Speaker 1: Now one of your pudding. I got a string going
Speaker 1: on here, something just cause my dog. Something killed your dog,
Speaker 1: My dog. We're flying through the air over the tree.
Speaker 1: I don't know how it did it, Okay, Damn, I'm
Speaker 1: really confused. All I saw was my dog coming over
Speaker 1: the fence and he was dead. And once you hit
Speaker 1: the ground like, I didn't see any cars. All I
Speaker 1: saw was my dog coming over the fence. Sat, what
Speaker 1: are you putting? We got some wonder or something crawling
Speaker 1: around out here? Did you see what it was? Or
Speaker 1: was it was? Standing enough? I'm out here looking through
Speaker 1: the window now and I don't see anything. I don't
Speaker 1: want to go outside. Jesus Quice, you better hello, get
Speaker 1: the Boddy out here. What quent on out there? I
Speaker 1: thought of a bench about tech forty nine. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Easy him out there. Yeah, I'm walking right head uh.
Speaker 2: Chapter twenty six, home Fires. Daniel settled into his new
Speaker 2: life with the contentment of a man who'd found his place.
Speaker 2: The pizza Place, a family owned joint called Mountain Pies
Speaker 2: had opened in March about six miles down the road
Speaker 2: from our property. It was a small operation, just a
Speaker 2: kitchen and a few tables, but the food was good
Speaker 2: and the owners were good people. The Hartley family had
Speaker 2: moved up from Georgia a few years back, looking for
Speaker 2: a quieter life, and they'd poured everything they had into
Speaker 2: making the restaurant work. Daniel started as assistant manager but
Speaker 2: quickly became indispensable. He handled the books, managed the staff,
Speaker 2: dealt with suppliers. He came home smelling of dough and
Speaker 2: tomato sauce, tired but happy, talking about the day's challenges
Speaker 2: with an enthusias I hadn't seen in years. You know
Speaker 2: what I love about this, he said one evening, as
Speaker 2: we sat on the porch watching the sunset. Nobody's trying
Speaker 2: to kill me, nobody's threatening us, nobody's making mysterious phone
Speaker 2: calls in the middle of the night. I just make
Speaker 2: pizza and go home. Sounds boring, I teased. Boring is underrated.
Speaker 2: After everything we've been through, boring is exactly what I needed.
Speaker 2: He was right. The intensity of the investigation, the threats,
Speaker 2: the constant sense of danger, it had taken a toll
Speaker 2: on both of us. We'd been living on adrenaline for
Speaker 2: so long that we'd forgotten what normal felt like. Now, finally,
Speaker 2: we had a chance to remember. Our life had found
Speaker 2: a rhythm. I spent my morning's researching, my afternoon's interviewing,
Speaker 2: my evening's editing, and preparing episodes. Daniel worked his shifts
Speaker 2: at the restaurant, came home, cooked dinner. We talked about
Speaker 2: our days, about the stories I was collecting, about the
Speaker 2: funny things that happened at the pizza play. We went
Speaker 2: to bed together, slept soundly, woke up ready to do
Speaker 2: it all again. It was simple, it was peaceful. It
Speaker 2: was everything we dreamed of when we'd first moved to
Speaker 2: these mountains. But the work continued. The work always continued.
Speaker 2: The podcast had become something bigger than I'd ever imagined.
Speaker 2: By the end of my second year, Sasquatch Odyssey had
Speaker 2: been downloaded over five million times. The community had grown
Speaker 2: to tens of thousands of active members. I'd been featured
Speaker 2: in magazines, interviewed on radio shows, invited to speak at conferences.
Speaker 2: The money was coming into enough to cover our expenses,
Speaker 2: enough to invest in better equipment, enough to feel secure
Speaker 2: for the first time in years. We weren't rich by
Speaker 2: any means, but we weren't struggling either. The podcast was
Speaker 2: working and more importantly, it was making a difference. I
Speaker 2: knew this because of the emails. I received hundreds of
Speaker 2: them every week from people who'd found the podcast and
Speaker 2: felt validated for the first time in their lives, people
Speaker 2: who'd been carrying their encounters in secret, afraid to speak,
Speaker 2: convinced they were alone, people who'd finally found a community
Speaker 2: that understood. One email in particular stood out. It came
Speaker 2: from a woman named Margaret, seventy eight years old, living
Speaker 2: in a nursing home in rural Pennsylvania. She'd had an
Speaker 2: encounter in nineteen fifty two. She was a young girl
Speaker 2: walking home from school through the woods when she'd seen
Speaker 2: a creature watching her from behind a fallen tree. I've
Speaker 2: never told anyone, Margaret wrote, seventy years, I've kept this secret.
Speaker 2: My husband didn't know, my children don't know. I was
Speaker 2: always afraid they'd think I was crazy. But I'm old
Speaker 2: now and I don't have much time left, and I
Speaker 2: needed to tell someone before I die. I needed someone
Speaker 2: to know that what I saw was real. Thank you
Speaker 2: for creating a space where people like me can finally speak.
Speaker 2: Thank you for believing us. Thank you for carrying our
Speaker 2: stories forward. I read that email with tears in my eyes.
Speaker 2: This was why I did this work, not for the money,
Speaker 2: not for the recognition, for Margaret, for all the Margarets
Speaker 2: out there carrying secrets they were afraid to share, For
Speaker 2: the witnesses who deserved to be heard, for the truth
Speaker 2: that had been hidden for too long. The podcast was
Speaker 2: giving them a voice, and I would keep doing it
Speaker 2: as long as there were stories to tell. The third
Speaker 2: year brought new challenges. As the podcast grew, so did
Speaker 2: the scrutiny. Skeptics came out in force, attacking MY credibility,
Speaker 2: dismissing my witnesses, demanding scientific proof that I couldn't provide.
Speaker 2: Some of them were genuine debunkers, committed to rational inquiry.
Speaker 2: Others were trolls looking to stir up trouble. A few
Speaker 2: I suspected were more sinister, part of the same apparatus
Speaker 2: that had tried to shut us down before I learned
Speaker 2: to handle them, to respond calmly, to present the evidence
Speaker 2: without getting defensive, To acknowledge the limits of what I
Speaker 2: could prove while standing firm on what I knew to
Speaker 2: be true. It wasn't easy, but it was necessary. The
Speaker 2: bigger challenge was maintaining quality. As the volume of potential
Speaker 2: interviews exploded, I was receiving dozens of requests every day,
Speaker 2: too many to possibly accommodate. I had to develop systems
Speaker 2: for screening, for prioritizing, for identifying the stories that were
Speaker 2: most worth telling. I hired a part time researcher to
Speaker 2: help with the workload, then a second one. The podcast
Speaker 2: was becoming a business, and while that brought benefits, it
Speaker 2: also brought complications. I hadn't anticipated. One of those complications
Speaker 2: arrived in April in the form of a phone call
Speaker 2: from a producer in Los Angeles. Mister Patterson, my name
Speaker 2: is Amanda Gardner. I'm with Meridian Productions. We've been following
Speaker 2: your podcast for some time, and we'd like to discuss
Speaker 2: a potential partnership. What kind of partnership a television series,
Speaker 2: documentary style based on Sasquatch Odyssey. We'd feature your interviews,
Speaker 2: recreate some of the encounters, add production value that you
Speaker 2: can achieve with a podcast alone. It would reach millions
Speaker 2: of viewers who've never heard of your show. I was
Speaker 2: skeptical television meant giving up control. It meant letting other
Speaker 2: people make decisions about how the stories were told. It
Speaker 2: meant the kind of sensationalism that I'd always tried to avoid.
Speaker 2: But it also meant exposure. It meant reaching people who
Speaker 2: wouldn't find the podcast on their own. It meant amplifying
Speaker 2: the voices of witnesses who deserve to be heard. I'll
Speaker 2: think about it, I said, take all the time you need,
Speaker 2: But mister Patterson, I want you to know that we're
Speaker 2: committed to doing this right. We've seen too many shows
Speaker 2: exploit this subject for cheap thrills. That's not what we're
Speaker 2: interested in. We want to tell these stories with the
Speaker 2: respect and authenticity they deserve. I told Daniel about the
Speaker 2: offer that evening. What do you think, I asked, I
Speaker 2: think you should be careful, he said. Television changes things.
Speaker 2: It's not like the podcast, where you control everything. Once
Speaker 2: you sign a contract, you're playing by their rules. I know,
Speaker 2: but the reach, the reach is tempting. But is it
Speaker 2: worth it if they turned these stories into a freak show.
Speaker 2: I didn't have an answer, not yet, but the question
Speaker 2: stayed with me, turning over in my mind as I
Speaker 2: continued the work that had become my life's calling. The
Speaker 2: four hundred and fiftieth interview happened on a rainy Tuesday
Speaker 2: in September. The witness was a man named Jacob Whitehorse,
Speaker 2: a Navajo elder from Arizona. He'd reached out to me
Speaker 2: through the community forum, asking to share stories from his
Speaker 2: people's tradition. We call them the Yet it's so, Jacob said,
Speaker 2: his voice carrying the weight of centuries, the big Giant.
Speaker 2: They've been part of our stories since the beginning, not
Speaker 2: as monsters to be feared, but as neighbors to be respected.
Speaker 2: Different from us, living by different rules, but part of
Speaker 2: the same world. Tell me about your personal experiences. I've
Speaker 2: seen them three times in my life, once as a child,
Speaker 2: once as a young man, once as an elder. Each
Speaker 2: time the encounter taught me something, something about respect, about humility,
Speaker 2: about our place in the web of life. What did
Speaker 2: you learn? Jacob was quiet for a moment. When he
Speaker 2: spoke again, his voice was soft. I learned that we
Speaker 2: are not alone. I learned that the world is bigger
Speaker 2: than we think, full of beings and forces that we
Speaker 2: can't fully understand. And I learned that our job, the
Speaker 2: job of humans, is not to conquer or control, but
Speaker 2: to live in balance, to take what we need and
Speaker 2: give back what we can to be good neighbors to
Speaker 2: all the creatures who share this earth with us. Do
Speaker 2: you think these creatures are spiritual beings? I think the
Speaker 2: line between physical and spiritual is thinner than you Westerners believe.
Speaker 2: These beings walk in both worlds. They have bodies you
Speaker 2: can see in touch, but they also have spirits that
Speaker 2: can reach across the divide. They are teachers if we're
Speaker 2: willing to learn, guides, if we're willing to follow. What
Speaker 2: do you think is happening now? Why are the sightings increasing?
Speaker 2: Because the balance is broken. Humanity has taken too much,
Speaker 2: destroyed too much, forgotten too much. The old ways are dying,
Speaker 2: the web of life is fraying, and the Yaidzo are concerned.
Speaker 2: They've watched us for millennia, hoping we would find our way,
Speaker 2: but time is running out. The world is changing, and
Speaker 2: not for the better. What can we do? Listen, learn,
Speaker 2: remember what our ancestors knew. These beings are trying to
Speaker 2: tell us something through their appearances, through their communications, through
Speaker 2: the very fact of their existence. They're reminding us that
Speaker 2: we're not the only ones who matter, that the world
Speaker 2: doesn't belong to us. Alone, that we have responsible abilities
Speaker 2: we've been ignoring for too long. Jacob's interview stayed with
Speaker 2: me long after we hung up. His words echoed through
Speaker 2: my mind as I edited the episode, as I fell
Speaker 2: asleep that night, as I woke up to another day
Speaker 2: of searching for truth, a reckoning was coming. I didn't
Speaker 2: know when, didn't know how, but I knew that Jacob
Speaker 2: was right. We had responsibilities, we had lessons to learn,
Speaker 2: and the creatures in the shadows were waiting to see
Speaker 2: if we'd finally pay attention. As the third year drew
Speaker 2: to a close, I took stock of everything I'd built.
Speaker 2: Four hundred and fifty interviews, five million downloads, a community
Speaker 2: spanning dozens of countries, Witnesses validated secret, shared, truth spread,
Speaker 2: and yet it felt like we were just beginning. The
Speaker 2: creatures were still out there, watching from the darkness. The
Speaker 2: cover up was crumbling, but not yet collapsed. The truth
Speaker 2: was emerging but had not yet been fully revealed. There
Speaker 2: was so much more to do, so many more stories
Speaker 2: to tell, so many more people to reach. I looked
Speaker 2: out at the mountains, at the endless forest that surrounded
Speaker 2: our home, and I made a promise to myself I
Speaker 2: would keep going, no matter how long it took, no
Speaker 2: matter what obstacles appeared, I would keep searching for the truth,
Speaker 2: keep giving voice to the witnesses, keep preparing the world
Speaker 2: for what was coming, because That's what I'd been called
Speaker 2: to do. That's what I'd been preparing for my whole life,
Speaker 2: since that day in the woods behind our house in Lyrey,
Speaker 2: when I was twelve years old. The odyssey continued, and
Speaker 2: I was ready for whatever came next. Chapter twenty seven,
Speaker 2: Separating Wheat from chaff. Not every interview was a gem.
Speaker 2: In fact, as the podcast grew and more people reached out,
Speaker 2: I found myself spending increasing amounts of time filtering through
Speaker 2: stories that ranged from the dubious to the outright absurd.
Speaker 2: For every Earl Hutchins or Mary Catherine O'Brien witness this
Speaker 2: whose sincerity and detail convinced me of their authenticity, there
Speaker 2: were a dozen others whose accounts raised red flags. Some
Speaker 2: were obvious hoaxers, looking for attention or trying to capitalize
Speaker 2: on the podcast's growing audience. These were usually easy to spot,
Speaker 2: inconsistent details, borrowed elements from famous cases, an eagerness to
Speaker 2: be featured that felt more like self promotion than truth telling.
Speaker 2: Others were harder to categorize. People who genuinely believed what
Speaker 2: they were saying, but whose stories didn't hold up under scrutiny,
Speaker 2: people who'd conflated dreams with reality, who'd embellished mundane experiences
Speaker 2: into extraordinary, ones who'd convinced themselves of encounters that had
Speaker 2: never actually happened. And then there were the ones that
Speaker 2: made me question whether I was wasting my time entirely.
Speaker 2: The interview that nearly broke me came in the spring
Speaker 2: of my third year. His name was Derek Fontaine, a
Speaker 2: forty two year old construction worker from British Columbia. He'd
Speaker 2: reached out through the website, claiming to have had an
Speaker 2: encounter unlike any I documented before. His initial email was
Speaker 2: vague but intriguing, promising details that would change everything I
Speaker 2: thought I knew about these creatures. I should have known better.
Speaker 2: The vague promises, the grandiose claims, these were warning signs
Speaker 2: I'd learned to recognize. But I was tired, stretched thin
Speaker 2: by the volume of requests, and his location in the
Speaker 2: Pacific Northwest Prime Sasquatch Territory made me give him the
Speaker 2: benefit of the doubt, We scheduled a video call for
Speaker 2: a Tuesday evening. Derek appeared on screen, looking exactly like
Speaker 2: I'd expected, a stocky, bearded man in a flannel shirt
Speaker 2: sitting in what appeared to be a basement wreck room.
Speaker 2: He seemed nervous, fidgeting with something off camera, avoiding eye contact.
Speaker 2: Thanks for taking the time, Derek, I said, why don't
Speaker 2: you start by telling me about your encounter and stay
Speaker 2: tuned for more sasquatch ott to see. We'll be right
Speaker 2: back after these messages. Well, it happened back in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: he began. I was on this camping trip up near
Speaker 2: Harrison Lake, a men's retreat, you know, bunch of guys
Speaker 2: from my church getting back to nature, doing the whole
Speaker 2: bonding thing. How many people were on the trip, about fifteen.
Speaker 2: I think we had a base camp set up, tents
Speaker 2: all around, fire pit in the middle, real nice setup.
Speaker 2: And what happened Derek shifted uncomfortably. Well, the first couple
Speaker 2: nights were normal, hiking, fishing, sitting around the fire, telling stories.
Speaker 2: But on the third night something changed changed. How I
Speaker 2: couldn't sleep. It was hot and I'd had too much
Speaker 2: coffee after dinner. So I was just lying there in
Speaker 2: my tent, staring at the ceiling when I heard something outside. Footsteps,
Speaker 2: heavy footsteps circling the camp. This was familiar territory. I
Speaker 2: nodded encouragingly. I didn't think much of it at first,
Speaker 2: figured it was a bear, maybe one of the other
Speaker 2: guys going to take a leak. But then my tent
Speaker 2: flap opened. Someone came into your tent. Something came into
Speaker 2: my tent. Derek's voice dropped to a near whisper.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: It was a sasquatch, a female. I could tell, because
Speaker 2: well I could tell. I felt a nott forming in
Speaker 2: my stomach. I'd heard stories like this before, claims of
Speaker 2: intimate encounters with these creatures that stretched credulity beyond the
Speaker 2: breaking point. What happened next, Derek, He wouldn't meet my eyes.
Speaker 2: She we look I know this sounds crazy, but she
Speaker 2: came into my tent and she we had relations, sexual relations.
Speaker 2: She wanted it. I could tell the way she looked
Speaker 2: at me, the way she touched me. I held up
Speaker 2: my hand hold on. You're telling me that a sasquatch
Speaker 2: entered your tent while you were surrounded by fourteen other men,
Speaker 2: and you had sexual inn intercourse with it her with
Speaker 2: her and yes, that's what I'm saying. Did anyone else
Speaker 2: see this creature? Did anyone hear anything?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: She was quiet, real quiet, and it was it was
Speaker 2: over pretty quick, Derek. I tried to keep my voice
Speaker 2: level professional. I've interviewed hundreds of witnesses. I've heard stories
Speaker 2: that would make most people's hair stand up. But this
Speaker 2: is not consistent with anything we know about these creatures behavior.
Speaker 2: I knew you wouldn't believe me. Nobody believes me. It's
Speaker 2: not about belief, it's about evidence. It's about patterns. In
Speaker 2: all the documented encounters, across decades of research, there's never
Speaker 2: been a credible report of this kind of interaction. These
Speaker 2: creatures avoid human contact. They don't seek out intimate encounters
Speaker 2: with strangers in tents. Maybe I'm special. Maybe she saw
Speaker 2: something in me, Derek, My patience was wearing thin. Did
Speaker 2: you report this to anyone at the time? Did you
Speaker 2: tell the other men on the retreat? No? I was embarrassed.
Speaker 2: I didn't know what to say. Are there any physical traces,
Speaker 2: any evidence at all that this happened?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 2: No, but I know what I experienced. It was real.
Speaker 2: It was the most real thing that's ever happened to me.
Speaker 2: I took a deep breath. I appreciate you reaching out, Derek,
Speaker 2: but I'm not going to be able to feature this
Speaker 2: story on the podcast. The lack of corroborating evidence, the
Speaker 2: inconsistency with known behavior patterns that I stopped myself, it
Speaker 2: just doesn't meet the standards I've set for the show.
Speaker 2: Derek's face hardened. You're just like all the others. You
Speaker 2: say you want the truth, but when someone gives it
Speaker 2: to you, you can't handle it. I want credible truth,
Speaker 2: I want verifiable experiences. What you're describing is what happened,
Speaker 2: whether you believe it or not. The call ended shortly
Speaker 2: after that, with Derek hanging up in obvious frustration. I
Speaker 2: sat in my studio, staring at the blank screen, wondering
Speaker 2: for the hundredth time if I was doing this right.
Speaker 2: Daniel found me on the porch an hour later, nursing
Speaker 2: a beer and watching the stars come out rough interview.
Speaker 2: He asked, sitting down beside me, you could say that
Speaker 2: I told him about Derek, about the story about my frustration.
Speaker 2: The thing is he seemed to genuinely believe it. He
Speaker 2: wasn't lying exactly, he was just, I don't know, deluded fantasizing.
Speaker 2: Does it matter. You can't put every story on the show,
Speaker 2: I know, but it's getting harder to sort through them all.
Speaker 2: For every legitimate witness, there are five Derek Fontaines, people
Speaker 2: who've convinced themselves of experiences that never happened, people who
Speaker 2: want attention or validation, or just someone to listen to
Speaker 2: their fantasies. That's the price of success, Daniel said. The
Speaker 2: bigger the platform, the more noise you have to filter out.
Speaker 2: I just don't I want to become one of those shows,
Speaker 2: the ones that'll put anything on air as long as
Speaker 2: it's sensational. That's not what this is supposed to be about.
Speaker 2: Then don't let it become that you've built something real here, Brian,
Speaker 2: something that helps people. Don't let the Derek Fontanes of
Speaker 2: the world make you forget that. He was right, of
Speaker 2: course he usually was, but the frustration lingered a reminder
Speaker 2: that this work, this calling, wasn't always easy. Sometimes it
Speaker 2: meant disappointing people, sometimes it meant being the bad guy.
Speaker 2: But if I didn't maintain standards. If I didn't filter
Speaker 2: the wheat from the chaff, the podcast would become worthless,
Speaker 2: just another collection of tall tales and wishful thinking, and
Speaker 2: that would help no one. So I kept filtering, kept sorting,
Speaker 2: kept searching for the real stories buried under the mountain
Speaker 2: of noise. The next interview couldn't have been more different.
Speaker 2: Her name was Gloria Reyes, a sixty four year old
Speaker 2: retired nurse from rural New Mexico. She'd i'd hesitant to
Speaker 2: reach out, her email full of apologies and disclaimers, convinced
Speaker 2: that no one would take her seriously. I've never told
Speaker 2: anyone about this, she said when we connected, not my husband,
Speaker 2: not my children. I was afraid they'd think I'd lost
Speaker 2: my mind. Tell me what happened to Gloria. It was
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two. I was working at a small hospital
Speaker 2: in Las Vegas. That's Las Vegas, New Mexico, not Nevada.
Speaker 2: We served a lot of the outlying communities, ranches and
Speaker 2: pueblos that didn't have their own medical facilities. What happened
Speaker 2: that year? A young man was brought in late one night,
Speaker 2: a Navajo boy, maybe nineteen or twenty. He'd been found
Speaker 2: wandering on the highway, dehydrated, confused, covered in scratches and bruises.
Speaker 2: The people who found him thought he'd been in an accident,
Speaker 2: but there was no damage vehicle anywhere nearby. What was
Speaker 2: his condition? Physically? He was okay, dehydrated and scraped up,
Speaker 2: but nothing serious. But mentally he was somewhere else. He
Speaker 2: kept mumbling about the big people, about being taken, being held,
Speaker 2: being examined. We assumed he was delirious, maybe on drugs,
Speaker 2: maybe suffering from heat stroke. What did he describe as
Speaker 2: his condition stabilized the story became clear. He said he'd
Speaker 2: been camping in the mountains when something grabbed him, something
Speaker 2: big and hairy, walking on two legs. Multiple creatures, actually,
Speaker 2: he said there were at least three of them. They'd
Speaker 2: carried him to a cave, held him there for what
Speaker 2: he thought was several days, and then released him near
Speaker 2: the highway. Did you believe him? At the time, I
Speaker 2: didn't know what to believe. His story was consistent, detailed,
Speaker 2: specific in ways that didn't seem like fabrication, but it
Speaker 2: was also impossible. Creatures like that didn't exist. That's what
Speaker 2: I told myself. What made you change? Your mind. The
Speaker 2: physical evidence. Gloria's voice grew quieter. When we examined him
Speaker 2: more thoroughly, we found things we couldn't explain. Hair caught
Speaker 2: in his clothing that didn't match any known animal, bruises
Speaker 2: on his arms, and patterns that suggested large humanoid hands,
Speaker 2: and his feet. His feet were injured in a way
Speaker 2: that suggested he'd been carried for miles, not walked. What
Speaker 2: happened to the evidence, that's the strangest part. The next morning,
Speaker 2: two men showed up at the hospital, federal agents, they said,
Speaker 2: though they never showed proper id they took all the
Speaker 2: physical evidence, the hair samples, the photographs we'd taken of
Speaker 2: the bruises. They interviewed the young man for hours, and
Speaker 2: when they were done, he signed a statement saying he'd
Speaker 2: been confused and didn't remember what had happened to him.
Speaker 2: He recanted he was terrified. I saw his face when
Speaker 2: those men were done with him. He'd been threatened. I'm
Speaker 2: sure of it. They made him afraid to tell the truth.
Speaker 2: And you've kept this secret for thirty years. What choice
Speaker 2: did I have. I was a nurse at a small hospital.
Speaker 2: Those men made it clear that talking about what happened
Speaker 2: would have consequences, and I had a family to think about,
Speaker 2: a career to protect. She paused, But I'm retired now.
Speaker 2: My husband passed two years ago, and I'm tired of
Speaker 2: carrying the secret. That boy, that young man, he deserved
Speaker 2: to be believed, and I need someone to know what
Speaker 2: really happened. Gloria's story was everything Derek Fontaine's wasn't, specific, verifiable,
Speaker 2: consistent with known patterns. The involvement of mysterious federal agents,
Speaker 2: the confiscation of evidence, the intimidation of witnesses. It all
Speaker 2: fit with what I'd learned about the cover up, And
Speaker 2: unlike Derek's fantasy, Gloria's account came with something else, corroboration.
Speaker 2: The young Navajo man she treated, she still remembered his name,
Speaker 2: and with some digging, I might be able to find him.
Speaker 2: This was why I did this work, This was why
Speaker 2: I pushed through the dar Derek Fontaines, and the hoaxers
Speaker 2: and the attention seekers, because buried under all that noise
Speaker 2: were stories like Glorias, real experiences, real witnesses, real pieces
Speaker 2: of the truth, the wheat among the chaff. Chapter twenty eight,
Speaker 2: Ghosts from the Past The men in black returned on
Speaker 2: a Thursday evening in October. I hadn't thought about them
Speaker 2: in months. The podcast had become my life, the community
Speaker 2: had become my focus, and the threats that had once
Speaker 2: kept me up at night had faded into memory. Maybe
Speaker 2: I'd grown complacent. Maybe I'd convinced myself that they'd given up,
Speaker 2: that the information was too far out of their control
Speaker 2: to contain anymore. I was wrong. Daniel was at the
Speaker 2: restaurant working the dinner shift. I was in my studio
Speaker 2: editing an episode. When the driveway alarm chimed. We got
Speaker 2: false alarm, sometimes dear, mostly occasionally a black bear wandering through,
Speaker 2: so I almost ignored it, but something made me check
Speaker 2: the monitor. Two black SUVs were rolling up the drive
Speaker 2: My heart rate spiked. I watched as the vehicle stopped
Speaker 2: in front of the house as four men in dark
Speaker 2: suits emerged. They moved with the same choreographed precision I
Speaker 2: remembered from years ago, spreading out to cover the approaches
Speaker 2: to the house while two of them walked toward the porch.
Speaker 2: I grabbed my rifle, still kept by the door, still loaded,
Speaker 2: and stepped outside. That's far enough, I said. The lead
Speaker 2: man stopped. He was different from the ones who'd visited before, younger,
Speaker 2: with a harder edge to his features, but the look
Speaker 2: in his eyes was the same, the cold certainty of
Speaker 2: someone operating with authority. They didn't have to explain, mister Patterson,
Speaker 2: we're not here to cause trouble. Then, why are you
Speaker 2: here to deliver a message and to make a request.
Speaker 2: I'm listening. The man reached into his jacket, slowly, making
Speaker 2: sure I could see his hands. He pulled out a
Speaker 2: Manila folder and held it up. You've been busy these
Speaker 2: past few years, the podcast, the community you've built, the
Speaker 2: attention you've brought to this subject. It's been impressive. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Now get to the point. The point is that you've
Speaker 2: reached across roads, mister Patterson. The work you've been doing,
Speaker 2: documenting encounters, collecting testimony, building a public record, it's had consequences,
Speaker 2: some of them intended, some of them less. So what consequences?
Speaker 2: People are asking questions, People in positions of power, congressional staffers, journalists, academics.
Speaker 2: The pressure is building for official acknowledgment of what you've
Speaker 2: been documenting, and that puts certain interests in a difficult position. Good.
Speaker 2: That's what I was hoping for. The man smiled, but
Speaker 2: there was no warmth in it. We anticipated you'd say that,
Speaker 2: which is why we're offering an alternative. He extended the
Speaker 2: folder toward me. What is that information? The kind of
Speaker 2: information you've been seeking for years? Details about the creatures,
Speaker 2: about the research that's been conducted, about what we really
Speaker 2: know and how long we've known it. And what's the catch?
Speaker 2: No catch, just a request. You take this information, you
Speaker 2: add it to your research, but you don't identify where
Speaker 2: it came from, and you stop pushing for official disclosure.
Speaker 2: Let the information speak for itself without forcing the government's hand.
Speaker 2: I stared at him. You want me to become your mouthpiece.
Speaker 2: We want you to become a partner, someone who helps
Speaker 2: manage the transition, rather than forcing it to happen on
Speaker 2: an uncontrolled timetable. And if I refuse, the man's expression
Speaker 2: didn't change. Then we continue as we have been, monitoring,
Speaker 2: containing doing what's necessary to maintain order. You mean threatening people,
Speaker 2: suppressing evidence, covering up the truth, maintaining order, he repeated,
Speaker 2: Mister Patterson, you've seen a fraction of what out there,
Speaker 2: the creatures you've been documenting They're just one piece of
Speaker 2: a much larger picture. There are things in this world
Speaker 2: that would break most people's minds if they knew about them.
Speaker 2: We're not the villains you've made us out to be.
Speaker 2: We're the ones holding back the tide. I thought about
Speaker 2: the Mount Saint Helen's documents, the evidence of government program
Speaker 2: studying these creatures for decades, the pattern of cover ups
Speaker 2: and silencings that stretched back generations. I've seen more than
Speaker 2: you think, I said. Something flickered in the man's eyes,
Speaker 2: surprise maybe or recognition. Then you understand why we're concerned.
Speaker 2: What I understand is that you've been lying to people
Speaker 2: for decades, hiding the truth because you thought we couldn't
Speaker 2: handle it, And now that the truth is coming out anyway,
Speaker 2: you want to control the narrative. We want to prevent panic,
Speaker 2: We want to ensure a stable transition. Is that so unreasonable.
Speaker 2: It's not your decision to make the people deserve to
Speaker 2: know the truth, all of it, not just what you
Speaker 2: think they can hand on. And stay tuned for more
Speaker 2: sasquatch ot to see. We'll be right back after these messages.
Speaker 2: The man sighed, I was afraid you'd say that he
Speaker 2: set the folder on the porch, railing the offer stands.
Speaker 2: Take some time, think it over read what's in that folder.
Speaker 2: Maybe it will change your perspective. And if it doesn't,
Speaker 2: then I suppose we'll see who's right about what's best
Speaker 2: for humanity. I hope, for everyone's sake, that it's not you.
Speaker 2: He turned and walked back to the SUVs. The other
Speaker 2: men followed, moving with that same eerie precision. Within moments,
Speaker 2: they were gone, disappearing down the driveway and into the night.
Speaker 2: I stood on the porch for a long time, the
Speaker 2: folder in my hands, wondering what I'd just agreed to
Speaker 2: or refused. The folder contained exactly what the man had promised.
Speaker 2: Information pages and pay ages of it, documents i'd never
Speaker 2: seen before, with classification stamps and agency headers, and detailed
Speaker 2: research findings, studies on sasquatch physiology conducted at facilities i'd
Speaker 2: never heard of, psychological profiles of witnesses compiled over decades,
Speaker 2: maps showing known habitation zones marked with encounter frequencies and
Speaker 2: population estimates, and something else, something that made my blood
Speaker 2: run cold. A section on interdimensional hypotheses. The documents suggested
Speaker 2: that the creatures weren't simply undiscovered primates hiding in the wilderness.
Speaker 2: They were something else, beings that existed partially outside our
Speaker 2: normal perception of reality. They could move between dimensions. The
Speaker 2: researchers theorized they could become invisible or nearly so, They
Speaker 2: could sense human intention and avoid detection with uncanny precision.
Speaker 2: This explained things the way they seemed to vanish without trace,
Speaker 2: the difficulty in obtaining clear photographs or physical evidence, the
Speaker 2: psychic phenomena that some witnesses reported, But it also raised
Speaker 2: more questions than it answered. If the creatures were interdimensional,
Speaker 2: what did that mean for the other things the government
Speaker 2: was hiding, the UFOs, the paranormal phenomena, all the strangeness
Speaker 2: that had been suppressed for so long. Were they all connected,
Speaker 2: all part of the same vast mystery that we were
Speaker 2: only beginning to glimpse. I stayed up all night reading
Speaker 2: and rereading the documents. When Daniel came home from his shift,
Speaker 2: he found me surrounded by papers, red eyed and wired
Speaker 2: on coffee. Brian, what's going on? I told him about
Speaker 2: the men, about the offer, about the folder and what
Speaker 2: it contained. He listened without interrupting, his face growing more
Speaker 2: concerned with every word. What are you going to do,
Speaker 2: he asked when I finished, I don't know. Part of
Speaker 2: me wants to take this information and run with it,
Speaker 2: put it all on the podcast, let the world see
Speaker 2: what they've been hiding, and the other part, the other part,
Speaker 2: wonders if they're right, if the truth is too dangerous
Speaker 2: to just dump on an unprepared public, if I'd be
Speaker 2: causing more harm than good. Daniel was quiet for a moment.
Speaker 2: Do you trust them? No, not even a little. Then
Speaker 2: there's your answer. Whatever they're offering, whatever they want you
Speaker 2: to do, it's not for your benefit. It's for theirs.
Speaker 2: But the information. Use it, but use it on your terms,
Speaker 2: not theirs. Don't become their partner, don't help them control
Speaker 2: the narrative. Just keep doing what you've been doing and
Speaker 2: add this to the pile. He made it sound so simple.
Speaker 2: Maybe it was. I looked at the documents spread across
Speaker 2: the table, years of suppressed research, decades of hidden truth,
Speaker 2: and now it was in my hands, waiting for me
Speaker 2: to decide what to do with it. Okay, I said, Finally,
Speaker 2: we do it my way. Daniel squeezed my shoulder. That's
Speaker 2: my boy, I started organizing the documents, preparing to incorporate
Speaker 2: them into my research. The men in black would be watching,
Speaker 2: waiting to see what I did. Let them watch, Let
Speaker 2: them see that I couldn't be bought or intimidated. The
Speaker 2: truth was coming out one way or another. The truth
Speaker 2: was coming out, and nothing they did was going to
Speaker 2: stop it. Chapter twenty nine, The Fire Returns. The second
Speaker 2: attack came eighteen months after the documentary release. This time
Speaker 2: they didn't bother with subtlety. A group of men in
Speaker 2: tactical gear faces hidden behind balaclavas, descended on our property
Speaker 2: at three in the morning. They set fires in multiple
Speaker 2: locations simultaneously, the studio, the garage, the tool shed. By
Speaker 2: the time we woke to the smell of smoke, the
Speaker 2: flames were already out of control. We escaped with our
Speaker 2: lives barely. Daniel was the one who woke first, shaking
Speaker 2: me out of deep sleep with urgency in his voice. Brian, Brian,
Speaker 2: wake up, something's wrong. I smelled it before I opened
Speaker 2: my eyes, Smoke, acrid and thick, already seeping under the
Speaker 2: bedroom door. We moved on instinct, grabbing clothes, phones, the
Speaker 2: emergency bag we'd prepared for exactly this kind of situation.
Speaker 2: The house itself was still intact, but the studio was
Speaker 2: fully engulfed. Flames shot into the night sky, painting the
Speaker 2: mountains in shades of orange and red. The garage was
Speaker 2: burning too, and the shed where we kept the lawn equipment.
Speaker 2: I called nine one one while Daniel sprayed the house
Speaker 2: with the garden hose, trying to keep the flames from spreading.
Speaker 2: The fire department arrived within twenty minutes, fast for a
Speaker 2: rural area, but by then the studio was a total loss.
Speaker 2: This was coordinated, the fire investigator said, surveying the damage
Speaker 2: the next morning. Multiple points of origin accelerant at each location.
Speaker 2: This wasn't vaskandalism. This was a professional operation. Can you
Speaker 2: prove that I can document what I've found, but proving
Speaker 2: who's responsible? He shook his head. These people know what
Speaker 2: they're doing. They don't leave evidence. The attack made national news,
Speaker 2: a former sheriff targeted for his research into unexplained phenomena,
Speaker 2: a podcast host silenced by Arson. The story played perfectly
Speaker 2: into the narrative. We'd been building a government cover up
Speaker 2: so determined to maintain its secrets that it would burn
Speaker 2: down homes to stop the truth from getting out. The
Speaker 2: response was overwhelming. Donations poured in from around the world, equipment, money,
Speaker 2: offers of safe haven. The community i'd been building rallied
Speaker 2: around us, determined to show that we couldn't be silenced,
Speaker 2: and Amanda called with news that changed everything. I've got
Speaker 2: a television deal, she said, a major network. They want
Speaker 2: to produce a docuseries based on the podcast, full editor control,
Speaker 2: no censorship, after everything that's happened, They're not afraid of
Speaker 2: the blowback. They're counting on the blowback. Controversy drives ratings,
Speaker 2: and this is the most controversial story in decades, she paused.
Speaker 2: They saw what happened to your house. Everyone saw, and
Speaker 2: they want to tell the world what's really going on.
Speaker 2: When do we start? As soon as you're ready. They're
Speaker 2: willing to fund a complete rebuild of your studio, better
Speaker 2: equipment than you had before. Security that'll actually work this time.
Speaker 2: I looked at Daniel, at the ruins of everything we'd built,
Speaker 2: at the life we'd have to reconstruct for the second time.
Speaker 2: He nodded, Tell them we're in, I said. The production
Speaker 2: dwarfed anything we'd done before. Amanda assembled a team of professionals,
Speaker 2: camera operators, sound engineers, researchers, security personnel. They descended on
Speaker 2: North Carolina like a small army, setting up in a
Speaker 2: rented facility while my new studio was being built. The
Speaker 2: concept was ambitious, a ten episode series, each focusing on
Speaker 2: a different aspect of the phenomenon. Encounters, evidence, government cover up,
Speaker 2: international connections, the history of research, and finally, an expedition
Speaker 2: into the heart of the Piska following the trail we'd
Speaker 2: been documenting for years. This is going to be different
Speaker 2: from the first documentary, Amanda explained, that was about revealing
Speaker 2: the cover up. This is about building an irrefutable case
Speaker 2: for the creature's existence. You mean, actually finding them. That's
Speaker 2: the goal. We've got the best equipment money can buy,
Speaker 2: thermal cameras, night vision drones with infrared sensors. If there's
Speaker 2: anything out there, we're going to document it, and if
Speaker 2: we don't, then we document everything else. We found the
Speaker 2: witness testimonies, the physical evidence, the patterns you and Zach
Speaker 2: have been mapping. Even without direct visual proof, the circumstantial
Speaker 2: evidence is overwhelming. The filming took six months. We traveled
Speaker 2: across the country, revisiting witnesses, documenting evidence, building the case
Speaker 2: piece by piece. Each episode was crafted to lead viewers
Speaker 2: deeper into the mystery, starting with basic questions and ending
Speaker 2: with implications that shook the foundations of what they thought
Speaker 2: they knew. I was on camera for most of it,
Speaker 2: guiding viewers through the evidence, sharing my own experiences, asking
Speaker 2: the questions that no one in authority was willing to ask.
Speaker 2: It was exhausting, it was exhilarating, and it was necessary.
Speaker 2: The expedition into the Pizga came last ten days in
Speaker 2: the wilderness with a full production crew, following the trails
Speaker 2: we'd mapped, setting up surveillance in locations with the highest
Speaker 2: concentration of encounters, days of hiking, nights of waiting, hours
Speaker 2: of footage that showed nothing but empty forest. And then
Speaker 2: on the eighth night, something happened. Camped in a hollow
Speaker 2: near the site where Austin Mercer had disappeared, the thermal
Speaker 2: cameras were running, the audio equipment was recording, and I
Speaker 2: was sitting by the fire keeping watch while most of
Speaker 2: the crew slept. The sound started around two in the morning.
Speaker 2: Wood knocks, the sharp crack of a branch being struck
Speaker 2: against a tree, once, twice, three times, coming from somewhere
Speaker 2: in the darkness beyond our camp. I signaled to the
Speaker 2: camera operator, who was awake with me. He trained his
Speaker 2: lens toward the sound, switching to night vision. We saw
Speaker 2: nothing clearly, but we could hear it. Footsteps, heavy bipedal footsteps,
Speaker 2: circling our camp, staying just beyond the range of the cameras,
Speaker 2: just beyond the reach of our lights. And then the
Speaker 2: vocalizations began. A howl rising from somewhere deep in the forest,
Speaker 2: joined by another from a different direction than a third,
Speaker 2: a fourth, a chorus of voices calling to each other
Speaker 2: across the darkness. The crew woke. Everyone was on their feet, cameras,
Speaker 2: rolling equipment running, capturing every second. We never saw the
Speaker 2: creatures clearly. They were too smart, too experienced, too good
Speaker 2: at staying hidden. But we heard them, we documented them,
Speaker 2: we proved they were there. And when the sun came
Speaker 2: up and the sounds faded into silence, we knew we
Speaker 2: had something significant. Not definitive proof that would require actual
Speaker 2: clear footage, but evidence, compelling, documented, irrefutable evidence that something
Speaker 2: was out there, something that the world would have to
Speaker 2: reckon with the Austin Mercer case remained unsolved. I'd made
Speaker 2: peace with that as much as I could. The trail
Speaker 2: camera footage we'd recovered told a grim story, a young
Speaker 2: man running through the forest, something massive in pursuit, screams
Speaker 2: that cut off abruptly. Whatever had happened to Austin, it
Speaker 2: hadn't been good. His parents had held a memorial service.
Speaker 2: They'd placed a marker at the campsite where he'd last
Speaker 2: been seen, a simple wooden cross with his name and dates.
Speaker 2: I visited the site during our expedition, stood there in
Speaker 2: the clearing, looking at the trees, feeling the weight of
Speaker 2: all the questions I couldn't answer. Austin was gone. His
Speaker 2: body was somewhere in these mountains, hidden in a place
Speaker 2: we might never find. But his story had become part
Speaker 2: of something larger. His disappearance had sparked an investigation that
Speaker 2: had grown into a movement. Maybe that was enough. Maybe
Speaker 2: that was all any of us could hope for, to
Speaker 2: be part of something bigger than ourselves. I knelt by
Speaker 2: the marker and said a quiet prayer for Austin, for
Speaker 2: all the people who'd vanished into these forests over the years,
Speaker 2: For the truth that was still waiting to be found.
Speaker 2: Then I stood up and went back to work.
Speaker 1: I didn't di
Speaker 2: Dot pat