Ep:106 Fear The Wendigo

I went about midnight, and as I'm walking up his driveway, I noticed
the coyotes all around are extremely vocal. I mean they're a loud They're high
pitched, but they sound nervous. As I'm walking in the back, I
could hear something moving around and I heard these soft growls at first, but
they were very very deep growls. But as I'm moving, the security lights
kick off. And when those lights came on, the first thing I noticed
was a light reflecting off of this thing's eyes, brightly glowing like amber,
staring right at me. And that's when my eyes adjusted and I could see
this wasn't a bear, this wasn't a mouth lion. This thing looked like
a hyena. And it's just kind of staring at me for a minute,
and I can see its head moving side to side like a curious dog would
dip. All of a sudden, it rushes forward, maybe about four or
five feet and stops on a dimond. This is Bigfoot Crossroads. I'm Matt,
and joining me is a very special guest who we have been trying to
align our schedules for a month now, it seems mister Ryan Trimblay, how
are you I'm doing fairly well. Man. I'm very tired. It's been
a busy time for me, but I'm doing pretty good. How about yourself?
Pretty good? Pretty good? We were just chatting. You just attended
the Georgia Bigfoot Conference as a speaker. I did. Wow, man,
crazy. Yeah. I got to get used to that little whole, large
crowd speaking thing. But you know, I'll wiggle into eventually. I'll get
used to it somehow. Yeah. So your presentation was over the wind to
go. Yes, that's one of my specialties, the wind to go,
the e a du basically Native American aspects on Bigfoot and things like that.
Would you care to jump right into some conversation about the wind to go?
Oh? Absolutely, I always if you haven't talked yourself out already, h
oh no, no, no no, I can never talk enough about the
wind to go. You're the resident expert on the subject, so I'm,
you know, just going to default to you. But the wind to go
is one of my pet peas. Oh, whenever it comes to Bigfoot in
cryptozoology in general. You know what, you and I are along the same
lines because I keep telling everybody the wind to go absolutely does not qualify as
a cryptid, thank you. An. The reason that is, yeah,
why that is is, by definition alone, a cryptid is an animal.
Okay, so like, you know, possibly Bigfoot. I'm not saying big
but it's an animal. But possibly Bigfoot or maybe dog Man or Nessy,
those would be animals. Okay, we haven't proven their existence yet, they
haven't been verified. Thus they're a cryptid. The win to Go though,
No, no, no, no, no, no no no, it's
an entity. It's a spirit. So in no way is that a cryptid.
Yeah. I recently made a post about this, uh just kind of
in you know, maybe I'm just getting a little older and certain things are
starting to bug me. And one of those things is the new found uh
I, modern folklore, pop culture cryptozoology where you're throwing in whend to Go,
skin walker, you know, Fresno nightcrawlers, just everything is getting lumped
into cryptozoology along with Bigfoot, which is a subject I take very seriously.
Obviously. Oh me too, And that's actually part of the reason why I
started doing the whole Whend to Go studies because I felt like the Internet and
you know, social media itself wasn't doing a proper job of relaying the Algonquin
traditions of the wind to go, it wasn't getting a true definition, so
I kind of felt like somebody had to step up to the plate, and
well, that somebody was me. So that's what I'm trying to do with
both when to go at skin Walker's, it's trying to show people this isn't
how they were interpreted by the different tribes. So let me ask you this,
why did you pick that specific topic to go after? Well? I
could go with a tough guy response and say, oh, I didn't choose
the wind to go, the wind to go choose me, sure, But
like I was saying, you know, I saw all these YouTube videos everywhere,
and I've seen like different you know, drawings and paintings on Instagram and
TikTok where they were always inaccurately portraying the wind to go in the skin Walker,
and I was like, well, somebody has to relay what they were
really like, and you know, that might as well be me. So
I might well do this research and get you know, the actual facts from
the different indigenous people and relay it back to social media so they actually know
what's going on and what it really is and you know, honestly, I
found myself fascinated by both the Wind to Go in The skin Walker, you
know, and it's one of those things that I just have to get it
all out there for everybody. The Wind to Go Internet version is basically kind
of a really tall, lanky humanoid with like a dear skull for a head,
Yeah, and someone that has a very weird shaped body with fur and
a tail and super long claws and glowing red eyes. And yeah, not
accurate at all. So what is the actual Wind to Go according to folklore
and native tradition, Well, according to the Algonquin War, it's a human
that gets overtaken by this entity. And what happens when they transform, They
become a very pale skinned, emaciated being that's void of hair, and they
really take on a more corpse like appearance. And if anybody out there has
ever played Until Dawn, that right there is the most accurate representation of a
Wendigo period. What you see at the end of that game when they show
the tall, lanky, very skinny, bald creature with you know, bloody
mouth and bloody fingertips, that right there is how the Algonquin to create a
new a Jibway saw the Wind to Go, and it was more or less,
to my understanding, a tail warning against cannibalism. In some parts,
yes, and I think it's become that because to the most people the most
popular method of becoming the Wind to Go is cannibalism. But all three of
the tribes, the Algonquin, the Creamio, Jibway. There's other means of
becoming a wind to Go though. One of them is you could be cursed
by a shaman, you know, So say you did some wrong to a
shaman and a tribe and he or she wanted to get back at you,
they could put this curse of the Wind to Go upon you and you are
eventually transformed into a wind to Go. Now, another way is actually through
your nightmares, because in the tribes and nightmares are kind of like passageways to
another world, right, and it works both ways. You can go into
the spirit world and the spirit world can come into you. So if you
had nightmares or dreams about the Wind to Go, it could influence you through
your dreams and your nightmares. So it was not only something that a person
might unfortunately transform into, but something that could possess you as well, like
a spiritual being. Absolutely yeah. And I guess, like you know,
in today's religious terms, we'd call it a demon, right, which I'm
not really support of that term because it doesn't seem like it's exclusively demon like.
I think it's more of a winter spirit uh huh. So, but
it's something that's so feared that these tribes won't even say the name when to
go, you know, because they feel that if you acknowledge it, you're
giving it power and because of that, it's going to seek you out.
That seems to be the case in a lot of folklore. Don't talk about
it or it will happen, right. Well, I mean I think it's
because you know, words have power, right, you know, you can
hurt somebody irreparably so with your words. So I think they believe that if
you acknowledged these things and you spoke to their need, you were giving them
that attention. Let's hop on over to the skinwalker, which you've already mentioned
several times. M again, not a cryptid folks. No, I don't
know what the deal is. I don't know how it ended up in the
cryptied world. I can't have an idea on that. If you pay attention
to a lot of the groups on Facebook, as I'm sure you're a part
of. They compare the skin walkers a ye not ALUs to a very another
popular en cryptied here, the dog man. H They think that dogmen and
nn alushi the skin walkers are one in the same, But through my research
and talking to actual Navajo people here in Arizona, they're wrong on that.
That's not the case. So when somebody becomes a ynt aduch, they have
to kill certain animals, and namely it's like coyotes. There's you know,
predatory animals and the danae the Navajo culture, predatory animals are very sacred.
So for a yen non adu she to don the pelt of a predatory animal,
it's kind of like spending on the Bible. You know, it's not
something they should do, right. And when they become the animal, they
literally become the animal. Ynn a douche translated into English roughly means by means
of it, on all fours he goes, and there's your key thing to
focus on, on all floors he goes. It doesn't say ways, you
know, so they become actual animal. So when a skinwalker becomes say a
wolf for example, because that's what most people compare dog MENTI when it becomes
a wolf, it becomes the actual wolf. And the only way you would
know that was a skin walker was a if you caught it and you caged
it, it would transform back into its semen form or be you look at
the eyes because in their animal form. Do you know lushi have very strange
human like eyes in their animal form. You know, coming from Oklahoma,
we don't have a lot of Navajo here, but we still do have,
you know, uh hush talks of skinwalkers and things like that. There was
a very famous crime that took place here called the Girl Scout murders, where
a lot of people believe that the killer was in fact a skinwalker. And
again it's it's something that we've been taught, you know, like don't talk
about them. And I do you think that has played a part in skin
walker and when to go and things like that also working their ways into the
crypto world because it's not spoken about. So maybe a lot of times people
aren't actually getting true information about them. Oh. Absolutely, absolutely, one
hundred percent. And that's why I feel like I have to do this research.
Do the legwork and then relate to other people, you know, so
that they know the factual stuff. So when they see something out in the
wild, they're not gonna be like, oh, that was a wind to
go, Oh that was a skin walker. They can actually use that critical
thinking that we need in this field and kind of think, well, it
doesn't line up with what the Navajo say, so it's not a skin walker,
something else. And I think it's really important for us to do because
I don't think people realize that when we say everything's a skin walker, everything's
a wind to go, we're kind of disrespecting the spiritual belief of the indigenous
people, right, and that's not really proper for us to do, you
know. So I've really I've turned down these rabbit holes, Matt. I
mean, I've gone so far. Even telling that rope around my waist doesn't
do too much good because I'm talking for somebody that pulled me out and I'm
not getting pulled out. So but it's been fascinating though. I Mean,
I've spoken to people here in Arizona about these skinwalkers, you know, and
they've opened up to me in ways that I never thought they would, you
know. So for me to be a Caucasian guy and they're opening up to
me and coming to me and telling me, you know, this is what
they're like, this is what they do, or coming to me with encounters.
That's a very big honor for me and I'm very proud of it.
That's something that really fascinates me is that skin walkers are still like an active
part of tribal society in modern times. Oh. Absolutely. What are some
of the things that you've heard since you've gone down that rabbit hole. Well,
I've been told to talk respectfully about them, don't ever take their name
and you know, use it and being you know, don't be insulting or
you know, degrading to them, because when you do that, it angers
them. They can hear you no matter where they are, and when you
anger them, that's when you incur their raft. That's when they're going to
come looking for you. And there's areas too where they've told me, you
know, don't go there because there might be one there and you're not strong
enough to fight it if it comes after you. So, you know,
it's a fascinating, fascinating topic. It really is. Have you encountered anything
negative since you've started researching this stuff, like has a skin walker come after
you? Or have you ever felt like, you know, maybe here's an
area I need to back out of. Oh. I've definitely had areas that
I've gone to and the minute I stepped foot on them, I just got
this really sickening feeling in my stomach. And it was the weirdest thing.
I mean, it's happened not too long ago. A buddy of mine were
going out there and we were fine. We were laughing and joking all the
way up, and when we got to this spot, Matt, we both
felt really dizzy. You know, We're having a hard time breathing, and
we feel like we were just, you know, totally nauseated. And so
I decided, let's get out of here because this has to be bad juju.
And sure enough, when we stepped off that property, boom, We're
feeling better again. You know. So I think there was some kind of
power there that's going yet, No, I don't want you here, and
I'm going to make you feel my presence, So catch why and leave.
Where do you think that comes from? Do you think that's an external force
or an internal force? I think it could be both. I really think
it could be both. I think that in the case of something like a
skin walker, it can influence the land that it lives on, so it
can affect your atmosphere or your environment, so it doesn't want you there.
It can really bear down on you and make you feel a certain way.
So I have been dying to ask you about this, which I'm sure you've
talked about it a thousand times, but that's what we're here for. You
are someone who has encountered something the dog yeah, the dog man, an
area that bothers me tremendously. Uh oh, So I want to hear your
story straight from the horse's mouth because you you have said I've seen where you
said a hyena like animal, and that really caught my attention. So if
you don't mind walk us through your experience. Okay. So a friend of
mine and his wife who lived in the town that I was living at a
time, they were going on a vacation, and so they asked me to
help sit for them, okay, and you know, being that good buddy,
I was like, yeah, sure, why not. So I had
the schedule where I would check in in the morning, I'd go in the
afternoon, and then my last visit would be about and maybe midnight, little
later. Okay. So on this particular night, you know, it was
an October, I believe, you know, I went about midnight, and
as I'm walking up his driveway, I noticed the coyotes all around are extremely
vocal. I mean, they're allowed, they're high pitched, but they sound
them nervous, okay, And that was a little off putting. That wasn't
normal, that wasn't the usual. But I just I kind of dismissed it,
you know, just kind of fluffed it off. And as I'm walking
in the back, I could hear something moving around and I heard these soft
growls at first, but there were very very deep growls, you know,
and I thought, maybe, hey, somebody's messing around with his property in
the back. You know, maybe it's a homeless guy, or you know,
hey, maybe it's straight dogs or whatever. So, being only five
ten and a half, I puffed up like a pufferfish, you know,
I got my chest sticking out in the wall, hey, trying to scare
off whoever or whatever it was. At first, there was no response,
but then I started hearing noises again. So again back into pufferfish mood.
You know, and I ball up and wall hey, this time I get
answered with this very very deep growl mat that I could feel in my chest.
I mean, when this thing routed, it was like it was right
on top of me and just like ooh, right on my rib cage.
So I'm kind of going, oh, oh crap, is this a bear
or is it a mountain lion? But logic in my head kicked in and
said, oh, there was no bears in this town. So I proceeded
to go in the back and as I'm walking into his backyard, I can
kind of see something in the solo watt. You know how when you're looking
at shadows, you can see a deeper shadow moving. Sure, okay,
so it was like that, And you know, at first I thought maybe
it was a homeless guy, okay, and I wasn't too scared of that.
But as I'm moving, the security lights kick off, and when those
lights came on, the first thing I noticed was a light reflecting off of
this thing's eyes. And you know, they were like two big round balls,
just brightly glowing like amber, staring right at me. And that's when
my eyes adjusted and I could see this wasn't a bear. This wasn't a
mountain lion. This thing looked like a hyena, okay, And I see
it. It sees me, and it's just kind of staring at me for
a minute, and I can see its head moving side to side like a
curious dog would. Do you know, I'm arning in place, mat,
I'm not moving. I don't know what this is. And I'm like,
oh, just standing there. This thing's staring at me. And all of
a sudden, it rushes forward, maybe about four or five feet and stops
on the diamond. And it did not take its eyes off me. It's
just staring at me as it does this bluff charge. Then it like slowly
starts to lurch up. And as it lurches up, I hear a loud
pump and I see its arm go up and it grabs a branch. So
it's holding on to this branch, just staring at me. You know,
I'm just I'm looking at it. I'm not daring to move. I'm not
trying to pull out my phone or anything, because I know, thanks to
my brothers who are hunters, if you run, you're gonna try to the
predator prey response. It's gonna chase you. If you move too fast.
It's going to only to attack. So I just stand there staring at it,
and it's staring at me, and I don't know how much time pass
but eventually this thing starts to turn away, and it kind of looks at
me over its shoulder as it's walking away. But once it's out of sight,
Matt, that was it. I'm out. I ran up my friend's
stairs into his house. I'm walking his doors, I'm bolting his windows,
I'm opening his kitchen drawers looking for a knife. I even called my buddy
up, going, hey, man, is there something you didn't tell me?
There's a hyena in your backyard. And then my friend thought I was
crazy. He's going, Ryan, there's no hyenas in Arizona. Bro,
what are you talking about? And you know I'm getting mad at him at
this point, Matt, I'm going, no, you're crazy. You're a
lion, because I just saw a hyena in your backyard. This thing stood
up, Man, this thing stood up, and it charged at me and
my friend. Again, trying to be my voice of logic, he's going,
Ryan, hyenas don't exist in Arizona, and hyenas don't stand up.
So he came home with his wife and I showed him where I saw this,
Matt. You could see the scuff marks whereas the thing's clause were dragging
in the sands. Dude, So my thing that was like, Okay,
that's not done by you. So you did see something, and I'm going,
uh huh, that's what I told you, you know. And so
yeah, I saw this hyena like thing. Now is it a dog man?
I don't know? Was it hyena like? Absolutely? I mean,
could it be something else, like a prehistoric creature that survives somehow? Maybe,
But I don't know what it was. I really don't how long ago?
Is this about two years now? Okay? And whenever you say it
looked like a hyena, are you talking about exactly like a hyena or just
the shape of a hyena the shape of the face, like if you imagine
a hyaena's face, that's not this thing. Space. Look, the snout
was very short, it had the darker fur around the snout, It had
the almost like the sloping forehead, had the rounded ears, and even the
coloring from what I could see, the lighting was, you know, like
it was like that tongy caramel color with the little rosettes on the shoulders.
Yeah, you know, so that's the only thing I can really you know,
compared to is a hyena? Right, could you tell if it had
a human like appendages or did it have paws? The fingers were more,
I like to say, raccoon like, they weren't really long like a human
beings. There were more you know, stubbish like a raccoons would be.
Yeah, you know. And did it have a tail? I don't know,
because I mean the minute it turned its back, I was out of
there. So, but it wasn't muscular like you know how you hear those
reports of like the Arnold Schwarzenegger like dog mat Yeah, yeah, yeah,
the one I saw it, it wasn't like that. I would have to
compare it to a basketball player, like it had muscle, but it was
that lean muscle. How tall was it whenever it was standing up right,
I always say about six and a half feet tall. So it was bigger
than me, you know, I mean it was taller than I was and
more muscle than I do. So I would have been easy pickings for this
thing. I've heard other reports, other encounters people have had with something that
they describe as it looked like a hyena. Yeah, that's especially in this
part of the country, in the ozarks. I mean you have the ozark
color, which you know and whatever. But I've heard from people that I
know personally who have had encounters with something that they say, yeah, it's
like a hyena. But I have never heard anybody say and it stood up
on two legs. This is a first for me. That's interesting. When
it stood up like that, and I think my minded blips. I think
my brain started doing cartwheels because I had no idea what I was looking at,
and I'm like, what, So it's on all fours and then it
stands upright. Its neck and head position just fluidly changed perfectly and everything.
It didn't seem to have any trouble with that in a way, it did
it d of it was like it had like a little hiccup or a stutter
as it was, you know, standing up on two legs, but you
had to kind of position its neck and shoulders so it's had you go down,
yeah, you know, because maybe that's what the pumping was. And
it had shoulders like a human, yeah, but they were more narrow shoulders.
They weren't broad. They were more sloping kind of shoulders. I mean,
you're in this world just like I am. So I mean, I
know you've heard dog man reports and all the stuff. So like now that
you've had a couple of years to process it, I mean, do you
think that's a dog man? Is that what people are seeing? Or did
you see something else? People have seen the same thing that I have,
you know, I mean I've spoken to other people that have seen the hyaena
type. So I kind of have to accept that it was a dog man.
You know. I want to have that more scientific explanation, like maybe
it was a prehistoric hyena or whatever, but even scientifically that wouldn't make sense
because they're extinct. So I have to accept that, yeah, it was
a dog man. And you're a skeptical thinker. You're a critical thinker.
I am, Yes, as I am, And so dog man, I
mean, what's going on with that? You know? I wish I knew.
I wish I knew that. I mean, just when you think that
we're getting close to answer the questions change, Yeah, Roddy Piper, Yeah,
we've yet to find a body. You know, we don't really have
that many footprints, you know, we have a few, but not that
many. We don't have fur, we don't have a corpse, you know.
So I have to wonder are these things interdimensional in some way or is
there an overlap? I just I don't know. I'm not sure we'll ever
know. Well, now you've brought up an interesting subject, the interdimensional,
paranormal, spiritual aspect of cryptids, especially in the big Foot filled as of
recent in my timeline of things. What do you think about Bigfoot? Is
are we dealing with something that's flesh and blood or is it possibly something more
than that? Oh boy, that's a complicated answer, so bear with me.
I think they're both a flesh and blood and be interdimensional. I think
there's kind of like a uh. I don't want to use topa, but
I think I will use that word. There's a tope effect going on here.
I think people are thinking so much about Bigfoot that we're manifesting something that
takes on the form of what we would call Bigfoot. Are we all seeing
the actual Bigfoot? I don't believe so. I think some people do see
the flesh and blood ones and that's why, you know, we get the
tracks, we get the fur. But I think other people are seeing these
more copo like beings, and that's why we get the cloaking, we get
the disappearing, we get the mind speed, we get the vulte proof Bigfoot.
You know, so I think there's more than one thing at play here,
I really really do. That's a really interesting theory. I'm not sure
I've heard that one before. Well, I mean, you know, the
spiritual Bigfoot, it's really not a new thing. You know, a lot
of the indigenous tribes do believe that Bigfoot is spiritual, that he comes over
from a different realm and he teaches us different things. So it's not really
a new concept. It's just a concept that's gonna been pushed to the background.
Do you think cryptids in general all kind of fall into that category or
do you think that there are some like actual undiscovered animals left. Oh.
I definitely feel that there's some undiscovered animals out there. One are they going
to be something fantastic like Bigfoot or dog man? No, No, They're
going to be something small like a woodpecker or Tasmanian tiger, you know,
something along those lines. Sure, I mean we discover those yearly, right
right, So, I mean I think people kind of get lost in what
a cryptid means. And I think they always think that when you say you're
thoseoologists, that you're only cheating Bigfoot or dog Man. But no, no,
I mean it could be something like a woodpecker. I think there's animals
out there that we beget to discover. Absolutely. So what got you interested
in all this sort of stuff? Oh? I was a monster kid growing
up. Monsters were part of my daily diet. You know, my dad
was a monster fan. He was a he was a Ocasun guy, so
he loved wear wolves and everything like that, and you know, he was
sharing those movies and things with me. So growing up, I would hear
about the Wolfman and we'd watch monster movies together, got Zilla, Gamera,
Ultraman, the Universal Monsters, the Hammer movie films. So it was just
kind of like part for the course. As I was starting to get a
little older, you know, I would start realizing cryptids and my dad showed
me the Patterson Ginman film. And I think that was my dad's mistake because
when he did that, I was so hooked into Bigfoot. That was it.
I had to have these answers of these monsters in the woods. Yeah,
you know, and he's started telling me the stories of the Ruguru because
of course, you know, being a Cajun guy, sure you heard stories
of the boogaroo growing up, so it's his thing to hand it down to
his son. You know. So I had Bigfoot, but now I had
the rue Garoo and then you know, NeSSI and locally a membe and all
these things. So for a monster kid, that's the perfect world, you
know, because you're going, oh, so the monsters aren't just on TV,
there's monsters outside. Yes, I had that same reaction. Hey,
you know, I grew up loving horror movies and stuff like that, but
I was also always interested in the paranormal. Oh yeah, having experienced quite
a bit of paranormal stuff growing up as a kid, which I'm not sure
now that I'm older. Was it more related to me being a child,
or was it more related to the house or the environment. It's hard to
say, but that eventually led me to the path of you know, Bigfoot,
and like, holy crap, there are actual monsters out there. How
one path always leads to the other things? Yeah, yeah, it's so
weird, yep. I mean you start out with cryptozoology, you know,
sooner or later you get wrapped up in the paranormal, or if you go
with paranormal first, sooner or later you get into cryptos as well. It's
kind of like, you know, it's a fourth road, but it all
leads back. Yeah, it all starts overlapping eventually. Absolutely, And you're
in Arizona, which is I mean a mecha for weirdness and strangeness and just
everything. Oh yeah, Okay, we get UFO sightings, we have ghostly
encounters, you know, we get the skin walker stuff going on here.
So why do you think it is that way? Is it an environmental thing?
Is it because of the history of civilization there? Why is not just
Arizona, but the Four Corners region especially such a hot spot for this sort
of thing. I think it's the history. And I think, you know,
obviously, because like the area is just like it's so majestic. It's
a beautiful, beautiful place, and it's got a history all its own.
And I think these things just they stay here, and you know, the
more we believe in them, I think that belief gives power. Okay,
I know it sounds hokey, but I'm sure some of my paranormal people out
there will support that. The more you believe in something, the stronger it
gets. And I think that power just grows and grows and grows for you
know, my area, your area, you know, wherever you're at.
That's honestly what I believe. The hyena dog man creature that you saw.
You mentioned that it was at your friend's house in this backyard. I mean,
was this like in a town or was it out somewhere. It's in
a town, but the town that we lived in it was a kind of
like going outskirts of Tuson, and you know, it was sixty miles away
from Tucson, Arizona, and it was a small mining town. Okay,
so there's plenty of abandoned mines, there's caves, there's railroad ways and everything.
So you know, something existing in a place like that, it's not
really unheard of. There's plenty of places to hide. Yeah, I thought
it was a until I started really, you know, looking at the area,
because when something like that that happens to you, Matt, you really
do start looking at the landscape. And you know, in doing so,
I started seeing it. You know, there's adequate water supply, there's adequate
prey because we had quail, we had jack rabbit, we had these deer
that would pass through, you know, so we had plenty of stuff that
something like this could allob off of if it chose to hide there. The
the reason I ask is because here in Oklahoma you have a lot of smaller
communities, especially certain areas have these small Native American communities right where it's not
that uncommon to hear stories of like Bigfoot coming in and raiding trash cans and
things at night. But whenever it comes to the dog Man topic, it
seems like there aren't really any rules. Whenever you think about Bigfoot, you
definitely think about areas like the Pacific Northwest, and you know they're out in
the woods and they travel to maybe the outskirts of a town where you know
those areas overlap. But with dog Man, you hear stories about them being
right in the middle of town, right in the middle of cities. Yep.
I just I don't think the dog Men aren't afraid. I think Bigfoot
has its own rules that it operates by, whereas dog Man just takes those
rules and throws it out the window. It's just kind of scary to think
about that, Like Okay, so I've never seen the dog Man, not
yet. I grew up with, like I said, being in the horror
movies and stuff, but were wolves were always the monster that was like,
oh man, that's that's the scariest one. Oh yeah. And so now
you have dog Man and it's like, oh wait, that's pretty much a
werewolf. I don't know about the shape shifting part of it, but I
mean, that's that's a werewolf by description. Yeah, by description, yeah,
I think that the two are different, but you know, description wise,
you're absolutely right, and just the idea. Like where I live,
specifically in Tulsa, it's a city, and I've heard several stories of people
in Tulsa seeing dog Man, which is just crazy to me because this isn't
an area where you have lots of wilderness surrounding the city. It's a metropolitan
area. It's surrounded by other little towns and cities. Well that kind of
leads to the whole interdimensional period, don't you think, because these guys can
pop in and out. Yeah. Yeah, I honestly I don't believe that,
you know, dogmena should be considered a cryptid because I don't think they're
just animals. You know, I think if they're interdimensional, there's something more
to them, so I'm very reluctant to put them in the cryptic category.
There's a thing referred to by the Creek tribe I believe here called the Nllusiphilea,
the long evil beings that were described as dog killers. They would come
in and kill dogs at night and things like that, and that has kind
of carried a moniker of a dog man with it. Have you ran across
in your folklore studies anything native that sounds like a dog man. There's a
lot of things they get misinterpreted as a dog man. You have, like
the Wahita, the shunka Waikin, and you know, a lot of people
will add that, oh, this is a dog man because they describe it
as attacking people and it's supposed to be keen. I Like. What they're
not reading though, is all these things walk on force, you know,
So it's not a dog man. Really, it's a cane I like creature.
But you know, is it possible that these can I like creatures have
evolved somehow to walk by pedally? I mean possibly, But I do think
there's a lot of misinterpretation the Shanka Wara can is another one that is known
as a dog killer. Yes, which also you know, for a while
there was like a taxidermy thing floating around in Wyoming, I think, or
Montana possibly where they believe that was a shunk of warrick and I do you
think it's possible that that is an actual creature that maybe at one time existed,
Oh, definitely, most definitely. In fact, I have to wonder
if the shunk of warriking was a bear dog, you know, and this
thing wasn't either a bear or a dog, but it had resemblances to bowl.
I got to wonder if maybe, you know, there was a small
pocket of that animal that existed up in the Honey Valley. That's where a
lot of the stories of shrunk of war can come from, you know.
So is it possible that you know, they existed up there and they were
killing off miners and whatnot. Absolutely, have you had experiences with the paranormal
or UFOs or anything. I've had some ghostly encounters, you know, and
it's weird stuff that my friend and I still going to trip out when we
talked about But when we were doing research one day, I was out by
myself. The first time this happened, I was walking around in the middle
of the desert and it was dark out, was very, very dark.
I had my lights going and everything. I hear kids laughing in the background
in the distance, and I'm looking around with my flashlight. There's no kids
around that, and it sounded like a group of kids, like a large
group of kids. And as I'm scanning the horizon with my light, it
sounds like these kids are running towards me, like I can hear their footfalls,
I can hear the pebbles being kicked, I can hear the sand moving.
And I whipped around because I thought the kids were getting close. There
was nothing there, and it sounded like the laughter moved off. Oh wow,
you know. Yeah, you know, kids in the night. That's
creepy to hear. Okay, when you hear kids laugh and you're by yourself
and you hear that, you're like, okay, I'm out of here.
So yeah, I did leave. I left. I told my friend,
Yo, this is what happened. He thought I was crazy. Okay,
He's like, oh no, no, you just heard kids playing and I'm
going dude. I was in the middle of the desert at night. There's
no kids playing in the middle of the desert at night. These sounded like
they were four or five years old, you know. So he comes out
with me the following weekend and we're out there about the same time, almost
at the same exact area. We both hear that kid lacker again. We
hear this group laugher and it sounds like these kids are bum rushing us,
like running right towards us. And he heard it too. He turned a
pale white man. He was so scared for this. He turned a pale
white his jaw dropped and he just stood there, you know, staring at
the emptiness that's around us, and I'm looking around to see if I could
see any kids. Once again, it sounds like the kid's laughter is just
kind of like dissipated with the wind, you know. And that was just
so creepy. That happened twice. It was like, what is this?
Why do you think things like this seem to happen to people? And what
I mean by that, you know, someone who has paranormal experiences also has
cryptid experiences, also sees UFOs. It seems like some people are just sort
of magnets for this type of stuff. Why do you think that is well
one man's opinion. I think that you know, like you can be a
skeptic or it can be a critical thinker like we are. And once you
experience one or the other via a UFO citing a ghostly encounter or a crypt
encounter, it opens your mind up. Okay, And I think as far
as a paranormal goes, the paranormal is very aware when your mind is open,
and it's going to show itself to those who have that willingness to see
because I think, you know, with the paranormal, I think a lot
of times it's spirits or energy wanting to be seen or felt. So when
we have an open mind, they're aware of this. And this is why
we get the ghostly encounters. This is why we get the crypt encounters because
our minds are finally open. We're willing to see what we weren't willing to
see before. So is there a cryptid or anything in the realm of unexplained
that particularly frightens you? Oh, I can definitely say the wind to Go,
I mean it's not encrypted, but the wind to Go and the skin
walkers that they terrify me and That's why I'm like, you know, I'm
punishing myself by researching them. Yeah. I think I'm this stick in a
way because you know, I'm like, oh, I'm terrified of it,
but I got to research it, you know. But yeah, I am
afraid of those. And it's funny that because I once was very skeptical about
both of these topics. Okay, there's a point in time that if you
said, oh, Ryan, a windy goes real, I'd be like,
no, it's not, you know, but it's reached the point where I've
done so much research and look into it so much, I'm going, yeah,
yeah, I believe you. I think the one to go is real.
Yeah. Have you found specific cases of the wind to go? Yeah?
I have it. It's actually one of the most popular cases. The
Crefur trader by the name of swift Runner in the winter of eighteen seventy eight.
This guy actually killed and cannibalized his family. And you know a little
backstory for this, to make it a little bit more intriguing for your listeners
that a couple of weeks before he went out on this annual route that he
would go upon, and he's been on this route plenty of times, so
if he knew what he was doing, he was having nightmares about the wind
to go, and he told one of his friends, and his friend,
Kenned dismissed it. And what happened is just a few weeks after that,
even though he know he left at swift Runner and said it's not serious,
swift Runner left with his family, going to kinnibalize them, and he did.
In fact, swift Runner himself confess to the magistrates and to the French
monks that were there. I killed my son by doing this. I killed
my wife by doing this. He even gave grizzly details about how he killed
his infant child. He talked about how he hung his infant from a pole.
He had a noose around its neck, and he would pull on the
baby's feet just to torture it, to make it gag and choke, and
while he just let it dangle and die. And he told in detail how
he cracked open the skulls to get to the brains, how he cracked open
the femurs to suck out the marrow from the bones, how he boiled their
bodies to eat them. Wow, I had never heard a specific case of
OneD Togo. Well, it makes it even more intriguing. That is,
when you look at swift runners backstory. Now there's two different stories he'll get.
You know, some people will say that when he was drunk he was
very aggressive, but I mean that's not unusual. You know, when somebody
gets drunk, they usually tend to be kind of aggressive, right, But
there's a story where they said that he was a gentle giant, that he
was a very you know, caring person. He was a very loving father,
a devoted husband. He would never harm anybody. So for him to
go from this kind person to cannibalizing his whole family, you know, something
happened there. I don't know why, but Amityville pops to mind. Oh
yeah, I mean it's similar, sure, just the situation where you have,
like, you know, a family man that just kind of snaps like
that. Yeah. Made his story so disturbing them that when he was showing
the magistrates the crime scene, they actually did see smears of blood along the
cabin walls. Outside, they saw a little ash pits where he had cooked
his family, and nonchalantly he would walk over to the skulls. He would
stick two fingers between into the eye sockets, hold it up and kind of
waggle it at the magistrates and say, oh, this was my wife,
and he just toss it aside, grab another one and go, oh,
this was my son, you know, and he would show the cracked open
skull and he would tell them I cracked it open and get his brains,
just matter of factly, no big deal. Yeah, he just he was,
you know, like he was just having a normal conversation with you,
like he was asking me how you do it, you know. And when
they arrested him. What's even more disturbing though, is he would think,
you know, his whole cannibal act would kind of quiet down. No,
he would actually torment one of the guards. There was this guard who was
kind of a short and stout fellow, and every time he came in to
check on swift Runner, swift Runner kind of I am up and down and
he would hold up three fingers and he would tell the guard, you have
this much fat on your bones, you'd be good eating the guards. Historically,
swift Runner is the first hanging at Fort Saskatchewan in Canada. Are are
there stories of wind to go outside of that region, not too many.
Most of them usually tend to congregate in the Canada provinces, you know,
so, but then you had a you had Jack Fiddler too. He was
a wind to Go killer, a wind to Go killer, like a wind
to Go hunter. Yeah. Yeah. He would be the one that the
Algonquins would call upon when he suspected somebody was a wind to go and he
would come and perform their version of an exorcism on the poor windy Goo victim.
He's allegedly killed fourteen different wind to go Wow. Have you had any
experiences with what you would consider native, uh, paranormal type stuff? I
know that's extremely vague. I'm trying to think of you know, like you
have stories of like little people and things like that, and since you have
like kind of gone down these different paths of researching this stuff, that does,
as you stated, sometimes drudge things up. And I was just curious
if you've ever experienced anything firstthand that you believe was directly related to some of
that stuff. I actually encountered what I think might have been a puckwudgie.
Really yeah. I was actually hiking with my dog Duke because I always take
him out. He's kind of like my first alarm okay, because I feel
like animals can sense things along before humans can. So I always take Duke
with me, and we were, you know, hiking one day and we
kept hearing this really weird, high pitched whistle. But this whistle wasn't just
like a straight whistle. It was like a trilling whistle, you know,
the school whistle sounded. How they had that little like can that sound?
Yeah, yeah, for sure, something like that. And I'm looking around
and there's nobody else in my vicinity. Met there's nobody there, you know,
And Duke's just kind of, you know, looking around, like what
is up? And we just keep walking, we walking in this whistle keeps
growing louder and louder and louder. And I look at Duke upon the third
time I hear this whistle, and he looks nervous, okay. And when
Duke gets nervous, that's when I get nervous. And I'm kind of like,
okay, you know what's going on here. I'm trying to ascertain what
it could be that's around. And I look at this hill, this embankment
that's going up, and I see this little person that's maybe about me a
foot and a half two feet tall, and he looks so weird, man
like. He had this big, big nose, and he had long strings
of hair on top of his head. It was like a darkish brownish meat
black hair. He had a long chin, and he was wearing what looks
like rabbit and squirrel pelts as his clothing. And he's holding this long stick
that looks like a spear. Keeps staring right at me, just kind of
like, you know, look at me, like the subplay. Yeah.
I wasn't even bothering him, and he just kind of stares at me for
a minute. He whistles at me real quick and just takes on up the
hill. He runs up the hill, and that was it. I was
like, what was this? You know? So I think that was a
puck lodge? Was that in Arizona? Yeah? And I assume the same
whistle you had heard before. Yeah, yeah, it was a seam exact
rupful. So I knew that whistle came from him. And I think the
reason why he didn't do anything unusual really, I mean kind of weird to
say he didn't do anything unusual. He's unusual, but he just kind of
stared at me. I think because I showed him the proper respect. You
know. I didn't let Duke take off after him. I didn't even try
to chase after him. I just kind of stood there looking at him,
like, oh, what are you so? I too have had a encounter
with something I would consider in that family of beans you know here we call
them little people. Mine mine actually did take place right in the middle of
the city. Oh wow. Yeah, And it was kind of a weird
situation. It was actually the first house I moved into whenever I moved out,
you know, couldn't afford very much. I was in the hood,
and whenever I moved into that house, there was this older Cherokee woman that
lived in the house behind mine, and directly behind our houses was a chain
link fence with a gate that separated the two properties. And so whenever I
was moving in, she came over and knocked on the back door, which
you know, surprised me, and I went and answered it and started talking
to her. She is very nice, and lots of paranormal stuff went on
in that house. She told me the story behind the house and everything,
which I won't get into now, but she had told me that she had
smoked the house whenever she heard that somebody was moving into it. And then
she starts to leave and she stops and she says, oh, by the
way, there's little people here. Wow. And you know, this was
something I had heard before, but it certainly caught me off guard. I
wasn't expecting, you know, yeah, no conversation. And honestly, whenever
she said it, considering, you know, I'm in the hood in the
middle of the city, I was kind of like, okay, maybe I
need to second guess this sweet little old lady. Well, she was like,
yeah, I feed them, you know. Oh, okay, you
know, it's fine. Everything, everything's okay, you know. She she
assured me that they were harmless and uh, not to worry about them.
Okay. Late one night, I'm sitting on my front porch and I don't
have the light on anything. I don't I might have been smoking a cigarette
at the time or something, and I see this thing, uh kind of
like standing there at the corner of my porch. I can kind of see
it out, you know, the corner of my eye. And as I
turned my head runs around the end of the porch. Oh wow, there's
bushes right there. And then there's like a gap at the end of my
porch where I can see between the bush in the corner of the house.
So I'm looking at that gap, and at first I thought it was a
cat, maybe like sitting there, right, And then it takes off running
and I'm looking and as it runs by the end of my porch, which
the end of my porch, the porch itself was probably it wasn't very tall,
maybe a foot off the ground. This thing was probably eight inches to
a foot taller than my porch. Okay, yeah, so about the same
guys what I saw then. Yeah, And I mean it just looked like
kind of like a little person with you know, long dark hair and kind
of I don't know, animal skins, leatherish yeah looking clothing and it you
know, I just saw it for a second. Yeah, I just saw
it for a second as it ran across, you know, by the end
of my porch. I have a theory as to why it was staring at
you, though, Why is that you were smoking a cigarette tobacco. Tobacco
is very important in Native American culture. Yeah, I never thought of that.
I never thought if you go, you know, to investigate bigfoot and
you want to see a big foot bring it tobacco. Yeah, you know,
so tobacco is a sacred plant in Native American culture. I think that's
why I was staring at you for a minute, because it could smell the
tobacco. Yeah, it wasn't uncommon for us back in the day to leave
offerings of tobacco whenever we would go out in the woods and go into different
areas and things like that. So that kind of makes a lot of sense
what you're saying. And I mean, I don't know, you know,
she may have been out there feeding it or something at the time. I
don't know. I didn't and really, you know, being the white guy
in the hood, I was like, I'm going back inside them. This
is this is a lot, but this is a little too weird me.
I'm going back inside. Yeah, yeah for sure. Like I said,
I don't want to keep you too long. I know you're tired from your
big convention trip. Yeah, you know, I really got to get used
to speaking for a large crowds match. There's a there's a different thing.
When you're doing a show, a live show on a podcast, you don't
see the audience, you see their names, But when you do a conference,
you know, you step up and you see two hundred people looking at
you, You're like, oh, good grief. Well, as long as
you enjoy it and have a good time, you know. Oh I love
this thing, Matt. I love doing cryptozoology. I love my skin Walker
talks, my Win to Go talks. I love interacting with the people,
the people, the audience. They really make it all worthwhile. Then do
you have any conventions coming up that you're going to be speaking up? Oh
not yet, not that I know of. So I mean that could change
right after week, hang up or whatever. You never know, if it
happens, if somebody wants to make it happen, how can they reach you?
Well, you can find me on Facebook under Ryan Paul Trembley. You
can find me on Twitter or is it X nowadays Twitter, that's all the
same thing. You can find me on Instagram if you want to know,
just add me up or whatever. You can message me whenever you want.
I love conversation, I love interactions. I'm constantly posting articles. So,
like I said, you interact, hit me up, and I'm a friendly
guy. I don't bite, not too hard anyway. What's your favorite movie?
Monster? Oh, Godzilla, It's a good time to be a Godzilla
fan. It always is a good time to be a Godzilla fan. That
I mean, you know, I know everybody's all exciting to the new king
King call me Godzillah. We came out, but Godzilla minus one, Oh
my god. Oh I haven't seen it. Yeah, and everybody says it's
so wonderful. Oh it is black and white, dude, black and white.
It was so good in black and white. It gave me such nostalgic
goosebumps. Yeah, I gotta see it. I gotta see it. Oh,
it's it's a beautiful movie. I know that's a weird way to describe
a god Zula movie, but it was beautiful. I'm not gonna lie.
It was nice to see it win some awards. Oh yeah, Zula finally
got the Oscar. Man, he did it after seventy years, finally got
one. Can't beat practical effects, man, No, you can't. I
will agree with you on that, Ryan, Thanks for joining me. I've
had a blast. I look forward to future conversations with you, sir.
Yes, let's do this again soon, dude. Absolutely, And if you've
had an encounter with something you can't explain, Bigfoot UFO's Ghosts, Puckwadgies,
anything at all. Send me an email at Bigfoot Crossroads at gmail dot com.
Check out the website Bigfoot Crossroads dot com. You can find links,
past episodes, social media, merchandise, everything you need, all in one
place. And until next time, remember there's something in the woods.