Ep:153 Fort Bragg Bigfoot

<v Speaker 1>I'm out on the lake and it was absolutely dead calm.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, there wasn't a wrinkle on the water, there
<v Speaker 1>was not a puff in the air. Normally there's a
<v Speaker 1>crows and other birds and other situations making noise, but
<v Speaker 1>nothing was going on out of nowhere in the big timber.
<v Speaker 1>We're talking old growth, big stuff, a tree and crashing
<v Speaker 1>down for no reason, absolutely no reason that I could
<v Speaker 1>figure out, and kind of made me wonder what the
<v Speaker 1>heck was going on there, And I started to get
<v Speaker 1>out of the canoe, and you know, this is not
<v Speaker 1>very smart. I think, I think I'll just let this
<v Speaker 1>situation timmer and go the other way. And I've had
<v Speaker 1>that premonition a couple of times, and I'm kind of
<v Speaker 1>wondering if those are the kind of warnings or situations
<v Speaker 1>that had come across. On a different level, it says, Jack,
<v Speaker 1>you need, you need to just go home and be
<v Speaker 1>done with it.
<v Speaker 2>I'd like to welcome Jack to the show. Jack has
<v Speaker 2>been featured a couple times on the Salish Sasquatch channel
<v Speaker 2>good friends that we both have Jonathan and Sarah Brown
<v Speaker 2>great channel. Check it out if you haven't already, and
<v Speaker 2>they connected us and Jack was gracious enough to accept
<v Speaker 2>my invitation to come on and share his story and
<v Speaker 2>some of the stories he's heard along the way in
<v Speaker 2>this crazy world of Bigfoot. Jack, Welcome to the show.
<v Speaker 2>How are you.
<v Speaker 1>I'm doing fine and thank you. Appreciate the welcome.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, of course. So why don't you get things starting
<v Speaker 2>off by just telling us a little bit about yourself.
<v Speaker 1>Well, I'm one of them older guys. I'm seventy nine,
<v Speaker 1>and if you count the gestation period, i'm eighty. You
<v Speaker 1>get the idea I'm getting up there. I've had a
<v Speaker 1>world and a lifetime of experiences and it's been fun,
<v Speaker 1>been a lot of fun. And my sweetheart and I
<v Speaker 1>Arla is her name. I know there's another Arla in
<v Speaker 1>the Bigfoot mix out there, but anyway, we've been together
<v Speaker 1>for oh man, fifty six years now. Oh wow, yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>the same person. Amazing. That's a credit to her, not
<v Speaker 1>to me. When I came home from Vietnam and sixty
<v Speaker 1>eight a seven. Rather, I courted my sweetheart and we
<v Speaker 1>got married in nineteen sixty eight, sixty seven home, sixty eight,
<v Speaker 1>got married and started on that life's journey and it's
<v Speaker 1>been good, been very good for me. I don't know
<v Speaker 1>if it's germane to the conversation, but I became a believer.
<v Speaker 1>And I'm not just a Bigfoot believer. I was there
<v Speaker 1>before that, but Christian, and so I've kind of patterned
<v Speaker 1>my life around that, that philosophy, and that that's part
<v Speaker 1>of what it takes to be who I am. Way back,
<v Speaker 1>I remember nineteen cent burgers, fries and cokes, and nineteen
<v Speaker 1>cent gas gallon gas. So that's that's almost just right
<v Speaker 1>fresh off the arc, you know what I mean. We
<v Speaker 1>raised a couple of boys, and one of them is
<v Speaker 1>an adopted son from Vietnam, half Vietnam Asian and half
<v Speaker 1>adventurous soldier. Good men. They're just good men. And it's
<v Speaker 1>been a pleasure to have them. And and when I
<v Speaker 1>started on the the bigfoot thing a little later in
<v Speaker 1>life in a sense, because you know how it is,
<v Speaker 1>you're raising a family and trying to make things work,
<v Speaker 1>and you haven't got time for a lot of the
<v Speaker 1>extraneous things that you'd like to pursue. I didn't even
<v Speaker 1>know I like to pursue them originally, except that in
<v Speaker 1>nineteen sixty two. Now that goes back previous. My aunt
<v Speaker 1>and her folks had the Port Bragg incident we call it,
<v Speaker 1>and we'll get into that here in a couple of minutes.
<v Speaker 1>But anyway, that's where that's where I've come from, as
<v Speaker 1>far as that part of my life is concerned, been good.
<v Speaker 1>I don't complain. I've been a hunter all my life
<v Speaker 1>up until the last few years, and I can no
<v Speaker 1>longer hunt, get out there like I want to and
<v Speaker 1>do those things. And I find it very interesting in
<v Speaker 1>one respect. For all the time that I've been out hunting,
<v Speaker 1>there have been a few times when something told me
<v Speaker 1>don't go here, and I don't belong here, and I'm
<v Speaker 1>not afraid of bear cougars and all the other paraphernalia
<v Speaker 1>that lives out there. But after some rethinking and some
<v Speaker 1>adding in and out of different situations, I've come to
<v Speaker 1>the conclusion that I've been a lot closer to mister
<v Speaker 1>bigbut than I realize. And of course I have got
<v Speaker 1>all kinds of stories that I've collected over the years
<v Speaker 1>and that type of thing. So yeah, I've been around
<v Speaker 1>that rascal and I know of him well. I don't
<v Speaker 1>know if anybody really knows the guy. I want to
<v Speaker 1>start right out by saying that I go back and
<v Speaker 1>forth on whether it's just another animal or if it's
<v Speaker 1>what is Meldrum would say, a relic commented or something
<v Speaker 1>in between. I don't know that any of that has
<v Speaker 1>really been nailed down, so I kind of go back
<v Speaker 1>and forth. I want to insult anybody. I just am
<v Speaker 1>what I am, and I say what I say, and
<v Speaker 1>it comes out that way.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, I'm the same way. I think anybody that
<v Speaker 2>really has looked into this at any great depth and
<v Speaker 2>spent time doing it kind of goes back and forth
<v Speaker 2>between different possibilities all the time.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, I've got a list
<v Speaker 1>of people that I whose books I've read, and this
<v Speaker 1>is just a small part of a long list. But
<v Speaker 1>I started out with John Green, and then Steinberg, Jeff
<v Speaker 1>Mildram for sure, Bender Nagel, Christopher Murphy, Kranz Burn, Michael
<v Speaker 1>I mean, Robert Michael Pyle. He's more of a local
<v Speaker 1>guy here. And then lately I finished up with Matt
<v Speaker 1>Pruitt on his phenomenal Sasquatch. And I've got to say
<v Speaker 1>that there's only two or three books that I would
<v Speaker 1>hold up as stellar accounts of things going on and
<v Speaker 1>Matt Really he really shines for me. I really like
<v Speaker 1>the way he put things and and kind of nails
<v Speaker 1>it for me. I'm at this juncture until I know different.
<v Speaker 1>I consider Mishter Bigfoot a biological entity, just like I am.
<v Speaker 1>Some people call me more animal than I need to be,
<v Speaker 1>but so that fit's well. But anyway, so I treend
<v Speaker 1>to separate the phenomenal with the biological. And I know
<v Speaker 1>there's parts of there's people that are solidly in other camp,
<v Speaker 1>and I think it's great, go ahead, you know, bring
<v Speaker 1>the evidence. We'll put it in one big bucket, come
<v Speaker 1>out with what he really is eventually. So what I
<v Speaker 1>collect and then we'll get into it here. What I
<v Speaker 1>collect over the years are stories that and I call
<v Speaker 1>them accounts, where their stories of relationships that people have had, good, bad,
<v Speaker 1>or otherwise with mister Bigfoot. And I've had the privilege
<v Speaker 1>of starting out on the positive in other words, I
<v Speaker 1>didn't have any negative problems as far as big Foot
<v Speaker 1>or concerns. Some people do. I mean they start out,
<v Speaker 1>they started, the first words out of their mouth is
<v Speaker 1>I don't believe it. It's a myth and all that
<v Speaker 1>kind of stuff. And that's okay. That's what they want.
<v Speaker 1>But I started out with my aunt's folks, and that's
<v Speaker 1>where we'll get into this. And just a second here,
<v Speaker 1>my aunt's folks their accounting of of in nineteen sixty
<v Speaker 1>two Bigfoot, and I think, so far as I'm concerned,
<v Speaker 1>it's an account of major importance, but not well and
<v Speaker 1>I don't want to say advertised, but we're not well
<v Speaker 1>known up and down the Bigfoot community. So there'll be
<v Speaker 1>my opportunity to share and hopefully we'll get somewhere with this.
<v Speaker 2>You started at the position of you personally knew family
<v Speaker 2>members that had encountered these things.
<v Speaker 1>Absolutely.
<v Speaker 2>I was raised by my great grandparents in anything that
<v Speaker 2>they would have told me was gospel, absolutely.
<v Speaker 1>True, the Book of Jack.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so that's obviously a much different position than starting
<v Speaker 2>out as a non believer in encountering one of those things.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Absolutely. And over the year I started in sixty two,
<v Speaker 1>I was sixteen. So over the years, I've really heard
<v Speaker 1>not one argument to say that they aren't here. In fact,
<v Speaker 1>it's harder to prove the negative than it ever would
<v Speaker 1>be the positive. So, like Kranz, a global Kranz said,
<v Speaker 1>he says, if there's only one and we know it
<v Speaker 1>for sure. I don't care how many accounts or history
<v Speaker 1>or experiences people have had. He's real and that's where
<v Speaker 1>I start too, So it makes it sure, makes it easier.
<v Speaker 1>I guess I'll start with the nineteen sixty two one
<v Speaker 1>because that's the anchor point for me. Is one of
<v Speaker 1>the most I think interesting stories that I have out there,
<v Speaker 1>and I just happened to be privileged to be in
<v Speaker 1>the family when it was told. So I'm going to
<v Speaker 1>start out with reading a book. Just happened to pick
<v Speaker 1>it up last night. It's a book by Larry Canute
<v Speaker 1>of Alaska Bear Tales. But he's got one line in
<v Speaker 1>here that really kind of fits a situation that I
<v Speaker 1>think is appropriate for all of us, no matter where
<v Speaker 1>we're at in the Bigfoot community, and it says, unfortunately,
<v Speaker 1>sensationalistic accounts of man bear accounters are often the public's
<v Speaker 1>main source of information on bruins. Not only are these
<v Speaker 1>accounts exaggerated, but they instill unnecessary fears about the wilderness
<v Speaker 1>outdoor experience. Now, if you transpose that and put a
<v Speaker 1>big Foot in there, I think that fits. We have
<v Speaker 1>an overlay of strange and weird stuff going on out there,
<v Speaker 1>and we look, we look at big Foot rather through
<v Speaker 1>that limbs, And I've had to a couple of times
<v Speaker 1>back up and say, what am I looking at? What
<v Speaker 1>am I thinking here? As far as Bigfoot is concerned
<v Speaker 1>in that you, is he really that mister ferocious wants
<v Speaker 1>to rip our head off? Well, there's I'm sure there's
<v Speaker 1>a few out there that would do that. But in
<v Speaker 1>the main, if indeed they were as violent and capable
<v Speaker 1>as we are often led to believe, I don't think
<v Speaker 1>there be very many of us left.
<v Speaker 2>If that is the case, if they are predators, so
<v Speaker 2>to speak. Yeah, the amount of people that have gone
<v Speaker 2>out into the woods by theirselves provoking these things, as researchers,
<v Speaker 2>as investigators out there specifically looking for Bigfoot, going to
<v Speaker 2>areas where they've been seen, trying to elicit some sort
<v Speaker 2>of interaction with them. Nobody's ever been harmed or turned
<v Speaker 2>up missing. Everybody's come home save for the two hunters
<v Speaker 2>recently in Washington that you know succumbed to the elements,
<v Speaker 2>and a few stories here and there, But for the
<v Speaker 2>most part, you don't really have any stories like that.
<v Speaker 1>That's true, It's absolutely true. And if you start on
<v Speaker 1>that premise that they're not they're not that they're portrayed
<v Speaker 1>to be, and go at it from a different perspective.
<v Speaker 1>I think we're going to make a lot more headway
<v Speaker 1>in the final assessment rather of what they are and
<v Speaker 1>that type of thing. And this story here will we'll
<v Speaker 1>shed some light on it as well. So with all
<v Speaker 1>of that, nineteen sixty two, it was February. It was
<v Speaker 1>a a rainy kind of black on again, off again night,
<v Speaker 1>and is the setting for in Fort Bragg, California. And
<v Speaker 1>there I know that you're the Fort Bragg back easter wise,
<v Speaker 1>but this is Fort Bragg, California, in the northern side
<v Speaker 1>of the state. Now I was sixteen when I first
<v Speaker 1>heard it. I never wrote a thing down. I just
<v Speaker 1>listened to my aunt's folks story. They came from down
<v Speaker 1>there up here to Washington State to visit, and they
<v Speaker 1>brought their story with them and the account with them,
<v Speaker 1>and they sat down in our living room and went
<v Speaker 1>through it. And the only person that wasn't there was
<v Speaker 1>Uncle Bob, great Uncle Bob, I'll call him. But everybody
<v Speaker 1>else was there. And of course I'm sitting there a
<v Speaker 1>sixteen year old with a slack jaw looking and listening
<v Speaker 1>to everything that's going on and absorbing all of this
<v Speaker 1>as much as possible. So my account might differ a
<v Speaker 1>little bit from what John Green wrote in his book,
<v Speaker 1>and he got into some of that on page thirteen.
<v Speaker 1>I think it is Bud Nanjie Jenkins was their name,
<v Speaker 1>and Bob I think McKendrick was his was Bob's name.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know why that's so, but anyway, so there's
<v Speaker 1>that and Bob. Bud and Bob were truck drivers, long
<v Speaker 1>haul truck drivers, and they would leave from l A
<v Speaker 1>and travel all the way up to Canada, and the
<v Speaker 1>midpoint for them at that time was right around Fort Bragg,
<v Speaker 1>So they would swing in at night and camp out
<v Speaker 1>for a few hours before they jumped in the rig
<v Speaker 1>and went north or vice or south, vice versa, depending
<v Speaker 1>on which direction they were going. And this particular night
<v Speaker 1>and Bud or rather Bob, are you confused yet.
<v Speaker 2>We'll try to keep track of it, okay.
<v Speaker 1>For Bob would sleep on a couch on the front
<v Speaker 1>in the front room because they didn't have a special
<v Speaker 1>room for him and everything else like that. It was
<v Speaker 1>just a little kind of a bungalow house with a
<v Speaker 1>fence around it and a chicken coop and whatnot in
<v Speaker 1>the backyard, and anyway, he would sleep on there, and
<v Speaker 1>then in the middle of the night, Angie Bud's wife
<v Speaker 1>would she had to get up go to the bathroom.
<v Speaker 1>And apparently the clouds were sifting in and out, and
<v Speaker 1>there was a moon kind of in between, and she's
<v Speaker 1>going through the living room toward the toward the bathroom.
<v Speaker 1>She looked out her front room window and here's this bear.
<v Speaker 1>She was convinced it was a bear at the time,
<v Speaker 1>and crawled over the fence and was getting in her garden.
<v Speaker 1>And if you know anything about bears and ladies and gardens,
<v Speaker 1>you know that bear was in trouble anyway, so she asked.
<v Speaker 1>She ran back to the bedroom and told Bud to
<v Speaker 1>get the shotgun. There's a bear in my garden. And
<v Speaker 1>so he's he's looking for the shotgun, which she had moved,
<v Speaker 1>and he then has to look for the shelves, which
<v Speaker 1>they never did find. And oh, I wish I'm thankful
<v Speaker 1>for quite frankly, but in the hubub and the chaos,
<v Speaker 1>Bob got up and said, what's going on, and of
<v Speaker 1>course she told him, and he said, oh, my goodness,
<v Speaker 1>I'll just run out of her and yell at it.
<v Speaker 1>It'll go away, no big deal. So he goes out
<v Speaker 1>through the front room door and to do what he
<v Speaker 1>needs to do. In the meantime, Bud comes out and says,
<v Speaker 1>where's Bob. He's down around the corner of the house
<v Speaker 1>or something. He's yelling at the bear. So they both
<v Speaker 1>walked up to the front room door and there's a
<v Speaker 1>screen door, kind of an alcove type of thing. Anyway,
<v Speaker 1>it was the front door, and they look down the
<v Speaker 1>sidewalk and here's Bob. He's on his hands and knees,
<v Speaker 1>crawling back into the house. And right behind him, literally
<v Speaker 1>right behind him, was this tall, eight foot tall bigfoot.
<v Speaker 1>Now they didn't know that by name, what a bigfoot was.
<v Speaker 1>They had never encountered such a thing, knew nothing about it.
<v Speaker 1>It was all brand new experience, absolutely new. And but
<v Speaker 1>Bob is crawling in, he crawls in the door of
<v Speaker 1>the house, and as he gets there, Bud and Angie,
<v Speaker 1>of course, they're in shock themselves. They don't know what's
<v Speaker 1>going on. They both are hanging onto the screen door
<v Speaker 1>and they want to shut shut the screen door. Well,
<v Speaker 1>the bigfoot sasquatch, whatever you want to call him. He
<v Speaker 1>walks right up there. He was there, and he was
<v Speaker 1>bent over to look inside at the place. And the
<v Speaker 1>doorframes on those were seventy eight inches I think standard.
<v Speaker 1>I you know, it might be an insure too different,
<v Speaker 1>but that's pretty standard. So it had to bend over
<v Speaker 1>quite a ways to look in. And they're looking at
<v Speaker 1>each other across the space of a couple of feet,
<v Speaker 1>I mean they're they're right there where they can count
<v Speaker 1>the cavities in his teeth, and and the the animal
<v Speaker 1>had that look on his face of just super curios
<v Speaker 1>curious curiosity all over him and going through the motions
<v Speaker 1>there and bent over and everything else like that. Well
<v Speaker 1>at that particular point, but and Angie did weren't curious
<v Speaker 1>at all. They just were away and their curiosity was gone.
<v Speaker 1>They're trying to shut the door and it wouldn't shut,
<v Speaker 1>and they didn't or the screener wasn't shut. They couldn't
<v Speaker 1>understand what was going on, and they're in a state
<v Speaker 1>of shock and any number of things of that nature.
<v Speaker 1>And so pretty soon they got wise and they just
<v Speaker 1>backed away and shut the main door. And after they
<v Speaker 1>shut the main door, they the animals stood there for
<v Speaker 1>a couple of seconds, a few minutes whatever. I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>I wouldn't, I don't. I didn't have a stopwatch on it.
<v Speaker 1>I wasn't there. But then it turned and left and
<v Speaker 1>it faded off into the dark, and it was gone.
<v Speaker 1>Well it took They called the They called the sheriff
<v Speaker 1>out of fair, out of Fort Bragg, and told them
<v Speaker 1>what had gone on. And that was about four in
<v Speaker 1>the morning, I guess all this transpired. And so there
<v Speaker 1>they're waiting there for the sheriff to come out, which
<v Speaker 1>what didn't take very long, and it was fading to day.
<v Speaker 1>I was beginning to get daylight anyway, and poor poor
<v Speaker 1>Uncle Bob, he couldn't hold a cup of coffee for
<v Speaker 1>about half an hour. She shaken so bad. And anyway,
<v Speaker 1>they came out. They took some plaster casts of the
<v Speaker 1>feet and took the information down, and and this that
<v Speaker 1>and the other thing. And I'm not one hundred percent
<v Speaker 1>sure they believed everything. Could it'd be pretty hard not
<v Speaker 1>to believe some family like that caught in that situation.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, you may not know what to take make
<v Speaker 1>of it, but believing that they had the encounter was
<v Speaker 1>very real and and uh that type of thing. So
<v Speaker 1>within a day or two or something, I don't know
<v Speaker 1>exact exact time frame, but there was a professor Edward
<v Speaker 1>I think is his name, out of Ashland, Oregon, which
<v Speaker 1>is you know, due north there a bit, and I
<v Speaker 1>think he was an art professor. Some of those things
<v Speaker 1>are very vague, but they're known, and if you want
<v Speaker 1>more information, if you want specific information, you could get
<v Speaker 1>hold of Daniel Perez of Bigfoot Times or Cliff Barrickman.
<v Speaker 1>They've got they've got a copy of the handprint inside
<v Speaker 1>the museum there. I've seen it three different times. But anyway,
<v Speaker 1>he came down and he traced he traced the hand
<v Speaker 1>on the that was left the print that was left
<v Speaker 1>on the door sill. It's pretty mighty enough enough what
<v Speaker 1>do you call it dirt on the hand of the
<v Speaker 1>print to make a pretty good print out of it,
<v Speaker 1>and from the heel by the wrist to the top
<v Speaker 1>of the farthest finger, who was eleven and a half
<v Speaker 1>or eleven and three quarters long.
<v Speaker 2>Wow.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I've heard that they have some massive hands, and
<v Speaker 1>I believe it. But anyway, that's that's the length of
<v Speaker 1>the hand and that was impressive enough all by itself.
<v Speaker 1>So anyway that that happened, and I've been told that
<v Speaker 1>somebody said, well, they tracked it for five miles. Well,
<v Speaker 1>if you've been been listening to any of the Bigfoot accounts,
<v Speaker 1>tracking a Bigfoot for five miles in anything but snow
<v Speaker 1>is just about an absolute impossibility. They may have found
<v Speaker 1>track another track somewhere five miles out, but they didn't
<v Speaker 1>track it that if, I don't think. But anyway, that's
<v Speaker 1>the upshot of that whole situation. And it'd been written
<v Speaker 1>up and talked about, and I listened. I listened to
<v Speaker 1>it with rapt attention.
<v Speaker 2>I'll tell you, I bet what were they there to
<v Speaker 2>tell the story? Specifically? Is that why they were visiting.
<v Speaker 1>They didn't come up there saying, let me, let's go
<v Speaker 1>talk to the folks, I mean my folks, But they
<v Speaker 1>were in They came up because my aunt and my
<v Speaker 1>uncle uncle Ollie, they lived close to us up here
<v Speaker 1>when they came up to visit. And it wasn't very
<v Speaker 1>long afterwards that they they came up and made the
<v Speaker 1>extra extra special to come over to the house and
<v Speaker 1>tell the story. And very very glad that they did,
<v Speaker 1>because that's been kind of a high water mark in
<v Speaker 1>our in our family.
<v Speaker 2>I can imagine. So how did they how did they
<v Speaker 2>present it to you? And because back then, I mean
<v Speaker 2>like like you're saying Bigfoot wasn't even a thing yet.
<v Speaker 1>No, well it was getting to be a thing obviously.
<v Speaker 1>But yes, they said, we had an account, we had
<v Speaker 1>this is what happened. And somebody had told them by
<v Speaker 1>that time that that this was supposedly a real thing
<v Speaker 1>in California, and this that and the other thing. So
<v Speaker 1>they were getting educated real quick. Let's put that one.
<v Speaker 1>I bet yeah. And one of the things I forgot
<v Speaker 1>to well, I didn't forget. I actually held back on
<v Speaker 1>telling Jonathan and Sarah about this part because I really
<v Speaker 1>wasn't sure of it myself. And that's when Bob went
<v Speaker 1>out to chase the bear off. He stuffed his face
<v Speaker 1>right in the chest of this animal.
<v Speaker 2>Ran right into it, and I thought, you know that
<v Speaker 2>I don't believe that.
<v Speaker 1>It's hard to believe. I mean that that's a little
<v Speaker 1>bit of hyperbole and this that and the other thing.
<v Speaker 1>But after I had the conversation with Jonathan and Sarah
<v Speaker 1>about what had happened, I made a phone call to
<v Speaker 1>one of my cousins of my aunt Shirley's son, and
<v Speaker 1>I asked him about that. I says, no, is that
<v Speaker 1>just add on? Is that hyperbole, drama whatever? He says, Oh, no,
<v Speaker 1>that actually happened. It's the real mac which is apparently
<v Speaker 1>one of the reasons that he he came crawling back.
<v Speaker 1>And you know, I think that between between that and
<v Speaker 1>the fact that the animal never never made a move
<v Speaker 1>that was it could have been construed as vicious or
<v Speaker 1>mad or mean or whatever, and it still had its
<v Speaker 1>presence of mind whatever that is, to come up to
<v Speaker 1>the door and look inside the house full of curiosity.
<v Speaker 1>That's one of the reasons that I am convinced they're
<v Speaker 1>not They're not what we think they are. There's there's
<v Speaker 1>there's a little bit more to them than that, and
<v Speaker 1>and I've always so anyway, they validated that, and I said,
<v Speaker 1>are you sure. He says, oh no, We've all talked
<v Speaker 1>about that exact same thing for years. And I said, okay,
<v Speaker 1>I'm going to let that information out. And but I
<v Speaker 1>didn't want to throw something out there that nobody would
<v Speaker 1>willing to buy into, you know what I mean, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>for sure. I was looking for clarity, not chaos and
<v Speaker 1>the real as opposed to false. So all of that
<v Speaker 1>has to fit into that matrix of the of the
<v Speaker 1>story and what I would give or have given to
<v Speaker 1>been a little closer, And they have taken the time.
<v Speaker 1>Now today we use BFRO and other research people and
<v Speaker 1>they would ask different questions and they would ferret out
<v Speaker 1>different lines of inquiry and maybe add or subtract from
<v Speaker 1>the story in a different way. But that's the gist
<v Speaker 1>of the story as it was told to me. And
<v Speaker 1>I feel honored and complimented in a very real way
<v Speaker 1>that these folks that I know, and they weren't given
<v Speaker 1>to storytelling anyway. My aunt Surety says, now, Bud might
<v Speaker 1>exaggerate a little bit, but my mom she wouldn't. If
<v Speaker 1>it was black, it was black. If it was white,
<v Speaker 1>it was white, and there's nothing in between. So and
<v Speaker 1>she told the story just like the rest of them.
<v Speaker 1>And I will say that their eye size must have
<v Speaker 1>went up a little, yeah, I mean I would there
<v Speaker 1>may not have may not have been a good odor
<v Speaker 1>there for a while either. Well. The rest of that story,
<v Speaker 1>which rarely gets told hardly if at all, is that
<v Speaker 1>over the next couple of weeks, you know, things settled down,
<v Speaker 1>of course, and they saw the footprints in the garden
<v Speaker 1>and YadA, YadA, YadA. But over the next couple of
<v Speaker 1>weeks they but noticed that the dog food was going
<v Speaker 1>down way too fast. He had a fifty pound bag
<v Speaker 1>of dog food and opened the top of it and
<v Speaker 1>to feed the dogs. And again I don't know what
<v Speaker 1>the dog's response was to this crater around the place.
<v Speaker 1>I never heard anything about that, or if I did,
<v Speaker 1>I forgot, But anyway, that it was down to from
<v Speaker 1>a full open down to half and almost overnight, so
<v Speaker 1>that was very uncommon. And somebody else said, well, the
<v Speaker 1>bear could get in there or not bother anything. Well
<v Speaker 1>not really, a bear would just drew that stuff all
<v Speaker 1>over the place. I've hunted bear myself for years, and
<v Speaker 1>bear are not good housekeepers by any stretch of the imagination. Anyway,
<v Speaker 1>So there was that. And they also had on the
<v Speaker 1>as you walked in the door, there was a two
<v Speaker 1>by four part of the two by four structure they
<v Speaker 1>kept an egg carton and they would take eggs off
<v Speaker 1>the hands and put them in there, and if it
<v Speaker 1>was two or three eggs, they just leave it. When
<v Speaker 1>they got up to eight nine eggs, ten a dozen whatever.
<v Speaker 1>They would take that into the house and replace the
<v Speaker 1>egg carton. Well, they noticed that the bud went out
<v Speaker 1>one time and there was a half a dozen eggs
<v Speaker 1>in there, and he walked out to the next in
<v Speaker 1>there was none, I mean, yeah, none cleaned out. He
<v Speaker 1>kind of what was going on, But he looked around
<v Speaker 1>and there was no shells on the on the floor.
<v Speaker 1>The eggs were just missing vanished. As the time went on,
<v Speaker 1>I mean it was a short time. Within a couple
<v Speaker 1>of weeks, there was an occasional bigfoot track that they
<v Speaker 1>either hadn't noticed or showed up fresh. They weren't sure,
<v Speaker 1>So that that told them that whatever this critter was,
<v Speaker 1>he's hanging around a bit. Yeah, And and Angie because
<v Speaker 1>Shirley Aunt Shirley's mom, because she's there alone. She'd had enough.
<v Speaker 1>So they either I don't know if they rented, were
<v Speaker 1>renting the place or it bought it or whatever, but
<v Speaker 1>they they made an effort to get out of there
<v Speaker 1>and go somewhere else. And that was the end of
<v Speaker 1>that whole chapter. But I always thought that that was
<v Speaker 1>an interesting tag on to the to the original story.
<v Speaker 2>There's a lot of interesting details in that story.
<v Speaker 1>Oh boy.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I understand if you don't know the answer to this,
<v Speaker 2>But do you happen to know what kind of produce
<v Speaker 2>was in the garden?
<v Speaker 1>Oh? It was. It's California, northern California still could end
<v Speaker 1>out towards the coast, so it could be just about anything.
<v Speaker 1>There could be every tomatoes, cabbage, just about anything, just
<v Speaker 1>about anything. I don't know anything about what they actually
<v Speaker 1>had in there, but that was part of it.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I was just curious about, you know what specifically
<v Speaker 2>it was after in the garden.
<v Speaker 1>I think it was just a pass through, Yeah, you
<v Speaker 1>know it was. The fence was I think I find
<v Speaker 1>I mistaken. The fence was like six feet tall of
<v Speaker 1>a regular seed board fence. Where it went over the
<v Speaker 1>top didn't go over. I don't know if it went
<v Speaker 1>over the top or not. That's a good question.
<v Speaker 2>So there's been situations, you know, and we'll get back
<v Speaker 2>to but I just want to take a break here
<v Speaker 2>for a second, because I've known people personally. A woman
<v Speaker 2>researcher down in Texas. Her husband at the time whenever
<v Speaker 2>I met her, was a long haul truck driver and
<v Speaker 2>Bigfoot was coming up around her house whenever he would
<v Speaker 2>leave town. That was something I was told and observed
<v Speaker 2>personally at a very early time whenever I got into Bigfoot.
<v Speaker 2>And over the years there's been numerous cases where for
<v Speaker 2>whatever reason, husband's gone for a while, no men are around,
<v Speaker 2>and Bigfoot starts coming up around the house. That's not
<v Speaker 2>something these people would have known about. That's not something
<v Speaker 2>you know that would really get picked up on all
<v Speaker 2>that much. But then you have a situation, like you're saying,
<v Speaker 2>where she was alone at the house a lot of time,
<v Speaker 2>and that might have made the bigfoot felm more secure
<v Speaker 2>about coming up that close to the house or whatever
<v Speaker 2>and taking advantage of like the dog food and the
<v Speaker 2>eggs in the garden and everything else. And then one
<v Speaker 2>of the first things that popped in my mind while
<v Speaker 2>you were telling the story was the Bigfoot's behavior, the
<v Speaker 2>curiosity and everything, and why would it act that way,
<v Speaker 2>and why was Uncle Bob crawling on his hands and
<v Speaker 2>knees and so running into it like that. It sounds
<v Speaker 2>totally believable because it explains those aspects of the story.
<v Speaker 2>It explains why he's on his knees like that, poor
<v Speaker 2>Uncle Bob. He explains why the Bigfoot might have followed
<v Speaker 2>him back to the house and been like, what is
<v Speaker 2>going on here? You know, a human just ran into me.
<v Speaker 2>One of those little hairless things just hit me.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So it's all just really fascinating. And to have heard
<v Speaker 2>that at the age of sixteen from your own family
<v Speaker 2>members sitting around like that, that must have been amazing.
<v Speaker 2>I can only imagine what was going through your head.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it was amazing. John dropping quite frankly, and my
<v Speaker 1>step dad my mom at the time, and they well,
<v Speaker 1>it took till the time of their death. They always said, oh,
<v Speaker 1>I can't believe that. I can't believe that. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>when you get it stuck in your mind that that's
<v Speaker 1>what you're going to believe or not believe, that's you
<v Speaker 1>normally stay there, which is kind of unfortunate. Yea, my
<v Speaker 1>stepdad he lived in the woods all the time. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>he grew up in the woods, cut wood, did all
<v Speaker 1>kinds of things that and hunted. He was an extremely
<v Speaker 1>good hunter and that type of thing. And he said, oh,
<v Speaker 1>I've never had a problem, I've never had that kind
<v Speaker 1>of a situation. Well, I wonder how many times we
<v Speaker 1>just erased that out of our mind, even if we
<v Speaker 1>did have this situation, a strange noise, a tree being
<v Speaker 1>pushed over, a rock being thrown, and you don't know
<v Speaker 1>where it comes from, so you kind of dismiss it.
<v Speaker 1>You're thinking it must have fell off of overturned stump
<v Speaker 1>or any number of things.
<v Speaker 2>You know, sure it must to been this.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, exactly. They make up their mind before they make
<v Speaker 1>up the finish out the information and so anyway, but
<v Speaker 1>I have been fortunate that when they told the story,
<v Speaker 1>I believe the story. I didn't. I didn't question it
<v Speaker 1>at all. But let me add a little bit to
<v Speaker 1>what you said, because I think that this is a
<v Speaker 1>fascinating sideline on it. There's where we my wife and
<v Speaker 1>I built an off grid home out of a little
<v Speaker 1>place on the west side pack of Packwood, Washington, which
<v Speaker 1>is also the west side Highway, not highway but Highway
<v Speaker 1>twelve and White Pass. Anyway, we had an off grid
<v Speaker 1>home and above our place, the forest service road that
<v Speaker 1>we lived on went up an additional thirteen miles to
<v Speaker 1>the top, made a hook, there's a there's a little
<v Speaker 1>lake up there, and it's just beautiful country and death
<v Speaker 1>definitely wilderness all the way from the from the my back,
<v Speaker 1>my back door to the end of it was wilderness.
<v Speaker 1>And there's a place up there where the road runs
<v Speaker 1>tight along kind of a rock wall. If you're coming down,
<v Speaker 1>it would be on the left side and for a
<v Speaker 1>couple of hundred yards, and then on the right side
<v Speaker 1>of that it just goes off into nothing with the
<v Speaker 1>bottom of the canyon. And we used to hunt up
<v Speaker 1>there all the time, and this gentleman from the area
<v Speaker 1>hunts up there an awful lot as well, and he was, well,
<v Speaker 1>he was past that point going up and when he
<v Speaker 1>came back down, that's the only way it comes. You
<v Speaker 1>either go buy that or you don't. There's no other
<v Speaker 1>You don't get an option. So he's coming back down
<v Speaker 1>the logging road, the poor service road, and in front
<v Speaker 1>of him, just passed the wall, there's a bigfoot is
<v Speaker 1>standing right smack in the middle of the road. He's
<v Speaker 1>a big guy to all of eight foot are better,
<v Speaker 1>and he's not paying attention to this gentleman coming down
<v Speaker 1>the road because he's got something in his hand and
<v Speaker 1>he's sniffing it and going through those motions and tearing
<v Speaker 1>this thing apart and ripping it apart, and he is
<v Speaker 1>bellering at the top of his lungs and just having
<v Speaker 1>a fit and that type of thing. So this gentleman,
<v Speaker 1>he's been all over those hills, he's never had an
<v Speaker 1>experience anywhere even close to this, and he's scared spitless,
<v Speaker 1>quite frankly, and I think I'm getting dry mouth just
<v Speaker 1>thinking about it. Anyway. Anyway, so he's stuck. Here's no
<v Speaker 1>place for him to go. And after a bit, the
<v Speaker 1>animal realized that there was somebody else in the vicinity,
<v Speaker 1>which was him, only a couple hundred yards away, and
<v Speaker 1>he drops what he has in his hand and took
<v Speaker 1>a couple of steps and went over the bank down
<v Speaker 1>into no man's land, and that was it. Well, the
<v Speaker 1>guy got him hisself together and he starts driving down
<v Speaker 1>the road and he looks down. He was wondering what
<v Speaker 1>was going on in his helf. By that time. What
<v Speaker 1>had happened was there was a lady's feminine napkin that
<v Speaker 1>this ad up on his face and sniffing in the
<v Speaker 1>odor and everything else like that. I don't think I
<v Speaker 1>need a lot of explanation about what was going on there,
<v Speaker 1>but it had lit him up, and that type of thing.
<v Speaker 1>You know, maybe he's looking for a date. I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>But the upshot of the whole thing is, I think
<v Speaker 1>the gal's perfume you might say, has has accommodated and
<v Speaker 1>has gone along with any number of outings, other different
<v Speaker 1>situations and ladies, ladies who have had, like you say,
<v Speaker 1>encounters around their own where men aren't around. So it's
<v Speaker 1>hard to say. I mean, that might be real far fetched.
<v Speaker 1>But whatever it was, this gentleman says, I'm think going
<v Speaker 1>there again, and which I think is kind of foolish
<v Speaker 1>because the animals they move on. It doesn't make any difference.
<v Speaker 1>But anyway, he'd had enough, he had enough experience right
<v Speaker 1>there without without going any farther than that.
<v Speaker 2>So I mean that was something that.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that's a natural I think.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, I was fortunate enough to hook up with
<v Speaker 2>people that were much older than myself and had been
<v Speaker 2>doing this for a long long time before I even
<v Speaker 2>got started, and that type of information theory, whatever you
<v Speaker 2>want to call it, that's good enough. It was was
<v Speaker 2>pretty accepted and pretty well known and talked about, you know,
<v Speaker 2>in circles, and it was only due to you know,
<v Speaker 2>changes in society and what was acceptable and not acceptable
<v Speaker 2>to say publicly. You know, it kind of got stopped
<v Speaker 2>talking about. But that doesn't erase it, it doesn't make
<v Speaker 2>it go away, It doesn't make it anymore untrue.
<v Speaker 1>Exactly right. I mean, if you think about it, how
<v Speaker 1>much how much sense I'm talking S C E N
<v Speaker 1>T S do we take with us when we're when
<v Speaker 1>we're hunting for game, animals, of the sense of the
<v Speaker 1>of the lady, of the of the area, and those
<v Speaker 1>types of things. And to me it all makes sense.
<v Speaker 1>And over over time you hear all different kinds of things,
<v Speaker 1>and I don't you know, I don't don't need to
<v Speaker 1>get too carried away. But like you say, culturally, we're
<v Speaker 1>always in a state of change and flux and whatnot.
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, sure, what have you experienced.
<v Speaker 1>No, I've never had to wrestle one, let's put that way,
<v Speaker 1>And I've never actually even seen one. But I've been
<v Speaker 1>in a couple of different situations. Well, at the same road,
<v Speaker 1>it goes up makes a hard, hard hook to the right,
<v Speaker 1>and it's about the forty five hundred foot level, which
<v Speaker 1>doesn't impress anybody from Colorado, but around here it's the
<v Speaker 1>same height. There's white paths, and there's a little lake
<v Speaker 1>there called Jackpot Lake, and I took my canoe up there,
<v Speaker 1>and I'm a fly fisherman and everything. Sometimes the only
<v Speaker 1>thing I catch is flies. But anyway, I'm out on
<v Speaker 1>the lake and it was absolutely dead calm. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>there wasn't a wrinkle on the water, There was not
<v Speaker 1>a puff in the air. Even there was no Normally
<v Speaker 1>there's a crows and other birds and other situations making noise,
<v Speaker 1>but nothing was going on. It was toward the evening.
<v Speaker 1>It was a it was just before it really gets
<v Speaker 1>serious about getting dark and out of nowhere. On the
<v Speaker 1>other on the other end of the light, now, this
<v Speaker 1>little lake was a pothole lake and probably five acres okay,
<v Speaker 1>But at the other end of it in the big timber,
<v Speaker 1>and we're talking old growth, big stuff, and away from
<v Speaker 1>the lake itself came a tree and crashing down, and
<v Speaker 1>I know it was. It was a tree and maybe
<v Speaker 1>the somewhere between six and eight inch diameter at the
<v Speaker 1>blot something of that nature came crashing down for no reason,
<v Speaker 1>absolutely no reason that I could figure out, and it
<v Speaker 1>kind of made me wonder what the heck was going
<v Speaker 1>on there. So I paddled down to that end of
<v Speaker 1>the lake, and I was going to pull the canoe
<v Speaker 1>up on the shore and go up through the through
<v Speaker 1>the timber. It wasn't very far through there, and it's
<v Speaker 1>fairly open, and then at the backside of it dropped
<v Speaker 1>off into down to what called Jackpot Creek and at
<v Speaker 1>the far end, and that may be or some eight
<v Speaker 1>hundred thousand feet below, but it was pretty well straight
<v Speaker 1>up and down, and I started to get out of
<v Speaker 1>the canoe, and you know, this is not very smart.
<v Speaker 1>I think, I think I'll just let this situation simmer
<v Speaker 1>and go the other way. And I've had that premonition
<v Speaker 1>a couple of times. Again, A bear or cougar no
<v Speaker 1>longer bothers me. You know, you've been around them along
<v Speaker 1>enough that you know when when to push and when
<v Speaker 1>to not push, and or I have anyway, and so
<v Speaker 1>I've kind of stayed away from him a little bit.
<v Speaker 1>But I don't they don't bother me. I see, I
<v Speaker 1>see bear. I considered the highlight of my evening to
<v Speaker 1>see a bear walk around in the area, or see
<v Speaker 1>cougar tracks or that type of thing. And so they
<v Speaker 1>don't bother me. But there's all I've said before. There's
<v Speaker 1>something else out there that definitely catches my attention. And
<v Speaker 1>I don't know if the bigfoot, that's where I would
<v Speaker 1>call the infrasound, or the or the growling or something
<v Speaker 1>of that nature, is that we can't pick up with
<v Speaker 1>our own hair. Shoot, I can't hear a bomb blast anymore,
<v Speaker 1>but those types of things is and I'm kind of
<v Speaker 1>wondering if those are the kind of warnings or situations
<v Speaker 1>that come across on a different level, it says, Jack,
<v Speaker 1>you need you need to just go home and be
<v Speaker 1>done with it. Also, at the same time, just down
<v Speaker 1>below that a little bit, there's a swamp. And when
<v Speaker 1>I'm coming back down where it crosses the creek and
<v Speaker 1>there is a they like water and this there's a
<v Speaker 1>stream that runs kind of through the edge of the
<v Speaker 1>swamp and out the backside down And in the springtime,
<v Speaker 1>I go up there because I lived at the bottom
<v Speaker 1>of the road, so nobody would bother going up that
<v Speaker 1>road until there was enough spring and enough summer to
<v Speaker 1>open keep the road open. I just go up there.
<v Speaker 1>I would be looking for a boat making material and
<v Speaker 1>just to visit. Well. We also used to collect firewood
<v Speaker 1>up there too, so that was another reason to be
<v Speaker 1>up there before anybody in town got up there, so
<v Speaker 1>at least I would have my stuff marked. But anyway,
<v Speaker 1>I come across a couple of situations. There were the
<v Speaker 1>scat on the edge of that swamp was of a
<v Speaker 1>diameter and size was put that way that you knew
<v Speaker 1>it was no common bear in there, and there was
<v Speaker 1>something much much bigger than that. And I came across
<v Speaker 1>that in two different spots, and both both of them
<v Speaker 1>had that same sensation Jack, you just don't belong here.
<v Speaker 1>And yet at the same time, I go through a
<v Speaker 1>week later and that would would not be there, The
<v Speaker 1>sensation would not be there, it would not bother me.
<v Speaker 1>I go right off and do whatever I was going
<v Speaker 1>to do up there. So and I think, if you're
<v Speaker 1>sensitive to what's around you, and I developed that sensitivity,
<v Speaker 1>by the way, because I bow hunt with the old
<v Speaker 1>English longbow, I've done it for thirty some years, and
<v Speaker 1>that means you're by yourself if you're going to be
<v Speaker 1>effective at all. And I was very effective, almost too effective,
<v Speaker 1>but very effective with that. And so I had to
<v Speaker 1>pay attention to what was going around me on a
<v Speaker 1>different level than just blundering through with a red coat
<v Speaker 1>and a rifle. You get the idea. I mean, I'm
<v Speaker 1>watching for every little thing I could to detect. I
<v Speaker 1>wasn't looking for danger, but I was looking for animals
<v Speaker 1>or signs of things, and whatever the case is. That's
<v Speaker 1>often the case for me anyway, that that I would
<v Speaker 1>bump into things that the average guy with a glow
<v Speaker 1>coat and a rifle would never see. They don't, they're not,
<v Speaker 1>they're not. They could shoot two hundred yards or better. Me,
<v Speaker 1>I kept my limits down at twenty or thirty yards max.
<v Speaker 1>And so I'd have to be I'd have to be
<v Speaker 1>pretty sensitive to what's going on around me. So with that,
<v Speaker 1>those things kind of disturbed me differently. And at the
<v Speaker 1>same the same area now, by the way, and I
<v Speaker 1>know of other people who have seen them up there,
<v Speaker 1>but the same area. There was a lookout up there
<v Speaker 1>during during World War Two. There was lookouts all over
<v Speaker 1>that country, and I could name a bunch of them,
<v Speaker 1>but it won't. But the south the ridge was called
<v Speaker 1>south Point, one of the highest little ridges in there,
<v Speaker 1>and it was right at about sixty one hundred feet
<v Speaker 1>where they put the the uh the lookout, and man,
<v Speaker 1>you could see a lot of country anyway. The upshot
<v Speaker 1>of that is that. My wife and I went up
<v Speaker 1>there a couple of times and back it never had
<v Speaker 1>a problem. It's quite a little height, and come at
<v Speaker 1>it from a couple of different directions on two different trails.
<v Speaker 1>And then the next time we went up there, she
<v Speaker 1>looked at me. I looked at her and I said,
<v Speaker 1>you know, this ain't and she she said, at first,
<v Speaker 1>she says, I don't think this is not right. Something's
<v Speaker 1>haywire here that it doesn't I don't feel comfortable. And
<v Speaker 1>I said, well, I've had the same feeling we're being
<v Speaker 1>watched or or we're being whatever. And so we backed
<v Speaker 1>out of there. The next next time we go back
<v Speaker 1>up there, it goes right through there like it was
<v Speaker 1>open seasons, you know, no problem. So from that perspective,
<v Speaker 1>I've been around them, and I've been around all kinds
<v Speaker 1>of people. I've ferried out any any uh uh story
<v Speaker 1>or any experienced people had I want to know more
<v Speaker 1>about these critters and that type of thing. The last
<v Speaker 1>few years I've really kind of leaned into it. And
<v Speaker 1>like I said, after I got married, you know, we're
<v Speaker 1>busy raising a family and I don't have I don't
<v Speaker 1>have a lot of time or and other interests and
<v Speaker 1>things of that nature take up the spare time, the
<v Speaker 1>slack time, and that type of thing. So I kind
<v Speaker 1>of stay away from that. But I've shared a lot
<v Speaker 1>of this with Sarah and John. She says, I got
<v Speaker 1>tons of stories. Well, I'm down to pounds.
<v Speaker 2>I'm just kind of curious personally. Is there a certain
<v Speaker 2>story or a couple that stand out in your own
<v Speaker 2>mind that you just personally like more than the others.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, this first one, I told you that that's one
<v Speaker 1>of the very real things. Another one is I'll use
<v Speaker 1>the Malwich account. And I've said this one before and
<v Speaker 1>and I really like it because it impacted me as
<v Speaker 1>well as the other gentleman. I We lived in a
<v Speaker 1>little bird called Carbonado, and it's up in the hills,
<v Speaker 1>a little little west of Mount Rainier National Park, kind
<v Speaker 1>of kind of west central, you might say, and up
<v Speaker 1>on the up on the carbon Glacier and all that.
<v Speaker 1>It's just beautiful country east of Mountain goat hunt in
<v Speaker 1>a close proximity that you can't hunt legally in the
<v Speaker 1>park period, end of the subject. But we'd always we'd
<v Speaker 1>always run the edges, and because you know, the park
<v Speaker 1>itself is I don't know how many square miles it
<v Speaker 1>is is pretty good, pretty good size. You got Mount
<v Speaker 1>Rainier plugged right in the middle of it. And the
<v Speaker 1>upshot of all of that is it's it's not only
<v Speaker 1>primitive and remote and that's type of thing, but it
<v Speaker 1>becomes a sanctuary for any of the animals that live there,
<v Speaker 1>and so from time to time they'll come out. But anyway,
<v Speaker 1>I can't. I was leaving a Carbonado driving toward pew
<v Speaker 1>All Up and it's a half of my half hour drive,
<v Speaker 1>and just as I left the town of Carbonato, I
<v Speaker 1>picked up a guy kind of looked half lost. And
<v Speaker 1>I normally don't pick up hitchhikers, but this was years
<v Speaker 1>and years ago when that it seem to be quite
<v Speaker 1>a problem. Anyway, I picked him up and we introduced
<v Speaker 1>each other who we were. I'd never met him before,
<v Speaker 1>and we're driving along and he was he was a
<v Speaker 1>veteran like I am. He was a Vietnam veterano, although
<v Speaker 1>he apparently had some rougher times than I did. But anyway,
<v Speaker 1>and I says, well, what are you, where are you going?
<v Speaker 1>What are you doing? All that kind of stuff, And
<v Speaker 1>apparently he had took a large stump, cedar stump that
<v Speaker 1>was inside the park. You're not supposed to have done this,
<v Speaker 1>but anyway, had a large stump inside the park that
<v Speaker 1>he had. The bottom of it was sort of hollow,
<v Speaker 1>so he finished hollowing it out and made a kind
<v Speaker 1>of a cabin out of it so he could stay there.
<v Speaker 1>And he managed to stay a couple of winters in
<v Speaker 1>that thing. I would never would have done that myself,
<v Speaker 1>but he needed to be alone and that was his
<v Speaker 1>way of It's kind of a sanctuary for him. And
<v Speaker 1>so we got to talking about that he would bring
<v Speaker 1>He brought in a crossbow. Well, crossbows were illegal, but
<v Speaker 1>he liked that because it was quiet and he can
<v Speaker 1>make sure he had meat. And I did again, I
<v Speaker 1>didn't question it. That was his deal. But anything anyway,
<v Speaker 1>So we're driving along and I asked, I asked him.
<v Speaker 1>I said, listen, I says, what do you know about Bigfoot?
<v Speaker 1>And I'll tell you what. And I've said this a
<v Speaker 1>number of times before. He went from a casual, open
<v Speaker 1>kind of a conversation, he just turned into a different
<v Speaker 1>man right there in front of me. He was two
<v Speaker 1>different people. He was dead serious when he got to
<v Speaker 1>that point of the conversation, and he says, well, I
<v Speaker 1>had one run in with one. I said to run
<v Speaker 1>in and he says, well, not really. I saw it,
<v Speaker 1>and I said, well, tell me about it. So he
<v Speaker 1>explained that he was on one little ridge that drops
<v Speaker 1>off into the canyon where his cabin was and her
<v Speaker 1>stump cabin you'd call what you want anyway, and he
<v Speaker 1>looked across the way and there was He thought it
<v Speaker 1>was a bear, and he says, I've seen lots of
<v Speaker 1>bear up there, and he did. I know he did,
<v Speaker 1>but anyway, because I used to hunt bear right off
<v Speaker 1>the edges of that myself. Anyway, he said, he said,
<v Speaker 1>was kind of up against the stump, and it was,
<v Speaker 1>and it was eating berries, huckleberries. So it must have
<v Speaker 1>been in the fall of the air late August early September,
<v Speaker 1>before he had decided to go in for the winter.
<v Speaker 1>And he says it was so odd it reach it
<v Speaker 1>would reach out and actually take take the berries and
<v Speaker 1>the limb and everything and eat it. And he says,
<v Speaker 1>I was fascinated because I hadn't seen a bear that
<v Speaker 1>was doing, not standing on its hinde and legs like that.
<v Speaker 1>And it was a far enough away that it wasn't
<v Speaker 1>a real clear picture apparently, and and he says, I
<v Speaker 1>watched it, watch it, and he says, all of a sudden,
<v Speaker 1>it senses it knew I was looking at it, and
<v Speaker 1>it turned and looked right at me, and he says,
<v Speaker 1>it's just scared me spitless, and it gathered itself together
<v Speaker 1>and walked off toward the park, up into the timber.
<v Speaker 1>And he says, I watched it the whole way. It
<v Speaker 1>was not a bear. It was definitely a big pot
<v Speaker 1>of sasquatch. And he says, I never went back to
<v Speaker 1>my cabin. That was it. He did he wouldn't take
<v Speaker 1>a chance on it. And I asked him, I said, well,
<v Speaker 1>do you think it meant you harm? He said no,
<v Speaker 1>I don't think so. But I wasn't going to stay
<v Speaker 1>there and find out what's what was going on. He said,
<v Speaker 1>I couldn't handle it. And you know, I never caught
<v Speaker 1>the guys. He told me his name, but I never
<v Speaker 1>caught the guy's name. We lived in Carbonado at the time,
<v Speaker 1>and apparently he was one of those pass throughs that
<v Speaker 1>back and forth through there. But I always consider that
<v Speaker 1>one of my more fascinating bigfoot stories because of the
<v Speaker 1>not so much that he saw it, but how it
<v Speaker 1>affected him. And his psyche was already damaged because of
<v Speaker 1>his war years, and I'm certain that didn't help. That
<v Speaker 1>didn't help at all. So I don't know whatever happened
<v Speaker 1>to him. It's been long enough. He's probably passed away
<v Speaker 1>or gone off into who knows where. But that was interesting.
<v Speaker 1>And then on the same edge of that park, I
<v Speaker 1>have a friend of mine whose son I guess he
<v Speaker 1>was eighteen or nineteen. I thought it was older at
<v Speaker 1>the time, but it wasn't come to find out. But anyway,
<v Speaker 1>they were in there for an elk hunting trip. As
<v Speaker 1>a large flat area we used to go in there.
<v Speaker 1>I never hunted elk in there, but I did hunt
<v Speaker 1>deer in there because it was kind of a gathering
<v Speaker 1>spot for elk, a deer rather at that time of year,
<v Speaker 1>and the elk were in there all the time. Anyway,
<v Speaker 1>the upshot is and the guy was a rifle hunter.
<v Speaker 1>They had bootleg the camp in there, and they weren't
<v Speaker 1>supposed to do that. But a lot of things that
<v Speaker 1>we're not supposed to do get done, if you know.
<v Speaker 2>What I mean, Sometimes it happens.
<v Speaker 1>It was an accident anyway, anyway, just about the last
<v Speaker 1>little bit of a daylight in the fall, and there's
<v Speaker 1>a ground fog, and if you know anything about ground fog,
<v Speaker 1>the kind of hover at a particular level and you
<v Speaker 1>stick your head up out up over the top of
<v Speaker 1>it or down underneath it. It's just kind of a
<v Speaker 1>layer of fog in there. And he walked away from
<v Speaker 1>camp up this we called it the water spur, and
<v Speaker 1>in there and he says, well, I'm going to poke
<v Speaker 1>around see if I can't find a bull. I don't
<v Speaker 1>think he was actually going to shoot anything, because the
<v Speaker 1>season hadn't open to the next day. But he was
<v Speaker 1>doing a little scouting just before dark, kind of wet
<v Speaker 1>his whistle on it, you might say. And he'd walked
<v Speaker 1>away from camp quite a little ways and out of
<v Speaker 1>no worry, he just happened to look it up and
<v Speaker 1>he's looking at an eight foot animal standing there looking
<v Speaker 1>at him. It was a sasquatch, and he again was
<v Speaker 1>not that was the last thing on his mind. And
<v Speaker 1>I don't think he was burst in sasquatch lower because
<v Speaker 1>that's some hazard I guess thirty five years forty years ago.
<v Speaker 1>Maybe with the scope on it right away and he
<v Speaker 1>was lining up on it, and he looked at it and
<v Speaker 1>he couldn't. He had no reason to pull the trigger right,
<v Speaker 1>so he didn't. On the one hand, on the other hand,
<v Speaker 1>it was so it was so much difference, and what
<v Speaker 1>he expected was definitely not a bear. It was standing
<v Speaker 1>on his hind legs looking at him. And he looked
<v Speaker 1>at it long enough to know that he was in
<v Speaker 1>the company of something that was very uncomfortable, let's put
<v Speaker 1>that way. So he turned around to leave. He brought
<v Speaker 1>his rifle back to his side, turned around to leave,
<v Speaker 1>and he started a hurry off, and he realized this
<v Speaker 1>may not be a good deal. He should have walked
<v Speaker 1>backwards for a waist. And he turned around real quick
<v Speaker 1>and it was just gone. And he's never been back,
<v Speaker 1>never been back. Scared him spallless, wow, and couldn't handle.
<v Speaker 1>But he was looking at and I feel bad for him.
<v Speaker 1>That's the other thing, too, We're not If you see
<v Speaker 1>a bear in an uncomfortable position situation, you know enough
<v Speaker 1>about bears to know that you can go right back
<v Speaker 1>in there later and not have a problem. You'll be looking,
<v Speaker 1>you'll be watching for what's going on, but not necessarily
<v Speaker 1>a situation where you felt like you were in danger.
<v Speaker 1>But bigfoot, because they're so rare, the sightings so quick
<v Speaker 1>and so surprising, we don't get acclimated to them. In
<v Speaker 1>other words, we don't have enough access to their face
<v Speaker 1>and to what's going on, what they're thinking, and how
<v Speaker 1>they're functioning, so that we can say, yeah, I can,
<v Speaker 1>I can, I can be comfortable in the company of
<v Speaker 1>a bigfoot A couple hundred yards off is that. I
<v Speaker 1>think Sarah and Jonathan are of that ilk. They they
<v Speaker 1>have had enough exposure that you know, they're not going
<v Speaker 1>to run up a bear hug one, but they're not
<v Speaker 1>going to be petrified or taken back. And most of
<v Speaker 1>us have not had that. We don't haven't had that
<v Speaker 1>level of experience experience. You and I probably if we
<v Speaker 1>see one once in a lifetime. We've seen one once
<v Speaker 1>in a lifetime, and that makes all the difference in
<v Speaker 1>the world. The first first bear I killed and that
<v Speaker 1>was that was that experience. But after that and others
<v Speaker 1>that I've taken over the years, they don't. They just
<v Speaker 1>don't affect me. I'm that way at all. And it
<v Speaker 1>includes cougar and other things I've been you know, I've
<v Speaker 1>been a handshaken distance from any number of animals over
<v Speaker 1>the years, and because I know what they are, they
<v Speaker 1>don't affect me the same way as they would a newcomer.
<v Speaker 1>I take a neophyte out there and show them the
<v Speaker 1>bear for the very first time, he might have racing
<v Speaker 1>streaks in the shorts. Yeah, yeah, you know, because that's
<v Speaker 1>the first time. With the second or third time that
<v Speaker 1>it gets in or after some if he's with people
<v Speaker 1>who have had those experiences, things fall into place in
<v Speaker 1>a different level.
<v Speaker 2>Oh. I'm sure if I were in a position where
<v Speaker 2>I saw a grizzly bear out in the wild, just
<v Speaker 2>in the woods with me or something, or standing on
<v Speaker 2>the other side of the meadow, I would be absolutely terrified,
<v Speaker 2>without a doubt.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. My wife and I and he went to eastern Washington.
<v Speaker 1>We had two dogs with us. One was a little
<v Speaker 1>a mutt, one of these little rat you know, it looked.
<v Speaker 2>Like a rat, yep, I know the breed. Well.
<v Speaker 1>The other one was was my it was and I
<v Speaker 1>say that fondly. The other one was a Labrador across
<v Speaker 1>and she was a young pupp at the time, and
<v Speaker 1>we crossed a little patch of timber and up on
<v Speaker 1>a ridge and there was a bear spot and at
<v Speaker 1>the other into that, and I didn't have leashes on
<v Speaker 1>the dogs at all, and we're that dumb and happy.
<v Speaker 1>And I looked up and there's a big red looking
<v Speaker 1>bear right right out there and everything else like that.
<v Speaker 1>And I got down on one knee real quickly, and
<v Speaker 1>I called my dog back to me. She didn't see
<v Speaker 1>the bear, fortunately, and I got a hold of her.
<v Speaker 1>And to make a long story short, we made leashes
<v Speaker 1>out of what we had and decided to get out
<v Speaker 1>of there, and we didn't. We didn't have a pocket
<v Speaker 1>knife between us, and if I did, I had cut
<v Speaker 1>my throat and handed the knife to my wife because
<v Speaker 1>because had it decided to do us in that we
<v Speaker 1>had no we had no defense. But anyway, so yeah,
<v Speaker 1>that But I've seen lots of sense, and I watch
<v Speaker 1>what they do. I don't they don't bother me that much.
<v Speaker 1>But but a bear, again, is a whole lot different
<v Speaker 1>than his asquatch. The animals you rarely see always always
<v Speaker 1>get catch you by by whatever. So I don't see
<v Speaker 1>if I got anything else to add to the file
<v Speaker 1>before before you throw me out of my own house.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, you're welcome to stay as long as you want. Jack.
<v Speaker 1>We lived in a little bird called Capelison and that's
<v Speaker 1>my next my next foray with Sarah and Jonathan if
<v Speaker 1>they put up with me. And that's there's three different,
<v Speaker 1>three different what do you call it? Incidence? Is there
<v Speaker 1>that I think are worthy of? Note? Uh, that was
<v Speaker 1>south of Tacoma, south of Graham and then finally out
<v Speaker 1>south of cap Holison itself and close to the southern
<v Speaker 1>western corner of the park. Which happened why I don't know,
<v Speaker 1>but we just happened to govitate to the park area
<v Speaker 1>when we moved around a little bit, and there there
<v Speaker 1>was nobody there. I mean when we first moved out
<v Speaker 1>there there was nobody. And now it's kind of a metropolis.
<v Speaker 1>It's kind of a shame to see that. But we
<v Speaker 1>we knew the area very well. And again I hunted
<v Speaker 1>by myself. I was all over the place there, footprints
<v Speaker 1>down and any any number of that places in there,
<v Speaker 1>and knew it very well. One of the few people
<v Speaker 1>that even did that, because nobody else would would waste
<v Speaker 1>their time there. But it was productive for me. After
<v Speaker 1>we moved out, I heard there was a called air
<v Speaker 1>Capus and air sports. I think it is. They had
<v Speaker 1>a parachute drop zone at the end of the airport
<v Speaker 1>that was at the airport was maybe less than a
<v Speaker 1>quarter of a mile from our house, that end of
<v Speaker 1>it and everything. Now, one of the guys UH had
<v Speaker 1>dropped a load of parachooters off and and was coming
<v Speaker 1>in for landing to pick up another load of UH.
<v Speaker 1>I call him idiots because there's no way I get
<v Speaker 1>out of a perfectly running airplane.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, my stepdaughter is one of those idiots, and said
<v Speaker 2>the same thing, what is wrong with you?
<v Speaker 1>I test in their bed sheets. I'm I'm on the
<v Speaker 1>on the ground. But anyway, there's a lot of brush
<v Speaker 1>around that corner of the bird. There wasn't any any tolls,
<v Speaker 1>there wasn't a lot of timber. There's older trees. Every
<v Speaker 1>once in a while, by the way, you'd find a
<v Speaker 1>parachuters hung up in the older trees, which is funny
<v Speaker 1>in its own right. Anyway, he dropped down to get
<v Speaker 1>another load of parachuters, and just as he was dropping
<v Speaker 1>over the end edge of the the runway, he noticed
<v Speaker 1>a bigfoot and it was off in the brush a
<v Speaker 1>little bit and making a bee line to get out
<v Speaker 1>of there. So he pulled a throttle back and went
<v Speaker 1>made a big turn around there and to go back,
<v Speaker 1>and by that time the bigfoot had disappeared. Gone. But
<v Speaker 1>that was right in our backyard. Another gentleman up there,
<v Speaker 1>he went out to check his fence line. Something was
<v Speaker 1>raising a hob with everything he had and his pitch black.
<v Speaker 1>I don't think he even had a flashlight. And he's
<v Speaker 1>out there, an older fellow, and something literally cuffed him hard.
<v Speaker 1>And it wasn't It couldn't have been. I don't think
<v Speaker 1>it could have been a bear, and it wasn't an
<v Speaker 1>There's a lot of elk in area too. I don't
<v Speaker 1>think it was an elk or a deer because they
<v Speaker 1>don't have the means to cuffya. You know, they could
<v Speaker 1>run over the top of you, I guess, but I
<v Speaker 1>kind of wonder about that. It was about the same
<v Speaker 1>time that a scape a Roman or a local sheriff
<v Speaker 1>whatever one of the two had seen one across the
<v Speaker 1>road as well, and that was very close to the
<v Speaker 1>same viea. So it makes you wonder, you know, how
<v Speaker 1>many of these things are living in and around us
<v Speaker 1>that we not only don't see, we'll never see. And
<v Speaker 1>unless they make a strange move. We're not going to
<v Speaker 1>know that either.
<v Speaker 2>I wanted to ask you. You've read so many books,
<v Speaker 2>and I'm sure you've heard the story of the rock
<v Speaker 2>apes of Vietnam. What do you think about that?
<v Speaker 1>Well, that's a good place for them, let's put that way.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know, Matt, I really don't know. I'm kind
<v Speaker 1>of as curious about that as you are. I was
<v Speaker 1>not a frontline soldier. I don't hate to say this,
<v Speaker 1>but I was a food inspector. That was my mos
<v Speaker 1>in the service, and I was stationed in sidegon Per
<v Speaker 1>a year and I bought to I bought staples off
<v Speaker 1>the local economy, checked different ration breakdowns and all that
<v Speaker 1>kind of falterol. That was my job and I was
<v Speaker 1>happy to leave it when I left. But as far
<v Speaker 1>as being out there were where I h what do
<v Speaker 1>you call it? Had exposure to that I did, and
<v Speaker 1>I know nothing about it at all until recently. I
<v Speaker 1>read a few books and articles and whatnot on that,
<v Speaker 1>So that's as far as I can go there. I was.
<v Speaker 1>I was attached to the veterinary. Our officers were veterinarians,
<v Speaker 1>and everybody underneath that were just like myself, were we
<v Speaker 1>did the grunt work and this, that and the other thing.
<v Speaker 1>So anywhere we were at we had a veterinary clinic,
<v Speaker 1>even in Vietnam, and that's kind of didn't I send
<v Speaker 1>you a picture of me holding a bear, Yeah, cub bear.
<v Speaker 1>That's an Asian cub bear, cub Asian bear cup And
<v Speaker 1>I liked that little guy. I'd been able to keep
<v Speaker 1>him there. He came in and they and they took
<v Speaker 1>him out. I don't know where he went after that,
<v Speaker 1>because we had a lot, we had pythons and you
<v Speaker 1>name it. Everything came through the clinic. But I saw
<v Speaker 1>no monsters come through there, and nobody talked of them.
<v Speaker 1>I have no idea. Although I do have friends from
<v Speaker 1>high school that went in the service at the same
<v Speaker 1>time ended up over there, and they they did talk
<v Speaker 1>about tigers and and things of that nature. But the
<v Speaker 1>rock apes or anything else like that, I have no idea.
<v Speaker 2>I just always wondered if it was, you know, something undiscovered,
<v Speaker 2>or if it was just a case of a bunch
<v Speaker 2>of Americans seeing something that they had never seen before
<v Speaker 2>and didn't know existed, or both right.
<v Speaker 1>Or a little bit of both. Yeah, Yeah, I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>I believe in the you know which always everybody wants evidence, evidence, evidence, evidence. Well,
<v Speaker 1>the first time you see a track in the mud
<v Speaker 1>is pushing down deeper than anything you could do, and
<v Speaker 1>it's and it's obvious that it came from a living animal.
<v Speaker 1>I start to call that evidence in a hurry. Uh,
<v Speaker 1>you know it. Uh, I don't know how you can
<v Speaker 1>do it. There's there's some of us who, let me
<v Speaker 1>put it this way. Of all the books I've read,
<v Speaker 1>and I've read a pilum, almost every one of them
<v Speaker 1>either starts or ends with it if they're there, if
<v Speaker 1>there really are existence, if this and that and the
<v Speaker 1>other thing. And I always started with there are they
<v Speaker 1>are there? So now let's get the rest of the
<v Speaker 1>information so we know what they are instead of always
<v Speaker 1>dealing with the if. And I just think it's what's
<v Speaker 1>the when I go hunting, I'll use it my another
<v Speaker 1>one of these sayings. When I go hunting, I assume
<v Speaker 1>that I'm going to find something. Other people hunt and
<v Speaker 1>they're going to ssume they don't find anything. So it
<v Speaker 1>is a whole different mindset, right, And I think I
<v Speaker 1>think the mindset either will either the mindset will verify
<v Speaker 1>where you're coming from or take away, so I just
<v Speaker 1>go the other direction there anyway.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I totally agree. I think it places unnecessary obstacles
<v Speaker 2>and kind of prevents a lot of people from ever
<v Speaker 2>progressing towards any answers. Yeah, absolutely, I know for me personally,
<v Speaker 2>I had a siding back in two thousand and two,
<v Speaker 2>and this was a total accident. Of course, I'm not
<v Speaker 2>taking any credit for it at all, but that was
<v Speaker 2>whenever I was really going out there and investigating these
<v Speaker 2>things and looking for them on a regular basis. And
<v Speaker 2>after that happened, it, in my opinion, opened a lot
<v Speaker 2>of doors for me to see different things that were
<v Speaker 2>possibly evidence at least. Yeah, things that I was convinced
<v Speaker 2>were evidence regardless, because I now knew these things are
<v Speaker 2>real and they're out there, I already have that answer,
<v Speaker 2>so I don't need to worry about that anymore. So
<v Speaker 2>if they're out there, how are they impacting the environment?
<v Speaker 2>What kind of sounds are they making? You know, this
<v Speaker 2>really could be a trap because I know they're out
<v Speaker 2>here right exactly.
<v Speaker 1>This ill seeing is believing or is believing seeing? I
<v Speaker 1>prefer believe I believe they're they're so I'm looking to
<v Speaker 1>see it.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I don't think there's anything wrong with it. I
<v Speaker 2>know a lot of people get hung up on it,
<v Speaker 2>you know, because well if you didn't see a bigfoot,
<v Speaker 2>do it or didn't you know? Okay, yeah, you're right,
<v Speaker 2>we get all those technicalities. But what are we here for.
<v Speaker 2>You know, if you're in this, you're in it to
<v Speaker 2>learn about bigfoot. And I think that's the most important thing.
<v Speaker 1>Absolutely. My floor installer when we first moved into this
<v Speaker 1>little place about ten years ago, we hired a guy
<v Speaker 1>to come in and put new flooring in it and
<v Speaker 1>are covering and I got to talk it. Damn. I
<v Speaker 1>talked to everybody about bigfoot or some related subject anyway,
<v Speaker 1>and I asked him about it, and he says, oh yeah,
<v Speaker 1>he says, I can take you down to Tatana Pam.
<v Speaker 1>Now that's where Sarah and Jonathan were. They're all met.
<v Speaker 1>A couple three months ago, a guy in a dump
<v Speaker 1>truck we drive down the road and one of the
<v Speaker 1>logging roads along the river, and a bigfoot stepped out
<v Speaker 1>in front of him and ran down the road for
<v Speaker 1>one hundred yards. Now, that guy there, quite frankly, he's
<v Speaker 1>not going to say I never saw it. It never
<v Speaker 1>happened because he did see it, and it did happen.
<v Speaker 1>And so this guy here up until that time, my
<v Speaker 1>guy that was putting the floor in, I thought, well,
<v Speaker 1>maybe he's maybe he's spinning the yarn here that I
<v Speaker 1>don't want to buy into, because he told me. He says,
<v Speaker 1>I can go down to Tata Pam, for instance, and
<v Speaker 1>this was ten years before this latest event. He said,
<v Speaker 1>I can take you down there and I can show
<v Speaker 1>you a bigfoot tracks anytime you want to see him,
<v Speaker 1>and you know you have it. I took that with
<v Speaker 1>a grain of salt. Okay, fine, sure, yeah and once
<v Speaker 1>and then when Sarah and Jonathan's article came out on
<v Speaker 1>that same thing or video, I said, uh huh, maybe
<v Speaker 1>that guy doesn't know what he's talking about. And at
<v Speaker 1>the same time, my old buddy that hunted up there
<v Speaker 1>lived up there and hunted up there. He told me
<v Speaker 1>about him climbing a little well, it's a pretty good
<v Speaker 1>size hill. It takes have the day to get there
<v Speaker 1>to the top called tomb water and which means falling
<v Speaker 1>water in the Native anyway, key and an incident worth
<v Speaker 1>one at the top of the hill. Now at the
<v Speaker 1>bottom of the hill was the Tainapan incident at the
<v Speaker 1>top of the hill. My friend had this incident. So
<v Speaker 1>between the two, I'm pretty convinced they had incidents and
<v Speaker 1>evidence enough for me. And as I went in a
<v Speaker 1>straight line north of that, I talked to two people
<v Speaker 1>that had had incidents at their place and amid the
<v Speaker 1>straight line with maybe four or five miles due north,
<v Speaker 1>and one of them had a bigfoot would come down,
<v Speaker 1>and a family come down from time to time and
<v Speaker 1>get into their apples and just make themselves known. You
<v Speaker 1>might say, nothing big until another till another house was
<v Speaker 1>built above them. There's only two houses on the road,
<v Speaker 1>the other one, and then that changed the dynamics of
<v Speaker 1>whether the animals could be coming in or out and anyway.
<v Speaker 1>So we got to talking and she she had had
<v Speaker 1>a grage sale there, that's why I pulled in and everything,
<v Speaker 1>and so somebody else came up there and we were
<v Speaker 1>talking and she says, well, when I was a little girl,
<v Speaker 1>this is an over gal. When I was a little girl,
<v Speaker 1>my folks who just lived just about a quarter of
<v Speaker 1>a mile away had a and this this is way back.
<v Speaker 1>I'd have to hazard a guess based on her her
<v Speaker 1>age and my age and everything else. It must have
<v Speaker 1>been fifty sixty years ago. They had an outhouse off
<v Speaker 1>off the edge of the house, off the edge of
<v Speaker 1>the some corner of the property was handy whatever, and
<v Speaker 1>they didn't have a door on it, which out there
<v Speaker 1>in the puckerbrush. Who cares anyway. So this she was
<v Speaker 1>about ten at the time, eight to ten, and she says,
<v Speaker 1>I went on there. I had to go to the bathroom,
<v Speaker 1>and I'm sitting there and this big hairy guy walked
<v Speaker 1>right in front of me, turned looked at me, and
<v Speaker 1>then they looked at each other for a few seconds
<v Speaker 1>and then turned back and walked away. Well, she went
<v Speaker 1>up told her granddad. She says he was big. He
<v Speaker 1>was really tall, And so Grandpa started to question her
<v Speaker 1>about it to find out what was going on. And
<v Speaker 1>he says, then he occurred to him. He says, they're
<v Speaker 1>here all the time, money, don't worry about it. They
<v Speaker 1>go through all the time. And it was a bigfoot.
<v Speaker 1>So just everything depends on the situation who you're talking to.
<v Speaker 1>But if I had the time and the money and
<v Speaker 1>a situation where I could go right down the house
<v Speaker 1>to house to house with some kind of an official
<v Speaker 1>badge hanging on me, so they would stare him off,
<v Speaker 1>and I let to talk bigfoot. I got a suspicion
<v Speaker 1>that that would be a lifelong pursuit all by itself.
<v Speaker 2>Just in relation to what you were saying. I had
<v Speaker 2>a couple of electricians working on my house one time,
<v Speaker 2>and one of them, I was kind of in this
<v Speaker 2>position where we are stuck in the same room together
<v Speaker 2>and he's over there working on the outlet and I'm
<v Speaker 2>sitting there and it's kind of awkward or whatever, and
<v Speaker 2>he starts talking, you know, first, and so we're having
<v Speaker 2>this conversation and I find out that he's originally from
<v Speaker 2>the southeastern part of Oklahoma, which is known for its
<v Speaker 2>bigfoot stuff. And I just kind of thought for a second.
<v Speaker 2>I asked him, I said, you ever runningto any bigfoot
<v Speaker 2>down there growing up? And he said, kind of looks
<v Speaker 2>up at me, no, looks back at the outlet and
<v Speaker 2>starts working again, And a few seconds he says, but
<v Speaker 2>my cousin did. Whenever he was fishing, he saw one
<v Speaker 2>cross the creek right down from where he was sitting
<v Speaker 2>at fishing, and he ran over there real fast, and
<v Speaker 2>it was already gone, but he saw the tracks and
<v Speaker 2>everything and just went on about his work like it
<v Speaker 2>was no big deal, you know, And that's kind of
<v Speaker 2>the deal. There's a lot more people who have experienced
<v Speaker 2>these things or know someone who has experienced these things
<v Speaker 2>than you would ever realize.
<v Speaker 1>Yep. And like I say, they don't get to see
<v Speaker 1>it twice, and so the familiarity doesn't happen. It just
<v Speaker 1>they are what they are. And you know, what, could
<v Speaker 1>you say? I'm a poet. I hate to say that.
<v Speaker 1>It scares people to death when you say that. I
<v Speaker 1>think I'm going to end with the poem about it's
<v Speaker 1>called an encounter. If that's okay with you, absolutely you
<v Speaker 1>can laugh with your friends. But this is an encounter
<v Speaker 1>that I wrote in twenty fifteen, and it goes like this.
<v Speaker 1>I heard footballs on the trail, and though I know
<v Speaker 1>he's near anticipation, grips me tightly and still, and yet
<v Speaker 1>there is no fear. Well over eight feet tall, four
<v Speaker 1>hundred pounds or more. I'll know this bigfoot better before
<v Speaker 1>this night is ore. So many years of hoping to
<v Speaker 1>see that lonesome face, to know the myth is real,
<v Speaker 1>I cannot, I cannot. That's a race. The moon is
<v Speaker 1>casting shadows and how I strain to see is that
<v Speaker 1>he among the willows? What else can it be? My
<v Speaker 1>heart is pounding lightly, My knees are weak, they shake.
<v Speaker 1>I wish a word to utter, but no sound can
<v Speaker 1>I make. The moon is full in silver, the light
<v Speaker 1>this night is full. I'm in the presence of a legend,
<v Speaker 1>and he is in full control. What a great confliction?
<v Speaker 1>Should I stay or go? My camera all but useless,
<v Speaker 1>I've forgotten all I know. Still he stands there in
<v Speaker 1>the willows, rocking slowly, rocking left and right? What is
<v Speaker 1>he thinking on this moon and silvery night? Like others
<v Speaker 1>long before me? Caught up in the lore, My heart
<v Speaker 1>says he's real, and still I need much more. I
<v Speaker 1>have no desire to arm him, and I hope he
<v Speaker 1>of me yet to touch and know he's real, and
<v Speaker 1>then just leave him be behind a cloud. It's darkening.
<v Speaker 1>The waiting is so long, and with the lights returning,
<v Speaker 1>the legend is now gone. Alone. I stand there, listening
<v Speaker 1>to night sounds coming through. Was this mere aperation or
<v Speaker 1>his bigfoot really true? Consider all the stories, put them
<v Speaker 1>to the test. You alone must decide on where your
<v Speaker 1>heart must rest. For me, I've heard the footfalls on
<v Speaker 1>the night of the Silvery Moon. I've seen him in
<v Speaker 1>the shadows and won't forget him.
<v Speaker 2>So Jack, thanks for joining me, Man, thanks for sharing
<v Speaker 2>the stories. You are a true treasure to the Bigfoot community,
<v Speaker 2>and I am very thankful to Jonathan and Sarah for
<v Speaker 2>introducing us.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know how much they paid you to say that,
<v Speaker 1>but I appreciate it,