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Speaker 1: All right, Bigfoot Society, You've got the privilege of talking
Speaker 1: to mister Tom Powell today. You may know Tom from
Speaker 1: some books that he's written. He's written a few for example,
Speaker 1: you know there's The Locals and his newest book, which
Speaker 1: is Planet Strange, and we'll be talking about that later.
Speaker 1: Tom has also been involved with many different Bigfoot related
Speaker 1: things over the years. He's written many Bigfoot books as well.
Speaker 1: But welcome to the show. Tom. How's it going tonight?
Speaker 2: Great?
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me on absolutely. You know, you're one
Speaker 1: of the individuals that I've definitely wanted to talk to
Speaker 1: over the years, and listeners will well know this, I think,
Speaker 1: but trying to you know, one of my favorite books
Speaker 1: is from back in the Day's Oregon big Foot Highway,
Speaker 1: which you did not write, but you were involved with
Speaker 1: as being one of the members of the Clackamis Sasquatchians, which.
Speaker 2: Joe, Joe just kind of threw that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Joe's been a friend of mine for
Speaker 3: I don't know, at least a decade, maybe longer by no,
Speaker 3: but know them well and us.
Speaker 2: He addresses the the drainage that I live in the
Speaker 2: Clacamus River. Oh, okay, I'm clo sort of the mouth
Speaker 2: of the river. I'm on the other side of Esticada,
Speaker 2: but the National Forest is upstream on the river from Sticada, Oregon,
Speaker 2: So that's sort of the the point of demarcation between
Speaker 2: the upper drainage where all the National forest land is
Speaker 2: and then the lower part of the river, which is
Speaker 2: a mix of ownership, some state, some private so on.
Speaker 1: That's fantastic. You know, an individual like yourself, where you've
Speaker 1: been in this field for many different years. I do
Speaker 1: like to start off with what was the catalyst point
Speaker 1: that got you into this big Foot field? To begin with, well,
Speaker 1: I read.
Speaker 2: Books back in the eighties. You know. Peter Burn and
Speaker 2: Don Hunter had a book which was pretty unspectacted, but
Speaker 2: there were others, but they were all pretty similar. I
Speaker 2: had seen John Green's book, but as a teacher, I
Speaker 2: was a science teacher for my whole career, and I
Speaker 2: confess that I ridiculed the subject and used it as
Speaker 2: an example of pseudo science. And every year I would
Speaker 2: do a throwaway lesson on the day before Christmas vacation
Speaker 2: when curriculum wasn't a priority because the kids were pretty
Speaker 2: wound up and half the class had already left for Maui.
Speaker 2: So I did a Bigfoot presentation. The school district had
Speaker 2: that in search of with Leonard Nieboy, and I'd show
Speaker 2: it on my sixteen millimeter movie projector and it held
Speaker 2: the kids' attention on a tough day. But I did
Speaker 2: make every joke in the book, although I was aware
Speaker 2: that there was this guy out there, Peter Burn, who
Speaker 2: was working in, among other places, the Clacamus Rivers, and he,
Speaker 2: you know, was very serious about his quest to find
Speaker 2: good evidence. You know, capture one.
Speaker 4: Who knows, and but I just made light of the
Speaker 4: whole thing for purposes of a you know, filling a
Speaker 4: tough day in the curriculum.
Speaker 2: I will say after I watched that movie countless times
Speaker 2: in search of with Leonard Nimoy, and it too is
Speaker 2: not memorable. It's just a bunch of talking heads, you know,
Speaker 2: there isn't any action. But I watched it and watched it,
Speaker 2: and I did find that, you know, Grover Krantz's contributions
Speaker 2: were pretty compelling, so that got me curious. But I
Speaker 2: lived in Portland, so it wasn't really something that I
Speaker 2: had a lot of direct experience with until I bought
Speaker 2: a place out on the Clacamus River, which I did
Speaker 2: just because the kayaking and rafting was good and I
Speaker 2: had a moonlight occupation teaching kayaking canoeing classes. So I
Speaker 2: bought a place on the Clackamas River and one of
Speaker 2: the neighbors came over one day for a beer. They
Speaker 2: were boarding horses on my property at the time, and
Speaker 2: he volunteered that, you know that bigfoot thing, well we
Speaker 2: get that out here. And I was a little bit
Speaker 2: surprised that I not only didn't take it seriously, But
Speaker 2: I had no idea that it was, you know, that
Speaker 2: it manifested so close to town and in the area
Speaker 2: where I had now just bought a piece of property.
Speaker 2: Then I saw a sign on the country store bulletin
Speaker 2: board saying there was a guy who was who collected
Speaker 2: Bigfoot sightings and his name was Frank Kineaster. He lived
Speaker 2: in Estacada. Yes. I called him up and said, hey,
Speaker 2: I do this thing every year, and it would be
Speaker 2: really nice if I could have some kind of thing
Speaker 2: to show the kids in addition to this movie. Do
Speaker 2: you have anything? He goes, well, you know, we cherished
Speaker 2: these artifacts, but I could lend it to you. And
Speaker 2: I said, all right, perfect, perfect. So he lent me
Speaker 2: a track cast, and he had a few other artifacts,
Speaker 2: you know, twisted stick and things like that that he
Speaker 2: thought were, you know, attributable to this asquatch. Well, one
Speaker 2: thing led to another, and I started sort of following
Speaker 2: the subject on my own, and then I stumbled across
Speaker 2: Matthew Moneymakers BFRO website. And this was probably in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety four, and so it was a pretty primitive website
Speaker 2: by today's standards. But being a mercurial fellow that he is,
Speaker 2: he had trouble holding on to investigators. They would work
Speaker 2: with him for a while and then his as slightly
Speaker 2: intense personality would be off putting. But he had a
Speaker 2: bunch of people quit on him, and so he didn't
Speaker 2: have anyone looking into the local sightings that he was
Speaker 2: getting from my immediate area. So I started doing that
Speaker 2: for him, bowing up on sightings, and for a while,
Speaker 2: everything in the Pacific Northwest went through my computer and
Speaker 2: a crossed my desk. Eventually it became overwhelming as the
Speaker 2: subject expanded. Every time he would get on a show
Speaker 2: like Art Bell back in the day, then he would
Speaker 2: just be flooded with sighting reports. And really at times
Speaker 2: like that, I was overwhelmed as well. So I just
Speaker 2: cherry picked the sightings and took the best ones or
Speaker 2: the closest ones, or the most interesting ones. But then
Speaker 2: I started seeing the patterns, and I'm saving everything on
Speaker 2: my computer, and eventually I got to the point where
Speaker 2: I had seen people's computers crash and they lose everything
Speaker 2: on their herd. And that's when I started writing it
Speaker 2: all down because I just felt like I started to
Speaker 2: get some of this stuff off of my computer and
Speaker 2: and into print, and so I basically contacted a bunch
Speaker 2: of the witnesses and interviewed them and uh and and
Speaker 2: wrote it all down. And then one of the witnesses
Speaker 2: told Matthew Moneymaker I was working on a book. He
Speaker 2: was he was sure that it was a tell all
Speaker 2: book that was going to make him look bad and
Speaker 2: uh and that was the locals and quite the opposite.
Speaker 2: But anyway, so that was the end of my involvement
Speaker 2: with b fro uh. But you know, I was kind
Speaker 2: of done with them anyway, because I had learned the
Speaker 2: patterns and I knew that there were instances where uh,
Speaker 2: someone saw a bigfoot dissolved into finn air. There are
Speaker 2: people who have had nonverbal communication telepathy, if you will,
Speaker 2: and there were multiple examples of that that I had
Speaker 2: available to me in the late nineties. So then I
Speaker 2: started looking for people who were having repeat sightings because
Speaker 2: then I finally decided, well, this is the this is
Speaker 2: the gold standard. You know, the cat's pajamas is these
Speaker 2: people who are having the things come around repeatedly. And
Speaker 2: there were some. There was one couple in a place
Speaker 2: called Blockhouse Washington near Goldendale, eastern Washington, and they had
Speaker 2: them coming out of the woods and sitting around in
Speaker 2: plain sight. They even set a picnic table over on
Speaker 2: the edge of their property and people would come out
Speaker 2: and the sasquatch would sit there and keeping their distance.
Speaker 2: And then the people said, don't stare at them. They know,
Speaker 2: you know, they they don't like being looked at, but
Speaker 2: just just act like it's nothing. But there these things
Speaker 2: were coming around on a semi routine basis, and that's
Speaker 2: when I met Alan in April. Why and they live
Speaker 2: up near Mount Rainier. And one of the things I
Speaker 2: had learned from gathering all the siding reports is that
Speaker 2: there are hot spots and the closer you get to
Speaker 2: Mount Rainier, the more stuff happens. And Alan and April
Speaker 2: lived within I don't know, twenty miles a Mountainier, and
Speaker 2: so I started going out there and interviewing them, and
Speaker 2: they described, oh, yeah, there's three different generations. We call
Speaker 2: them Grandpa, Grandma, mom and dad, and then the youngsters.
Speaker 2: But there's three different generations. We see them. My daughter
Speaker 2: sees them the most. She sees them when she's on horseback.
Speaker 2: Quite often, horses are pretty aware of their surroundings and
Speaker 2: then they their their ears point at things that are
Speaker 2: happening in the so, you know, I had seen this before,
Speaker 2: but they were a really good example of of this
Speaker 2: repeat encounter stuff. They have kept a bunch of bunnies
Speaker 2: and hutches on their property, and they learned that the
Speaker 2: sasquatches were able to open the hutches, and the sasquatches
Speaker 2: would take the the young rabbits but leave the breeders alone.
Speaker 2: So they seem to understand that, you know, it was
Speaker 2: not in their own interest to take the uh, the
Speaker 2: breeding rabbits, but rather the offspring whatever they're called in
Speaker 2: and rabbit raising. But the main thing I was, of
Speaker 2: course interested in was a place to set up cameras,
Speaker 2: and they acquiesced and I got my hands on some
Speaker 2: early trail cams that were crazy expensive by today's standards,
Speaker 2: six hundred dollars for these things back then, and we
Speaker 2: started putting cameras around the property. Meanwhile I had well, actually,
Speaker 2: one of the most interesting things was I was aware
Speaker 2: of this situation in Oklahoma where the sasquatches were raiding
Speaker 2: an outdoor fridge. So I happened to ask Alan in April,
Speaker 2: have you ever seen this? And they said yes. In fact,
Speaker 2: they had not put two and two together. All they
Speaker 2: knew is that every once in a while they'd come
Speaker 2: out and the and the fridge door was open in
Speaker 2: the morning, and and Alan, the patriarch, would would scold
Speaker 2: the kids for leaving the door open, and they said,
Speaker 2: we didn't do that, we wouldn't. Well, then he noticed
Speaker 2: that a side of a pig disappeared from the freezer.
Speaker 2: There were ice cream bars in there that were untouched,
Speaker 2: but the side of a pig disappeared. And they have
Speaker 2: a pig roast every year, you know, Polynesian thing. They
Speaker 2: bury it and the coals and everything. Well they're they're
Speaker 2: pig vanished. And ice cream bars were untouched. So that
Speaker 2: sort of ruled out neighborhood kids. And I hadn't seen
Speaker 2: enough in other places that I was like, no, no,
Speaker 2: they do that. And so we of course put a
Speaker 2: camera on the fridge and made sure the fridge was
Speaker 2: stocked with things. Nothing happened, and the activity shifted to
Speaker 2: another part of the property, so we moved the cameras
Speaker 2: over there. Well, then the fridge got hit again when
Speaker 2: the camera wasn't on it. So little by little it
Speaker 2: started to appear that they understood what we were doing,
Speaker 2: and they were reverse to the cameras. Every time we
Speaker 2: would put the cameras in the location where they where
Speaker 2: the activity was, the activity would stop. Took me a
Speaker 2: while to put two and two together, and I eventually
Speaker 2: came to that conclusion. But my colleagues that in BFRO
Speaker 2: were still pretty skeptical. You know, in those days, no
Speaker 2: one was assigning the Sasquatches with the degree of intelligence
Speaker 2: that enabled them to understand and avoid cameras. Well. Now
Speaker 2: we laugh at that. I mean, you know, when when
Speaker 2: people say I don't I don't enjoy it. I just
Speaker 2: wanted to go away, what should I do? I tell
Speaker 2: them to put out a camera. That'll stop it for sure,
Speaker 2: And and it really does. And over and over again,
Speaker 2: we we put cameras in the woods and had them
Speaker 2: either dismantled, powered down, pulled off the tree, and left
Speaker 2: face down in the ground. Just just a whole bunch
Speaker 2: of things like that that all point to the same thing.
Speaker 2: They understand and are averse to this idea of cameras.
Speaker 2: And so that was one of the chapters in the
Speaker 2: locals that was sort of groundbreaking, at least in the
Speaker 2: time early two thousands. And then the whole idea of habituation,
Speaker 2: that there are people who have the sasquatches, you know,
Speaker 2: come around on some sort of semi routine basis. That
Speaker 2: was that was new with the time, isn't anymore.
Speaker 1: There's I want to jump in and make a connection
Speaker 1: for some listeners that might not get something that was
Speaker 1: said a few minutes ago. The locals is probably one
Speaker 1: of the I would consider it the best source of
Speaker 1: knowledge about what is considered by the community right now.
Speaker 1: The siege at O Nubby in Oklahoma.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's where that's that's where I first learned about
Speaker 2: the outdoor freezers.
Speaker 1: Right exactly. Yeah, how how uh so were you involved
Speaker 1: with with interviewing anyone involved with that?
Speaker 2: Was the guy of that household and he shot him.
Speaker 2: He shot at once and he he felt that he
Speaker 2: hit and there was blood on the ground, and he
Speaker 2: he relayed that to uh, Matt and myself, and Matt
Speaker 2: of course said, don't touch thing. We're sunning the team
Speaker 2: right there. We'll we'll handle it from here. Well, in retrospect,
Speaker 2: that was a mistake. It was a terrible rainstorm and
Speaker 2: it all washed away.
Speaker 1: Really wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so if anybody's ever in that position, don't
Speaker 2: don't wait an hour to get out there and get
Speaker 2: the tissue sample or whatever it is. But it is
Speaker 2: kind of of a weird coincidence that I don't think
Speaker 2: is as much of a coincidence as people think that
Speaker 2: when you know, something like that happens, in comes this
Speaker 2: rainstorm on and nowhere and washes the evidence away. There
Speaker 2: is a tribe I think it's in Wisconsin, and their
Speaker 2: name for the Sasquatch, which I forget what it is,
Speaker 2: but it translates into he who makes the wind blow. Wow.
Speaker 2: So there's something weird about weather with these things. And
Speaker 2: let's just say, I'm I suspect that they have powers
Speaker 2: that are a lot more sophisticated than we realize.
Speaker 1: Absolutely so, in your your opinion, because you were able
Speaker 1: to talk to these the individuals that were involved with this,
Speaker 1: you know firsthand, it sounds like it was an event
Speaker 1: that absolutely actually happened.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh absolutely, And and like I say, they
Speaker 2: were we're having repeat visitations. One of the things that
Speaker 2: was happening was that they were pulling the screen, they
Speaker 2: were messing with the windows and tearing the screen off,
Speaker 2: the off the window and and and doing things that
Speaker 2: started to become menacing. And and that's when said I
Speaker 2: just wanted to go away. I don't like this thing.
Speaker 2: I'm not interested in gathering evidence. I want these things
Speaker 2: out of here. I met the guy. I went to
Speaker 2: Oklahoma for one of these festivals that they had right
Speaker 2: there in that area. And one of the people who
Speaker 2: attended was one of the neighbors. And he brought me
Speaker 2: over and showed me the place, and and man, I
Speaker 2: met a couple of different times, and you know, he
Speaker 2: he was very concerned about the safety of his family.
Speaker 2: It wasn't interested in gathering Bigfoot evidence. But he was
Speaker 2: willing to uh play ball at least for a while
Speaker 2: with b FRORO before he got a little exasperated with
Speaker 2: their their ways of being and so on and so forth.
Speaker 2: But you know that it was it was in the
Speaker 2: early days when when the sort of attempts to gather
Speaker 2: better information were quite ham handed.
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, it's such an interesting story from you know,
Speaker 1: twenty some odd years ago. And it's hard to track
Speaker 1: down individuals. I know there was individual he's like a
Speaker 1: private investigator but also part of the BFO. And I
Speaker 1: don't even know if he's around anymore.
Speaker 2: To be honest, but well, one guy was an airline
Speaker 2: pilot pilot, one guy was a hunter. Matt put together
Speaker 2: a group of three or four guys who went down there,
Speaker 2: all card carrying BFIRO But like I said, by the
Speaker 2: time they got there, the evidence was washed away and
Speaker 2: they didn't really have a good idea about what to
Speaker 2: do when anyway, But eventually, you know that the activity stopped,
Speaker 2: as it always does, especially once you know all the
Speaker 2: official investigators show up. You know when unfamiliar cars start
Speaker 2: pulling in and then that destabilizes a situation.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, I mean it's yeah, it makes it totally different.
Speaker 1: You know. Another thing that you were involved with is
Speaker 1: uh I believe you were actually the individual that found
Speaker 1: the imprint that was then used to make the Scukam
Speaker 1: cast and Scukam medals and Gifford Pinchot. Is that correct?
Speaker 2: No, I didn't find it, okay, Derek and rit Nole
Speaker 2: were the ones who who stumbled across it. But we
Speaker 2: were in the Mount Saint Helen's area for a better
Speaker 2: part of a week. We were being followed around by
Speaker 2: an Australian film crew that did a show back then
Speaker 2: called Animal X. Right, so you know you can imagine
Speaker 2: what that's about. Lockness, Monster, Bigfoot, the works. And so
Speaker 2: for this episode, they they came out and they had
Speaker 2: an early thermal camera. The batteries didn't work it, it
Speaker 2: didn't hold the charge, and in it, you know, seemed
Speaker 2: to be a promising thing because you could see into
Speaker 2: the night. But we never got anything with it. But
Speaker 2: that was the big technological uh innovation that had just
Speaker 2: sort of come on the scene back then. But they
Speaker 2: weren't getting anything after a week or so of of
Speaker 2: hanging out and trying all these different things. So on
Speaker 2: our last night before we all had to you know,
Speaker 2: get back to town, the offices had to get back home.
Speaker 2: But they didn't have anything and were sort of like, look,
Speaker 2: what are we gonna do? And I said, well, all right,
Speaker 2: can I make a suggestion here. You guys have been
Speaker 2: sneaking around a lot. Well, I know these people Allan
Speaker 2: in April, and what I know is that they know
Speaker 2: your tricks and traps. The Saskes are up at Allan
Speaker 2: and Apriles. They were on to us, and they knew
Speaker 2: the cameras and and so instead of sneaking around and
Speaker 2: trying tricks, why don't you try a different approach, and
Speaker 2: they said, okay, what do you got in mind? And
Speaker 2: I said, gestures of friendliness, accommendation. You know, we got
Speaker 2: all this food that isn't like. We got a case
Speaker 2: of peaches sitting here. Put them out somewhere and and
Speaker 2: just see if they don't, you know, take them, but
Speaker 2: but don't put the cameras on them, and don't hide
Speaker 2: in the bush. Just just put them out there and
Speaker 2: as a gesture of friendlinessconciliation. And they said okay. So
Speaker 2: they took it off and drove up the road and
Speaker 2: found a big pull out on the side of the
Speaker 2: road where they turn around, logging trucks and big mud
Speaker 2: puddle in the middle of it, and they put the
Speaker 2: apples and peaches there in the center of the this
Speaker 2: kind of shot over turnaround in the middle of a
Speaker 2: forest road. And that's where they went back the next
Speaker 2: day to check their food and and that's when they
Speaker 2: found the big impression. And all I remember is that
Speaker 2: they came racing back to camp snow that night, and
Speaker 2: snow was melting in the morning, and they came roaring
Speaker 2: into camp and said, you gotta zee this, Come here,
Speaker 2: Come here, come here. We jumped in the car, and
Speaker 2: to their credit, they did notice that it there was
Speaker 2: an impression. They were, of course looking for footprints, you know,
Speaker 2: that's all we were ever looking for. It's footprints. But
Speaker 2: all of a sudden they at least Rick Rick Noele
Speaker 2: especially recognized that that that's that's something else, but that
Speaker 2: wasn't here before and uh and so push came to shove.
Speaker 2: What they deduced was that the thing sat down and
Speaker 2: reached for the fruit, perhaps so as not to leave
Speaker 2: the footprints that we were looking for.
Speaker 1: That's extremely interesting because there would be I mean, logically,
Speaker 1: there'd be no scukam cast if you hadn't had made
Speaker 1: that suggestion, which is pretty correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's it. That's incredible. It really you know, it
Speaker 1: makes you think, you know, you start thinking outside the box. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Hey, they listened because you know, they all had their
Speaker 2: ideas on letting you. The funny thing was there was
Speaker 2: actually a degree of fear. Derek showed up with a
Speaker 2: landscaping trailer that he slept in, had no windows and
Speaker 2: had one door and he would lock it from the inside.
Speaker 2: And then here I am sleeping in my ARII tent
Speaker 2: with you know, two mil nylone and uh, and I
Speaker 2: don't know, a few of the guys had guns and stuff,
Speaker 2: but Derek was sleeping in this fortified trailer because you know,
Speaker 2: he wasn't sure, but that his safety was not on
Speaker 2: the line, and so that that was, you know, it
Speaker 2: was kind of humorous how how different, uh, the approaches
Speaker 2: were back then, and how unsure people were about putting
Speaker 2: themselves out there. But they did listen when I said
Speaker 2: quit the tricks and traps. It didn't work a fair
Speaker 2: at Mountaineer, and once we started being accommodating, they started
Speaker 2: cooperating at least a little. But there they wouldn't appear
Speaker 2: on camera. But but then I finally found a work
Speaker 2: around on that, and that is I met this psychic
Speaker 2: dude through Ray Crow in the Western Bigfoot Society, and
Speaker 2: he felt like he had communication. His name was Steve Fredericks,
Speaker 2: and I said, Steve, all right, well, you know we
Speaker 2: got this area, and we got these cameras and we've
Speaker 2: been putting them out for two years, so let's try something.
Speaker 2: Will you please use your juju to ask for permissions?
Speaker 2: And that kind of worked. He said, well, he said,
Speaker 2: he called me back after he felt like he had
Speaker 2: had the com intact and uh. He said, they were
Speaker 2: very impressed that you asked. And but he also he said,
Speaker 2: there's a thing and that is we don't we have
Speaker 2: a rule against being seen, and we also have a
Speaker 2: rule against being photographed. This is what he was claiming
Speaker 2: he received by way of a you know, a telepathic response.
Speaker 2: And but then within two days Alan calls me up
Speaker 2: and said, we got something on the camera for the
Speaker 2: first time, and it was a shadow. But it was
Speaker 2: a shadow that looked for all the world like the
Speaker 2: upper torso of a of a you know, primate, something upright,
Speaker 2: and it was the It was the first and best
Speaker 2: thing we ever got on the cameras and it was
Speaker 2: within two days of of of Steve asking. Uh. Now,
Speaker 2: I did not tell Alan in April that I was
Speaker 2: doing this, you know, trying to do a single blind
Speaker 2: psychological you know, you can't let each side of the
Speaker 2: experiment know what the other, you know. I think they
Speaker 2: call it single blind in psychology studies, the double blind
Speaker 2: was when the researcher doesn't even know themselves which treatment
Speaker 2: is being administered to. Well, anyway, after we got a
Speaker 2: camera image, but not a very good one, I didn't
Speaker 2: tell Steve that we got anything. I didn't want to,
Speaker 2: you know, sort of lead him on or anything, but
Speaker 2: I said, Steve, I want you to ask for a bone.
Speaker 2: Forget the camera. It's not a thing I want to
Speaker 2: And Okay, they're not going to like that, but okay.
Speaker 2: And so then he called me back he said, I
Speaker 2: did get what you said. Two days later, Alan calls
Speaker 2: me up New Year's Day of I think it was
Speaker 2: two thousand and one and said, we just found a
Speaker 2: bone at the base of a camera tree. So I'll
Speaker 2: be right up. And so I drove one hundred miles
Speaker 2: up there and he handed me the bone and it
Speaker 2: was about the size and shape of a coffee saucer,
Speaker 2: but it was real thick and it ended up After
Speaker 2: checking around a whole bunch, I finally found a guy
Speaker 2: who raised EMUs and he was able to positively identify
Speaker 2: it as the breast bone of an emu. And uh,
Speaker 2: so I asked Alan, do you know anybody who raises
Speaker 2: these things, because you know people raise them domestically for
Speaker 2: I guess meat, And he said, yeah, my dad raises EMUs.
Speaker 2: Where's your dad live five miles away? Well, do you
Speaker 2: have any explanation for how an EMU bone got from
Speaker 2: it even five miles away to your house. No, I
Speaker 2: really don't. And of course, you know, in retrospect, it's
Speaker 2: in my view, indicative of a sense of humor. Uh.
Speaker 2: You know, what I was asking for was of course
Speaker 2: a little bit audacious. You know, would you dig up
Speaker 2: one of your relatives so that you could provide a
Speaker 2: bone to some person who wanted proof of I don't
Speaker 2: know what. Uh. But when I finally told Steve Fredericks
Speaker 2: what happened, uh, he hit himself on the forehead with
Speaker 2: his palm and he said, you know, I never specified
Speaker 2: one of your bones. I was, yeah, it's a bone,
Speaker 2: so and and they complied quite literally. What's amazing is
Speaker 2: the timing is that it all happened within a very
Speaker 2: uh small period of time, and and that the people
Speaker 2: who found the foot bone did not know that I
Speaker 2: was doing this. And Steve Frederick had never visited the site,
Speaker 2: didn't know where it was, so he could not be
Speaker 2: accused of seeding the or salting whatever the word is for,
Speaker 2: you know, leaving imitation evidence for serious minded researchers to scumbore.
Speaker 1: Upon tom When I when I talked to individuals, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I've talked to individuals for a few years in
Speaker 1: this field. I find that sometimes there's a time where
Speaker 1: they it changes from their investigating things, but then they
Speaker 1: really get in it becomes super personal for them. What
Speaker 1: did that start to happen to you? Where you started
Speaker 1: to experience things yourself or have any experience with the Sasquatch?
Speaker 2: Well, not as much as I was being for. The
Speaker 2: frustration was that every time I showed it up, showed
Speaker 2: up at Alan and Aaples, everything would stop, and then
Speaker 2: as soon as I left, everything would resume. When I
Speaker 2: say everything, I mean, let's just say the limited activity
Speaker 2: that they were experiencing always stopped when I showed up,
Speaker 2: And all of a sudden it became clear that they
Speaker 2: understood who I was and they weren't gonna cooperate with,
Speaker 2: you know, Joe Researcher, namely me. But sometimes there was
Speaker 2: manifest a sense of humor. For instance, one night I
Speaker 2: sat there at Alan and Naples and I, oh, you know,
Speaker 2: in those days, we were all thought the tree knocking
Speaker 2: was it? You know, that's just how they We were
Speaker 2: sure that they were hitting trees with sticks. So I
Speaker 2: sat there all night with a baseball bat, three times
Speaker 2: in a row, whack whack, whack, and did that every
Speaker 2: fifteen minutes for the better part of the night. And
Speaker 2: eventually at four point thirty in the morning, I left
Speaker 2: because I had a dentist appointment or something mid morning,
Speaker 2: had to get back home, and I had a one
Speaker 2: hundred mile drive at four point thirty, and I pulled
Speaker 2: into my house at just at sunrise, which you know,
Speaker 2: in August is about five thirty five forty five. And
Speaker 2: as soon as I got out of my car from
Speaker 2: the woods in the back of my property comes whack, whack, whack,
Speaker 2: And I was so tired I couldn't even walk to
Speaker 2: the back of the property. I just had to get
Speaker 2: in bed and lie down. But what's funny is somehow
Speaker 2: the idea was conveyed one hundred miles from Allen and
Speaker 2: Aprels to my house, and there they were responding only there.
Speaker 2: When I reflect on that, it's it's to me, that's
Speaker 2: that sense of humor.
Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely, I would definitely agree with you that, Tom,
Speaker 1: I'd like to talk about the Oregon big Foot Highway
Speaker 1: for a little bit in your own words, How would
Speaker 1: you describe what the Oregon big Foot Highway actually is.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's highway to twenty four. It's a state highway,
Speaker 2: and then when it enters the National Forest it becomes
Speaker 2: the forty two Road. But it is the road that
Speaker 2: goes from s Decada up and over the crest of
Speaker 2: the Cascades around Mount Jefferson and then descends down the
Speaker 2: Brighton Bush River to a place called Detroit, Oregon. Pretty
Speaker 2: small town on the Santiem River, but it is It
Speaker 2: basically speaks the entire Clockamus River basin, especially the upper
Speaker 2: part of the basin upstream of Sticada in the National Forest,
Speaker 2: where a whole bunch of sasquatch sidings have occurred over time.
Speaker 2: You know some famous ones like the one where the
Speaker 2: guy saw the sasquatch lifting up rocks and grabbing pikas
Speaker 2: out of the ground and eating them. That's up on
Speaker 2: what's called Burnt Granite Ridge. But there's just a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of siding activity that happens in the in in
Speaker 2: along the Clocamus River and along the tributaries. Cloacamus County,
Speaker 2: which contains the river, of course, uh has more sasquatch
Speaker 2: sidings than any anywhere else in Oregon. There are places
Speaker 2: in Washington that has more. There's places in northern California,
Speaker 2: but in Oregon, clack in this county is number one.
Speaker 2: So Joe just did his best to collect in chronicle
Speaker 2: as many of the historical sidings that came out of
Speaker 2: that area, plotsam on maps and so on. I think
Speaker 2: the only thing that's perhaps misleading about doing that is
Speaker 2: people want to put themselves in that same place where
Speaker 2: a sighting historically happened, or maybe even more than one.
Speaker 2: But in my view, I think that's a little misguided.
Speaker 2: I think that the sidings are not necessarily attached to
Speaker 2: any single spot. It's it's just that the person was
Speaker 2: in the right place at the right time. Rather than
Speaker 2: put yourself at the exact place where previous sighting has happened,
Speaker 2: I think you just kind of got to go up
Speaker 2: there and camp out and hang out and let them
Speaker 2: come to you.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I think that's a great way to put it.
Speaker 1: It is. I mean, it's not an incredibly easy drive
Speaker 1: to get through there. You definitely need to be prepared
Speaker 1: to get down that road. Correct.
Speaker 2: No, No, it's it's at two lane road and then
Speaker 2: the center stripe goes away once you get into the
Speaker 2: National Forest. But it's paved and it's an easy drive, scenic,
Speaker 2: very windy, but there's a whole bunch of drainages that
Speaker 2: flow into the clack in this river, Oak Grove Fork
Speaker 2: and the Roaring River and Memelush Creek and Fish Creek
Speaker 2: and up any of those creeks. Things have happened, So
Speaker 2: it's not just the road itself, it's all the ancillary
Speaker 2: roads that are are part of that part of the
Speaker 2: Mountain Hook National Forest, but they all have stuff going
Speaker 2: on the side. Roads start to get a little beat
Speaker 2: up and primitive and they're mostly logging roads. But it's
Speaker 2: a great piece of public land and you can just
Speaker 2: drive on up there and set up camp. But it
Speaker 2: is not overly difficult to get in there. But there
Speaker 2: are places that are designated wilderness, like the Roaring River,
Speaker 2: and if one wants to get into there, that is
Speaker 2: actually trail less, so you sort of have to navigate
Speaker 2: drop into these steep drainages and try your best not
Speaker 2: to get lost.
Speaker 1: Wow, that sounds wild.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's there's easy spots and you know a lot
Speaker 2: of the sidings were right along the main highway, right
Speaker 2: by a bridge or just you know a cop was
Speaker 2: driving down the highway and here was this creature standing there,
Speaker 2: swaying back and forth at five in the morning, that
Speaker 2: kind of thing. So most of the sidings were from
Speaker 2: the car window. That's really really That doesn't mean everybody
Speaker 2: who drove through there is going to have something happen.
Speaker 2: Would would that they could. It's a statistical thing, and
Speaker 2: you know, the the chances of having something happen are
Speaker 2: one in a thousand on any given day. But if
Speaker 2: you go up there a thousand times, something's going to happen.
Speaker 2: You know. There's this guy Les Stroud who did a
Speaker 2: show called Survivor and he would go out into the
Speaker 2: woods all by himself and hang out, and eventually, on
Speaker 2: at least one of his episodes, he was approached and
Speaker 2: something was moving around and really gave him the hebgb's
Speaker 2: and that's when he sort of started taking the sasquatch
Speaker 2: things seriously.
Speaker 1: I will also say for listeners, if you're curious about
Speaker 1: the sasquatch in the pika reference that Tom made, that's
Speaker 1: I believe the Glenn Thomas incident, I think, and that's
Speaker 1: called out in the book and you can really read
Speaker 1: up on it in the book that we've been talking about.
Speaker 2: Burt Granite Ridge. It's it's not the worst road ever,
Speaker 2: but it's what's a little spooky for for some is
Speaker 2: the fact that these roads go up the side of
Speaker 2: a mountain and there's no guide rail. It's not a
Speaker 2: bad road, you certainly just want to keep your mind
Speaker 2: on the road and you quit playing with your stereo
Speaker 2: because you get a car off the off the road
Speaker 2: and and you you might never be seen again. But
Speaker 2: but Burnt Granite Ridge is where that happened, and those
Speaker 2: rocks are still staffed there if one finds their way
Speaker 2: up there, you can still see the remnants of what
Speaker 2: Glenn Thomas described thirty years ago.
Speaker 1: By now, have you had any any things happen yourself
Speaker 1: when you were involved with the other members of the
Speaker 1: Oregon Big for Highway in that area, any incidents that happened.
Speaker 2: You know, I've had lots of things happen over the
Speaker 2: years that uh, you know up in that clock in
Speaker 2: this area. So you know, Joe and I and a
Speaker 2: bunch of other guys would would camp out there a
Speaker 2: couple three times a summer and sometimes you'd hear some
Speaker 2: scream in the distance. We've had several times where something
Speaker 2: disappeared under mysterious circumstances from our camp. One time, my
Speaker 2: wife and I were on one of these outings and
Speaker 2: they had a bunch of other people uh bar uh
Speaker 2: what's her last name? Anyway, she was doing a bfr
Speaker 2: row outing and had a bunch of people up there.
Speaker 2: We went up and joined them, and one of the
Speaker 2: participants had a GPS unit taken out of their plastic
Speaker 2: case and and then uh Ceily, my wife and I
Speaker 2: found it in the middle of the road a mile
Speaker 2: and a half outside of camp, and they couldn't explain
Speaker 2: how it got there. And then we went up on
Speaker 2: a climbed up onto a promontory over this rock quarry
Speaker 2: and we're sitting there and my wife took her watch
Speaker 2: off and left it on the rocks, and then we
Speaker 2: did some other stuff and came back and then she
Speaker 2: realized she had didn't pick up her watch. Well. Then
Speaker 2: the next day they some kids were part of our group,
Speaker 2: said oh, we saw that watch. We climbed up to
Speaker 2: that promontory and we saw the watch, but we didn't
Speaker 2: touch it because it wasn't ours. And I said, well,
Speaker 2: we've been nice if you brought it home. But I
Speaker 2: guess we'll go back and get it. And the girl said, well,
Speaker 2: the other thing we noticed is that the time wasn't
Speaker 2: set to the correct hour. We had just had a
Speaker 2: time change and so my wife hadn't reset the watch. Well,
Speaker 2: then when we went back to get the watch, we
Speaker 2: found it right there and that time had been updated
Speaker 2: to the correct time.
Speaker 1: Okay, wow, now that doesn't prove big but did But.
Speaker 2: Those kinds of things that you get, you know, it's
Speaker 2: it's always something that you're not expecting and it's there.
Speaker 2: It's as though you're being challenged to notice. So when
Speaker 2: you're walking around in the in the woods, one thing
Speaker 2: I had learned to notice is as these weirdly twisted trees,
Speaker 2: usually at trail junctions. You you get other curiosities like
Speaker 2: that that are really hard to explain. But it is
Speaker 2: definitely not necessarily proof, rather just an indication that something
Speaker 2: intelligent and and with a sense of humor is sort
Speaker 2: of leaving things and inviting you to notice.
Speaker 1: I agree with you, Tom, I mean, I just went
Speaker 1: out to Oregon for the first time this last July,
Speaker 1: to Oakridge area, and I mean, yeah, the stuff you
Speaker 1: find out in the woods out there like miles and
Speaker 1: miles out on forest rows. I mean, yeah, you're you're
Speaker 1: finding tree twists that are in like not just one,
Speaker 1: but like multiples and like high up and it's like,
Speaker 1: oh man, what's going on around here? Dude?
Speaker 2: Well, so what I've learned is answer them, add to it.
Speaker 2: Oh so pick a leaf and and and stab it
Speaker 2: through a branch or or add another twist. Uh and uh.
Speaker 2: One of these guys, I know, Toby Johnson area where
Speaker 2: he was, was inviting them to contribute to his rock
Speaker 2: art and he was getting quite a you know, a
Speaker 2: bit of back and forth. One thing that Judy what's
Speaker 2: your name, Henry I think from Washington brought us to
Speaker 2: was she said, take a picture with your phone, do
Speaker 2: a little un arrangement there, and then take a picture,
Speaker 2: and darned if you won't come back the next day
Speaker 2: and things have been moved. Well, I said, Judy, so
Speaker 2: are you really of the thinking that sasquatch has nothing
Speaker 2: better to do than walk around in the woods and
Speaker 2: rearrange all our little pieces of woods art? And she
Speaker 2: said no, no, they do it with energy. They don't
Speaker 2: have to physically be there. Look like, oh that's that'll
Speaker 2: you scratch in your head. But I think there's something
Speaker 2: to that. You know, it's pretty again audacious to think
Speaker 2: that they follow you around and and and rearrange your
Speaker 2: pieces of stick and ag that you're leaving there. But
Speaker 2: but however it's done. You do get these acknowledgments, which
Speaker 2: is fun, but it's it's it's again not really the
Speaker 2: kind of proof that people would like. You know, you're
Speaker 2: you're not going to be able to take that to
Speaker 2: Jeff melderm and say, hey, I got proof they move
Speaker 2: my rocks.
Speaker 1: Exactly. But then it's like, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: like what what is really more important that we can
Speaker 1: take it to an individual like that and be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: here's a footprint or you can experience something yourself and
Speaker 1: is that enough?
Speaker 2: You know, it depends on the individual, but you you
Speaker 2: better believe that there are people. And I was one
Speaker 2: of those people who was I just felt like, you know,
Speaker 2: if I work this thing long enough, it's it's got
Speaker 2: to work. You know, if I put enough cameras at
Speaker 2: Alan and Aple's place, it's gonna work. Well, it won't,
Speaker 2: but what you might get is something that is sort
Speaker 2: of personally meaningful to you. But They very much seem
Speaker 2: to understand exactly what we're looking for, and they're not
Speaker 2: going to give it to us.
Speaker 1: You've spent so many years in this have you come
Speaker 1: up with any ideas of what the Sasquatch might actually
Speaker 1: be based on, you know, things you've looked into and experienced.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And and that's what Planet Strange gets at, is
Speaker 2: that it The question that I finally came to and
Speaker 2: attempted to address is where do they go when they
Speaker 2: want safe haven? I don't think they're just kind of
Speaker 2: roaming around in the wilderness. And these TP shaped stick
Speaker 2: structures that we find in the woods are indicative of something,
Speaker 2: but there are no way shelter. But they must have
Speaker 2: safe haven, and they must have this place where they
Speaker 2: go when they want to be left alone. And who
Speaker 2: knows where their Sasquatch family or whatever. And you know,
Speaker 2: my Native American sources said they come from underground. They
Speaker 2: emanate from within the earth. So that's really what Planet
Speaker 2: Strange attempts to address, is what is the evidence and
Speaker 2: the indications of this subterranean realm? And I do believe
Speaker 2: that it is the place where the Sasquatch and the
Speaker 2: extraterrestrial phenomena intersect, and they do intersect, they do know
Speaker 2: each other. I believe the Sasquatch are essentially doing the
Speaker 2: heavy lifting, and they are the observers and guardians of
Speaker 2: what happens here on Earth. But they answer to a
Speaker 2: higher power, which may come and go from the planet,
Speaker 2: and I think they do. I think they originated from
Speaker 2: somewhere else in the galaxy. But I think it's probably
Speaker 2: a mistake to suppose that the extraterrestrial phenomenon as it
Speaker 2: manifests today necessarily comes from space. I think they are
Speaker 2: already here. They have been for one hundred thousand years.
Speaker 2: They're comfortably ensconced on planet Earth, and those lights and
Speaker 2: things that we see in the sky emanate from again
Speaker 2: within the Earth.
Speaker 1: You hear so many, so many accounts of that when
Speaker 1: you talk to witnesses about how you know, maybe there
Speaker 1: is an orb they saw after they saw a sasquatch,
Speaker 1: or they saw a sasquatch controlling an orange. Just it's
Speaker 1: so interesting when you hear those those tales of lights.
Speaker 1: But the Planet Strange book is just you really get
Speaker 1: into some some interesting territory. I mean, you're talking from
Speaker 1: about everything from the Pyramids two giants, the.
Speaker 2: Mound phenomenon, er muted triangle, there's a there are a
Speaker 2: litany of phenomena that we tend to look at separately
Speaker 2: that that probably intercept or let's just say, when when
Speaker 2: you hit a wall, it's often because you're not asking
Speaker 2: the right question. And in this case, I asked the
Speaker 2: question of how do these seemingly separate phenomena interact, and
Speaker 2: all combined to suggest something that has been right in
Speaker 2: front of us for a long time, but we just
Speaker 2: have not you know, sort of put two and two together.
Speaker 2: So that's what I attempted to do, is take a
Speaker 2: bunch of unexplained things and then suppose that perhaps the
Speaker 2: question that we're not asking is how they interact. One
Speaker 2: of them being does this asquatch have any interaction with
Speaker 2: the extraterrestrial phenomena? And I think that the answer is
Speaker 2: a definite yes.
Speaker 1: I mean you that's something else that comes up in
Speaker 1: a lot of these accounts, especially I mean you're you're
Speaker 1: probably aware of like the Chestnut Ridge area out in
Speaker 1: southwest Pennsylvania. There's so many accounts out there where it's connected. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: mm hmm.
Speaker 2: Stan Gordon had some great stuff that people are generally
Speaker 2: unaware of. One of the questions is how they get around,
Speaker 2: and he found that there was an indication that, well,
Speaker 2: there were some people who said, oh, they have a
Speaker 2: they have an annual get together and it's up in
Speaker 2: the Yukon, and uh, this is the Sasquatch now and
Speaker 2: and so the question is, well, how do they all
Speaker 2: get there? And and one Native American source said, well,
Speaker 2: they ride the steel snake. What the steel snake? You know? Trains? Well,
Speaker 2: Stan Gordon had had these outlier sidings from Pennsylvania or
Speaker 2: Kentucky where the Sasquatch were seen riding standing on the
Speaker 2: coupler in between the freight cars. Uh, traveling on trains.
Speaker 2: That's crazy, but it why not? You know, they they're
Speaker 2: they're quick, and they're agile, and and I see no
Speaker 2: reason they couldn't jump on the thing and save themselves
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of steps. Uh. You just wonder whether
Speaker 2: there's ever a hobo in the box car who who
Speaker 2: had those Sasquatch jumped in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. It makes you wonder, like I almost want
Speaker 1: to do a search to see if there's sighting accounts
Speaker 1: that have been taken from you know, hobos that did
Speaker 1: see a big foot, like when they were on a car.
Speaker 1: That would be pretty cool.
Speaker 2: I think one of the things that I unearthed over
Speaker 2: the years is that sometimes the most unassuming member of
Speaker 2: civilization or society is the one who has the most
Speaker 2: you know, vivid story, almost as though the entities understand
Speaker 2: that this person has no credibility and therefore we could
Speaker 2: do the foxtrot in front of them and it's just
Speaker 2: not going to get any traction.
Speaker 1: That is extremely interesting. Is there a particular example where
Speaker 1: you saw that happen?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, it doesn't come to mind, but I
Speaker 2: think there's a few different times when you know, somebody
Speaker 2: had a very vivid encounter who was also either underage
Speaker 2: or you know, no other corroborating witness, uh, not a
Speaker 2: person of any great credibility, So that you know, historically
Speaker 2: b f R has always tried to find the sightings
Speaker 2: that that can be assigned to a person of credibility. Uh.
Speaker 2: And so engineers, uh, you know, train operators UH see
Speaker 2: things a lot but don't always talk about them. But
Speaker 2: if you can find a priest, or a airline pilot
Speaker 2: or I don't know, just somebody of elevated credibility that
Speaker 2: strengthens their sighting. But you know, it does seem that
Speaker 2: the well alan in April for instance, you know, really
Speaker 2: unassuming salt of the Earth folk, few semi operational cars,
Speaker 2: lying around, their son living on the property in a trailer.
Speaker 2: You know, just real Salt of the Earth types are
Speaker 2: over and over again, the ones who seem to have
Speaker 2: the repeat sidings West Virginia, Oklahoma. You know, it's almost
Speaker 2: like they're chosen on account of their lack of credibility
Speaker 2: in a wider audience.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting in you know, it reminds me of
Speaker 1: those you know, I just watched again. I have a
Speaker 1: few favorite documentaries, but like in Search of Bigfoot by
Speaker 1: Robert W. Morgan, it's the old old one filmed up
Speaker 1: in the Cougar, Washington area. But like they're you know,
Speaker 1: they're just talking to two loggers that had sightings and
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. That's what I love, you know,
Speaker 1: just hearing uh stories and accounts from you know, as
Speaker 1: you said, like Salt of the Earth people, just normal
Speaker 1: everyday people. That's what I That's what I love.
Speaker 2: But but they they're they're they're not taken very seriously
Speaker 2: because of their you know, country accent and uh one
Speaker 2: strap broken on their coverall. Uh. But but if you
Speaker 2: can get past all that you you you I think
Speaker 2: can learn some things by given people. You can learn
Speaker 2: you can go so much and and and talk to
Speaker 2: uh uh loggers uh over a beer and and and
Speaker 2: they all have a story, but they all understand that
Speaker 2: that you know, no one wants to hear it, and
Speaker 2: they they don't have any particular credibility. But if if
Speaker 2: if you give them a chance, they'll.
Speaker 1: I think that's that's a great way to put it, Tom,
Speaker 1: is you know, there's so many people out there that
Speaker 1: definitely do have something they want to share, but it's
Speaker 1: just giving them the chance to to to share what
Speaker 1: they've experienced. And you, Tom, has been just a fun
Speaker 1: time chatting with you. You remind me of an individual
Speaker 1: I used to talk to a lot. His name is
Speaker 1: Henry Franzoni and very similar. I mean, rest in peace,
Speaker 1: Henry a great guy, but you are both very similar.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a just a fun time chatting with you.
Speaker 1: Before we we end our our talk today, is there
Speaker 1: anything else that you were wanting to share or is
Speaker 1: there a way that people can you know, reach out
Speaker 1: to you or you kind of a little bit, you know,
Speaker 1: you you write your books and then maybe uh in
Speaker 1: the shadows a little bit.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I got an email and I don't
Speaker 2: check it all that often. It's th h O M
Speaker 2: dot p O w e l L at Yahoo. So
Speaker 2: if someone really needed to talk to me, I guess
Speaker 2: I would encourage them to email. Uh might take me
Speaker 2: a few weeks to get back to them. But I don't,
Speaker 2: you know, see myself as the r biter of any
Speaker 2: you know, particular wisdom. All I got is a bunch
Speaker 2: of statistical patterns and some sort of out their ideas
Speaker 2: that seem to have fallen out of my looking for
Speaker 2: patterns to the sightings. So I would say, you know,
Speaker 2: anybody can get to the point of leading the sort
Speaker 2: of the knowledge starting by just reading books. And I
Speaker 2: think sometimes, I mean, it's it's fine to watch stuff
Speaker 2: on the internet, but it's one of those subjects that
Speaker 2: you just sort of have to get into book lengths
Speaker 2: sets of material in order to really start to put
Speaker 2: things together. And you know, I guess more and more
Speaker 2: I'm seeing that people rely on electronic sources of information
Speaker 2: and uh, and the books get pushed aside. But I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm not just hawking my own books, but just reading
Speaker 2: the literature that's out there. There's so much of it.
Speaker 2: There's that this guy Chris Noel up in Vermont, and
Speaker 2: he's really come into some really interesting things. And his
Speaker 2: analysis of the path of the of the data suggests
Speaker 2: that there they show indications of being a savant and
Speaker 2: you know, extremely aware of of of details and they
Speaker 2: can walk into a woods and and notice the one
Speaker 2: thing that has been moved since the last time that
Speaker 2: they were there. Uh So his work is really interesting.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to think of who else. Well, you you know,
Speaker 2: you got Joe's one the Bigfoot Highway. That's he he
Speaker 2: doesn't really he just reports and and that's kind of
Speaker 2: the way John Green and all these guys did for
Speaker 2: all this time. But I think more and more I'm
Speaker 2: sort of of the feeling that, at least with my
Speaker 2: own books, that you know, you can't just report, you
Speaker 2: have to speculate, because you know, that's sort of how
Speaker 2: we advance the knowledge.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I think that's that's a great way to put it.
Speaker 1: So guys, make sure you if you're interested by what
Speaker 1: you've heard tonight check out the Planet Strange book by
Speaker 1: Tom Powell. You can get it on is the best
Speaker 1: way to get it on Amazon, Tom? Or is there
Speaker 1: another way?
Speaker 2: You know, none of us want to give Jeff Bezos
Speaker 2: any more money, but does a good job. But but
Speaker 2: Edges of Science was my third one, and it's really
Speaker 2: where I first started to go round the bend and
Speaker 2: speculate as to how these things had. You know, for instance,
Speaker 2: the chapter on communication it is in Edges of Science
Speaker 2: was originally going to be in the Locals. It was
Speaker 2: the thirteenth chapter, and in two thousand and two or
Speaker 2: whenever it was, I had some people proof for it
Speaker 2: and they said, ah, man, I think you should get
Speaker 2: that chapter out of there. It's just too much. And
Speaker 2: one of my proof readers said, why don't you have
Speaker 2: that be the first chapter of your next book, because
Speaker 2: you're really you're going way out on a limb with
Speaker 2: this idea that you can communicate with these creatures. And
Speaker 2: so I took their advice, and obviously in retrospect it
Speaker 2: was maybe a little bit, but it did up being
Speaker 2: the beginning of of then what ended up being the
Speaker 2: next book, which was Edges of Science. But the one
Speaker 2: that's lost in there is the novel and and that's
Speaker 2: called Shady Neighbors, And it doesn't necessarily advance the knowledge,
Speaker 2: but it's a it's a cute story, that is, you know,
Speaker 2: I wrote as a sort of a family friendly but
Speaker 2: still edgy, kind of a Sasquatch treatment. And I was
Speaker 2: working at the middle school of course at the time,
Speaker 2: and so I I wanted to write something that you know,
Speaker 2: teenage audience could read and and you know, get something
Speaker 2: out of very cool.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like something for for everyone to check
Speaker 1: out from from the books that you've written so far, Tom,
Speaker 1: But yeah, we will will definitely be uh you know,
Speaker 1: keeping an eye on it. Sounds like you'll be in
Speaker 1: some some things in the future. Which will be.
Speaker 2: Next appearance is this one? This event they do in
Speaker 2: Hocking Hills, Ohio.
Speaker 1: Oh cool, you're going out for that? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and that's in August. I don't do the
Speaker 2: appearances as much as I used to. But that's just
Speaker 2: because you know, I got exhausted and it's uh yeah,
Speaker 2: my wife busy remodeling.
Speaker 1: There you go, I get it. Yeah, But Tom, thank
Speaker 1: you for spending some time tonight talking about you know,
Speaker 1: your your past work and experiences and also about your books.
Speaker 1: And it's been a fun time chatting. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: You're so welcome.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to take a few minutes to say
Speaker 1: thank you to you. Holmand. Listeners or listening to the podcast,
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