Ep:68 The Sasquatch Experience

And we're sitting there around the fire, just kind of laughing, having a
good time, and then out of the corner of my eye, I see
something run through our campsite, and I mean run, and I've never seen
anything move like that. And all of a sudden, you can hear it
just take off and run around the perimeter of the tree line like you can
hear it running through the woods. We had taken the logs off the fire,
and something can move the logs back onto the fire. I'm freaked out
at this point. You know, the fire just came back to life.
There's this thing. You could hear it running around the campsite, and all
of a sudden, we can smake out the silhouette and the tree line map
and it's kind of peering around at us. Dustin has his weapon pointed at
it, and I'm like, shoot it. Doesn't shoot it now, identify
yourself now, or we're gonna shoot you. And nothing. It wouldn't respond.
Ray had a glow stick and he took the glow stick and he chucks
it into the woods at this thing. All of a sudden, that glowstick
gets picked up and it chucks that glowstick on the ground that you can hear
it running off. It took off. Mister Shaan Forker, Welcome to Bigfoot
Crossroads. Man, how are you, my friend? It's an honor and
a pleasure, and I'm doing great. I'm just glad you asked me on
it. It's been forever since we talked. Yeah, I know, pretty
crazy. We kind of started around the same time. I think, how
long have you been doing this? Well, we did started doing cheap plug
sasquatch experience since the beginning, well towards the end of two thousand and six,
but we started doing it. It's kind of a Yahoo messaging group.
We would all get together and talk about what was happening on the old big
Foot forums. And you know, let's be honest, the media consumption of
bigfoot stuff was a lot lesser back fifteen twenty years ago. We didn't have
documentaries and YouTube channels and you know, things just popping up like we do
today. It was a much different world in the mid to late two thousands.
Yeah, I was telling somebody that back then it was really confined to
field researchers. You know, the people going out in the field would get
on message boards and talk and compare notes so to speak. I mean not
really, but yeah, argue at least and talk about things. But outside
of that, I mean, you didn't have like this huge field of just
enthusiasts that are involved right alongside the researchers like you do now. Yeah,
and it's it's very different, and your audience varies so much. Where we
go back to years and years Matt, and you know, being researchers,
right, and then in a way kind of changing gear and turning us into
entertainers as well as researchers. Right. So not only are you trying to
fulfill the needs of the actual research and the boots on the ground, but
now you have to generate content for people that listen and not just want to
know what you're doing, but what your opinion on everything, which sometimes is
a lot more dangerous than what it's worth. But it's just amazing how much
the field has changed. Like you said, it's gone from being a world
of researchers, whether at armchair or those in the field. Those were people
that were dedicated and passionate about bigfoot, right. It's a lot different today
where you have that varying level of interest. Back then, I think you
were a die hard or nothing. Now, it's just such a wide gamut.
It's it's really hard to dial it down and be you're almost a generalist
as an ambassador for the community, sharing what we're doing out to the populace
because you don't know who your audience is all the time. Yeah, do
you feel as a podcast host sort of that inner conflict being involved in the
research side as well? I do, because so much of the research is
you have to be careful because you got to watch what you're putting out there.
And what I mean by that is us as researchers and podcasters have made
it so easy to hoax things now because we're giving so much information. We're
almost creating a brand new handbook for the smart to go out there and hoax
us all the time. And now that you know, people want to talk
about the areas of researching and you know, let's you use Salt Fork State
Park for an example, right in Ohio. Would you, Matt, go
and research bigfoot there now, knowing how saturated it is? Not a chance
and would you be able to put your thumb print on any concrete evidence that
came out of there? Because there's no way of saying it's concrete with so
many people being there, Like a lot of the long term investigators that work
that area won't even go back because of the oversaturation. So that's the information
we put out there. We give location, We've created this handbook to hoax
and trying to get information out there, good, solid and frad we created
a whole conundrum for ourselves. Yeah, it's really kind of a double edged
sword, you know, it really is. It's good to see like the
Bigfoot community growing the way that it has over the past decade or so,
but at the same time, it's just you know, open the doors for
anybody and everybody to get through and you know, make a name for themselves,
present themselves anyway they want to and not have to have that you know,
resume or those accolades from their peers or anything to get there. Yeah,
we used to have some pretty hard hitting vetters back in the day.
If you remember Paul Vella yea rest as Soul was not any longer, Paul,
and he just comes to mind, because you know, folks don't remember
the Georgia Bigfoot hoax anymore, but we remember the Georgia Bigfoot hoax because we
were knee deep and talking about it or in some way involved in it.
You know, Paul Vella was really an instrumental part of you know, i'd
like to say keeping it real. When that whole controversy started, there were
allegations that myself and other people were involved. So I sent my phone records
to Paul Vella, you know, to kind of clear my name and you
know, establish my timeline. And that sounds serious. We took things back
then. You know, all we had was our reputation in the field,
and we weren't real, you know, considered ourselves and broadcasters or anything.
We were just people that enjoyed Bigfoot talking about Bigfoot, and we had some
pretty respectable people vetting us at every corner to make sure we were still staying
legitimate. And now, man, that's the informations out there, but nobody
cares about legitimacy. They care about the hot story, or they care about,
you know, what's going to get clicks on YouTube. And that makes
it very difficult for people who still have a passion for this subject and still
really see this as a science and the podcasting as an outlet for that science
as opposed to just entertainment and pop culture and all that jazz. You know,
I have found that it's kind of overturned to what it used to be.
The sides have kind of flipped, you know, talking about integrity of
research and everything. Nowadays, it seems that if you try to hold anybody
to a certain standard or scrutinize their claims, you become the bad guy.
You become the enemy. We're back in our day, it was just the
opposite. It was expected to happen. I was just talking with my co
host Vans and James Baker a couple of weeks ago that, you know,
creating content for the show. Why we don't talk to witnesses so much is
because I don't want to be that guy that, you know, while we're
talking to them, discover something and then all of a sudden you have to
flip gears and be the bad guy, and you now have people listening to
it, right, And like for me, I'd rather not talk to witnesses.
I appreciate those of you that do, because that's a skill set and
it's a balancing act. But you knew me way back in the day.
You know, I was a pretty Robert Rousing kind of guy. If I
got my dander up. I really didn't think as much as I have as
i've become an older statesman, just not you know, you don't want to
do that to somebody. James and I did a presentation in Hawking Hills,
and I'm sorry if I'm jumping around here onead. One of the things we
talked about was, you know, the trauma of a big foot sighting and
how you work with a witness through that to give them kind of I use
the term safe place, but it's culturally people now an outlet to share that
and not really you know, put them in a seat of judgment more as
a place of understanding. Where I feel like I've gone from being an interrogator
to a counselor now Matt when I'm doing these bigfoot sightings. But you know,
there's always that part of me that when you're investing, you're interviewing somebody,
you're investigating the claims. You know, my part of the problems,
my bullshit meter is always on. It's just how I react to that now
that that makes it a lot different. You have to be so caring because
some of these people, you know, the people that really had a sighting.
Man and I think you've talked to enough people to know when somebody's really
had an encounter and when somebody's bullying it, you know, it's traumatic and
we're seeing that. And now that you know, we've gotten better with you
know, psychology and understanding things like PTSD and it's not just something that happens
from people, you know, in a war zone, that it happens from
people dealing with traumatic experiences. You have to be really careful when you're interviewing
people now and you're talking about these things because it's a much different concept.
It's a much different application of science, and you have to be so careful
not to damage them even more so, I'm thankful that I guess when I
get sightings now, I don't really They're much more different to navigate in terms
of, you know, a roadside crossing to somebody that had an absolute encounter,
and then you can talk to those people that absolutely encounter and somehow you
just know when someone's you know, really being honest with you. And if
you you know, do some research into psychology and brush yourself up on it,
the signs are there, from body language to cadence and voiced everything like,
you can become much better at the actual investigating and interviewing people than we
probably were twenty years ago. But to say those people aren't out there that
aren't hoaxing, and they're really good at it and are probably getting through.
There's probably some really good basers out there still making their way through, getting
some really good sightings out, reports made up and put out there. But
there are some people met that are just incredible and that you empathize with because
they experience something that really did shake them to the core. And now I
just have a different way of dealing with all that. The one thing that
I will say about all of this that is possibly a positive. I see
it as a positive. At least you may disagree, and that's fine,
is that by opening the doors like this and having so many people come into
the community at different levels and share their stories. Even though there is of
course plenty of people out there that are just seeking attention or seeking some sort
of you know, social thing, you know, a group of friends or
a group that will accept them or whatever, and they're putting out these you
know, false claims and making up these stories, it's still I think opens
the door for a lot more actual witnesses to come forward and share their experiences
where in the past they wouldn't have at least I don't recall, you know,
so many of you know, the traumatic stories you know that we hear
these days that you know are way more common than they used to be.
I think it's an acceptance thing, you know, as this bigfoot phenomena,
sasquad phenomena has really taken off in pop culture. People are that now people
know that they're individuals out there who take this seriously and want to listen to
them and want to talk where they might not have known that twenty thirty years
ago. They might not have had that knowledge or that safety net of thinking,
oh, I could talk to somebody, or everybody's going to think I'm
crazy. If I talk to somebody about this, who do I talked about?
That's not going to think I'm crazy? Or who am I going to
talk to That's not going to put it out there, and then everybody's going
to know it was me, and then I'm crazy, you know. So
the acceptance level of this phenomena is at a higher rate, and I think
that makes it, like you said, more accessible for people to come out
and share their share their encounters, which it is a very good thing because
as researchers investigators, we need that information. We need that data, but
we have to understand that there's a human behind that and they can't just be
treated like a data point like it has to be treated a lot differently than
we did twenty thirty years ago, and kind of I don't know, Matt,
if you still even frequent any of the forums. I don't go to
the forums anymore because I don't know. I spent too much time on them
in the early days that I just don't want to go into that level of
negativity anymore. And they were a pretty place where they vetted things like crazy.
Every detail was vetted. It's not like that so much today. You
don't have that mass vetting going on because I think people, like you said,
are at different levels and different interests, and people I think at this
point just want to hear stories. They just want to find some way to
keep this, to keep this phenomena going and keep this phenomena around. Yeah,
I don't. I don't partake in any forums. I don't really join
in any discussions any of the you know, social media groups or anything like
that. I have a page that I keep very lighthearted I just put out
memes mostly and whenever I release a new show. I recently opened up a
Facebook group for the podcast and people that listen to it if they want to
join and just you know, ask me questions or whatever and reach me outside
of the podcast itself. But other than that, you know, very seldom
do I ever open my mouth about anything anymore, which, as you know,
is a complete one eighty from who I used to be. For sure,
well right, and I feel you there, mainly because you don't want
to alienate anybody, but you still, you know, have your beliefs,
but sometimes your beliefs are better kept to yourself at this point instead of going
on every you know, first of all, we couldn't be a member of
every big Foot group if we wanted to. They are so numerous now it's
it's unreal. But you're just wasting time at that point because someone's not going
to agree with you. No matter what. You're going to be going back
and forth for hours. Nothing's going to be solved. At the end of
the day. You run the risk of looking like a jerk. And I
don't got time for that. You don't have time for that, So it's
it's almost an exercise and futility, and it's just it's funny to me how
how much we've changed over the years in terms of this research. If you
don't change, you haven't grown. Yeah, you have to adapt and evolve,
you do. And that was where we're kind of at with that.
Like the community today, like you know, we said, is much different
now, good and bad. It's a different place. There's also the obstacle
of every time that you do voice your opinion, especially a critical one,
then you have to substantiate your your own opinion and it can be exhausting.
I don't I just don't have it immy to take everybody to class, you
know, over the past twenty years of events and things to explain how I
reached my opinion about a specific person or topic or group or whatever. And
that's what people want. Yeah, are you seeing things from the past coming
back up and resurfacing over and over again. That is old hat to you,
oh, all the time, But to all these people, it's brand
new all the time. And most of it comes in the form of videos.
You know, they find this stuff we went over it years and years
ago, or how history looks on research and this researchers in this field a
lot differently than when we did when we were actually when some of those people
were still alive, or when some of those people were still active. You
know, people can go and rewrite their own history if they want to too,
because the attention span is very short. You know, people don't want
to have to do their homework. They don't And so I had this guy
messaging me from the radio show page just ask watch experience page on Facebook,
and he's asking me all these questions, and I just got fed up with
it. It's like three o'clock in the morning. I'm like, dude,
do some reading here. Check this book out. This is going to answer
all the questions you're asking me. Do some work, Like the stuff's here,
the information's out there. And I honestly feel that by people that aren't
going out and reading the books that are out there, and they're not going
on the journey for themselves and they just want to be spoon fed, they're
missing out on some critical thinking. But they're missing out on a lot of
the history that makes this field so unique. You know that it's been it's
been happening a lot more than you know, a lot longer than two thousand,
Like it's gone back to the fifties, you know, when the genesis
of all this really started. But people don't want to go back that far.
That's why I appreciate guys like Todd Prescott and the Sasquatch Archives putting videos
out there from like the nineties of the researchers like de Hindent and everybody,
because you can go back and see what those guys were like and get to
understand them and see them, and then you read their materials and it all
comes together. You know, you can finally put that puzzle together for yourself.
And I think there's a sense of accomplishment from that. But people don't
want to do that anymore. They just want current or they want you know,
they want cliff notes. They don't want to go in it and really
dive deep. And they have to. If you really want to embrace this
field and everything it's about, you've got to know the history. So let's
talk about your history. I don't think I've ever even asked you what got
you interested in this subject to begin with. Well, you know, we
go back, you know, as we say history. I was about eight
or nine years old on a family trip to Virginia Beach and I like to
talk that's no mystery, and my dad trying to drive it just needed something
to shut me up. So he got a book and the book was Sasquatched
the Apes among Us. Wow, yeah, he got it for himself.
But I've in my house growing up. You know, the good memories that
I have from my childhood with my dad and family is that we used to
watch things like Arthur C. Clark Mysterious World in Search of Unsolved mysteries.
Those things were always on in my house since I can remember as a kid.
My grandfather had books at his house with strange creatures from the Amazon,
a book by Vincent Price called Monsters that I still I have up in my
attic. And so I always grew up around this stuff and I found it
to be really interesting. But reading that book on that vacation just got me
hooked. And so that started. Then when I got to be in my
teens, we know, the internet became a thing. It wasn't so readily
available in my younger childhood for as it was for most of us, because
it wasn't really a thing besides the concept yet. And then I got a
computer and started getting on the internet talking to people on the Internet, which
I don't advise folks unless you know who they are. He got on chat
rooms like the Virtual Internet Bigfoot Conference and got to know some researchers. I
think I was talking to Cliff Barrickman last year at Ohio and he remembers us
talking in like the nineties, which just blew my mind. And so I'd
have those conversations. And I started field work when I was about, you
know, anecdotically, you know, a tongue in cheek, like fourteen,
but really seriously, and I was about seventeen. I started going out to
citing locations. I started meeting investigators and getting really serious about this. So
probably in a nutshell, I've been doing this now twenty eight years mat or
you know, from reading books to building. And there weren't as many books
back then either. I remember the library, I could get like four or
five books about Bigfoot and that's all they had. And now I have that
many books just sitting right here in a pile of my desk I got to
read. Yet it's it's beautiful to see all this, you know, all
this information about this now, but it didn't exist then. So I feel
very fortunate to be part of a research group or a research field that I
got to grow up with as I grew up, because my perspective on things
have changed, how I deal with people has changed, and I've learned a
lot, you know, from doing this. A lot of the people I
investigate with now are former cops, the retired or and one still an active
cop, my buddy Matt Arner, who's a good friend of mine and a
research partner. So I'm learning a lot from them, you know, so
constantly, still developing myself and learning myself. I've changed as my experiences have
changed. My dealing with people in the field has changed, and witnesses have
changed. So like you know, like I said just a little bit ago,
like the growth that I've seen in myself over this has been amazing,
but the growth in the community has been equally as amazing because it's very different,
and that's that's a good thing. It's also comes comes at a price,
right like anything else. So I've been doing it a long time and
I still I still have a passion for it. The moment, I don't
have a passion for it anymore. I'll I'll go, I'll go do something
else like bowling or something. So what was your first major outing like?
So that was with the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society, a group Eric Altman, who
man I still consider one of my mentors in this field, had a gathering
in Keystone State Park in southwestern Pennsylvania, which is like the epicenter of big
Foot activity on the East Coast. I mean, it's a hugely saturated bigfoot
residing area. And we went and investigated a the park, different areas of
the park that have had some sightings, and I thought it was just going
to be a you know, a weekend in the woods, but we had
a very interesting encounter that happened that weekend. And this is my first outing.
It's not my first my first sighting investigation or whatnot. It was just
my first outing with a large group of people. And I was hiking with
Cindy Darragison who just passed away, and Tim Cassidy, who's a park ranger
and a biologist, and we were out hiking a part of the park where
all of a sudden, Tim was hit with this overwhelming sense of euphoria and
I was hit by this real intense sense of nausea, and we're sitting there
trying to figure out what the heck's going on, and all of a sudden,
it sounded like a bulldozer just took off through the brush. Well,
fight or flight kicked in and I chased after it, trying to figure out
what it was. And I have on my tail Eric Altman and some of
the guys chasing me because I'm doing something unsafe. I'm running after something I
can't see, and we don't know what it is. And at one point
we thought we had this thing surrounded and it managed to evade us. We
never did see what it was. And as we're walking down the power line
cut out to get back to the area to the cars to go back to
the main site for dinner, somebody on the group says they saw a humanoid
shaped figure the opposite side of the tree line, watching us as we relieving.
I never saw it, but somebody in the group said we did,
so I thought that was a very interesting, uh you know, first kind
of major group X, you know outing that's really an expedition. We weren't
going to the Himalayas or anything, but a large group outing in a very
active area of PA and that one kind of sticks with me to this day.
Matt, I don't know what it was. All I know is that
that feeling I made me so nauseous, and it was it was compelling.
And to have two people have two different reactions but still kind of a you
know, a reaction to something we couldn't you couldn't see, we could only
feel, was just very very intense. Okay, that derails me, Uh,
thanks a lot, So I have, you know, just going off
that infrasound, man, is that what you think it was? Were your
thoughts on that theory that these things can produce infrasound to this day, I
do. And one of the things I'm trying to find reliably is some sort
of infrasound detector that we can take woods with us. But you know,
you see things on the internet that are just you know, junk, someone
selling to take your money. But there has to be some sort of detector
out there that they can use, because listen, we know there are animals
that use infrasound. Tires use infrasound, elephants use infrasound, Like, it's
not unknown for mammals to use this. We just don't know of any primates
that use this, and all it is is frequency. It's the ability to
emit frequency and incredibly low tone. So who's to say that this creature doesn't
have that capability. We just don't have any way of really documenting it,
and we need to. So if we can document that, do you not
think that's still a good piece of the puzzle, Like, all of a
sudden, Hey, you know, we might not have physical proof, but
something's paining us out there, and this is how we've got recording of it.
We have physical evidence in the form of you know, data that showing
that, all of a sudden, I was hit by this at this time.
This is how I felt. Right, that's compelling, Right, That's
not as easy to dismiss as someone saying I saw something run across the road
at incredible speeds. You know, that's real scientific data right there. Do
you have any certain encounters or encounter stories that have kind of been influential on
you over the years that really stand out? You know, there's been so
many over over the years. You go to the classics right that you know,
we all you know grew up with, you know, Bobby Short's website
big Foot Encounters was loaded with them. Locally, I had a gentleman who
was a marine, a retired marine. He was out fishing and hiking.
And when he was hiking, he was sitting on this big rock and was
getting towards getting towards dusk. And that he's sitting there on the rock,
mine in his own business. He hears this trumping through the brush and just
below him on the rock, it just barely missed his dangling legs. He
says, a sasquatch walked right past him, across the path and into the
brush. This guy had no reason to lie to me about anything. He
was impressed by, you know what he had just witnessed. And it wasn't
an incredibly long encounter. But in two thousand and seven, not long not
far from that area, there was a gentleman who contacted me and this sighting.
He also contacted the BFRO, so this is on the BFRO website.
While he was out dumping stone at an old conservation civilian conservation camp he had
was getting ready to drop the stone. As he looked in the mirror,
he saw sasquatch in the rearview mirror. As he turned around, he looked
at his one in front of him, and he didn't even drop the bed.
He just took off like a bat at a hell out of that campground,
dumping that stone as he went, and he never lowered it, and
he never went back. I called him, you know. Eventually we did
go back there, but it took some prying and it was just an incredible
you know, just how it was impacted this guy. He never wanted to
go back there. Right, It's just so, you know, a freakish
story. As he's sitting there doing his day job in the middle of the
day, mind you, this isn't even at nighttime, in the middle of
the day, and he has this encounter and then one more that I have
that really got me a gentleman. To this day, he's asked me to
keep him, you know, anonymous to the public. He had about a
five six thousand acre private hunting lease up in north northern PA, right next
to the New York border, and he had gone out there for twenty years.
One morning, when he was out in his tree stand, he's just
scoping it out, and out of the woods come a large creature. Goes
into the woods, comes out of the woods into the clearing, sees him
in the tree stand and they have kind of a little a little bit of
a standoff, and you know, that's going on for just a little bit.
The creature goes walks back into the woods. He gets down, takes
off like a bat out of hell, out of there. Comes back the
next day and something had taken the the the about an inch and a half
two inch aluminum pipe and wrapped it around the tree. Wow, and he
would not go back there after that. We went back probably a couple of
years later with him. He actually we got him to bring us out to
that area. We had a hell of a time Matt trying to get him
into the truck to take us to the area where he had this encounter.
He did not want to go back to this spot, like or he didn't
want to be out there anywhere were there, you know, he didn't feel
you know, safe, There wasn't going to be a copious amount of light.
And we did manage to convince him to take him down there. It's
like, look, you know, you're with us, there's a bunch of
us here. You're okay, We're not going anything happen to you. And
he ended up researching with us through the entire night and had a little bit
of a different appreciation for you know, the kind of the science and the
research behind it. But he was just, man, I tell you,
just scared. And that's what starts getting my gear going about treating witnesses and
how to some people, yeah, Bigfoot's you know, a great folk story,
a great fantasy, right, can't be real. But to the people
that have experienced it, man, it's it's something special, and it's it's
life changing. And to this gentleman, you know, he works in the
woods. He's an official with the Game Commission. That's what he does for
a living. And to not want to go out into the woods anymore,
you know, that's affecting your livelihood. I think the human element is one
of the biggest parts of the whole Bigfoot phenomenon. And I know that a
lot of people really like to hear, you know, the scary horror stories
and you know the stories that people tell of you know, special military units
going out and hunting these things. For me, whenever I talk to someone
and I hear the emotion in their voice and I hear them reliving the moment,
those are the stories that stand out to me because of that human element
and like you're saying the way that it affects people, and maybe that's kind
of sick of me. I don't know. It's not that I'm happy that
they're going through the trauma or anything, but those stories always hit harder to
me. They always seem more real to me than these, you know,
big dramatic stories that you hear a lot of times on podcasts, including my
own I'm Guilty as Charged. But it sounds like you're kind of the same
way. Yeah, I like the people element of it, right, and
Matt it kind of you know. I guess for the longest time I was
a fence center on whether this thing really existed or not, saying the infrasound.
You know, I had rocks thrown at me with Billy Willard once,
and you know, so, yeah, you had things like that that happened
that really don't really seem significant, right that they're anecdotal in all this,
I don't know at the point I ever wanted to have an encounter until I
had one of my own in twenty fourteen, I'm sorry twenty twelve, and
it changed my life. I almost left everything behind and quit this field and
just was done with it because it really shook me to the core. I
to this day at times, I still have times dealing with it because of
being in the field and trying to be unbiased and trying to you know,
not let any of my own experiences contaminate when I'm working with somebody else,
to let my own bias take over. When we had our encounter, and
I'll tell you about it if you'd like me to, Yeah, for sure.
It was one of my best friends, Dustin Kinley, a guy is
like my brother Ray Hendershot. We had met up with Dave Rupert, Eric
Altman, and Ryan Cavalen to go do some preliminary work for an outing.
We were going to have that weekend up in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, which
is another area of PA in the north northwestern part of the state, no
central, the northwestern part of the state, near the Allegheny National Forest,
And we had, you know, set up our camp site and we're just
kind of getting stuff ready for the weekend, and we were going to call
it an early night because we were going to get up really early in the
morning, like two three o'clock in the morning to go do some like late
night you know, early morning, squatching right to be out there at you
know, at that dust to dawn kind of scenario. So Eric and Dave
and Ryan left and we were going to stay out there to get ready,
myself, Dustin and Ray and we build a fire and we're sitting there around
the fire just kind of laughing, having a good time, and then out
of the corner of my eye, I see something run through our campsite,
and I mean run. It was large. It wasn't bulky ball kids,
actually built like a big NBA player, And to this day, I still
describe it as sloth like like it. It just moved, it glided,
It moved so fast mad I've never seen anything move like that. And Ray's
back was to it. Ray wasn't seeing what was going on, but Dustin
it also saw it. So Dustin and I jumped up and we ran to
the edge of the woods. It's starting to get dark, so you couldn't
see very far, but you can still hear this thing taking off through it.
Not really know what in hell we just experienced. We're sitting there kind
of gobsmacked, like, man, what the what, What's just going on
here? So we're like, well, if something like this is going to
hang around or is out here. It's probably, you know, gonna be
out here. Let's go to bed, Let's try to relax, and let's
see if we can get up really early and see if we can get any
more of this right. Put the fire out, go in the tent,
lay down on the tent. We're in there about forty five minutes to an
hour, and all of a sudden we hear something walking through our campsite.
Now, Matt, we're miles from the road. We're in an area that's
pretty remote. Not a lot of people knew we were out there, So
to this day, I rule out anybody hoaxing us. It made no sense
for anybody to hoax us because a lot of people know we were there,
right, and they're not really anybody close by to do that. And definitely
by petal, because you can hear it moving around like you know, it's
locomotions different than a deer. And I see the little light come on a
dustin's sleeping bag and there's no phone service in the tent. You have to
run to the middle of this little meadow we're camping in the kit phone service
and a bar or two it that and I see the light. Come on,
I see Dustin. You hear that? He goes, yeah, I
hear it. I'm like, well, what do you want to do is
so let's just sit here and listen. Hear it going on. So Dustin
gets up, he unzips the tent, he gets out. I'm getting ready
to put my boots on, and he goes, hey, fork or throw
me my gun. Well, like an idiot, I throw him his gun
and not thinking that, hey, just throw a firearm. But I'm getting
ready to get out. He goes, shit, take a look, and
as I turned my head that the same thing that ran through our campsite earlier
is going up this little hillside and all of a sudden you can hear it
just take off and run around the perimeter of the of the tree line like
you can hear it running through the woods. I'm like, what the heck
is going on here? So at this point I'm kind of frightened because hey,
this is the same thing we saw earlier. It's come back. Well,
what I didn't tell you is I gotta go back and say I left
this part out, and I don't know how I left this part out.
What got us out of the tent is because we started seeing the fire can
rink kindling. We had taken the logs off the fire, and something can
move the logs back onto the fire. Wow, all right, that's what
got us out. Okay, I don't know, and I'm sorry, and
so I'm freaked out at this point. You know, the fire just came
back to life. They just think you could hear it running around the campsite.
So I run to the middle of the little meadow and I pick up
the phone and I called Dave Rupert's wife and I said, hey, Carrie,
did Dave make it home yet? She goes, no, he's still
you know, he's still out. I'm like, can you call him and
get him back here to me? We got some shit going on. I
want to get out of here. And she goes, okay, let's you
know. So she, you know, hangs up with me, calls me
back. A few minutes later, she goes, listen, Dave and Ryan
had stopped off at a place down the road. They're still there. They're
going to come back to you. About a half hour later, here comes
Dave and Ryan and I can see the flashlights. We run up the little
hillside to go talk to him. And Ryan still may have this on film
because he was making a movie back then, and he was, you know,
always filming. He was filming everything back in the day. And they
stumbled upon us, and you know, we start talking about, you know,
what's going on. So, you know, we we're revisiting everything that's
going on. And Dave goes, well, let's see if we you can
get this, you know, keep things going here. We're out here with
you now, you're not by yourselves. So as you guys go back in
the tent, here's the radios. We'll talk back and forth. And they
kind of bib whacked down and like this little hunkered covered in a you know,
a bush type type area. We're in the tent. We're out there
for a while and nothing happens. Right, of course, nothing's going to
happen now, so they talked to some nothing's happened. We're gonna come back
out in the morning. We're gonna go home for a while and get some
sleep, and you know, we'll be back with you guys in the morning.
All right. They build our confidence up, like this is why you're
out here. Come on, guys, you can do this, And sure,
what the hell, why not so they left and a while later,
here comes the footsteps again. This time we're ready, we jump out,
you know, we all we can hear at this point is something still moving
along the tree line. And all of a sudden we can smake out the
silhouette and the tree line, Matt, and it's kind of peering around at
us. And I told Dustin, I Dustin has its weapon, his weapon
pointed at it. And I'm like, shoot at Dustin, shoot it now.
And he's like, Sean, I can't. I said, listen,
if you're somebody out here you're messing with it, we're gonna shoot you.
Identify yourself now or you know, we're gonna shoot you. And nothing,
it wouldn't respond. And so Ray had a glow stick and he took the
glow stick and he chucks it into the woods at this thing right, well
for a moment, nothing happens. All of a sudden, that glowstick gets
picked up, all right at a decent hype. Nope, and I think,
like day out of here now, and it chucks that glowstick on the
ground and you can hear running off. And we decided that at the same
point we're gonna we're gonna charge at this thing at the tree line. Okay,
we're tired of this thing messing with us, and so the three of
us just in unison kind of charge at it and it took off. So
we're sitting there like, okay, as soon as daylight breaks were out of
here, We're not pissing around in this place anymore. I'm done. It's
come back twice on us, now technically three times if you count the time
with the fire. I'm done with this. So we go back in the
tent. It starts raining. We think we're safe. You know, nothing's
going on. Notate this really odd, strange flash of light. Man,
it's not lightning, there's nothing. It was just as I thought, maybe
one of the game cameras that had been set up and had taken a picture
of something right morning hits. We pack everything up in a toe and our
fat asses are out of there. We ran that mile and a half,
two miles, I swear sixty eight minutes we were out there. We didn't
everything out. We got into a car into my van. I called my
wife and the way home and I said, listen, we're done. I'm
coming home. I'm freaked out. I don't want to do this anymore.
Like and now I guess think about it today, the impact still there.
I still get the goose bump from the story. I've told it enough times
now where I feel like the impact has lessened on me. But when I
go back and still think about what happened to us to that night and how
scary it was when we were experiencing it, it kind of brings that back
up to us and Matt, I've never experienced anything like that before. I've
not experienced anything like that since that one night. But we knew the going
into it. This was a hot bet of activity, had been a hot
bagot of activity. Why we reacted that way, I don't know. For
people that have had the experience we had, it still scared us right like
it. It frightened the hell out of me. I wanted to quit.
I called Dave Rupert, It called Eric Altman. I told Eric Man,
I love you, but I'm done. I don't want to do this anymore.
I called David, said, hey, when you go back after this
week, look at those game cameras because the flash went off and there might
be a picture on there. And he goes, Sean, none of those
cameras have flashes on the I'm like, well, what the hell? And
then that really cemented me not wanting to go back at It took me years
to go back out to that location. And when I went back out to
that location, we had like fourteen people with us, so I felt really
safe. But when we were out there again that night, we experienced a
strange flash alight for no reason. We experienced that same flash of light and
none of us can figure out what it is or what it was, or
why it happened. And so that experience, I think that's what triggered in
me that we really have to start looking at the at the impact that this
has on witnesses and how I treat witnesses because I know what I experienced and
I know how I'd want to be treated if someone was asking me about this
encounter. That literally changed my whole perspective on this, and it was enough
to get me to quit, Like I really wanted to give up. And
so after about a few months of talking to people, and you know,
talking to my wife and she's like, you really enjoy doing this? Do
you really want to give this up? Because it's important to you, I
was like, not really, but it's going to take a long time before
I get my confidence back. And I don't really think I got my confidence
Batmack to like twenty sixteen where I was really comfortable again, you know,
four years later going back out into the woods and doing like I used to.
I didn't camp like almost that entire time. It took me a long
time to get back into it. Yeah, whenever I was going out in
the field, there was a couple of events that took place that shook me
up pretty bad. One specifically, I mean it sent me out of the
wood. I was done. I didn't go At the time, I was
very active in the field. Primary research location was like a three hour car
ride. I had friends there that I could stay with, you know,
I was able to afford to do it at the time. This event,
I mean, it knocked me out of the woods. For three months straight.
I would not go back, and it was it was one of those
situations where it was like, Okay, well, I've been doing this for
years, but this it's not being normal. It's not acting like it's supposed
to act. Something's weird about this, and it just terrified me and I
just couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it and then not be able
to quantify it, Like that's the part that you know, it really got
to me. And you know, I, like I said, sometimes I
feel like because I've told the story it, you know, it's kind of
burned out on me. Like, but to people listening to this for the
first time, they're probably like, why the hell would you go back into
it? Because it really is and I think you can relate to this.
Man, there's something about this that's not like anything else, and it maybe
it's part of wanting to be somebody to solve the mystery or wanting to be
a part of this, the story of this because there's a time invested now,
you know, Like I don't know, it's it's different, and I
I love it. I love it more now I think than I did when
I started. But I'll tell you one of the things that makes it difficult
to continue to carry on podcasting for myself is that I feel like there's not
a lot of new stuff going on, Like there's not a lot of new
evidence, or that we should be further along in the evidence with evidence collection
or with new stuff than what's actually out there. Do you share that like
we should have something better at this point. Yeah. So someone else I
know just recently mentioned that on another podcast, how this particular researcher had started
a podcast and was going for a while and had stopped and geez, I
don't think they've even done one for like a couple of years now. But
he was a guest on a different show, and he said the reason that
we quitz because there's just nothing new to report, there's no new information,
and there's really not for something. I mean, in all aspects of the
world, everything has progressed over the past fifty years, but this is one
subject that has not. Yeah, it hasn't. It's almost like it stood
still. And a lot of people I just recently I'm not going to mention
who it was because I don't want to start any drama, but I just
you know, there's a couple of different people, as a matter of fact,
this past week, who have talked about, hey, I've got this
new idea. We're really trying to do something different that's never been done before.
And I'm just like, yeah, that was going on twenty years ago.
That's that's art. Yeah, that's frustration. Like, yeah, read
a little bit go back and look into this stuff, because you're gonna find
a lot of what you're trying to do has already been tried. Like it's
it's been done. And I hate to be that been there, done that,
you know, Matt, but it has been. We had a lot
of really smart people, people that are far smarter than I'll ever be in
this field at one point in time where they tried to do some pretty remarkable
things, oh for sure, for sure, and they almost sometimes almost as
much as they started, they left because I think they knew that this mystery
is harder to then it looks on paper. You know, we're talking about
something that has some form of intelligence, may or may not have abilities we
can or can't document document in other animals. I'm not saying, and that's
a stretch statement for me if you've known me for all those years, Like,
there is an element to this that is kind of and I'm folks,
I'm not a paranormalist, but there's a kind of elements sometimes that are a
little paranormal rights. There is something going on out there that can't be explain
or quantified with modern science period. Right, I've taught over the weekend,
I talked to some pretty smart people that you know, you wanted to have
a conversation with me about it because you know who you're the bigfoot guy.
Have you thought about I have thought about this, but you know, if
I bring that up to somebody with a scientific brain, I look like a
quack. But you bringing it up kind of makes me think that maybe there's
something into this. And that conversation was and I I feel still even talking
about it, Matt, But you know they had anybody thought about has anybody
thought about portals? Well, yeah, because they're not into this field really
besides you know, knowing me, Yeah, they've talked about portals. And
I say, this is why I said, there's no way to document this,
that they will prove that they're real, and he goes, well,
or maybe it's because the genesis of them isn't on this side. This is
just the exit point. You might not be able to detect it through its
exit. Maybe you're only able to detect it from the area that originates and
we can't detect that because we're not there. Not too long ago, I
was privy to being a part of another podcast calling All Beings It's more UFO
based. That's how I'm at all those people, but they have interest in
Bigfoot as well. And I'm multifaceted, you know, I'm interested in all
of it. But they had a T. J. Allard on there as
a guest. T J. Allard is a producer for a Skinwalker ranch,
you know, the popular TV series, and the discussion of portal came up
with him, and he said something that I hadn't even thought about. And
that's about the way that we use our words and everything and we talk about
portals. It automatically paints a picture of some sort of portal exactly what it
is, an entrance of some kind of a doorway to go between here and
there. But what if it's not a portal? What if it's just a
situation that allows for a manifestation or a window as opposed to a doorway,
you know, something of that nature. And I hadn't even like thought about
that sort of thing. But I think one of the huge problems with all
of the paranormal stuff as far as us old school flesh and blood guys are
concerned, not that you know, I grew up experience paranormal activity in my
home. I was into the paranormal before Bigfoot I don't have an issue with
paranormal stuff. My issue is I'm well aware that with flesh and blood I
can look for tracks and cast them and look for hair samples and all that.
But with paranormal stuff, you know, we're sol there's nothing we can
do about it. There's no way to prove anything or test anything. Whenever
it comes to the paranormal I agree with you one hundred percent. And that's
kind of the conundrum or at and us old flesh and blood guys. I
mean, the fact of the matter is where I've tried to start, you
know, bringing myself to the discussion that it's okay for me to think in
these terms, and that seems silly. Is that because it's not documentable scientifically
doesn't mean it's not possible, right, And I think I can rest better
with that thinking that, you know, maybe I'm not joining the paranormal train,
but there's aspects of this that just can't be explained. I mean,
think about it. Footprints they just end. They're not doing the world's greatest
moonwalk back through them. Where did the footprints go? Where do they just
end? And we've been documenting that for years. Stan Gordon himself you know,
a pretty big name in Pennsylvania research and UFO all uphology, and even
he you know, there has to be an explanation. They just don't stop.
Where do they go? And I don't have an answer for that,
and that that's always bothered me, not being able to answer a question that
seems so simple and the answer is simple, but just kind of bringing myself
to say, hey, it's a potentiality, you know, has always been
hard because it didn't fit in my wheelhouse right right, didn't feel what my
perception of what bigfoot is. And as I as I said, as we've
rowned through this and have grown through this, that's changed a little bit.
That doesn't mean I'm going to believe everything, you know. I still want
proof. I want some pretty good proof. But I don't think I'm going
to throw it out anymore. I'm going to put it into that's interesting,
or let's notate it, because that's the scientific thing to do. Let's notate
this, but let's try to gather evidence to support everything we're talking about here.
And I think for me, Matt, the biggest problem with trying to
find an answer to something is you can't answer it with another mystery right.
You know, that's just not how it works. And we have a hard
enough time. We had, I think a hard enough time trying to get
people to take us seriously. Now people take us seriously, it's still I
think they want they want proof. They just want proof. And you know,
unfortunately we haven't had anything. We haven't had any good proof or any
good evidence in years. Here's a question I'll ask you that I've been asking
a lot of people lately. Removing the Patterson Gimlin film from the equation entirely
not up for debate. What's the best piece of evidence besides that? You
know, I honestly think it's all the audio we had. I really think
all the audio recordings we have that can't be explained, and we've got a
lot of people looking at this now is compelling. Because something's making those sounds.
That's a physical manifestation. And if you can rule that out based on
you know, spectrographs of other creatures and other noises and within frequencies and so
on and so forth, that gets a little harder to dispel. We may
not have And look, you know, I think the biggest mistake people make
is trying to use the Patterson film as the foundation for their big belief.
I think you're just setting yourself up for fail there what I think? You
know? Also, you know kind of I guess the jury's out in the
Scukum cast anymore too, right, like Scuokum cast, which I mean if
you talk to some people, the jury's always been out. Yeah, Like
I mean, nothing physical has been concrete enough to say, yeah, this
is what it is. You know, you can you know, we even
go back to the doctor Ketchum DNA study and how that was poorly mishandled.
And regardless of what anybody feels, the fact of the matter is science and
your reputation go hand in hand. And if you don't aren't reputable, you're
not going to be taken seriously. So does it matter if you have the
world's greatest evidence or greatest study. You're not credible. They're not even going
to listen to it. You're going to throw it out. When you act
in a way that's you know, makes it even less credible, it gets
harder. So we've had a lot of junk science and a lot of mishandling,
and a lot of amateur mistakes that have caused I think perhaps it's sometimes
some really good evidence to just not even be considered. So we just have
to act. We have to find scientists that ethically, scientists that are willing
to sit down and really agree to look at this. And I think we
have to have people that are trained to collect evidence better. And I think
we have a responsibility ourselves to put ourselves through that, to train and to
get that that technique down. Which is why I think working with more people
of law enforcement has been beneficial for me, because I'm learning how to collect
evidence in a more forensic manner, a better way that's not contaminated, and
it's you know, going to be more accepted if you if you can have
a chain of custody from the moment you collected that evidence to how it was
handled in documentation, all the way up to the time it's processed and analyzed,
how can you dispute that? Right, There's there's so much arguing that
doesn't even have to take place that constantly does. We don't have to argue
about whether or not these things have paranormal attributes or whatever. We should all
be working on the same page to you know, figure out definitive, definitively
how to prove that they're out there to begin with, and then we can
start worrying about all that other stuff. You're right, and and that's that's
why I think I've come to all this in the last few years. Mat
is what you just said. How about we find ways to document and prove
this exists. If through this existence we discover that, hey, the thing
came out of a portal and we have proof of that, I'll eat the
biggest slice of humble pie in my life. I'll be glad to say I
was wrong. Nothing would make me happier to say it was wrong, because
at the end of the day, we proved it was real. That's what
really matters. Everything else we can learn after the fact. But we know
here we are. You know, like you said, we have the argument
and fight over the stupidest things. Let's come together and say, let's just
collect. It doesn't matter what you or Bob or myself believe. It's what
we're documenting in what we're getting that will tell the story, whether we agree
with the you know together or not initially, at the end we'll all come
together on its proof and then we'll let that tell the story. Are there
any other cryptids that you're into or that you think exists out there besides Bigfoot.
Oh, you know, my sister's a big lake monster enthusiast, My
little sister. She's not really little anymore, but you know, she's in
her thirties now, but she's always been a lake monster enthusiast. I feel
like there could be some merit to Lockness. I don't think it's what we
think it is. I think it's something. I don't think it's the giant
pleasi so or everybody believes after that. I don't know. I have a
hard time with dog Man. I've always had a hard time with it,
and it kind of for me, I feel like it's been misidentified Bigfoot.
That's what I always felt, and I think when we start adding attributes to
it, it's more fantasy than truth. But again then I never saw one
either, so how can I say that. It's just again you go to
what I'm comfortable with. Right, it's hard for us bigfoot guys to get
off that stunt man is it is? It's very difficult. It's hard.
So I don't know. I think maybe Lochness, like I said, and
I'm open minded on the dogman type thing. But I don't know. I'm
so burnt on on some of these other cryptids, Like don't you know in
Mothman. I think Mothman's a great story. I go to the Mothman Festival
every year. I think it's a blast. But I think it's just built
on an owl. I do. Yeah. I just interviewed moth Boy Matt
from the moth Boys podcast, and yeah, he's part of this, you
know, this younger generation that we've seen, these guys and gals and miscellaneous
others that are in their twenty somethings and early thirties that have kind of swept
over the cryptid community and turned in kind of a a festival type setting,
which is awesome. I haven't met an anybody that I haven't liked so far,
but Crypted's are kind of trendy now they are. They're kind of trendy,
and the more obscure crypted the better. It's no longer you know,
like, oh, you know, as serious old guys talking about Bigfoot.
It's now just like whatever is out there is on the table and it's all
cool and you know, get a tattoo of it and sell some T shirts
and it's crazy Man, it's so different than what we came up in.
And you know what, folks need to enjoy it while they can. Yeah,
because it's gonna lose. It's gonna lose it at some point. You
know, we've been through the EBB and flows before. Yeah, it's gonna
lose. It's dirty, and then we'll still be here doing, you know
what we do. And I don't get bet out of shape about the festival
because I think anything that can create awareness to what we're doing. You don't
know who that's going to attract. If you don't know who that's going to
inspire, and believe it or not. You know, if we're going to
keep this field of research going, it still needs people, it still needs
boots on the ground, and you know we're are some of our favorite researchers
aren't here anymore, you know, and we have to keep that mantle.
You know, we have to keep it going, and it's going to need
more and more people to be involved with it. I was always hoping that
one of my kids would be involved in this. I have three kids,
and I have a daughter that's twenty, a sound seventeen, and one that's
twelve, and my seventeen year old son Gabe's on my Facebook page with me
going out on these. He's the one. I'm always hopeful that he's going
to get bit by this and really be interested. But I think to them
it's still something to do with that. I don't think they have a real
interest, which is a shame. So now I have you know, we
just got to If I can't grow my own, I have to find my
own. So like I'm going to have to find a new protege to go
out and get to investigate the take over for the day where I can't do
this anymore if we haven't solved it. Like, I want people in this
mystery. I want them to be a part of this. It's at the
end of the day, Matt, We're I'm just a page on this story,
this great story that's been ongoing, and I want more and more people
involved in this until we solve it. We need we need boots on the
ground. We need people involved, and if they're brought to us by a
crypted bash or a moth Man festival, have at it. I'm glad.
I'm happy. So after it's all said and done, what does the Sean
Forker legacy look like, why do you hope to have accomplished by the time
you're all done with this journey? And how do you want to be remembered.
Well, I think with everybody, I want to be the one that
solves it. I'm not going to be, but I think I would like
to be the one who does it. But you know what, I hope
people understood I was a fat kid that cared amen brother, I was a
kid that had a passion of this growing up. I started a podcast and
oh six to talk about it, and I just dedicated a lot of my
life to investigating it and you know, being out in the woods and meeting
great people. I've met so many tremendous people I never would have met if
it wasn't for this this field, and I'm thankful for that as it has
been frustrating. Absolutely it's been frustrating. But you know, looking back on
this now of twenty eight years of it, I don't regret anything. I
think they're well, you know what, I have one regret. I wish
I would have been a lot more open minded sooner and maybe that could have
led to some different results later on down the road. But aside from that
regret, I really don't have anything compelling that I wish I could have changed.
I've enjoyed it. It's been fun, and I look forward to another.
I'm still young. I'm not forty yet, so I've done this for
a long time, so I've got another fifty sixty years. I've told my
family I'm going to live till on one hundred and fifty. You got to
have goals. So if this keeps me on it right, you know,
I'm going to be you know, I might be the world's oldest sasquatch researcher
at some point. That'll be a heck of a thing to be remembered for.
Are we going to get a book by mister Shan Forkery. I've been
writing this this book now for I think five years, and I've deleted it
twice. Like I've had some good parts of it written and I've deleted it
because it's not where I wanted to go. I want it to have the
humor when you read it. I want you to read it in my voice.
I want you to have the humor and the excitement and the love because
it's gonna be not just about some of the cases. It's about the people
too. And it's about the experience. I said, it's going to be
part biography, part field research, and part you know, case studies.
Like I think it's a it's going to be unique, a unique type of
book that hopefully people add to their collection. Should I ever get it finished,
Well, sir, I hope you do, and I hope I get
an autograph copy of it. You'll you'll definitely get one. Man, it's
been a long time since we've done this. Uh, you know, I
got Sasquatch Experience with me because you just all we've been a good dude.
I think we've been uh you know, acquainted through this since the early days,
and good or bad, I've always had a respect for you. Rather
we've been on the same side of an issue or not. And it's just
good to talk to you. I've had so much fun tonight. Thank you.
Yeah for sure. Well, let everybody know where they can find you
and the Sasquatch Experience. Well, you can find me on every social media
at Sean Forker, it's my name. I don't hide behind a pseudonym or
anything. I'm an open book. And then you go to Sasquatch Experience dot
Com and get tell all our links. If you like what you hear,
subscribe. You know, it's not always for everybody, but there's something we
try to make something for everybody. We're just a little different, you know.
We try to do a little bit more news and opinion than witness interviews.
But you never know what you're going to hear when you tune in,
so it's always a good time. I got vance Nesbit, Henry May and
James Baker with me. We're a four man team, which is daunting in
itself, but Henry May there, Matt has been another name that's been around
forever, bro the Bigfoot Encyclopedia himself Elf Henry May he is and I yeah,
he's very blessed to have him around when you when I have a question,
he's always there, Dame Well, I appreciate it, Sean. And
if you've had your own experience with something you can't explain Bigfoot or otherwise,
email me at Bigfootcrossroads at gmail dot com. Check out Bigfootcrossroads dot com for
links to the social media, contact information, links to the merch everything you
need all in one place. And until next time, I remember, there's
something in the woods.