Big food and be on with Cliff and Bobo. These guys, are you fav It's so like say subscribe and raid it. I'm stuck and me just on us today listening watching lim always keep it's watching. And now you're hosts Cliff Barrickman and James Bubo Fay. Hey, Bobo, how you doing? Man good? How's it going? Cliff going pretty good? It's going pretty good. Just getting ready to do a podcast here we're and have a great guess actually two guests on. We'll get to them in just a few minutes.
But been in the woods a bunch and I'm going again tomorrow. Great things are happening. I can't it's astonishing with how much goes on, or you know, maybe just you know, I'm a magnet for this sort of thing because the museum and stuff. But man, a lot of Bigfoot stuff happens all the time. It's ridiculous. Yeah, you got a lot of stuff happening. I was supposed to gotta get with those guys. Todd Doug up Bluff Creek a couple of days ago, last week or just a few
days ago. Previous guests are our listeners may remember because they're the guys who cast those footprints in the snow about a year ago. And then of course they also saw a sasquatch in January did a follow up. There were footprints there. It's legit signing up in up here in Oregon. They've been busy as well. What do you know about it? Well, they just got
back two days ago. They went out, they got trapped, they got more cast I'm like, God, you know, I better not good with these guys because I'll just curse them like they're on they're on a roll. They get and stuff all the time. Like I feel like I jinks And if I go out there with them now, because those guys are just killing it. They are killing it, man, I would hop on that wave and surfit, you know, go see some stuff in the ground. It's
amazing what they've been doing. No it is. I gotta get up there with those guys. It's just been that, like there's a lot of days I can't go that the times they're going, it's like it's always like just bad timing for me. It's like, God, if I would have known like a day before, Yeah, well try to get up there when you can. And also, you know, if more eyes the better and some some spots. You know, they're getting stuff in the same locations. This
was twelve miles away. Yeah, we'll do it. I mean twelve balls from their last spot they found stuff, Like a couple of weeks ago they found and this spot was like twelve mills for the road. They're covering some territory. Yeah they are. They are, and they're kind of developing their they're seeing, you know, like cluing in with their eyes, you know, calibrating their eyes to see these things. So good for them, man,
I wish them all the luck in the world. I can't wait to and you know, like I keep saying, I want to make it down there at the end of summer early fall, so I probably drop by and see them and see the stuff they've been collecting too. It's great, Oh for sure. Nice. Well we got we got some more stuff on I got some more stuff on Monday, went out to the Old Haunts and I
met a friend out there, so that was that was really cool. It turns out my friend I didn't know my friend who was going to be out there, but he texted me in the middle of it all, and I happened to have reception for a second. I get a text. I go, holy smokes, he's out here and he's casting prints. So I texted him and found reception, met up with him. He got two prints that
day from two different drainages. Now those drainages are adjacent to one another, and I got a print about two miles away from there the same day, and so I cast stuff and this guy cast two prints. So they seem to be back in the zone right now, right on schedule. It seems like every three months February, May, August, and November, we're getting casts out of this little area. So right on schedule, they're back again. I love it. Some data. Yeah, and this is a pattern
that's pretty much held consistent since twenty twenty. That's significant. It is significant. It is significant. Now we missed this past November. The November before, we didn't get any cast out of this area, but it turns out he did. I didn't find anything, but he found it, like one drainage over so that even then, like even though I didn't get the information,
that data still holds. And to my knowledge, the only break in this data has been we got some stuff in December, which is fairly rare you know, they were just a few weeks later or something maybe, but it might just be a matter of I didn't see it. Yeah, And then of course today I come to the museum. I worked all day in the museum. Of course, it's a it's a Tuesday right now, and I we get a call early in the morning and my one of my employees picks it up and it says, no, we haven't seen it yet,
but we'll get to it real soon, promise. And what was that? He goes, yeah, somebody said that they send us some pictures of some prints. They go, oh, cool, I always like to see those, and I start so I start going through email as soon as I can. What I didn't know is that those prints were found yesterday and there was a there's i don't know, two hundred yards of tracks on a mud flat out by the coast. I said, really, and and so basically he's
this guy was fishing out there. I'm not going to tell you the river because I'm going to I'm going to go there tomorrow. So I've already contacted the witness, made an arrangement. I got to drive to the coast, be out there by eight am, which means I'm leaving the house by five
point thirty, so it's gonna be an early day for Cliff tomorrow. But anyway, I guess these two guys were fishing one of the local rivers, and you know, and they're on their jets sled or whatever and kind of near the mouth like in the estuary, right, And so they're they're floating around doing their thing out there fishing. And you know how rivers, especially in estuaries, like there's oftentimes like silts or sandbars and like making little islands
in the middle. Right, So they're out there kind of near one they go, oh, look, there's there's some footprints over there. They're probably look how big there? They're probably a bear, right, So they go they kind of scoot their boat over. They beat it. One guy has waiters on, the other guy does not. So the guy at the waiters gets out and goes over and looks and think thinking he's going to see bear tracks, and he goes, oh my god, you hey, these are
really big and they have toes on them. And they go, what really, And so they start taking pictures. The guy crawls out of the boat and basically, yeah, they're I mean the size. I'm not sure of the size. I think they're about fourteen inches. And the guy took fifteen pictures and videos and sent them to me. Now, I this is an estuary and it's tidally influenced, so there has been a tide I think that has claimed some of them. And all the photographs of the prints that I
saw were water filled, but you could see toes. They are sasquatch tracks. And apparently this thing came out of the woods on one side of the river, crossed a little rivulet like a small little stream sort of thing, went onto the island and walked out into the river itself, the river proper, trying to get to the other side, where there was a herd of
elk. We don't know if the elk was there at the same time or not, because all the elk were present, and we know that because of the footprints, But we don't know if the sasquatch saw the elk or anything. But you know, one could suppose, but we don't know. We don't actually factually don't know that. So this thing went out into the river itself towards a one of these preserves, you know, like there is often found in these estuaries the samdbar. Well, no like a forested area.
That is it is like a game preserve. No huntings fort area. Okay, you know, maybe not that game preserve, but wildlife preserve is some sort of you know, game implies you can hunt there and you cannot hunt in this area. So the thing went over there, and then the guy actually put his boat on top of where the thing walked in the river.
He could see the bottom of the river and the sasquatch tracks in the river itself, and the thing went out until it was I don't know, four or five feet deep, and then just turned around and walked back on the same island, the same sandbar island, back to the woods from whence it came. And so you have two trackways. At first, even in the videos that they recorded, they're saying, oh, there are two of them. Look, this one's going this way, this one's going that way.
No, no, it's actually the same animal walked to one spot and then turned around and then walked back. So yeah, they're pretty cool pictures and we'll see what happens tomorrow. I'll be out there at eight am at the boat launch. Because he says, you cannot get there without a boat, and so he's going to take me out on his boat tomorrow and we're going to go check out this area and see if there's anything castable. He did
go out there about an hour ago. Actually, while just before this spot podcast here, I got a text from him saying that he went out to the area to see if they were still there, because there's been a high tide that may have touched them since then. The tides apparently are pretty low right now, but he says he wanted to go check it out, but the tide came up and put water in them, and then they're going back down. But he says, no, they're still there. The tide hasn't
messed them up too much. So we have one more tide. I guess between here and there when I'm there tomorrow morning, So keep your fingers crossed at the tide doesn't do any damage to them, but at the very least, I'm going to go out there and scour the river banks and see if there's any tracks that might have been preserved that weren't on the silt bar. And worst case scenario, I like to go on a boat ride at the coast to see sasquatch tracks that are blown out, and it's a nice stay
at the coast. You have strug and go out there. Today. Well, I had a podcast to do, unfortunately, or I would have should. Well, you know what, Matt Prude has gone today. He's in the woods and I think in Georgia's somewhere he's and so it was kind of up to me to run the episode. And I know you could have done it. But at the same time, I'm the one to set up the guests today and I and all that other stuff. So I held to my responsibility and I am here today. But tomorrow morning eight am I have at
the boat launch. But speaking of guests, maybe it's time we bring those in. All right? Who you got today? We have the two people who basically run the West Virginia Bigfoot Museum out in Sutton, West Virginia. I've had my eye on this museum for a long time because I am a Bigfoot museum enthusiast, as you can probably imagine. So let's go ahead and bring the guests in. David and Laurel Pedalikio. They are the founders and they're runners. Maybe not the founders, they are the runners of the West
Virginia Bigfoot Museum. So welcome, David and Laurel. Appreciate your time and coming on Bigfoot and Beyond with Clifton Bobo. Well, thank you so much for having us. Thanks for having us. Yeah, yeah, thanks for showing up. Yeah, a lot of times we have no shows. If there's a no show, it's either a me or Bobo, I think.
But yeah, so you guys are the West Virginia big Foot Museum. When I heard about this, I was like, Oh, that's cool, because I think I think Bigfoot museums are rat I'd like to visit every single one of them. I mean, I own one, that's how great I think they are. So I actually own one, and every museum has a different take on things, and I really appreciate that that so much of the owner's personality is injected into the establishments themselves. But since, no, I don't
I've never met either one of you in person. Have I I don't think I have. I don't remember it, but not yet, I don't think No, hopefully soon, hopefully soon, Yeah, because I don't get out that way much anymore than I'm not traveling for a living. But I would
like to get out there at some point. So, so, how long have you guys been doing the Bigfoot thing, because certainly there must be a background interest in bigfoot if you went ahead and opened a Bigfoot museum, right, Yeah, I would say that probably me and my dad mostly were into cryptozoology stuff in general, a little bit before the TV show Monster Quest came
out, because I was actually still a kid when I came out. That was probably around the time where I got really big into it, and then obviously from there I got into Bigfoot specifically, but I have a broad range of different interests in that field now. I actually was a total non believer until we moved here, and in moving to West Virginia and living in the
very center of the state, which is extremely rural. We are in one of the least populated counties in the entire northeast, very very heavily wooded, and the locals in this area, it's to them, it's just another animal, and they were not even sure why we thought this was so special. But the amount of stories and the amount of sightings from this area are just immense, and I think the particular I'm not sure what you'd call them, whether it's a group or a troop or whatever that live in this area.
Seemed to interact with the mountain people quite frequently. And there's not a lot of dangerous encounters. It's more just curious city encounters. But there were so many that and I knew these people. These were pastors, wives, doctors, police officers, you know, not the town Drunk. So it totally convinced me, although the Town Drunk season two, to be fair you yeah, yeah, he has the best stories for sure. Now, where did
you move from? You said you moved to the area we're from. We moved from the Hershey, Pennsylvania area, just north of Hershey, Pennsylvania, and so it was farm country. But so we were from the country, but not the woods. And this is very, very heavily wooded. Yeah, and I believe Hershey, Pennsylvania is on the east side of the state. Is that correct, that's correct, Yes, fairly close to Philadelphia, so it's fairly urban. I mean, we lived in the country, but
you don't have to go very far to get to the urban. Yeah. I don't think there's a lot going on in that particular corner of Pennsylvania. It's mostly on the west side of the state, I think out there. So, so how long ago did you move to that area? I would say about six years now, probably more like five. Yeah, we haven't been here super long yet. We've been visiting this area for almost fifteen seventeen
years. We've had Honeyland down here about fifty acres about two minutes from where we are now, and we had that ever since I was, you know, a kid basically, So we've been visiting for a long time, but we only lived here full time for about the last five and a half years. So how did the museum become a thing? You know, because it's a far cry from you know, doing whatever you're doing before to running a big Foot themed establishment. Yeah. I mean my education is in criminal psychology,
definitely not the Bigfoot research or anything I met. There's a lot of overlap there, actually, Yeah, you'd be surprised. Yeah. I think it probably started with the when we first moved down here and opened the country store before the museum existed, we had this Halloween where everybody was having trigger treat and all the kids were out and I had a big Foot costume that I used to use for a podcast back in the day. I was like hey, I should use Bigfoot as a mascot for the store. That'd be
kind of fun. And we were kind of nervous. We were like, I don't know if they're going to take that well. I don't want to offend anybody, because we were brand new to the culture here and people absolutely
loved it. And then from there, we had a consigner that does chainsaw carvings and he cut a it's like a six and a half foot tall hemlock about four hundred, five hundred pounds into a Bigfoot carving, and he brought it in and we set it in the front of the store and we just kind of used it as like a like a quasi maskot, just for fun. But from there, everybody that came in would just keep talking about Bigfoot. They would either ask if we had seen it, or they would tell
us about their encounters with it in their own life. And there were people from all all over the place. They were either there from we got people from Florida, New York, some people were looking for Bigfoot from other countries. That was pretty wild. But yeah, I kind of created this gigantic theme to the point where we've kind of decided that it was a great time
to try and compile everything and then put it in a museum. And then we ran into less Odell and he introduced us to several other big foot hunters in the area and they all loaned us their casts. So we have a very, very large cast collection. So it just it kind of became. We started out with one small room and we ended up with a larger one, and we're working on a third room now. Wow, stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bogo. We'll be right back after these
messages. So it's all Is it all donated from local people or Yeah? The vast majority of it is original casts from West Virginia. There's basically two primary collections that we host. One is less Odell's collection and then the second one is Daniel Smith. They're both from West Virginia and their casts from all over the state. Basically Daniel Smith, he goes by Daniel Boone, doesn't
he Yes, that's the one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I met him a couple of times, actually, yeah, And he has like thirty or something, and then less has another I want to say like five to seven roughly. We host those. Then we have a bunch of cast copies. We have a couple from I want to say, Kentucky, Tennessee, and then we have a ton of copies from Meldrum's collection as well, because he helped us build an entire basically an entire room back there is from working
with him and his research. Has he been there, Yes, Yes, he's been here. Have been coming again for our Bigfoot Festival which is coming up in June, so we always look forward to that. It's a lot of people. Yeah, you know, I heard like whispers or rumblands or something like that of the of your museum out there, and it wasn't really until Huckleberry, you know, told me that I should look into what you guys are doing and that you guys are really nice folks and everything and all
that sort of stuff. In fact, I guess Huckleberry picked up Huckleberry, of course from Mountain Monsters, and people aren't familiar out there listening. They're all the kind of local folks from that general area kind of. Huckleberry just texted me a couple of days ago saying that somehow or another he heard that you guys were going to be on the show or whatever, and he was soaked that they were finally having you on. Oh that's awesome. He's amazing.
He has been such and a good friend. He and his wife have been down quite often, and after my husband died, they showed up again just to encourage us and BLUs his heart. He has come to every single festival that we've had for free, just to support us and to help us get started. They are just the salt of the earth. They really are. Yeah, all those folks are legitimately good people. I very often sing
their praises just so who they are. You know, I'm not a big fan of TV in general, but who they are, you just can't beat it. Man, I love those guys. Yeah. Sure, he kind of comes here with his family and they'll kind of take a day off where they'll just come in and he'll set and talk with me for like an entire afternoon, just really informally. And then tourists of walking around they'll look at him and like they'll get these big eyes like is that Kleberry, And then
they'll run over to him ask him for pictures and stuff. But he's a he's definitely a pro when it comes to just meeting with people and being really nice to fans and stuff. But he's had a lot of really interesting encounters that he's told us about as well from his youth and things around West Virginia as well with Bigfoot, which I thought was really cool. Yeah, I mean, there's show is so over the top and kind of ridiculous in a lot of ways. And I love it, by the way, and it's
the Scooby doo a Bigfoot. It's really what it is, oh absolutely, at the end of the day. And they all know it. They all know it on the show they told I mean, I don't remember if they told me these words exactly, but they basically turn it up to eleven, you know, and on their on their personality and just have fun with it, you know. And of course, you know sheep Squatch and all that nonsense. It's all just nonsense. Sheep Squatch is a favorite. But all
those guys have had legitimate big fight. I mean, I think Huckleberry's seen him twice if I remember correctly. Yeah, he's seen that and a dog Man supposedly as well. He wasn't happy about that one. Yeah, But yeah, we actually have Jeff and Willie from Mountain Monsters is going to be at the festival this year as well, and possibly a couple more. Oh yeah, so yeah, tell us about the How long that has a festival been going on? The festival was kind of like my Frankenstein Monster. We
when we first opened the museum. I saw the momentum that was there. It did really really well just the end, and it was just like a closet size room, very small because we only had a handful of cast at the time, and we had posters and citing reports and I was about it.
We got a a couple more big foot carvings, but people were just really enjoying the combination of that with the Country Store, and we realized that this was kind of like lightning in a bottle basically, and we decided to, you know what, it would be a great time to start a festival. Now. The catch there was I made this idea up like three weeks before the event. I wanted to kill him. Yeah, it might not have been the smartest thing, but we did pull it off and it went
really really awesome. We had a ton of vendors. The first year, A couple thousand people showed up right off the bat which is fantastic, really clean everybody's family friendly. It was just a really good experience. Mind you, this is an incredibly small town of about seven hundred people, so having several thousand people show up on the first one just about wipe them all out. Scared the crap out of people. Yeah, yeah, I must have.
Yeah, yeah, totally. But last year we had it was the last year that we were going to be holding it in the town itself, but we had about eight thousand that showed up and overwhelmed the town big time. So we are moving it out of town to we have a fifty acre hold around area County Fair. Yeah. So there's barns and trees and ponds and it's going to be great. It's going to be great. There better parking vendors and what they have speakers to or what is the festival consists of.
Yeah, we'll have about I want to say, one hundred and fifty possibly one hundred and seventy vendors for the festival, and they're gonna have Turtleman will be there, Mountain Monster guys will be there, Jeff Meldrim will be there, Lesser Dell of b Mills. Trying to think of everybody, it's a long list, Michael W. Cook, Daniel ben Waugh. We're forgetting some there's like, oh yeah, we're missing I'm sure goodness, but yeah, there's about fourteen big Foot speakers, a lot of authors are coming.
All of the vendors are handcrafted items only, food trucks, food trucks, We have bounce house stuff. There's we're gonna have Bigfoot stories around the campfire in the evenings where people can just bring their lawn chairs and all the guys and be can tell their stories about their big Foot encounters. Just kind of more on a casual, so it should be just a really neat casual West Virginia vibe. We've got Fiddlers and Mountain Cloggers and the Dolphin the Mountain Dalcimer
band coming. Oh yeah. Jim board Wine is another one that you're hoping to work with more. He'll be here the first time this year too. I think, who else? Who are else are we missing? I know we're missing. It's a long list. There's like fifteen or sixteen of them. At least. We're really excited. You had me at Fiddlers and Cloggers. Oh yeah, old school. Yeah, it's a lot of fun and we're it's super cheap, so it's only like ten dollars a car to get
in. So we're trying to encourage a lot of families that maybe can't afford it elsewhere that they can come and really learn and enjoy. We've got a four x four show going on at the same time, and a what you call it a four x four road scavenger hunt that'll take place in all three days with prizes, and the Cryptid Mini golf guys are going to be there
with their mini golf and it's a lot. Yeah, it's three days, so it's going to be a ton of different stuff going on, everything from a little archery stuff to bounce houses, to food trucks, to speakers and workshops, you name it. Well, we'll circle back around at the very end and plug it again to remind everybody. But what win is this June twenty seventh through the twenty ninth. I think that you're probably making Bobo jealousy
can't show up because half the things you mentioned. I know Bobo is interested in clogging. What he said, clogging, turtle turtlemack and clog bance. Oh, I believe it. I believe it. This is the first year, he's coming. We're really looking forward to that. Oh he's he's him and the mountain monsters come by. That's just like that's two forces in Asia. I'm gonna be watching the Weather Channel see anything transpires. That's what we're
hoping for. Yeah, the thunderheads of the pier right above the fairgrounds. So you said you you got a lot of people coming and telling their stories. Like what patterns were you noticing, Like after you know, doing this for a while, what do you see, Like is there like times a year where're seeing in certain places, are eating certain things, or how's that
working out there? Well, we're starting to think that this there's a particular family grouping that lives in this area and we're thinking they have about a twenty twenty five mile range because they're being spotted in the three tri county area Braxton, Clay and Webster and a little bit into Nicholas County. They're very mild
mannered. They do not seem at all bothered by people. One thing that we have noticed over and over again that we hear repeatedly is they do not like anything Electronic trailcns keep coming down and being smashed, or they'll avoid him entirely, yeah, or they'll be avoided. There's a gentleman that says he has them living on his land, and he said that he can't take anything electronic out with him, or they'll throw rocks at him until he empties his
pockets, and then he's allowed to proceed. And he has tried over and over again. But that seems to be a common theme, is that they can hear the electronics and it bothers them. You think can somehow since it supposedly from a lot of the accounts that we've heard, we hear a lot of the classic stuff where they shake branches or limbs, they'll throw rocks at
stuff that they're not a big fan of being around them. They tend to make it so bears, coyotes and some of the other various types of predators or omnivores area don't come in. So that's why some of the farmers actually prefer them over some of the other animals locally, because according to the farmers, they're much less destructive to like crops and livestock then coyotes or bear would
be. I don't imagine, well, bears, Bears could be pretty destructive, So yeah, I guess, well have if you have crops, I don't. I think you'd like coyotes. But if you have any kind of animals chickens, are sheep or anything that you're gonna hate them. Yeah, a lot of hogs and chickens around there. They all the old timers say that they like root crops, and one thing that they will dig up in people's gardens are any of their root vegetables like carrots or potatoes, turnips.
We've had a lot of those kind of things where reports where people are like, oh, there was one out in my garden digging up my root crops. But in this area they don't seem to mind that. That to them is it's just another animal. It's not causing a lot of harms. So let them do it. You know. So when you you gave the estimate, there's a group in your area and they arrange to hear. Is that
based on footprint fines or what are you basing that on? Mostly just off Well, I guess some of it's footprints as well, but a lot of it is just a combination of sightings and vocalizations and what kind of rolled together, and there's just they seem to follow a certain pattern. Like we have
one of our consigners who's of Native American descent. They live out one of these hollows and for the last three generations they've been trading with this family grouping that comes through, but they only come through their land in September or October. They think something's coming due that they're coming to collect, but they'll make
their presence known at the house. They get out a traditional basket, they put root crops in it as a gift, and they put it out on their porch and the next morning there's always a small animal that's been left as a thank you. But this has been happening every year for three generations. That's one. We have a lot of farmers that say, oh yeah, they walk through like at least once a week. They seem to take a circuit where they're going through. We're not sure if they're hunting, probably and
some kind of foraging maybe. They just they go through the same areas over and over again, and they're being spotted in very similar areas over and over again because again the locals aren't scared of them. They don't seem to be scared of the locals, and so yeah, they just as the old timer says, we don't pay them no mind, right, and you're fairly certain that they're they're the same individuals that are being seen again in the I mean
not not in the same place, but in multiple places. And that's what I'm getting at. We can't Yeah, I don't know, but I know where this guy's farm is, and if you draw a radius around his farm, a lot of the sightings are within that radius. So I'm guessing because we know that that family grouping has been there for about sixty years, so
I'm guessing that they're out foraging from that one location. Is our guests, what's the physical descriptions, like you guys get in consistent color and height Usually one of the things that I hear from people, and it varies a little bit, but some of the witnesses that I've seen relative like close that said that they've observed them, you know, at very close range for an extended
period of time or what have you. A lot of them describe them really similar to like a silver back but upright, that's actually a quote from one of the guys that I spoke with not too long ago, So very primeate like features like a great ape a little bit more flat, but then usually there's no fur on the face, or at least not as much. They seem to be extremely still usually when people see him around here as well, somebody mistook one for a stump and actually walked right by one, and then
the stump got up and walked away. They do. They do vary in height, but then they would have to if they're, you know, an actual animal grouping. They couldn't be all eight foot tall. You know, are you hearing like there's an eight foot one, like a seven foot one, then two smaller ones like six foot or yes, yeah, actually it's been the one guy spotted three very small ones. They were he was up
his tree stand. He was baiting deer, and he had corn scattered on the ground, and he had fallen asleep, and well, he's dozing, and then he suddenly heard noises and he woke up and looked down and there were three small, he said, ape like creatures that were eating the corn. So he sat very very still, and he glanced at his watch. So he watched them for about ten minutes while they were eating the corn.
And then he thinks the wind shifted because all of a sudden, there was this big harumph from the a large thicket where it sounded like an adult was there, and they all three looked up and looked at the adult that that direction, which is where he thinks the adult was, and they all ran that direction. But he has since gone back multiple times and they've come back
to feed on the corn. And he said, and it's interesting because it's down a road very close to a road called Monkey Hollow Road, which all the old timers in this area said, well, that's where all the monkeys are generally scene, which it's just interesting to hear that. Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo will be right back after these messages.
Well, yeah, it's long been noted that you can kind of tell the presence of sasquatches sometimes based on the geographical features in the area, and a Monkey Hollow Road or Monkey Hill or Monkey Mountain or Monkey Ridge or Monkey Creek, those are all strong indicators. Then I find that to be true to this day out where I live. Where you go to you know, Double's this, Double's that, Double's Ridge, Devil's Creek, Devil's Fall,
Devil's Meadow, ogre Creek. All these names Tarzan Springs. That's awesome. That's awesome. Now, Yeah, Joe Beelart wrote writes about that and his excellent book, The Big Highway Book there that he actually tracked down someone in the I think the federal government that told him the origin of that name was in the nineteen twenties. I could be wrong about the decade, but I
think it's the nineteen twenties. Surveyors were up there and they ran across a lone prospector kind of fellow out there living in the woods, and he reportedly was living amongst the apes and in thee I think it was the twenties. Again, I could be wrong about that, but this is a time before television and everything. So the big book that everybody was talking about, you know what, They weren't talking about the TV shows or anything, talking about
Game of Thrones or something. They were reading books, and so they the big book at the time was Tarzan. Essentially, it just come out recently and everybody was all a flutter about it. And so when they heard about the guy living amongst the apes out there down the Clackamous River, they named that place Tarzan Springs. That's awesome story. Yeah, yeah, he has a great little bit of a local history and legend, and of course that area is thick with history as well. I don't know if you remember the
John Green stories about a guy named Glenn Thomas. He's the guy who saw the sasquatches digging out the rock the hybernating ground scrolls from the rocks the Taylors Slopes. That spot is less than three miles away from Tarzan Springs, and so there's a lot of activity even to the present day. That's very awesome. Yeah, very cool. No, so as far as your museum goes, I want to get back to that a little bit because I'm very interested. Obviously, I owned my own, so I'm interested in what sort of
trials and tribulations you guys went through in opening. I mean, for me it was COVID. I mean I opened and then two or three months later COVID shut us down for months, months and months, which is a really crappy way to start a business. Yes, same time, you know, you started out with that at zero. There's only one way to go, it's up. So in a way it kind of benefited me in that sort of way, and it taught me to be very conservative with my money,
because you never know everything will fall to crap right away. So what sort of difficulties and issues did you have upon while going through your opening process. I would say it was pretty much the same, honestly, because we opened basically during COVID. Now we opened partly that business to help our the country stores survive COVID. That was kind of my thought was like, hey,
let's have a free museum. There's a real thing, there's real stories around here, it's a very real local legend, so why not promote it. And we just made the museum, and I was like, let's see if we can draw in business that way and survived COVID while also talking about local history and folklore, and it seemed to just do really well from there. But I would say pretty much the same thing where the fact it's a in the middle of the pandemic, and then we obviously had we've had a couple
of bad winners during that too, where nobody could get out here. And then we live in a super tiny town where, yeah, like COVID made everybody stay inside already, so the very few people that were here all just disappeared kind of and then, obviously towards the tail end of COVID, my dad passed away because me and him founded it, and that was very difficult. We were closed for a couple of months after that too. So your
dad was one of the original founders of the museum. Yeah. He actually wrote a book too that we have available in the museum and stuff, where
he compiled a bunch of historic accounts from all over. He was all over the country, right, Yeah. It was called The wild Man of North America, and he basically went from nineteen fifty back to the Revolutionary War to actually do research because in this area, Bigfoot is called the Old Man of the Mountain, and people would actually get a little bit hostile and we said, oh, it's Bigfoot, and they would say, no, no, no, that's a make believe thing out of Hollywood. This is an animal,
and they just kept saying that. So then it got him thinking, well maybe because he said, you just can't have something just suddenly appear in the nineteen sixties and seventies and be legit. So he went back and started looking for local names to see what people like, what he could find that were in newspaper articles, and it was amazing how many he found all over the country of recited reportings. Mostly they would say, oh, we think
think a gorilla escaped from the circus. But then he did research and found out that none of the circuses in America have ever had a gorilla as part of their act, so gorillas couldn't have escaped from the circus. Yell. Then, yeah, here was that book. It was It was printed well the year he died, actually twenty two or twenty one, twenty I think it came out twenty twenty five in the Winner of twenty one maybe, yeah,
and it's called The wild Man of Going to America. Yeah, it was very recent, but he just went through it just and it's basically just reprints of the old news articles where people were talking about these weird occurrences and they were in a colloquial term for them necessarily, so they call them anything from a wild man to like an ape or a devil, et cetera. Like there's a whole list of different terms, so we just kind of just
pick out keywords and then tie the articles in with that. Stoneman was another big one that's down south par of the state and then southwestern Virginia too. Yeah, He basically just put a bunch to them altogether in this book, and we've it's been cool to meet people that have read it and whatnot. A few people have got signatures of it too, which has been neat since
then. And what was your dad's name, Lewis Pedalikio. I having to write that down because I just did a Google search for The wild Man of North America and nothing comes up. No, it is. It is out of print. I've got to get a new publisher and get it republished. He went through Lulu, which was like on Amazon for a while, but it has not been showing up on Amazon recently. I ordered one hundred about a year ago and those are all sold out, and I've just got to
get it reprinted. Well, that's interesting. I'm kind of a you know, a fan of books in general, and I have a pretty great big Foot book collection. It says Bobo. Actually Bobo has an astonishing collection. Well, I like it just because they're actual, Like he was able because it was nineteen fifties and before, there's no copyright on the full article, so he could do the full article and not have to you know, like redact it, you know what I mean, with all that you have to
do nowadays for copyright. Because he didn't have to worry about copyright infringement, he was able to do the whole article, which was actually very informative. I think. Yeah, something else I found very interesting. I'm fascinated by feral people as it relates to Bigfoot, and how a lot of that stuff
tends to bleed over or into each other. Where you have feral people, you'll have Bigfoot, and then people talk about like in a really mean wild man, and nine times out of ten, when it's extremely hostile encounter with somebody, it's basically a person that's feral. Like there's one account from Flatwoods where that's the case, where it's they talk about it and it seems like you're talking about Bigfoot initially where it's big hairy man that's like, you know,
terrorizing the area or whatever. But then they mentioned, oh, yeah, he had tattered clothes on him, like I don't think that was Bigfoot, and somebody actually ended up shooting him a couple of times. But yeah, I mean, I think that from what we've seen here, at least a lot of the Bigfoot stuff where I think it's an actual like an ape of some kind or relic commented like Jeff things, it seems to be a lot less aggressive, whereas feral human encounters teams tend to be a lot more
negative. I've noticed. I so humans are probably the most dangerous ape. Yeah, the most dangerous games. Yeah. Yeah, who gets aggressive? Like interactions that you're when you're talking with people here, like they were aggressive? Is it hunters, fishermen, hikers, farmers? Honestly, I mean we we've only had one. Yeah, we've had very I've had one that was verbal, and then we have one that's written in our big binder in the museum. Most of them are super passive, but the few where it's
hostile. There's the one that I'll let you tell it because that was something to talk to you in the store. Yeah, it was kind of interesting. So one of the things the West Virginia encounters pretty much across the board are very passive. It's more that people are scared because they are seeing something that their brain is just not processing. You know, like, WHOA, this thing is really big. It could kill me, but then it doesn't,
you know what I mean. It's that kind of thing. And so up until that point, I would always say, well, there's no record of anyone ever being hurt by one in West Virginia. And this guy and this lady were standing there and he looks at her and she looks at him, and he pulls his shirt back and he says, you can't say that anymore. And his left shoulder looked like mincemeat. And I'm like, what on earth happened? And he said that a year before in our neighboring county
in the New River Gorge, which is the newest National Park area. But it's a very very deep gorge, kind of like the Grand Canyon, but with a whole lot of woods. And there's this whitewater rafting river that goes through at the New River on the show. Okay, yes, then you
know, very remote in some of the areas. So he had taken this girl that he was wanting to take on a date swimming, but he was familiar with the river and it was a very large man and she was this tiny little thing and when she got in the river, she got swept away almost right away, and he's thinking, oh, cred, I'm gonna lose
her on our first date and awkward. So he was swimming as hard as he could to catch up to her, and they had gotten swept down about a mile when he saw a flat rock coming up, and he bounced off the bottom and threw her out of the water onto the rock, and then grabbed the rock and pulled himself out. And he said, when they'd gotten
out of the water, he was facing the hillside. She was facing the river, and there was this large creature standing there and it was really angry, and it picked up this rock and it threw it directly at his head. He ducked and it went through his shoulder and hit the water. She screamed landslide because all she saw was a rock hitting the water and started to turn around. He's like, don't scream, because the thing was already picking up a second rock. He he said, and all this stuff was like
rushing through his head. He realized that it was angry at him only, and didn't seem to be focusing anything on her. And then he thought, oh, it thinks I was trying to hurt her, because he had thrown her hard out of the water, and she was scared because she was almost drowning, and he said, hug me, so it knows where together. So she threw her arms around him, and it dropped the rock and just stood there and swayed. And then he realized in order to get back to
the car, they were going to have to hype right by it. And he's like, this thing he had gone through three tours and in Afghanistan, and he's like, I literally got out of there without one scratch, and I come home to my own town and I'm gonna get killed by bigfoot, you know, like this is crazy. And so he told her when we get to the tree where it was standing next to, he said, just
run and I'll try and hold it off. And he's thinking there's not going to be anything left of me by the time she gets to the car and calls nine to one one. And but in that short time where he turned to her and said run and he turned back, it had already melted into the forest. But they said they felt like it watched them the whole way
back because they could just feel it watching them. So he made her hold his hand the whole way back, and she got him to the hospital and he got his shoulder fixed up. They did end up getting married, so it all ended up really good. But he said, yeah, you can never say that nobody's ever been hurt by one, because I definitely was. Well, you said the rock passed through his shoulder, Well, not quite like directly through it, It just took a big chunk out of it,
basically. Yeah, because he said if he hadn't ducked, it would have hit his head and killed him. He said it was a very large rock, and he's convinced it would have killed him, and that it had every intention of killing him. He thinks that it was protecting her because she was tiny. They both felt that way that they thought that it thought he was hurting her and was trying to protect her because none of the anger was at
her, it was all at him. Yeah. Some great apes have this like protective behavior that gets triggered when they see that, even in humans, which I thought that was kind of interesting when I heard that story as well, where I'm like, maybe it's just something a year old that's ingrained in it, and it didn't really discern between human and its own kind. It was just like, oh, small females getting attacked, I need to do something about. That might have been about all that there was to it.
I love that he saw his opportunity and said, quick, hug me, so the Bigfoot doesn't attack me, That's what I said. I'm like, yeah, right, good, Yeah, he told her about to look, don't look, just hug me. It's that horror movie trope. Yeah, was his shoulder? Was his shoulder like scarred or it was fresh fresh? And said it was like hamburger? No, it was it had been it had been a year, so it was heavily scarred, like it just looked
really bad. When he pulled his shirt down across his shoulder. I'm like, oh my word, what happened? And I mean it looked really bad. And I'm like, and you married him after this? She goes, yeah, I guess I'm a blunt for punishment, but I did happily ever after after big Yeah, stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bogo. Will be right back. After these messages. Well, I'm going to share the conversation back to the museum again because that's what I do.
Tell us about some of your maybe favorite plack a better term displays and exhibits that you have there and how they came about. I would say probably my
section with Gigantopithecus the Mountain gorilla skull and then the orangutang skull. I'm trying to basically, I'm not suggesting Bigfoot is a gigantipithecus by any stretch of imagination, but I always like to point people to that to basically suggest there's been gigantic primates in the past, to try and destigmatize the notion of Bigfoot being out there, because then it gets people going like, well, I guess
that's true. Like I've talked to a lot of skeptics with the museum, and then once you dive into those subjects, like we have current primates that are huge now, and then we also have a fossil record that suggests that we had a much larger one that was I want to say, excess to like seventeen hundred pounds and ten feet tall in the past. So why would something relatively similar that was also a primate. Why couldn't one still potentially exist?
And that seems to actually have a big positive impact on skeptic conversations. Now, I imagine most of the people and I basically this on my own experience here, most of the people who come in are pretty either open to the subjects or already think they're real. Oh yeah, no, no, we get a ton of skeptics. I would say about twenty five to fifty percent. No kidding, that's a lot larger percentage than what I find in
my own museum. Well, it's probably people from not in the area, right, Well, yeah, it's partly that we get West Virginians too, but I think a lot of it is because of the dichotomy of the businesses. So we have our museums free. It's a big, Bigfoot museum, and then there's obviously the country Store right next to it. So nine times out of ten it's a family because we do steer everything towards like family and
working class people being able to have fun and go on vacation. So usually the father will be into Bigfoot and the mom will be into the country store or vice versas sometimes and then one of them will be a hardcore skeptic and the other one will think it's awesome. So there's like it's always something along those lines of dichotomy, even with the kids. Like usually the kids will be split right down the middle when a hardcore sceptic comes in and they're accompanied
by someone who's already believing, and that's not an issue at all. Do you ever see never see fireworks erupt like I told you, I told you, or that sort of thing back and forth with some sort of family dynamic
that you didn't exactly anticipate. Oh yeah, well, usually it ends up being kind of like sports teams where like you have, you know, a Cowboys fan and they have a Pittsburgh Steelers fan or something similar premise where they'll get into that and I've obviously I've talked to a lot of people where they're I don't know, I talked to a lot of skeptics. I guess it's just kind of what I do. But I try to always find good common ground with them before I dive into it too much, because they'll be like,
well there's nobody. I'm like, yeah, there's nobody. They're like, oh, you agree with me. I'm like, well, yeah, I don't have a body. I just show you. So like people get a little bit surprised when they don't get met with like uh, I don't know how to put it, like forceful response to that where I'm like I'm not offended. If somebody says I don't believe in bigfoot, I'm like, okay, it's a real museum. You're welcome to look at it anyway.
Exactly when I think, I think, I approach it a little differently. Usually I send the more scientific ones to David to handle. But my thing is I just tell people where I was coming from and what changed my mind, and I listened to and I repeat the stories that people have told me to them, and we get a lot of people leaving thinking a little bit
more seriously about it than when they came. Yeah, they'll start out kind of negative, and then they'll check it out and give it a fair shake, because I think being free is actually a big part of it too, because they're like, well, what's to lose? And then I really am a big fan of trying to use natural history as a tool for the conversation, at least because natural history itself is pretty insane when it really comes down to it. You had everything from sea scorpions to giants' laws, to saber
tooth tigers to cave bears, and the list goes on and on. Bigfoot really doesn't end up being that crazy outlandish when you compare it to the rest of this massive fossil record of just about everything you could imagine. Yeah, it makes perfect sense. I mean, being perfectly normal animals. Everything about them kind of does make sense in a lot of ways. You know. Well, brek is a nice segue into another question I kind of have,
and I've been kind of pondering this recently. You know, I live on the West Coast, Bobo lives in the West Coast, and I have all my life travel a fair amount here and there and stuff. But I mean, I've always lived here is a thing, and just like a fish may not notice the water that it's swimming in, I'm curious about the prevalence of of like paranormal thoughts about sasquatches back where you are, Because when I was in West Virginia, and again I was an outsider visiting for a week or
two, I've been there a handful of times and that's about it. My My general take on the on the area and the people in particular is that they're very pragmatic, down to earth, salt of the earth sort of folks, and they don't have a lot of time for paranormal Uh what is the word like pursuits? Yeah, pursuits in that sort of way. You know, do you do you? But I think I'm on the West coast, you know, like nuts and granola sort of folks and a lot of lot
and there's nothing against I have nothing against that, you know. There's a little bit of that in me too in some sort of ways. And therefore I think that people that here, I believe that this is stereotyping, of course, but I am from here or perhaps more inclined to think that crystals play a role in your health or something like that. Oh yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, So so do you am I way off base here or is or is sort of strong vein of paranormal beliefs in the in your
part of the country as well, and you see that a lot. I would say it kind of depends with regards to bigfoot specifically, the vast majority of cases and whatnot that I've read or talked to people about, they're almost all very natural. They think it's an animal. They don't think it teleports or flies in spaceships or those to other dimensions. Usually there's exceptions to those accounts where some people will claim that it disappeared or something like that, but
those are I mean, that's maybe two percent maybe if that. Now, in terms of general paranormal stuff. Yeah, I mean that's super big in backwoods Appalachia. In general, we've met, I've talked a lot because I'm a Christian and so is she, So we talk about our religion pretty openly
with people all the time. And I've talked to tons of witches and stuff in the area, Pagans, various New Age type folks, and we'll have like legitimate conversations about religion with regards to ghosts, UFO's demons, everything. I'll know if I answered your question super well. But it's definitely prevalent in
terms of folklore for sure. But I think with when Bigfoot is concerned, I would say I've only had one story where they were saying that it was appearing and disappearing in front of them, but the behavior was so off compared to what everybody else says when they see it. I don't think they were seeing Bigfoot, if you know what I mean. Yeah, just some sort of outlier in the data that doesn't Yes, Yes, yeah, I was.
I'm curious about that because obviously being in a similar position to you at a Bigfoot museum and even Bobo down in northern California, ex everybody knows who bobo Ise. He's famous. Yeah, can't go out with that here to Bigfoot story probably. You know, I don't hear a lot of normal stuff. I hear a lot of paranormal stuff from very loud paranormal people like who have a very large well they have a big microphone or big megaphone as they say. But that's kind of it. In my day to day stuff here
at the museum, I don't. I just don't get stories like that. And when the paranormal advocate would say something like like, no clip they do go in inter dimensional whatevers and you know all that stuff, And I said, well, then why aren't I hearing about it? The average Joe doesn't. Yeah, no, it's less than one percent. And it's far less than one percent of the stuff I hear. And they always say, oh, that's because they know who you are, and they're not going to tell
you that because you aren't going to believe them. And I'm just thinking, well, isn't that a convenient argument to have? But you're experiencing the same thing. It's just not there for the most part. Yeah, I would say the vast majority of big Foot stuff is not like spiritual Now, some people try and add that in to their own perception of the encounter, which is their prerogative. I'm not trying to be aful or anything like that, but in terms of the meat and potatoes though, no, usually it's not
that said. Bigfoot is almost always a segue for people to dive into aliens, angels, or demons, almost every time, because they tend to just they're not saying Bigfoot is one. I think they're saying that if you're open to this, then maybe you're open to X, Y and Z subject which I end up talking about all kinds of random stuff after Bigfoot. Basically does
that make sense? Oh? Yeah, absolutely, and it kind of echoes what what my thoughts were is like, I don't think this is a I don't think that my situation is a necessarily a cliff tainted input, you know, like, Oh, they're just not going to tell you about the thing, you know, when it started glowing and flew away or something like that, because because your cliff and they know that you don't buy that stuff,
so they're going to hide that part of the story for you. But you're finding something similar because I'm I'm I'm a rather vocal proponent of these things being a perfectly normal animal and the paranormal stuff. I do think they're very intelligent animals. Yeah, I think they're probably like one of the highest forms of well grade eight, because I know, when you get into the conversation of homined and Grade eight people like, well humans are great apes. I'm like,
I know, I'm trying to differentiate them for normal people. But I
think it's definitely the most intelligent Grade eight that would exist. Probably. I think it's senses in terms of smell, site and how it not in terms of woo woo feels stuff, but in terms of like, oh I could it can feel Maybe it can feel electronics, you know how when we walk underneath a huge power line, even humans can feel like a vibration from the electric It kind of just makes me wonder if that's something it's hyper sensitive too,
so it can sense it with trail cameras and phones and everything else as well. But yeah, I don't. I definitely don't think it's an alien in my opinion, And I definitely do think that's either a relic commented like Meldrum would argue, or it's a lost Grade eight like I would argue.
I feel like a lot of the stories like to me the hunters. The hunters are always describing it a whole lot more differently, or the old time, the old time farmers will describe it a lot more differently than then the girls that are out on their four by four and get scared of it, you know what I mean. Well, my favorite was these these two girls would go across the ridge, and again these are these are quite the ridges in this area. So they would go across the ridge and visit their grandmother
who was on the other side of the ridge. But they would go by four by four and they would travel over there, and they would play games
with her on the weekends. And the one night it got really late and they were on their way back around twelve midnight, and they came around the corner and there was this huge being standing in the middle of the road, and according to them, it was fourteen feet and its eyes were flaming, and they were terrified, and then they exec they executed a four point turn on an incredibly narrow mountain ridge road, you know, in an open four
by four within its reach, and managed to get it turned around while they were screaming their heads off. And then got back to Grandma's house. And in the interview, I'm like, did it reach out? Nope, it just stood there and looked at him like they were crazy. But it's so different from the hunters. The hunters are describing between you know, between six
to eight feet tall animal like behavior. They all describe a very intelligent animal like the one that he was talking about, where it was a stump. And this guy came flying in here after his experience and he's like, I thought you were nuts for starting this museum until I saw it for myself. And we hear that a lot. Well, until I saw it for myself, I didn't believe it. But then they usually have time to study it and while they're in the hunting blind and they're watching its behavior, or in
this case, it was watching him for three hours. It sat and watched him, and he thought he was looking at a stump until the stump stood up and looked directly at him. But he had his scope on it, and he said he got a really good look. It was only about seven feet tall, but he said he realized right then that a dear rifle would not stop it. You must just hear story after story after story because my experience back in the Appellation. That's why I'm basing this on at least my
appillations. Appellation folk are very friendly and love to talk about some stuff, you know, they just love to tell their Now, I don't know if you have any more time, but you would you be willing to stick around a little bit and do a little time with us during our members episode and
tell some of your favorite stories that you've heard. Certainly, Yeah, if you don't mind, that'd be great, Bobo, anything on any last minute things for our regular episode before we go to the members sing that's so I want to I know the people want to hear like what what what are you guys hearing? Like what are you? What are they seeing? Yes, let's go get to that. All right, Yeah, let's do that.
But before we get off the regular episode, I want to remind everybody that, uh, this is these are the founders or the runners I guess the curators of the West Virginia Bigfoot Museum in Sutton, West Virginia. Go. I mean, if I am in that part of the country, I will absolutely go. Everybody needs to go see all the big Foot museums they possibly can. But West Virginia. One god. West Virginia is one of my
favorite Eastern probably is my favorite Eastern state honestly. And also if I can chime in real quick, I forgot to talk about this earlier, but we're also one of the only towns in the United States that has two cryptids. I tell you that. No, we have the Flatwood's Monster too. Oh that's you guys. That's right in our same town. That's our visitors bureau for the county. Andrew Smith runs that. But it's literally just like four doors down from us. We wanted to plug that while we had a chance.
Yeah, because he's awesome. We love the museum or is there a flat Woods Museum or like, yeah, he runs he runs the Flatwood's Monster Museum, Andrew Smith does. It's the place to be man, Yeah, apparently so and also speaking to places to be June twenty seven through twenty ninth, it's a West Virginia Bigfoot Festival and taking a stab in the dark. Is that the name of this? Yes, absolutely, the West Virginia Bigfoot Festival. And it's ten dollars a car to get in, so it's very
affordable and a whole lot of fun. If you want to just get immersed in West Virginia culture and all things Bigfoot, come all out. Where can people find information on this or buy tickets? I would go to West Virginia Bigfoot Museum on Facebook or WV Bigfoot Museum on Instagram, and not on Twitter. I think it's just Bigfoot Museum if I remember brectly, So any of those three should have a ton of posters about it. And you don't have to buy tickets in advance. You just show up and so we'll see how
many come. But it should be a lot of fun. We have a whole lot of really amazing crafters, so there's and food, trucks and music and bounce houses and yeah, just a whole lot of fun. David and Laurel, there you go. So yeah, thank you very much for coming on, and we're gonna pop over to our member section for our members. If you are listening and are interested in being a member, go to Bigfoot to be on podcast dot com hit the membership button, or you can always
click that link in the show notes. Because mister Matt Pruitt, who is absent today, he's in the woods doing Bigfoot stuff. He will put that link in the show notes. And what you get for that, what you get for your measly five dollars a month, which is just a beer with no tip. Think of it like that. For the cost of one beer and no tip, you get an extra hour of Cliff and Bobo and Matt every single week. And you also get this episode that you're listening to right
now, our regular episode with zero commercials. Zero commercials. So if you're tired of hearing commercials about garbage you don't want to buy, feel free to give us five bucks a month, and then you don't have to do that ever again. So there you go. Thank you very much. David and Laurel. We're gonna pop over to our member section right now, but Bobo in the meantime, can you take us out of here. I'll try, guys, all right, Thanks to David and Laurel. We appreciate you,
guys, and until next week, y'all keep it squatchy. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Bigfoot and Beyond. If you liked what you heard, please rate and review us on iTunes, subscribe to Bigfoot and Beyond wherever you get your podcasts, and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Bigfoot and Beyond podcast. You can find us on Twitter at Bigfoot and Beyond that's an N in the middle, and tweet us your thoughts and questions with the hashtag Bigfoot and Beyond