Speaker 1: And yet I asked you, it's not an alien force already.
Speaker 1: Among my guest today is author, musician, artist, researcher and
Speaker 1: host of Strange Familiars Timothy Renner. Welcome and thanks for
Speaker 1: coming on.
Speaker 2: Well, thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, before you came on, actually my power shut off
Speaker 1: just a real quick and it cut back on and
Speaker 1: the light started stroby like dark green.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's weird.
Speaker 1: That's I know it's and it's it's a dark green
Speaker 1: color that I don't have available because some of these
Speaker 1: lights have a remote and I've never been able to
Speaker 1: accomplished that shade of green. So I don't know what's
Speaker 1: going on. I don't know what's in store for us
Speaker 1: this evening.
Speaker 2: Well let's find out.
Speaker 1: And I should mention too, before I had a podcast,
Speaker 1: before I knew I was going to have a podcast,
Speaker 1: I came across your show and the coolest part of
Speaker 1: doing this is getting to talk to people who kind
Speaker 1: of had a hand in influence in me. So and
Speaker 1: your podcast one is one of the few shows that
Speaker 1: had that kind of had me aspiring to start my own.
Speaker 2: So that's thank you, that's that's a huge compliment. That's
Speaker 2: the way I started too. I had there's a few
Speaker 2: podcasts I listened to. Sasquatch Chronicles was one of them,
Speaker 2: Where Did the Road Go was another? And without those guys,
Speaker 2: you know, I wouldn't have done it either. So I
Speaker 2: love that. I think that was a huge compliment. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no problem. And you know, yeah, it sounds like
Speaker 1: we're in the same boat on a different timeline, because
Speaker 1: it is. It's just a few handful of these shows,
Speaker 1: these gems out there, because there's a thousands podcasts, right,
Speaker 1: but there's there was only a few of them that
Speaker 1: really called me to I guess to try this.
Speaker 2: Yeah what, Yeah, I love podcasting in general because I
Speaker 2: think it's in a way, in its ideal form. I
Speaker 2: think it's it's a wonderfully equal format.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Now, there are some celebrities that come in and they
Speaker 2: get a leg up because they're already popular. But for
Speaker 2: you know, the rest of us, you know, we're all
Speaker 2: we all kind of start at the same place. And uh,
Speaker 2: it's a great community. It's just a great community. Everyone
Speaker 2: I've met it has been wonderful. Like I haven't met
Speaker 2: like one podcast as a look, like I said, you're
Speaker 2: everybody I've met has been really nice and supportive, and
Speaker 2: it's just such a great community and I really enjoy it.
Speaker 2: I just I love everything about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Same here. I think from what I've gathered so
Speaker 1: far with people I've interacted within this community, they're all
Speaker 1: very very interesting and very intelligent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they don't have that. So I came from
Speaker 2: the music world and there was a not everybody, but
Speaker 2: you could definitely run into a lot of people with
Speaker 2: a real competitive streak.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It seemed like they were really trying to get like
Speaker 2: everybody's after the Golden Ring or whatever, and they weren't
Speaker 2: too worried about what you were doing if and might
Speaker 2: actively be kind of trying to push you out of
Speaker 2: the way. It's not that way in podcasting. It's not
Speaker 2: when like we're not fighting for the audience because people
Speaker 2: can listen to as many podcasts as they want. And
Speaker 2: it's just like I said, it's that supportive community that
Speaker 2: that I just find wonderful. Like, you know, we've guessed
Speaker 2: on each other's podcast. We help each other out, you know,
Speaker 2: we give each other clues like, hey, what equipment are
Speaker 2: you using? What does this? You know, people, it's just great,
Speaker 2: like it's just really supportive and wonderful.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. I was in the music world for a
Speaker 1: while as well. I'm in Nashville actually that's where I
Speaker 1: live now, and I came out here. I was summoning
Speaker 1: out here by other musicians, So I know about that,
Speaker 1: the cutthroat antics in which you speak.
Speaker 2: What It can get pretty bad there, I imagine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well you know, Pete, Yeah, yeah, it's it can be.
Speaker 1: It can be a lot of the people who who
Speaker 1: make it out here have had time to sort of
Speaker 1: mellow out on their journey, I think. But at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, there's still that that tendency to
Speaker 1: sort of get ahead of your neighbor if you will.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's just I don't know if it's baked
Speaker 2: into the music world or I don't know what it
Speaker 2: is about it, but yeah, it does exist there and
Speaker 2: not everybody, certainly not everybody, but you do, you do
Speaker 2: run into it a bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: What attracted this is what I really want to know.
Speaker 1: What attracted you to the subject of the strange phenomena?
Speaker 2: Well, I always liked it, like even as a little
Speaker 2: little kid, I remember hearing about ghost stories, like and
Speaker 2: I grew up in a in rural Maryland on a farm,
Speaker 2: and every now and then I'd hear about a ghost
Speaker 2: story this place was haunted or a ghost was seen here,
Speaker 2: and I always wanted to go there. I would always
Speaker 2: bug my parents, like I want to go there. And
Speaker 2: I didn't know why, you know, I didn't even think
Speaker 2: as a kid, I thought i'd see a ghost. I
Speaker 2: just wanted to go to those places where this stuff happened.
Speaker 2: Later on I would have learned this is this is folklore,
Speaker 2: and I love folklore. But I was interested from that
Speaker 2: from that young age. And then once shows like In
Speaker 2: Search of came on and things like that, it just
Speaker 2: fired my imagination and and I really fell in love
Speaker 2: with the idea of Bigfoot. And it had a few
Speaker 2: experiences of my own as a kid, which I didn't
Speaker 2: really connect until I was like much later looking back,
Speaker 2: not Bigfoot experiences. I saw Ufo and and had some
Speaker 2: other strange things happened around around that stuff. But funny enough,
Speaker 2: even though I saw Ufo, I didn't I was still
Speaker 2: a Bigfoot kid. I just all I wanted was I'd
Speaker 2: read big Foot books and watch big Foot shows on
Speaker 2: TV all that stuff. But then you know, got us
Speaker 2: to a certain age, and I found girls in punk rock,
Speaker 2: and I forgot about all that stuff and went off
Speaker 2: and had adventures and music and et cetera. And then,
Speaker 2: you know, as an adult, started settling down again and
Speaker 2: started looking the stuff up and found that, you know,
Speaker 2: it didn't stop when I stopped, It kept going and
Speaker 2: there was a wonderful world full of this stuff. And
Speaker 2: I started exploring it again, and eventually, you know, I
Speaker 2: wrote my first book, which is about a local area
Speaker 2: here in York County, Pennsylvania called Toad Road, and I
Speaker 2: really dug in and that's when I found my love
Speaker 2: for research. I just really, like, like, you know, started
Speaker 2: going to the Historical Society, started really spent a lot
Speaker 2: of time with newspaper archives and things like that, and
Speaker 2: just fell in love with like just digging up this information.
Speaker 2: And then from there I started going on podcasts and
Speaker 2: then I was like, hey, I want to do a podcast.
Speaker 2: So it all kind of but it roots back to
Speaker 2: my earliest memories. I mean, I just always loved this stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you said, Maryland, I guess that's where it all started.
Speaker 1: And did you migrate the PA? And I was going
Speaker 1: to ask about PA because I love that state. You know,
Speaker 1: I've been going up my whole life to Pennsylvania. It's
Speaker 1: like a second home for me, and I was just curious,
Speaker 1: you know, how much of that state has a place
Speaker 1: in this story for you. Did you find a lot
Speaker 1: of weird when you got to p a.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I used to. When I started the podcast,
Speaker 2: I used to say, now, I could do the same
Speaker 2: thing anywhere. You know, it's just a matter of look
Speaker 2: in and you'll find the weird stuff. And I do that.
Speaker 2: That is true, probably to an extent. But also Pennsylvania
Speaker 2: has a whole lot of it. I'm lucky to live
Speaker 2: where I do and be interested in this stuff because
Speaker 2: there's just so much here. There's there is a lot
Speaker 2: in Pennsylvania. I don't know why, but there's there's a
Speaker 2: lot of it here. So it's a good place to
Speaker 2: live if you're interested in this stuff. There's you know,
Speaker 2: just you know, forty five minutes away is Gettysburg, which
Speaker 2: is a massive, you knows, ghost hunting place, and you know,
Speaker 2: obviously the history there I love too, but I mean
Speaker 2: it's infused with this this ghost hunting culture there. But
Speaker 2: you know, we have Michell Forrest. It's just a little
Speaker 2: bit beyond that, which is probably your top one or
Speaker 2: two places in Pennsylvania for bigfoot settings, and then all
Speaker 2: kinds of other stuff locally. It's just it's a wonderful place,
Speaker 2: like I don't have to go too far to get
Speaker 2: to some really interesting stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I feel that way as well about being
Speaker 1: in Tennessee. And I suppose I came from North Carolina
Speaker 1: to Nashville, and I suppose I could probably say the
Speaker 1: same about North Carolina, but I do. I have all
Speaker 1: these great memories of driving up to Pennsylvania from North Carolina,
Speaker 1: just my whole life because my mom's side of the
Speaker 1: family is from Butler. Okay, the Pittsburgh area, Yeah, familiar
Speaker 1: and yeah, and so you know, part of that trip
Speaker 1: was going through West Virginia, which is very much a
Speaker 1: high strange area of the country. I'd say that West
Speaker 1: Virginia is dense four tea in land.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I I love West Virginia too. I always say
Speaker 2: West Virginia just it's like Pennsylvania on steroids. You know,
Speaker 2: you get the rolling hills roll a bit more, the
Speaker 2: mountains are a bit higher, the greens a big greener.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I love West Virginia. I spent a lot of time
Speaker 2: there learning culhammer banjo, and I fell in love with
Speaker 2: the state and the people. Just just wonderful place. If
Speaker 2: I didn't live in Pennsylvania, I don't know, be a
Speaker 2: close call between Western Massachusetts and West Virginia if I
Speaker 2: if I didn't live in Pennsylvania, I'd choose one of
Speaker 2: those two places.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've often thought about that too. I often think, what
Speaker 1: if I end up in West Virginia, And then I think, well,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be that bad. It's it's kind of like
Speaker 1: an isolation this dream. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, that part of me that wants to
Speaker 2: live alone in a cabin looks at West Virginia. Oh, yes,
Speaker 2: that's right. It's pretty nice.
Speaker 1: Yes, and you know, just going up through you know,
Speaker 1: going up through flat woods going sometimes we would, I
Speaker 1: would go up through Point Pleasant, right, and and then
Speaker 1: but of course Pennsylvania, you know, I mean, it's right
Speaker 1: on the hills of West Virginia. For weird because in Butler,
Speaker 1: where my grandpa's from, they had that Butler Gargoyle.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, yeah, And I.
Speaker 1: Always thought that that was such a strange, strange, cryptid
Speaker 1: and I often wondered if that speaking of point pleasant
Speaker 1: if that was not in some kind of a relation
Speaker 1: to Mothman.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I wonder that too with a lot
Speaker 2: of these these sightings of these these wing things, because
Speaker 2: the descriptions of Mauthman, if you read like Mothman prophecies,
Speaker 2: a lot of the witnesses were kind of describing it
Speaker 2: was something with wings. But other than that, a lot
Speaker 2: of the descriptions were a little bit different. And you're like,
Speaker 2: were they seeing the same thing? You know? And that's
Speaker 2: so you wonder when you see these gargoyles and these
Speaker 2: some people call them these batsquatches, they call them. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was like, are these are they related? Are they
Speaker 2: the same thing? I don't know, I don't know, but yeah,
Speaker 2: I thought about that too, as far as the gargoyle thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think too with some of the pa gargoyles.
Speaker 1: One of the characteristics that I remember seeing was that
Speaker 1: it dark figure in the road. Witness sees it jump
Speaker 1: and fly and spread its wings, but not flap its wings, right,
Speaker 1: And that was I think that that was a mothman characteristic.
Speaker 2: I believe you're correct. Yeah, yep, yeah, there's a Now
Speaker 2: this witness called it a mothman. That happened in New
Speaker 2: York County.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 2: I'm very close to that area Toad Road I was
Speaker 2: talking about, in fact, less than a quarter of a
Speaker 2: mile away from it, basically right there, but very similar thing.
Speaker 2: They said. It was this dark figure. It stood up.
Speaker 2: They pulled over the car to look at some deer
Speaker 2: and this thing stands up behind their car. They see
Speaker 2: this thing stand up and then the wings go out.
Speaker 2: It screamed, I think, they said, But it didn't flap
Speaker 2: its wings. It just just shot up.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, That's that's why I like this subject so much.
Speaker 1: It's those just those those I mean impossibilities, but yet
Speaker 1: lot oftentimes on the other side of that siding, you
Speaker 1: have a witness that's totally genuine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, that's I mean. When I started uncovering these,
Speaker 2: and I wasn't the first one to do this. When
Speaker 2: I say I'm covering, I mean, like for myself, I
Speaker 2: started uncovering these these wild man reports they called them
Speaker 2: from the eighteen hundreds of you know what I believe
Speaker 2: are Bigfoot. It certainly sounds like what they're describing. The
Speaker 2: thing that really hit home for me is these people
Speaker 2: are describing behaviors right so not only they describe something
Speaker 2: big and hearing, but they're describing the behaviors that people
Speaker 2: today are describing. And these are very obscure articles I'm
Speaker 2: finding that take me a long time to dig out
Speaker 2: of these old newspapers. These witnesses today that are like,
Speaker 2: let's say I hear them on Sasquatch chronicles for instance.
Speaker 2: They're not reading these old articles and going, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm going to talk about this this and the you know,
Speaker 2: they're talking about what they saw, and so are these
Speaker 2: people in these old newspaper articles, and they're describing some
Speaker 2: very specific things, things like recognizing the gun, like they
Speaker 2: seem to recognize a gun when they put out things
Speaker 2: like there they're problems or or anger or I don't
Speaker 2: know how to put it there. They don't like dogs, right,
Speaker 2: so they're they're aggressive towards dogs, climbing on roofs. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's a very very weird thing. That's a very strange thing.
Speaker 2: And when I hear that, I'm like, okay, okay. And
Speaker 2: people today are reporting it too, you know, slapping the
Speaker 2: side of their house, tapping on windows, all these things,
Speaker 2: and it's like, well, these it's the same behavior. These
Speaker 2: people are describing over the course of hundreds of years,
Speaker 2: you know, And I'm like I said, I'm sure these
Speaker 2: modern witnesses weren't finding these articles and then and then saying, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm going to make up a story based on these
Speaker 2: old articles. It's just, you know, it's not possible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know. And I was telling you before a
Speaker 1: little bit, I haven't done a proper Bigfoot show yet,
Speaker 1: and I've been wanting to do that, and I haven't
Speaker 1: been able to decide if I wanted to start with
Speaker 1: wild man or with Bigfoot. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, sometimes that's the same thing.
Speaker 1: But I'm glad you brought up the eighteen hundreds because
Speaker 1: I think that's a really cool place to start with.
Speaker 1: This subject is going back to some of those older
Speaker 1: articles when they were called often they were referred to
Speaker 1: as wild men.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, well the wild man really starts in the
Speaker 2: Middle Ages, okay, And they would have caught it back
Speaker 2: then on up to the eighteen hundreds, about the time
Speaker 2: the West becomes aware of the Mountain Gorilla in Africa.
Speaker 2: I won't say discovered, because the African people knew it
Speaker 2: was there already, But when the West becomes aware of
Speaker 2: the mountain gorilla. Then you start seeing the very late
Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds, like eighteen ninety, really more around nineteen hundred
Speaker 2: nineteen ten, you start seeing them called gorillas. At that
Speaker 2: point they'll say, you know, there was a gorilla, A
Speaker 2: big gorilla was seen, you know, outside of town. So
Speaker 2: it's interesting how they changed. Once the monster movies come
Speaker 2: in in the twenties and thirties, well then they turn
Speaker 2: into monsters for a while. The newspaper reports are like,
Speaker 2: you know, monster scene, they pay big hairy monster scene,
Speaker 2: and then you know bigfoot sasquatch. All that takes over
Speaker 2: starting in the fifty sixty seventies. So it's interesting the
Speaker 2: way the sort of naming goes. And when I mentioned
Speaker 2: gorilla is by the way, a lot of people say, well,
Speaker 2: they were escape circus animals. Gorillas were extremely expensive back then,
Speaker 2: about the equivalent of two million dollars today. Not everyone
Speaker 2: had it. Not every circus had one. Very few zoos
Speaker 2: had them. We knew exactly how many girulas they had
Speaker 2: in the United States at any one time back then.
Speaker 2: I believe the New York Zoo had one, and Barnum
Speaker 2: had one. That might be it. There might have been
Speaker 2: one other one out there that I'm forgetting about. They're
Speaker 2: very difficult to take it. They didn't know how to
Speaker 2: take care of them back then, so they died pretty easily.
Speaker 2: So the idea that people say, oh, it's just an
Speaker 2: escape circus animal, when the people are talking about seeing gorillas,
Speaker 2: you know, now we knew where the gorillas were and
Speaker 2: they were accounted for, so it just a gorilla does
Speaker 2: not explain, you know, what these people are seeing. They
Speaker 2: were just using that word. You know, first they saw
Speaker 2: big everything in the woods, they called it a gorilla.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that that sometimes tends to be this
Speaker 1: urban legend that has a tendency to like perpetuate itself,
Speaker 1: where it's like, you know, just about every small town
Speaker 1: has that same story and that same excuse that something
Speaker 1: weird happened, and oh, it was just the train that crashed,
Speaker 1: the circus train. Oh yeah, it's in every time.
Speaker 2: I happen to be lucky in that department. My wife
Speaker 2: is a circus historian, and she knows, like, if someone
Speaker 2: claims there was a circus train crash, she can figure
Speaker 2: out if where the circus train crashes were. They always
Speaker 2: made the newspaper. It was a big news. There were
Speaker 2: a few nowhere near as many as people claim. But
Speaker 2: I can always check with her and just say, hey,
Speaker 2: was there a circus train crash in this state around
Speaker 2: this time, and she can look it up for me,
Speaker 2: and by far the answer has been no. You know,
Speaker 2: I can't think of one time where it's corresponded with
Speaker 2: one of these stories.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One of the first episodes I heard of yours
Speaker 1: was the I think it was called the Witch Digger.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and the.
Speaker 1: I bring it up because I think it's a good
Speaker 1: example of this dichotomy between wild man and Bigfoot and
Speaker 1: how blurry that can be, because this this episode deals
Speaker 1: with a creature that kind of rides the line between
Speaker 1: Bigfoot and wild man. If I'm remembering that correctly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that story in particular has become in many
Speaker 2: ways the defining story of strange familiars. I'm not sure
Speaker 2: how recently, I don't know. So we did it episode four,
Speaker 2: so that early in the show was the first time
Speaker 2: we did the Witch Diggers. We came back to it
Speaker 2: last year because some witnesses who lived who currently live
Speaker 2: on that same property contacted me and said they were
Speaker 2: still having activity today. They invited us out. We went
Speaker 2: to that property, we stayed there. We had some incredible
Speaker 2: things happened to us, not all of which I'm ready
Speaker 2: to talk about, but some Bigfoot related things, some things
Speaker 2: related to anomal flights in the sky, and some other
Speaker 2: very very strange things that were very Mothman prophecies esque.
Speaker 2: And I don't mean we saw Mothman. I just mean
Speaker 2: the other kind of high strangeness that surrounded that phenomena.
Speaker 2: We are we're currently working on. This will be a
Speaker 2: Strange familiar's life. We're going to tell the entire Witch
Speaker 2: Digger story live, the history of it, modern witness interviews,
Speaker 2: and then our experiences when we went to Indiana and
Speaker 2: did that. So that story has become incredibly important to
Speaker 2: Strange familiars and to me personally. That journey to Indiana
Speaker 2: changed my life in a major way.
Speaker 1: I didn't know this, by the way, this is news
Speaker 1: to me. I just remember that episode because I went
Speaker 1: back and started from when I found your podcast. I
Speaker 1: went back and started, I guess from the beginning, and
Speaker 1: I just remember that. Man. That's so feel free to
Speaker 1: talk about that as much as you feel like you
Speaker 1: hand I guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the Witch Diggers. It's an article I found.
Speaker 2: I'm doing these newspaper searches for these wild men, and
Speaker 2: I came up with this article, and I didn't know
Speaker 2: what I was going to do with it, because before
Speaker 2: I had a podcast. I found it and I knew
Speaker 2: I was going to collect the Pennsylvania stories, but I
Speaker 2: wasn't sure I was going to keep going. I think
Speaker 2: now I'm eventually I'm gonna do the whole country, hopefully,
Speaker 2: hopefully I live that long. But I put it aside
Speaker 2: and I put in a folder on my desktop, like
Speaker 2: this is a really interesting story. And then when I
Speaker 2: started the podcast, the first three episodes were based on
Speaker 2: my first book. So really the the first original content
Speaker 2: I made for the podcast was The Witch Diggers, and
Speaker 2: it was based on that story. So it's this, this
Speaker 2: family moves from Ohio to Indiana. They buy property in
Speaker 2: this area and there they're a Swiss family. They they're
Speaker 2: having a hard time there for various reasons, farming and
Speaker 2: so forth. But they're they're living, they're doing okay. But
Speaker 2: one day one of the family members shows up at
Speaker 2: a neighbor and starts talking about witches. And it was
Speaker 2: so is a one brother named Nick, one brother named Sammy,
Speaker 2: and their sister named Susan. And Nick was kind of
Speaker 2: the caretaker of these two. The rest that they had
Speaker 2: a very large family, but their parents died, two brothers
Speaker 2: were killed in the Civil War, and a couple other
Speaker 2: their other brothers died I believe in Europe before they
Speaker 2: ever got to America. So it's just Nick, Susan, and
Speaker 2: Sammy left. And Nick's actually younger than those two, but
Speaker 2: he comes back from the Civil Wars and starts taking
Speaker 2: care of them. So they moved to this farm in Indiana,
Speaker 2: and like I said, they start talking about witches, and
Speaker 2: the neighbors are like, what's going on there? And Sammy,
Speaker 2: the younger brother, he starts talking about he's afraid to
Speaker 2: be in the house alone, and he just wanders the
Speaker 2: neighborhood all day long. They said he was a little
Speaker 2: he was probably, you know, mentally handcapped, handicapped in some way.
Speaker 2: They in the in the census records, they list him
Speaker 2: is not a nice word, but this is this is
Speaker 2: how we find this family. In the census records, they
Speaker 2: list him as an idiot, So we know it's it's
Speaker 2: that family. We can find them pretty easily by their names.
Speaker 2: And then and then when Samy is listed as as such,
Speaker 2: but he starts talking about what he called monkeys with
Speaker 2: human heads that climb through the window and scared him
Speaker 2: so bad that he did he didn't even want to
Speaker 2: talk about it. And they're also talking about seeing witches
Speaker 2: and so forth. The family seems to go crazy together,
Speaker 2: all three of them, and they start digging this ditch h
Speaker 2: and at anytime they come upon something like a frog
Speaker 2: or a worm, anything alive, they kill it and they
Speaker 2: say it was a witch, and they drive a stick
Speaker 2: in the ground. So they're obviously like they're kind of
Speaker 2: losing it. And the question is did this paranormal activity
Speaker 2: kind of drive them to that that make them, you know,
Speaker 2: put them in this paranoid state, or is there something
Speaker 2: else going on. Eventually the people come and they take
Speaker 2: them to the Olms house. But then later people coming
Speaker 2: through this area start seeing this Harry wildman and he's
Speaker 2: carrying an axe, so it's this weird thing and they think, oh,
Speaker 2: it must be Nick because he escapes from the asylum
Speaker 2: at some point, and they said it must be him,
Speaker 2: it must be Nick. He come back to the neighborhood.
Speaker 2: But what they're describing doesn't look it's not a man.
Speaker 2: They're describing a big hairy thing that runs on all fours,
Speaker 2: but it's carrying an axe. It's a really really interesting thing.
Speaker 2: I love the article and I always wanted to do
Speaker 2: something more with it. And last summer I was talking
Speaker 2: to my friend John, who would he would end up
Speaker 2: going to Indiana with me. I said, John, I want
Speaker 2: to do something more with the witch Diggers, and I
Speaker 2: don't know what it is. I said, maybe we should
Speaker 2: just go to Indiana and drive around and see if
Speaker 2: we could find this place. I didn't. I didn't know, like,
Speaker 2: you know, the chances of that would be slim, but
Speaker 2: I thought maybe we could try. And about a week later,
Speaker 2: I got an email with the subject witch Diggers and
Speaker 2: I opened it up and it said I live on
Speaker 2: that property and I'm still having activity today. Please contact me.
Speaker 2: I was like, this is a week after I said
Speaker 2: this to John. So I sent an email right away,
Speaker 2: and I don't hear anything back for two weeks, Like
Speaker 2: what is happening? Like why won't this person contact me?
Speaker 2: They seemed like so eager to talk to me, So
Speaker 2: I went in in our discord for Strength Familiars. We
Speaker 2: have this intention and prayer channel and usually people use
Speaker 2: it for like, hey, my mom's sick, can you pray
Speaker 2: for you know, you know, my my neighbor's not feeling well,
Speaker 2: things like that. And I went in there and I said, look,
Speaker 2: this is this isn't important as far it like nobody's
Speaker 2: health was involved or anything like that. But here's what
Speaker 2: I'd like. I said, I'd like these people to contact me.
Speaker 2: Number one. Number two, I'd like them to tell me
Speaker 2: their story. Number three, I'd like them to come on
Speaker 2: Strange Familiars and tell their story. And number four, the
Speaker 2: big ass is, I'd like them to give me access
Speaker 2: to this property. Two weeks, within two weeks of me
Speaker 2: putting that on discord, I get another email from a
Speaker 2: different email address that says which diggers as a subject
Speaker 2: line says, hey, we live across from this property and
Speaker 2: we're still having activity today. So this is yet another person.
Speaker 2: They gave their phone number. I called them right away.
Speaker 2: They told me the stories they came on Strange Familiars.
Speaker 2: I said, hey, can we come out there? They said,
Speaker 2: You're welcome to come out here. I got everything I
Speaker 2: asked for. Like to the letter everything I asked for,
Speaker 2: which blew me away. Right, So we made plans to
Speaker 2: go out there. I think this was in the fall.
Speaker 2: We made plans to go out in the spring. We
Speaker 2: went out in March. And now they were these witnesses.
Speaker 2: There's about five families live back in this hollow. This
Speaker 2: is in southern Indiana, near this property, all of them.
Speaker 2: I think maybe we know about three of these families.
Speaker 2: Talk to us, and we're going back and we'll be
Speaker 2: able to talk to another one. I think in the
Speaker 2: fall they all had activity. They all had stories, multiple stories,
Speaker 2: and the one that really blew me away and the
Speaker 2: reason the witness contacted me. They didn't know anything about
Speaker 2: this witch Diggers article. They had a cemetery on their property,
Speaker 2: and they sent away to the local historical society for
Speaker 2: information on that, and they sent them information on that cemetery.
Speaker 2: But they said, oh, this is in your area too,
Speaker 2: and they sent them part of the witch diggers article,
Speaker 2: not the full article, just like a little part of it.
Speaker 2: They type in witch diggers on the internet. They get
Speaker 2: interested in upcomes strange familiars. They listened to strange familiars
Speaker 2: and the witness said she listened to it, and then
Speaker 2: when her husband got home from work, she made him
Speaker 2: sit down and said, now, listen to this podcast the
Speaker 2: whole thing. Listen to it. And this is why they
Speaker 2: had had bigfoot activity. But they did not know anything
Speaker 2: about this Witch Digger's article. They were seeing she had
Speaker 2: seen bigfoot. They had some workers come to work on
Speaker 2: some power lines nearby. They had seen bigfoot. They were
Speaker 2: terrified by what they saw, and their neighbors were experiencing
Speaker 2: weird stuff. But the thing that got them they had
Speaker 2: an eighty year old neighbor and they originally thought he
Speaker 2: was seen now when he said this. He called his
Speaker 2: son one night and he said, come out here. I
Speaker 2: need your help. It's like late at night. I think
Speaker 2: he left a message. He didn't explain what he needed.
Speaker 2: And they go out to his house, which again is
Speaker 2: right across from this property. All the lights are on,
Speaker 2: all the doors are open. He's nowhere to be found,
Speaker 2: and they're looking around for him, and they finally they
Speaker 2: call his cell phone. They could hear it ringing in
Speaker 2: the distance. They go and they find him under a
Speaker 2: piece of farm equipment hiding and they asked him what happened,
Speaker 2: and he said monkeys with human heads climbed through my windows.
Speaker 2: Same thing that the kid without any knowledge of this
Speaker 2: article from the eighteen hundreds, same thing, and that's what
Speaker 2: gave them chills and made them contact us. And when
Speaker 2: she told me that, obviously I got chills too and
Speaker 2: I have to go. I have to go. So we
Speaker 2: went out there. Like I said, we've had We did
Speaker 2: not see any creatures, but we had bigfoot like activity.
Speaker 2: I don't want to say too much because, like I said,
Speaker 2: this is going to be we're going to do strange
Speaker 2: familiars live. We're going to tour the country and we're
Speaker 2: going to tell the full story of all this. But
Speaker 2: we saw anomalos lights in the sky more than once.
Speaker 2: And next time we go out, I believe. So the
Speaker 2: house where that the elderly man lived, he he has
Speaker 2: since passed away, and that house sits empty. The family
Speaker 2: doesn't doesn't want to do anything with it. They said,
Speaker 2: next time we go out, we can stay in that house.
Speaker 2: So I will. I will get to stay in the
Speaker 2: house where the quote unquote monkeys with human heads climbed
Speaker 2: through the window. So I'm quite excited about that. Since
Speaker 2: we've been there, there's been three toed tracks found in
Speaker 2: along a pond, and the main witnesses that we talked
Speaker 2: to they rent a cabin to other people, and these
Speaker 2: people at this cabins had not talked to them about bigfoot,
Speaker 2: but finally when they had this footprint appeared in this pond,
Speaker 2: they opened up about it. And they said, since I
Speaker 2: think for two years, they said, every night they've been
Speaker 2: getting activity. They so they get their house slapped. Things
Speaker 2: you know, comes through the woods. They can hear holan
Speaker 2: on the ridge, et cetera, et cetera. So there's more
Speaker 2: for us to explore. And uh yeah, we'll be going
Speaker 2: out there again in the fall. I'm super excited. But
Speaker 2: it's just been this amazing thing, Like I said, life changing,
Speaker 2: has just been fantastic for us.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The three toed tracks are these big, big tracks. Okay, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so this you know, of course I'm speaking in the
Speaker 1: realm of speculation here, but it could be is it
Speaker 1: big enough to belong to us asquatch?
Speaker 2: They look at okay, look at yes, and three toed
Speaker 2: tracks are are a thing.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: They're a very difficult thing for people who are married
Speaker 2: to the the idea of a flesh and blood Bigfoot
Speaker 2: being out there, which I'm not. In fact, the longer
Speaker 2: I go on with this, the more I think that's
Speaker 2: very unlikely, if not impossible. Three toed tracks are a
Speaker 2: big problem because the mammals you know, or rather primates,
Speaker 2: have five toes, and they don't look like syndactily, which
Speaker 2: is like toes fords together. They don't look like that all.
Speaker 2: They look like big bird feet, you know, very separate
Speaker 2: toes and a lot of flesh and white. People say, well,
Speaker 2: that's inbreeding. Well, if you look up how inbreeding works,
Speaker 2: that you tend to get more toes, not fewer with inbreeding.
Speaker 2: So it's they're just weird. They're just weird tracks.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And by the way, I'm not in any of
Speaker 1: these clubs or groups. I wanted to make sure that
Speaker 1: I had a show that didn't hinge on Bigfoot before
Speaker 1: I started talking about Bigfoot. Because I'm not in the
Speaker 1: Bigfoot world, nor am I in the UFO world. I
Speaker 1: reserve my right to think that a lot of weird
Speaker 1: happenings might actually be connected.
Speaker 2: Sure, No, I mean it's hard. The longer I'm in it, though,
Speaker 2: it's harder for me to disconnect them from each other.
Speaker 2: There's so much this stuff happens together. Yeah, it's it
Speaker 2: certainly seems connected.
Speaker 1: Let's say that it seems connected. That's that's the quote
Speaker 1: right there, that's the quote of the century. It does
Speaker 1: seem connected. I can totally relate with that. I mean,
Speaker 1: UFO is Bigfoot, paranormal fairy lore. And then you know,
Speaker 1: in the case of this great story that you've found
Speaker 1: yourself in, you've got all this synchro mysticism going on.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and yeah, that's a phenomena that I've experienced
Speaker 1: a lot more in recent years. But I've realized that
Speaker 1: the synchro mysticism is almost like its own type of this.
Speaker 1: I don't know, like it's its own a tentacle of
Speaker 1: this phenomenon or it's its own entity altogether. But somehow
Speaker 1: it's all all intertwined. And it's like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: just like you with this Witch Diggers episode. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's interwoven in your podcast journey, yeah, and now and
Speaker 1: now it's I don't know, it's interwoven with with the
Speaker 1: big Bigfoot and everything else.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And so I went out there with my friend John,
Speaker 2: who I have known for many, many many years since I
Speaker 2: think probably since he was a teenager. I might have
Speaker 2: been twenty when I met him. He's a little bit
Speaker 2: younger than me, so I've known him for a long
Speaker 2: long time. He went with me, And if you're familiar
Speaker 2: with The Hell your series, Tyler Strand from that.
Speaker 1: Absolutely that's what I thought of you once or twice
Speaker 1: when you told me your story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Tyler went with me too, and the three
Speaker 2: of us have become because of this incredibly close. It's again,
Speaker 2: I think this is part of the journey. You know,
Speaker 2: we've become like very close and very like more than
Speaker 2: just more than just partners in the paranormal or whatever
Speaker 2: you might say. It's it's been really incredible and it changed.
Speaker 2: I mean the three of us when we came back,
Speaker 2: we spent a week, each of us in separate places,
Speaker 2: like very depressed and almost sick. It's very strange like
Speaker 2: like this, but the whole thing is just it's just
Speaker 2: brought us closer together. It's just been amazing in a
Speaker 2: very spiritual way. Like John again, I've known John forever
Speaker 2: and I've seen this change in John, this incredible change
Speaker 2: in John where he's just in this new sort of
Speaker 2: like it like activated this spiritual side of him that's
Speaker 2: just been incredible to see. And it, like, like I said,
Speaker 2: it changed this. I think the paranormal can do this.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it could change people for the worst, I know,
Speaker 2: but in this case, I think it just brought the
Speaker 2: three of us very close together and it feels quite amazing,
Speaker 2: and it feels like like we're supposed to be doing
Speaker 2: this like this, this is like something that we're meant
Speaker 2: to be doing. I think. I don't mean to speak
Speaker 2: for him, but I think the other two guys feel
Speaker 2: the same. So yeah, I mean that's part of it too,
Speaker 2: Like this idea of like this, I guess, like kind
Speaker 2: of going on this quest, right, the three of us
Speaker 2: go on this quest and we end up, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of closer at the end of it. We all
Speaker 2: end up I think change. And I don't mean like,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm going to leave my wife or anything
Speaker 2: like that, like not that kind of change, but just
Speaker 2: your perspective on the phenomena is changed, I think, and
Speaker 2: certainly likewise, maybe your perspective on life, you know, because
Speaker 2: this is I believe this is about this is a
Speaker 2: human experience thing and we've been experiencing it forever that's
Speaker 2: why we have folklore that talks about very similar things
Speaker 2: going back in time. So this is part of of
Speaker 2: what happens when we're here. You know. Maybe I don't
Speaker 2: know if it's why we're here, but it's it's certainly
Speaker 2: something that happens and has been happening to people over time.
Speaker 2: So it just feels that like like this is my journey,
Speaker 2: you know, And a few times in my life I
Speaker 2: felt like, yeah, this is where I'm supposed to be,
Speaker 2: and this is one of them. For sure.
Speaker 1: It's remarkable and it's remarkable how many doors had to
Speaker 1: open up to get you to where you're at with this.
Speaker 1: And also I know you probably can't talk too much
Speaker 1: about the details of where this is, which I won't ask,
Speaker 1: but it does seem like this is intriguing to me.
Speaker 1: It seems like there's almost like a community of people
Speaker 1: there at this in this region who are all experiencing this.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. They all talked to us,
Speaker 2: They all gave us interviews. Some of them have positions
Speaker 2: in county government. They have everything to lose, you know,
Speaker 2: by talking to us, and they were like, no, I
Speaker 2: want to tell my story. They told us everything and
Speaker 2: I tell you one of the things we saw in
Speaker 2: the sky. I've said it elsewhere, I might as well
Speaker 2: say it here too. We saw a massive fireball. It
Speaker 2: manifested out of nothing into the sky and moved in
Speaker 2: a very ghost like fashion. It descended below the tree line,
Speaker 2: and when it went out of sight, beams of light
Speaker 2: shot up into the sky, like several beams of light like.
Speaker 2: And then we were walking towards where we saw it
Speaker 2: go behind the tree line. It popped up on the
Speaker 2: other side, just a little bit above the trees again,
Speaker 2: just enough to let us know, like, yep, you saw me.
Speaker 2: That was it. I was here. And it drops down
Speaker 2: again and again with the beams of light. Once it
Speaker 2: drops down. One of the witnesses when we described this,
Speaker 2: his eyes got real big because they were telling us
Speaker 2: their stories. And then like, oh, you know what we
Speaker 2: saw the other night, because we saw that the first night,
Speaker 2: not the first night we arrived. We got there late,
Speaker 2: we went right to sleep, but the first night we
Speaker 2: were like out in the field when we were there,
Speaker 2: that's when we saw this fireball, and we said, you know,
Speaker 2: he tells his stories. And then we said, well, you
Speaker 2: know what we saw the other night. And his eyes
Speaker 2: get big. I could tell, and he said, he said,
Speaker 2: you know, I haven't thought about this. He said, I
Speaker 2: saw the exact same thing in the exact same place
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 1: Like it.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So one of the big things I'm left with, like
Speaker 2: just taking this fireball for instance, were we there? Did
Speaker 2: we walk into that field? Was about I think it
Speaker 2: was ten It was either ten twenty or ten forty
Speaker 2: five after ten o'clock at night. And when I say
Speaker 2: this thing was huge, I mean we're guessing at least
Speaker 2: twenty five feet across, probably closer to forty feet across.
Speaker 2: It was massive fireball in the sky. Looked like the
Speaker 2: sun at sunset, but it was kind of moving around.
Speaker 2: It wasn't the sun, It wasn't fireworks, it wasn't swamp gas.
Speaker 2: You know, it was a fireball. That's the only thing.
Speaker 2: But one of the things that it's I want to
Speaker 2: say it bothers me, but not in the way it's
Speaker 2: like scary or upsetting, but it's just kind of like
Speaker 2: I can't figure it out, is did we happen to
Speaker 2: walk into that field and one in a two milli
Speaker 2: chance or whatever it would be in time to see
Speaker 2: that fireball? Yeah? Or did it appear for us for
Speaker 2: some reason? And it's so why, you know, And that's
Speaker 2: that's the thing that kind of haunts me about it.
Speaker 2: And again not in a bad way, but it's just
Speaker 2: this question I have, like, like, why did we see that?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, I'm sitting here, I'm debating. I'm just going
Speaker 1: to tell you the story. It's a real quick one,
Speaker 1: but I've told it before on here, and you know,
Speaker 1: I just I just don't want to overtell it. But
Speaker 1: it's so applicable. So when I first started the podcast,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, let me back up. Before I started this podcast,
Speaker 1: I was talking about it with a close friend of
Speaker 1: mine in North Carolina and we we were on the
Speaker 1: phone and we were, you know, we were talking shop
Speaker 1: about getting this thing together, and he had a a
Speaker 1: weird moment in the middle of a conversation where he goes,
Speaker 1: hold on and he says, I just saw these I
Speaker 1: think seven lights appear in a row and then disappear,
Speaker 1: and then an explosion happened at a neighbor's house. He goes,
Speaker 1: he goes, I gotta go. I'll call you right back.
Speaker 1: So as I'm waiting to get back on the phone
Speaker 1: with him. I was in my living room and I
Speaker 1: stepped outside. And I stepped outside. I hadn't been out
Speaker 1: there for I haven't. I hadn't been out there for
Speaker 1: a minute yet. And I looked up and I saw
Speaker 1: an orb fly an arc right right in my field
Speaker 1: of vision, and it was, I don't know, two hundred
Speaker 1: yards away, maybe very close. And it came from within
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, and it went up and it arcd and
Speaker 1: it went over a tree line across the street, and
Speaker 1: it went down behind a tree line close to where
Speaker 1: there's another neighborhood street over there. And here's the thing.
Speaker 1: It blinked at me three times as if to say,
Speaker 1: like you said, just making sure you saw this, just
Speaker 1: making sure you see me. And it was so intentional.
Speaker 1: And of course I'm getting back on the phone with
Speaker 1: my friend at this point, and I'm like, you're not
Speaker 1: going to believe this. So he has a UFO siding
Speaker 1: in North Carolina. Moments later, I have a UFO siding
Speaker 1: for lack of a better word, in Tennessee. We're talking
Speaker 1: about doing this podcast about the supernatural, and it's like,
Speaker 1: at what point, at what point is any of that coincidence.
Speaker 2: Exactly to anybody who would say it was, I would say,
Speaker 2: how rare would it be for somebody to see that?
Speaker 2: Incredibly rare? Yeah, and then to have two people see
Speaker 2: that who were just talking on the phone with each other,
Speaker 2: not the same thing, but you know, SIMP, you know,
Speaker 2: light anomalies in the sky, whatever you want to.
Speaker 3: Call him.
Speaker 2: In that short of you know, expense of time and
Speaker 2: then talking about this stuff. No, that's I mean, in
Speaker 2: my mind, they have to be related somehow, like there's
Speaker 2: something happening there. That was that was the other, Like
Speaker 2: I don't know what all this stuff is. I just
Speaker 2: kind of generically call it the other. That was the
Speaker 2: other saying I see.
Speaker 1: You yeah, And I always forget this part. It was
Speaker 1: a very clean white light. It was so clean, appears
Speaker 1: almost an unnatural light. It didn't look like a flashlight
Speaker 1: or like a drone or it definitely didn't look like
Speaker 1: a plane. And it was just you know, I always
Speaker 1: forget that part, so I'm throwing that in. It was
Speaker 1: just quaint, this clean white orb just so entity like
Speaker 1: the whole thing. But back to that fireball that was
Speaker 1: my grandpa's UFO siding.
Speaker 2: Oh really, and.
Speaker 1: I'd heard it many times over the years. He would
Speaker 1: tell it at family gatherings and all the It was
Speaker 1: great because all the disbelievers in the room would roll
Speaker 1: their eyes, Oh this again, you know. But I always
Speaker 1: believed him, and I pressed him on it because I
Speaker 1: was trying to get more information out about this. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't a cigar, it wasn't something metallic. It wasn't,
Speaker 1: you know, a classic saucer. It was he saw a fireball.
Speaker 1: And that's what I meant, Grandpa, what do you mean
Speaker 1: he goes a fireball like it was literally like a
Speaker 1: ball of fire that moved over the horizon.
Speaker 2: So I've been going back and looking in Indiana around
Speaker 2: the time of the original Witchdiggers, so the eighteen eighties.
Speaker 2: The article appeared in the nineties, but it actually happened
Speaker 2: in the late eighteen eighties. And I found this article
Speaker 2: from Indiana from eighteen eighty eight, and it says, while
Speaker 2: globular lightning maybe more common than is generally supposed, it
Speaker 2: remains for a gentleman connected with the news and adviser
Speaker 2: to have seen still a more singular sight. It was
Speaker 2: nothing more or less than a phosphorescent fire or will
Speaker 2: of the wisp which emerging from the banks of the
Speaker 2: Flint River during the recent overflow, in the shape of
Speaker 2: a ball of fire across and above the tree tops.
Speaker 2: This ghastly fireball made its appearance just as the corpse
Speaker 2: of an unknown man was seen drifting down the swollen
Speaker 2: current of the river, his face, calm after the agony
Speaker 2: of death, upturned to the pitiless sky. So the dead
Speaker 2: guy is a you know, we certainly didn't see a
Speaker 2: dead guy. This was by a large creek. Some people
Speaker 2: call it a river where was But when they describe
Speaker 2: it as this ghastly fireball, that's what I mean. The
Speaker 2: first thing Tyler said is like he said, that thing's
Speaker 2: a ghost, you know, by which he meant I believe
Speaker 2: it had been the nature of a you know, it
Speaker 2: did move in a very ghostly way. You know, it
Speaker 2: kind of did this fish hook motion down and blow
Speaker 2: the chin. But it moved very ghostly like that. So
Speaker 2: when they say this ghastly fireball in that article, first
Speaker 2: of all, there we go. You know, they're talking about
Speaker 2: a fireball in the sky in Indiana around the same
Speaker 2: time as the witch Digger. Is very interesting to me.
Speaker 2: But the way they describe it though, I was like,
Speaker 2: wow that, you know, I don't know that they saw
Speaker 2: the same thing, but it certainly sounds very similar to
Speaker 2: what we saw.
Speaker 1: Yeah, while you were talking there, I was looking and
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be able to find it right
Speaker 1: now in time, But this year I was able to
Speaker 1: file on Newfork and I found a siding from I
Speaker 1: believe Wyoming, very cool account close to one of the
Speaker 1: cities out there, and they included a picture. And when
Speaker 1: I saw the picture, I thought, that's exactly what my
Speaker 1: grandpa saw or close to it, because it's you know,
Speaker 1: we're talking about a fireball here, and I'm very excited
Speaker 1: actually to see what you do with this.
Speaker 2: You.
Speaker 1: I noticed you said you're going to do Strange Familiars Live,
Speaker 1: and I don't know. Do you have you considered doing
Speaker 1: documentary or video footage of this?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a possibility. We need to talk to the
Speaker 2: witnesses and see how comfortable they are with that. We're
Speaker 2: very guarded of this because these people were about the
Speaker 2: nicest people I've ever met in my life. And I
Speaker 2: mean that that whole neighborhood just embraced us and gave
Speaker 2: us access to all their property, night and day. Just
Speaker 2: completely gave us access. The main witness gave us a
Speaker 2: four wheel drive just to drive around, you know while
Speaker 2: we're there, like a for erunners. Great little little four
Speaker 2: wheel drive yet an old four runner is fantastic and
Speaker 2: just to you know, hit the trails if we wanted,
Speaker 2: and just drive us around night and day again, night
Speaker 2: and day. Just the nicest people I've ever met in
Speaker 2: my life. The last thing I want to do is
Speaker 2: bring down a paranormal circus around their heads, you know,
Speaker 2: and have a bunch of people running on their property
Speaker 2: and stuff.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: So we're very careful and we're very protective of them
Speaker 2: because of this. So yeah, I'm I mister. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: So that's why we're we're presenting in the way we
Speaker 2: are as a live show, and you know, we just
Speaker 2: that's the way it's going to be. Well, eventually I'll
Speaker 2: write a book, but for now we're going to keep
Speaker 2: it as the live show. So people want to hear
Speaker 2: this where he comes to his live there's a lot
Speaker 2: more to it, so much more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great. I mean, you know, that's how stories
Speaker 1: were told for all time as far as I know,
Speaker 1: before before this these TVs and stuff, started to become
Speaker 1: a thing in modern society. It's like you had the
Speaker 1: campfire tales, you had the oral tradition. You have this
Speaker 1: very old and and and intricate type of of oral tradition,
Speaker 1: basically folklore. That's a part of humanity. I mean that.
Speaker 1: So when I say, whenever I hear you say, you
Speaker 1: know we're going to do it like this, well you're
Speaker 1: still getting the story out there, and the story can
Speaker 1: still be great even if it's just being told. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the documentary. The documentary was the question. Yes, yes,
Speaker 2: we made at some point look to do that. I'm
Speaker 2: not I just I'm not a video guy. I don't
Speaker 2: know that much about it, so it require people other
Speaker 2: than me to help us with that. But there will
Speaker 2: be audio visual elements to the live presentation. So there
Speaker 2: will be like video clips and stuff we will present.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, you brought up a article there from eighteen
Speaker 1: eighties a second ago. I believe it was eighteen eighty
Speaker 1: six or something like that.
Speaker 2: Eighteen eighty eight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, eighty eight. I've got one here from eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven, and it's a short one, so I'll just
Speaker 1: read it. A party of gold miners traveling through the
Speaker 1: Globe Valley in Caldwell County, North Carolina, encountered what they
Speaker 1: described as a wild man, although they only got within
Speaker 1: forty yards of the man. One miner claimed that this
Speaker 1: peculiar specimen of humanity appeared to be a giant six
Speaker 1: foot five inches with a funnel shaped head and two
Speaker 1: inch long dark hair covering his body. When he spotted
Speaker 1: the miners, he pounded his chest before turning and bounding
Speaker 1: off into the woods with the speed of a deer.
Speaker 1: The party tracked him with guns. The party tracked him
Speaker 1: with guns, drawn to a cave deep in the mountains,
Speaker 1: where they found bones of many animals scattered about, including
Speaker 1: that he had been living oh indicating that he had
Speaker 1: been living there for a while. And I just I
Speaker 1: like that one because it's from North Carolina. I'm from
Speaker 1: North Carolina, you know, Yeah, you've probably heard that one.
Speaker 2: I don't know, Like I've collected so many of these reports.
Speaker 2: And I did a book for Pennsylvania, I did a
Speaker 2: book for the west coast California, Oregon, and Washington State,
Speaker 2: and I'm about ready to do one for the east coast,
Speaker 2: so North Carolina will be in that. I don't know
Speaker 2: if I have that one or not. I'll have to
Speaker 2: look back in my files. It's been been a while
Speaker 2: since I I've been writing other books and stuff. But
Speaker 2: it's so typical of these other wild Man stories, you know.
Speaker 2: I immediately when you said that was eighteen.
Speaker 1: Seventy eighteen seventy seven, seventy.
Speaker 2: Seven, I wonder, like, did they even know about apes
Speaker 2: beeding in their chest at that point?
Speaker 1: It's a good question.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's an interesting detail that the wild Man did there.
Speaker 2: The cave is a very important detail. You hear that
Speaker 2: a lot there is something about caves, about underground things.
Speaker 2: I will say Indiana that that whole area is filled
Speaker 2: with caves. There's caves underneath the entire area where we
Speaker 2: were tons of caves around there, but no a lot
Speaker 2: of these, a lot of anomalous activity. In general, you
Speaker 2: will find caves, minds, some form of people digging into
Speaker 2: the ground. And I started picking up on this and
Speaker 2: it's been pretty consistent. Every time I find one of these,
Speaker 2: you know, quote unquote haunted areas or areas that are
Speaker 2: associated with Bigfoot, there seems to be cave mine or
Speaker 2: an instance of people doing like some kind of major
Speaker 2: digging into the ground. Look at the witch diggers. They
Speaker 2: were digging in the ground, digging in the ground. Not
Speaker 2: only were the caves there, but they were digging.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the premise of hailure of course, just because that,
Speaker 1: you know, when you said three toad track, I thought
Speaker 1: of hailure originally. But that's that's to do with caves.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm doing I'm doing another episode on giants,
Speaker 1: but I just also just finished an episode on giants.
Speaker 1: And what's interesting there is it's the same it's these
Speaker 1: same states. It's these states that have all like Kentucky
Speaker 1: and Tennessee and Indiana, the states that have the caves
Speaker 1: in the west Virginia, Ohio and then you know the
Speaker 1: lower part of Pa where all these giants are are found,
Speaker 1: all the well they were found, all the bones in
Speaker 1: the burial mounds, the Ohio River Valley. And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to find different terminology, but what keeps coming
Speaker 1: to mind is like Middle Earth, Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 1: But it's like this area of the country was just
Speaker 1: and still is like abundantly humanoid.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I mean whatever, And I forget the name
Speaker 2: of that culture that they think, you know, like basically
Speaker 2: pre American Indian. They left a lot of structures around.
Speaker 2: A lot of these these stone structures up in New England,
Speaker 2: and there's a local park here. It's in a place
Speaker 2: called hex Hollow, where there's something called the quote unquote
Speaker 2: Hex's murder happened. Uh, it was a faith year. There's
Speaker 2: a faith healing practice in Pennsylvania, the shorthand Powell. The
Speaker 2: German name is Brokrye, and it's it's simply a Christian
Speaker 2: folk magic tradition, mostly faith healing kind of stuff, but
Speaker 2: part of it is to undo hexes, right, so if
Speaker 2: someone felt they were cursed or hext and always with
Speaker 2: the idea that the people can undo, can unmake hexes,
Speaker 2: can also make hexes. So there's a lot of superstition
Speaker 2: around these Powwow doctors as they were called. This one fellow,
Speaker 2: these people believed he put a curse on them. They
Speaker 2: murdered him. It's a long story. He was completely innocent.
Speaker 2: I feel awful for him, but in any case, the
Speaker 2: area became known as hex hollowed. In that area, I
Speaker 2: have found a series of intersecting walls, so out this
Speaker 2: park and the local sort of wisdom is, oh, there's
Speaker 2: just farm walls, Well, they don't correspond to any farms
Speaker 2: that were ever on the map down there, you know,
Speaker 2: going through the old historical maps, and they're not built.
Speaker 2: Now there are the confused matters. There are a couple
Speaker 2: firmly like Western walls that are that are down there,
Speaker 2: But these intersecting walls throughout the park are not built
Speaker 2: like like Westerns built walls. They're built like these early Americans,
Speaker 2: you know, these pre Native American civilizations built walls. The
Speaker 2: intersect they have offering niches in them, which is where
Speaker 2: they would have put corn or something. And these niches
Speaker 2: line up with the sun on solstices and equinoxes. So
Speaker 2: I believe, yes, I have found something. Now the State
Speaker 2: Museum of Pennsylvania has is not yet convinced, but I
Speaker 2: cannot see what else it would be. There are there
Speaker 2: are serpent walls, you know, they wind, These walls wind
Speaker 2: and they end in what look like big snakeheads, m
Speaker 2: h all kinds of these earthworks. And if you know
Speaker 2: I grew up on a farm, you don't. You don't
Speaker 2: build a wall just to build a freaking wall, you know.
Speaker 2: And these low walls aren't keeping livestock in or out right. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they could be property markers. But come on, that's a
Speaker 2: lot of calories. That's a lot of calories. You know
Speaker 2: what we did when we come upon rock, We taking
Speaker 2: me throw them out of the field. We're gonna build
Speaker 2: a wall with them, right, you know why waste the calories,
Speaker 2: Get moving, get back to farming. I'm just not convinced
Speaker 2: these these are anything. But these this pre like I said,
Speaker 2: this pre Native American society. And I'm sorry, I keep
Speaker 2: I keep blanking on the name that they called it.
Speaker 2: But yeah, these build our culture. Perhaps, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Are you are you? I know what you're referring to,
Speaker 1: But are you thinking about the mound boat the mound class?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but there's another there's a sort of more official
Speaker 2: name for it. I'm reaching for, but I probably won't
Speaker 2: be able to think of it. But no, I think
Speaker 2: these are the same like the same thing. You know,
Speaker 2: the giant skeletons are related to this, These earthworks are
Speaker 2: related to this. These mounds, like you were saying, are
Speaker 2: related to this. And I think there's more of them
Speaker 2: out there than people know or realize. And I think
Speaker 2: I think, sure, you walk through the woods, you see
Speaker 2: a wall it's an old farm wall. But it's just
Speaker 2: when you, like I said, when they start intersecting, they
Speaker 2: go north and south like on the compass perfectly. You know,
Speaker 2: the intersections are places which seem to correspond with with
Speaker 2: different things. So my goal is at some point to
Speaker 2: get maybe get this recognized as a as a you know,
Speaker 2: place of history, and it is a it's a county park,
Speaker 2: but you can't rely on the county. They will sell
Speaker 2: off parkland. If it becomes like a National Place of
Speaker 2: you know, historical marker or something like that, then it
Speaker 2: can be preserved. So that's that's my hope one day
Speaker 2: to convince somebody else of what I'm seeing here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're on the same page there, and I keep
Speaker 1: coming across the same sort of thing here. And because
Speaker 1: I know recently I was talking to a fella and
Speaker 1: we were talking about there's a there's a similar old
Speaker 1: wall in Louisville and it's it's an old ancient wall,
Speaker 1: we think, and you know, it's there's there's an old
Speaker 1: ideology in some of the archaeologists. They don't want to
Speaker 1: you know, they don't want to look into it. They
Speaker 1: wanted to fit into this box. But it seems like
Speaker 1: it's older. But I keep seeing this, and you know,
Speaker 1: I was just recently looking at the so I think
Speaker 1: that some of these are old cities, remnants of old
Speaker 1: cities from a race who was here before the Native
Speaker 1: Americans and and eventually probably coexisting with them. And that's
Speaker 1: why I think that wall in Louisville is where it's at,
Speaker 1: because it's on the Ohio River. I think they were
Speaker 1: using that they were traveling that river U and then
Speaker 1: But I just found a similar thing in Chicago where
Speaker 1: because you said altars and it and it came to mind,
Speaker 1: there was an old stone there called the Wabazi Stone.
Speaker 1: It's in a private collection today, giant I think it's
Speaker 1: granite standing stone, has a face carved in it, and
Speaker 1: at the very top of it is one of these
Speaker 1: altars carved into it. I think you said niche altar
Speaker 1: or something.
Speaker 2: They're offering niches there. They're like, there's spaces in the wall,
Speaker 2: you know, put usually like corn, I guess or something
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it's got that. And this was in Chicago
Speaker 1: for forever. It was there before I think before the
Speaker 1: city was Chicago, and it was right at the mouth
Speaker 1: of one of the rivers there and the Lake Mission,
Speaker 1: and it looks like it was a place where the
Speaker 1: ancient people's do you know about the copper mines. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they were mining all that copper on Lake Michigan, and
Speaker 1: they were headed to wherever they were headed, and they
Speaker 1: were on their way to the to the Mississippi. And
Speaker 1: they're going through one of these rivers in Chicago and
Speaker 1: they stop and they do their offering for well well being,
Speaker 1: for you know, safe passage. And I also have an old,
Speaker 1: an old map I've been studying. It's the tear Australis
Speaker 1: map and it's got it's from fifteen seventy something and
Speaker 1: right above Chicago it's got or right where Chicago is today,
Speaker 1: it's got on that map listed Chilago. So you know,
Speaker 1: it's just it's it just got me thinking. I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: I think maybe when the ancient people were minding that
Speaker 1: copper and they were they were doing their altars, you know,
Speaker 1: in the area that Chicago is today, it must have
Speaker 1: been a port city possibly called Chilaga.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, yeah, yeah, you know, I know that's.
Speaker 1: A lot to connect. There a lot of dots, but no.
Speaker 2: I mean, I I think there's this this again, this
Speaker 2: pre Native American civilization. They seem to have been at
Speaker 2: least east of the Mississippi almost everywhere, Like it must
Speaker 2: have been a massive society, you know, and and I
Speaker 2: can absolutely believe they would have networks of you know,
Speaker 2: using the rivers and so forth.
Speaker 1: You said something about Powwell, have you ever seen this
Speaker 1: book here?
Speaker 2: Uh, I'm very familiar with that book.
Speaker 1: Yes, you would be the first person I've talked to
Speaker 1: who knows what this is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that has to do with the with that
Speaker 2: folk magic tradition in Pennsylvania. I find that I love
Speaker 2: that book, I really do. It's on a skeptical I
Speaker 2: can read that and dismiss it as you know, ridiculous,
Speaker 2: But there's there's more to it. I'm incredibly sure of that.
Speaker 2: My experience with that books has been has told me
Speaker 2: that there's something there.
Speaker 1: I think it's from the early eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Homan was a Catholic who moved to Berks County, Pennsylvania
Speaker 2: in the early eighteen hundreds. And he was a fairly
Speaker 2: prolific writer and publisher, and he did, you know, several
Speaker 2: but he collected those charms and published it Now this
Speaker 2: is a folk magic tradition. It belongs to the people.
Speaker 2: So I think he did a good thing by doing that.
Speaker 2: But there are people who today want to gate keep
Speaker 2: this tradition and who are very mad at him and
Speaker 2: others who write books about it. They're giving away our secrets. Now,
Speaker 2: these are everyone's secrets. These belong to the people. So
Speaker 2: I think he did a good thing by writing it down.
Speaker 2: And this is this book was fairly ubiquitous throughout the
Speaker 2: Pennsylvania Dutch region. Most people who have family here for
Speaker 2: a long time, they have a copy that maybe that
Speaker 2: was their grandmother's or something. I collect copies of that.
Speaker 2: I have copies going back to the I think eighteen sixties,
Speaker 2: maybe earlier than that I found.
Speaker 1: Do they line up pretty well? Are they? Is it
Speaker 1: the same content?
Speaker 2: It's the same content. Yeah, So this book is one
Speaker 2: of the few that's been in print since the day
Speaker 2: it was first in print. It's yeah, it's never been
Speaker 2: out of print, you know, various publishers. Now it's in
Speaker 2: public domain, so anybody can publish it. But still it's
Speaker 2: never been out of print. But these yeah, the original
Speaker 2: content is the same as as what you have there
Speaker 2: in that reprint. But the interesting thing is in these
Speaker 2: old copies they were these were user copies. So you
Speaker 2: get in pencil, often on pages extra charms that people
Speaker 2: have collected from people in their neighborhood, or names of
Speaker 2: other what we call palaut doctors or brawlkers they will
Speaker 2: have written down. And so these books are incredibly valuable.
Speaker 2: Like a researcher like me, yeah, they're expensive, but when
Speaker 2: I find them, I you know, if they're not crazy,
Speaker 2: I will get them because because of that, those extra
Speaker 2: bits that are in there are just just wonderful, wonderful stuff,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Just to give people an example of what we're talking about, here,
Speaker 1: there's a little, a little taste here on the back
Speaker 1: it says this book shares secrets for curing his stick.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a light type. Here, let me try
Speaker 1: the skin, curing hysteroetics or hysteria, I'm assuming, protecting oneself
Speaker 1: against slander, attaching a dog to a person, making a
Speaker 1: wand for searching for iron or water, so divining there,
Speaker 1: preventing malicious persons from doing injury, curing the pole, evil
Speaker 1: and horses, mending broken glass, making cattle or turn home,
Speaker 1: destroying rats and mice, making a candlewick that is never consumed,
Speaker 1: charming guns and other arms, and much more.
Speaker 2: The hex murder I was mentioning before the fellows that
Speaker 2: believed they were cursed, they were told by a woman
Speaker 2: they had to get either a lot of this guy's
Speaker 2: hair or his copy of the Longlost Friend and bury
Speaker 2: it six feet underground. So that's that's how embedded that is,
Speaker 2: uh in the in the culture here, and you do
Speaker 2: find it. So some of the Pennsylvania Germans did move
Speaker 2: into Appalachia, so you will find pockets of it in
Speaker 2: Appalachia as well. Appalachia it's changed. When I was learning
Speaker 2: BESI in West Virginia, I had some banjo teacher from
Speaker 2: West Virginia tell me, if I hear you say Appalachia,
Speaker 2: I'm kicking you out this class. Now everyone says, no, no,
Speaker 2: it's Appalachia. So yeah, trying to stick with it. But
Speaker 2: that's why I say Appalachia because someone from the region
Speaker 2: told me I better not say it any other way,
Speaker 2: and that got in mine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I lived, I lived in the region. I'm
Speaker 1: for a long time in some of my formative years,
Speaker 1: and I'll you could say it however you.
Speaker 2: Want, Okay, Yeah, so any young.
Speaker 1: Appalachians or Appalachians, we don't care what you say.
Speaker 2: In any case, you do find pockets of it through
Speaker 2: out there, so which is really interesting. So because it
Speaker 2: gets in sort of mixed in with what they call
Speaker 2: granny magic. Yea granny magic, that the folk magic traditions there.
Speaker 2: I you know, I just I find it incredibly fascinating
Speaker 2: that the journeys these things to take and then they
Speaker 2: get combined. And I'm good friends with a friar from
Speaker 2: Ireland and he was looking at the Long and Lost Friend.
Speaker 2: He's like, oh, this is very similar to some of
Speaker 2: the same traditions in Ireland, you know.
Speaker 1: So it's this sort of it's that oral tradition we
Speaker 1: were talking about. It's that antricate method for passing down information. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this book is incredible. I mean it's this is one
Speaker 1: of my favorite parts. This is what really got me,
Speaker 1: Like I paused after I read this. When I first
Speaker 1: got this book, it's this little part on here that says,
Speaker 1: whoever carries this book with him is safe from all
Speaker 1: his enemies, visible or invisible, and whoever has this book
Speaker 1: with him cannot die without the Holy corpse of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: Nor drowned in any water, nor burning any fire, nor
Speaker 1: can any unjust sentence be passed upon him. So help me,
Speaker 1: And that's such an Appalachan thing to say, so help me.
Speaker 1: You know that's I just that whole pencil. I'm glad
Speaker 1: this came up. You know this, the whole Pennsylvania Dutch
Speaker 1: thing has always fascinated with me. My mom being from Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: she always told me stories of being around the Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: Dutch and all they did it this way, or they
Speaker 1: would do this, and and you know, I just I've
Speaker 1: always found that very fascinating. I just saw a thing
Speaker 1: that Peter Santanello put out. He went to I believe
Speaker 1: he wasn't actually in Pennsylvania, and he was just going
Speaker 1: around doing what he does. He just talks to the
Speaker 1: locals and films it. And he was in a community
Speaker 1: where you had not Amish. Who am I thinking of Mennonite? Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you. And so he goes into a Mennonite farm
Speaker 1: and talks to the lady there. She's the mom basically,
Speaker 1: and she has all her kids out there in the fields.
Speaker 1: They're all doing tasks and such. But the younger kids
Speaker 1: come up and they don't speak English, and this is
Speaker 1: you know, twenty twenty four in Pennsylvania, and she explains
Speaker 1: to him that they learn English at a certain age
Speaker 1: before that they speak Pennsylvania Dutch.
Speaker 2: I guess. Yeah. It is a very interesting culture that
Speaker 2: perhaps because of the language. I think this maybe helps
Speaker 2: it survive. And we have traditions that are very unique.
Speaker 2: There's a a European So when I say a European
Speaker 2: wildman tradition, there was tradition in Europe, especially around the
Speaker 2: Christmas holidays, to dress as wild men, you know, as
Speaker 2: as hairy things. And they have some wonderful costumes in Europe.
Speaker 2: To some of these festivals, not always around Christmas, but
Speaker 2: often around Christmas, you will find this Corompus is an example.
Speaker 2: I'm sure people are familiar with, like the crompus thing.
Speaker 2: That's one of these European wild men I'm talking about
Speaker 2: in Pennsylvania. Way we had until Santa Claus took it over,
Speaker 2: we had a surviving wild man tradition in the United
Speaker 2: States in the form of bell snickel. Hairy thing came
Speaker 2: from the mountains. Howld knocked on your windows knocked It
Speaker 2: sounds like Bigfoot, right, that's that's the legend of the
Speaker 2: bell snickel and it came at Christmas time. So we
Speaker 2: have this surviving. You know, people would dress in these
Speaker 2: crazy outfits, you know, and and do what they call
Speaker 2: bell snickling. They would go from house to house and
Speaker 2: hang on the windows, and you know, good kids got candy,
Speaker 2: big kids got switches, all all that stuff. But here
Speaker 2: we have this it's and it survived. And I think
Speaker 2: part of it is because of the language, because of
Speaker 2: the Pennsylvania Dutch language, which is not German. It's closer
Speaker 2: to Luxembourgian than straight Germans. It has a lot in
Speaker 2: common with German. But I have German friends who, like,
Speaker 2: I've tried to get them to translate Pennsylvania Dutch stuff
Speaker 2: for me, and they're like, nah, different not can't do it.
Speaker 2: Different language, you know, it doesn't exactly. It's not one
Speaker 2: to one kind of thing there. So it's a it's
Speaker 2: a unique language. It's a unique form of German. And
Speaker 2: because of that, I think I think that helped the
Speaker 2: culture survive, you know, in a way, help these these
Speaker 2: aspects of it survived. It's very very interesting, very interesting culture.
Speaker 1: It is. And you've mentioned Randy Magic and I know
Speaker 1: what that is. But sometimes even when I still hear
Speaker 1: that term, I think about the faem just that's what
Speaker 1: comes to mind. And I think it's because when I
Speaker 1: lived in Apalasia, some of the grannies that I knew,
Speaker 1: some of the older ladies in the community, they still
Speaker 1: very much believed in fairies. And I only knew. They
Speaker 1: didn't tell me this. I knew this because their their
Speaker 1: kids and their grandkids would tell you this. They kept
Speaker 1: it very quiet. And there were two things in that
Speaker 1: community that I guess you would call in the supernatural
Speaker 1: realm that people knew about, or you could say, believed in,
Speaker 1: and that was the fairies and Bigfoot.
Speaker 2: Hmm. Interesting.
Speaker 1: Bigfoot was a belief because people were seeing it mm
Speaker 1: hmm in that community, and and then they would go
Speaker 1: to their grandma's and be like, you know, what is
Speaker 1: this and the grandma's would be like, Grandma would start
Speaker 1: talking about fairies, almost as an explanation for Bigfoot. Well,
Speaker 1: I know there's this crossover.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I hard to see them as unrelated. Again.
Speaker 2: And you know, people think of tinker Bell when they
Speaker 2: think of fairies, but many of these stories have fairies
Speaker 2: that could turn into very big things. You know, they
Speaker 2: weren't always little things. They would turn into very very
Speaker 2: big things. So you know, I'm with Grandma on that one. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think, you know, I think they're closer to a
Speaker 2: fairy than they are to just some undiscovered ape in
Speaker 2: the woods. That's all, you know. I can't say I
Speaker 2: don't know what they are, but just my gut says
Speaker 2: they're very weird. I know, they're very weird things you
Speaker 2: can't explain. They don't act like any other animal on
Speaker 2: the planet, and they seem, you know, a lot closer
Speaker 2: to these other things we talk about than they do
Speaker 2: to a gorilla.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I just had a guy on I haven't put the
Speaker 1: episode out yet, but he wrote an encyclopedia of fairies
Speaker 1: with over seven hundred accounts. Wow, I think similar to
Speaker 1: what you do. He went out and he found all
Speaker 1: the archived old articles and such and put them in
Speaker 1: a book, and you know, like yourself, you know, presents
Speaker 1: it in a very appealing and digestible way. But he
Speaker 1: had the same theory about Bigfoot. He believes that Bigfoot
Speaker 1: is is like a basically a big hairy face spirit essentially,
Speaker 1: And he was talking about the Book of Enoch, because
Speaker 1: in the Book of Enoch there's this story that these
Speaker 1: there was like an ancient battle, like a cosmic battle,
Speaker 1: and the celestial spirits fell to Earth, and wherever they
Speaker 1: landed they became a humanoid fixture of that tobography, your geography,
Speaker 1: that landscape. So you know, you have mermaids for water
Speaker 1: and fairies for air, and for woods, you have wood boogers.
Speaker 1: I guess there sasquatch, right.
Speaker 2: And I mean, yeah, absolutely, yeah they seem to be
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, sure you get you get bigfoot in
Speaker 2: the desert too, but yeah, they like it seems so
Speaker 2: related to me. It seems so related to me.
Speaker 1: It's this idea of a hurry Earth spirit. But go ahead.
Speaker 2: Earlier this year, I was at Pine Ridge Reservation in
Speaker 2: South Dakota. I was invited there because they said, oh,
Speaker 2: they're having a big foot flap right now, do you
Speaker 2: want to go collect stories? Heck? Yeah, Like when am
Speaker 2: I going to get a chance to do that again.
Speaker 2: Wonderful people the Lakota I met were lovely and and
Speaker 2: shared with us their culture and their stories and is
Speaker 2: another just wonderful life changing trip. You know, I've been
Speaker 2: very lucky to have some of these, but I was
Speaker 2: impressed by them because literally everybody I talked to except
Speaker 2: one person, had a big Foot story. There was no
Speaker 2: question to them whether real or not real, because it
Speaker 2: was there, you know, they it was real. But I
Speaker 2: asked everyone, what do you think it is? And everyone
Speaker 2: that I talked to said, oh, it's some kind of
Speaker 2: spirit and some kind of spirit. And they also have
Speaker 2: little people there, you know, in the same area they're
Speaker 2: same Bigfoot. In fact, literally in the exact same area
Speaker 2: some of these stories I collected, they saw what they
Speaker 2: call the wee we load, the little people, and then
Speaker 2: big they saw. You know, another person saw Bigfoot the
Speaker 2: exact same place is the exactly raped by this creek.
Speaker 2: So yeah, they're they're firm would convinced to the reality
Speaker 2: of it. There's no question to them. Yeah, no, it's
Speaker 2: it's here. But is it is it a They never said,
Speaker 2: by the way, they never said gorilla, and they never
Speaker 2: said ape man, nothing like that. They all said man,
Speaker 2: hairy man or big hairy man. That's how they described him.
Speaker 2: And I asked, finally, I asked, one of them was
Speaker 2: telling their stories when the Lakota was telling me the stories,
Speaker 2: and I said, you know, I noticed nobody here says
Speaker 2: compared it to a gorilla or an ape or anything
Speaker 2: like that. And she said, oh no, no, no, it's
Speaker 2: a man. It's a man, big hairy man. So I
Speaker 2: found that interesting too. There was no no gorilla talk, no,
Speaker 2: nothing like that. But yeah, they're all But I would say,
Speaker 2: even after they said oh, it's a big harry man,
Speaker 2: I said, well, do you think it's like you know, like, no, no,
Speaker 2: it's a spirit. It's the spirit of a man, you know.
Speaker 2: That's what they say. So it's incredibly interesting, Like it's
Speaker 2: just completely there. There's no question to them that does exist,
Speaker 2: does it not exist? No, it's here, it's here.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The general consensus is that they think it's some kind
Speaker 2: of omen though, and it could be something good or bad.
Speaker 2: So I think, and I'm sort of paraphrasing from the
Speaker 2: people I talk to, and I don't want to misrepresent
Speaker 2: the culture as a whole, but this is just my
Speaker 2: impression from the people I talked to, was that they
Speaker 2: don't want to see it because they don't know if
Speaker 2: it's a good or a bad omen you know, so
Speaker 2: they'd rather not see it at all.
Speaker 1: That's what I was. That's what was happening in Apalachia
Speaker 1: with the fairies. It's that same idea. They'd rather not
Speaker 1: deal with it because they don't know. I guess if
Speaker 1: it's coming or going or good or bad or what?
Speaker 2: Right? Yeah, it could be good, could be bad. But
Speaker 2: why I take the chance. Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I got this article here, and this is
Speaker 1: going to tie in with with what you just said.
Speaker 1: And I tried to find a couple of articles here.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie that. Maybe you aren't familiar with,
Speaker 1: so I try to get real deep. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I could achieve.
Speaker 3: That or not.
Speaker 1: But have you ever heard of the Russian wood Goblin?
Speaker 2: Not by that name? I don't know if we're talking
Speaker 2: about the chi I believe it's called is the same guy?
Speaker 1: I don't think so, maybe, but I don't see that name.
Speaker 1: So this goes back to the fifteen hundreds and the
Speaker 1: sources Fadim A. Brov Turnabrov. It's from Encyclopedia of Mysterious
Speaker 1: Places in Russia, and it says local peasants in this village,
Speaker 1: located south of Moscow, encountered a hairy humanoid entity, the
Speaker 1: so called wood Goblin. In this legendary place near the
Speaker 1: banks of the river Moskova. The frightened locals quickly fled
Speaker 1: in terror. Other reports indicated that these giant, hairy entities
Speaker 1: have been seen in this area on several occasions and
Speaker 1: for centuries, and putedly are able to slip into our
Speaker 1: realm from another dimension. Wow wow yep. Rumors indicated that
Speaker 1: there was a gateway or portal into another dimension in
Speaker 1: the area where large dolmens were located at the bottom
Speaker 1: of the Golo Selvilla Goli. So we're back to like
Speaker 1: ancient sites here now. Decades later. Decades later on, there
Speaker 1: were reports of mysterious disappearances of residents in the nearby
Speaker 1: villages of Dayakovo and Sabdovniki between eighteen twenty five and
Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen. But the legend has been around since the
Speaker 1: fifteen hundreds.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: And it seems like if you were to ask the locals,
Speaker 1: the consensus is that these things coming in through a
Speaker 1: portal or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting, that's super interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I can send you that one if you
Speaker 1: want it later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love it, love it.
Speaker 1: There's a It actually gives another source too, So I
Speaker 1: think there's like a couple of an amalgamation of sources
Speaker 1: for that, but.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's yeah. So we collect a lot of this
Speaker 2: folklore worldwide. My co author Joshua Kutchen and I for
Speaker 2: the two book series we wrote called Where the Footprints Then,
Speaker 2: and that tackles all the weird stuff associated with Bigfoot,
Speaker 2: and there's no shortage of it. These are two very
Speaker 2: thick books we wrote, But a lot of this worldwide
Speaker 2: folklore like that, And I know, I don't think I
Speaker 2: had that one, but you find so much of it.
Speaker 2: There's these legends all over the world. It seems like
Speaker 2: wherever we live, weeping humans next to us, there's always
Speaker 2: the wild man in the wilderness, whatever that wilderness is,
Speaker 2: if it's the forest, if it's the mountains, even the
Speaker 2: desert sometimes, as I said, but there's always a wild man.
Speaker 2: Even in places that have large primates, like Africa, they
Speaker 2: still have a wild man tradition.
Speaker 1: And the islands, some of the islands.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like you can go to the far corners of
Speaker 1: the earth and get all the wild man accounts all
Speaker 1: your way to the end, and when you turn around
Speaker 1: to come back. On your way back, you're going to
Speaker 1: be discovering new wild Man's stores. That's that's my experience.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, they've like they've always lived the sides in
Speaker 2: the woods. Now what does that mean? I don't know,
Speaker 2: But our ancestors have been telling these stories all over
Speaker 2: the world, all over the world as long as we've
Speaker 2: been around. You know, perhaps a youngian archetype, right, that
Speaker 2: we are manifesting in some way humanity again being we
Speaker 2: who can say, I don't know, but you know why,
Speaker 2: why is it always besides it's always been there?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know you sparked something there for me
Speaker 1: when you said the young and archetype. And because I
Speaker 1: got really into I mean I've read young, but I
Speaker 1: got really into Keel in a way in which I
Speaker 1: was reading his unpublished letters to his and like old
Speaker 1: correspondences with like his friends and girlfriends. So I was
Speaker 1: I was going through his letters and most of these are,
Speaker 1: like you know, like I say, they're unpublished, and I
Speaker 1: was able to somewhat track his state of mind through
Speaker 1: the late sixties and into the seventies. And this is
Speaker 1: a man who threw himself at the phenomenon. He became
Speaker 1: a bloodhound on the trail of just all things weird,
Speaker 1: and he got close, I think, to catching up to
Speaker 1: this great unknown spectacle of this whole thing. But on
Speaker 1: his journey, what I found was that this was a
Speaker 1: guy who was hitting these pockets of frustration, because when
Speaker 1: you can't conclusively catch what you seek, you are at
Speaker 1: best adapting a theory. And I think that he is
Speaker 1: constantly stuck in this state of here's my theory. I've
Speaker 1: got to tweak it again. But it's the dot dot dot,
Speaker 1: the eternal dot dot dot. And I call it the
Speaker 1: Kill conundrum. And you know, I recently included in the
Speaker 1: title of an episode just for people who are paying attention.
Speaker 1: I'm just kind of nerdy about it, but honestly, I do.
Speaker 1: I think he was frustrated because he thought that he
Speaker 1: couldn't find real conclusive proof. But I'd argue that he
Speaker 1: proved that there is a whatever we want to call it,
Speaker 1: I'll just call it for the sake of this conversation,
Speaker 1: like an ancient cosmic intelligence. He almost proved that there
Speaker 1: is one by the amount of time that he sacrificed
Speaker 1: by search. His physical and mental dedication to the study
Speaker 1: itself was a form of proof. And you know, also,
Speaker 1: if you really want to go deep alchemically, agregorically, if
Speaker 1: you want to take into account maybe a form of
Speaker 1: esoteric manifestation. If this phenomenon did not exist before Keel,
Speaker 1: perhaps it existed after Keel because of Keel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean he did not have a good time,
Speaker 2: especially later in life, and people would talk to him,
Speaker 2: and I've seen interviews with them where people would basically
Speaker 2: say I want to do what you did, and he
Speaker 2: would say, oh my god, why why do you want
Speaker 2: to ruin your life? Are you trying to ruin your life?
Speaker 2: Allow me to change my theory next week.
Speaker 1: Yes, but I.
Speaker 2: Evidence is a problem. And I wrote about this in
Speaker 2: terms of bigfoot evidence and where the footprints end, but
Speaker 2: it applies across the board with this stuff. Evidence is cool, right,
Speaker 2: Like if I find footprints, I am absolutely gonna make
Speaker 2: casts out of them, and that would be super cool.
Speaker 2: But my goal is not to take this to science
Speaker 2: and say see see this is real. See it's fruitless.
Speaker 2: This is a fruitless pursuit. The evidence we do collect
Speaker 2: tends to go missing. Anything like blood samples or hair
Speaker 2: samples inevitably comes back inconclusive. They'll test it once and
Speaker 2: they'll get something like unknown primate. They'll send it to
Speaker 2: a different lab and they'll come back. Now that's a bear,
Speaker 2: you know, complete or just inconclusive. It's contaminated, it's inconclusive.
Speaker 2: We can't use it. A lot of times it gets
Speaker 2: just go lost. They get lost in the maulth these
Speaker 2: hair samples, they're just gone. They're gone. Oh it's the government.
Speaker 2: What the hell, it's not. Government can't fix the roads.
Speaker 2: They don't care about Bigfoot here. It's something about the phenomenon.
Speaker 2: There are people who have claimed to kill Bigfoot, several people,
Speaker 2: multiple cases of it now the time, not ninety nine
Speaker 2: percent of the time, not ninety nine point nine, one
Speaker 2: hundred percent of the time. These bodies go missing. We
Speaker 2: have no Bigfoot body. So are they lying? I don't know.
Speaker 2: But there's no bodies. There's no bodies. Those giant skeletons
Speaker 2: you're talking about, Oh they were taken away to the Smithsonian. Okay, maybe,
Speaker 2: but if they're gone, no matter who takes them, whether
Speaker 2: it's a black helicopter or some government agency or in
Speaker 2: the terms of these big Foot sometimes we'll say the
Speaker 2: other Bigfoot coming out of the woods and reclaim the body.
Speaker 2: If we can't access them. They're gone. It doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: They're gone. The original Patterson Gimwin film from the sixties
Speaker 2: that shows what may or may not be a big
Speaker 2: foot walking across the thing there. My opinion has changed
Speaker 2: on this over the years. I used to be very
Speaker 2: convinced it did show an actual creature. Now and we'll see.
Speaker 2: I think time will reveal. But in any case, the
Speaker 2: original film, despite some people who claim to have it, has,
Speaker 2: is not when no one can put their hands on
Speaker 2: the original film, and it's an incredibly valuable piece of evidence.
Speaker 2: We could tell a lot if we had the original
Speaker 2: film just going. You know, this happens again and again
Speaker 2: with this evidence, with this stuff, and I think it
Speaker 2: becomes very much like and I do paranormal conferences, and
Speaker 2: so many of them are about like, this is how
Speaker 2: we should collect evidence, and this is how we should
Speaker 2: present our evidence, and these attempts to write these scholarly
Speaker 2: papers on the phenomena and so forth. It becomes like
Speaker 2: how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Speaker 2: It's all theory, and it's you're presenting theories to other
Speaker 2: people who are interested in the paranormal people into the science. Now,
Speaker 2: as I say this. There have been some very interesting
Speaker 2: PSI experiments that were repeatable in the lab. These are
Speaker 2: vastly in the minority. I'm talking about your average ghost
Speaker 2: tun or, your average bigfoot person, obsessed with evidence, obsessed
Speaker 2: with collecting evidence, obsessed with convincing people who aren't interested
Speaker 2: in this stuff that it's real. I think it's a
Speaker 2: real problem because I think you begin to miss the
Speaker 2: nature of the phenomena is experiential. It is not. It's
Speaker 2: not for me to prove to you. If you've experienced
Speaker 2: it and I tell you my stories, will go, oh,
Speaker 2: you'll probably believe me. Right, I can tell you my stories.
Speaker 2: You know that's great, But to believe you must experience.
Speaker 2: And the biggest believers of the people who've experienced something
Speaker 2: maybe they just all in orb but they're opened a
Speaker 2: little bit more to some weirder stuff. So the nature
Speaker 2: of this, I truly believe it that this stage in
Speaker 2: my life, the nature of this is experiential. You can
Speaker 2: relate it to other people, you can tell it to
Speaker 2: other people, but you're never going to prove it to him.
Speaker 2: You're never going to prove it to mainstream science. It's
Speaker 2: almost fruitless to even try just go out there and
Speaker 2: experience it and talk to other people who are interested
Speaker 2: in it, you know what I mean. That's kind of
Speaker 2: where I am at this point. I'm not interested in
Speaker 2: proving to anybody who's a skeptic or anything. I can't whatever,
Speaker 2: I can't tell you what it is. I think that's.
Speaker 1: What Kill was up against too. He was and like
Speaker 1: I mean, you said, the nature of it is experiential.
Speaker 1: I love that, And you know, I had to abandon
Speaker 1: this eventually, but I did my best to kind of
Speaker 1: track down where Kill was, not to just continue talking
Speaker 1: about him, but no, I'll just add this in here.
Speaker 1: I was trying to track down where he was when
Speaker 1: the Mothman thing started. That's why I was going through
Speaker 1: all his old correspondences.
Speaker 3: And.
Speaker 1: It seems like he was going up from Atlanta through
Speaker 1: Western Carolina into West Virginia, that region we started talking
Speaker 1: about right in this conversation, and it seems like I
Speaker 1: couldn't pin it down, but he may have actually been
Speaker 1: in the car on the road on the road of
Speaker 1: West Virginia actually the same time that injured Cold showed
Speaker 1: up and Mothman showed up in West Virginia. It's very
Speaker 1: close and so it's like I had to ask a
Speaker 1: question like how much of that was how much of
Speaker 1: that phenomenon now is perpetuated by the fact that there
Speaker 1: is a madman out on the roads who's hunting down
Speaker 1: humanoids in real life? You know, how much of them
Speaker 1: coming through To go back to that one account them
Speaker 1: coming through a dimension is how much of that is
Speaker 1: intertwined with the fact that there's a guy out there
Speaker 1: looking for it?
Speaker 2: And did the fireball appear because the three of us
Speaker 2: made that journey to Indiana? Yeah, Yeah, it's yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, because you have these synchrome mystical happenings, and
Speaker 1: it seems like from with all of my paranormal and
Speaker 1: just all the experiences I've had over the years, it
Speaker 1: seems like we're dealing with a phenomenon that interacts with
Speaker 1: us on its terms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, can't make a dance for you, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: And.
Speaker 2: So much to the extent that I've experienced this person personally.
Speaker 2: Sometimes two people can be looking at the same thing
Speaker 2: and experience something see something different. John one of the
Speaker 2: fellows that went with me to Indiana, he started out
Speaker 2: very skeptical and he's there's a certain place here where
Speaker 2: we see light's mystery lates quite regularly in the woods.
Speaker 2: And he said, take me out there, tell you what
Speaker 2: they are. I'm fine, I'll take you. If you can
Speaker 2: explain them. I'm good with that. Let's let's go. So
Speaker 2: we hiked into this area during the day and we
Speaker 2: just waited until it got dark, and not only did
Speaker 2: we see them, but we saw them in a way
Speaker 2: that we never saw them before. I don't know it's
Speaker 2: because normally we would sit outside of the woods and
Speaker 2: look in. We were sitting in the woods where we
Speaker 2: saw it normally saw the lights, and they came right
Speaker 2: up to us, almost like curious and playful, like these
Speaker 2: these orbs and lights just coming at us. And at
Speaker 2: one point John dropped to his knees and he was
Speaker 2: trying to catch one. He was trying to grab one
Speaker 2: out of the air. He's laughing because he's like, I
Speaker 2: don't know what these are. I said, I told you,
Speaker 2: I told you. And he's he's reaching up and trying
Speaker 2: to grab one. And I was about six or eight
Speaker 2: feet to his left, and I was looking at what
Speaker 2: I assume was the same light, and I said, John,
Speaker 2: what do you see? For some reason, I asked him
Speaker 2: and he said, oh, it was about the size of
Speaker 2: a ping pong ball and was going I didn't see that.
Speaker 2: I saw just a little single looks like a little
Speaker 2: led light, That's all I saw. It looked like he
Speaker 2: was trying to reach up for a little led light.
Speaker 2: So I'm pretty sure we were observing the same thing
Speaker 2: and seeing something different, which is you know, it leads
Speaker 2: me to wonder, like, does this stuff Is it like
Speaker 2: a video game and it's skinning this phenomena right in
Speaker 2: different ways?
Speaker 1: I think it is, and it wants you to play
Speaker 1: back and interact with it.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it definitely wants some kind of interaction, whether that's
Speaker 2: fear response, whether that's it's it's looking for something for sure,
Speaker 2: for sure, I don't know if it's always looking for
Speaker 2: fear or like sometimes I think it's like it doesn't
Speaker 2: realize that what now. Obviously, if it's a big giant,
Speaker 2: eight monthster screaming at you, I think that's trying to
Speaker 2: in gender terror, no question about that. But some of
Speaker 2: these things that like it almost doesn't realize how creepy
Speaker 2: it is or how weird it seems to us, Like
Speaker 2: it doesn't quite speak our life language. You know what
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just trying to get our attention. Had
Speaker 2: an instance where I was in the woods and I
Speaker 2: had heard some wood knox and I really didn't want
Speaker 2: to go back in the direction of the wood knox,
Speaker 2: so I knew the trail looped around the other way.
Speaker 2: I was by myself, and it was an area I
Speaker 2: hadn't been in. We really don't have time. One day,
Speaker 2: I'll tell the whole story of this, this whole area.
Speaker 2: It's it's very involved story. But I hadn't been there
Speaker 2: for a while because i'd been attacked by a rabid raccoon,
Speaker 2: which I believe was related to a whole bunch of
Speaker 2: other synchronicities and and something I did wrong. I think
Speaker 2: I was sort of being smacked on my butt by
Speaker 2: the phenomena for screwing up a little bit. In any case,
Speaker 2: I hadn't been there much since this rabid raccoon attack.
Speaker 2: I put the recon. I won the fight good, but.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you're still alive from the on the bite.
Speaker 2: It didn't bite me. I still had to get raby
Speaker 2: shots because I've been hiking through the thorns. I cuts
Speaker 2: on my legs and I broke it. I broke its neck.
Speaker 2: But in the process of doing that, I had a
Speaker 2: big walking stick. Okay, in the process of doing that,
Speaker 2: I split it open, so it was bleeding. And they
Speaker 2: were like, just because you had cuts and stuff, you
Speaker 2: need to get raby shots. So I didn't get bit.
Speaker 2: I stopped it. I had. I had to put myself
Speaker 2: between the raccoon and my son who was with me,
Speaker 2: and I was like, you know we it was during
Speaker 2: the day. Shouldn't have been out during the day. I
Speaker 2: told my son run. I tried to run. I looked
Speaker 2: in this thing. I was like, I'm not outrunning this thing.
Speaker 2: So I just thought this is gonna suck, because like
Speaker 2: raccoons could tear you up. I said, I got I
Speaker 2: got one shot. If I hit this thing with my
Speaker 2: walking stick before it gets to me, that's my one
Speaker 2: shot and divine intervention. I don't know. I got it.
Speaker 2: I broke its neck with my walking stick one shot,
Speaker 2: but I knew I couldn't let it get to my son.
Speaker 2: That's the only thing, Like, I have to stop this thing.
Speaker 2: It's between me and my son. Anyway, hadn't been at
Speaker 2: this park much since that raccoon attack because of all
Speaker 2: this weirdness. It was the synchronouses around. It literally floored me.
Speaker 2: There were so many and so much that it like
Speaker 2: I was like stunned, and I was like, I just
Speaker 2: I don't know if I want to go back there.
Speaker 2: And I didn't go back there for a long time,
Speaker 2: but one of my I think it was like the
Speaker 2: second time I went back to the solo hike there,
Speaker 2: I hear these wood knocks. I don't want to go
Speaker 2: towards the wood knox. I go the other direction and
Speaker 2: literally turn the corner and there's a dead cat like
Speaker 2: right in the middle of the trail, perfectly laid out,
Speaker 2: no sign of predation. It wasn't a coyote kill. It
Speaker 2: looked like it just killed over in the middle of
Speaker 2: the trail, perfectly parallel, like perfectly in the trail, as
Speaker 2: if it was walking the trail and just just keeled over. Now,
Speaker 2: I initially took this as something very sinister because of
Speaker 2: what had happened with the raccoon, and there are some
Speaker 2: other there's relations to other dead things that work into
Speaker 2: the story. Again, it's a very very long story, but
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, and it really took me back,
Speaker 2: and I was like really like, oh, but I talked
Speaker 2: to my friend brother Richard the Friar again from Ireland,
Speaker 2: and he said, well, maybe not. He said, maybe it
Speaker 2: was just trying to get your attention and it doesn't
Speaker 2: really understand that that's really creepy to us. You know,
Speaker 2: that's a really creepy thing to us. Maybe it was
Speaker 2: just in a way saying welcome back, here's some weirdness
Speaker 2: for you, and it didn't mean it in a sinister way.
Speaker 2: So I think that maybe sometimes that can be the case.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I don't know, the sometimes it can seem very
Speaker 2: very sinister. I'll say that, yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's it's always befuddled me though, this
Speaker 1: whole thing, and it's just, you know, I'm a past kid.
Speaker 1: I think that that might have something to do with
Speaker 1: why I've had experiences. But I've always been given a
Speaker 1: heads up and I don't know. But for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: whenever you said divine intervention, this is what came to
Speaker 1: my mind, is like I've always been kind of given
Speaker 1: this heads up and about to lose this, so I'm
Speaker 1: gonna plug my laptop in when when I've moved. When
Speaker 1: I was ten, we moved into a house that.
Speaker 2: Was haunted.
Speaker 1: It's severely haunted. And but when when we got there,
Speaker 1: I was talking to the kids across the street. I
Speaker 1: was making friends immediately with the neighborhood kids, and they
Speaker 1: said the house is haunted. They gave me this heads up,
Speaker 1: and they wouldn't back down from it. They they weren't
Speaker 1: they weren't joking. They kept saying, yeah, it's haunted. They
Speaker 1: were serious about it. And of course the previous owners
Speaker 1: had left the house empty, and I went upstairs to
Speaker 1: try and pick myself a bedroom before my brother could.
Speaker 1: I just like kids do, I just opened up the
Speaker 1: hallway closet upstairs, and of course this whole house is
Speaker 1: empty except for the Luigi board. What that was left
Speaker 1: in this house?
Speaker 3: Whoa?
Speaker 1: And the kids had just told me, you know, it's haunted,
Speaker 1: and I'm ten, so I'm just kind of putting the
Speaker 1: pieces together. I know that Ouiji board. I know I'm
Speaker 1: not supposed to have that because my dad's a pastor.
Speaker 1: I know it represents you know, evil or whatnot. So
Speaker 1: and you know, I would go on to to find
Speaker 1: that that house had some serious Poultergeis activity going on.
Speaker 1: And when we moved, When we moved, when I was fifteen.
Speaker 1: I was so happy to move, so happy to move.
Speaker 1: And we moved back to the mountains, back to Appalasia.
Speaker 1: And when I got there, I'm a teenager, now I'm older.
Speaker 1: I'm talking to some of the kids outside the church,
Speaker 1: my first, you know, week there, and one of the
Speaker 1: girls says, have you seen them yet? And I say,
Speaker 1: you know, I say who? She goes the people in
Speaker 1: the woods?
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: And she's dead series. And on top of being dead serious,
Speaker 1: she has these big crazy eyes when she says it.
Speaker 1: And I wish I could just say this girl's full name,
Speaker 1: but I'm not going to because, like it would just
Speaker 1: add so much to this. Because I went to youth
Speaker 1: group with this girl. I remember her full name, I
Speaker 1: remember her face and everything. And she was so serious
Speaker 1: and she was scared, and she's we're having this conversation
Speaker 1: and we're out in this church parking lot in the
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere, and the parking lot surrounded by woods,
Speaker 1: and so the whole time she's telling me this, she's
Speaker 1: looking over my shoulder at the woodline as if she's
Speaker 1: expecting something to come out as we're talking about it.
Speaker 1: And come to find out, it took a while. It
Speaker 1: took a while for me to put together the pieces,
Speaker 1: but she was talking about sasquatch and she was one
Speaker 1: hundred percent serious about it. And her friend in I
Speaker 1: went to youth group with all these kids. Her friend
Speaker 1: was a girl who I dated for a while, and
Speaker 1: this is like, this was, you know, a sixteen year old,
Speaker 1: seventeen year old girl who did not She wasn't in
Speaker 1: the squatching, she didn't care about Bigfoot. He's not involved
Speaker 1: in the culture of it or anything. She's not watching
Speaker 1: Bigfoot documentaries for fun. She but she saw one and
Speaker 1: she was scared to death. She lived down a lit, long,
Speaker 1: windy road out in the middle of the country, gravel road.
Speaker 1: We used to joke that it was the longest driveway
Speaker 1: in the region because it seemed like it was like
Speaker 1: a mile long. And she one walked out in front
Speaker 1: of her her car, and the way I understand it
Speaker 1: made eye contact with her, and she was afraid to
Speaker 1: tell me. She eventually told me, She's like, I'm, I'm
Speaker 1: She was almost apologizing for telling me the story, but
Speaker 1: she's like, I can't help it because it really happened.
Speaker 1: I've have to tell you. And she was scared, and
Speaker 1: I said well, what was it? And she said it
Speaker 1: was a man, but not a man, and of course
Speaker 1: big and hairy. And we would go out and we
Speaker 1: would do you know, teenager stuff, and we'd get back
Speaker 1: sometimes after dark, and she'd have to psych herself up
Speaker 1: to get out of the car after dark, just to
Speaker 1: go straight into the front door. This was a very
Speaker 1: real thing to.
Speaker 2: These I've met hunters who hunted all their life, guys
Speaker 2: that loved hunting, and they see one and they're done. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they will not go back in the woods again. They're done. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, doesn't tend to happen with bears. This is
Speaker 2: another strange thing about this, and one of the things
Speaker 2: that I have to be careful the way I talk
Speaker 2: about this, and I'm going to stay up front. I
Speaker 2: do not think Bigfoot is a demon, so please no
Speaker 2: one say that I'm saying that. But when you look
Speaker 2: at the phenomenon and you compare it to marry and apparitions,
Speaker 2: for instance, these visions of Mary all over the world,
Speaker 2: people say brighter than the sun, Bigfoot, they say, blacker
Speaker 2: than black. These these holy visions, not just Mary, but
Speaker 2: some angels, other things that people experience often are accompanied
Speaker 2: by a wonderful smell. The odor of sanctity just smelled
Speaker 2: so good. Smell good. Bigfoot smells like rotten meat and scat.
Speaker 2: You know, it smells horrible, awful smell. People are left
Speaker 2: tired often with these these heavenly visions, but very happy,
Speaker 2: very very fulfilled, very you know, like calm Bigfoot. People
Speaker 2: are left scared, terrified, haunted by it for the rest
Speaker 2: of their life, these these holy visions. They'll leaves like
Speaker 2: flower petals behind. Sometimes they'll get the people get showers
Speaker 2: of flower petals. What is bigfootly behind? Big piles of poop,
Speaker 2: you know, nasty stuff. So I call it the oppositeness
Speaker 2: of the phenomenon. So it does. It does speak to
Speaker 2: something kind of like the opposite, you know, the opposite
Speaker 2: of this heavenly stuff. Now again I'm not saying it's
Speaker 2: a demon, but it does make me go, well, that's weird.
Speaker 2: You know, there's maybe maybe there's something a little bit
Speaker 2: negative about that phenomenon, or maybe just aspects of it.
Speaker 2: You know. I've had people tell me, well, some are bad,
Speaker 2: some are good. I don't know, but certainly the people
Speaker 2: that are left with these effects, it makes me wonder.
Speaker 2: It really does because again, I've seen bears in the woods.
Speaker 2: I don't want to mess with a bear, you know,
Speaker 2: I'd rather not see them in the woods. It's neat
Speaker 2: to see. I've seen a moose in the woods. They
Speaker 2: could be very way more dangerous than bear. It was
Speaker 2: cool to see. I'd rather not see one again. But
Speaker 2: it's not gonna keep me out of the woods, you know.
Speaker 2: And these are, like I said, these are guys who
Speaker 2: loved hunting. Who they could tell they'd be like, oh, man,
Speaker 2: I loved hunting. You know, every year I was out there,
Speaker 2: you know, every day I could hunt in my entire life.
Speaker 2: And like never going back in the woods again. I
Speaker 2: give up hunting. Can't do it. You know, there's something
Speaker 2: about it that's not a bear. You know, It's not
Speaker 2: like I've seen a bear in the woods. It's something different.
Speaker 1: Those are some of my favorite stories, are like the Hunters,
Speaker 1: like when it comes to like a show like Sasquatch Chronicles.
Speaker 1: I know West has had a lot of hunters on
Speaker 1: over the years. Those are always my favorite shows. And
Speaker 1: it irks me whenever I hear people who haven't studied
Speaker 1: the subject say, well, you know, who doesn't see bigfoot
Speaker 1: hunters because they're absolutely wrong hunters. Just it's out there,
Speaker 1: you can find it.
Speaker 2: I mean, wait, And you always get the person who's like, oh,
Speaker 2: I've been in the woods my entire life, I've never
Speaker 2: seen anything. Okay, Yeah, that means nothing. That doesn't mean anything.
Speaker 2: That means absolutely nothing. I could walk down a trail
Speaker 2: and just see something to say, I see a bluebird
Speaker 2: down a trail and I come out of that trail
Speaker 2: and I say, hey, there's a bluebird down there. You
Speaker 2: should go down there and look for it. You go
Speaker 2: down there, that boo bird's probably gone. You may or
Speaker 2: may not ever see that bird. Doesn't mean if we
Speaker 2: wasn't there when I saw it, It's right, it means
Speaker 2: you didn't see it, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're almost back to does it cheap to show
Speaker 1: itself to you? Or doesn't choose you? And it's you know,
Speaker 1: I remember back in the day listening to Coast to
Speaker 1: Coast and Art Bell was talking to a guy from
Speaker 1: the Ozarks who was expousing all these bigfoot stories and
Speaker 1: Art goes, you know, why did they choose you? And
Speaker 1: he's like, I don't know, but they were just always
Speaker 1: seen to be around. And I'm the guy that they
Speaker 1: like to show themselves to. And another weird thing about
Speaker 1: that one was it was his parents knew about the Bigfoot,
Speaker 1: and they they called them wild man or wild man,
Speaker 1: and he's here, he is on coast to coast and
Speaker 1: he's using the term the terminology bigfoot because it was
Speaker 1: almost like it was generational there. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I think, especially like in the seventies, it was
Speaker 2: this idea that Bigfoot was in California and Oregon. So
Speaker 2: you get a lot of these, like other names that
Speaker 2: people used for them all over the place. In the
Speaker 2: wood boogers in the South, you get some pockets they
Speaker 2: would call them catamounts, which I know is another name
Speaker 2: for a a cougar, but they would I've heard some
Speaker 2: accounts that said, no, no, we called the bigfoot. We
Speaker 2: called them catamounts, maybe because the way they scream or something.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Locally, they were there's one place and
Speaker 2: I know that this is a different creature in Wisconsin
Speaker 2: or something, the hodag. But locally there was a place
Speaker 2: that they were calling it a hodag here in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 2: and that it wasn't this creature of Wisconsin. They were
Speaker 2: talking about a big hairy man like thing. So I think
Speaker 2: these names they probably pre date Bigfoot, a lot of them.
Speaker 2: But you know, until later on, people didn't realize we
Speaker 2: were talking about the same thing. You know, they've been
Speaker 2: on bigfoots. In California, we have the ho Dag, we
Speaker 2: have the Wooly Booker, you know what I mean like that,
Speaker 2: So it could be a little bit of that that's
Speaker 2: going on too.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, the localized regional names. There's the White Screamer
Speaker 1: in Tennessee. Is there's another when it's it's slipping in
Speaker 1: my mind right now. Of course, there's just the wild man.
Speaker 1: The Tennessee wild man is just another term for I
Speaker 1: think for a Bigfoot like creature. Uh, because a lot
Speaker 1: of those accounts that I've read, when they're talking about
Speaker 1: Tennessee wild Man, it's it doesn't seem like it's man.
Speaker 1: It seems more weird bigfoot supernatural.
Speaker 2: Oh, I remember another gum devil that was another local
Speaker 2: name around here, and they call them gum devils.
Speaker 1: Gum devils. Well, you know what, what what do you
Speaker 1: think about this? Have you heard about those two guys
Speaker 1: that are like and because I'm thinking about that Old
Speaker 1: Coast to Coast episode and I remember I think Linda
Speaker 1: Moulton Howell came on and was talking about the men
Speaker 1: in Black and then they were talking about the men
Speaker 1: in Black of Bigfoot. And have you heard about these
Speaker 1: two guys that used to I guess show up after
Speaker 1: the Bigfoot sidings. Do you think there's anything to that?
Speaker 2: I mean, they certainly had a lot of people who
Speaker 2: weren't related talked about him. Yeah, I've heard about him.
Speaker 2: Interestingly enough, they would they always seem to be the
Speaker 2: same two guys, one big guy. They say he's dressed
Speaker 2: like a biker or sometimes wearing a flannel shirt, which
Speaker 2: if you're a strange familiar person, that should ring some
Speaker 2: bells for you. Man, he's uh. In one instance he
Speaker 2: said his name was Bear, which is super interesting given
Speaker 2: the amount of you know, associations between bears and Bigfoot.
Speaker 2: You know, people most often say it's the most mistaken
Speaker 2: animal for Bigfoot, or a vice versa. He's appeared behind people.
Speaker 2: There's a cop that tells a story of being he
Speaker 2: run into these guys. This cop was documenting a lot
Speaker 2: of these Bigfoot reports locally, and these guys came and
Speaker 2: basically told him to stop it. He gets called out
Speaker 2: on a big foot call se these people's house, and
Speaker 2: he draws his gun on a creature, and he hears
Speaker 2: a voice behind him says, I wouldn't I wouldn't do that,
Speaker 2: and he turns around. It's that guy, that big guy
Speaker 2: in the big biker looking guy in the flannel shirt.
Speaker 2: He's just what, just appearing there. Like, it's very strange,
Speaker 2: and they do seem to be the bigfoot world's men
Speaker 2: in black. I collected lots and lots of accounts of them. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they're they're odd, and they've been appearing at least since
Speaker 2: like nineteen eighty or so. So you know, these same
Speaker 2: two guys. One guy's like nice dressed in a nice
Speaker 2: suit and more business like. The other guy's like real
Speaker 2: gruff and rough and like I said, like sometimes they
Speaker 2: say he's like a biker. Sometimes they say he's wearing
Speaker 2: a flannel shirt. It's supposed to be a great big
Speaker 2: guy too, like real big, intimidating guy. Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 2: interesting stuff.
Speaker 1: It's very interesting. I figured i'd throw it in because
Speaker 1: you know, we're having this, We're not having a flesh
Speaker 1: and blood Bigfoot conversation right now exclusively.
Speaker 2: It's just difficult to do with me.
Speaker 1: It's just fine. I mean, yeah, that's it's great. I mean,
Speaker 1: I I don't know. The more I look into it,
Speaker 1: the more wide open this this thing is for with possibilities.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And people like to pin me down like do you
Speaker 2: think it's interdimensional? I don't know. It's a good theory,
Speaker 2: but I don't know. You're never going to get me
Speaker 2: to say, oh no, that's definitely what it is, because
Speaker 2: the true answer is I don't know. And I had
Speaker 2: to accept that about a short time after I started
Speaker 2: looking into this, you know, I went in charged into Bigfoot,
Speaker 2: and I was like, you know, once I got back
Speaker 2: into it as an adult, I was like, maybe I
Speaker 2: could figure this out, you know, and very short time
Speaker 2: into it, I kind of realized like, nah, it's I'm
Speaker 2: not figuring this out. I don't think anybody in my
Speaker 2: lifetime is figuring this out. And I had to sit
Speaker 2: down and sort of talk to myself because I went
Speaker 2: through like a month of almost depression about it and
Speaker 2: I and eventually I sort of had this talk with
Speaker 2: myself like well, are you are you still interested in it?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: Do you still like it? Yes? Are you willing to
Speaker 2: accept that you just you're not going to solve it
Speaker 2: and just live with the mystery. And my answer to
Speaker 2: that was yes, And it's been way more rewarding since
Speaker 2: that time. Honestly, it's just, you know, just accept that
Speaker 2: we don't get to solve this. You know, solving is
Speaker 2: maybe the wrong way to even approach it. Like I said,
Speaker 2: that seems like almost like an evidence thing like I
Speaker 2: was talking about before. You just experience it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, Ron Moorehead goes into the quantum realm
Speaker 1: m h and pokes around and heat again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the quantum it's interesting. But someone much smarter than
Speaker 2: me said, if you think you understand quantum physics, you
Speaker 2: don't understand quantum physics. So that's to let's kind of
Speaker 2: leave it there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, well yeah we can leave it there.
Speaker 1: And you know, the first time I heard the Sierra sounds, though,
Speaker 1: I thought, if that's real, what we think of and
Speaker 1: what we think we know of as reality is totally different.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and and let me take a step back
Speaker 2: and say, I love Ron Moorehead and he's super cool dude.
Speaker 2: I wanted to use again before I was doing the podcast,
Speaker 2: I wanted to use some of the Sierra sounds on
Speaker 2: a on an audio CD I was making with my
Speaker 2: band and I wrote him and I was just like, hey,
Speaker 2: can I just use a short clip of this and
Speaker 2: his answer, He's got the coolest response in the world.
Speaker 2: This this man is. I love run Morehead. He's super cool, dude.
Speaker 2: He said, I didn't make those sounds. Bigfoot made him
Speaker 2: do whatever you want with him. How cool is that?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: It's like yeah. And and how confident he is in
Speaker 2: him not making those sounds, right yeah? And and Ron's
Speaker 2: like in it venture. I mean, I totally admire the guy.
Speaker 2: So when I say, like, if you thinking, I don't
Speaker 2: mean to take anything away from the guy. The guy's amazing.
Speaker 2: He's an amazing man and a super nice guy. Just
Speaker 2: like that response alone to my inqreat just like I
Speaker 2: loved it, Like like just super nice guy. So I
Speaker 2: have no problem with Ron at all at all. And
Speaker 2: I do believe that the Sierra sounds are something. Now
Speaker 2: they were seeing Bigfoot and they were hearing the sounds.
Speaker 2: I don't know that they ever saw the creatures make
Speaker 2: the sounds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So but if those sounds are real, and I'll
Speaker 1: just lay this out for people for the uninitiated. We're
Speaker 1: talking about a recording of creatures out in the wilds
Speaker 1: of California, Oregon.
Speaker 2: That's northern California, northern.
Speaker 1: California, and there you can look them up. They're readily available.
Speaker 1: Just look up the Sierra Sounds. But and you're going
Speaker 1: to hear just a a wide variety of sounds and frequencies.
Speaker 1: But also I think what you're gonna notice is there
Speaker 1: appears to be a language involved.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people crypto linguists have listened to it and they
Speaker 2: said they cannot tell what's being said, but they can
Speaker 2: tell it's the language. Audio technicians have listened to it
Speaker 2: and they said there is. They had the original tapes
Speaker 2: to test and they said that there are whatever's on
Speaker 2: there is making sounds that go both lower and higher
Speaker 2: than the human range. So it's you know, it's not
Speaker 2: a person. What is it, you know, bigfoot? We could
Speaker 2: certainly say it's happening in the same place as Bigfoot.
Speaker 2: The reason I say this is when they talk about
Speaker 2: these class B encounters with bigfoot. In other words, this
Speaker 2: is the using the BFROS terminology. These are things that
Speaker 2: are Bigfoot like things where the creature isn't seen people
Speaker 2: smell bad smells, they get stones thrown at them, They
Speaker 2: hear guttural vocals like the Sierras sounds sometimes things like that,
Speaker 2: and they say, because they're in the woods, they say,
Speaker 2: oh is a bigfoot. Look at poltergeist encounters. Though, you
Speaker 2: get stones son at you inside of houses, they are warm.
Speaker 2: Now the bigfoot people say, oh, it's warm because the
Speaker 2: bigfoot was holding in their hands. Inside houses. People get
Speaker 2: stones thrown at them with poultrygeist accounts, and they pick
Speaker 2: them up. They're warm, They get bad smells, they get
Speaker 2: these all the same things, including a guttural unknown language.
Speaker 2: I don't know that it's ever been recorded, but it's
Speaker 2: been reported with poultergeist accounts again and again at Skinwalker Ranch,
Speaker 2: the original I believe it was the original. The second owners,
Speaker 2: not the original owners, but the ones that were there
Speaker 2: when they wrote the book about it said they heard
Speaker 2: as language coming from the air, which they said sounded
Speaker 2: like Russian being spoken backwards. Now that could describe the
Speaker 2: Sierra sounds, you know. It's so you have these things that.
Speaker 2: So that's why I say, like, did big Foot make
Speaker 2: the sounds or is it something else? Is it something
Speaker 2: about the phenomena. I don't know, but it's it's certainly
Speaker 2: something they recorded, and I do believe I don't. I
Speaker 2: don't believe very highly in video evidence, and that that
Speaker 2: doesn't mean I don't think it can be captured on video.
Speaker 2: I just think the phenomena, for whatever reason, doesn't like video.
Speaker 2: But audio is fine. We're for some reason, we're allowed
Speaker 2: to record audio. I've gotten some very interesting audio myself,
Speaker 2: including unknown vocals. They don't really sound like with Serra sounds.
Speaker 2: They sound like the only way I could phrase it,
Speaker 2: and I don't mean to be offensive, but it's sounds
Speaker 2: like someone death who's trying to speak but very loudly,
Speaker 2: calling very loudly through the woods, free in the morning.
Speaker 2: You know I recorded that. So you get these things,
Speaker 2: but it's it's it's almost a one to one match
Speaker 2: for Poltergez though, which is super interesting, super interesting.
Speaker 1: Have you heard I've heard the weird sounds in that
Speaker 1: community that I lived in that I was talking about earlier.
Speaker 1: I've heard I was woken awoken one night by these
Speaker 1: crazy sounds. At the time, I didn't know what it was,
Speaker 1: and you know, it sounded demonic, it sounded it sounded
Speaker 1: like multiple creatures that were scrapping over I don't know,
Speaker 1: like a quarrel or something, but it was it was
Speaker 1: a very loud sound. It was very like I shot
Speaker 1: up in bed. Wow, it woke me up, and I
Speaker 1: shot up in bed. I sat straight up, and I
Speaker 1: never do that. You know, it takes a lot to
Speaker 1: get me to sit straight up out of a sleep.
Speaker 1: In fact, I just I think that's the only time
Speaker 1: that's ever happened to me. And I was overcome by fear,
Speaker 1: and I thought, I mean, I'm like, is this really happening?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, yeah, I'm not dreaming anymore. I'm not
Speaker 1: asleep anymore. Just loud, strange, demonic with these parts that
Speaker 1: trail off into what seems to be the language. And
Speaker 1: you know, at the time, I didn't know what it was.
Speaker 1: I went and I talked to my neighbor about it.
Speaker 1: I asked him about it. He said, well, first of all,
Speaker 1: I don't think he told me what he really thought.
Speaker 1: He was an older gentleman, and the older people in
Speaker 1: that community wouldn't. They weren't inclined to talk about this.
Speaker 1: The kids would talk about it. The older people. You'd
Speaker 1: rarely hear that they knew about this, but they wouldn't
Speaker 1: talk about it. So he told me. My neighbor told me,
Speaker 1: the only thing I know that that would be or
Speaker 1: could be, is a pack of wild dogs. And you
Speaker 1: know what I heard didn't sound knine at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, I've so the sort of unknown language,
Speaker 2: whatever it was. I caught that on a recorder I
Speaker 2: left out in the woods. I've heard these like clacks
Speaker 2: in like kind of howls, and I've heard what they
Speaker 2: call the the eight hundred pounds ol. You know, it's
Speaker 2: like someone something imitating an owl, but it sounds way
Speaker 2: too big. The one I actually recorded one, it's about
Speaker 2: a half oct of lower. It's not not a full
Speaker 2: walk of lower, but about a half foctive lower than
Speaker 2: the other als around. It's pretty interesting. The one thing
Speaker 2: that that did wake me up when I did wake
Speaker 2: up the wood knocks. One night I was camping at
Speaker 2: a there's a ghost town here in Pennsylvania called Pandemonium.
Speaker 2: And for those ghost towns on the East coast are
Speaker 2: not These aren't your western ghost towns. It's you know,
Speaker 2: very wet in the forest here, and that there's no wood.
Speaker 2: The wood goes away, so we're talking about you know,
Speaker 2: rock foundations basically. But we're camping within this this town
Speaker 2: called Pandemonium, which had some ghost stories associated with it.
Speaker 2: We went there for ghosts. We did not go there
Speaker 2: for Bigfoot. But I was woken up about, you know,
Speaker 2: three twenty in the morning by these wooden knocks and
Speaker 2: I could hear them, and I had enough in my
Speaker 2: mind to hit record on my recorder, so I recorded them,
Speaker 2: and you could see in the stereophile you could see
Speaker 2: it's a knock in this side, and it sounds very crisp,
Speaker 2: almost like a baseball bat like clack clack, and then
Speaker 2: it's answered and you can see it in the other channel.
Speaker 2: It's answered by this heavy thud, you know. So I'm
Speaker 2: imagining like, you know, maybe a branch with like some
Speaker 2: spark still on it or something, you know, like a
Speaker 2: bigger log like a thud thud and clack clack, and
Speaker 2: they're going back and forth. I was terrified. I had
Speaker 2: to pee, and I'm sitting there in my tent, going
Speaker 2: I have to go out there, and this is happening
Speaker 2: sounds like maybe forty fifty yards from my tent, you know,
Speaker 2: right in the woods behind me, and I'm just I'm thinking, like,
Speaker 2: my buddy's with me, he's in his tent. I can
Speaker 2: hear him snoring. And there's enough of these accounts where
Speaker 2: you can't wake people up. There's a lot of them
Speaker 2: where you can't wake someone up and you have to
Speaker 2: go through it alone. And I'm thinking like, well, I
Speaker 2: don't want this. I don't want to have to deal
Speaker 2: with this alone. I definitely have, you know, I gotta
Speaker 2: get up and pee, I gotta face this. And I'm listening.
Speaker 2: It was probably only a minute or so, and finally
Speaker 2: I hear him say do you hear that? And I said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I've been hearing that, and we you know, at that point,
Speaker 2: we got up and I felt a lot better, you know,
Speaker 2: having someone else around. The rest of the night, we
Speaker 2: heard stuff walking around, saw some red eyes looking at us.
Speaker 2: A pretty intense night. But yeah, I got woken up
Speaker 2: by knocks that night. Pretty very intense, very intense time.
Speaker 3: Had.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because when you're out there and you're in nature
Speaker 1: and something like that happens to you, we have instincts,
Speaker 1: you know, we come prepared for this world somewhat with instincts,
Speaker 1: and we're out in nature and you hear something unnatural.
Speaker 1: A lot of times you realize that, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: We were six miles in the state forest. We had
Speaker 2: hiked around to make sure there was no one else
Speaker 2: camping there. There was no one else around us. This
Speaker 2: had to be something with hands, I think, swinging it
Speaker 2: in and the thing that really blew me away, besides
Speaker 2: all the other stuff. We're up now from three thirty
Speaker 2: till daylight. Just like I said, just listening to something
Speaker 2: walking around. It's a lot of ferns in the forest.
Speaker 2: This was in the summer, and you could see a
Speaker 2: wake of something just walking around, something big through the ferns.
Speaker 2: I just walked around our campsite, you know. So we
Speaker 2: had this very harrowing night buying like daylight us here
Speaker 2: and we're breaking down camp and I have to go right.
Speaker 2: And I had my pack hanging on a tree and
Speaker 2: I reached around without looking. I didn't look around the
Speaker 2: backside of the tree. I just reached around and untied
Speaker 2: the para cord that my pack was hanging. And I
Speaker 2: bring the para cord around and on that para cord
Speaker 2: and I was thankfully my buddy was standing right next
Speaker 2: to me, so he got to see it. As I
Speaker 2: brought it around, we locked eyes like what was a
Speaker 2: rusty spring? A bedspring that had been twisted into the
Speaker 2: para cord. Now again, gotta be something with hands to
Speaker 2: do that. It was still attached to the para cord
Speaker 2: when I brought around with and like I said, we
Speaker 2: locked eyes like, what the heck? Go around the backside
Speaker 2: of that tree. Could see another wake through the ferns
Speaker 2: leading right to that tree, and a rusty old bedspring
Speaker 2: was there. It must it who him whatever, must have
Speaker 2: walked right over that bed spring, picked up a pull
Speaker 2: of spring up from it and twisted it into that
Speaker 2: pair of cord. I think it was that's just my gut.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think it was like saying, yeah,
Speaker 2: I was here, I was this close, within feet of
Speaker 2: my tent, and my friend sleeps in a lean to
Speaker 2: tent standing behind that tree. You could watch him sleep.
Speaker 2: You could watch him sleep maybe ten feet away from
Speaker 2: that tree he was. I was right beside that tree.
Speaker 2: I think it was just like, yeah, I got this
Speaker 2: close and you did nothing about it. It's like Countain
Speaker 2: Coup in a way. It was stunning, stunning. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: if it was a person, hey, brave man, because if
Speaker 2: we'd have woken up and found you in our campsite,
Speaker 2: you'd have had you we were armed, and you would
Speaker 2: have had a hard time. I'll tell you that. Don't
Speaker 2: go into people's campsites atnight, don't. I don't do it.
Speaker 2: You know you're asking for trouble if you do.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I had trees shook at me, just a whole
Speaker 1: other a lot of other sideis I'm not going to
Speaker 1: go into them today, but I'll just finish it with that.
Speaker 1: I there was something too powerful to be just a
Speaker 1: man doing some of doing some of the things that
Speaker 1: I saw as well. And when it comes to the
Speaker 1: trees that were shaking, they were too big.
Speaker 2: I've seen that, big trees just shipping back and forth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and when it's only two trees, it's not.
Speaker 2: Not the wind exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I saw that one day and I was with another
Speaker 2: guy and he's like, oh, that's the wind. I'm like,
Speaker 2: why is it just the one tree and the wind's
Speaker 2: not there's no wind blowing, it's just the tree. And
Speaker 2: it was His girlfriend was across a creek that we
Speaker 2: couldn't there's just no way to cross this creek. It's
Speaker 2: a big more akin to a river, and water's filthy anyway.
Speaker 2: It comes out of York City. I would not want
Speaker 2: to be in that water anyway, but there's there's really
Speaker 2: no safe way to cross there anyway. Yeah, and his girlfriend,
Speaker 2: he was actually showing me some other like bigfoot sign
Speaker 2: that he found in the woods there. His girlfriend was
Speaker 2: sitting by the creek and said, came back up. I said,
Speaker 2: all I heard these low grunts and then I looked
Speaker 2: across and you just this this tree just whipping back
Speaker 2: if it was a big sycamore tree because it was
Speaker 2: white against it, really see it, because it's white against
Speaker 2: the other trees and just whipping back and for a
Speaker 2: huge tree, Like what's doing that? Like yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: who knows.
Speaker 1: Here, I've got another siding here. I'll do this. This
Speaker 1: will be the last one I read. It's from Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: so I had to throw it in right, all right,
Speaker 1: And it's from nineteen seventy three in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2: Right by me.
Speaker 1: An ungodly looking creature created havoc among the local god
Speaker 1: fearing Amish community. Witnesses described the creature as follows the
Speaker 1: size of a good heifer gray in color with a
Speaker 1: white mane t It had tiger like fangs and curved
Speaker 1: horns like a billy goat. It ran upright on long
Speaker 1: legs and had long, grizzly claws. In one incident, the
Speaker 1: creature sent a team of horses and two brothers flying
Speaker 1: when it approached their haywagon. The following day, a man
Speaker 1: was cutting weeds on his farm about five miles from
Speaker 1: the previous incident when he heard a fierce roar and
Speaker 1: turned to see a monster with three horns and a
Speaker 1: tail charging in his direction. He raised his scythe to
Speaker 1: defend himself, only to have the implement ripped from his hands.
Speaker 1: At that point, the man wisely decided to turn both
Speaker 1: cheeks to the monster and escaped as fast as he
Speaker 1: could run. And then there's one more. A day later,
Speaker 1: a woman was feeding poultry on a farm midway between
Speaker 1: the two earlier incidents, when she heard a commotion and
Speaker 1: turned to see the creature in the act of snatching
Speaker 1: a goose in each of its hands. She bravely ran
Speaker 1: towards the thing, waving her apron. The woman managed to
Speaker 1: recover one of her geese when the creature threw it
Speaker 1: at her, knocking to her to the ground in the process,
Speaker 1: and the interloper then escaped with the remaining bird in hand.
Speaker 1: And that's from America's Nightmare Monsters.
Speaker 2: Okay, a couple of things about that story. When that
Speaker 2: man with the size returned the next day, he just
Speaker 2: found the metal part of the size. The handle was
Speaker 2: he presumed eaten out of it. It was gone. The
Speaker 2: handle was gone, so he just found the metal part
Speaker 2: of the side. But that is misattributed to Lancaster County.
Speaker 2: That's actually from Happy Valley. It's the Amish in the
Speaker 2: middle of the state. And I think whoever elected that
Speaker 2: story originally saw Amish and there's so associated with Lancaster County.
Speaker 2: I think they just went, oh, it's Langster County because
Speaker 2: it's Amish. But it's actually in a place called Happy Valley.
Speaker 2: It's in the middle of the state. But you have
Speaker 2: a fantastic account. All the other details are spot on.
Speaker 1: I figured you would have known that one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's a good one. It's hard to get
Speaker 2: the Amage to talk about this stuff. They don't like
Speaker 2: to neither do there's a there's a Welsh community here
Speaker 2: where they still have church services in Welsh right here
Speaker 2: in York County, Pennsylvania. It's a wonderful community. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of strangeness that happens there, a lot of big
Speaker 2: foot sightings, a lot of other stuff. And I wanted
Speaker 2: to talk to the Welsh people because I truly believe
Speaker 2: people bring their folkslore with them. You're talking about fairies
Speaker 2: and Appalachias because there's a heavy Scots Irish population there.
Speaker 2: They brought that folklore with them. So I thought these,
Speaker 2: well Welsh have a fairy tradition too, and I would
Speaker 2: love to talk to them. But the Welsh they don't
Speaker 2: talk about this stuff like the Amish, they don't talk
Speaker 2: about it. So that I went to the Historical Society
Speaker 2: there and they're like, you'll never get them to talk.
Speaker 2: And I happened to mention this to someone in the
Speaker 2: UK and they said, oh, yeah, the Welsh they just
Speaker 2: don't talk about this stuff. So it's it's just not done.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I'm sure the Amish have a lot more
Speaker 2: stories and I wish they would talk about it, but
Speaker 2: they just don't. They don't. It's not what they do.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've been through so York, PA, that Central that
Speaker 1: was Central Okay. Now, I don't know if I've been
Speaker 1: through York, but I've been through Pennsylvania from the Philly side.
Speaker 1: I drove.
Speaker 2: Across to Pittsburgh, okay, and I went went north of
Speaker 2: York then.
Speaker 1: Okay, And I will say this, it is beautiful country.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, but it is very it's sparse. It's sparsely populated.
Speaker 2: In the middle of the state there. Yeah, Like where
Speaker 2: I am, it's it's close enough to Maryland where you
Speaker 2: get a lot of like commuters from Baltimore even here,
Speaker 2: so it's it's a little more populated where I am.
Speaker 2: But in the middle of the state, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 2: super sparse, very very low light pollution there. If you
Speaker 2: if you like the SkyWatch, it's like a wonderful place
Speaker 2: to go, especially the north central Pennsylvania. It's like almost
Speaker 2: zero light pollution there. It's incredible. Do you see darkness
Speaker 2: there like you rarely see anywhere?
Speaker 1: Well, yes, and it's just National parks stacked. There's like
Speaker 1: one of those areas. I think there was just six
Speaker 1: National parks in a row. That's what it seemed like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, it's yeah, it's it's it's a great place
Speaker 2: for that too. Yeah, I have. I have some complaints
Speaker 2: about the way the local parks are handed, but it
Speaker 2: handled but in general they are creating and keeping green
Speaker 2: spaces here in a really special way that as a hiker,
Speaker 2: never mind the paranormal, as someone who loves to hike,
Speaker 2: is is wonderful to see. There's some private organizations that
Speaker 2: are doing and they just they're making this land available
Speaker 2: to people to hike, to hunt, fish, whatever, and it's
Speaker 2: it's just wonderful. They're just saving block after block, hundreds
Speaker 2: of acres at a time and just making it green
Speaker 2: space for people, and it's just it's fantastic, incredible.
Speaker 1: So when's the next book and what and when are
Speaker 1: you thinking?
Speaker 2: Okay, So the next book is called I Have Never
Speaker 2: Minded the Loneliness and it's about hermits. It's my first
Speaker 2: book that's not really paranormal, though there are there are
Speaker 2: some hermits who told fortunes. There's one hermit that was
Speaker 2: actually mistaken for a bigfoot, but mostly it's it's my
Speaker 2: first book that's like, it's not really paranormal focused. It's
Speaker 2: the story of these hermits in their lives, which are
Speaker 2: super interesting, and it's based on my photo collection I
Speaker 2: started collecting photos of these guys from the eighteen hundreds
Speaker 2: to early nineteen hundreds. After my wife bought me one
Speaker 2: basically said Dell, you're like, this is like a wild man.
Speaker 2: It's like it's the hermit. He's like a wild man.
Speaker 2: You'll like this. And I looked up the guy and
Speaker 2: his story blew me away, and so I became interested,
Speaker 2: and I started collecting pictures of other hermits. So when
Speaker 2: I started writing a book, it is like, well, how
Speaker 2: am I going to narrow it down? There's way too
Speaker 2: many hermits, way more than you'd ever think. Well, just
Speaker 2: based on my photo collection. So almost every hermit, there's
Speaker 2: one or two in the book you don't get to
Speaker 2: see photos of, but almost every hermit you get to
Speaker 2: see the photo. You get to see what they look like.
Speaker 2: I did tons of illustrations for it. It's, my opinion,
Speaker 2: the best illustrated book I've ever done, and over three
Speaker 2: hundred pages of hermit stories and illustrations and photos, and
Speaker 2: I think it's a really interesting topic. We've done some
Speaker 2: hermit stories on strange familiars and people seem to like them,
Speaker 2: so you know there'll be a whole book.
Speaker 1: They're fascinating they're absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 2: That'll be before the end of the year. I'm done
Speaker 2: the writing. I'm done eighty five percent of the art.
Speaker 2: I have a little bit more art to do for
Speaker 2: it and got to get it edited. But it should
Speaker 2: be out in twenty twenty four. I'm excited. Excited. Had
Speaker 2: a book out in a while. I've been working on
Speaker 2: this one. It's been a lot of work on this one.
Speaker 1: I'm excited for that too. I like kermits, you know.
Speaker 1: I think that that's once you get into the stories,
Speaker 1: you start to realize how incredible the stories really are.
Speaker 1: You know, you'll find yourself kind of lost in it,
Speaker 1: you know. I was looking at one recently. I had
Speaker 1: a guest on and we were talking about the ancient past,
Speaker 1: and this guest mentioned a pyramid that he knew about
Speaker 1: that was on an island up in the Great Lakes.
Speaker 1: And I don't have all that information with me right now,
Speaker 1: but basically I looked up the island. I found this
Speaker 1: the name of this island, and like, there's a little
Speaker 1: community there. But it turns out the island is famous
Speaker 1: for this tomb that's there today of this hermit, and
Speaker 1: he was he went to the island to get away from,
Speaker 1: you know, society basically. But he was a healer mm hmm,
Speaker 1: so he ended up being these people like a big
Speaker 1: help to all his neighbors in that you you know,
Speaker 1: in in terms of healing and other things. So I
Speaker 1: got sucked right into it. And those those hermit stories
Speaker 1: are so rich.
Speaker 2: So yeah, And I mean some of them I couldn't
Speaker 2: find a lot. So some of them it's just a
Speaker 2: couple of pages.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: Some of them are are much longer, you know, depending
Speaker 2: on how much information I could find on these these
Speaker 2: men and women by far more men. But there are
Speaker 2: some women hermits in the book. But they're so interesting
Speaker 2: and and I think to capture their lives, you know,
Speaker 2: these these people that could have been forgotten. They're sort
Speaker 2: of like people that walked away from society right easy
Speaker 2: to be forgotten. And I feel in a way like
Speaker 2: it's almost this responsibility. One of them, she's a woman.
Speaker 2: Her name is Jenny Johannica. She was called the hermit
Speaker 2: of Happy Valley. I believe Happy Valley, hermit of Happy
Speaker 2: I'm getting Happy Valley because the almis is confirmed, but anyway,
Speaker 2: Happy Hollow. She's the hermit of Happy hollow, and I
Speaker 2: looked her up, you know, as I'm doing, and you know,
Speaker 2: she's sort of famous in her area. I forget what
Speaker 2: part of the country she was from, somewhere I'm in
Speaker 2: the Indiana maybe maybe I could be wrong, but somewhere
Speaker 2: in the Midwest, and there's a I think, a little
Speaker 2: sign of her, you know, where she lived at this park,
Speaker 2: you know, like you know a little story about her.
Speaker 2: And I realized I may have the only photo of
Speaker 2: her anywhere. I found this photo. It's a Siano type photo,
Speaker 2: someone probably printed at home, and on the back written
Speaker 2: is her name and the name of her dog, because
Speaker 2: they're dog's in the picture, and there's no I can't
Speaker 2: find any other photos of her anywhere, and it sort
Speaker 2: of hit me the responsibility, like I might have the
Speaker 2: only photo of this person that's around these days. Anyway.
Speaker 2: I'm sure there were others before, but I might have
Speaker 2: the only existing photo of her. And I take that
Speaker 2: very seriously, you know, like I feel like, you know,
Speaker 2: there's the idea of second death right you die once
Speaker 2: and then you die again. Once everybody forgets who you were.
Speaker 2: And I feel like, almost in a way, like responsible
Speaker 2: for their stories and their care, and I've become very
Speaker 2: fond of these people writing these stories. And like I said,
Speaker 2: the seriousness of that when I realized, like I might
Speaker 2: have the only existing photo of this woman, that's kind
Speaker 2: of important. Like, I hope someone else cares, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean. I'll leave it to maybe there'll be
Speaker 2: a library or something that will care enough to want
Speaker 2: to preserve this collection, because I would be happy for that.
Speaker 2: I would certainly give it to an institution like that,
Speaker 2: because I think there's something here to preserve these stories
Speaker 2: of these people that could have been forgotten. And in
Speaker 2: a way, they were forgotten in their time. A lot
Speaker 2: of them people didn't care, you know, they went off
Speaker 2: to the woods and they they were either superstitious about
Speaker 2: them or they people barely knew them, or they made
Speaker 2: up stories about them.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: So as best as I could, I told I told
Speaker 2: their real stories. And I feel, like I said, kind
Speaker 2: of honored to do so. It's like I just fell
Speaker 2: in love with these people in the process of writing
Speaker 2: the book.
Speaker 1: Maybe your book will serve as a memorial to some
Speaker 1: of these people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hope so. And there is an element of there.
Speaker 2: But for the grace of God, go I because, let
Speaker 2: me tell you, especially coming out of the pandemic, there
Speaker 2: were some times where I just thought, I just want
Speaker 2: a cabin, just be by myself.
Speaker 1: I was, I got I was there as well, and
Speaker 1: I was in that headspace as well as ready to
Speaker 1: I was ready to hit Appalachia again, hit the road
Speaker 1: and the head back to Appalachia. And yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: as people I think have if if you can see
Speaker 1: at this point in the conversation, you do great research.
Speaker 1: I think you throw yourself into your research. You do
Speaker 1: you have an honest approach, and you have research that
Speaker 1: is fueled by genuine curiosity.
Speaker 2: I think I have a absolute love for research. I do.
Speaker 2: I just am connecting the dots I love, like, oh
Speaker 2: look at this and this is connected to that, and yeah,
Speaker 2: I absolutely love it. So thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, And I would urge people to go check
Speaker 1: out your books and your podcast. And you know, one
Speaker 1: of the things I didn't mention also is your music.
Speaker 1: I listened to I've heard some of your songs within
Speaker 1: your episodes, and they're great, some of the best, the
Speaker 1: best folk that's out there. It's great. But yeah, tell
Speaker 1: people where they can find you.
Speaker 2: So the easiest place for everything. Just go to Strange
Speaker 2: familiars dot com and all that contact information there goes
Speaker 2: to me. There should be links to our Etsy shop
Speaker 2: or if you want, like Strange Moliar t shirts or
Speaker 2: my artwork's there. My books are there, but you can
Speaker 2: get my books on Amazon everywhere else. All the links
Speaker 2: are there, my contact information, all that, so it's just
Speaker 2: Strange familiars dot com.
Speaker 1: Great, well, thanks for being here. This has been a
Speaker 1: great conversation and we'll have to do it again sometime.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, thanks for having.
Speaker 3: Me as always, break the mold, conquer the room, and
Speaker 3: thanks for listening.
Speaker 4: Controlling Shops station connection