know where he's telling
me about it, and I'm saying like, I'm ready to
see you now. I really am, I'm ready to see
you now. But then I realize, oh, I'm not asking,
So I had a change. It's like could I see you?
Like could I see you now? And I tell you
people talk about mind speak. It wasn't that I did
not hear words in my head, but I got a
feeling come over me that was so clear that I
could perfectly render into words. So I call it heart speak, right.
It was a feeling that I could rent, and it
was you already have. I do not know what that means.
I don't know if that means one of those things
I saw in York County before. I don't know if
that means. And I'll get to the back to this hiker.
I don't know what it means. And I don't know
if that means I never get a chance to again
because I already have. Right, it's the open ended answers
you get with this stuff. They never give you clear answers.
It's like the Protection from Ape story in the book,
which we can go over quickly too. They never give
you clear answers. There's always like a hook or a
little twist to it. So you already have What does
that mean? I don't know. Okay, last day we're on
the plantation, they said reservation. Sorry, Now, last day we're
in the reservation, they said, what do you want to do?
I said, I want to go back up to that ridge.
I want to look at that again. So we did,
and about where we saw the hiker, I dropped John
off in the car and I timed how quick and
you could see it's real dusty soil. You could see
exactly where I turned around. So I timed it. It
was exactly, almost exactly a minute to drive up, turn around,
and go back. And I told John run go as
fast as you can and try to disappear. And John tried,
and he was still well visible by the time I
got back. So again, our host gets out and he's
running through the field and he's he's, well, he could
have gone here, he could have gone here. This might
be one of his footprints. And he's super fast, and
John's faster than me. So by the time I get there,
there's three sets of footprints before mine, you know. So
there's and after a while, I'm just like, I give up,
And I said, once again, I told the guy, it's
not where he went, it's how fast he got there
with four or five dogs which were on leashes, you
know what I mean. It was like he had to
disappear with these ANIMs. So I decide John and him
can track look for footprint I'm going to walk through
and just enjoy the landscape. So I'm just walking through
the field, just enjoying my last day there. It's just
and I'm picking up some like cans and stuff people
have left around, and you know, as I'm there, so
the point of that being no one had come and
cleaned up the area from the time we were there. Well,
as I'm doing this, I'm looking around and I noticed
that car seat there's nowhere to be seen nowhere around.
I said, John, come here, and I called John over
and he came over and I said, look around, tell
me what you see. He's like, what are you talking about?
I think, where's that car seat? And he looks at
me and his eyes get real big. He's like, it's
not here. Yeah, it's not here. And I called our
host over, said, hey, dude, where's that car seat? And
I'm sure you've had this before too, where you see
like a minute of like or a second, a brief
like second of like where we hit a skeptic with something.
They're like, whoa, it was just that. And then he
immediately said, well the wind blow it over and walked away.
If the wind was blown way harder that night, we
were there, like it would still be there if the
wind blew it over. You know, he just wanted nothing
to do with that wind blew it over. He would
walk it with. So we get back and then I
started asking everybody in the car, what did you see
that night with that hiker? Are the female host lady said, oh,
he's a Hispanic guy. Listen to my friend who was
there with us, She's like, oh, he looked like a
hippie from northern California. He was wearing sunglasses. He thought
he was Joe Cool. John says sunglasses. He wouldn't wearing sunglasses.
I looked him right in the eyes when we passed.
We couldn't agree on what he looked like other than
he was wearing a hoodie and he had that big
walking stick. Everybody agreed on that. And then our host
tells us, and I don't know, I need to get
in touch with her and ask her where she got
this information. She said, I was told you would have
a sighting from the car. Because now I'm putting this
together and I'm telling him, like, look, we saw like that,
what was that black thing? That black thing's going and
we're sort of putting all this together and she's like,
you know, I was told you were gonna have a
sighting from the car when you were here. So was
that hiker a shape shifting bigfoot thing or something? I
don't know, was that related to that you already have.
I don't know what any of this means, but it's
this incredible experience and it's just like I I don't know,
I don't know. We we have the black thing on
camera too, whatever that is. You can't tell what it is,
but you can see a black thing in the field,
like like I think Lucinda was filming, so we have
like a few seconds of it like on camera.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, Tim, Oh, I somehow I thought that
was what you were going to say that everybody saw
something different, just because how many people I spoken to
it was close.
Speaker 1: And again when I said, oh, he has my facial
hair and she said you look like bigfoot, like there's
like something about that. To me, it was like, oh,
there's something there, Like did I like who was this guy?
And you know, nobody ever figured out who he was
or anything like this hik or this mysterious like who
shouldn't have been there? He wasn't supposed to be there.
Speaker 3: And with all these dogs. What kind of clothing did
he have? I mean, or was everybody's version different of
the clothing?
Speaker 1: Besides, I mean he had a hoodie, which, again, like
I think that's funny because like how many you know,
big foot report, especially in the early days of like
Saskran and stuff. You hear people it looked like somebody
in a hoodie. Yeah, he was wearing a hoodie. He
had the hood up. And I didn't clock sunglasses. But
if he's wearing sunglasses, that's the other thing. People say, Oh, yeah,
I look like somebody in the hoodie with sunglasses. You know,
people say, oh, that was their big eyes or or whatever.
So I thought that that was funny. But the only
thing I clocked was his facial hair, and I thought
he looked white. I specifically, Oh that's not a native guy,
Like what's he doing out here?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: So yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Do you get to go back out there?
Speaker 1: I'm sure I could. I would be invited again, I
have not yet, but I'm sure it could happen at
some point. Our hosts were very gracious people, and they
shared everything with us. Is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Everybody I
talked to had a story except the one guy, and
even he said, tells me he said, oh, I don't
believe in any of that stuff, and tells me ufo story.
Speaker 3: Of course.
Speaker 1: But everybody had Bigfoot stories. Literally, everybody had a big
Foot story. Yeah, And I'd ask everyone at the end, well,
what do you think it is? And everybody said a spirit.
Even though they're telling me stories of Bigfoot breaking into
trailers and throwing motorcycles and doing all this like very
physical stuff, they all said, it's a spirit.
Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, But when they're here or in their
actual flesh and blood bodies, they're they're forced to be
reckoned with for sure.
Speaker 1: Well you brought up.
Speaker 3: Sorry, Tim, go ahead, what are you gonna say?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean they can break into trailers, they can
throw motors, you know what I mean, they can do
things like why when they're here, they're here. But it's
the problem.
Speaker 3: But it's funny though, because going back to your point
before about them getting up on trailers, which they should
just be denting to high Hell, they're not. So when
they need to be very very light footed, they can be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, so it's so hard not to connect
this stuff with I, you know, because I'm fascinating the stuff,
and I also happen to because like I'm very interested
in marrying apparitions and these seers that see them, and
they will manifest things like incredible weight at sometimes and
incredible lightness at other times. There will be like the
one account I'm super fascinated with his Garbon doll in
Spain in the nineteen sixties, and there were these young women.
They were like ten to twelve, I think, when these
things started happening, four of them, these visionaries, and they
would go into these trances and grown men couldn't lift
them like so there were skeptics that would come to
the town. It became a thing where people would come
to town to watch them and stuff, because it happened
again and again, and these these skeptics would come to town.
And the one girl's father said, oh, go ahead and
try to pick her up. You think she's faking you
go try to lift her. And grown men could not
lift these little girls off the ground. They would try
and try and try, and they couldn't do it. So
and again other times their manifesting lightness. Other times the
other girls were seen to just lift them up as
if they were feathers. So there's a thing with this that.
And again I'm not saying, please don't think I'm saying
bigfoots a demon. I don't think bigfoots a demon. I
think that's a dumb form for a demon to take.
Of all the forms you could take, Bigfoot's not going
to make me do anything. Show up to my house
as a beautiful woman, then there's probably a problem there.
But Bigfoot, you're not going to get me to do
any commit a sin. Yeah, so I do not, in
my heart of hearts think in any way bigfoots a demon.
But it's very interesting how they manifest the similar stuff.
These apparitions are said to appear, you know, brighters in
the sun, but people can easily look at them, they
don't hurt their eyes. Well, Bigfoot blacker than black, you know.
They manifest this beautiful, wonderful smell that people can't always describe,
or sometimes the smell of roses. Well, Bigfoot manifests that
horrible smell.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It's very interesting how there's these sort of equal but
opposite phenomena associated with these things. I don't think it
means Bigfoot bad. I think it means as brother, Richards says,
they're using the same channels to get.
Speaker 3: Through well, and going back to that whole idea that
the smellier ones are just they're running out of time
in this plane of existence, you know, So maybe we
hear plenty of Bigfoot reports where there's no smell involved.
And I'm like, what, he just popped out of the portal.
So he's a fresh version right now?
Speaker 1: Could be?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that idea. Well, did you want to
close with that? You mentioned protection from apes?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, yeah. So this is this wonderful story that
if you watch the Hell You're documentary. I'm sure people
know who Tyler Strand is. And he collected this story
at a Bigfoot and UFO event in western Pennsylvania and sorry,
I'm having trouble finding it here. And a woman came
up to him and told him the story, and he
told it on Strange Familiars, so I will. This is
a quote from Tyler that is taken from the show.
Tyler said, what she told me is that her cousin
when she was little, was playing inside of her garage.
I think she was between eight or twelve years old
in that age range. She was playing in her garage alone,
and on the floor of the garage there was a
manhole cover for drainage, a perforated manhole cover. And while
she's playing, the cover starts to rattle and shake, and
it slides open and out crawls a little man, a
little old man, sounds like a gnome. The girl looks
at them and they both lock eyes, and out of nowhere,
they just start wrestling each other and fighting. She said,
my cousin. After they're rolling around and tussling for five minutes,
they both sort of stop and look at each other
and start laughing. This little man said, you know what,
I'm going to give you the gift of protection from apes.
And she said, ever since that day, my cousin has
been haunted by seeing things that look like bigfoot walking
in the periphery of your yard. It gets weirder, she said,
a mistool appear and they will literally form out of
the mist. She said, I've had sleepovers with my cousin
and I saw firsthand a mist appeared inside of her
room and this thing that looked like a monkey human
hybrid manifested out of the mist with glowing green eyes
and hovered there before it vanished. So My commentary on
that story is in that wondrous, strange way in which
the other conducts itself, the gift of the noome like
being would seem at first to be granting the girl
protection from any assaults of simian things. However, as these
ape like things have appeared around her in the wake
of her wrestling match with the Gnome, it seems she
was given instead apes as her protector. So instead of
protection from apes, she was given protection comma from apes.
Speaker 3: Mmm, oh, my gracious. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You can never take the stuff at its word. There's
always a twist, my goodness.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And the idea of you know, you got missed and
water and boulder fields and we talked about you talk
about berries earlier. There's all these these same tropes that
run through it all. It's just fascinating. Oh yeah, well, Tim,
it has been such a pleasure to finally have you
on for a proper chat. And before you go, you
please let everybody know where to find you the show
your books and talk about your artwork. Also, because I
through this whole time, I didn't even mention that the
all of your cover work, all of the illustrations inside
the book is.
Speaker 1: All you Yeah, I Mike Mignola is the guy who
came up with hell Boy, said that. There's a great
quote from him, and I'll probably not getting exactly right,
but essentially said, I just wanted to draw monsters every day,
and I feel like I've done that for myself. I'm
not drawing comics, but I'm writing these books and I
get to draw monsters every day, and I'm very happy
about that. So yeah, I do all the artwork, the covers.
I illustrate books. I wanted this book to have a
lot more illustrations, but I realized quickly that it was
three hundred and fifty six pages, and if I do
a lot more illustrations, this thing is going to be unwieldy.
It will break toes if people drop it on them.
So I decided to you know, but there's a few
in there. I think I have one at the beginning
and end of each chapter, and then a couple like
others throughout. You can find me. It's strain familiars dot com.
There's links to my everything I do there. Of course,
the podcast is there, but you can find links to
everything else I do. To get signed copies of the
book if you want them, my Etsy shop is Lostgrave
dot Etsy dot com and you can get signed copies there.
Speaker 3: Excellent. I will make sure everything is linked in the
show notes for everybody. But Tim, thanks again, and you
are welcome back any old time.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's taken us far too long to do this
for people who your listeners might not know. We talk often, Yeah,
just not on the air.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, they're probably And even Randy, who he pointed
out a couple of things to bring up with you.
He goes, you guys are like my two favorites, Like,
you know what it Finally this is happening.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I know, yeah, I mean literally for years
we've talked. Ye never been on the airs for one
reason or another. So yeah, I'm happy to be here
and I'll come back anytime.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Tim.
Speaker 5: Well, I'm so and so.
Speaker 1: I was given this name by my parents. My business.
Speaker 2: I was out of college.
Speaker 5: I've done these things and my profession I producing little block.
Speaker 4: But forget it.
Speaker 5: That's something her story and that's all gone.
Speaker 4: That's all possible. And I want to see this million.
Speaker 1: Nobody knows who that is because we don't.
Speaker 5: Except to listening to arecas and consulting our memorials. But
then that's a really and then again leads a speccinating
this question.
Speaker 3: Who are you?
Speaker 4: That does not mean.
Speaker 5: We shall see how they play with.
Speaker 1: The success will buy the cots.
Speaker 5: To get you to come out of your show and find.
Speaker 4: Out it will be very hard. It's past status aspects,
puss pusssss.
Speaker 5: The people, for example, are quite divided on us. They
will say, no, we don't believe literally in reincarnation that
after your funeral, bro, you will suddenly become somebody different,
there being somewhere else. They will say, reincarnation means this
that if you're sitting here now, are really convinced that
you're the same.
Speaker 4: Person the boarding at.
Speaker 2: The door half an hour ago, you'll be reincarnate if
you are liberated as now that you're done.
Speaker 4: The past hasn't instant, The future doesn't insistence. There is
only the present.
Speaker 5: That's the only amenia is the zend Master dogget was
String does not like sounds because there are some and there.
Speaker 3: Is springs.
Speaker 4: Puss Puss. Puss Puss.
Speaker 5: Has the same idea in four Days, where he says,
when you settle down in the train to read your newspaper,
and so you're not the same person while ago and
live in the plan. If you think you are, you
are linking your moments up in the check and this
is what buyds is the wheel look both when you
know that every moment which you are is the only
moment this counts inos are. The Master will say to somebody,
I can have a walk across the room and it
can be back, and he says, where are your foot?
Speaker 4: They've gone?
Speaker 2: So where are you?
Speaker 4: Who are you?
Speaker 5: When we are asked who we are, we usually give
a kind of recitation of an Instagram screens insens