Speaker 1: Welcome to this edition of The High Strangest Factor copyright
on the Paranormal UK Radio Network. I am Steve Ward,
one of your hosts, along with Andy Mercer, host and
producer for the show, and Susie Basstile, host and pug
Wedgie whisper. We are back from a long hiatus and
on The High Strangest Factor we delt delve into all
aspects of the paranormal and the unexplained, and sometimes I
don't even talk about John Peel, so Andy and Susie
let's just catch up a little bit. Andy, your publishing company.
How's that going very good.
Speaker 2: I'm just working on the next book, which should be
out in hopefully some mid late September. Just in the
process of laid out into the format to be printed,
which takes a few weeks.
Speaker 3: It's just getting it quite right and the exactly but yes,
it's going pretty well.
Speaker 2: This is the fourth title un Publishing and this one
is a reprint of an old manuscript from the eighteen
fifties which is from Greek magical papyary and it's interesting
because it's best known for the source of original Caught
the Headless or the Baldness one which mister Adda Crowley
made famous, but a lot of us are cultist not
quite well. But this is the first time that's published
and we're doing a completely new, reformatted version. People have
printed the original book for the eighteen fifties in its
old format, but I've reformatted it completely so it's in
a modern font, much clearer, easier to follow and without
going to too much detail. The original manuscript was missing
some text which has been printed separately, but I've now
put the two together for the first time, so that
to keep me quite busy for the last couple of months.
I've it's been very warm here in England of the
last couple of months, very hard to work when it's
both about thirty our degrees.
Speaker 1: Actually, I think we can all relate to that over
on the other side of the ocean as well. So
your change in profession has been pretty rewarding.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, I mean I still have a couple of clients. Yeah,
so that's always helped sort of something income between books.
But yeah, it's going pretty well as worth i'd hoped
it would, so I'm pretty pleas of that.
Speaker 1: And so when you say clients, what is your chosen profession?
Speaker 2: Well, as you know, as a psychotherapist of twenty years
and sort of retired in quotation marks to move from
my old hometown close to London across the coach at Somerset,
living in a small village yard, which is actually wonderful.
Speaker 4: Is calm and quiet and peaceful.
Speaker 2: Now I'm enjoying how much quieter, relaxing life over here,
getting into all sorts of adventures, including going on a
ghost investigation last weekend, which a time later i'll talk
about if you're interested.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, on our PBS, on the British murder
mystery TV shows, it's always those quiet little towns that
you're rept in mayhem, you know.
Speaker 3: So oh yes.
Speaker 1: Now the last question is you don't plan on plan
on publishing any graphic novels now do you plan? Very good?
And and Susie, now tell us, uh, tell us about
your uh hoggie whisper uh persona and uh where people
can contact you and give reports.
Speaker 5: So all hate mail can go to my manager. His
name is Steve Ward. You can find him on Facebook.
And I do have a blog out there, what is
it Steve Blogges dot blogspot dot com.
Speaker 1: I think that's close enough they'll find it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Uh, Google Susie Bastille and I come up all over
the place if you want to hear interviews with me
and whatnot. I am a bit of a recluse online nowadays,
So I'm just gonna I'm going to be mysterious for
a while over here.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 5: I've been more concentrated on acting like a paquajy lately
than talking about them on the internet.
Speaker 1: Oh here's my Uh, this is lucky. If I've decided
to make a cravesit here very nice, well, very good.
And if I'm going to get all that hate mail,
I'm glad that I have access to a psychotherapist. Now,
let's with no further ado, Let's introduce our guest. Ken
Gerhart is a widely recognized cryptozoologist, author, and lecturer who
frequently appears on television. Ken has traveled the world searching
for evidence of mysterious creatures, including Bigfoot, the lock Nest Monster,
the Chupacabra, Mothman, and the Beast of Ja Boudin. I
think I got that close. In addition, he has authored
seven books on the subject of unknown animals. His research
has been featured on numerous TV shows including Missing in Alaska,
Monster Quest, Ancient Aliens, America, Unearthed, The Unexplained with William Shatner,
and Legend Hunters. Ken has appeared on major networks including
the History Channel, Animal Planet, Discovery, Sci Fi, National Geographic,
and the Science Channel. Currently, he is featured on The
Proof Is Out There. Ken, Welcome to the Sky Strangeness Factor.
Speaker 4: Hey, it's great to see us, Steve, and you too. Everyone.
It's an honor to be here with you tonight. Thanks
for having me on.
Speaker 1: Well, well, thanks for coming and right off the bat,
let's tell people that they will be able to see
you shortly speaking at the Mothman Festival coming up on
the twentieth and twenty first of September.
Speaker 4: Yes, always stoked about that, Steve.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that'll keeps for putting a word in you know
what I mean. No, I mean you know Jeff. Just
so people know, Jeff Bondsley is the man. He makes
the decisions sometimes I can. I just just lost a cat.
He's okay, oh man, okay, little little extra entertainment, no
extra charge. But I have he had you in his
sights anyway, so I don't think I can claim, you know,
any credit here. I don't think I'll get a finder's fee,
is what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: I appreciate it. They've asked me back a few times,
so I guess they don't help you too much.
Speaker 1: That's that's very good. Yeah, you're one of the regulars
that comes back occasionally. So and I remember the night
you and I and a few people were out. This
might have been I don't know if it was your
first time there, but we were standing by the fence
where the old Norse power plant used to stand out
there in the TNT area. I don't know if we
could call that.
Speaker 4: So I think that was twenty fifteen. I think was
the first time I went up with Nick Redfern and
uh the Frick brothers were there and you and uh
John John Lee if I remember.
Speaker 1: Him, might have been I don't know.
Speaker 4: Anyway, it was a fun group, good time.
Speaker 1: And I remember you asked for somebody to say something
profound now that we were there at the point, and
so I whipped out a quote by none other than
John Keele. I was glad to do it, but at
any rate, uh, you know, can I originally I thought,
I'm wondering, you know, how did how did it can
get into this stuff. I mean, so many people were
influenced by the Beast of Boggy Creek film. That's the
one that kind of set them off. But I think
you had I think your parents were instrumental and kind
of uh guiding you along and and you know where
you found some of your interests.
Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely. My father was a forestry professor, so he
spent a lot of time in the outdoors, and I
collected all kinds of animals, and so I loved animals,
and I love monster movies. I kind of grew up
in the you know, Godzilla movies and King Kong, Creature
from the Black Lagoon and all that kind of stuff.
So I saw a Bigfoot documentary I guess probably about
nineteen seventy six when Bigfoot was kind of really taking
off in pop culture, and it just changed my life.
I became obsessed with unknown animals, cryptids, And of course
my mother was a huge influence because she was a
travel agent and she took me all over the world
when I was growing up. So I was always studying
legends of different creatures and things. But I never certainly
ever planned on making this a career. I've just been
very blessed and have had some really amazing opportunities. So
I've just kind of gone with it.
Speaker 1: So you traveled with your mom places that she.
Speaker 4: Went, Yeah, she would travel, My dad would go, and
my sister as well sometimes. But my mom was actually
one that used to you know, when I got into
this stuff, you know, she used to talk about the
Yetty although she traveled to the him. I never made
it over there with her to that spot, but she
told me about She always called it the West Virginia
moth Man. She loved to talk about that. And then
when I was fifteen years old, she arranged for me
to travel to Lockedness and that's when I did my
first field research when I was fifteen years old and
at lock Ness that would have been eighty two. So
so yeah, it's been a it's been a fun ride.
Speaker 1: Very good. I was over there my first time in
seventy three, oh wow, backpacking through Europe. I got to
see Stonehenge and sponge off my relatives, which was it
was really great. I had a bunch of second cousins
that were all quite a bit older than me, but
they had they bore striking resemblances to my relatives back home.
I mean, my grandfather Alec looked so much like my
second cousin Alec who lived in Grangemouth in Scotland, and
on and on. So but yeah, I had and I
had read the book I had read on the lock
Ness Monster was F. W. Holliday's first book on the
Great orm Rm of Lockness, And of course he was
the one I'm sure you're familiar with him. He initially
thought that perhaps this had nothing to do with the policeosaur,
but it had something maybe more to do with a
sort of an oversized mollusk or something like that from
his observations. And I remember some of the incredible land
sightings that he talked about that happened, you know, early
in the thirties and on, and so I was, I
was scanning the waves for the locked Nest Monster. I
was also looking over my shoulder just in case this
thing came bouncing off the road or something.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, Holliday was an interesting guy, and of
course later he went into the more Your Your Cup
of Tea with Goblin Universe and some of that kind
of high strangeness stuff. But he was actually notable for
being in one of nine eyewitnesses the most perhaps the
most significant messy siding ever was I think June fifteenth,
nineteen sixty five, and Holiday was up at the Klansman
Hotel looking at He had just quit the Lockness Investigation Bureau.
He wanted to do his solo research. And he saw
this big hump moving across the loch and there were
two guys on the other side of the lock fishing
that also saw Sergeant Ian Cameron, who was a law
enforcement and a local city official. Can't remembers now at
the top of man, but anyways, there were nine people
that watched this thing for an hour, this giant hump
like a whale they described, surging against the tide, submerging
coming up, moving around. And so I've gotten to know
Ian Cameron's son Willie at loch Ness and we talk
about all the time. We said, man, that was a
heck of a sight. Again, he got nine witnesses. They
didn't even see, you know, they saw each other across
the lake looking at They were all looking at the
same time, like do you see this? And so that
was a yeah. So Holliday was there for that monumental
event and very good.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: He was.
Speaker 1: He was an angler, a fisherman and that's what that's
what brought him there and uh, and then he went
off to uh uh he found it. You know, of course,
a lock ness is a huge body of water and so.
But then he heard about some of the sightings in
Ireland and uh and so and some of those lakes
were very small and shallow, and they thought maybe they'd
have a better chance if they were dragging nets and
so forth, which brings me to Andy. I'm actually going
to be talking about loch Ness at the I'm the
last speaker and the end of Sunday when everybody is
going home, so the the six people that are there,
I'll be talking about the paranormal aspects of Lockness. But
the uh, the Irish lakes are spelled l o U
g h. But the pronunciation sounds like lock. Is that correct?
And yeah.
Speaker 2: They put l A a K. Yeah, yeah, it's it's plows.
The Roughies say it's spelled differently because it's.
Speaker 1: It's just a confused Yanks like me. That's all okay
with you.
Speaker 4: At the end, I had some phlem at the end.
Speaker 2: Exactly you said about going to kenn at fifteen O
it's a lock ness. When I finished the school sold
a friend of mine who was sixteen. We actually planned
the camp for a week. Was that lock ness, but
he's mum would let him go. We didn't do it
because I'm really saying my friends, Oh yeah, that sounds
fun of you.
Speaker 4: Was she afraid he'd get eaten?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Trusted? Mean, necessarily.
Speaker 2: That was always the plan. We talked about it for
good sort of the last year at school. We do
in the summer, but his parents said, no, no, I
don't think you should do that.
Speaker 1: So, Ken, how did things kind of evolve for you?
I mean, when you you had this interest in animals,
you were I had opportunities to go over the world,
even go to locks at age fifteen and do research.
I mean that was pretty amazing. But how did how
did the I mean you've covered We're going to get
to your moth Man book soon, but how did you've written?
How many books have you written at this stage?
Speaker 4: Seven?
Speaker 1: I believe it. I've written partially one book and contributed
a few chapters. That's all I got, you know right now?
So how did these things kind of evolve for you
in the beginning?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I guess said this has been a
lifelong interest of mine. But you know, I kind of
was derailed by a music career. For about twenty years.
I was writing, recording and producing music, touring and stuff
like that, and that was kind of my passion for all.
But even when I was doing that, everyone around me
and my periphery kind of knew my passion and would
bring me books or you know, we even on tours
sometimes we would stop and you know, I would jump
off on Bray Road in Wisconsin and run around for
a few minutes. You know, I'm for the way from
one gig to another. So but I guess things really
maybe late nineties when the Internet was becoming a thing
and I got online and I met these other bigfoot
research in Texas where I was living, and they were
like they were I was like, oh wow, this is cool.
These guys do this and they go out and look
for it. And so I started tagging along with them
and doing big foot field research throughout Texas, Louisiana and
other places. And uh then I bumped into Lauren Coleman,
of course, one of the icons of cryptozoology, and I
asked him, you know, how can I do this, you know,
to the level that you are. He said, well, you
need to write a book because that opens a lot
of doors. So so I wrote my first book about
big bird you know, winged cryptids thunderbirds, if you will.
And then around that time I was discovered by a
producer for the Travel Channel who was doing a show
called Legend Hunters, and he, you know, interviewed me and said, hey,
do you want to come do this bigfoot show? And
so that, you know, that opened a lot of doors too,
because then Monster Quest and you know, once you're once
you're on television, and as long as you don't crap
the bed, then people start calling you back and saying, hey,
you know, you're pretty good. So so, so it was
just that and.
Speaker 1: You know, at my age, I gotta be careful about that.
But go ahead, now, I was just going to.
Speaker 4: Say, you know, I had a part time job for
many years because it's very difficult to earn a living
doing this kind of stuff full time. But then in
twenty nineteen, I finally just said, you know, I'm screw it.
I'm going to go for it. And I had a
little bit of money in the bank and just started
doing this kind of research full time. And you know,
between television shows, which really don't pay as much as
people think, and book royalties and doing lectures and just
different things like that. I'm able to eke out a living.
Speaker 1: So well, that's pretty cool. You know, you're one of
the There's not too many people that can do that. Now, me,
I could sort of since I'm retired, but you know,
I don't. I actually do work at the Mockman Museum
part time, which is I mean, they pay me to
do that, ken, I mean, can you imagine that's.
Speaker 4: A game job for sure.
Speaker 1: Well, let's let me let's see. There's so much I
want to ask you. I was reading something that you
were you were being interviewed or whatever, and you were
talking about you know how everybody, a lot of people
they'll they'll report some kind of a winged creature apparition
or whatever it is, and it's all these stamped mothman
or often oh it's it's mothman. Even though I'm a
little bit protective of my point pleasant mothman, I'm not
quite sure. Well, for example, have you looked much into
the Houston Batman? Was that in the fifties?
Speaker 4: Oh? Yeah, yeah, I know. I've worked on that case
quite a bit because I lived in Houston for about
twenty years, so yeah, that was June eighteenth, nineteen fifty three,
I believe, and that was in a place called the Heights,
which is a neighborhood close to where I lived in Houston.
Now the actual address were supposed to has happened, has
long since been taken over by a freeway that's kind
of going over that location. But I never interviewed any
of the principal people because of course that was a
very old case. But I did. I did study that case,
and then I had subsequently came up with a couple
of very vague, ambiguous, possible Houston Batman follow up sightings,
but you know, I couldn't really there wasn't a lot
of substance to them. So I think it's just the
one sighting in nineteen fifty three that really And of
course the name Houston Batman probably similar to Mothman and
other cryptids, that that name was somewhat of a newspaper invention, right,
they just kind of thought it sounded cool. But just
just for your listeners that aren't familiar, you know, this
was in the age, of course, the flying saucer invasion
fears and things like that a lot of you know,
Flatwood's Monster, Hopkinsville Goblins, a lot of stuff going on
around the fifties. But these three people were sitting out
on a patio, Hilda Walker, Judy Myers, and Tom Phillips.
It was hot, kind of like now, late at night.
They didn't have avery conditioning, so they're sitting out on
their porch and they thought this shadow of something flying
under the street light, and then they saw it landed
on the large branch of the contree, and they described
it as being about a six and a half foot
tall humanoid shape with you know, wings folded against its back,
and it had kind of a glow to it, like
a dull yellow glow, and it was really weird. Does
it seemed to be silhouette. They looked dressed like it
dressed in a paratrooper costume with a helmet and knee
length boots and a like a body suit. And then
after a few minutes, the light began to fade and
it vanished, and then they saw something shoot into the
sky from across the street, a torpedo shaped object. And
Hilda Walker was so freaked out by this that she
called the Houston police. They came out and then of
course ended up in the Houston Chronicle newspaper and the
name Houston batman was born. So you know, all of
the witnesses there kind of associated it with you know,
flying saucers or UFO since that was kind of so
much in the news around that time.
Speaker 1: Well, especially if it looked like it was wearing some
kind of a suit. Yeah, I mean, that's just you know,
I mean, it's bizarre enough as it is. Compare that
to the you remember about the year that Wisconsin man
bat showing up, the one that Linda Godfrey reported on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that was twenty sixteen, maybe thirteen sixteen,
somewhere in there, all right, and that.
Speaker 1: Was just kind of like a big, ugly, oversized vat
and the father and son I think became ill afterwards
after they saw it when they went.
Speaker 4: Home, correct, And they also claimed that their dog was
acting weird when they got home and they were hearing
like banging noises. So I don't know, that's interesting. We
can talk about the similarities to some of the original
mothman cases, but you know, these claims of kind of
residual hauntings and things that surround a mothman or a
flying humanoid sighting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sometimes I know that. I'm going to mention the
Keel word now. I remember Keel wrote somewhere that he
thought that some of the some of the cryptids or
apparitions or whatever that had a glow to them might
be paranormal and might not actually be a physicality.
Speaker 4: Yeah, makes sense. I mean, there aren't a lot of
glowing animals outside of lightning bugs and you know, maybe
things that live in the deep ocean. But I can't
think of a lot of life forms on this planet
that amid any type of you know, energy like that.
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit about thunderbirds, but first,
you have moved from Texas to upstate New York. Is
that correct?
Speaker 4: Yes? Correct, you know New York.
Speaker 1: Susie is your neighbor. She lives in Connecticut. Susie a
young lady right here. Sorry, there's so many He is
doing a good job at hiding den.
Speaker 5: That's been my vibe lately. I just lurk in the
shadows in the background.
Speaker 4: No, you're I'm sure you'll have some great questions here
in a moment. Yeah, well, Hidi Gabor, Connecticut, huh yeah, Connecticut. Yeah, okay,
very cool. Hey, I'm it up here. It's hot right
now because I don't have air conditioning. I'm in a
one hundred and sixteen year old house here on a
mountain in the woods. It's pretty cool, but it's very hot.
But I'm sure it'll be quite the opposite later on
this year. But I love it. It's beautiful. People are great,
very friendly, the wildlife, the just the beautiful scenery. It's
really nice.
Speaker 5: Have you gotten any local cryptid reports or anything from
your area yet?
Speaker 4: Nothing really substantial. That is a good question. See, I
knew that was coming. I've spoken to a guy named
Bruce hollandback who encountered the Kinderhook creature Kinderhook, New York,
and the Kinderhook Blob, a weird bloblike creature that was
peeking out from behind a tree. And he's only about
an hour east to me. So I've been talking to
him and I got his book and I said, hey,
I want to come out and check that out. And
of course I've studied the Beast of Whitehall just up
north of us, and we have the Champ and some
cool lake monsters in the finger Lakes, and I've done
lot of thunderbird research in northern Pennsylvania, which isn't too
far away. That's kind of a hot spot. So this
seems to be a good area. But I haven't heard
Steve in anything. You know, the Iroquois apparently referred to
Bigfoot as rock giants, and not necessarily because they were
made of rocks, but because they threw rocks, you know,
And that's a behavior that's often associated with sasquatches, that
these rocks come curly, big rocks out of the woods
of people. And so that's supposedly what the local indigenous
people thought, that these big giants throwing rocks at them.
So they talk about rock giants around here quite a bit.
Speaker 1: He's investigated the Bridgewater Triangle. I don't know if you've
ever been there. Yeah, yeah, no. And have you ever
looked at anything like a punk wedgie or little permittative
critters anywhere?
Speaker 4: Can you describe an art typical puck wedgie? I mean,
I'm vaguely familiar, but what would a puck wedge look like?
Speaker 5: Think home? Okay, the ones in the Bridgewater Triangle are
they say, they're about like three feet tall, usually described
in literature as having porcupine quills. But everyone I have
talked to you that has seen one has not described
the quills, so we're not sure where the quills came from.
But then you have the Midwest Paquajis, which have like
a blonde bob and they wear blue smocks. So it
kind of varies by region.
Speaker 1: You know, we're more stylish out here in the Midwest
where I used to live.
Speaker 4: Anyway, Now that's interesting, Well, I can say, maybe not locally,
but I've investigated some little people, if that's what we're
going to call them, in Belize, in Mexico, I investigated
some the Duende, which means tata Duende. I've investigated that
down in Central America, and then in Alaska when I
was up there filming, we did an episode on the
little people of Alaska, which have many different names in
different cultures, Urchin Rock, jinxy Ox, and Nukins. But they
basically live in little holes in the ground and they're little.
They have magical powers. They can control time and do
different things like that. So yeah, there have been a few,
you know, not certainly not to that level of your research,
but I've had a few of those cases come across
from time to time.
Speaker 1: I was actually in Belize back in seventy four. Briefly,
my buddy of mine's uncle was the Roman Catholic Bishop
of Belize. This is shortly after it changed from being
British Honduras, and we stayed in the presbytery with the priests,
and at night the cats would run up and down
the hallways chasing cockroaches the size of kayaks just about it,
So that's my memory. I didn't run into any little creatures,
but we'd got to see some Aztec ruins, and I
did make a trip over to Carl They actually see those,
which was pretty cool, otherwise known as the Rebel bass
in the first Star Wars movie. Andy, you must have
a big bursting with questions here. Maybe maybe bursting is
of the worry, but you're you know, I'm missing something
here so far.
Speaker 2: I think with us in the UK, because it was
so much smaller, cryptids don't tend to be a major
feature other than things like the august A lot less monster.
They don't tend to get reports of any other the
occasional sort of large cat that may be not quite
the home tabby. So it's not only I know and
awful about. I'm fascinated by to listening to you guys
talking about it. Of course you've got the vast, open,
huge wilderness of North America that you can have all
sorts of things lurking that will be missing for years,
decades and never be found seen. But the funnily enough,
having a conversation that we claim with friends as was
heading off to our ghost investigation, talking about big Foot specifically,
how it's such an interesting phenomenon that you have on
the two verses if you like the idea that is
some kind of unknown sort of eight like animal that's
hiding in the woods, or the interdimensional Bigfoot that appears
and reappears all by itself, and that I find that
idea the most fascinate of all the culture, that there
is this creature that is wandering around that does disappear
into other realities. It isn't for the physical. I find
that idea most fascinating. But there's not a lot over
here that really can compare. I mean, there are places
like can It Chase in the Midlands as a large
state that all sorts of things have been claimed about
over the last sort of.
Speaker 3: Decade or so, but they're a bit dubious, to be honest.
With some of the claims have been made are.
Speaker 2: Speculative shows there, and sometimes we trace all back to
one particular person who was very much the motor of
can It Chase about twenty years ago, and it seems
to have succeeded in convincing people.
Speaker 3: That there were something pursuerous going on. But it's an
area that I do find interest. As I say, but
it's not my field, don't when you questions, I'll.
Speaker 4: No, it's great if I could just tag onto that,
because I love the UK, And you know, when I
think of and you're right as far as like Bigfoot
and Sasquatch, you know that you just don't have the
habitat over there. You know, maybe in the past, but
it's and I think a lot of the researchers over
there then tend to that are into Bigfoot, tend to
fall back on those more paranormal explanations. But when I
think of the UK, I think of lots of lake monsters.
I mean, besides Messi Messi, you have lake monsters throughout Scotland, Ireland, Wales,
England and the Big Cat mystery, which I find very fascinating.
Between the Beast of x More and Bodmin Moore the service.
But then you also have some really weird things of course,
like the owl man you know from church. You have
the big gray Man of Ben mcdowey in Scotland, which
is like a big you know, like a giant that
lives on a mountain. And boy, but there's a bunch
more than a monkey man, I mean. So there's a
lot of really weird things that are reported from the UK.
Speaker 2: I think there's stories I can tell you about that.
So I've mentioned before the guys I just script back around.
I wrote a book which is a compilation of spells
and incantations section from sort of touring England and back,
a compilation from old focal Society and books. I've got
a collection off and amongst those are say direct spells, incantation,
also stories of strange crypted experiences that people have and
I've been trying to get around to compiling those together
into the book as well. And a couple that always
stick in my mind, one of which is similar thing
you just mentioned where two sailors set cells up in Scotland.
There was a group say going on a small boat
out fishing for a couple of days that we're going
to go out for And the first day they were out,
but see something landed on the top mast. They scut
has been about five foot tall with wings and glowing
red eyes, and it sat up there for a couple
of days before it off. Literally they were like looking up.
Speaker 3: With this thing about it called the brief report and
saying that what is that?
Speaker 1: What are we going to do?
Speaker 3: Let's just keep quiet and calm, and then it just
flew away, which I.
Speaker 2: Thought was really quite fascinating. Another story which I found
really strange was two young boys, I think a boy
or girl had great skin, who, according to the report,
were able to teleport a cow from a cliff down
to the sea, the sea and back up on to
the cliff. Again I don't have a bit of Apparently
these two gray beings to do it, and one of
them would speak, but the mouth wasn't moving. The force
was coming directly from their throat, which was strange. I mean,
it's just describe almost a matter of factory like that,
and you're reading the begining, Hang on, what's that? So
there are lots of stories and tales over in the
UK that, as I say, I will eventually get into
compiling these into a book, but it is just taking
me a while. But yeah, there are definitely strange phenomenons.
I'm just trying to think of one in my locally
in Somerset here, but popping was not far for already
of actually, so that's something.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm going I'm going to use this as an
opportunity to shamelessly plug my friend's book, The Unexplained Paranormals
and Encounters in the UK by Nathan Lockley. He talks
a lot about the big cat sightings.
Speaker 3: Wing snakes.
Speaker 5: Are in here, black eyed children, the pigmy and the
owl Man, lots of beasts in here. Black dogs.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was gonna say the Black Shock, that's a
good one. And uh and the Brentford Griffin. If you
never heard of that case, you know, a green dog
flying over a London suburb. That's a pretty So you
guys get You've got that magical kind of mythical aspect
over there with all that great history and legends, and
I think that adds a cool element.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, I know, research right for Griffin and.
Speaker 1: Andy the voice coming from the throat that goes back
to uh, some beliefs in demonology. The demons didn't have
any vocal cords, so the voice was just kind of
out there and.
Speaker 2: Of mind to mind communication actually experience, and they would
have to explain, but that's why, that's what they were experiencing,
that kind of more telepathy, kind of a connection actually
hearing the voice.
Speaker 1: The same with some UFO pilots. Sometimes they have the
speaker on their chest and sometimes there is no speaker,
but they're hearing a voice, but there's no lips moving.
So that's another kind of a weird thread that shows up.
So Ken, you started out writing about thunderbirds, and I
was always curious as to how things as large could
appropriate and stay hidden and so forth. I think you've
written about some of their their routes and so forth,
migration routes. So what what I just wonder what you
thought about thunderbirds when you started writing about them, if
you're thinking has changed at.
Speaker 4: All, Well, you know, I think thunderbird the name thunderbird
is kind of a compiled as it identity cryptid. To
borrow a term from Carl Schuker, he uses that well.
But you know, so there are different things getting mixed
together in terms of the so called thunderbirds so certainly
of misidentifications. There are some large birds that people aren't
familiar with or don't see very often, and sometimes it's
hard to estimate the size of how big a bird
is depending on how high it is and where you
are and so forth. Also, you know, you have kind
of two types of descriptions. I get a lot of
people that describe basically a giant raptor like you know,
like a hawk or an eagle, solid dark color, hooked beak,
usually a wingspan about fourteen or fifteen feet across on average.
And then you also have the people that describe these
prehistoric looking thunderbirds that they describe like you know, batlike,
leathery wings and kind of reptilian features like a pterosaur,
a flying reptile. So I get a lot of both
types of reports, and then I get the flying humanoid
reports to get mixed mixed in as well. But what's
interesting about thunderbirds? And I go to see Steve as
far As like compared to Bigfoot in Lake mantas like
NeSSI there's really not a lot of evidence in terms
of thunderbirds other than Native American legends and traditions from
different tribes and modern sightings and reports, but we don't
have a good controversial film even really well, we got
one controversial film. We don't have any giant feathers or
eggs or nests or giant piles of bird crap that
have appeared mysteriously on people's cars, So we know it's
not a lot of evidence. But it's just fascinating to
me because you have so many Native American legends of
these thunderbirds, which the native people were certainly familiar with
eagles and other large birds condors in some cases, so
this was described as something much greater and larger than
that often displayed on the top of a totem pole
because of its great power soaring through the air. But
I've interviewed dozens of people, credible people that seemingly credible,
people that claim that they've seen these giant winged creatures
flying around. And so that was kind of the spring
or the launch into my flying humanoid investigations because I
did an episode on thunderbirds for the show Monster Quest
back in the day, and then the next season the
producers called me back and said, hey, this was in
two thousand and nine. They said, there have been some
recent mothman sightings in Mexico, you want to go down
there and investigate those? And I said, sure, yeah, I'd
like to look into that. So I went down and
did a flying Humanoid episode from Mexico in two thousand
and nine, and once that happened, that a lot of
these Mothman and flying humanoid eyewitnesses began reaching out to
me with their accounts. You know, as you know, Steve,
when someone has had an experience like this, it's often
very therapeutic for them to reach out to an investigator
or someone that has you know, can will basically listen
without judgment or ridicule and say, okay, other people claim
they've seen that too, or you know, whatever closure they
can get, you know, or they just want to share
those So anyways, I've interviewed, subsequently interviewed dozens of people
that claim that they've either encountered the Mothman or other
creatures like Mothman.
Speaker 1: So remember tom Ury. Tom Murray one of the original witnesses,
he really saw a thunderbird. He did not see the Mothman.
It was misreported. I think it was actually originally a
misreporter by Mary Hyer who yes, and uh and Jacques
Filet and John Keel and others quoted that and really
got it, really got Tom Stander up. You know, he
would be at the Mothman Festival at one of the
tables talking about his sighting and he'd have he'd have
a Valet's book, he'd have Keel's book and he'd have
the places yellow that the way they made mistakes and
Grey Barker too, So he he confronted both Gray Barker
and John Keel about the mistake. But you know, he
originally thought that the other witnesses were saw the same
thing he did, but due to the freak out factor,
they added the details. But then he was traveling to
remember how they filmed the Mothman Prophecies, some of it
in Catanning, Pennsylvania. He was with Marcella Bennett going to
do a promotion for the film back in two thousand
and two. They told each other their stories. Marcella is
the one that was holding her infant child when he
saw this thing rise up out of the ground, and
he decided that they had actually seen different things. He
was sitting there with Linda Scarberry when she was still
with us Fade de Witt at the table at them
at one of the festivals, and you know, you think
everybody that's seen Mothman, they all know each other well
the first time they had met, and so that was
kind of cool to talk to get all their stories.
Do you remember a wave of reports of thunderbirds in
the forties? Was it in the Saint Louis area? Okay?
Speaker 4: Forty eight? Several sightings and there was even a kernel
I think his name was William Sigmund, who was an
Air Force colonel that was on an air base there.
This was mostly around Alton, Illinois, just outside of Saint Louis,
and he claimed that he saw this B twenty nine
sized airplane or bird flying over along with another colonel.
And then there were other reports too, So yeah, these
thunderbird reports seemed to come in waves. You have the forties,
as you mentioned near Saint Louis. In the early seventies,
there were you know, northern Pennsylvania Susquehanna River Valley. Also
in the mid seventies, you had another flap in Illinois
in nineteen seventy seven with the Lawndale incident where the
young boy got picked up allegedly by a thunderbird. So yeah,
and then big bird in Texas, which is how I
started my research. That was a cluster. So you have
these clusters or flaps of these big bird sightings and
then they kind of disappear for a while.
Speaker 1: Let me do my intermission here really quick. You were
listening to The High Strangers Factor copyrighted on the Paranormal
UK Radio Network. Today we are talking to Ken Gearhart
about his investigations, research and his books. Yeah. The other
Keel of course has a chapter what is it the
Flutter of black Wings or something like that, early in
the Monckmann prophecies where he covers all kinds of bizarre
winged reports and he touches on that Saint Louis flap.
And I'll never forget the one guy he quotes, some
guy that wrote he said, I've seen the thing what
was it? Three times in the last four days. And
that's too much tom foolry for a man of fifty
to take. I'm thinking, what about a man of seventy
two for crying out loud?
Speaker 4: But so yeah, and I just want to add one
thing to your West Virginia Thomas Ury. I use that
as an example when I'm talking about, you know, could
mothman be a thunderbird of of some type. There are.
I've collected at least a couple of interesting thunderbird reports
from West Virginia that described more of the traditional thunderbird creatures. So,
and of course other cryptos olds like Lauren Coleman and
I mentioned earlier, and Mark mark Hall, who sadly passed
away a few years ago, still always advocated that the
mothman was a giant owl, some kind of giant man
sized owl unknown to science, or a thunderbird or something
like that. They kind of rejected, I think, or may
still reject. I don't know. When I posted about my
new book online, Lauren put up a comment about hmm,
flying humanoids. Huh, So that's what you're going with. So
I know he and Mark Hall were close, and they
always advocated that big hoot, right, Steve, That's what they
called it, instead of big foot, it was big hoot.
It was a six foot owl.
Speaker 1: That's a big bird. Yeah. Well, if some of the
I've spoken to several excuse me, of the original witnesses,
like Linda Siegmund, for example, and you know, whatever the
heck it was, it was not a giant owl. I
don't think giant owls don't seem to create poltergeist phenomenon.
When people went home for a couple of weeks, they
had these bizarre outbreaks At the researcher named Friends and
at foul Keel into Point Pleasant a year or two later,
interviewed some of the same witnesses and more, and they
were constantly getting these reports of a Poultergeist outbreak afterwards,
suggesting something else is going on. But now you your
more recent book, it covers Mothman and other wing creatures.
What's the actual title of it.
Speaker 4: It's The Essential Guide to Mothman and Other Flying Humanoids.
Speaker 1: Okay, so how will this differ from some of your
earlier books? What else? What can we expect to find there?
Speaker 4: Well, truthfully, it's somewhat revised from a book I published
in twenty thirteen called Encounters of Flying Humanoids, but I
added a lot more in in terms of like, you know,
the Chicago Mothman case and some other modern reports that
I've collected. And I also eliminated a few cases that
I looked back on and thought, Okay, maybe that wasn't
connected or substantial or whatever. And you know, I consulted
with a lot of people you know, yourself included, and
other people. Just to make sure that. I've written two
other books, Essential Guides. One is the Essential Guide to
Bigfoot and one is the Essential Guide to the Lockness
Monster and other aquatic cryptids. And what I try to
offer the reader is very accurate, objective information because we
live in a day and age with social media and
all of these channels where there's just a lot of
storytelling and you know, if you can watch, you know
not to be a cryptid snob, Steve, but I'm sure
you're the same way if you watch a bunch of
short YouTube videos on the mothmn that these people are
putting together for like ten minutes, and they're full of inaccuracies,
and you're watching it going, no, that's not right, that
wasn't the right, you know. So you want to provide
the reader with the most accurate, different information so that
they can make their own judgments and determinations as far
as what they think really happened, you know, or what
could be going on. So yeah, so some new cases
in there, the Ottawa Angel from Canada that was in
twenty thirteen, and some flying humanoid cases from West Texas.
I investigated that described a twelve foot winged humanoid with
angelic wings and long flowing hair and other weird features.
Speaker 1: So did you ever look into the e calls Ika
ls Oh, yeah, Central America. Yeah, little guys who seem
to have jet packs on their back or something like that.
Speaker 4: They live in caves, you know. Yeah, yeah, there's a
lot of those, you know, and I talk about that
as well, because you know, with regard to flying humanoids,
and you know, there's there are some connections I think,
in terms of these different types, even though the physical
descriptions often vary dramatically from what we think of in
terms of the tradition mothman archetype from from Scarberry and
Bennett and all those other eyewitnesses Connie Carpenter. But you know,
there are there are some similarities in the cases. But
there's also a lot of evidence in antiquity, if we
look back at ancient mythologies and legends as far back
as seventeen three hundred years ago, there's a cave painting
in France of something called the Birdman of Lascaux, which
is basically a man figure with a bird's head no wings.
But that's weird. An anthropomorphic creature. And then you know,
the ancient Assyrians had the Apcalu, these winged humanoids from
the sky. The ancient I think the Assyrians actually I'm sorry,
was Pezuzu. Sumerians were the Apcollo, but you know, Pazusu was.
You know, we're mentioning demons earlier. You know, Pazuzu was
a demon, a winged demon, but it had a human
shaped form, and it was often associated with disasters. You know,
they if Pazuzu came, that meant there was going to
be a flood or a famine or some horrible catastrophe.
So it's interesting you find that theme, you know, thousands
of years ago, and another on another continent.
Speaker 3: Harsh wings from the west, the lion's head on the wings.
Speaker 1: Yes, is that the one that showed up in the
beginning of The exorcistem Okay was framed.
Speaker 3: We have no proof it was him, you know, actually him,
but it's become demonalized. Of course.
Speaker 1: I just wonder how much he got paid. There was
probably only scale.
Speaker 3: You know, it's fool would fit would describe me here
with the wings especially?
Speaker 1: Yeah, very cool. You know I had a couple other
really good questions, and I didn't write them down, so
I've lost them. So I know another back to thunderbirds
a little bit. What about the bizarre case. I mean
there is uh well, I know, before we get to that,
some of these things, you know, as you know, I'm Achelian,
and what I don't believe all these things are, you know,
trans modifications of energy or altra terrestrials or whatever. It
is possible that some of these that are more ethereal
more paranormal, perhaps the same source, whatever that may be,
is responsible for them, and they manifest in different ways,
you know, So perhaps it's the same energy or whatever
in some cases, but it just comes about in different ways.
But what I was wanted to you to talk about
was the case was it in Illinois where that a
young child was actually picked up by something by a
large bird? I mean that puts it right in the
physical Yes.
Speaker 4: Eight point thirty on the evening of July twenty fifth,
nineteen seventy seven, Londale, Illinois, there was a young boy
named Marlon Lowe. He was nine years old. He weighed
about sixty five pounds. He was playing hide and seek
with two other friends in the yard. Travis Goodwin and
Michael Thompson I think, and his parents and two family friends.
The adults were out in the yard doing something as well,
and in front of all of these seven eye witnesses,
these two great birds swooped down. One of them dove
it one of Marlin's friends, and then the eventually came
and picked up Marlin by his shirt strap he was
wearing a tank top and carried him for about thirty
feet just off the ground while he fought back and
kicked and fought his way free. And then the birds
flew off together. And Marlon's mother, Ruth, who witnessed the
whole thing, obviously was horrified. She debated whether she should
call anyone because she didn't think she'd be believed, but
ultimately she was concerned for other children's safety, so she
contacted the local police and then it became the Lawndale incident.
So yeah, that's a you know, are pretty weird case.
You know, if you consider the weight of Marlon Lowe
at sixty five pounds, generally speaking, a bird of prey
can only pick up about half its body maybe, you know,
I mean, they're birds, even big birds are very lightweight.
They have hollow bones, and they're not. They have powerful
claus but you know the physics, so it's weird, you know.
And then local officials, much like sandhill cranes have been
brought up and where they art a mothman. All the
local people in Illinois, the walle if officials said, oh,
those are just turkey vultures. Well, certainly turkey vultures are
not able to pick up anything. They don't have the
strength in their talents. So that that's a famous case.
And Steve, I've got a great set, if you don't
mind me taking me a taking a segue here, because
you were talking about you like this as achilium. So
a few years ago I interviewed several eyewitnesses who claim
to have seen something called the dog Man, which is
anthropomorphic creature with ahetable wolf for a dog and a
human like body. So for a project, I interviewed many
people who claim to have encountered this dog man phenomenon.
And what occurred to me after all of these interviews
is that it's except for the physical description of the
creature itself, all of the particular surrounding the incidents in
terms of the trauma, the hyper aggressive behavior, the weird
glowing eyes and glows and weird is just like mothman
and flying humanoids. So I think Keel would take that
opportunity to say that in fact, this is the same phenomenon,
and whatever this thing is that's manifesting, these monsters that
are scaring people have to death take different forms, and
sometimes it's a winged creature, but sometimes it may be
something like a wolfheaded or you know, were wolf type
of creature. Sometimes it might be another type of monster.
You know, for all kinds of different descriptions of weird
creatures that don't fit into the paradigm of natural history.
So their physical descriptions are too weird to be anything
that evolved on our planet. But when you look at
the trauma and all the residual you know, Linda Godfrey
would have talked. You know, she was the see one
of the first investigators of the dog man phenomenon, and
she found these patterns wherein you know, people would see
dog Man and there were these weird green mists that
would appear when they were having their sighting, and there
were weird crackling and popping noises like there was an
electricity in the air, and residual hauntings to the eyewitnesses
or multiple experience or UFO sightings. I don't know about
men in black. I can't think of any dog what
it is they got.
Speaker 1: But she found a correlation with some of the epigy
mounds in southern Wisconsin, and they wind up perfectly with
some of the groupings of dog man reports and most
specifically panther epigy mounds and spirit epigy mounds. Isn't that bizarre?
Speaker 3: And I was.
Speaker 1: I've spoken at the Beast of Bray Road conference a
couple of times, and the great part of that is
have you been out there? Have you been out to
Lee Hample's farm?
Speaker 4: No? No, I know who he is, but I haven't
been to his property.
Speaker 1: What he does is he'll for for two hours. You'll
sit there in his barn and they'll show you photographs
that he's taken in that area, uh, with trap cameras,
and there's bizarre things in the sky. There's footprints of
these things that start nowhere, split into two like two creatures,
and then go off and end somewhere. I mean, it's
just and he's taken thousands of these And when he
tells the story about how when he moved, you know,
and he retired. He's a mathematician and a chemist. And
when his neighbors said, you know, there's a werewolf those
lives back in those woods, he's looking at him like
like they're crazy. But then he sees it himself. He
a couple of times, and he has missing time himself.
It's uh, you know, you're you're right. The whatever this
thing is does seem to be surrounded by something truly bizarre.
And and you talk about those mists, he uh, he's
got he's he's standing there on his he's captured by
his trap camera. There's a mist that's surrounding him and
he doesn't see it in real time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's pretty weird stuff. And I guess when when
you investigate all these different types of cases, to me,
it really comes down to two possible I won't say explanations,
because I think a lot of this stuff is really
beyond our understanding at this point. But there's the kilium
theory that there is the quote unquote cosmic joker, some
type of ultraterrestrial intelligence that is, for whatever reason, this
intelligence is manifesting and kind of interacting with us in
these ways that we don't understand. And then the other
possibility is that this is a phenomenon from within ourselves,
and that somehow we are able to project or manifest
like a tulpa, some type of physical creature into our
reality for a brief moment of time. And I don't
understand or couldn't explain the mechanics of how that could
be possible. But there's just so much we don't know about,
you know, the powers of like I say, magical powers,
but you know what we're capable of, you know, in
terms of our interaction with our reality.
Speaker 5: I have a very important question for you. Between a
dog man and mothman, who do you think would win
in a fight?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 4: Well, I think that's I think that's a sci fi
movie in the making.
Speaker 1: Let's see, remember when they used to make those really
cheesy movies for what Friday or Saturday Night, Just awful
stuff with the worst cgi imaginable.
Speaker 4: But go ahead, that's no let's see. Well, mothman certainly
has the power of flight, so he can attack from above,
so that's pretty intimidating. But some of these dog man
that people describe are pretty powerful, you know, like like
a big sasquatch, seven feet tall with these broad shoulders
and sharp, razor sharp teeth. So I think Mothman we
don't even know if it has a mouth, right, So
maybe dog Man would just bite, bite poor Mothman to death.
I don't know, that's a that's a great question.
Speaker 5: Mothman's known to make that high pitch squeak. Yeah, maybe
that's just what our ears can register. You can make
an even higher pitch noise. It would be like a
dog whistle for the dog man and scare him away.
Speaker 1: No, let me tell you as an expert, Mothman expert,
don't let h there's somebody that doesn't want to hear that.
Speaker 3: But uh not here.
Speaker 1: But uh, what Mathlam would do is simply chase the
dog man. Just stay a little bit out of reach.
Dog Man would be snipping at him and going nuts,
and that's all he would do. He just chase him
until he uh.
Speaker 5: Well, dogs don't seem to like Mothman or they don't
fare well with him sometimes.
Speaker 1: Well perhaps you know if those some of those stories
are true. But we were actually the uh uh, the
Merle Partridge encounter with Bandit his dog. He clarified that
I think I think some of the Keel's problems were, uh,
those faceless energery, because if you read a report he
did on Mural Partridge and bandit, it's it's much more accurate.
It's it's actually an accurate report. In the Mockman prophecies,
it implies that it was the Mothman, when actually he
told Jeff Walmsley they were just kind of spinning lights.
It was implied it was electrical. So we don't even
know that Mothman was the culprit for Mural Partridge. And
I still see books printed with his name incorrect new
Cartridge that was Barker and Keel got that from his
birth certificate. It was misspelled in this actually.
Speaker 4: Mural Partridge, not to anybody cares, but you know, no,
we got to keep facts matter.
Speaker 1: If I was he's no longer with us, But if
I was alive and will and they were mispronouncing my
name in books all over the place, I'd be pretty angry.
I think, well, I think we're getting we're getting close
to our time here. So so Ken, give us a
tell us about the books you have available where people
can find you and any are you guys hearing story anything?
Speaker 3: Yes, I understand it.
Speaker 1: Must be my must be my awesome voice or something
that's weird. Okay, but anyway, Yeah, give us, give us
a lowdown on what how to find you and things
you've got coming up. Of course we'll talk about the
Mothman Festival again. Schedule, it's not I'm assuming you'll be
speaking on Saturday, but I believe Saturday at two is okay,
very good.
Speaker 4: Well, thank you, Thank you guys for having me great conversation.
I expected that for sure. Yeah. My news book is
the Essential Guide to Mothman and other Flying Humanoids. I've
also written The Essential Guide to the Lockness Monster and
Other Aquatic Cryptids, Any Essential Guide to Bigfoot, among others.
You can find them all on Amazon dot com, many
of them in kindle form as well. If people can
go to my website Kengearhard dot com and there's different
links to buy the books. I do online courses on
cryptozoology and different cryptids, and a couple of cool events
coming up. I'm going to be, as you mentioned, at
Mothman Festival. I'll also be at Goblin Con in Hopkinsville,
Kentucky in October is the fiftieth anniversary of the Kelly
Hopkinsville Goblin invasion, which is a pretty cool story. And
so you know a few Bigfoot conferences here and there
along the way as well.
Speaker 1: So is there a place that if people have had
experiences or siting scandy contact you on your website?
Speaker 4: Yes, if you go to my website, there's actually a
tab at the top that says report is siting, and
you can fill out a brief description. And I, of
course always will honor someone's privacy and anonymity if they
don't want their name or anything published. Of course I'm
not going to do that, but I do like to
collect those reports and add them to my database for
you know who knows evidence.
Speaker 1: Actually. Well, Ken, thank you so much for being here.
And if if lady and gentlemen, do you have any
parting questions or for comments for Ken?
Speaker 2: Ye, I'm good, Okay, I'm must be boiling him. I
can think interesting. It's mean to you as I say, And.
Speaker 1: I can tell you Susie's question about who would who
would beat the other one mothman or the dog man
was totally unscripted. Okay, let me do, let me do.
Everybody sit tight, let me do the close out again. Ken,
thanks for coming, Thank you all. The heightst Rangis Factor
was created by Steve Ward and Any Mercer, and it's
copywritered on the Paranormal UK Radio Network. Our Fearless Leader
is at the network our I ring, Alan block, Mark
Johnson and Andy Mercer. Andy is also producer of the
show and composer of the closing theme. Brian Zeller composed
the opening theme for the show. Susie Bastile provided the
extremely connection otherwise nobody'd hear us. And I can also
be heard on mcmlloney's Military X Files as a correspondent
every week, and I often do a refringe report at
that time. And macloney's Military X Files can also be
heard on this network and many other platforms. And I
am Steve Lord, your humble host here on the Highest
Rangess Factor. Displaced Michigander deep in the Ohio Valley, living
on the same road that the Mothman chased the two
couples on November fifteenth, nineteen sixty six. We will see
you all again in about a fortnight, closer to a
fortnite this time than usual here on the Paranormal UK
Radio Network. Take care