Speaker 1: You're listening to an Airwave media podcast.
Speaker 2: A little bit of thank you before we start the episode.
Speaker 2: Late last year, Karen talked me into adding Patreon to
Speaker 2: Monster Talk as a way of letting listeners show support
Speaker 2: for the show.
Speaker 3: At the time, I.
Speaker 2: Wasn't sure I wanted to even bother with it, because
Speaker 2: I was concerned about it turning what's a labor of
Speaker 2: love into a business. Not that there's anything wrong with business.
Speaker 2: I'm definitely in favor of being paid for one's work,
Speaker 2: but I wanted the show to be free, and I'm
Speaker 2: one of those people who gets annoyed by commercials. But
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Speaker 2: to support us with tips and recurring donations, and it's
Speaker 2: a really nifty system. I like it, but I was
Speaker 2: thinking it was going to be for coffee money, or
Speaker 2: maybe to buy a book or DVD here and there.
Speaker 2: And it turns out that over the past two months,
Speaker 2: both Karen and I have had some very interesting challenges
Speaker 2: in our life, and it turns out that the support
Speaker 2: of those Patreon donations seriously helped make that a little
Speaker 2: less painful. We are grateful for those donations, and I'm
Speaker 2: not using this to beg for everybody to sign up
Speaker 2: for it. I just wanted to say thank you very
Speaker 2: clearly and sincerely to the people who donated to us,
Speaker 2: because we both appreciate your support for the show and
Speaker 2: you helped make Karen in my life a little bit
Speaker 2: easier with your generosity, especially over here at Team Smith headquarters. Okay,
Speaker 2: from here on out, it'll be nice and lighthearted for
Speaker 2: the rest of the show.
Speaker 3: Wait.
Speaker 2: Actually we're going to be talking about animal mutilations and
Speaker 2: horrible disgusting stuff to do with monsters and dead livestock.
Speaker 3: Huh do you still call it livestock if it's dead?
Speaker 3: Is that an oxymoron?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: Is it an ox and moron?
Speaker 2: Okay, it's actually quite unlike anything we've ever seen before.
Speaker 4: A giant hairy creature park Ape part Mats in Luckness,
Speaker 4: a twenty four a mile long bottomless lake in the
Speaker 4: Highlands of Scotland.
Speaker 1: If the creature known as the Luckness Monster.
Speaker 2: Mormstertall Monster Talk is the science show about monsters. In
Speaker 2: this episode, we'll be talking to Colin Schneider, aka the
Speaker 2: Crypto Kid, who I met recently at Cryptodcon in Kentucky.
Speaker 2: Hopefully we'll be having some more interviews with people I
Speaker 2: met there and get some good classic cryptid monster content.
Speaker 2: But as I mentioned in a recent episode, I'm also
Speaker 2: anxious to work on my series on magic, and we'll
Speaker 2: be getting that going in our next two episodes as
Speaker 2: we tackle grimoires. But for now, it's time for some
Speaker 2: good old classic Mormsterta.
Speaker 3: College.
Speaker 2: Schneider's one of the youngest active already in and cryptosology
Speaker 2: researchers in the United States. He's now seventeen years old,
Speaker 2: but he's been doing this since you were sixteen, since
Speaker 2: I was eleven, since you were eleven, so quite a
Speaker 2: few years. And he's been involved in cryptosology and uphology
Speaker 2: since he was thirteen. After he visited the International Cryptozoology
Speaker 2: Museum in Portland, Maine.
Speaker 3: Salute there to.
Speaker 2: Lauren Coleman. Oh my god, Lauren, I'm so sorry. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna edit that out because I just had a brain fart. Colin,
Speaker 2: here's another piece of advice. Never turned forty. It's all
Speaker 2: downhill after that. A frequent attendee of conferences that about.
Speaker 3: The Unexplained, Collin lectures at numerous.
Speaker 2: Events around the Ohio and Pennsylvania area, he's also a
Speaker 2: regional representative for the Center for Wordy and Zoology and
Speaker 2: the host of the Crypto Kid radio show on WCJV
Speaker 2: Digital Broadcasting Network and you can listen to that on
Speaker 2: Monday nights. While A linked to that in the show notes,
Speaker 2: and before we actually started this interview, you mentioned that
Speaker 2: you were working with the CFC to increase teen outreach.
Speaker 2: So we'll talk about that a little bit, but I'm
Speaker 2: gonna let Karen kick off the questions while I try
Speaker 2: to recover my ability to speak English.
Speaker 5: Welcome to the show, Colin.
Speaker 1: Well, thanks for having me. It's been a goal of
Speaker 1: mine to come on the show for a while.
Speaker 5: Oh fantastic. Well, thank you, and we're just very curious
Speaker 5: to find out how you got interested in this field
Speaker 5: at such a young age.
Speaker 1: I every interview I do about this, I always kind
Speaker 1: of have a different answer, and it's a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of things. Goosebumps, the book series by R. L. Stein
Speaker 1: was definitely a big influence in my interest in the stuff.
Speaker 1: But directly, the first thing I really heard about cryptology
Speaker 1: from was Monster Quest History Channels show about Oh gosh,
Speaker 1: it's almost ten years ago now that it started airing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it slightly predates our show because it was definitely
Speaker 2: an inspiration.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the first episode I ever saw was on the
Speaker 1: Ohio Grassman, and it terrified me because they portrayed this
Speaker 1: bigfoot creature as being hyper aggressive and it was literally
Speaker 1: in my own backyard because I live in Ohio. So
Speaker 1: it was like, you have an eight.
Speaker 6: Year old and an eight year old watching this thing
Speaker 6: about this giant ape creature that, according to old newspaper stories,
Speaker 6: literally ripped a person off of ah.
Speaker 1: Off of his horse and killed him. Like that's not that,
Speaker 1: that's scary. And so because it was scary, it interested me,
Speaker 1: and I just started looking more and more into this stuff,
Speaker 1: and uh, every episode pretty much had Lauren Coleman on it.
Speaker 3: I know exactly.
Speaker 2: They actually I've talked to him about that. They brought
Speaker 2: him up for like one day and then film like everything.
Speaker 1: Right. That's how Lauren always seemed like just this very knowledgeable,
Speaker 1: grandfatherly figure that I don't know, I just was. I
Speaker 1: just kind of idolized him as a kid, and I
Speaker 1: bought almost all of his books as soon as I could,
Speaker 1: as soon as I got the money. And as you
Speaker 1: as you mentioned at the beginning. I got a chance
Speaker 1: when I was thirteen to go to the International Cryptusoology Museum,
Speaker 1: and I remember walking out after me him and buying
Speaker 1: every book in the gift shop with walking out with
Speaker 1: a stack of books, all of my vacation money spent
Speaker 1: before we even got to the place where we were
Speaker 1: actually staying, thinking I want to do this for the
Speaker 1: rest of my life. I want to be a monster hunter.
Speaker 1: I want to look for these things. And I haven't
Speaker 1: looked back since.
Speaker 2: That's neat, you know. I actually we were just doing
Speaker 2: a multi part episode on the Kentucky Goblins case, the
Speaker 2: Kelly Hopkinsville Goblins, and in that document, which was by
Speaker 2: Blacker and Davis or Davis and Blacker, they mentioned Lauren
Speaker 2: Coleman is part of the some of the research. I
Speaker 2: think we're just talking about the Evansville sort of fish
Speaker 2: man attack, and I thought.
Speaker 3: My gosh, Laura's been around forever.
Speaker 2: I mean, he's he's he's he's really managed to take
Speaker 2: up that role of sort of he took the torch
Speaker 2: sort of from John Keel maybe for my Sanderson, you
Speaker 2: know that.
Speaker 1: Sort of he was around during John Keels.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And I think I.
Speaker 2: Want to believe if I remember correctly, that he was
Speaker 2: actually like helping out Sanderson. Maybe at one point.
Speaker 1: I think Sanderson and Hoovelman's and Coleman all had lot.
Speaker 1: They sent letters to each other, they were they worked
Speaker 1: together on different projects. I remember in several books Lauren
Speaker 1: said that Sanderson called him as man in the West.
Speaker 3: That's nice. It's fun because we kind of ended up
Speaker 3: doing the same sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Now we typically do it through email and you know,
Speaker 2: Facebook groups and other things. But it is really fun
Speaker 2: to collaborate on research across the country or across the world.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think one of my.
Speaker 2: First collaborative projects was done with Kylie Sturgis and she
Speaker 2: was in Australia and I was in.
Speaker 3: Actually I was in Colorado at the time.
Speaker 2: We were working on it.
Speaker 3: I was at the Stanley Hotel.
Speaker 2: So I was in the Stanley Hotel researching a ghost
Speaker 2: case and Kylie was on the ground doing field work
Speaker 2: for me.
Speaker 3: It was awesome with me.
Speaker 2: I shouldn't say for me if you were just it.
Speaker 3: It was a nice cooperation across the world. So I
Speaker 3: I love it. I love collaboration, and I think that's great.
Speaker 2: This existed all this time.
Speaker 5: So yeah, well hope sort. I think just take on
Speaker 5: different perspectives and if you just work on something yourself,
Speaker 5: you can get a bit of tunnel vision.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, right, absolutely also helps to be that voice
Speaker 2: of sanity if you're.
Speaker 3: Going down a rabbit hole.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, unless you intend to be going down a
Speaker 2: rabbit hole.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that's so.
Speaker 5: Do you work by yourself, come on? Or do you
Speaker 5: work with a team of others or.
Speaker 1: I work pretty closely with a couple different people, and
Speaker 1: I am anymore. I'm one of the major movers and
Speaker 1: shakers in the Center for forwardian Zoology, which is the
Speaker 1: largest cryptosoological organization in the world, which I will continue
Speaker 1: to flaunt because I love the group and I think
Speaker 1: that not only are we the biggest, but we're the best.
Speaker 1: And working with John Downs, who is the director, has
Speaker 1: just been amazing. He was, along with Coleman, one of
Speaker 1: my childhood heroes, and now I talk to him basically
Speaker 1: every day, and not just about krypsosology, but we've become
Speaker 1: friends and we just chat about you know, Star Trek
Speaker 1: and life, universe and everything, and it's just absolutely amazing
Speaker 1: to me that someone that I grew up watching that
Speaker 1: influenced how I think about things and how I look
Speaker 1: at things and where my life is gone can be
Speaker 1: a close friend of mine. And that's honestly one of
Speaker 1: the reasons that I do this, as well as my
Speaker 1: love for this subject, is because I get to work
Speaker 1: with people that I've lived my entire life looking up to.
Speaker 3: Was it was it difficult to.
Speaker 2: Get involved with him? Did you feel like you had to? Oh, no,
Speaker 2: even with your young age, it wasn't a problem.
Speaker 1: John is one of the few major cryptozoologists in the
Speaker 1: field that is like anyone can go up to him
Speaker 1: about anything and he will immediately like pay attention to
Speaker 1: you and only you, and discuss whatever you need. I
Speaker 1: remember when I first got involved. I was with the CFC.
Speaker 1: I was about fourteen, and I was really nervous when
Speaker 1: I first asked him a question because I was because
Speaker 1: for the longest time I was just working with the
Speaker 1: guy in charge of the US division, which is a
Speaker 1: guy named Ronan Colon who lives in Ireland. And he
Speaker 1: he's a very nice guy, but he's very professional and
Speaker 1: I'm not I mean, I am professional, but I also
Speaker 1: like to joke around about things, sure, and I was
Speaker 1: I was worried that when I contacted John about something
Speaker 1: or other I don't even remember what it was. I
Speaker 1: was worried that just that type of thing would get
Speaker 1: them to be a little standoffish, and I didn't want
Speaker 1: it to be like that. But I sent him a
Speaker 1: message on Facebook because that's honestly the easiest way to
Speaker 1: get in touch with him, and he immediately replied back
Speaker 1: and we just started chatting, and within six months he
Speaker 1: started pushing me to write an article for the journal.
Speaker 1: And it was the easiest thing in the world to
Speaker 1: get involved with the CFC. To be honest, you join
Speaker 1: and someone will get in touch with you ask if
Speaker 1: you just are interested in learning or do you want
Speaker 1: to work with people and work on research, and if
Speaker 1: you do, you some the people that work in the
Speaker 1: CFC are honestly some of the nicest people I've ever
Speaker 1: worked with in this field. I've worked with quite a few.
Speaker 3: That's great.
Speaker 2: So what sort of things are you working on? I mean,
Speaker 2: I know a little bit about what you've worked on
Speaker 2: because of your presentation at a con, but like, just
Speaker 2: what's day in the life of of of a forty
Speaker 2: n slash cryptozoology researcher, Like for you.
Speaker 1: Well, I really have three major things I do on
Speaker 1: a monthly basis. I'm working on a book concerning the
Speaker 1: topic for my lecture at cryptocon, which is looking at
Speaker 1: cryptod attacks on livestock because there's a lot of weird
Speaker 1: aspects to it and something that's not really discussed much,
Speaker 1: and that takes up a lot of my time. The
Speaker 1: other one of the other major projects that I've been
Speaker 1: working on is I've been working with the CFZ on
Speaker 1: something we call the Next Generation Initiative, and it's kind
Speaker 1: of like an outreach program and a community for young
Speaker 1: cryptosologists or young people interested in working in cryptosology to
Speaker 1: kind of help them along and have a community where
Speaker 1: they can work work with other people their age to
Speaker 1: really learn and become better researchers. Is it something that
Speaker 1: doesn't really exist and there are quite a few of
Speaker 1: us around we're just not out there and doing much
Speaker 1: because it is really difficult to get into that position.
Speaker 1: And then the final thing that I do is work
Speaker 1: on kind of branding myself, if you will, and that
Speaker 1: that really just covers doing lectures, writing articles I've been
Speaker 1: published fifteen times now sixteen times, and then just doing
Speaker 1: my radio show once a week.
Speaker 3: So humble self promotion.
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's important.
Speaker 3: No, it is, no, look I'm a guy with the podcast.
Speaker 3: Of course it's important.
Speaker 1: It's critical, absolutely, especially for a young person to you know,
Speaker 1: be able to say, well, I've been published, I do this,
Speaker 1: this and this, I reach out and I do things,
Speaker 1: because there are a lot of young researchers that are
Speaker 1: doing some phenomenal work, but they aren't public about it,
Speaker 1: and they aren't visible about it. They are seen, so
Speaker 1: they're not thought of, and it can be really difficult.
Speaker 1: Even though you may have some of the greatest research around,
Speaker 1: it can be really difficult to break into the field
Speaker 1: if you aren't from the beginning working on getting published
Speaker 1: and building those connections.
Speaker 2: That's actually really a really good point. I think we've
Speaker 2: actually talked about this on a few episodes where one
Speaker 2: of the differences between sort of mainstream scientific research and
Speaker 2: cryptozoological research is among amateurs there's a tendency to try
Speaker 2: to hoard knowledge rather than share it, and that means
Speaker 2: that people duplicate the same work trying to find the
Speaker 2: same information, and it means that people can't build on
Speaker 2: the work that other people have done. Very easily. So
Speaker 2: I think anything the CFC as to sort of promote
Speaker 2: that sharing through journal publishing also just to build that
Speaker 2: network of people willing to do the work is a
Speaker 2: good idea. You know. I have that problem where I'm
Speaker 2: I'm a fan of the field, but obviously also critical
Speaker 2: of it, and because there are a lot of people
Speaker 2: out there who just sort of do the sort of
Speaker 2: echo chamber y repeating of stories without actually digging in
Speaker 2: to find out what's going on. So when I saw
Speaker 2: your presentation at a Cryptic kind of I knew we
Speaker 2: wanted to talk to you because you've done such hard
Speaker 2: work and really what seemed to be rock solid research
Speaker 2: into the topic that you were looking at.
Speaker 5: What is the topic? What was the topic of your talk?
Speaker 1: It was called blood Sucking Beasties and Shadowy Stalkers, and
Speaker 1: it was looking at crypto attacks on livestock, but from
Speaker 1: the viewpoint of like purported vampiric attacks.
Speaker 3: Right, and extended far beyond, just like cattle mutilation.
Speaker 1: For example, right, or the chewpacabra. I only talked about
Speaker 1: the chewpiccaba for maybe ten minutes.
Speaker 3: Right, Right, So do you want to talk a little
Speaker 3: bit about what you found.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the first thing that I heard about besides
Speaker 1: the Chewpacaba with this was what's known as the Vampire
Speaker 1: Beast of Bladenborrow or the Bladenburroo Cat. And it's sort
Speaker 1: of one of those underground stories that a lot of
Speaker 1: researchers seem to be familiar with, but nobody's done a
Speaker 1: lot of like investigation to what actually happened. And so
Speaker 1: it interested me because I love vampires and I love
Speaker 1: the idea of a vampire cat because it's just fun.
Speaker 1: And what happened was in December of nineteen fifty three
Speaker 1: through January nineteen fifty four, this small town of Bladenborough,
Speaker 1: North Carolina, had this rash of violent attacks on dogs, poultry, cats, sheep,
Speaker 1: a handful of other livestock, as well as a rash
Speaker 1: of what were said to be black panther attacked black
Speaker 1: panther sightings and the whole town panicked. Over a thousand
Speaker 1: hunters over the course of a couple of weeks started
Speaker 1: going into the swamps in the forests around the town
Speaker 1: with brandishing not just guns but clubs and big sticks
Speaker 1: and whatever they could grab because they were panicking about
Speaker 1: these animals, because they were worried that they were going
Speaker 1: to attack a child or someone else, and they they
Speaker 1: actually at one point outnumbered the town. There were so
Speaker 1: many hunters from their states and around just the state
Speaker 1: of North Carolina that were flocking to this town. And
Speaker 1: so that level of massisteria fascinated me and I wanted
Speaker 1: to know more.
Speaker 2: I have.
Speaker 1: Mostly as complete as I can and get of a
Speaker 1: timeline of newspaper articles about this creature. And what's really
Speaker 1: interesting is, except for two examples there were there was
Speaker 1: no real sighting of the black panther things around the Kills.
Speaker 1: The only examples where that happened was on January eighth,
Speaker 1: a woman a woman was looking at the sunset on
Speaker 1: her porch and her dog got attacked by the large
Speaker 1: catlet creature, and she said when she tried to show
Speaker 1: it away, it ran after her. Her husband came out
Speaker 1: with his gun and the creature just took off. But
Speaker 1: besides that, there were only kind of glimpses of a
Speaker 1: strange looking beast in the outskirts when people discovered the
Speaker 1: animals that were killed. Now, the reason that people thought
Speaker 1: it was a vampire cat was because all of the
Speaker 1: animals that were actually killed were killed in more or
Speaker 1: less the same way. It was pretty gruesome. They were
Speaker 1: their skulls were said to be crushed, their jaws were
Speaker 1: ripped open. Some of them had their tongues removed, others didn't.
Speaker 1: The animals were slashed on their sides, and of course
Speaker 1: they were said to be drained of blood. Sometimes there
Speaker 1: were puncture wounds on their necks, sometimes there weren't. It
Speaker 1: would depend on the state of the animal at the
Speaker 1: time whether or not they were you know, slash marks
Speaker 1: on the neck to be able to determine if there
Speaker 1: were puncture wounds there, and no one actually there were
Speaker 1: no actual autopsies of the animals to determine whether or
Speaker 1: not they were actually drained of blood. It was just
Speaker 1: said that they were because they couldn't find any blood
Speaker 1: around the animals, so it was just assumed that it
Speaker 1: was a vampire creature attacking them. Bladen Burrow is a
Speaker 1: really interesting little town. They actually hold a Bladenborough Beast
Speaker 1: Festival every year and I've been wanting to go down
Speaker 1: for a couple of years. I just haven't had a chance.
Speaker 1: But what's interesting is, unlike places like Point Pleasant that
Speaker 1: with the Mothman Festival or van Meter with the Van
Speaker 1: Meter Visitor Festival. Bladenburrow's festival actually uses the creature to
Speaker 1: fund their band program for the high school, which I
Speaker 1: thought was kind of cool. And the Bladeborrow case has
Speaker 1: a lot of tropes that are seen in other cases
Speaker 1: of these creature attacks that I really just kind of
Speaker 1: stumbled onto more of them and I decided, hey, this
Speaker 1: would make a pretty good book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you want to talk about some of those
Speaker 2: tropes of some of the things that you see.
Speaker 5: Yeah. THEASCA specific question about the panther sightings from Australia originally,
Speaker 5: and we have a lot of those sightings. There are
Speaker 5: big cat sightings and claims, and just in regards to
Speaker 5: the origins of these claims, they're not native creatures to Australia,
Speaker 5: but there are these different urban legends about how they
Speaker 5: came to Australia. Some say that they escaped from a
Speaker 5: zoo and other claims are that they were brought to
Speaker 5: Australia by US servicemen during World War Two. So I'm
Speaker 5: just wondering if you've got the same kind of theme
Speaker 5: going here, either for the Bladenburgh claims or for elsewhere,
Speaker 5: if you have different urban legends about the origins of
Speaker 5: these panthers and big cats.
Speaker 1: Not really. The area where most of these attacks are
Speaker 1: is the that I've that I found at least is
Speaker 1: the eastern side of the United States, kind of the
Speaker 1: Mississippi's kind of the dividing line here and after east
Speaker 1: of the Mississippi. That's where most of these attacks are.
Speaker 1: And when they're associated with panthers, uh, generally they're said
Speaker 1: to be mad panthers, mad mountain lions. And despite the
Speaker 1: fact that they're said to be extinct, pretty much anyone
Speaker 1: you talk to in these areas where I live down
Speaker 1: North Carolina, even up in Maine, UH will tell you
Speaker 1: that they're still here. Now I'm not making a claim
Speaker 1: that they are, but it's very much a part of
Speaker 1: the rural culture that mountain lions are here. The government
Speaker 1: doesn't want to admit it.
Speaker 3: No, that's true.
Speaker 2: And I mean, the the these stories out out there,
Speaker 2: and there's that's always that government cover up angle. I
Speaker 2: hear that over and over again in these online stories
Speaker 2: and in in various places where here among where there's
Speaker 2: coast to coast, two different people calling in and telling stories.
Speaker 2: It's that angle that the government's trying and suppress it.
Speaker 2: They don't want us to know about these animals. I
Speaker 2: find that so interesting, Like why there's that sort of
Speaker 2: conspiratorial anti big government angle going on with it Bladenboro.
Speaker 1: No one ever met, actually, as far as I could tell,
Speaker 1: made a claim that it was a mountain lion. But
Speaker 1: panther is synonymous with mountain lion in the area, so
Speaker 1: just by calling it a panther, they kind of did
Speaker 1: say it might have been. But there were three or
Speaker 1: four bobcats that were killed in the area during the panic.
Speaker 1: And actually there was an animal, strange spotted cat that
Speaker 1: some speculated was an ocelot that was actually hit by
Speaker 1: a car at the same time. And I've been trying
Speaker 1: to track down whatever happened to it, but I haven't
Speaker 1: found a single thing concerning it. Also, there was an
Speaker 1: unusually large dog named Big Boy that apparently escape a
Speaker 1: week before the attack started happening, and Zeke Stanton, the
Speaker 1: local who owned Big Boy, said that he fed the
Speaker 1: dog on nothing but blood and scraps from the local
Speaker 1: slaughter house, and he said that it developed a taste
Speaker 1: for it. So that was also one of the explanations
Speaker 1: that was being passed around what year was this again,
Speaker 1: December of nineteen fifty three through January nineteen fifty four.
Speaker 3: Back to the ex sanguination part of things.
Speaker 2: In your talk, you mentioned some things that I think
Speaker 2: are not said often enough about some of the reasons
Speaker 2: why an animal that's found dead on a farm might
Speaker 2: seem to have been drained of blood but might not be.
Speaker 3: Could you talk about that a little.
Speaker 1: I want to preface this by saying that I have
Speaker 1: done extensive research into what happens when an animal dies
Speaker 1: to the blood and the attack methods of these animals,
Speaker 1: of known animals. Even though I'm not a zoologist, I
Speaker 1: have done the research and I can back it up
Speaker 1: with credible sources. So when something dies, the heart stops pumping,
Speaker 1: the blood thickens, and gravity takes over and kind of
Speaker 1: pulls the blood at the bottom of the body where
Speaker 1: the center gravity is. And this process is called lividity.
Speaker 1: And what happens is UH even if you like pick
Speaker 1: up the animal, move it around, or you know, even
Speaker 1: cut into the animal, you probably won't find blood because
Speaker 1: it's all pulled into UH one area. And I've read
Speaker 1: several interviews with UH with veterinarians talking about this saying
Speaker 1: how it can be incredibly difficult to actually determine whether
Speaker 1: or not an animal has been exsanguinated. So even if
Speaker 1: you're you know, you're an experienced hunter or farmer or
Speaker 1: police officer like most of the people who look at
Speaker 1: these animals are, they would not be able to tell
Speaker 1: whether or not the animal has actually been drained of blood.
Speaker 1: Another another factor that does contribute to the idea of
Speaker 1: these animals being uh, these creatures being vampiric is UH,
Speaker 1: many of these animals that will go out and kill livestock,
Speaker 1: domestic dogs, wild dogs, pretty much any kind of cat
Speaker 1: on the planet, h and handful of others. Most of
Speaker 1: them will attack the throat and UH, there's a process there.
Speaker 1: There's a behavior called surplus killing in which a coyote
Speaker 1: or a wolf for most carnivores, will start attacking animals
Speaker 1: when there's a high number of them, and they will
Speaker 1: just kill and kill and kill until the entire group
Speaker 1: is gone. And generally, when these animals attack, they just
Speaker 1: get them in the throat and then move on. And
Speaker 1: I've talked I live right across from a farm, and
Speaker 1: doing research for my book, I went over there because
Speaker 1: I was curious. I wanted to know if just the
Speaker 1: average farmer knows about some of these things. And even
Speaker 1: though we have coyotes in the area and I constantly
Speaker 1: hear about coyotes attacking the animals, he was not familiar
Speaker 1: with lividity or surplus killing because it is surplus killing
Speaker 1: is a rarer occurrence, but when it does happen, it
Speaker 1: can be devastating. I know of an example where a
Speaker 1: pack of wolves of like three or four slaughtered over
Speaker 1: three hundred elk in just a handful of hours. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: in some of these cases. There's a case in seventy
Speaker 1: seven by Salem, Ohio, where one hundred and thirty four
Speaker 1: sheep were killed and by an unseen animal, just by
Speaker 1: a bite on the throat in a single night.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: And it must have been really difficult to count them.
Speaker 2: I mean, people kept falling asleep while trying to get
Speaker 2: the numb. Sorry, no, but that is you actually hit
Speaker 2: on something I really think is under not under reported.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure what the right word is. The fact
Speaker 2: is that you can become a farmer. There's not like
Speaker 2: a high barrier to entry from an educational perspective, and
Speaker 2: there's nothing in farming training that's really all about, you know,
Speaker 2: here's what happens to your livestock after it dies, you know,
Speaker 2: keeping it alive. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty common. But I
Speaker 2: don't think people really understand what happens when animals die.
Speaker 2: And right, right, it's just I mean that's not your goal.
Speaker 2: I mean your goals to keep the animals alive, help
Speaker 2: them reproduce, get them to market or whatever it is.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: And and there's just a lot of ignorance out there
Speaker 2: about what happens after animals die. And I see this
Speaker 2: again and again where relatively mundane, normal, post mortem things
Speaker 2: happen to creatures and it completely confounds the general public. Well,
Speaker 2: we talk about that on things like the Montauk Monster,
Speaker 2: where you have a mundane animal soaking in water, gets
Speaker 2: washed up on the shore and it looks weird because
Speaker 2: the hair is off of it, So a hairless animal
Speaker 2: suddenly it's a monster. No, not really, but to the
Speaker 2: general public it looks unusual. You know, animals that are starved,
Speaker 2: you know, animals that are deformed. There's there's all kinds
Speaker 2: of really mundane things that happen that can transform something
Speaker 2: completely normal or within the spectrum of normal into something
Speaker 2: quite mysteriou and it's really I think once people have
Speaker 2: embraced a sort of paranormal or unusual explanation, it's hard
Speaker 2: to talk them down from that. You know, someone's convinced
Speaker 2: that that there's a blood sucking monster killing their livestock,
Speaker 2: it's hard to convince them, no, your live stock's dying,
Speaker 2: but it's something normal, you know.
Speaker 1: I think that part of the reason that not many
Speaker 1: people know about what happens after animals die is because
Speaker 1: the topic is kind of taboo. It's kind of gory
Speaker 1: and gross, and not a lot of people are comfortable
Speaker 1: bringing it up. I'm a little I'm a little disturbed,
Speaker 1: so I think it's interesting, But I do when I
Speaker 1: do talk about these things, I do have to preface
Speaker 1: it during my talks that it can be a little gross,
Speaker 1: and I always try to dial it back right right.
Speaker 5: Even when it comes to food, we're so far removed
Speaker 5: from the way that animals are killed and our food sources,
Speaker 5: and people used to butcher animals on their farms and
Speaker 5: just make use of all of the different parts of
Speaker 5: the animals, and nowadays everything's wrapped up in cling wrap
Speaker 5: in a supermarket, and so we certainly don't know about
Speaker 5: how animals are killed, how they die, and what becomes
Speaker 5: of them. It's not something people want to know about nowadays.
Speaker 2: Well, and I think Karen, you're, or at least you
Speaker 2: have been, a vegetarian, right I don't know if.
Speaker 5: You still grew up vegetarian. My mother is vegetarian, and
Speaker 5: so I've had periods of my life of being vegan vegetarian.
Speaker 5: Right now, I'm pescatarian, so I eat seafood, but not
Speaker 5: other different kinds of meat.
Speaker 2: That's like Anglican right esscapalian.
Speaker 5: It sounds religious, it really does.
Speaker 2: I come from a family where, like both of my
Speaker 2: sisters are vegetarian.
Speaker 5: And really in Georgia.
Speaker 3: In Georgia, but.
Speaker 2: My family has been farmers, ranchers, and so I grew
Speaker 2: up around the farm. I help process animals, and I'm
Speaker 2: definitely a carnivore. Although I've experimented with vegetarianism, so I.
Speaker 3: Know I'm capable of doing it. It's not my thing.
Speaker 2: But like John Clee said, if the Lord didn't want
Speaker 2: us to eat animals, why did he make them out
Speaker 2: of meat?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: But the reason I say it is the there are.
Speaker 2: In fact, I guess we'll probably have to slap a
Speaker 2: explicit label on this.
Speaker 3: Episode because we're going to talk about gross stuff.
Speaker 2: But a lot of the things that happen in some
Speaker 2: of these animal predations where a farmer comes upon his
Speaker 2: cow or his sheep and mysterious things have happened to it.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking about the cattle mutilation cases. They always talk
Speaker 2: about the anus being cored out, or the genitalia being removed,
Speaker 2: the eyeballs being removed, you know, like laser precision cuts,
Speaker 2: that sort of thing. These are all the sort of
Speaker 2: things that happen during normal attacks by predators that they
Speaker 2: go for the easy entry. Animal hides tough. It's hard
Speaker 2: to get in there. With the peculiar exception of rabbits,
Speaker 2: I think generally speaking, it's hard to skin an animal.
Speaker 2: I don't know why rabbits come up, but they do.
Speaker 2: But but yeah, so eating like animals will eat out
Speaker 2: the rectum of a kill, and they'll tear off the
Speaker 2: genitalia and then that'll dry out in the sun, or
Speaker 2: you know, different things will tighten it and stretch it.
Speaker 2: As the animal gets distended by the gases expanding inside
Speaker 2: its body. They can change the shape of the wounds.
Speaker 2: There's lots of things that happen that are completely nasty
Speaker 2: to discuss, but which can lead to really peculiar interpretations
Speaker 2: by people.
Speaker 1: I'm really glad you brought up cattle mutilation.
Speaker 2: I thought we were gonna say rectums being eaten out,
Speaker 2: because I thought, no, that's really discussing else well.
Speaker 1: Well, doing research on this topic and being very public
Speaker 1: about what I'm doing because partially because I want to
Speaker 1: get some more recent attacks from people, because I don't
Speaker 1: have any Almost all of the stuff that I have
Speaker 1: in my book that I'm working on right now is
Speaker 1: from newspapers or police reports or those type of first
Speaker 1: firsthand stories that do have a lot of flaws in them.
Speaker 1: They don't always cover this right thing, they don't always
Speaker 1: have accompanying pictures. It can be really hard to determine
Speaker 1: what attack these animals just from the vague descriptions in
Speaker 1: the newspaper. But people bring up cattle mutilations all the time,
Speaker 1: and it's something I'm very adamant about not being connected
Speaker 1: because just because it's weird doesn't mean that it has
Speaker 1: to be connected to this other weird thing. And in fact,
Speaker 1: they don't really have a lot of similarities besides an
Speaker 1: animal being dead. A lot of the times, the reason
Speaker 1: the uh creature that creatures are being blamed is because
Speaker 1: they're either seen in the area at the same time,
Speaker 1: or there are clear signs of predation flat out that
Speaker 1: anyone can tell, like they're they're bite marks instead of
Speaker 1: you know, the the apparent surgical cuts. Also, what what
Speaker 1: really does make these appear to be weird is just
Speaker 1: the high level of animals that have been killed. There
Speaker 1: was a case in nineteen seventy December el Reno, Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: It gave us the great name of the Abominable Chicken Man.
Speaker 1: There was this There was this anonymous farmer that was
Speaker 1: sitting in his home at night when he heard his
Speaker 1: chicken squawking out in the out in his coop. They
Speaker 1: sounded like they're being attacked. So he grabbed his gun
Speaker 1: went outside to go see what was going on. And
Speaker 1: the light in the coop was on, the door was
Speaker 1: ripped off and broken in half, and there were just
Speaker 1: feathers everywhere, but no birds. He had about He had
Speaker 1: about one hundred pen chickens in there and they were
Speaker 1: all gone. What what makes this weird? Other than chickens
Speaker 1: disappearing was that apparently on the ground there were these
Speaker 1: giant human like footprints, and on the walls and the
Speaker 1: door there were bloody handprints. The farmer and then local
Speaker 1: newspaper sent photos of these prints to Lawrence Curtis, who
Speaker 1: was at the time the director of the Oklahoma City Zoo,
Speaker 1: and they also actually shipped him the door from the
Speaker 1: chicken coop, which I found interesting. Apparently he actually kept
Speaker 1: the door in his office until he retired, which I
Speaker 1: just find quite amusing. And Curtis was unable to determine
Speaker 1: what made them. He said that they kind of looked
Speaker 1: like a cross between a bear and a human, but
Speaker 1: he wasn't sure. He said they were definitely sorry, a
Speaker 1: gorilla and a human. Sorry. He said they were definitely
Speaker 1: not bear and they but they were definitely primate. And
Speaker 1: that was about as far as he was willing to go.
Speaker 1: It was never really explained how if this was a
Speaker 1: bigfoot like people claim. It was never really explained how
Speaker 1: bigfoot managed to steal one hundred and ten chickens within
Speaker 1: the span of a couple minutes. I'm pretty skeptical of
Speaker 1: the case because it was the farmer was very was anonymous,
Speaker 1: and there were not a lot of details given about
Speaker 1: the area and certain things, so it might have happened.
Speaker 1: I think it did happen, but I don't I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if it happened in the way that the newspapers
Speaker 1: said it happened. And unfortunately Curtis has passed on as
Speaker 1: far as I can tell, so I have I'm just
Speaker 1: not able to get in contact with him. Yeah, for
Speaker 1: obvious reasons. But it does kind of show that the
Speaker 1: high number of animals that were purportedly killed or were
Speaker 1: missing were was the weird factor there.
Speaker 2: It's a peculiar case. When you talked about that in Kentucky,
Speaker 2: I thought that was.
Speaker 3: It seemed like almost like fraud.
Speaker 2: Because like, like, that's a lot of chickens to go.
Speaker 3: So either the guys the right right or or the timeline.
Speaker 2: Wrong or or are it's you know, he's covering up something.
Speaker 2: I don't, although I can't imagine he had chicken insurance,
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was thinking.
Speaker 1: It's also one of those stories where it's been written
Speaker 1: about quite a few times. Lauren Coleman and Jerome Clark
Speaker 1: wrote about it in their Creatures from the Outer Edge
Speaker 1: John Keel wrote about it in his Strange Creatures from
Speaker 1: Time and Space. Colin and Janet Board wrote about it.
Speaker 1: Quite a few people have talked about this case, but
Speaker 1: none of them expressed any kind of doubt that it happened,
Speaker 1: and none of them gave any other possible explanations. I
Speaker 1: don't think that the question of how did a bigfoot
Speaker 1: manage to get one hundred and ten chickens out of
Speaker 1: a chicken coop within probably five to ten minutes?
Speaker 3: Hey, have you ever been around it chicken coop?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have too.
Speaker 2: The very idea of trying to round up that many
Speaker 2: chickens at once as an animal seems absurd. I mean, like,
Speaker 2: you can get an animal, like if you can get
Speaker 2: get a dog, a really hungry dog in a chicken coop,
Speaker 2: it could kill a lot of chickens really quick, but
Speaker 2: it can't get rid of them right like even you
Speaker 2: know that's that's a little peculiar. Chickens are really good
Speaker 2: at getting away.
Speaker 5: It does sound like a mistake with the timeframe. That's
Speaker 5: just on the surface of things.
Speaker 1: And that that's one of the reasons that it's really
Speaker 1: hard to use just newspapers for these kind of reports
Speaker 1: because you know, a lot of things these newspapers are
Speaker 1: small town h so the only reason they're talking about
Speaker 1: this stuff is because they know people will buy it.
Speaker 1: And it's vaguely interesting, more interesting than who married who
Speaker 1: last Saturday. So so oftentimes they'll play up things like
Speaker 1: they'll play up, oh, it was a vampire, or and
Speaker 1: one hundred and ten chickens were just gone, that type
Speaker 1: of thing, and it can be really hard to determine
Speaker 1: what was I hate to say falsified, but what was
Speaker 1: played up or emphasized for effect versus what actually happened.
Speaker 1: And some details are just flat out left out, like
Speaker 1: sometimes in some of the older newspaper stories, because I
Speaker 1: have things that go back to the eighteen seventies some
Speaker 1: of these stories. In a lot of them, women if
Speaker 1: they're married, they won't actually have their own name. It'll
Speaker 1: be missus, the their husband's name, and it'd be really
Speaker 1: hard and really frustrating as a researcher because I hate
Speaker 1: to just say that. And also they'll they'll call people
Speaker 1: by their nicknames, and just by their nicknames, sometimes the
Speaker 1: last name won't even be given, so it can make
Speaker 1: it almost impossible to try to track down anybody.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's uh.
Speaker 2: I was looking at a newspaper that hangs on the
Speaker 2: wall in one of my favorite restaurants in my hometown,
Speaker 2: and they had like a tenth anniversary opening special. It
Speaker 2: was just like an ad for the paper for that
Speaker 2: restaurant that was ten years after it opened. So this
Speaker 2: was I think nineteen fifty five. The restaurant open in
Speaker 2: nineteen forty five. And then on the same page they
Speaker 2: had all these other local news stories and for some reason,
Speaker 2: while I was waiting for my order, I just started
Speaker 2: reading the other news stories and it was it was
Speaker 2: funny what passed for news back then. So it was
Speaker 2: things like, you know, John Smith had a birthday party
Speaker 2: and his favorite kids arrived and all you know it,
Speaker 2: and it's like, you know, the Parkinson's are having a
Speaker 2: visitor from out of town and she's gonna be staying
Speaker 2: for a whole week, and I'm like, how is this news?
Speaker 3: How is this in the newspaper?
Speaker 5: Exactly when I was doing research into the Silver Cliff Cemetery,
Speaker 5: I was looking at a newspaper from the nineteenth century
Speaker 5: and it was called The Wet Mountain Tribute, and everything
Speaker 5: was just like that really mundane stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then I think we've talked about briefly it's
Speaker 2: not really one of our regular episode topics, but the
Speaker 2: Great airship Mystery, and then maybe like the Aurora, Texas
Speaker 2: UFO crash. Those newspapers at the time, they seem to
Speaker 2: mix fiction and reality just absolutely seamlessly, with disassumed everybody
Speaker 2: who was reading it would know what was real.
Speaker 3: And what's a tall tale.
Speaker 2: It was a different time, and I think there's been
Speaker 2: these like this is a suspicion. I haven't actually done
Speaker 2: any formal researches, but I suspect there's been rises and
Speaker 2: falls in the way that American journalism has like you know,
Speaker 2: press for accuracy and then it's dropped away and pressed
Speaker 2: for accuracy has dropped away.
Speaker 3: And it's different. Editors come and go. I imagine there's
Speaker 3: pressure on that.
Speaker 2: But I think we actually probably need to do an
Speaker 2: episode on the sort of the role of journalism because
Speaker 2: I feel like these forty in topics and monster topics they.
Speaker 3: Get short shrift in general.
Speaker 2: I think unless human beings are killed, in general, these
Speaker 2: stories are given like here's a curiosity, here's a bit
Speaker 2: of news that we're never going to follow up on
Speaker 2: You know, if you're a researcher fifty years from now,
Speaker 2: good luck with it, because we're giving you just enough
Speaker 2: to sell a newspaper and we don't really care what
Speaker 2: the outcome is.
Speaker 3: And they did the same thing on the news. Now
Speaker 3: we talk about it.
Speaker 2: A lot, where it's you know, here's a spooky story,
Speaker 2: here's a mysterious video. We're playing the X Files music,
Speaker 2: and now we'll never know what it was, right, it
Speaker 2: just goes out right at the end of the show.
Speaker 2: It's just that's mysterious, that's all it. And they always
Speaker 2: do the around Halloween too, where they play up a
Speaker 2: lot of is it ghost?
Speaker 4: Is it really?
Speaker 5: You decide?
Speaker 2: It's oh, I hate it, I hate it, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: I think what's really interesting about these type of attacks
Speaker 1: is even more so than just the general monster story.
Speaker 1: These can get people riled up and get people working together,
Speaker 1: and that actually allows the newspapers to be able to
Speaker 1: cover it more generally. Some of these cases, it's like
Speaker 1: a blow by blow daily thing. Even if there were
Speaker 1: no sightings or attacks for a week, they're still talking
Speaker 1: about who went out on an expedition looking for this
Speaker 1: creature and who did what who freaked out about this?
Speaker 1: And then they'll just rewrite all of the encounters. And
Speaker 1: it's really interesting because it's unique in the sense that
Speaker 1: there's no other real level of constant reporting on these
Speaker 1: type of things. But then once people get tired of it,
Speaker 1: it'll just drop off and you'll never hear about it again.
Speaker 1: One of the other really interesting things about some these
Speaker 1: cases is I'm not quite sure if it can be
Speaker 1: seen in other monster stories, but in some of these
Speaker 1: I found that the creatures kind of are used as
Speaker 1: a backdrop for other conversations in the town. There was
Speaker 1: a case, oh man, I can't remember. I think it
Speaker 1: was in Massachusetts in the fifties, and there was a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of cat sightings and a handful of dogs
Speaker 1: were attacked, But that wasn't as important to the newspapers
Speaker 1: as the factory workers that were quitting to hunt for
Speaker 1: the cat because they were upset that the dump across
Speaker 1: the street was smelling the High Heaven because it was summer,
Speaker 1: so they decided to all quit their jobs temporarily and
Speaker 1: go and hunt for the cat until the stench went away.
Speaker 1: And that was covered eight days in a row. Wow,
Speaker 1: there's so many unique aspects to some of these stories.
Speaker 1: There was another case in Granby, Connecticut in the forties
Speaker 1: where the state Fish and Wildlife director said that if
Speaker 1: anyone catches the panther, he would personally grill it and
Speaker 1: feed it to the first one hundred people that show
Speaker 1: up his house. Wow, and that that case had a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of peculiarities. There were a bunch of teens
Speaker 1: that were out in one of the local wildlife preserves
Speaker 1: that were making out and some of the boys had
Speaker 1: guns and they were claiming that they were hunting for
Speaker 1: the cat that was attacking sheep and rabbits in the area,
Speaker 1: and they got arrested, and newspaper headlines said Granby cat
Speaker 1: used as alibi for Oh, I think it was uh
Speaker 1: canoodling teams.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's funny, And.
Speaker 1: That's one of the While there are a lot of
Speaker 1: flaws with, you know, some of the how these stories
Speaker 1: are portrayed in the media, you also get some of
Speaker 1: the interesting SaaS and commentary on other things in the
Speaker 1: town using these creatures as kind of the the way
Speaker 1: to get this discussion going. I think it's it's one
Speaker 1: of the more unique aspects of these things that you
Speaker 1: don't always see in other aspects of uh Fortyana.
Speaker 2: Well, I have to say I commend you for bothering
Speaker 2: to go back to the original resource, you know, the
Speaker 2: primary sources wherever you can.
Speaker 3: There's so many people do that. Well it's thrue and there's.
Speaker 2: There's so many Fortian researchers who are basically just clearing
Speaker 2: houses for these stories and they don't really filter them
Speaker 2: or evaluate them or do any additional work. And so
Speaker 2: I think you're on the right path here, you know,
Speaker 2: trying to get back to the primary sources, doing interviews
Speaker 2: if you can, get in touch with actual witnesses, that
Speaker 2: sort of thing. So and applying some critical thinking to
Speaker 2: these topics.
Speaker 3: So what's your show like if people wanted to check
Speaker 3: it out? What sort of things do you do?
Speaker 2: I I've only had a chance to listen to one episode,
Speaker 2: and it was an interview with the guy who does
Speaker 2: small town Monsters, and I was enjoying that, but I
Speaker 2: didn't get to finish the whole thing before we got
Speaker 2: out here tonight.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that was a crazy episode. Did you get
Speaker 1: to the point with the raccoon?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's actually exactly where I stopped.
Speaker 2: He's like, he was staying in a cabinet Tennessee, and
Speaker 2: a raccoon just showed up in.
Speaker 3: The middle of the interview.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, So that's one of the beauties of doing
Speaker 5: live radio.
Speaker 3: Yeah yah, I so I surprised me. You can't trust
Speaker 3: him because you've got these little bandit masks on. You know,
Speaker 3: they're never no good.
Speaker 1: My producer actually was on the call with us, like
Speaker 1: always and uh, she mutes herself to the broadcaster, but
Speaker 1: the entire time Seth was talking about the raccoon. She
Speaker 1: was going, watch out, it's raby season.
Speaker 3: Be careful.
Speaker 1: Anyway, my my radio show, The Crypto Kid, it's internet radio,
Speaker 1: which I think is getting bigger. I hope it does
Speaker 1: because I love doing live radio because I don't have
Speaker 1: to sit and edit because I've done that before and
Speaker 1: I just like letting things be how they are. It
Speaker 1: gives me a bit more of an excuse if it's
Speaker 1: uh lower audio quality. Sure, But but The Crypto Kid
Speaker 1: started out as really kind of a way to have
Speaker 1: some of the top researchers in the field, some of
Speaker 1: the real movers and shakers and in the field of cryptosology,
Speaker 1: as well as skeptics and witnesses and other people to
Speaker 1: come on the show and not really talk about cases
Speaker 1: or stories like a lot of places do, but to
Speaker 1: talk about ideas. Yes, we do talk about cases on occasion,
Speaker 1: but we really do that with a focus of now,
Speaker 1: what do these cases mean, what can we kind of
Speaker 1: get from these what are some of the explanations for
Speaker 1: them of these creatures, what is the importance of Mothman
Speaker 1: that type of thing like that, the whole cultural aspect,
Speaker 1: and the the the ideas that don't quite get enough
Speaker 1: attention in the field anymore. I really try to focus
Speaker 1: on and I also try to make it approachable for everyone,
Speaker 1: not just people that are big into the field, because
Speaker 1: I think that it can be really hard to find
Speaker 1: a good show that is consistent in quality, that is
Speaker 1: easy to approach, that doesn't just tell stories all the time.
Speaker 1: And I have I've been really working hard on trying
Speaker 1: to get some of the biggest guests I can. I'm
Speaker 1: having Lyle Blackburn come on in a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: to talk about some of the ideas behind the Southern Sasquatch.
Speaker 1: I'm having Sharon Hill, who I met at Crypticon with
Speaker 1: you Blake, to come on and talk about her book
Speaker 1: Scientifical American Americans, and so I just I'm really focusing
Speaker 1: on some of the importance and you know, what why
Speaker 1: these things matter, and what are some of the ideas
Speaker 1: that these things that we can get from these things,
Speaker 1: as well as trying to be as as objective as
Speaker 1: I can be because I think it's important. And honestly,
Speaker 1: I don't know if any of these things exist except
Speaker 1: for the thylacine. That's one of the few things that
Speaker 1: I will say I'm fairly confident exists. But that's purely
Speaker 1: because I love it and I really want it to exist,
Speaker 1: and I haven't done a lot of like my own
Speaker 1: expeditions and stuff into it. I'm purely a fan when
Speaker 1: it comes to the thylacine.
Speaker 3: But we want it to exist too. It's a beautiful animal. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But.
Speaker 1: I try to stay as objective as I possibly can.
Speaker 1: I think that's something that not a lot of other
Speaker 1: shows do.
Speaker 2: So besides this work that you're doing with the CFC
Speaker 2: in your book that you're working on, I guess I'm
Speaker 2: curious about what are you planning to do as far
Speaker 2: as like your education and career, where you do you
Speaker 2: plan to keep this separate or are you going to
Speaker 2: try to find a job that works together towards like
Speaker 2: a common unified goal.
Speaker 1: Well, see, I know a lot of people try to
Speaker 1: make their living in this field, and I respect those
Speaker 1: who figure it out because obviously they're doing what they love,
Speaker 1: and I highly respect that. But I I honestly wouldn't
Speaker 1: be happy just working in this field because I want
Speaker 1: to contribute not just to the field of cryptozoology and
Speaker 1: some of the more fringed topics, but I also want
Speaker 1: to contribute positively to science. I don't think I'd be
Speaker 1: happy just writing books on the weird and doing research
Speaker 1: into the history of some of these things, because I
Speaker 1: also have a drive to discover new animals and work
Speaker 1: with animals and discover new things about animals. So I'm
Speaker 1: looking in right now into what the best education decision
Speaker 1: would be for me and some of the things I
Speaker 1: want to do. But right now it's looking like I'm
Speaker 1: either going to go into wildlife conservation or zoology just
Speaker 1: as an overall field. I absolutely love to work work
Speaker 1: with a zoo or work at a you know, work
Speaker 1: on a government level, working on trying to conserve some
Speaker 1: of the animals in these areas well.
Speaker 3: I hope you're able to make that work out. That's
Speaker 3: you're young, you got you know, plenty of time to
Speaker 3: figure all those things out. But yeah, good luck with it.
Speaker 2: And hopefully we'll get you some additional listeners. People can
Speaker 2: come check out your show, and when your book comes out,
Speaker 2: please let us know so we can help you promote it.
Speaker 1: Definitely I will. I hope to have it the second
Speaker 1: draft finished by January and I'll be shipping it around
Speaker 1: the publishers in February, so by this time next year,
Speaker 1: I hope it should be out and people can buy it.
Speaker 5: Very impressive.
Speaker 2: Thank you, and if you need to help with a
Speaker 2: pun for the title or anything, let me know. My
Speaker 2: punk and fulty business is working and it's going, it's moving.
Speaker 1: I'll keep that in mind. If your listeners are interested
Speaker 1: in following what I'm doing, you can. They can find
Speaker 1: me on Facebook. I have a page that is just
Speaker 1: a crypto hyphen kid. My website is a paranorm one
Speaker 1: zero one dot blogspot dot com. And my radio show
Speaker 1: is on every Monday night at eight pm Eastern Standard
Speaker 1: Time on w c JV radio dot com.
Speaker 3: And we'll put a link to all that in our
Speaker 3: show notes at munster talk dot org.
Speaker 1: Excellent.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we'll just finish up with the usual question. So, Colin,
Speaker 5: what's your favorite monster?
Speaker 1: Well, for the longest time, my media answer would be
Speaker 1: bigfoot because that's really one of the things that got
Speaker 1: me into this field. But now I think looking at
Speaker 1: monster under the definition, under the assumption that it's a cryptid,
Speaker 1: I think I would have to go with the Eastern
Speaker 1: cougar because as I was looking into my book doing
Speaker 1: the research for it, I really fell in love with
Speaker 1: big cats and living on the eastern side of the
Speaker 1: United States, I really really want a big cat or
Speaker 1: a large feline to still exist here, and I've been
Speaker 1: building a library on it, and it's a topic that
Speaker 1: I'm really passionate about, not just under the field of cryptosology,
Speaker 1: but also wildlife conservation as a whole.
Speaker 3: Well, you're at that age.
Speaker 2: Sorry, you're at that age now where you'll probably start
Speaker 2: running into a lot of Eastern cougars if you go
Speaker 2: to bars.
Speaker 5: Don't scare now, Colin.
Speaker 2: It was great talking with you, and thank you for
Speaker 2: coming on with us. I know we're very silly people,
Speaker 2: but I'll cut all that out.
Speaker 5: So I think you should leave it in.
Speaker 3: We'll leave in some of it.
Speaker 1: So it definitely, it definitely was an honor to be
Speaker 1: on and it definitely filled a goal of mine of
Speaker 1: being on a not just Kryptoso wology shows, but a
Speaker 1: skeptic show as well. And I'm just really really excited
Speaker 1: to have this come out.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it'll be out.
Speaker 2: I believe, barring unforeseen obstacles, it'll be out next week.
Speaker 2: So I'll send you a link when it's up, and
Speaker 2: you can, you know, put a link out on your
Speaker 2: Facebook page.
Speaker 3: And I think this was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: I really I'm great pressed with your work and I
Speaker 2: look forward to seeing what becomes of you.
Speaker 3: So this is cool.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think you're gonna do a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you. Monster.
Speaker 5: You've been listening to Monster Talk.
Speaker 3: I'm Karen Stolsner and I'm Blake Smith.
Speaker 2: Monster Talk is the science show about monsters. Today you
Speaker 2: heard us talking with Colin Schneider, an investigator into matters
Speaker 2: bizarre and unusual. You can hear him on his radio
Speaker 2: shows Monday nights at eight pm Eastern on w c
Speaker 2: Jvradio dot com. A link to his work will be
Speaker 2: in our show notes it Monster Talk. Monster Talk is
Speaker 2: an official podcast of Skeptic Magazine. The views expressed on
Speaker 2: this show are those of myself and my guests and
Speaker 2: do not necessarily reflect the views of Skeptic Magazine.
Speaker 3: Or of the Skeptic society.
Speaker 2: We hope you've enjoyed this episode of Monster Talk. Each
Speaker 2: episode we strive to bring you the best in monster
Speaker 2: related content, with a focus on bringing scientific skepticism into
Speaker 2: the conversation. If you enjoy Monster Talk, we now have
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Speaker 2: College Schneider is one of the youngest active forty and
Speaker 2: n cryptosology. This is a new word to me, cryptozoo.
Speaker 2: I'll lead gee, I'll try that again.
Speaker 3: Is one of I do these a lot?
Speaker 2: You know we're This is like our one hundred and
Speaker 2: forty first episode. I'm just getting a hang of it.