Ep:204 Home of the Skunk Ape

<v Speaker 1>Or last night there and it's so freaking quiet there.
<v Speaker 1>That's the quietest place in the United States. It's an
<v Speaker 1>incredible rainforest area. I was awoken by vocalizations. I woke
<v Speaker 1>up and I'm like, it's quiet. I mean, not even
<v Speaker 1>a bug farting. I mean, not a leaf falling, not
<v Speaker 1>a nothing. And I woke up and it was around
<v Speaker 1>one or so in the morning, and I'm like, why
<v Speaker 1>did I wake up? And then I heard it and
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, oh my god. I heard like twelve, twelve
<v Speaker 1>vocalizations different ones. Five of them were the same from
<v Speaker 1>the same individual, and the others were from different individuals,
<v Speaker 1>coming from all directions. It was unbelievable.
<v Speaker 2>This is Bigfoot Crossroads. My name is Matt and joining
<v Speaker 2>me is Marie Dumont, the Mid Florida Bigfoot Research Group
<v Speaker 2>and team. Marie, Man, you know you've been on my
<v Speaker 2>list of someone to have on the show for I'm
<v Speaker 2>embarrassed to say it multiple years.
<v Speaker 1>What took you so long, Matthew.
<v Speaker 2>But here we are, finally here we are. Yeah, it's
<v Speaker 2>good to talk to you. You were just talking about
<v Speaker 2>some vocalizations and the one that snagged you into this
<v Speaker 2>crazy world. How did all that happen.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, So I'll just give you a little bit of
<v Speaker 1>a background about me. I've been a paranormal investigator for
<v Speaker 1>over thirty years, so you know, I started out with
<v Speaker 1>ghost hunting. I did all that, and then I did
<v Speaker 1>UFOs and you know, aliens it all. You know, got
<v Speaker 1>into that, and then some friends of mine were into bigfoots,
<v Speaker 1>and I'm like, I don't know about bigfoot, you know.
<v Speaker 1>I was like, eh, well, my friends were into it,
<v Speaker 1>and so we started going out into the o'calan National
<v Speaker 1>Forest and so I went out with them on a
<v Speaker 1>camp out and there was like fifteen people. We all
<v Speaker 1>got together for one night. It was on a Saturday
<v Speaker 1>night Coles Nye of the Year, like in January or
<v Speaker 1>something like that. And we're freezing to death because it
<v Speaker 1>was so cold. So we're just all huddled around the campfire.
<v Speaker 1>And I walked away from the campfire because it was
<v Speaker 1>getting too hot. My friend moved away, and some other
<v Speaker 1>guy moved away. So we're all just standing together and
<v Speaker 1>all of a sudden we heard this late, crazy, loud
<v Speaker 1>and lengthy vocalization. It took something with incredible lung capacity
<v Speaker 1>in order to make a how that loud and for
<v Speaker 1>that long. So, you know, in the research the Bigfoot
<v Speaker 1>research community, people categorized that. They call that the classic
<v Speaker 1>Ohio Bigfoot call, and I think Matt Moneymaker coined that term.
<v Speaker 1>And so it just loud and lengthy and it just
<v Speaker 1>went on and on and on, just one how but
<v Speaker 1>there was no answer that was it just one loud
<v Speaker 1>and length the vocalization. And it wasn't that far away,
<v Speaker 1>maybe half a mile away if that, and we all
<v Speaker 1>just looked at each other with deer, you know, deer
<v Speaker 1>in the headlights. Look. We're like, oh my gosh, what
<v Speaker 1>was that? And that's what did it for me. I'm like,
<v Speaker 1>oh my god, they do exist, and I want to
<v Speaker 1>be the one that proves they exist in Florida, you know.
<v Speaker 1>And this is before I started my group and my team.
<v Speaker 1>You know, I was just doing this with friends, you know,
<v Speaker 1>just for fun, right, right, And so that's what got
<v Speaker 1>me hooked. Since then, you know, I decided to start
<v Speaker 1>my own group, the Mid Florida Bigfoot Research Group, And
<v Speaker 1>through the group, it was just me, you know, and
<v Speaker 1>then people started to join. And then I started going
<v Speaker 1>out with some locals who started joining my group. And
<v Speaker 1>that's how I came across the people from my team,
<v Speaker 1>my research team, and that's Mike Aguilar, Ruby, Joe Brew,
<v Speaker 1>Christina Lawhorn, Bob Smeltz, and Kaitlin Aguilar. And so we've
<v Speaker 1>been together for what five years at least at least
<v Speaker 1>and we go out in the woods every single weekend.
<v Speaker 1>And we have been for at least five years, five
<v Speaker 1>six years, every single weekend. So it's either you know,
<v Speaker 1>I go out, or if I can't go out, somebody
<v Speaker 1>else goes out, or they all go in their own
<v Speaker 1>little areas, or we all get together. So there's always
<v Speaker 1>somebody in the woods every week.
<v Speaker 2>That's really interesting. One of the most common questions that
<v Speaker 2>people ask that aren't really familiar with the bigfoot world
<v Speaker 2>but they want to get involved, is like, how do
<v Speaker 2>I start? How do I find people to go out with?
<v Speaker 2>And you just did it. You just I'm going to
<v Speaker 2>start my own group and did it.
<v Speaker 1>Because at the time, there wasn't many there wasn't any
<v Speaker 1>real groups for Florida for bigfoot research, and so you know,
<v Speaker 1>I was posting the stuff on my personal page and
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, yeah, you know, this is not the right
<v Speaker 1>place for me to do this because I don't want
<v Speaker 1>employers to think I'm a whack job and you know,
<v Speaker 1>not get a job or you know whatever, get harassed.
<v Speaker 1>So I'm like, you know what I need to I
<v Speaker 1>think I'm going to start a group, and I wanted
<v Speaker 1>to be about research specifically in Florida, but it could
<v Speaker 1>be anywhere I go, you know, when I go to
<v Speaker 1>you know, like last July, I went to Beechwood and
<v Speaker 1>I went to Oregon. Of course I'm going to go
<v Speaker 1>research there while i'm there. Sure, same for Olympic Peninsula.
<v Speaker 1>I was there. Also. I usually go to Utah every
<v Speaker 1>year and I always go into the forrests in Utah.
<v Speaker 1>So wherever I go, I'm always doing going out and
<v Speaker 1>doing some kind of research wherever I go.
<v Speaker 2>Don't take this the wrong way, but you get around
<v Speaker 2>for like for real in the bigfoot world, Like you're
<v Speaker 2>always posting pictures. Like every time I see you post
<v Speaker 2>a photo, it seems like you're someplace new. You're with
<v Speaker 2>you know, Josh Gates, You're with the guy who's Walker Ranch.
<v Speaker 2>I'm just like, is Marie like a low key celebrity
<v Speaker 2>that I don't know about? Like what's going on here?
<v Speaker 2>I was just talking to uh, Brent Thomas today, he
<v Speaker 2>brought you up. He was talking about you, and he
<v Speaker 2>was actually talking about some tracks you found that I
<v Speaker 2>thought it was pretty funny that you showed another Bigfoot
<v Speaker 2>TV celebrity. But yeah, so you're doing the research thing. Obviously,
<v Speaker 2>you're getting out into the field as much as, if
<v Speaker 2>not more than anybody else doing Bigfoot research. What does
<v Speaker 2>a typical research outing look like for you? What kind
<v Speaker 2>of stuff are you doing out there? What kind of
<v Speaker 2>stuff are you finding? How do you find the areas?
<v Speaker 2>Just walk me through it.
<v Speaker 1>Well, you know, I live in Tampa, so it's a
<v Speaker 1>big city, right, so I have to drive like an
<v Speaker 1>hour to get to any real interesting place to go research,
<v Speaker 1>which is usually like the Green Swamp or you know,
<v Speaker 1>we may go to Okaala o'kala National Forest which is
<v Speaker 1>a hot spot that's where I had my vocalization at.
<v Speaker 1>But usually I have to travel about an hour wherever
<v Speaker 1>I go. And so if the team, you know, if
<v Speaker 1>we can all pick a place that if we all
<v Speaker 1>can go out together, then we pick a place where
<v Speaker 1>we want to go, and so it's just preference. It's like, hey,
<v Speaker 1>we haven't been to this place in a while, or
<v Speaker 1>I want to, you know, go here and see if
<v Speaker 1>there's any more of these strange things here. We also
<v Speaker 1>have some gifting areas in different places, so we just
<v Speaker 1>kind of like make our rounds. But you know, we
<v Speaker 1>always love going to new places as well. So here
<v Speaker 1>in Florida, Yeah, there's so much development going on. There's
<v Speaker 1>so many people moving to Florida. It's just it's ridiculous.
<v Speaker 1>And so these developers are just buying about of land.
<v Speaker 1>So it causes problems for the wildlife, you know that
<v Speaker 1>travel through the state. Throughout the state, you know, they go,
<v Speaker 1>they go where the food's at right, you know, and
<v Speaker 1>you know, they know when the huckleberries are out, you know,
<v Speaker 1>they're they're you know, ready, and they'll go to those places.
<v Speaker 1>They know when the palmetto sawberries are ripe. You know,
<v Speaker 1>So they just travel, you know, they try to travel around.
<v Speaker 1>But the problem is now you have developments where they
<v Speaker 1>used to roam, so now they're going through neighborhoods and
<v Speaker 1>stuff like that, which is not good. So the state
<v Speaker 1>is trying to still create pathways for wildlife to travel
<v Speaker 1>through the state. They call it the Florida Wildlife Corridor.
<v Speaker 2>Oh ok.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so they're purchasing parcels of land that connect to
<v Speaker 1>each other so the wildlife can still move throughout the
<v Speaker 1>state as needed, you know. And so those are the
<v Speaker 1>places where we want to look, right, yeah, for sure,
<v Speaker 1>where the wildlife is moving. There's some places that are
<v Speaker 1>kind of like a bottleneck. They get really narrow right
<v Speaker 1>where the wildlife would be passing through. So you also
<v Speaker 1>want to we want to hit those kind of places too,
<v Speaker 1>where there's a bottleneck, you know. So anyway, the corridor
<v Speaker 1>starts basically down south where the Everglades is, and then
<v Speaker 1>it goes there's a portion of it that goes up
<v Speaker 1>kind of like along the East coast, and there's a
<v Speaker 1>portion of it that kind of goes along the West
<v Speaker 1>coast on up through North Florida. And so again they
<v Speaker 1>all they're trying to get them all to connect and
<v Speaker 1>they almost have it ready, you know, done, so the
<v Speaker 1>wildlife can travel that way. So those are the kind
<v Speaker 1>of places we want to go to. But we also
<v Speaker 1>like swamps, you know, So we check out swamps because
<v Speaker 1>those are it seems like a lot of the sightings
<v Speaker 1>here Florida because it's so hot, hot, and human typical
<v Speaker 1>wildlife's going to be by water. So we like to check,
<v Speaker 1>you know, along waterways. Obviously you want to look for
<v Speaker 1>prints along waterways and you hope that you see something
<v Speaker 1>going to get a drink of water. You know, when
<v Speaker 1>it's hot, you know jargon, Well, a bigfoot or skunk
<v Speaker 1>cape is gonna you know, be hanging by the water.
<v Speaker 1>Most animals would you know, they probably sit in the
<v Speaker 1>water when it's you know, scorching hot, oh for sure,
<v Speaker 1>you know. And maybe they cover themselves in mud also
<v Speaker 1>to keep the bugs off them. Who knows, We don't know.
<v Speaker 1>But so that's basically what we do. Mike is very
<v Speaker 1>good at finding locations for us to go to and
<v Speaker 1>h but they're typically again around waterways and we look
<v Speaker 1>for thick thick thick swamps is where we like to
<v Speaker 1>usually go. So, but we just go to different places.
<v Speaker 1>We'll go to the with Lakuchi State Force, We'll go
<v Speaker 1>to some parks, some state parks that are very primitive
<v Speaker 1>and stuff like that. So which is how far you
<v Speaker 1>want to travel and how much time you have.
<v Speaker 2>On your website you mentioned different kinds of structures, you know,
<v Speaker 2>very common structures that bigfooters talk about binding all the time. Yes,
<v Speaker 2>and glyphs, and I wanted to ask you about that specifically,
<v Speaker 2>what kind of glyphs are you finding?
<v Speaker 1>Now, we have obviously a lot of debris here because
<v Speaker 1>of our winds and storms and stuff like that, but
<v Speaker 1>I have we have found some strange glyphs. And the
<v Speaker 1>weirdest one is a glyph that is in the shape
<v Speaker 1>of a square, but it's not laying down. It's propped
<v Speaker 1>up between two trees. Huh.
<v Speaker 2>I mean that's not natural.
<v Speaker 1>No, it's not natural, especially when it happens every year.
<v Speaker 1>So we found this, or it was Ruby and I
<v Speaker 1>were out together in this in this swamp outside of
<v Speaker 1>Tampa and we come across this and I'm like, what
<v Speaker 1>the heck? This is a This is a square that's
<v Speaker 1>not natural for branches just to fall into a perfect
<v Speaker 1>square standing up. This is not laying on the ground.
<v Speaker 1>These are This is propped between two cypress trees, right,
<v Speaker 1>and I you know, there's thousands of cypress trees out there,
<v Speaker 1>and it's like, what is this. I don't understand this.
<v Speaker 1>And so just in the wintertime, the swamps dry up,
<v Speaker 1>so that's when you see this stuff. And then when
<v Speaker 1>it starts raining, you know, like in the summertime, then
<v Speaker 1>the swamps fill up and the sticks will fall. But
<v Speaker 1>that's square, right, So now you got a swamp, it's water.
<v Speaker 1>And then next year it starts drying up. Guess what
<v Speaker 1>reappears another square, same exact two trees that two years
<v Speaker 1>in a row. I mean, yeah, I don't know. I
<v Speaker 1>don't know. It's like, okay, how did this happen? I
<v Speaker 1>didn't realize at the time it was the exact same trees.
<v Speaker 1>But I took a bunch of pictures and I compared
<v Speaker 1>them to last year's photograph and I'm like, oh my god.
<v Speaker 1>I called Ruby because I was with her again. I
<v Speaker 1>called her and I'm like, oh my god, you will
<v Speaker 1>not believe that that new square glyph is in the
<v Speaker 1>exact same place. And She's like, are you kidding me?
<v Speaker 1>And I'm like, no, how does that happen? And why? Why?
<v Speaker 1>What does it mean? I was talking to my Native
<v Speaker 1>American friend, Thomas Sewood, and I asked him about it,
<v Speaker 1>because he's very knowledgeable as far you know, the Native
<v Speaker 1>Americans and stuff, and I asked him, what is this,
<v Speaker 1>what could this possibly mean? And he's like, I've never
<v Speaker 1>seen that before. He goes, but it could very well
<v Speaker 1>be that it's the sign of the klan that's there,
<v Speaker 1>kind of like a family shield, right, you know what
<v Speaker 1>I mean by that, Like the Scottish, you know, like
<v Speaker 1>McDonald's had their own shield, a family crest, is what
<v Speaker 1>I'm trying to say. He says that very well could
<v Speaker 1>be the sign of the clan, and I'm like, wow,
<v Speaker 1>that's super interesting. So year three we went back out
<v Speaker 1>there and there were three sticks, not four sticks, so
<v Speaker 1>it was a three stick square. So I don't know
<v Speaker 1>if a branch fell or it didn't get to complete
<v Speaker 1>it or what.
<v Speaker 2>Or somebody in the clan passed away.
<v Speaker 1>Could be, could be, I don't know. In that same swamp,
<v Speaker 1>I found this other on the very first times I
<v Speaker 1>ever went to the swamp, and I wish now I
<v Speaker 1>could kick myself for not having a little shovel with me,
<v Speaker 1>because what I also found in the mud was it's
<v Speaker 1>an alignment. There was three things lined up a two
<v Speaker 1>sticks that were very branchy, two small sticks like a
<v Speaker 1>foot and a half high, but they had a lot
<v Speaker 1>of branches on it. It almost looked very decorative. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>there was two and then there was an animal skull.
<v Speaker 2>Kind of like a raccoon or a puzzle seems very
<v Speaker 2>specific in a line.
<v Speaker 1>One, two three, in the perfect line, I found two
<v Speaker 1>of those, two sets of those, and I'm like, what
<v Speaker 1>is this. It looked like something's been buried and like
<v Speaker 1>they honored it by putting those branchy sticks on it.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know. At the time, I'm like, oh wow,
<v Speaker 1>this is really weird. But now I wish hang it.
<v Speaker 1>I wish I would have dug yea to see if
<v Speaker 1>there was a body there, because what would do that
<v Speaker 1>in a swamp.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, whenever I hear this kind of stuff, it
<v Speaker 2>just I'm trying not to, you know, humanize anything, but
<v Speaker 2>I mean, whenever you see something like that, this is
<v Speaker 2>not the behavior of an animal. No, I mean this
<v Speaker 2>is like culture. This is culture that we're talking about,
<v Speaker 2>and to have culture, yes that I mean you come
<v Speaker 2>from a paranormal background.
<v Speaker 1>Yes.
<v Speaker 2>Do you see any overlaps between the paranormal and bigfoot stuff?
<v Speaker 1>Well, I've gotten not that I've tried. I'm not looking
<v Speaker 1>for paranormal activity while I am out researching, but at
<v Speaker 1>times it just happens. It just happened, like on a recorder.
<v Speaker 1>We've gotten EVPs while we're doing Bigfoot research, I had
<v Speaker 1>one say my name, oh wow, so vps at times,
<v Speaker 1>but orbs, orbs is one that definitely you get in
<v Speaker 1>all three of those modalities, right, ghost hunting, aliens, UFOs,
<v Speaker 1>and bigfoots Bigfoot research. I've seen orbs in all three
<v Speaker 1>of those that they're all very different from each other.
<v Speaker 1>And so why are those Why are orbs coming in
<v Speaker 1>all three of those things? I don't know. That boggles my.
<v Speaker 2>Mind when you say they're different. How so.
<v Speaker 1>Well, my orban encounter I had while I was doing
<v Speaker 1>Bigfoot research was the craziest I've ever experienced with orbs,
<v Speaker 1>you know, with you know, with ghost hunting, yeah, you
<v Speaker 1>may see an orb and I'll fly by you or
<v Speaker 1>something like that. With aliens U have foes, you may
<v Speaker 1>see orbs in the sky or kind of around you.
<v Speaker 1>But with Bigfoot research. So what happened was I was
<v Speaker 1>down south Florida at a campground. I was with like
<v Speaker 1>four or five other team members. It's nighttime. We're all
<v Speaker 1>sitting on some picnic benches under a pavilion, and we
<v Speaker 1>all have equipment. We have thermal cameras, we've got a
<v Speaker 1>night vision, and we've got everybody had something, and everybody
<v Speaker 1>who's faced a different direction. Right, we're just monitoring this
<v Speaker 1>whole camping area because there's been sighting reports there. That's
<v Speaker 1>why we were there. So I have my thermal monocular
<v Speaker 1>and I'm looking around, and my thermal monocular it dilates
<v Speaker 1>my eyes, so I can't look through it too long,
<v Speaker 1>you know, and when I look through it then I
<v Speaker 1>have to like put it down and let my eye
<v Speaker 1>readjust kind of thing. So I looked around. I put
<v Speaker 1>my monocular down, and I was just sitting on this
<v Speaker 1>picnic bench and I'm just staring at the tree line
<v Speaker 1>and I am looking specifically at the tallest tree in
<v Speaker 1>the tree line. I don't know why, that's what I'm
<v Speaker 1>just looking at. Right, all of a sudden, this giant
<v Speaker 1>orb appears in front of that tree, in front of
<v Speaker 1>the canopy of that tall tree. It just pow, It
<v Speaker 1>just exploded. It lit up the whole canopy of the tree.
<v Speaker 1>And I was like, WHOA, what the heck was that?
<v Speaker 1>And everybody's like, what what? What? What? And I said, look,
<v Speaker 1>so this orb from where I was at, it was
<v Speaker 1>bigger than the basketball. That's how gigantic this orb. I've
<v Speaker 1>never seen anything so you know, in a orb like that.
<v Speaker 1>So it changed immediately from that giant orb to about
<v Speaker 1>the size of a softball and it started moving. So
<v Speaker 1>it started moving. It was probably about four feet off
<v Speaker 1>the ground, and it started moving along the tree line
<v Speaker 1>and it's kind of flashing real slowly, just dimming and
<v Speaker 1>getting bright, dimming and getting bright. And I'm going to
<v Speaker 1>tell you right now that there were no fireflies that
<v Speaker 1>day that night. Okay, So anyway, it's moving along. Now
<v Speaker 1>we're watching this thing and it's starting to approach this
<v Speaker 1>group of bushes. It goes behind the bushes. Yeah, and
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, okay, it's going to come out from behind
<v Speaker 1>the bushes. See what's going to happen. What comes out
<v Speaker 1>from behind the bush is a teeny tiny, little green orb.
<v Speaker 1>It was not a firefly, but it kind of looked
<v Speaker 1>like a firefly. It was green, and I'm like, I
<v Speaker 1>started talking to it, and I'm like, oh, look at
<v Speaker 1>this little guy. Look at him. But the difference is
<v Speaker 1>he came right at me. He came out from behind
<v Speaker 1>the bushes and he came straight to me. He got
<v Speaker 1>about three this good, little tiny green orb got about
<v Speaker 1>three feet in front of me. Then it turned to
<v Speaker 1>my right shoulder. Right when it got to about twelve
<v Speaker 1>inches from my right shoulder, it disappeared totally gone. So
<v Speaker 1>it started out being bigger than the size of a basketball. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>and it ended up being a teeny tiny green light.
<v Speaker 1>But it was white when it started and it changed
<v Speaker 1>to green and came right at me, and I was like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>look at the little guy, and like, wait a minute,
<v Speaker 1>he's coming right at me. I've never had an ORB
<v Speaker 1>come directly at me. And everybody's just watching this and
<v Speaker 1>they're like, oh my god. That was my crazy Bigfoot
<v Speaker 1>ORB experience. And then probably about three minutes later or so,
<v Speaker 1>I heard this crack. It sounded like the crack of
<v Speaker 1>a baseball back so something a tree or something got broken.
<v Speaker 1>I didn't see anything else, but that was incredible, absolutely incredible.
<v Speaker 1>And then the next night saw another ORB, and another
<v Speaker 1>camping area that we were checking out saw a different ORB,
<v Speaker 1>and this one was different because I was with team
<v Speaker 1>member Mike, and then we're you know again, we're looking around,
<v Speaker 1>we're doing the exact same thing we did the night before,
<v Speaker 1>but in a different spot, and I was getting bored,
<v Speaker 1>so I'm like, come on, let's go take a walk.
<v Speaker 1>So we go walking into the middle of this giant
<v Speaker 1>campground area and we look over to the right and
<v Speaker 1>we're like, somebody in the woods over there. Well, it
<v Speaker 1>looked like a search flight, like somebody had a flashlight
<v Speaker 1>and they were looking around. It just kept going back
<v Speaker 1>and forth, back and forth. It looked like somebody had
<v Speaker 1>their cell phone light on or a flashlight and they
<v Speaker 1>were looking around, searching for something. Well, I had my
<v Speaker 1>monocular and I look, there's nothing there, nothing on the thermal.
<v Speaker 1>Nothing And I told Mike that Mike's light. There's no way.
<v Speaker 1>He goes, that's a person. I said, Mike, it's not
<v Speaker 1>there's nothing there, and I gave it to him, gave
<v Speaker 1>him the thermal. He looks, he's like, oh my god,
<v Speaker 1>he goes. I have never experienced anything like this before.
<v Speaker 1>So don't know. It just was moving around like it
<v Speaker 1>was searching for something, and then just boof disappeared. It
<v Speaker 1>was the second night.
<v Speaker 2>It's so weird because whenever we think of light anomalies
<v Speaker 2>or light in general, you know, it's just energy, it's
<v Speaker 2>just a thing. But these orbs have intelligence behind them.
<v Speaker 2>They behave intelligently. Yes, correct, that's so so bizarre. Do
<v Speaker 2>you think there's a connection between the two phenomenon.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know. There's gotta be a connection. There's gotta
<v Speaker 1>be a connection, but I don't know what it is.
<v Speaker 1>I try to not go on the wooho side of things, sure,
<v Speaker 1>but you know, one thing I always say about bigfoots
<v Speaker 1>and skun capes, mostly bigfootsmen's my opinion is I think
<v Speaker 1>that they have abilities that we would consider to be supernatural.
<v Speaker 1>Like you know, people say they cloak, right, you know,
<v Speaker 1>they just they seem to disappear or you know there's
<v Speaker 1>an orb or they're there and they're gone, or you know,
<v Speaker 1>they may have that kind of ability and it's normal
<v Speaker 1>for them that they could do that, they could change
<v Speaker 1>into that. I don't know. That's just a thought of mine,
<v Speaker 1>that's all.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, you have a background in the paranormal. There
<v Speaker 2>are definitely people in the paranormal filled that seem to
<v Speaker 2>have at least tapped into abilities that we would call
<v Speaker 2>supernatural that people don't typically have or don't realize they have.
<v Speaker 2>Correct exactly, So it doesn't really seem that far fetched that,
<v Speaker 2>you know, if Bigfoot.
<v Speaker 1>If you told somebody, if you told somebody two hundred
<v Speaker 1>years ago. Yeah, I saw this lizard, this chameleon, and
<v Speaker 1>it stood on a piece of purple paper and it
<v Speaker 1>turned purple. Skin turned purple. Yeah, and then it's turned on.
<v Speaker 1>Then it stepped on a blue rock and it turned blue.
<v Speaker 1>They think you were crazy, Yeah, but here we are.
<v Speaker 1>Chameleons do that. That's just their natural ability to be
<v Speaker 1>able to do that. Their masters a camouflage, right, So
<v Speaker 1>who's to say that bigfoots aren't don't have that same
<v Speaker 1>ability where they may be able to just like turn sideways,
<v Speaker 1>and maybe their hair makes it makes them almost like
<v Speaker 1>disappear like a polar bear or something. You know, there's
<v Speaker 1>it could very well be that they have special abilities
<v Speaker 1>that we don't know about.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, I'm like you, I'm not closed off to
<v Speaker 2>the idea. I don't know what they can and can't do.
<v Speaker 2>I know, I've talked to a lot of people that
<v Speaker 2>claim to have witnessed, you know, things that I have
<v Speaker 2>no explanation for. But I do find it interesting that
<v Speaker 2>I recently watched a YouTube video where someone was talking
<v Speaker 2>about how historically when people were talking about other large
<v Speaker 2>primates and just animals in general, but for the sake
<v Speaker 2>of this conversation, we're going to talk about primates, gorillas, chimps, orangutangs,
<v Speaker 2>all those. Before they were officially discovered, they were talked
<v Speaker 2>about and described the same way that people currently describe Bigfoot.
<v Speaker 2>They applied supernatural abilities to them. They talked about them
<v Speaker 2>just vanishing in thin air and all that sort of
<v Speaker 2>jargon that we're currently using.
<v Speaker 1>So who knows exactly is.
<v Speaker 2>There a difference between the skunk cape and Bigfoot and Sasquatch.
<v Speaker 2>I know there's definitely, you know, differences regionally whenever it
<v Speaker 2>comes to Bigfoot, of course, you know, the bigfoot in
<v Speaker 2>Oklahoma typically aren't built the same as the ones up
<v Speaker 2>at the Pacific Northwest. But are there actual differences with
<v Speaker 2>the skun cape?
<v Speaker 1>Yes, yes, and we my team and I we believe
<v Speaker 1>that we have both species in our state. And the
<v Speaker 1>reason for that is because the reports are very very different.
<v Speaker 1>Skunk capes are smaller in size, five to seven feet tall.
<v Speaker 1>They're very thin, very lean, less harry, very aggressive, and
<v Speaker 1>they have four toes and not five toes, and their
<v Speaker 1>toes are long. Now why is that, Well, most of
<v Speaker 1>the places that they are seen are the Everglades flooded swamps,
<v Speaker 1>Saint John's River, just all these places in Florida that
<v Speaker 1>have a lot of water. That's where the reports seem
<v Speaker 1>to be. So like in the Everglades. The Everglades, it's
<v Speaker 1>in the summertime, it's like two two and a half
<v Speaker 1>feet of water most most everywhere you go. So if
<v Speaker 1>you're a skunk cape, where are you going to sleep at?
<v Speaker 1>You're going to climb a tree to sleep unless you
<v Speaker 1>can find a island, a dry island, piece of land
<v Speaker 1>sticking up somewhere that you may be able to sleep on.
<v Speaker 1>But that's too dangerous for them.
<v Speaker 2>I'm not sleeping on the ground in Florida.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Yeah, when you got the you're doing the same thing.
<v Speaker 1>You got bears doing the same thing. Well, you think
<v Speaker 1>everybody's crowded around these, you know, hammocks, which are called
<v Speaker 1>you know, they're called they look like islands, but they're
<v Speaker 1>called hammocks. So I think, just like panthers, they're going
<v Speaker 1>to climb up a tree, a bear's going to climb
<v Speaker 1>up a tree. I think the skoncaps climb up trees
<v Speaker 1>and sleep in there. And that's why their toes are longer,
<v Speaker 1>because they have to be able to climb the tree.
<v Speaker 1>They seem to be more primate than bigfoots. But of
<v Speaker 1>course they're very stinky, but that may be just because
<v Speaker 1>of where they are at and body odor. It's so
<v Speaker 1>hot and you can't tell and they're not sweating and
<v Speaker 1>they're covering themselves up with stinky mud and stuff. So yeah,
<v Speaker 1>they're gonna stink, you know, that's one of the characteristics.
<v Speaker 1>But bigfoot. So the skunk cap reports are. I'm in Tampa.
<v Speaker 1>Tampa's like in the middle of the state it runs,
<v Speaker 1>it's about midway through the state. Everything south of Tampa
<v Speaker 1>is where the skun capes are. So that's like Maaca
<v Speaker 1>State Park. There's been sightings there, and of course the
<v Speaker 1>Everglades there's been many reports there and Saint John's River.
<v Speaker 1>If you ever seen the Saint John's River, the Saint
<v Speaker 1>John's River looks exactly like the Everglades. It's just this
<v Speaker 1>you know, waterway with marsh and water, and it looks
<v Speaker 1>exactly light the Everglades. So it's no surprise that there's
<v Speaker 1>skun capes there too. So, like I said, the skunkcapes
<v Speaker 1>seem to really hang around watery areas. Skuncapes are even
<v Speaker 1>found in you know what, Alabama, Louisiana in the swamps, right,
<v Speaker 1>same thing. Whereas the bigfoots, we get more bigfoot slightings
<v Speaker 1>like where I'm at Tampa and north of Tampa are
<v Speaker 1>the typical bigfoots. They're six to nine feet tall, they're bigger,
<v Speaker 1>they got reddish brown hair or blackish hair. They got
<v Speaker 1>five toes and not four toes.
<v Speaker 2>What do you think about the Mayaka photos, the Maaca photos?
<v Speaker 1>E I do think it's an orangutanpe. I don't. I
<v Speaker 1>don't think that it is an actual skunk cape. But
<v Speaker 1>to me, it just looks very much like oranguting. But
<v Speaker 1>I wasn't there. I can't say either way. Right. But
<v Speaker 1>the problem with that story to me, and it doesn't
<v Speaker 1>make sense is the lady claims that she had apples
<v Speaker 1>on our back porch and it was stealing her apples. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>except we don't have apples in Florida. So if you're
<v Speaker 1>storing apples on your back porch, where are you getting
<v Speaker 1>them from? You just buying them at the grocery store
<v Speaker 1>and putting them on your back port. No, no, it
<v Speaker 1>sounds like apples that were picked and left on our
<v Speaker 1>back porch. But we don't have apples. We're citrus. We're
<v Speaker 1>a citrus state. So that part of the story makes
<v Speaker 1>no sense to me. Where why were there apples out
<v Speaker 1>and where did she get these apples at because they're
<v Speaker 1>not local in the state at all. You get apples
<v Speaker 1>North Georgia. So that doesn't make sense to me. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>so I'm not a big fan of that that story.
<v Speaker 1>Now there's a guy I think his name is Mike
<v Speaker 1>Falconer that him and his son were driving through Maaca
<v Speaker 1>State Park and they pulled over because other people had
<v Speaker 1>pulled over the side of the road. At Miaka State Park.
<v Speaker 1>There's like one way in and one way out of
<v Speaker 1>the park, you know, So people started pulling over and
<v Speaker 1>they're looking at something. And these guys got out of
<v Speaker 1>their car and they're like, what are you looking at?
<v Speaker 1>And then they get their camera on the look and
<v Speaker 1>there's a skunk ape a big bipedal, dark bipedal creature
<v Speaker 1>walking in the marsh. Again just like the Everglades, right,
<v Speaker 1>it's watery, watery. So these guys tried to get closer
<v Speaker 1>to it to photograph it, and it was walking along
<v Speaker 1>in this marsh. When they got closer to where it
<v Speaker 1>was at they started noticing that there were hogs with
<v Speaker 1>broken legs. Oh wow out there that were alive, but
<v Speaker 1>they had broken legs. So I'm sure, you know, but
<v Speaker 1>the skunkate broke its legs so it wouldn't run away, right,
<v Speaker 1>so they could come back and get it later, maybe killed,
<v Speaker 1>maybe killed two or three of them, you know, I mean,
<v Speaker 1>but they found several hogs, I don't know, three or
<v Speaker 1>four hogs that had broken legs out there where the
<v Speaker 1>skunk cape had been. So that's a real fact. That's
<v Speaker 1>more fascinating to me than those my Haka photos because
<v Speaker 1>they were there and there were other people who also
<v Speaker 1>pulled over to watch it as well, walking and it
<v Speaker 1>was far away. You know, it's just like this little
<v Speaker 1>black thing, teenyachay black thing in the distance. You see
<v Speaker 1>it walking. But that's a crazy coincidence that there's hogs
<v Speaker 1>out there with broken legs where the skunk cape was.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, how does a hog break multiple hogs break
<v Speaker 2>their legs like.
<v Speaker 1>That exactly on flat land?
<v Speaker 2>Mind you, there's always been rumors of known primates just
<v Speaker 2>living in the wild in Florida. Have you ever ran
<v Speaker 2>across any evidence of that actually happening?
<v Speaker 1>I have not personally seen them, but they do exist.
<v Speaker 1>You've got outside of O'calla National Forest is Silver Springs.
<v Speaker 1>Silver Springs is where they used to film the old
<v Speaker 1>Tarzan movies back in the day, and so they had
<v Speaker 1>an island at Silver Springs out in the water and
<v Speaker 1>that's where they kept the monkeys that were used for
<v Speaker 1>the show. Well, they didn't know those monkeys could swim,
<v Speaker 1>so they would escape the island and get into the
<v Speaker 1>woods around Silver Springs on o'calin National Forests. So people
<v Speaker 1>have seen these monkeys up in the trees and they
<v Speaker 1>typically stay around Silver Springs and they'll actually like fall
<v Speaker 1>in the water, they'll jump in the water. But yeah,
<v Speaker 1>they thrive. People have seen them. I have not seen
<v Speaker 1>one yet, but they do exist. There's rumors that back years,
<v Speaker 1>many many many years ago, some monkeys were escaped and
<v Speaker 1>got into the green Swamp and they said, oh, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>we got them all, which I don't think so, So
<v Speaker 1>they're very well. Could be a small, you know, population
<v Speaker 1>of these monkeys in the green swamp. But again I
<v Speaker 1>had not seen them, but they do exist around Silver Springs.
<v Speaker 2>The green swamp is definitely a location that has popped
<v Speaker 2>up time and time again over the years in regards
<v Speaker 2>to bigfoot stuff.
<v Speaker 1>I remember.
<v Speaker 2>There was an older guy. I'm sure he's passed on
<v Speaker 2>by now. This would have been like, I mean, over
<v Speaker 2>twenty years ago. He was always talking about the Green Swamp. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>that was like the mecca for bigfoot in Florida. Would
<v Speaker 2>you agree with that? Where's the where's the hot spot
<v Speaker 2>for bigfoot in Florida?
<v Speaker 1>Green Swamp is? Okay, We've heard I've heard vocalizations out there.
<v Speaker 1>I have found some strange structures and stuff. That's where
<v Speaker 1>I've had my EVPs. We're in the Green Swamp and
<v Speaker 1>we had some in the Everglades also, But hot spot,
<v Speaker 1>I would say the most is O'calla National Forest. That's
<v Speaker 1>my one of my favorite places to go to because
<v Speaker 1>again that's where I had my first vocalization. I'll tell
<v Speaker 1>you a crazy story if you want to hear it. Well,
<v Speaker 1>COVID Remember COVID It started what March of twenty twenty?
<v Speaker 1>How'd you forget right?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah? I think I've heard it before.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so it was March twenty twenty when they down here,
<v Speaker 1>they shut down the forests, they shut down you know,
<v Speaker 1>all these companies and stuff. And they shut down the forests.
<v Speaker 1>I got laid off and so I'm like, crap, what
<v Speaker 1>am I going to do now? Well, they opened the
<v Speaker 1>forest back up in May into May, and so I
<v Speaker 1>told my friends, I'm like, hey, they opened the forest up.
<v Speaker 1>Let's go. Has you know who's been out in the
<v Speaker 1>forest has been closed? So I'm like, yeah, it's been
<v Speaker 1>closed for three months. Who knows what kind of stuffs
<v Speaker 1>out there? Right? So we go and of course my tour,
<v Speaker 1>I want to go down my favorite trail in the
<v Speaker 1>Ocala National Forest. And there's a black bear walking right
<v Speaker 1>down the middle of the road, just not a care
<v Speaker 1>in the world because again the forest has been closed, right,
<v Speaker 1>And I'm like awesome. So we go down the trail,
<v Speaker 1>my favorite trail, and nothing, didn't see anything. I'm like, wow,
<v Speaker 1>this really sucks. And so we decided to go back
<v Speaker 1>the following week. Let's go back out there, and again
<v Speaker 1>we went to that same trail. Well, things totally changed
<v Speaker 1>in a week because there was nothing the week prior,
<v Speaker 1>but that week was there was a large X on
<v Speaker 1>the left hand side of the trail head like when
<v Speaker 1>you first start X over on the left hand side.
<v Speaker 1>The trail had five freshly broken trees laying across them,
<v Speaker 1>one behind the other, behind the other from the other,
<v Speaker 1>all laid across the trail, broken, fresh, laid out. And
<v Speaker 1>then there was some bushes and some little tall saplings
<v Speaker 1>and bushes and stuff that were pulled over and pinned
<v Speaker 1>down underneath these trees, and some other small trees were
<v Speaker 1>pushed and bent over across the path the trail. And
<v Speaker 1>we're like, whoa, what the heck happened in one week?
<v Speaker 1>One week? Nothing two five freshly broken trees laid across
<v Speaker 1>the trail with these all these things pinned down underneath
<v Speaker 1>those trees.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, they clearly weren't ready for the forest to open
<v Speaker 2>back up.
<v Speaker 1>Clearly, Yeah, go away, humans buzz off. You know, We're like, wow,
<v Speaker 1>this is craziness. How it just changed in one week.
<v Speaker 1>So yeah, obviously there were pissed. It was pissed off.
<v Speaker 1>They were pissed off that humans were back out there.
<v Speaker 1>Maybe they saw us the week before. I don't know,
<v Speaker 1>but we definitely got the message. This time. Didn't stop us.
<v Speaker 1>We still went in there, but because that's what I do.
<v Speaker 1>But that was amazing, That was an amazing thing that happened.
<v Speaker 2>What would you consider the best piece of evidence that
<v Speaker 2>you found.
<v Speaker 1>Oh gosh, there's there's just too many things. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>and we have found, you know. Team Remember Mike, he
<v Speaker 1>finds a lot of footprints. He's very good at finding footprints.
<v Speaker 1>I found two years ago. Two years ago this month,
<v Speaker 1>we went on a trip to Jennings State Forest, which
<v Speaker 1>is outside of Jacksonville, Florida. And I knew nothing about
<v Speaker 1>the place, but I'm like, okay, let's go. A friend
<v Speaker 1>of ours, Mike Famelot from In the Shadow of Big
<v Speaker 1>Red Eye, he said, come on, why don't we go
<v Speaker 1>to Jennings. Okay, never been there? We go. We do
<v Speaker 1>a long weekend. Got there on a Friday afternoon. It
<v Speaker 1>had lightly rained right when we got there, but then
<v Speaker 1>it cleared up, and so we met some volunteers who
<v Speaker 1>was walking working the campground. They were driving around. They
<v Speaker 1>were just like security. And the thing about a lot
<v Speaker 1>of our forests here is you're not allowed to be
<v Speaker 1>in the forest one hour after sunset. Even if you're
<v Speaker 1>camping in the forest, you can't leave your campsite, which
<v Speaker 1>I find it odd. Okay, well, these security people took
<v Speaker 1>us out at like ten o'clock at night. They're like
<v Speaker 1>you want to go out And we're like, uh yeah,
<v Speaker 1>Canley and they're like, come on, we'll take you. So
<v Speaker 1>they took us to this area and we were just
<v Speaker 1>standing around talking, looking around. You know, it's pitch dark,
<v Speaker 1>and so we're at a there's an intersection where there's
<v Speaker 1>a forest road, and so I looked down the forest
<v Speaker 1>road over to the right and it's just open and
<v Speaker 1>it just looks boring, and I'm like, now I looked
<v Speaker 1>to the left. That portion of the forest road was
<v Speaker 1>dark and creepy and it had like it was like
<v Speaker 1>a canopy of trees. It just like creepy as heck.
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, that's where I'm going. So I had my
<v Speaker 1>little tiny flashlight. I started walking down this forest road
<v Speaker 1>and a lot of our substrate is like a sugar sand,
<v Speaker 1>kind of like a beach sand, beach sand and dirt
<v Speaker 1>mixed together, so it's very hard to get footprints. And
<v Speaker 1>so I'm walking along with my flashlight and I'm like, hmmm,
<v Speaker 1>this looks like a flashlight. I mean, this looks like
<v Speaker 1>a footprint. And it's hard though because it's sugar sand.
<v Speaker 1>And I'm like, okay, where's the next one. And I'm
<v Speaker 1>looking around, looking around, and I'm like, oh, it's over there,
<v Speaker 1>and then I'm looking the flashlight and I'm like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>there's another one over there. So I called the team
<v Speaker 1>over and I said come here. I said, what does
<v Speaker 1>this look like to you? And they're like, that looks
<v Speaker 1>like footprints. So these footprints were sixteen inch footprints with
<v Speaker 1>a gigantic big toe, I mean big big toe, sixteen
<v Speaker 1>inch prints that had a fifty four inch stride between
<v Speaker 1>each footprint. That's four and a half.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that's something very tall.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so it was. I found it was a quarter
<v Speaker 1>mile trackway of Prince that led to a creek, a
<v Speaker 1>really deep old creek, and that's where that's as far
<v Speaker 1>as we could get. It probably just jumped over the
<v Speaker 1>creek or it just you know, went right through it.
<v Speaker 1>I'm not going to do that in the wintertime. And
<v Speaker 1>we're like at the time, you know this, this is the nighttime.
<v Speaker 1>I only found three of them at the time, and
<v Speaker 1>we're like, okay, let's come back in the morning. We'll
<v Speaker 1>come back and we'll look more and see what else.
<v Speaker 1>You know, when these tracks go that's where I said.
<v Speaker 1>It was a quarter mile track slight, So we go
<v Speaker 1>back to our campsite. Now I am car camping and
<v Speaker 1>team member Ruby, she's at my campsite and she is
<v Speaker 1>car camping, and we are about at least fifteen feet
<v Speaker 1>away from each other, fifteen twenty feet away her car
<v Speaker 1>in my car. So my bed is set up in
<v Speaker 1>the back of my Suparo and I'm laying in the
<v Speaker 1>hatchback of my car. I've got window shades up, and
<v Speaker 1>i can't sleep. I'm just laying there. I'm comfortable, but
<v Speaker 1>i just cannot sleep. And I'm like, oh God, this
<v Speaker 1>is so stupid. And then probably around three four in
<v Speaker 1>the morning, I hear something big and by Peter walking
<v Speaker 1>next to my car. Boom boom boom, boom boom. It
<v Speaker 1>walked back and forth on along the driver's side of
<v Speaker 1>my car. It walked back and forth at least five
<v Speaker 1>or six times. And I'm like, I'm very skeptical, and
<v Speaker 1>so I'm like, even though I knew what that was,
<v Speaker 1>I was trying to come up with an explanation. And
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, Okay, is that Ruby outside my car? Why
<v Speaker 1>is she so heavy? Why is she walking so close
<v Speaker 1>to my car? You know what?
<v Speaker 2>Walking around my car at three am?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah? Yeah, walking heavy and big step for everything. I'm like, why,
<v Speaker 1>what is it? What is she doing? And then it
<v Speaker 1>pushed my hatch back. It pushed the car. Oh that
<v Speaker 1>I was and I jostled me and I'm like, whoa,
<v Speaker 1>holy crap. The thing is I had my door unlocked.
<v Speaker 1>It could have opened the door if you wanted to.
<v Speaker 1>But yeah, it walked back and forth, back and forth,
<v Speaker 1>back and forth, back and forth, and it pushed the
<v Speaker 1>back of my car. But after it pushed the car,
<v Speaker 1>I never heard it walk away, which is odd because
<v Speaker 1>it was very heavy when it was walking back and forth.
<v Speaker 1>What pissed off? He saw me find the prince and
<v Speaker 1>came back to the right to harass me. I don't know,
<v Speaker 1>but it was amazing. So the next morning UH team
<v Speaker 1>member Mike and Chris and his son they were at
<v Speaker 1>the next camp light over. So in the morning, I
<v Speaker 1>get up out of my car, I walk over there
<v Speaker 1>and to start, you know, you know, making breakfast and stuff.
<v Speaker 1>Mike the sun come out of their tent and they're like,
<v Speaker 1>oh man, we were woken up in the middle of
<v Speaker 1>the night because there was something big and Bye Peter
<v Speaker 1>walking around our tent and I'm like, yes, yes, yes,
<v Speaker 1>So they had an experience as well, but mine. They
<v Speaker 1>pushed my tailgate, which is where I was sleeping, where
<v Speaker 1>I was laying, so it knew I was in that car.
<v Speaker 2>That would be so unnerving. Yes, you know, like that's
<v Speaker 2>that's something that I've thought about a few times over
<v Speaker 2>the years, because you're not the only person that's ever
<v Speaker 2>happened to you know, where they shoved a car with
<v Speaker 2>somebody inside of it. And I always just thought, I
<v Speaker 2>don't know what I would do if that happened to me.
<v Speaker 2>Squeal or something squeal.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it didn't scare me, didn't scare me. I was
<v Speaker 1>just trying to make sense of it. But it was awesome.
<v Speaker 1>It was absolutely an awesome experience. I am so grateful.
<v Speaker 1>But all that happened within five hours, six hours of
<v Speaker 1>each other. Wow, I found the track away a prince,
<v Speaker 1>Anne had the encounter of my car, all within five
<v Speaker 1>or six hours.
<v Speaker 2>You don't seem like the type that scares easy. Has
<v Speaker 2>there ever been a time where you were in a
<v Speaker 2>situation where you were frightened by these things?
<v Speaker 1>Uh? Well I was frightened, but it wasn't because of
<v Speaker 1>those things. It was because of something else. So U
<v Speaker 1>last year I was down. I had to do a
<v Speaker 1>event down around Fort Myers, which is between it's closer
<v Speaker 1>to the Everglades. It's really south of Florida. And so
<v Speaker 1>I we you know, I'm a big for researcher, right, So.
<v Speaker 3>Me and Bob and we wanted to go out somewhere
<v Speaker 3>at night to go walking do some research, right, And
<v Speaker 3>so I invited my friend Cheryl Peacock from North Carolina.
<v Speaker 1>She was there. Now Leics Mearman was with us, and
<v Speaker 1>my friend Lynn Barnes for Persons was with us. So
<v Speaker 1>Lynn knows the area. So she took us to this trail,
<v Speaker 1>this trail that's abandoned. Not many people have ever been
<v Speaker 1>on it in a long time. So it was creepy
<v Speaker 1>because it was tall grass that looked like cornstalks. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>very tall, like six oven feet tall, these clumps of
<v Speaker 1>this grass. So you're walking down this path with these
<v Speaker 1>clumps of grass everywhere, and it was just very unnerving
<v Speaker 1>because you're close to that grass, so you don't know
<v Speaker 1>what's also in that grass. So Bob and Lynn had
<v Speaker 1>to go back to the jeep for something, and so
<v Speaker 1>it was me, Cheryl and Natalie and you know, I'm
<v Speaker 1>leading the way. I'm like, come on, let's go a
<v Speaker 1>little bit further. We have a little flashlights and stuff,
<v Speaker 1>and we're walking down this old path and all of
<v Speaker 1>a sudden, in front of me in the tall grass,
<v Speaker 1>a clump of a big tall grass, I hear something
<v Speaker 1>big move and I I just frozen my tracks and
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, we gotta go because my thought was it
<v Speaker 1>was a hog, a wild hog. You could it sounded
<v Speaker 1>like something was laying down and it stood up, but
<v Speaker 1>it always the sound. It only sounded like it was
<v Speaker 1>like three feet tall or so, but it was big.
<v Speaker 1>And you don't we don't want to confront a wild
<v Speaker 1>hog because they'll they will kill you. And so I said,
<v Speaker 1>we gotta go. Turn around, let's go. So we started
<v Speaker 1>walking fast. Right, Well, this thing is pacing us in
<v Speaker 1>on the other side of this tall grass, but it's
<v Speaker 1>walking very quietly, very gingerly. But you can hear it moving.
<v Speaker 1>But it never made a big noise. You could hear
<v Speaker 1>it walking, and it was walking with us. So we're
<v Speaker 1>walking as fast as we can to get out of there.
<v Speaker 1>This thing is walking. Then you could hear it coming
<v Speaker 1>through the grass at us. It was coming at us.
<v Speaker 1>I would say It was probably six feet away from us,
<v Speaker 1>but we couldn't see it because of how thick and
<v Speaker 1>tall this grass was. We freaked out and because I
<v Speaker 1>was like the closest to the grass, and I'm like,
<v Speaker 1>oh my god, this thing's scary attack us. This thing's
<v Speaker 1>going to jump out at us. And Natalie thank god
<v Speaker 1>she had bear spray because she ripped it out and
<v Speaker 1>she just sprayed the grass in front of us. She
<v Speaker 1>just laid it out. It scared the crap out of
<v Speaker 1>me because I didn't know she was going to do that.
<v Speaker 1>So here we've got this thing coming through the bush,
<v Speaker 1>through the grass at us, and she rips had her
<v Speaker 1>bear spray and she just starts spraying it to try
<v Speaker 1>and stop this thing from coming through, and we just ran.
<v Speaker 1>We just took out. Luckily, the bear spray did work
<v Speaker 1>and it stopped whatever it was. So bottom line, we
<v Speaker 1>believe it was a Florida panther. That was scary. And
<v Speaker 1>I did some ring search. I did some research about
<v Speaker 1>the area afterwards, and yeah, that's like the birthing area
<v Speaker 1>for Florida panthers. It's like the biggest population is there.
<v Speaker 2>Wow.
<v Speaker 1>And I was reading stories of people walk taking walks
<v Speaker 1>down trails and encountering panthers, and they stopped the panther
<v Speaker 1>with fair spray, and I'm like, oh my god, that's
<v Speaker 1>exactly what we did. That's exactly what happened to us.
<v Speaker 1>It's a freaking panther. You know. A hoog is like
<v Speaker 1>a bulldozer, right, It's it's not gonna it's not quiet,
<v Speaker 1>it's just going to blast through. It's gonna be noisy,
<v Speaker 1>it's going to grunt. But this thing was stealthy. It
<v Speaker 1>didn't make a single noise. But it was tracking us,
<v Speaker 1>it was walking, it was pacing us. And That's been
<v Speaker 1>the scariest thing that I've ever experienced because I could
<v Speaker 1>have died that night from a panther attack. All three
<v Speaker 1>of us could have. So there's scary stuff out there.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. Back in my research days, the guy that I
<v Speaker 2>was research partners with, we were at a location we
<v Speaker 2>had been to a thousand times. He was from the area,
<v Speaker 2>so he's been there even more than me, and we
<v Speaker 2>were actually in the process of casting a trackway and
<v Speaker 2>he was down there waiting for the plaster to dry.
<v Speaker 2>I was not there yet. I was feeling ill and
<v Speaker 2>had stopped by the store to get some medicine and
<v Speaker 2>was meeting him there, and he was down there with
<v Speaker 2>a buddy of ours, and whenever I arrived on the scene,
<v Speaker 2>he was laid out in the bed of the other
<v Speaker 2>guy's pickup truck and his pants were all torn up.
<v Speaker 2>He was bleeding, and yeah, he had gotten charged by
<v Speaker 2>a wild hog. Well, he was down there checking the
<v Speaker 2>plaster and heard a rustling in the tree line and
<v Speaker 2>looked up. And by the time he looked up, he
<v Speaker 2>was kind of in a squatted position, you know, checking
<v Speaker 2>the plaster out, and this hog came busting out of
<v Speaker 2>the tree line and made a bee line straight for him.
<v Speaker 2>He had a knife with him, but he couldn't get
<v Speaker 2>the knife out of the sheath, and eventually he had
<v Speaker 2>like a hold of one of the ears of the pig,
<v Speaker 2>and he's like kind of jabbing at the eye with
<v Speaker 2>the sheath of the knife, trying to get it off
<v Speaker 2>of him, and you know, it's trying to gorm and everything,
<v Speaker 2>and it actually got his leg pretty good, and he
<v Speaker 2>got on his feet, and as soon as he got
<v Speaker 2>on his feet and turned around to run, the thing
<v Speaker 2>hit him from behind and knocked him back down and
<v Speaker 2>rolled him and he got up again and ran into
<v Speaker 2>the woods on the opposite side of the creek, and
<v Speaker 2>the hogs right on his tail, and there was a
<v Speaker 2>large fallen tree, and he jumped over the tree, kind
<v Speaker 2>of vaulted himself over the tree, and the tree was
<v Speaker 2>just tall enough and close enough to the ground that
<v Speaker 2>the hog just stopped and turned around went back. I
<v Speaker 2>think it was probably a mother. Yes, we found you know,
<v Speaker 2>piglet tracks and everything in the area. Later on that
<v Speaker 2>the other guy was taking a nap in the cap
<v Speaker 2>of the truck and had no idea any of this
<v Speaker 2>was happening.
<v Speaker 1>Oh my god.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and uh, you know, I got him back home
<v Speaker 2>and everything. He got in the shower and washed himself
<v Speaker 2>off the spot on his leg. He probably should have
<v Speaker 2>gotten stitches, but he didn't. But yeah, man, it can
<v Speaker 2>be very dangerous out there. You never know what you're
<v Speaker 2>going to encounter whenever you're out there looking for these things.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. I was in the Utah actually National Forest. I
<v Speaker 1>just found a footprint and so bist somebody found a
<v Speaker 1>structure and I started looking around and I found a
<v Speaker 1>footprint crossing the road. It was right on the edge
<v Speaker 1>of the road. The road was you know, gravel and
<v Speaker 1>sand and stuff, and so so one of my researchers,
<v Speaker 1>he went in the front, says, okay, like I'm looking
<v Speaker 1>at the print. So he's looking. He's going ahead of
<v Speaker 1>me to see if he can find more prints. Right
<v Speaker 1>then he yells out mountain lion, and a mountain lion
<v Speaker 1>had jumped out of the tree right in front of him.
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah, that could have been me. If I didn't
<v Speaker 1>find that print, I would have walked across there, and
<v Speaker 1>I probably would have had the mountain lion jump in
<v Speaker 1>front of me. But it jumped in front of him
<v Speaker 1>and scared him, obviously, because you don't want a mountain
<v Speaker 1>lion jumping out of a tree in front of you. Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>So yeah, the Florida panthers extremely scary in the wild forest.
<v Speaker 1>The hogs are super scary, that's you know. And of
<v Speaker 1>course the snakes we have there. We have water moccasins,
<v Speaker 1>we have rattle snakes. We got all kinds of things here.
<v Speaker 2>What's been your favorite Bigfoot place outside of Florida.
<v Speaker 1>I'll say I'd like Ashley National Forest in Utah. I
<v Speaker 1>liked that place because I have found some really cool
<v Speaker 1>tepee structures which here in Florida. You don't find too
<v Speaker 1>many tepee structures, and if you do, they're like made
<v Speaker 1>out of palm frons or something, you know. So to
<v Speaker 1>find real tepee structures where these trees are bent over
<v Speaker 1>and part of the tepee and everything. That's what I
<v Speaker 1>like about it is I have found probably three tepee
<v Speaker 1>structures out there. I have found prints out there, and
<v Speaker 1>it's it's a pretty easy area to research. There's pretty
<v Speaker 1>you can drive all over the place and they just
<v Speaker 1>get out and go take a nice stroll. But there's
<v Speaker 1>been a lot of sightings of Sasquatch there lots, lots lots,
<v Speaker 1>So that's one of my favorite places to research.
<v Speaker 2>Any theories on what the teepee structures are.
<v Speaker 1>No just to me, you know, it's like a shelter
<v Speaker 1>of blind is what I think it is, because you know,
<v Speaker 1>you can get in those things and you look like
<v Speaker 1>you disappear. You look like you can just disappear less noticeable. Right.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know if that's true or not, but that's
<v Speaker 1>what I think they're used for because they seem to
<v Speaker 1>be in these forest areas where there's trees but not brush,
<v Speaker 1>so there's there's like no place for them to hide. Right,
<v Speaker 1>if you're going to be hunting a deer or something
<v Speaker 1>where you going to try and hide behind a little
<v Speaker 1>pine tree the whole time. Now, it'd be easier to
<v Speaker 1>build something like a teepee structure to get into, so
<v Speaker 1>you know, the deer and stuff they don't know. They're
<v Speaker 1>not going to notice a bunch of sticks, you know,
<v Speaker 1>laid out, So I guess it's to me it's more
<v Speaker 1>of a could be a hiding place for them for hunting.
<v Speaker 2>Have you ever been to skinwalk a ranch.
<v Speaker 1>I have been to the gates. I have not been
<v Speaker 1>on the ranch. No, nobody's allowed. Why that you can
<v Speaker 1>get to the gate only if you do if you
<v Speaker 1>have like permission. Usually you can only go as far
<v Speaker 1>as a little parking lot. And I've been to the
<v Speaker 1>actual gate. But I have an artifact from the ranch.
<v Speaker 1>Someone special got on the ranch and I was like,
<v Speaker 1>oh my god, if you go on the ranch, try
<v Speaker 1>to grab me something from the ranch. And so they
<v Speaker 1>grab a piece sach. It's a piece of a cow.
<v Speaker 1>I think they said it was from the cow that
<v Speaker 1>reme in the first early episodes where the cow like
<v Speaker 1>died and it wouldn't it wouldn't sinegrade.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, remember that it wouldn't break down. This is from that.
<v Speaker 1>Oh wow, yeah, so I have it here in my house.
<v Speaker 1>I have a little piece of the bone, one of
<v Speaker 1>the bones from it.
<v Speaker 2>So it wasn't someone that just snuck onto the property
<v Speaker 2>and ran and grabbed a rock real quick.
<v Speaker 1>Now, it was kind of that way. He was kind
<v Speaker 1>of that way.
<v Speaker 2>I was trying to give you an out, Marie.
<v Speaker 1>I wasn't me. It was not me, but it was
<v Speaker 1>somebody else. So they did it. I got a little artifact.
<v Speaker 1>That's all it matters.
<v Speaker 2>That's a lot anyways.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah right, I mean people can say that. Not many
<v Speaker 1>I had to tell you about the weavings, the artifacts
<v Speaker 1>and the trees. That's a really fun thing too that
<v Speaker 1>I found.
<v Speaker 2>We found lately, weavings in the trees.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. So I'm not going to tell you where. Well
<v Speaker 1>it's it's in the vicinity of the green swamp. Okay, okay,
<v Speaker 1>So right now you've got the dry season, so the
<v Speaker 1>swamps are all nice and dry now, so you can
<v Speaker 1>get way way way back. You know, these swamps that
<v Speaker 1>you normally can't get into once it starts filling up
<v Speaker 1>with water, forget it. And so we went back into
<v Speaker 1>this area that I've been wanting to go to, and
<v Speaker 1>one of the reasons, we've had so many things happen
<v Speaker 1>to this location. So what started it was he remember,
<v Speaker 1>Bob had brought an orange from his house and he
<v Speaker 1>decided he wanted to hang it up in the tree. So, oh,
<v Speaker 1>he brought para cord. He's wrapping this app of the orange.
<v Speaker 1>He's wrapping this orange with double knots. It's you. He's
<v Speaker 1>swinging this thing around. This orange is not coming out
<v Speaker 1>of this para of cord. And then he made a
<v Speaker 1>loop on the end of the string and he used
<v Speaker 1>his hiking stick to hang this orange up on a
<v Speaker 1>dead branch above him on a tree. It was up
<v Speaker 1>at least nine feet. Okay, can't use the stick to
<v Speaker 1>get this orange on it. So we go back, like
<v Speaker 1>a week or two later, the orange is gone. Well,
<v Speaker 1>what's interesting about that was wherever it was that took
<v Speaker 1>the orange, it didn't pull the orange down because the
<v Speaker 1>branch did not break. It was a dead little branch
<v Speaker 1>hanging out. It didn't pull and break the branch. It
<v Speaker 1>pulled it off the branch. It untied. It took the orange,
<v Speaker 1>and then it laid the pair of cord down on
<v Speaker 1>the ground in a coil like a garden hose, very neatly.
<v Speaker 1>It's like, what did this. Now it was a bear,
<v Speaker 1>it would just grab it. The branch would have broke
<v Speaker 1>and that would have been it, right, same thing for
<v Speaker 1>a deer. But something. This thing's up nine feet Something
<v Speaker 1>pulled it off the branch without breaking it untied. It
<v Speaker 1>took the orange, laid the rope on the ground. That's
<v Speaker 1>why we started going back in this swamp. We went
<v Speaker 1>further back. Let's see what else would happen, what else
<v Speaker 1>see if we would see anything or whatever. Well, Temember
<v Speaker 1>Bob finds this little tree four feet tall. It has
<v Speaker 1>a dead grass we in it like something pulled the
<v Speaker 1>grass all the ground and wrapped it around the center
<v Speaker 1>of the tree. We're like, what is this? What the
<v Speaker 1>heck is this? Then we started looking around that area
<v Speaker 1>and ten feet away is another one. But the rest
<v Speaker 1>of them we have found a total of twelve of these. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>they're either made out of tall grass that has been
<v Speaker 1>pulled out of the ground hung up in the tree
<v Speaker 1>five and a half feet hi, or they broke a
<v Speaker 1>bunch of ferns and wrapped them, tied them around these
<v Speaker 1>small trees, or just wrap them and they're hanging from
<v Speaker 1>these tree branches, breaks ferns and puts them up five
<v Speaker 1>and a half feet up in a tree.
<v Speaker 2>So like all of them are around the same height.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, they're all around five and a half feet, except
<v Speaker 1>for that first one he found, which was a small tree,
<v Speaker 1>it was about three feet, but all the others five
<v Speaker 1>and a half feet approximately.
<v Speaker 2>Did you plot where they're at on like a map?
<v Speaker 1>Oh? Yes, oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
<v Speaker 1>And guess what it forms a path? And in that
<v Speaker 1>same path area I have never seen so many deer
<v Speaker 1>rubs before in my life. When we went out there,
<v Speaker 1>we probably looked at went back and looked at eight
<v Speaker 1>of those artifacts, seven eight of them, and we counted
<v Speaker 1>at least sixteen deer rubes.
<v Speaker 2>Oh wow.
<v Speaker 1>In the same area, the same spot where these weavings
<v Speaker 1>were was where there were deer robes. Very strange.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, potentially marking like a future hunting spot or something.
<v Speaker 1>Mmmmm maybe easy to see with something in a hanging
<v Speaker 1>up on these trees. Like I said, there this grass
<v Speaker 1>is pulled out the ground with the root and everything
<v Speaker 1>and hung up on these branches or its ferns. One
<v Speaker 1>of the clusters of ferns is actually tied something wrapped
<v Speaker 1>a piece of the fern and is it's tied around
<v Speaker 1>the trunk of this little tree. It's like, what did this?
<v Speaker 1>Something with fingers? Did this? Okay? For sure? Yeah? Would
<v Speaker 1>it be? Yeah? Man? Absolutely. I don't understand why how
<v Speaker 1>it could be because this is an area the swamp
<v Speaker 1>that we never you know, people normally don't go that
<v Speaker 1>far as like we do. And then Bob found a
<v Speaker 1>possible hair ten and a half inch long hair out there.
<v Speaker 1>He found it on a fallen tree, dead tree that
<v Speaker 1>was about three and a half four feet off the ground.
<v Speaker 1>And the reason why he looked there was because that
<v Speaker 1>there was a section two three feet of this tree
<v Speaker 1>where it was rubbed off. It was scraped off. It
<v Speaker 1>looks like something was climbing over it. It was scraping it.
<v Speaker 1>And that's why made him start looking around where the
<v Speaker 1>bark and where that smooth part was, and that's where
<v Speaker 1>he found a ten and a half inch long British
<v Speaker 1>brown hair.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, unless a horse is out there, there's not
<v Speaker 2>too many things that has hair that long.
<v Speaker 1>No, and it's entangled in the bark, and underneath the
<v Speaker 1>bark that was scraped off, he was entangled in the bark.
<v Speaker 1>We can't step over that, we're too sure. And if
<v Speaker 1>you're a human, Oh yeah, I just walk ten feet
<v Speaker 1>around this tree to continue. You're not going to go
<v Speaker 1>climb over this tree when you can just walk ten
<v Speaker 1>feet to the rider's leaf to get around it. The
<v Speaker 1>path of least resistant pack police resistance. Yeah, why do
<v Speaker 1>I try to climb over this stupid thing? But like
<v Speaker 1>I said, the hair was entwined in the bark. He
<v Speaker 1>also had mind speak out there and freaked him out
<v Speaker 1>because he's never experienced anything like that before, and he
<v Speaker 1>always carries a knife with him. And he didn't tell
<v Speaker 1>me about this till later on. He didn't tell me
<v Speaker 1>what happened. He's like, oh, the weirdest thing. He goes,
<v Speaker 1>I heard someone talking to me, and I'm like, what
<v Speaker 1>are you talking about? I said, what did it say?
<v Speaker 1>It said two things to him. Number one, it said
<v Speaker 1>why do you carry a knife? And so he answered
<v Speaker 1>in his head, he's like, from my protection only. And
<v Speaker 1>then like five minutes three, five minutes later, it said
<v Speaker 1>take your knife off and put it in your pocket
<v Speaker 1>and he did. He took the knife off, stuck it
<v Speaker 1>in his pocket and that was it.
<v Speaker 2>Wow.
<v Speaker 1>Unfortunately, unfortunately we didn't have a sighting because usually when
<v Speaker 1>something like that happens, people have sightings. Yes, but yeah,
<v Speaker 1>so mine speak possible hair weavings, these strange weavings, and
<v Speaker 1>the orange all in this one spot. But like I said,
<v Speaker 1>we've been gpsing marking these locations and it does form
<v Speaker 1>a path. So I want to continue to go in
<v Speaker 1>that area and look more to see how many others
<v Speaker 1>we can find and see and map those things and
<v Speaker 1>see where we already have an idea where it's headed.
<v Speaker 1>So we're just trying to look for the evidence of that.
<v Speaker 1>But crazy, twelve of these things.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I've been sitting here thinking, you know, going through
<v Speaker 2>the rolodex of useless knowledge in my head that I've
<v Speaker 2>accumulated over the years, and I don't I can't think
<v Speaker 2>of ever hearing that before now exactly.
<v Speaker 1>And even Thomas Seewit saying thing, He's like, I haven't
<v Speaker 1>heard of that before. But what he's doing for me
<v Speaker 1>is he's talking to other natives and asking them what
<v Speaker 1>they think it is because he doesn't know. He doesn't
<v Speaker 1>know either, he is, I've never heard of that before,
<v Speaker 1>and I shown him pictures. He's like, holy crap, I said,
<v Speaker 1>I know. Well, their first thought was it's medicine, like
<v Speaker 1>like they're hanging up stuff to dry harvested later. Maybe
<v Speaker 1>it's some kind of sacred medicine for them. But they're
<v Speaker 1>still out there, so nothing's been harvested yet. But maybe
<v Speaker 1>that is what they were doing. But he's trying to
<v Speaker 1>find out for me because most people have never heard
<v Speaker 1>of that before or seen anything like that before. It's crazy.
<v Speaker 1>It's absolutely craziness, but it's a blast. It's so much fun.
<v Speaker 1>I love being out there in the woods. You never
<v Speaker 1>know what you're gonna find.
<v Speaker 2>Do you have any speaking engagements coming up.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, We've got March, March in April. We have some
<v Speaker 1>just local things, like we have an Agriculture Wildlife Expo
<v Speaker 1>outdoor expo that we're going to be doing in March.
<v Speaker 1>We've got a hiking group down here that just absolutely
<v Speaker 1>loves our team and they want us to speak to
<v Speaker 1>their hikers because those people are out all the time
<v Speaker 1>and they're doing like ten twenty mile hikes all the time.
<v Speaker 1>So those are the fun people to talk to. You
<v Speaker 1>just like bushcrafters. They're a great coup to talk to
<v Speaker 1>also because they're always outside, so you know, they're experiencing
<v Speaker 1>stuff but they don't know what it is, but I
<v Speaker 1>want to hear their stories, you know. So it's nothing
<v Speaker 1>really major, but we just have local events that we're
<v Speaker 1>going to be doing so coming up, and then we've
<v Speaker 1>been invited to every year there's a minor league hockey
<v Speaker 1>team down south called the Florida ever Blades ever Way, okay,
<v Speaker 1>but one game every year they changed the name of
<v Speaker 1>their team to the Florida skun Capes. Yeah, so they
<v Speaker 1>invite David Cheeley from the Everglades skun Cape researcher. He he,
<v Speaker 1>he's the main focus of the game, the whole skun
<v Speaker 1>Cape thing. So we've been invited to also set up
<v Speaker 1>a table at the hockey arena for the skun Cape game, so,
<v Speaker 1>which is a huge honor. So that's all good. So
<v Speaker 1>it's all by stuff we got. We're doing filming this weekend.
<v Speaker 1>There's a group that wants to do a Skunkcate documentary.
<v Speaker 1>So we met them down the Everglades last year. They
<v Speaker 1>love us, so we're meeting up within this weekend.
<v Speaker 2>Cool and where can people find you on the internet?
<v Speaker 1>Okay, Facebook, Mid Florida Bigfoot Research Group I have over
<v Speaker 1>eleven thousand members there you got to answer questions about
<v Speaker 1>at least seventy percent of those people are all Floridians,
<v Speaker 1>which is good. Oh wow, Yeah, I'm on Instagram, Mid
<v Speaker 1>Florida Bigfoot. I have a website, mid Florida Bigfoot dot
<v Speaker 1>com and there you can go to the research gallery.
<v Speaker 1>You can see some of the great photographs of weird
<v Speaker 1>things that we have found in Florida. Footprints and weavings
<v Speaker 1>and things like the square, stuff like that, and Mid
<v Speaker 1>Florida Bigfoot Research Group on the YouTube and there we
<v Speaker 1>have short little research videos that show you something strange
<v Speaker 1>that we have found. It's their short videos are like
<v Speaker 1>two or three minutes, so anybody can join there. So
<v Speaker 1>that's about it.
<v Speaker 2>Well, Marie, thanks again for joining me. I've enjoyed it.
<v Speaker 1>Thank you so much. Matthew. I hope you enjoyed it
<v Speaker 1>and it was great. Thank you so much for having
<v Speaker 1>me on your show.
<v Speaker 2>If you've had an encounter with Bigfoot or something else
<v Speaker 2>you can't explain, and you'd like to share your story
<v Speaker 2>on the podcast, email me at Bigfoot Crossroads at gmail
<v Speaker 2>dot com. Check out the website Bigfootcrossroads dot com. You
<v Speaker 2>can find links to social media, past episodes, merchandise, everything
<v Speaker 2>you need all in one place, and until next time,
<v Speaker 2>remember there's something in the woods.