Ep:91 Monsters & Mysteries of Chestnut Ridge

So one of the aspects that really fascinates me about Bigfoot is the connection to
actual locations. There are certain regions that just seem to be these meccas of
all types of unexplained phenomenon. You don't have just a single thing taking place.
You have multiple things. You have Bigfoot, you have UFOs, you
have haunted locations in the same areas. You also have those areas all over
the United States. There's even one in Oklahoma. Last time I had Sean
Forker on as a guest, I wanted to talk to him about one of
those locations that I knew he would be familiar with, but we didn't have
time. So I've brought Sean back to talk about the infamous chestnut ridge.
Sean, welcome back to Bigfoot Crossroads. Well, thank you, Matt,
and you've picked a great place to talk about chestnuts. Chestnut ridge, chesternutridge,
chesternut ridge, chestnuts. What a crazy place, man. It doesn't
get much weirder than that. In many places, I mean, around the
country. There's a few places that you could say are areas of high stranges,
but I don't know if any of them have the concentration that the chestnut
Ridge. Does you know Westmoreland, Fayette Counties, down the southern tier PA
as it works its way into West Virginia and Maryland. It's just crazy.
And the things that happened there, man, are just no pun intended out
of this world. You know, I really had no idea the scope of
Chestnut Ridge geographically or what was actually going on there. I told you,
you know, hey, I thought there was like a couple of documentaries that
small Town Monsters. Did I know you were involved in those about Chestnut Ridge.
But there's like five or six. It's like Seth Breedlove got tons and
tons and tons of footage. It just started cranking these things out and it's
just story after story after story. If you don't mind, just first of
all, explain what Chestnut Ridge actually is. Well, you know, the
Chestnut Ridge the Twilight Zone of PA. It's also the Laurel Highlands, which
is the westernmost ridge of the Alleghanies Mountains that goes into southwest PA and into
northern West Virginia. It's just endless hills and mountains and it's it's just an
amazing place. And I can't tell you why this area has such a proclivity
to the weirdness that happens, but it happens, and it happens frequently,
and I wish I could tell you it has slowed down, but it has
not. Now you said about Seth Breedlove and small town monsters, you know,
really diving in there. It's really close to where they're headquartered out of
too, So that helps, Like, why go across the country chasing monsters
when you could lean in next door and just jump right into one of the
most concentrated areas of strangeness on the East coast. And it's probably it's about
a seventy five mile range, probably more of when you start figure factoring it
going up northernly, but it's it's a long slew of mountains. And the
other thing is, you know, the Laurel Highlands. There's also some caverns
that pepper through there which have had some activity over the years. When I
was out filming Sasquatch on Earth, the first season of Saasquatch on Earth The
Ridge, which is all about the Chestnut Ridge, we had learned some interesting
factoids about some creatures that were said to inhabit Sometimes, you know, we
hear about these creatures popping in and up out of nowhere. You know what
we hypothesize, Well, how do we know they're not popping it up out
of nowhere out of a entrance or exit to a cave that they know that
we just don't know where it's at. You know, sometimes we don't get
into these cave systems and map them ount and walk through them for a menagerie
of reasons. Safety probably the predominant one. But if they know of all
these entries and exits of these caves, of this cavern system, you know
that subterranean, it could be a subterranean highway for them to be able to
move across that region virtually undetected until they choose to you know, surface and
do their thing. Yeah. Something that interested me right off the bat with
it was that the area, I guess is primarily limestone, but then you
also have lots of quartz, You've got lots of coal mines, lots of
caves, and I mean whenever you start mentioning those things, along with the
waterways in the area and the springs and everything else, I mean, those
are like just going down the checklist of things that you often find in areas
of high strangeness. I don't know if they have anything to do with it,
but it's certainly there. Well, you know, we speculate that that
quurtz has a lot to do with it, something about how that mineral retains
energy. And it's remarkable about how many places you see that there's paranormal activity
that's also a high concentration of quartz. So it makes sense that it would
be there. This high strangeness occurs for what reason. We have no idea.
It's just speculation, but you know, we start drawing parallels geologically.
You know, you have to look at these things. You talk about waterways,
you know, right there, it's a good source of navigation and food.
Right waterways usually lead to things needed to drink, things needing to migrate
through that water, such as fish or you know, there's food sources,
and what better way to you know, sustain oneself than follow these food sources,
using these caverns for shelter, and go virtually across that entire region undetected.
There's also, uh, you know, train systems that run through there,
so there's also man made navigational routes that you know, oftentimes we associate
with sasquatch, these train and not recently with these hoaks videos. But there's
an area on the Chestnut Ridge called Gray Station. I've been there several times
and it's an area of high strange. It's one of my favorite encounters stories
come from that region. There's a woman that was out one morning on her
morning jog and she sees a sasquatch throw a deer over its shoulder and walk
off along the train tracks into the woods. It just picked the deer up
from alongside the train tracks. Now think about that. In this particular area
near the Torrents Hospital, there's a soybean field, there's train tracks, then
there's woods, okay, and now you have these deer that are obviously going
to feed on the soybean right or what else is other vegetation is over there?
They get hit by these trains. Now, Bigfoot's got itself a hot
free lunch with expending little energy, goes over, picks up the roadkill or
the train kill, throws it over its shoulders, and disappears for a nice
hot breakfast. I was going to ask you, which I mean, you
kind of gave away the answer right there, But what is your theory about
the association between Bigfoot and train tracks? Do you think they're just using it
as a food or a travel route, or maybe a little bit of both.
I think a combination of both. I mean, you know, you
factor where these these trains, uh, you know, train tracks are placed
usually in wooded you know, uh, farmish areas, right, rural areas.
Right. They cut through the terrain. Again, not often frequented by
people unless you're a passenger on the train, and not a lot of people
travel by rail through these places anymore. It's really more for the shipping of
goods. So unless you're an employee, like, what are your odds of
being discovered? And like I said, the accidents that happened along these things
with the deer, you know, they're just getting picked off left and right.
You know, when you're a creature that depends on those types of food
for survival and you can get it with expanding less energy, I would be
going that route as well. Right. Also again an area where you can
get through undetected. So I think there's a multitude of reasons why train tracks
are popular. I think that's one of the reasons. And you know,
I think there's an untapped area for us to do some research into that.
Matt have there been how many sightings have happened via train and how many sightings
are still out there that we could potentially solicit from people who have worked in
the rail system that have seen some things that you know, haven't made itself
to the public yet. Yeah. Years ago, I was in contact with
a guy who worked as a train engineer, and he said he people see
crazy stuff all the time on the railroad tracks. And I believe I don't
think it was him, but he did tell me about someone that he talked
to that worked for the train system, another engineer that had a big foot
sighting one night. And so, you know, I think about train tracks
As a little kid, I like to walk the train tracks. There was
some train tracks by, you know, one of my mom's old apartments,
and I used to walk the train tracks up at the lake. I had
walked train tracks. Other little kids were always walking the train tracks. You
find all kinds of cool stuff along train tracks, you know, just trash
and the breeze that falls off the trains, and then also the way that
they cut through the landscape like that. A lot of those train kills happened
because whenever you have those cutthroughs like that and the trees are gone, it
allows for other vegetation to grow on the outskirts of the train tracks, and
that's the type of vegetation that deer and other smaller animals oftentimes feed on.
Right, So, you know, it just makes sense if you think like
a booger, you know, if you think like Bigfoot, to use these
train tracks for all they can, or even just a form of entertainment,
or just walking along them to see what they can find. You know,
I can see numerous reasons why they would be drawn to these train tracks,
right, And if it was just the train tracks, that would be one
thing. But you know, you go to an area that where, at
least to my knowledge that I know, the first report that I know of
came from nineteen forty five in that area from two hunters, and then you
don't go and get another bigfoot sighting in that area till like nineteen sixty nine.
That is in a database. Now. I'm pretty sure if I looked
at doctor Paul Johnson's books or Stan Gordon's I could probably find some earlier cases.
But the one that comes to my mind was nineteen forty five. There's
a couple guys out hunting that hear a strange, strange cry, and it
attacked the hunting dogs. And they didn't see the animal that attacked it,
but they heard the strange cry. And then you go years without anything,
and it's funny how all of a sudden nineteen seventy here's where the sightings start
happened. And there's that big flap in seventy three, and then another flap
I would say probably in nineteen eighty one. But what's interesting about the seventy
three flap is that's the one that's the most famous because that's the one that's
also associated with a lot of UFO activity, right yeh. And the Westmoreland
County UFO flap of Bigfoot flap in nineteen seventy three was a big event.
That one started getting national attention from the newspapers. The seventies in general were
probably the hottest decade for bigfoot, if not bigfoot and UFO activity in the
United States. That's the million dollar question, why is it? Why do
you think? Well, you're now coming off the Patterson film, and the
Patterson film was finally out there for a little while. I think it,
you know, unlike today, I don't think we appreciate how long it took
news to travel, right, You know, you don't have instant access to
information. Is it just didn't happen. You still had party lines and telephone,
CB radios, had wires, you had you know, the methods of
communication were not as evolved as they are today, so it took a lot
longer for news to spread. But also in the seventies in Arkansas, you
have something else going on too, write the legend of Buckie Creek. You
have the Falk monsters sure starting to make its way around. Now what's interesting
is nineteen seventy three and Buggy Creek, you don't have stories of UFOs associated
with the Bigfoot creature, right, And for the longest time, it was
always funny to me how it really seemed like UFO and Bigfoot was insular to
Pennsylvania. And then also, you know, in the two thousands, late
nineties, two thousands, when shows like Sightings and stuff take off, you
start getting more reports of high strangers. But for the longest time, it
was really perceived to be an East Coast thing with the Bigfoot UFO flap and
the Bigfoot UFO connection. But that's because in nineteen seventy three and Stan Gordon.
He says, so in Invasion on Chestnut Ridge, you know, the
small Town Monsters movie, and just a general conversation, I was Stan if
he wasn't getting a phone call about a UFO report, he was getting a
phone call about a bigfoot. And they weren't just coming in from because he
had a hotline going. They weren't coming in from just people. He was
getting phone calls from law enforcement to go and check this out. Yeah,
that's crazy. So it was taken a lot seriously, a lot more serious
than it was than it would be today. Yeah, you know, think
about putting that situation in nineteen seventy three in the middle of twenty twenty three.
I think about that, Now, how many years has it been?
You know, this year would technically be what fifty years of the flap?
Yeah, fifty years of the flap, And well, Chuck, nobody's made
a big deal about that. I think we should jump on that one,
buddy. Fifty years of the flap and we haven't had another incident like that
of such you know, profound impact. If you put that event into today,
I think it would be taken a lot more differently. You know,
just sitting here thinking, I wonder how much of the stuff going on in
Pennsylvania boosted those numbers of the seventies. It would be interesting to see how
many reports came from outside of Pennsylvania during the seventies, and I'd have to
take a look, but I can tell you there's at least hundreds of reports
that came out of the Chestnut Ridge region themselves through the entirety of the nineteen
seventies, at least probably one hundred in nineteen seventy three. Well, I
remember in you know, one of those documentaries I'm pretty sire it with Stan
Gordon that said, you know, the UFO reports of seventy three started January
first and continued until the last day of the year. Just yeah, every
day a year, for sure. That's crazy, man, that's crazy.
What's crazy to me is thinking about trying to investigate on that level and there's
no handbook for that, no, so you Stan is just out there.
Really, when you think of a pioneer, you know, you get all
these big names out there, but Stan Gordon's really often overlooked, I feel
as an investigator when he was really a pioneer and a lot of this,
people weren't thinking about bigfoot UFO connections. People were afraid to even talk about
bigfoot back in that time. So the people that were out investigating that were
really kind of serious researchers. Now, imagine being the guy that's also going
to say, well, you know what, I'll do you one better.
I'll investigate your bigfoot, but I'll investigate your UFOs too, and so he
you know, it would probably be very easy for Stan to be laughed at
by people and to be not taken seriously, considering it was a lot more
conservative back then than it is today. But he's managed to do that now
for over fifty years, and he hasn't given up yet. No, he's
eighty one years old. Eighty one, yeah, wow, and he's still
sharp as a deck, still sharp. And I just outside of Pennsylvania and
that East coast, I don't think he gets enough for respect that he deserves
for the work that he's done out there. And you know, he is
very private about it too. He shares the outcomes, but he doesn't share
a lot of the information with just anybody. You have to really earn your
things. I was familiar with who he was and everything because of the Bigfoot
world, and I guess his connection is it, But I didn't really have
any idea how in depth and how long his research had been going on,
especially with the UFO stuff in Pittsburgh, Right, Yeah, I mean,
in my mind, anything related to the theory of Bigfoot being connected to UFOs
or whatever has happened since I started researching, you know, Like that's how
that's why everybody thinks, you know, whenever they hear something for the first
time, that's the first time it's ever been said. But to hear that
he was like hearing reports noticing patterns back in the seventies. Even Yeah,
well it was it was. Doctor Paul Johnson is a man that virtually is
not heard of by anybody who's a good man, a decent man. He's
a retired chemistry professor from Duquesne University. Him, Joan Jeffers, is somebody
nobody hears about, and somebody I would really like to when I finish my
book, there's going to be a good portion of it about Joan. Joan
was a nurse who investigated UFO and Bigfoot activity in the seventies. She was
a woman, and unfortunately, I think just through the years you know,
doctor Paul has referenced her quite a bit, but nobody has referenced her work.
And she was a very important component of Pennsylvania Bigfoot in Pennsylvania UFO research
because she was at boots on the ground investigator and she was one of the
first women that were actually they're doing this, a very professional woman at that
What was your first introduction to Chestnut Ridge and the stuff that was going on
there, Well, it was in the books Sasquatch, the Apes among Us.
There's a chapter called Eastern Action where he references Stan Gordon in there.
But then when I became old enough to use the internet, right, I
started, you know, putting in searches for Bigfoot UFOs. Of course Dan
was on Unsolved Mystery. But even then outside of Kexsburg, PA, when
you're seven eleven years old, you know, one hundred and twenty miles away,
it might as well be California, right, you know, like Pennsylvania,
you don't have that concept of distance, and it's a far drive.
It's a far drive now, and I know how far, one hundred and
twice miles. And when I discovered that this stuff wasn't just happening in the
Pacific Northwest. It was happening at home and close to home. It was
a game changer for me. So I got online, started researching and connecting
with people, and I connected with Stan and the early late nineties, early
two thousands, probably about ninety ninety two thousand. What happened is there was
a fireball, a media rite that went over Bowman Field and landed in a
field not far from where I was visiting a lady friend. You know,
I was a teen, sixteen, seventeen years old, she was babysitting.
You couldn't let your imagination, folks. I was a younger studleyer fork chop
and I remember that thing making an impact and it was so violent it threw
me across the room. Wow, it's like a sonic boom. That's how
impactful this this was. And no hyperbole there, Like, we were really
close to that impact of where that that struck. And so I contacted Stan
to see if he had any idea because we wanted to go up pretty far
and we were turned around by people that you know, you guys don't need
to be up here. And of course when you're that age, you're like,
oh, something weird happened was at a UFO or something like that here.
He just you know, turned out to be a basic media right right,
sure or whatever, so not as interesting. But Stan remailed me back
telling me exactly what had happened. I shared my experience, and then later
when I started getting active in the bigfoot research, I came across Stan again.
Eric Altman, my mentor, who's a guy that's pretty you know,
well known in bigfoot circles and you know, for PA Bigfoot research. He
was kind of a mentor or Stan Gordon or Stan Gordon was his mentor.
He was a mentee, and Eric was my mentor. So Stan was kind
of my mentor's mentor. So I got the relationship started and built for that.
And then as Stan got to trust me, he would throw me some
reports and some information every once in a while that he wouldn't, you know,
just give off to anybody else. He's a good dude, really nice
guy, very passionate about what he does, and he just doesn't share it
easily. And some people are a little off put by that, but you
know, it came to him. It's really his what to do with it,
right. I'm just thankful he does share things with me. And others
when when he can You mentioned the media, right. One of the things
that kind of interests me, but I've always been on the fence about is
the loud noises, the atmospheric booms, And that was another thing that was
that was mentioned. Yeah, the noises there, Yeah, no definitive reasoning
I rationalist to why they happened. But also there were stories from Fayette County,
which is real close to the Westmoreland area of a dragon, a dragon
being seen on the Chestnut Rid a dragon and they talk about it just very
briefly, an invasion on Chestnut Ridge. But yeah, there was a dragon
observed. Let me pull it up and see if I can find out exactly
what year. It's just fascinating stuff. So here you go. March eighteenth,
twenty twelve. The Fayette County Dragon. March eighteen, twenty twelve,
in the southern part of Fayette County, a man was walking his dog in
a rural location at about eleven forty five pm. He was in the front
yard and away from any lights when his attention was drawn to look upwards after
hearing a woshing sound coming from overhead flying above him at a distance of about
fifty five feet was a large flying creature that looked like a dragon. As
the flying creature pass over an automatic dusk to dawn light, the witness was
able to get a good look at the strange flying animal. The body was
about twenty two feet long with a wingspan of eighteen feet wide, and looked
to be shiny with almost a reflective body with no scales. The color was
dark, possibly brown and red, similar to auburn brown. At the end
of the tip of the wings, there appeared to be talon like fingers of
about three to four number. The arms of the wing structure appeared muscular.
The wings were quite thick, not like skin. There appeared to be a
rear fin on both sides of its body, and the creature displayed at arrow
head shaped tail, so an arrowhead shaped tail. It was weird wording there,
I'm sorry. The witness also saw what appeared to be two extended rear
legs. The creature had a cone shape around the head and it stopped flat
on the base of a neck, so it obviously was just recently neutered.
So that's your creature, as everyone should have. You know, your dragon
spader, neuter get your dragon Spader neutered. That's right. The oddest physical
fears, if the cone wasn't odd enough, was that the witness mentioned to
me that the mouth and eyes were illuminated with a very ominous orange glow.
As the creature flew over a tree at the bottom of the yard moved off
in the distance, the fellow heard a deep, throaty sound similar to the
fog horn on a boat. The entire observation lasted about twenty seconds. Now
think about that. Twenty seconds doesn't seem like a lot of time. Oh,
it's a long time. It's a long time. If you and I
sat here in silence for twenty seconds, people would be like, what the
hell's going on? Yeah? Did the show end? Yeah, so twenty
second is a long time. There was another mention of a guy that saw
something. You know. It was during a segment where they were talking about
thunderbirds, but basically said it looked like a flying manta ray in the sky.
Yeah. Now, launch Strickler from fantoms and monsters. These flying rays.
For probably I want to say twenty ten to probably twenty eighteen, we
were getting reports. He was getting reports. I say we because I belonged
to his research group of these flying rays pretty consistently, a couple times a
year, we were getting reports of these, And to me, that's a
strange anomaly in itself, Like, is there some sort of flying ray?
Like would it be beyond the realm of some sort of flying fish? I
mean that's a long way from the ocean. Yeah. But if it's a
species we haven't documented, is it that unreasonable to assume it could exist?
I mean, I don't know. I feel like we've just thrown ourselves down
the rabbit hole of weirdness of Chestnut Ridge already. You're right, and we
haven't even talked about the you know, the Bigfoot, the lady shot outside,
or trailer that exploded into light. Let's take some baby steps, Okay,
let's start with the ambulance drivers seeing the bigfoot cross the road. And
that was recent, that wasn't even that far in the past. I actually,
if you go watch that episode Sasquatch on Earth, I don't know what
the episode's titled specifically, but it was Eric's sister was one of the ambulance
personnel that witnessed the road crossing. You were at the spot where it happened,
yep, I was at the spot where it happened obvious for reasons.
You know, they're they're showing the side of the road. You it's got
some crazy traffic. You guys almost got hit by a car or a truck
driving by a thing. Yeah, you hear me mention that. I think,
sir jee, we're going to get pecked off this road. It's a
it's it's a frequented road most of the time. There are some times it's
it's just desolate, but there it's a it's not a road I would I
would play around on put it that way, yeah, because I mean there's
hardly any shoulder right there, uh to speak of, and it's it's a
pretty steep embankment right there on that side of the road. Yeah, did
you did they show me trying to get up it, because I failed,
miserable trying to get up there. I did not see that. I just
saw you crossing the road and it took you about twenty steps or so.
And they said that this thing crossed the road in about three steps. If
you listen to me, I really butchered the math because I wasn't paying attention.
I just guessed him. Because I really wasn't counting my steps. I
was just like you've seen the traffic on that road. I was just trying
to get across the street by another car, and it was it's dangerous,
and like I'm laughing about it because if you got to go back and watch
that video, like how many times we almost get hit just trying to reenact
it, or you know, just walking from the vehicles to the area where
the encounter happened, and like you said, where the thing crosses the road,
like it's a field on one side and then the embankment over into you
know, another wooded rural area. But that embankment is not an easy embankment.
It's steep. Nobody in their right mind should attempt that in a hope
situation or what like. It's dangerous. Well that's kind of what I was
getting at because they said that, you know, I believe it was Eric
who had put out flyers in the area some shop nearby and talk to somebody
who said that somebody else had reported a road crossing right in that same general
area. So you're thinking, like, oh, well, maybe it's somebody
you know, trying to be funny, because there is a house right there.
I did see that there is. But then whenever you see like the
logistics and the direction it was crossing, where it's not crossing towards the house,
it's crossing away. I wouldn't have the guts to dress up in a
costume and try to make it up that embankment with no guarantee that I'm not
going to fall right in front of the vehicle coming at me. No.
Sure, And I'm sure the people who live in that house are just so
happy that that busy roads there. I bet you it's a pain in the
ass to get in out of your house. Oh for sure. For sure,
is there like a pet cemetery nearby or a little gauge as you know,
we were saying, like I would roll out hoax them immediately, because
you know, just for safety factors, it'd be an incredibly stupid maneuver for
somebody to try and pull one over on somebody is particularly at the time that
this event happened. Also it's emergency personnel, Like I just don't know,
like the event of that being a likelihood, I would I would say misidentification
well before I would say anything about a hoax. Yeah, like I said,
I would roll I would I would say misidentification, but even then I
would still put my trust in what these folks see, you know, the
professional people. No reason to make it up, No, you know,
really not. So there was a house right there. Did you ever talk
to the people that lived at the house. I did not. I I
came into this one, this was already investigated. I was brought on scenes
to kind of do the reenactment and to ask some questions. While we were
there. The homeowners weren't available to nor do I know if they actually went
to talk to the homeowners about the situation. And I don't even know if
you think they would even be aware of it, you know what I mean,
Like it's one of those things that's so rare that local people would know
that this happened in their neighborhood. Like, I don't know about you.
I might go up to the door and say, hey, folks, you
got some strange shit going on around your house, because I think you just
said a Sam squidch, you know, running across the street in front of
you. That's me, But I don't know how many other people would do
that, right, I mean, here in Oklahoma, I just make the
natural assumption that like Oh, so the Bigfoot was messing around at that house
and probably looking through the windows and messing with the garbage, and that's probably
what's there. I say that, But when I was going up to the
ridge with Dave and Cindy Draguson, both who have passed away, we had
stopped got stopped by some folks as we were going up the ridge and they
asked us what we were doing. We told them what we were out here,
and you know what our whole purpose was out there. They lived out
that way, and they just talk to us plainly like, oh, yeah,
we hear these things all the time. They hear the vocalizations of these
creatures all the time. Dave and I just thought that was outstanding that,
you know, we're going up here to investigate some sighting reports and they do
some night recon and we just get flagged by these folks wondering what all this
whole group of strange people is going up the road past their house and to
them as second nature, like, oh, yeah, we know these things
exist. So it's like some of the locals are very knowledgeable about the things
that are residing on the ridge. They may not know what they are or
may not you know, have put a face to the identity. But when
we told them what we were doing, they were very believable and they were
very like, oh yeah, we hear that all the time. What are
some of the more like uh, stand out bigfoot stories of the area that
you can remember? Well in the seventies near the Gray Station, that same
area. I was telling you there's trailer park that was back there and one
night, you know, somebody residing one of those trailers hurt some commotion and
a bigfoot had ripped the electrical panel off the side of their house. Their
electrical service ripped it off the side of their trailer home, like the weather
head, like the whole metallic box just ripped it right off the right off
the side of the trailer. Wow. Not only was there a flap in
nineteen seventy three, like I told you, but like from nineteen eighty two
to eighty four, there's a ton of recent eighty one to eighty four is
a ton of sightings that also happened in that general vicinity. So something like
and I wish I could tell you why what part of that? What was
going on at that time? It was like stranger things shit think about that
you know, you're talking about the electrical box, and then they made mention
of you know, electric lines and power substations and things like that being associated
with sightings of Bigfoot and UFOs and everything else. So my good friend Bob
Domingoz kind of came to a realization a few years back and mentioned this to
me, and it's you know, in the Bigfoot community, we hear a
lot about infrasound. I myself have experienced symptoms while out in the field.
I have to we go to infrasound because a lot of us in terms of
research, are out there looking for a physical being and we know that there
are other biological creatures out there that use infrasound. So the theory is that
Bigfoot could possibly be using infrasound as some sort of mechanism and we're feeling the
effects of that. Well, Bob pointed out that from the pair normal research
side, the symptoms of EMF are pretty much identical to the symptoms of infrasound
exposure. Whenever you start talking about EMF, now you're bringing up electrical boxes
being torn off something. You're talking about these power substations that are emitting a
huge amount of MF. I mean, I wonder if there's some connection there
in terms of Bigfoot. Maybe they're sensive to electromagnetic frequencies. Maybe they can
emit it their themselves, because I mean, everything has an electrical frequency that's
living. It just makes me wonder, especially with the story of pulling the
electrical box off. So that happened August twenty fifth, seventy three women in
a trailer court saw a huge black creature around seven feet tall, rip open
an electrical box attached to a trailer. A woman resident screened, and the
creature fled the area, left behind three toad footprints, three toad footprints,
three toad prints, just like Boggy Creek, right, Yeah, you know,
you start going around the seventies. For some reason, these three toad
creatures are seen. Now. I was talking to Matt Arner last night and
he's wondering that maybe they're not three toad they're just three toad that leave an
impression and they found a way to walk safer on their feet, especially through
treacherous terrain. So they're not going to you know, break appendages or expose
anything to something venomous or harmful that could you know, hurt them. So
it's just an interesting hypothesis he posts, is that maybe they just walk a
little differently or in print a little differently because of the terrain or area they
happen to be walking in. That's something that a lot of people tend to
forget, is that, you know, you talk about prints and track impressions,
that's not necessarily the shape of the foot. That's just you know,
right, the movement of the foot impression it was left right. I think
that's a really interesting theory to me too, And it was one of the
first times somebody had particularly brought that one up to me, And it's something
to consider, particularly in the South where these things are going through the you
know, the swamps right where you know, an exposed pinky toe could be
the difference between life or death with something getting a hold of your biting it
or you know, and and veminating you or what have you. Not that
much different in certain areas of Pennsylvania either, with the different types of venomous
snakes that we have. So maybe they just learned to walk a little safer.
Just something to think about, right, But the fact that this thing
ripped the electrical panel off, just the concentration is specifically because of the concentration
of events that happened in that area from the seventies into the eighties. Like
if again, if it was like certain parts of PA where you get like
a bigfoot sighting every ten to fifteen years, it's one thing, but you're
talking about hundreds of reports and that ten year span that's extremely irregular. That
is not normal and by any standard of any measurement of data we have for
bigfoot sightings across the board. Give me another area that's had a high concentrations
of sightings like that consistently for that long of a time. Even foul Arkansas
where we talk about the Buggy Creek Monster. Yeah, it's had a decent
amount of sightings from the nineteen oh five to today, but they're not concentrated
like they are in this particular region of Pennsylvania. No, not at all.
And to keep in mind that you're talking about you're still talking probably fifteen
to twenty reports a year that happened from that place that we know about.
That's people reporting them. It was so many different outlets, either through Facebook
pages or emails or websites, you have no real way of knowing how many
reports are coming in on a daily basis anymore. I mean, there's no
way to even come up with a true number. But for the sake of
argument, what percentage of do you actually think make it to the internet and
get reported. Well, probably, and I think that would change. I
think a year ago, i'd probably say maybe five percent of the sightings that
happen actually make themselves to us. Now I'm talking about the entirety of since
they've happened, right, not a year the entirety. But now, because
TV is making it a little bit more cooler, I think you might have
maybe about twenty percent of sightings that are reported now because if you think about
it through the different outlets, they are reported more frequently. But still I
still think there's a ton of reports out there that don't happen because people are
still afraid to share what they see. Not everybody shares that security that they're
not going to be made fun of and called a loser, an idiot,
or a freak. You know, that's still a scary thing for some people
to make that leap, particularly people that experience these things back in the day
when it still was very taboo. And the sad thing is those folks are
dying out. Recently on Facebook, there's been a it's just a screenshot basically
where somebody's gone to the BFRO website and captured the report table for state by
state as it is current and posting that and asking you know, how accurate
do you think this is? Well, I can tell you it's not at
all, not at all. Does that doesn't take a consideration what's in flats
right right behind the scenes database that we don't get to see. How many
reports that are there that are just haven't even been vetted yet or gone through
or posted for public consumption. So right away we already know that number is
not true. But also when you look at the other regional websites, the
PA Bigfoot Society, there's five six hundred reports that we probably have taken since
it's exception in two thousand and going back and looking at historical records of bigfoot
settings in the BFROS is one hundred and twenty seven. Yeah, that's not
right, that's not accurate. I mean, just using myself as an example,
whenever I had my sighting, I did fill out a report. It's
on Bobby schwartz old website Bigfoot Encounters but that's the only place I reported it.
I didn't send it to the VFRO. I didn't send it to any
other database because I was like, well, I already reported it, so
there's no need to report it anywhere else. But you know, bf gets
the recognition because they've been around since nineteen ninety five. Sure, and they
were on finding Bigfoot. You know, that was the whole marketing behind the
BFRO. But like you said, we both know that the reports that get
made public and posted publicly on the BFRO website is not by any means their
entire database or their log of reports that they're still currently going through. And
then on top of that, that's just one website. There's other websites out
there with reporting databases that include reports that aren't on BFRO. Right and have
The Bigfoot Packing Project, Yeah, I am so thankful for that. I
hope it continues to grow. I think that's a wonderful resource. The Bigfoot
Mapping Project, I am too. The only concern I have is particularly in
PA, depending on where they're getting the data from. The concern I always
had is that a lot of the data that was taken from the Pennsylvania Bigfoot
Society database. You know, we never got authorization with those witnesses to share
those on anything besides the PA Bigfoot Society website. Oh yeah, so now
we're taking witness information that you know should be in public domain. I get
that, it's it's a technicality that bothers me because those areas, if not
vetted by the right people. You're putting a placemark in somebody's backyard, right
without thinking that Pennsylvania is not like a lot of other states. Pennsylvania is
a lot of private property. It's not a lot of state property. And
there's a lot of rules and regulations that go with trespass, and you could
be putting yourself in sticky situations if you're not careful about the information that you're
posting. And if you're doing a generalization, that's fine, But I really
feel that the specificity of it is what's going to get us in trouble because
that information was never meant to be mass posted out like that. Because the
questions very vague, do you mind if we share this information on our website?
Now, go ahead? What information? I don't think anybody at that
point saying you're going to put their home address out on the internet, right.
So that's where I get a little I get a little taken aback by
the mapping projects. But they're very important tools, I think, because this
goes back to and it's actually critical to what we're talking about here in the
Chestnut Ridge. When I founded the Keystone Bigfoot Project in twenty twelve, one
of the things we wanted to do was we used Google Earth right as our
resource, and we mapped all the Bigfoot sightings we had in our databases on
Google Earth. What we wanted to do was going be able to filter that
out further by time of year, well, filter it by year, by
decade, by moon phase, by weather conditions, Like there's a lot of
data points you could extrapolate there and show in the you know, query that
data, pull up a couple of keywords, and have that information right in
front of you. And that was what we wanted to do. Do you
know how hard that is? I do because I was part of a project
that was also wanting to do that at one point time, and we were
like it was incredibly hard. Yeah, so you know, like it's damn
near impossible. And at that time, the tools weren't out there, like
there are today, like twenty twelve doesn't seem like that long ago. But
think about it. In the technology eleven years ago, technology is a lot
different than it was eleven years ago. Oh there's been a huge jump,
right, So it's a lot less manual now, a lot more automatic.
But we were trying to do that with the Pennsylvania sightings, and you know
what was interesting what we found, And this is something I found back when
I had my old map with the pushbins in it. Whereas this this large
swath of Pennsylvania which runs from that Chestnut Ridge through the if you pull up
Pennsylvania right up that swash like right through the middle, and it narrows right
up into New York where all the Bigfoot, the frequent Bigfoot activity is.
So it goes from the Chestnut Ridge up through Clearfield, over through Lacombing,
McKee, Bradford Counties, Tioga, a little bit over towards the eastern part
of the state, and then right up in the New York where it funnels
through and down into West Virginia. So it was just really interesting to see
how that came to life on the maps. It was almost like a funnel,
huh. In a way, like an elephant trump funnel cloud that went
right up, straight through. And that's only with what I considered shit data
from north, north, Central and Eastern PA. Because up until I was
really investigating, there was a couple investigators joe byelo Earl and Pat Dundre,
so three people for the entirety of the northeast, and nobody was reporting things
very often. It's a very conservative part of the state. So we had
to do boots on the ground, something Matt Arner and I are still doing
today to get big Foot sightings out of those areas. We're starting to get
reports from places that, you know, people have never talked to anybody about
this stuff now, so as bigfoot what has become more popular in pop culture,
we're starting to get a lot of that information in to enhance and enrich
these databases so we can get a little bit more accurate reads and accurate ideas
of maybe, you know, are there better times to deploy ourselves to particularly
get you know, better evidence. I've talked to a lot of witnesses on
this podcast who have never reported their siding. Well, it's a trust thing,
man, You've got to build trust, right, and yeah, it's
hard to do. And then a lot of people that do report their sidings
that I mean, they're never contacted by an investigator or they never see their
siding actually get posted anywhere. Then you have people that just turn to social
media Facebook for stints and find a bigfoot group and they might share it in
there eventually in the comments section, but they don't really think about officially reporting
anywhere. And I think the same goes with podcasts. I think you know,
they come on the podcast and share their story and they think, okay,
well that's that's good enough. Well we have to take all this data,
we get mad, and we still use it right using our own method
of sorting out what's good and what's bad. I think we still keep the
data point, we just kind of put it off into another side, like
this is an anecdotal report, this is actually more of a resource report,
you know, kind of back and forth. And then of course, you
know, when they're bullshit, you call it bullshit. And I think sometimes
you know, that's where it gets hard from putting my investigator's cap on and
through that investigator lens, like, yeah, so much of you wants to
believe everybody, but you just know in your heart of hearts that that's not
always going to be the case. Sometimes there are just going to be bad
reports, Right, what do you do with those bad rebuilds? Are you
irresponsible if you just throw them away? Or you know, do you still
keep up just to have them. That's when I was just talking with Rick
Fisher, David Spinx and some guys at dinner when we were down at the
Albatwitch Festival. I'm name dropping a lot, but these are names that people
don't hear about, and these are people that are really important to investigating because
they've been doing it for over twenty years. And you know, some of
those guys have had the same prome for twenty years. Well, you keep
a hold of it, you know, whether it's good or bad. You
still put it out there and you let the people for themselves decide what's good
or bad. To me. I don't know if that's you know, a
real good process, but I guess it's good if you don't want to hurt
anybody's feelings. I mean, it's such a double edged sword though, you
know, because if you put it out for public consumption, for instance,
people can take that information and fabricate their own story for whatever purpose, and
I've said many times we've created the world's greatest guide to hoaxing now with podcasts
and everything else. The only thing that makes the difference is our you know,
our ability to discern bullshit, right, but without without keeping the data.
You don't throw away data. That's that's how you find the patterns.
But then if people start using that data to create new false data, then
patterns emerged that are false patterns. Yep, you're running down the rabbit hole.
I mean we've been Yeah, we've been chasing that tell forever. Now
so again no, but you know this all relates to We could just take
this entire conversation and rope it back into what we were talking about. On
the Chestnut Ridge. You had hundreds of reports coming in that was being discerned
by Stan Gordon and the folks investigating and what happens. Would this story be
as dramatic if Stan Gordon said, well, this is bull I'm not going
to put it anywhere. No, not at all. It's become part of
that lore, right, And you know, with lore, good or bad,
there's always that point. I think with everything we do that there is
up to people individually to call a certain amount of bullshit, right, Like,
it's up to you to really decide what you want to believe. But
it gets really dangerous when you're really looking for factual information to It's why I
kind of abandoned the Keystone Bigfoot project. It became hard to discern what's good
data and bad data. And how do you display that? As you talk
about that witness that gets frustrated because they reported it and put it out there,
nobody posted it. Well, maybe somebody that posted because they thought you
were full of shit, But you don't want to hear that, and that's
not something you'd want to tell somebody. But that's always the potentiality you have
to think about. You and I might look at a report and see two
different things. Matt case In point. In the Facebook group I have for
this very podcast, it's not a big group or anything. It's just a
place where I can post my thoughts and stuff I run across or whatever to
people that might be interested. But I pose the question, you know,
what percentage of reports do you think are true? Are actual sightings that people
had not just made up or misidentifications or whatever. And the results the responses
that people gave were really interesting the people who I knew were actual field researchers
and investigators or whatever that's worth, all of them were saying ten percent or
less. All the people that were what I call bigfoot enthusiasts just maybe listeners
of podcasts things like that, they were all like ninety percent seventy five percent.
And it's really interesting to see that divide. How researchers see that maybe
ten percent at best ninety percent being misidentified animals or humans, or people just
lying and making up a story for some reason whatever. But as a former
investigator, to me, that ten percent is amazing, and that's more than
enough to go on. It is that ten percents a lot. I mean,
so even if those you know, hundreds of reports that came in in
seventy three, even if ninety percent of them are just bullshit, that's still
an amazing number and a lot of sightings. It goes back to that John
Green quote, right like, even at the end of the day, if
all this was a bull crap and one sighting proved to be real, it
was still worth it. Yeah, I'm paraphrasing, that's not his direct quote,
but like he you know, I think he surmises sasquad shapes among us
with that, with that very thought, and it's something that I hold,
you know, value, even if one report has proven to be real that
was this has been worth it. And yeah, we've shifted through a lot
of crap. But it's what makes this amazing, It's what makes this journey
incredibly fulfilling, is that you think about that, Matt, We're part of
a group of a handful of people in the population that goes out and is
part of this, a part of people humanity. That said, you know
what, we don't care if you think we're crazy. There's a mystery to
be solved here. Good or bad. Hoapes are real. Like, we've
spent the time and you know, put the effort and energy in to talk
about it, bring it to attention, and to create a call to action
that take this a lot more seriously than brushing it off as you know Saturday
morning cartoons or you know, Friday night b movies. You know, we've
done our due diligence, you know. So yeah, I guess when some
people get upset, people call themselves experts, but you think about that,
we have done the expert work. Yeah, you know, if you go
by the FBI definition of what an expert is. There are many people in
this field that have earned the right to call themselves an expert. You don't
have to be an expert of something that's proven to be right, but you
could be an expert in the methodologies you used to to land it. And
I would consider I would put my investigation skills pretty much on par with criminal
investigators, because I've spent a lot of time with criminal investigators to hone my
skill on being a better investigator. I mean, I don't think anybody's an
expert on the subject, but I think there's a lot of experts on the
subject matter. No, but you know what, you say that as it
may, but there are people out there that are walking encyclopedias chapter line in
verse can tell you everything about these Bigfoot books, and those people are very
valuable. Henry may right, I could pick up a phone at any time
a day and say, Henry, I thought I heard this somewhere. What
does this sound familiar? Well for it, Chop, it's in this book,
and he'd walk me through it. Yeah, you know. So,
how do you not call someone like that an expert? You're an expert in
the literature that's out there on this. So I think we have to get
away from shying away from using some of the terms. Not that any of
us are experts, but let's not be afraid of labels. Let's just be
afraid of not being good enough to discern good reports from bad reports. And
let's just not be irresponsible and throw anything away just because on a whim that
something doesn't measure up to you know what, we're whatever, what what standard
we currently have because my standards have changed. I don't know about you,
but over the years, my standards have changed. You know me, You've
known me for twenty years. There are times I would never entertain a conversation
about a paramormal bigfoot. It would be offensive to me. And now through
over the years and the experience you get from researching, when you're left scratching
your head that says, hey, what the hell is this? You know,
I can't explain this with anything rational. That's a unique place to be
at. Coincidentally, that's about ninety five percent of what happens on the Chestnut
Ridge. I can't explain it. I was out last year with Eric Alton
and Rick Shirby his fiance now his wife, and Tommy Hoak and but my
son Adam Cox. We were out there and Rebecca is Rick's wife, had
filmed these non localized lights moving around in the trees. Nothing's creating that light
phenomenal. There's nothing on the ground I can identify. There's these three floating
forbs of light floating through the trees. Matt, I have no explanation for
it. She's got it on tape. So what's going on there? What
is I wish I did because we're not talking about like a location where it's
not like the size of somebody's backyard. It's a vast region it is,
and strange things are happening up and down this area. But why is it
the courtz deposits? Is it energy being stored and being released? Is it?
You know, we could go down, we could spend hours tripping it
up. And it still doesn't explain the Bigfoot sightings. It still doesn't explain
the dragon, which could somebody could have been in the Magic Dragon before that
happened. I don't know it. Said he was walking his dog. He
could have been doing the ganja. We don't know that. But there's a
lot of unexplained things that happen and we're limited by what we know in today's
science. And if we don't look at these things and it maybe investigate them
later where new methods and new technologies have come out to help us. You
know, we're just irresponsible. We threw them away when maybe five years from
now we might have something better. Mad that says, hey, you know
what, I know, have an answer for those damn lights. I'm kind
of at the point after all of it where I'm not so sure UFOs are
part of the phenomenon happening at Chestnut Ridge as much as maybe they're just they're
observing it like we are. Well, hey, why not. It's an
interesting place to be. It definitely needs some eyes and more attention to it.
There's an intrepid group of investigators that spend a lot of time down there.
Now, he's still got Eric Altman and Tom and those guys on the
ridge. You know, you know, far more qualified. I'll tell you
one hundred percent of the time, I'm no expert on the ridge. I'm
a special guest visitor. And I've been there a handful of times over there,
actually more than a handful of times over there. Is they've been there
quite a bit through the years, and it's a different places. There's never
been a place I've been that's given you quite the feeling you get when you're
there. It's different. It's eerie, and sometimes you wonder if it's the
mind playing tricks with you. But it's more than that. There's a feeling
you get when you're there that it's entrapping, makes you want to spend more
time there. One more thing before we cut out of here. Just a
subject, you know, one of the many things that fascinates me about Bigfoot
and also just mystifies me entirely, the eyeshine phenomenon, where people report the
Bigfoot eyes glowing red and producing their own luminescence. Basically, Yeah, Billy
Willard and I experience set on the Ridge, two independent reports contained within the
Small Town Monsters series about the Ridge where people claim to see the eyes turn
red where they weren't red before, and they were in close proximity to the
Bigfoot and actually saw the eyes as they turned red. We didn't see the
reddish color. We saw the bioluminescent kind of color as they gloss over and
shine. It wasn't red by any means. But I'll tell you as we
were leaving that area because a storm just started dropping gallons of rain on us
as we buckets of rain. As we were going through, there was a
probably a softball sized rock lobbed between myself and Billy Willard that damn near hit
me in the face. It would have broke my nose. It was a
big rock and it was lobbed between the two of us, which was kind
of even more of an epetus for us to get out of there. But
Billy Willard and I shared that experience together. He'd tell you about it,
and it wasn't anything exciting or out of this world or you know, it
wasn't a scary, scary situation. We heard some movements, aw some eyeshine,
it started pouring down rain, we decided to leave. Rock was thrown
at us, and that was kind of the end of the night because we
still had about another mile and a half to walk to the cars and the
pouring down rain. But it was definitely an evening to remember, and that
was not far away from where the lady had the electrical box ripped off a
trailer. So weird. I mean, you have like all these classic things
attributed to bigfoot activity. You know, like you're talking about the rock throwing,
different vocalizations, wood knocks, road crossings, things of that nature.
And then you also have all this high strangeness and weirdness going on in the
same area, and a few weird paranormal type bigfoot reports mixed in over the
years as well. I had a report from a very respectable researcher I've spent
a lot of time with over the years, who a couple of years ago
I think have been a couple of years ago now told me he saw a
doorway open in the woods, a portal open and closed right in front of
him. Wow, And for no, this is not somebody I'd have had
doubts in before. And he told me, And honestly I doubted him at
first, But the more I heard his story, the more I kind of
like, what the hell did he witness? What did he see? Why
of all the times he's been doing this for over thirty years, why all
of a sudden, now did he see something like this? And why am
I questioning him? You know, he's never told a story like this for
thirty years. All of a sudden something happens, and now I'm questioning him,
like, what you know what's wrong with me? This guy experienced something
he cannot explain. He's obviously stunned by it. And all I can think
of is, man, what the hell's wrong with you? You know,
as I've changed my mindset I told you over the years, because there's no
reason. What do you get out of that? Like another researcher telling a
researcher, man, I saw some shit. Would that you know? That'd
be like me telling you, man, you know what I mean, what
the hell what happened to the forker? He's done flipped his gorg. Yeah,
but it's just natural for us to do that. I mean, whenever
you have somebody that you've known for so long and okay, I can trust
this person. They're very well grounded, they don't tell me anything crazy,
Yeah, and then they come to you with something like that. I think
it's pretty natural to disbelieve them at first. Yeah. And you know,
I have a little shame about it because I'm like, man, I you
know, even having my own encounter in twenty twelve, like, I was
very reluctant to tell people about it because of how it made me feel.
And you know, here I go one of my you know, close you
know, close, you know, acquaintance of mine that did the research,
and here I am struggling to believe him when you know, I was just
in his shoes probably eight years ago, you know. So it's just a
little messed up, but it's you know, it's there. But this area
man's Chestnut Ridge, like you know, small Town Monsters has done a little
bit on it, a little bit, a lot a bit. They've done
the Invasion on Chestnut Ridge the first season of Sasquatched on Earth. But that
just tells the stories that we know about and you know, kind of illustrates
it better for an audience that needs to understand it better. But there's so
much more there that's beneath the surface that people haven't seen, and so much
more that hasn't been shared that I don't know if you could do ten seasons
on the Chestnut Ridge and it would even share all the stories of what's happened
in that place considered, you could talk to many different prominent researchers in PA
and experiencers and still get stories. But it's just insane Chestnut Ridge. It
sounds like a crazy place, and it's beautiful. It's a beautiful place and
It's not the only place out there like it. I mean, obviously,
Skinwalker Ranch is probably the most famous one, but there are these places out
there that seem to be i don't know, doorways or something where there's just
no rules. There's no rules, and we really have to think about what
the rules are anymore. Sean Parker of the Sasquatch Experience. Thank you,
sir for joining me once again and talking about Chestnut Ridge. It's always a
pleasure, my friend, to sit down and talk with you. If you've
encountered Bigfoot or something else you can explain, email me at Bigfoot Crossroads at
gmail dot com.