Big Food and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo. These guys are your favorites, so like Shay, subscribe and rade it five stock and me question today listening watching lim always keep its watching And now you're hosts Cliff Barrickman and James Boobo Fay, Hey Bobo, what's up? Cliff? Just getting ready to do a podcast here? But lots and lots of stuff going on, in fact, so much stuff that for me, I usually fill you in like what's been going on this past week? But I got to do that in the
members episode. It's going to take too much time. So oh damn, because he's yeah, great stuff going on all the time, all kinds of stuff and it fits into this segment. So it's bigger than that. That's a lot. Yeah, yeah, So anyway, I I'm going to tell you all about that stuff in the members episode, but because it's just too much stuff and we have a full episode this time anyway, So what about
you? Man? What's going on? Just getting rid of Uh? They opened the gates up to Bluff yesterday, so I think I'll be heading up there tomorrow or the day after. Nice. Nice, you know, go up with those guys who keep finding prints on go road. Yeah, I might go up actually with Polly. Uh, we're gonna try to get up there and cut wood for a day, get some madrones split up, so start drying and uh yeah there was another day after that, so we'll see
him down there hopefully. Excellent, excellent. Any chance of you going down into the valley or is just just going to go see on the sides? Oh, you know the film PAULI has never been to the film site. Someone take it to the film site? Fantastic? Are you going to go by Laus Camp? Oh? Yeah, yeah, for sure, so we'll probably camp in there, I imagine. Oh that's great, So you gotta
spend a span. I'm really really interested on what it's like there. Hey, man, would you mind taking some pictures and stuff and sharing anybody get a chance, Just shoot me a couple of pictures, you know, Lared Meadow for example. I think that's gone at this point. Yeah, but I'm interested where the fire started and stopped. And like I said, I'm hoping to go out there maybe later that's like late summer, early fall and check it out for myself. But I'd like to know what I'm getting into.
Yeah, yeah, for sure, I'm definitely gonna take a lot of pictures. All right. Well, you know again, I have so much to tell you, Bobs, I got to save it for the members stuff, and I don't mean to be a tease everybody who's listening who's not a member. Sorry about that, but you know, you could be a member if you wanted to be a member. It's five bucks a month. You get an extra hour every single week of Cliff and Bobo, and Matt pipes in a lot more than he does in the regular episode. So that's a
pleasure there. And also probably the biggest pleasure of being a member is that you get this episode right now that you're listening to. The regular episode was zero commercials, zero commercials, so you don't have to worry about all, you know, whatever kind of crazy stuff your local advertisers are trying to sell to you. It's just zero commercials, pure pure Globo and Matt and nothing else, just all all the love we have to give. So maybe you
should become a member. It's good for you, it's good for the soul Raiser IQ by fourteen point at least at least all right, Well, with having said all that, I think it's time that we get into our guests. And we've got a good one today. Okay, we let's go ahead and bring our guests on. And today our guest is bigfoot researcher Michael Cook from Central Kentucky. I met this guy, and well, I met him throughout the years, I guess, but he's been one of these familiar faces
to me at the conferences and stuff. But I got to hang out with them a bit more at the Forest County, Pennsylvania Bigfoot Festival a few weeks ago. And he's a rad guy. And I mentioned it to Bobo and Matt and bobas we got to get that guy on. He's got a great story, and I go, shoot, I don't even know that I hung out with him for a whole weekend. I don't even know he had a great story. So I thought this was a great opportunity. It's not just a story. He recorded most of it. But he'll get into that.
But it's actually on video too, because I've seen it on a TV show. Oh yeah, yeah, he's been on a couple he's been a travel channel. I think these woods are haunted or something like that. Yeah. Well, anyway, let's stop blabbing together and get Michel Michael on. Michael, you can come blab with us. Thanks so much for coming on. Well what's going on, guys? R just doing a podcast? What about you just hanging around? Yeah, well thanks for setting some time asight and
coming on the show with us. We appreciate it. There's Michael. I can't even tell you, man, when I mentioned your name, Bobo flipped out like, I mean, we weren't in the same state even, but I could tell that he like stood up out of his chair and then like banged his fists on the table metaphorically and said that we had to have this guy on. So I don't know what you've done or what's in your in
your background, man, but you got Bobo fired up. Well, I mean, you know, Bobo done miss solid several years ago at the Ohio Bigfoot Conference. Uh huge, probably the I mean even bigger than us Bigfoot enthusiast. My little friend Jovie her birthday and Bob send her center a personalized video wishner happy birthday, and it made that little girl's whole life, I
guess because she still talks about it to this day. But yeah, no, I'm with everything going on research and stuff like that, and these these festivals and speaking events. It's just a vicious circle anymore. Well, if you want viciousness, you came to the right podcast. So thank you very much again for coming on. And So I guess I mean, I don't. I mean I hung out with you and stuff, but I don't know that much about you, and I'm certain that some of our listeners probably don't
either. What can you tell us about yourself and your Bigfoot journey? Oh, it started twenty two years ago this October, and I had a wild, random encounter. I always tell people, especially during my presentations at these events, So tell people, you know, twenty two years ago and so many minutes before, I didn't believe in Bigfoot. Bigfoot did not exist to me. And then it literally fell out of myth and into reality on me.
I was fishing on a river bank in eastern Kentucky and this whatever it was at the time, took a wrong step, trip, slipped, it done something off this ridge, and rode end over end until it hit the river in front of me, about fifty feet or so away. At first I thought it was a bear, obviously, you know, because let's go back then let's just transport ourselves back to that moment. Bigfoot didn't exist. There's no such thing. It's make believe. So I said, oh,
there's that's a bear. And when it stood up, I really knew it wasn't a bear, but I was still trying to rationalize things. And it pulled itself upon the bank across from me and shook itself off and started to turn and walk away, and then it looked over its shoulder squared up with me, and we stood there for a moment of eye to eye contact. And one of the most distinctive things wasn't the size. It was around eight foot tall, maybe four hundred pounds, kind of straggly for you know,
what people perceive a big foot would be. But it's hands, very human like hands, gestures that facial expressions on almost acted like it was embarrassed that it that it had actually fallen into the river in front of a human. So I was ready to run. I still couldn't run. I was trying to find fight or flight, and it bought its fist up and let out these just guttural screams toward me, and that's when I figured out how to run, and I ran to my car, got in, had full intentions
of telling my parents when I got home. When I got home, I couldn't tell them because I thought they would tell me that I was crazy or I was lying seeing things and all this stuff. Were you in high school? I was? I was. I skipped school that day. That's what you get. That's what I get. Don't try to encourage because to skip school, Cliff, it's it's karma. Man, You played hooky stuff like this? In fact, didn't this happen to the Little Rascals one time?
When they did? They played hooky and then did school. I think they went camping, and then a gorilla, the bite pedle gorilla started chasing them around. Isn't I wrong? On that? Sounds right? Sure, I'm right. I thought they were playing hooky that day. But I could be wrong about that, but I do. Yeah, anyway, I'll try to find that, verify that anyway. I'm sorry, Michael, like that.
When Little Rascal was popping my head, I get distracted. I promised you, well, if you start calling me spanky at these events and stuff we're gonna I'll probably let you call me spanky. Why not? That's a badge of honor man. That's a badge of honor. So we get about a year later. I don't know how long later. This happened in October of two thousand and two, but about a year later, my dad and I were watching Unsolved Mysteries, and you know how they normally the normal show was
about missing persons, unsolved murders, stuff like that. Every now and then they would have something like the Travis Walton case with the abduction. That particular night, they were talking about Bigfoot and how it is an unsolved mystery, and I look up. They were showing the Patterson gain Win film. I look up and Patty turns and looks over his shoulder, and my dad said, I just dropped all the color out of my face. And he immediately
got worried. He said, someone's wrong. And I said, Dad, I don't know how to tell you this, but I saw one of these things. And he said when where you know? And I told him the story. The whole time I was talking, though, I realized my dad was like looking at me intently and not laughing, not brushing me off or telling me I'm lying. And I said, Dad, what do you know?
And he said, well, Son, they're out there, and he goes into these accounts that he had heard over the years of wild men of the forest, feral people, so forth and so on, and it made me realize that I wasn't the only one. So I began my research journey then and tried to dive on into it. And now it's twenty two years later, I'm still out there in the woods doing my thing. That makes you part of the older generation? Now, man, how do you feel
about that? I do feel like an old man sometimes, especially at these do you feel that way? I mean, you do these conferences and these events too, and you have these kids come up to you and you just look at them, like, go go to the playground, go go somewhere. Yeah. You know, I hear quote unquote experts that have been doing her for you know, five years. I know, I'm thirty years in. I don't know anything, man, I'm no experts. That's a weekend,
Yeah, one sighting the next day, they know at all. I wanted to bring us back to before we lose sight of the sighting that you just shared with us. Of course, so it fumbled and rolled down the hill. Is that we're into the creek? Is that we're how far away was it from you? It landed about fifty feet from me, just up the river. I mean it was straight in front of me. So I'm standing at the river bank and it was, you know, to my left.
But for probably twenty or thirty minutes before this happened, I kept on hearing something shuffle around the ridge across from me, which was across the river, and I thought it was squirrels, maybe a deer. You know, we had just released elk in this area, back in this area from years of them not being here, and I thought, well, maybe it's an elk. And the ridge I've been there several times over the years. You can imagine it's very very hard to transverse. It's very hard to stand on.
So I'm thinking this thing probably lost its footing. I mean, I don't mean to bring the woo or anything like that into it, but that's where I have a problem with some of this, where people are like, oh, these are supernatural beings. They can do this, they can do that, they can stop the space time continuum and step into a different universe. Okay, that's once slipped off a ridge and landed in a river in front of me. And if I possess those abilities, there's no way I
would stumble off ridge. Paranal doesn't mean perfect high was the ridge? How high was the ridge? Very steep? It's very steep. It's a steep terrain like iron roll like forty feet down or thirty feet or oh we've ever been of forty Yeah, I've heard of them, like when they roll like how humans like if we like, if we fall out, how we start rolling, we like, you know, try to spread out, like like
spread our arms and legs out whenever. When I've heard people talk to like that, say they see him come down cliffs like that slip and fall that they ball up and rolled down like a ball faster like that. Is that what it did? Holy crap, that's exactly what it did. So when it rolled off into the river, that's what I saw was a ball of just this dark reddish brown, very dark around uh fir hit the water.
That's what made me think, Oh, it's a bear. So yeah, when you said that, that's exactly how I describe it, like at these events, it balled up into a ball. I've heard I believe from bear hunters that that's a bear behavior as well, that when they're stressed out and like they're really under the gun, no pun intended. They they'll roll downhill to escaping area quickly. Have you Am I wrong about that? Is this?
Am I making this up? You get a few minutes, you get bored, you want a good laugh, Look up TikTok or YouTube or something bears rolling down a hill, and that's exactly what they do. They panda bears. They will they will ball up into almost a perfect sphere and roll. It's it's wild to see these creatures do that. Now, you you commented on the creature's hands. What stood out to you about the hands because you just kind of you mentioned it briefly, but you didn't go into details.
Don't want to hear about I want to hear about those. They were huge, they were, but they were five fingered like herrors, a posable thumb and everything. That's what stood out to me the most, even though the sheer size, the magnitude that this creature is not make believe. This is this is standing in front of me right now. Its hands. It
had dexterous hands. And while it was when it was drying well, I say, drying itself off, it's hard to describe this, but it was taking its hands and it was pushing the water downwards off its fur, and then the fur the hair that was hanging off its elbows. It was doing like a ringing motion like you would ring a washcloth out, and it would ring the water off switch sides, wring the water off that side, and
then on its chest. It was pushing the water from the top of the chest all the way down and it was pushing the water off like it was drying itself off. An intelligent behavior. The way it was used in its hands is what I was what I was trying to convey. But yeah, I believe that's the same emotion that you're describing that we had described to us
by that Elk hunter a few weeks ago in episode two sixty. He saw the thing, and I think he saw that like it was like pushing, like he said, drying himself off kind of with his hands and like pushing the water down. Bobo, Am I right remembering this? Yeah, Yeah, it seems to me that you're describing the same behavior but a different location in the state and all that other stuff. So that's interesting. Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo will be right back after these
messages. So that was your first incident with a sasquatch as your wake up call. Shall we say, My god, what a crazy wake up call that is. But from there you started researching. So bring us back to then, because that was a while ago. That was, you know, twenty over twenty years ago. Now what did research look like to you in those very very early days of your bigfooting career. Well, I would say that I would I would think that it would look the same as it did
to you. A lot of pen and paper stuff, notebooks, trying to get people to talk. I put an ad in a local paper and I said, has anyone had any strange encounters that they cannot explain in the woods, so forth and so on. We'll meet it the Harlan County Library this day. So I reserved the library conference hall and there was a handful of people showed up. Of course, a lot of them were paranormal stuff.
I saw a ghost or something like that, And I'm like, okay, cool, I know people now that you can go to and talk about that. I'm not that guy. I want to know if you've seen something that you would think is a bigfoot, but getting people to talk back in those days, and you know, we didn't have at the conferences and the festivals and all this going on like we do now. So you can throw a rock at most of these conferences and hit somebody that's had a big foot encounter.
And unfortunately you can throw a rock and hit somebody that's just there to make fun of us. But but it was, it was very archaic back then. You know, well, I'm gonna write this down. I'll go home, pull out my big computer and type it up on a report and put file it away. Print it out and file it away. I've got I've got a couple of hundred not class A visual encounters, but I've got a couple of hundred encounters that I've taken over the years before the mainstream way
of taking reports and stuff. But I'm not a very big report taker anymore. I'll listen to them. I love hearing bigfoot encounters that do. But I'm in it to research for myself now, and I like getting out in the woods and doing it. If I hear of a report that happened fifty years ago, I can't go back to that same place and see the evidence
that I left behind. So, and that was another thing. Some people would have encounters back then, and it would be a week, two weeks, three weeks afterwards, and by the time they'd get to me, it'd rain or snow or do something, and all the evidence that could have been there had probably been washed away by then. So do you have a goal with your researchers, it's just something that you like to do. I'd like to know exactly what these creatures are. My goal is to find out what
these creatures are, do everything in my power to protect them. And I think they are very special creatures. I think they're just as important as every other animal on this earth, if not more important, because I do truly believe they are closest, the closest thing to humanity that you could get, and I think they hold secrets that we could learn from. They've survived this long without quote unquote proof. They've been spotted on every continent on this Earth,
with the exception of Antarctica. And I would like for mostly though the protection of these creatures, but the protection of the people that have witnessed them. What would you be protecting them from ridicule? Being called crazy? Being to self doubt. I know a god dear friend of mine who used to research and now he's just like you know, years later, and his encounter
happened forty years ago. Years later, he looks at me now and says, you know, maybe I did see something, maybe I was seeing things. And I say, you know, John, no, listen, you've told me the story. You actually saw something. I wasn't there, but you saw something. You wouldn't just seeing things. And you wouldn't have spent over half your life looking for this stuff if if it was just that.
And you know, but people have put so much self doubt in his brain that it's made him believe that maybe maybe I was just seeing things that day, or maybe it was a limb moved. And his story wasn't limb moved. It was it was an actual bigfoot walking across the field in front of him when he was when he was about twenty years old. And you know, but people are the worst enemy to humans that's ever been. These creatures are not I don't think, in my opinion, are not dangerous, but
humans are. Humans kill humans every day. Humans will will drive each other down. And that's just like the Bigfoot community some of the worst critics on this earth is in the bigfoot community and having friends in the paranormal community. I mean it's hand in hand, you know. So if you're not there seeing something with your own two eyes, you cannot say that that person didn't see it. You can say I have a hard time leiaving that, but
at the end of the day, I wasn't there. You're a real researcher, Mike Michael, what uh what have you What have you discovered? Like what have you learned that you can say I know this about them? Like they go here at certain times you really go eat this thing? Is this time of year I find scot like this or you know what I mean? Like, what have you learned like patterns or things you'd recognize? Or here in Kentucky, I see that they there's a the sidings are scarce in the
summer. I think they move underground here. You you very rarely hear of a footprint or anything like that found too during the summer. So that tells me then that they are going deep in the woods, deep deep deep in the woods where people don't go, or they're going underground. So you all know as well as I do and everybody listening to this that Kentucky is riddled
with cave systems. The Mammoth Cave system stretches from the western part of the state all the way to the eastern part of the state, and they're mostly all connected. So the caves tend to stay around sixty five degrees a year round. That's a constant climate. Maybe send maybe send one or two out at night to grab some food, you know, and head back underground in the daytime. But they start amping back up toward the end of July, going into the dog days of summer. I think that has to do with
the bury harvests. We have blackberries and all kinds of wild berries that pop up during that time across the United States. And I'm with surmised to say that even the western part of the United States probably has an influx of sightings during that In my particular research area, the one that we were talking about earlier, that Bobo knows about, there were mainly juveniles there, and I could not tell you all why. I still wonder that to this day why
there were so many juveniles there. And this is location where you had your initial sighting. This is a location where I had the big sighting in two thousand and eight. Yeah, the gnarly one. Oh, that wasn't the two thousand and two, wasn't then early one? No? Oh, So you still have something to share with this. Okay, I'll let you finish
your thought, But then I want to hear about that, please. So another researcher and I went into this area in twenty fourteen, and we saw an old BFRO report back from way back when, and I said, you know what, it's worth it, Let's go in here. Let's see what's going on. It's a crazy hoke. It's it's nine miles if you do the whole thing, but it's worth it if you go up and you see
the lookout and stuff. But we had a couple of weird things. So in twenty fourteen, nothing happened any Probably any other researcher out there would have been like, this place is dead, this place nothing's here and moved on. But we were persistent. We went in there. We felt like this was a squatchy area. So move up to November of twenty sixteen, and
I can't explain this, So I don't know how to explain this. We were walking across the ridge the main top ridge at night, and ahead of us there was this light and it looked like a headlamp like you would wear on your head, but it was a brilliant blue color, about the size of a baseball. And my colleague and I we said, you know, I wonder who that is. And I said, I don't know. Nobody's crazy enough to be up here at night but us. So we walked toward
it. Usaid, when I get up here, I want to tell this guy, I want to know where he got his lot at because it was lighted up the whole forest. And we got probably fifty sixty feet away from it, and it raised up in the sky and it got real bright right above the tree line, and it burst in this flash, no sound, no nothing, and we were frozen where we were standing. And I leaned over. I said, you saw what I saw, correct, And he
said I did. And we're standing there talking about it, and from out of nowhere, this rock about the size of a football comes flying over our heads and bounces off trees going down the ridge, and it was followed by what sounded like really low grunts. So we both high tailed it out there. It was obvious that we did not belong there. They didn't want us there. Whatever it was, they didn't want us there. So we went back December, January, February, March, April, May, all twenty
seventeen. Nothing happened again. Normal researchers would have probably said screw this, we're going home and left it. But I was dating this girl at the time in twenty eighteen, and she wanted to go squatching, and our friend Kenny wanted to go squatching too, And I said, I was already researching over into Daniel Boone. We had a very good research area over there, and I said, I'm going to take them to this other area, you know, and show them more. The rock got thrown at us. We're
not going to go into a very active place. So we go in there that night or that evening. We went in about three o'clock in the evening October sixth, twenty eighteen, and as soon as we entered the forest, my phone died completely. It was on charge in the car we go in. I felt it vibrate and I looked at it, thought it was somebody calling me, look at it and it was dying. Her phone dies, Kenny's phone dies. I said, this is weird. You know, it
is strange. This is just a strange area. It's you know, probably some hooky pooky supernatural stuff going on. It's not Bigfoot related, but whatever. Because this place is adjacent to a battlefield, so there's probably some residual stuff going on there. And you know, I'm not a paranormal researcher, so I don't know. But we get up there. I show them where the rock got thrown at us, and we went up to the lookout and you can see everything from the lookout. You can see it's where the mountains
meet the bluegrass of Kentucky. So we're sitting there watching the sunset, and it dawned on me that the sun is setting. It gets dark really quick here. We need to get out of here because we didn't bring any flashlights with us. I had no intentions of being there after dark, and we made our way out. Kenny came to the rescue with a couple of little flashlights. You know, the keychain flashlights you buy Walmart has a little button
you have to push and hold. That's what we were working with. So we get down about halfway down the mountain, down the trail, and there's this rock formation you have to climb down. And we climbed down it and I was helping my girlfriend get off the rock and I heard something up on the hill above us, and I stopped and I thought for a second. I said, that sounded like footsteps, and I just played it off with Kenny. Kenny hears it and he freaks out, what was that? And
I said, I don't know what you're talking about. I played it off because I didn't want to freak any anybody out. And we get down to the bottom of the trail, and the whole way down though, we hear I hear these this footfall paralleling us all the way down this mountain. And Kenny finally breaks and he goes, all right, something's out there. What is it? And I said, Kenny, I don't know. I don't know what it is. I haven't seen anything yet. I'm hearing things,
but I don't I don't know what it is. And I'm not a big tree knocker, but I'm really not. I'm not a big whoop where. I don't Mostly when I go out research and I go out, I sit down and I listen and I look. I use all my senses, and I said, you know, what it's worth a trial. Let's let's do a tree knock now on these woods are haunted Bobo. It shows the actor playing me hit the tree three or four times. I never hit the tree
three three or four times. I hit it once and instantly, how right above us, something smacked the tree and Kenny just has this complete and total meltdown on us, and he's freaking out. My girlfriend, she draws this circle in the in the dirt. She says that it's something to do with Native American culture. It's a symbol that will protect her and protect her own. You're on your own, Yeah, you're on your own on that one. Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bogo will be right
back. After these messages, for about fifty fifty three minutes, I told her, I said, listen, you need to get your phone out and start recording. She had a battery pack and she had charged her phone on the top of the mountain, so her phone was fully charged, but the battery pack completely sapped of power. She starts recording this right before she drew the circle in the in the dirt, and for fifty three minutes, these creatures were walking around us, just out of that small flashlight range, and
they were grunning, and they were they were rowling. There was like gutter or grouse. Then I hear what can only be described as chatter. It was I couldn't understand it. It was a completely different language. Did it sound like the Sierra sounds? No? Did it sound close to them? Absolutely? I don't know what they were saying to each other. But I walk up to Kenny and I put my hand on his chest and I said, Kenny, are you okay, buddy? And when I put when I
laid my hand on his chest, it was cold. I could feel his heart beat. I said, Kenny, you you got to get out of here righted. And he said, yeah, I'm going to run. I said, don't run. Don't run, because I don't know what these things will do. If you run, you could lose that race, okay. And I said, I'm gonna get you out of here, buddy. And that was probably the most terrified I was at the moment, because I was afraid something would happen to Kenny. I was afraid something would happen to Gwynn.
I was afraid that if either one of them something happened to either one of them and I survived, I wouldn't be able to live in myself because I put them in this situation. So I am a card carrying member of the firearm community, and I always carry a pistol with me, and to be blunt. It is not for bigfoot. I do not wish to kill one of these creatures now if it came down to life or death. Absolutely my life for its life. I've got kids, I've got to live.
But I walk. I get my gun and I placed it on my hip. I get it out of my backpack. I placed it on my hip, and I walk up to Gwen and I put my hand on my shoulder and I said, Gwen, Honey, we gotta go. We gotta get Kenny out of here. And as soon as I said that, this one rushed just bluff charge straight toward us. And you could hear it just to to too too, the foot fall from it stomping toward us, and subconsciously,
I guess, I don't know. I didn't mean to. I drew my firearm, I drew my pistol, and I said, stop, whatever you are, you gotta stop. I don't know if you can understand me. I don't. I don't care, but you have to stop. We're leaving. Let us go. And Gwen gets up and she says, okay, I'm ready. I said, all right, let's let's get out of here. But I want you and Kenny to walk ahead of me. And she said no, and I said, yeah, go go ahead of me
here, it's okay. And I said, if something should happen, run, don't tell Ken I told you this, But run as hard as you can get to the car. Calm on one one, but don't say bigfoot because they won't come. And she said, what are you going to do? I said, I'm okay with this. I really am. At the time it was it was like, you know, I'm okay with this. Be a hell of a way to go. I joke about it during my
presentations. I say, you know, if something would have happened to me, I would have got to the other side and my grandpa would have been like, what happened. I'd say, well, you got you had a heart attack, I got ripped apart by a bigfoot. We're not the same, old man. Yeah, you would win that one. But they walked ahead of me. They got about fifteen foot ahead of me, he or so, and I'm walking, walking, walking, and I just got this
feeling, you know, you get that feeling. And I took that little flashlight and looked over my shoulder, and one took one ginormous step across this trail right behind me, probably ten maybe eleven twelve feet, and all of a sudden, every bit of the bravery that I had left, and I briskly walked up to both of them, put my hands on both their backs and said, don't run, but you got to go a little faster.
And we get down to where at the bottom of the trail, the main bottom where the parking lot stuff is, there's a shelter house and we're standing there and I'm like, okay, we are safe, We're good. There's lights here. I don't wanted to know what their thoughts were, how they were feeling us. How do you all feel this just happened? How do
you all feel now? Mind you, the camera is still going, the video was still playing, and we're talking, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, guys, these rocks the size of the foot of soft balls came flying out of the air and landing around us. Now they're not heating near us, but around us, and we high tailed it to the
cars. But when I got down there, I'm leaned against the car and I'm just completely mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted at this point, and I said, I don't know, I don't know how I'm going to tell anybody this. This is crazy. This is craziest encounter I've ever had.
And up on the ridge we hear this whoo, and we all three just stopped and I was like, y'all heard that, right, And I just above it, and all the way up to the top of the mountain, these things were sounding off, and it was almost like they were celebrating that they run us out there. And I lean over to Gwenn and I said, please tell me you are still filming this, and she said, oh, yes, it's okay. This might be something to bring to the table.
And they went off several minutes, and then all of a sudden, everything in the forest, crickets, frogs, chirp, and everything stopped. And that was it. It's like the switch got turned off. And we stood there probably another twenty minutes. Way off in the distance, you could hear some cows bellering and moving but Gwenn goes to save this video and her phone glitched and I said, okay, just you know it saved, it's turn it back on. And guys, when she turned it back on,
it said nine minutes and so many seconds. And I said, no, no, no, no, no no, there's fifty three minutes of that, every bit of it. We never could recover it. It was the first nine minutes and so many seconds of the encounter. And we don't know how the hell that happened. Yeah, the batteries died before that. Those, I g it's weird. We went back up there several times after that when and I did, and it was just once in a blue moon something
like that, not like that, that's never happened before. It never happened again, but something would happen and it would draw us right back in. And then two thousand May of twenty nineteen, I know you all know Darby or Cut. He's a college professor out of North Carolina. Darby calls me up and he says, Mike, Darby had already heard about the story and all this, and he says, Mike, I'm coming to Central Kentucky.
I want you to take me to where this happened at I said, okay, So we went up there and I took him to where we saw the lot in the forest. It took him to where we had the encounter with the one surrounding us, and we went up on the ridge. And it's funny because my colleague, Glenn Mink, and myself took Darby up there. Glenn and Darby were standing on top of this one ridge looking down into a valley, and I said, guys, I don't want to be rude or
anything. Got a pee and I'm going to head on back to the trail. You all good, I'm good, let's go. So I went straight down the side of the side of the hill and went over to the other side of the trail and done my business. And Darby yells at me. He says, hey, Mike, which way did you go down? And I said, well, I went down the way that I knew I wouldn't finally kill myself and all that. But it's kind of a steep, but if you come straight down you can see where I've brushed up the leaves and
stuff. He said, that's not what I'm asking. He said, you didn't go off the side of the ridge. And I said, not the side you're looking at now. I came straight where if you draw you straight line from where I'm standing at to you, that's the way I come off. He said, you might want to come back up here, So I'll walk back up there. And we found footprints, and I think Darby would know more. And we found twenty eight footprints over two hundred yards and it
was a trackway, but it looked as though they were running. Now, when I go back to what I said about them being juvenile, none of the footprint there were two sets of footprints, none of them neither one of them was over twelve to thirteen inches long, but there was like a seven foot gap between them, so it looked like they were running. And one took a clear step right into a dead log and left the impression of that footprint there. But Darby was with us the whole time when this happened.
We documented every single one of those footprints. We run out of plaster and was not able to cast all of them, and the ones that we did cast, the kind of lobsquatching there, there's no definition, and I think that's probably because where they were running, it didn't they didn't hit the ground hard enough to leave a really good toe impression. But it was wild to see that. Yeah, Derby's referred to a strange experience. I believe that.
I thought, maybe he can Kentucky. Maybe this is what he was talking about, because he's been so cryptic about what he actually experienced, had never really you know, pushed him on it to find out what what what actually occurred, So maybe this is what he was talking about. Darby and I we we saw each other up at the OBC back in back in May's. I saw you there for I just stopped in for the night. I was on my way to West Virginia that night, and it was just a
strange occurrence that we uh. And oddly enough, guys, nothing that's happened since then in that area. We've I've been diligent about collecting stories and stuff, and I have a dear friend that lives in the area, and he's not said anything here or there about any encounters in that area. So maybe they've moved on by now. But I'm researching in nwm A now and I
haven't found anything crazy. I mean, I've found a few squatchy things, but you know, nothing that I would ever bring to the table stuff that I look at and say, well, that's that's kind of cool. Take a picture of that, you know. Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like you've had two visuals, right, two verifiable? Yeah, the two that you just described to us, so one in two thousand and two and then this one that was when it was escorting you out of the area. Is
that is that the second visual you've had? Yes? Okay, now you said verifiable. What do you mean by that, Well, the first one I was by myself. The second one I was with other people. I know what I saw. The second and third the ones we were talking about earlier when when I said, you know, I don't really talk about it a whole lot because don't really know what I was looking at. I don't ever bring that one up because we saw something. Did it favor a bigfoot?
Yes? Yes, absolutely it did. But was it at I can't tell you that, and I won't say it was a big foot. I hate it when people do that, when they come up to you and say I saw a bigfoot, it's great. Did you have any doubt what it was before you? You, you know, come to the conclusion that it was a big foot? Nope, I saw a bigfoot. Cool, So it sounds like you have a maybe on your hand too. Well, what happened at the maybe? And what makes you think it might have been a
big foot? If you're not so sure? The movements? It was definitely organic in nature. It was a it was something. It was very large, it's covered hair, and it moved when we went to step toward it. It moved very very quickly, a lot quicker than a bear would a bear black bears are very very fast, but they're very lumbery too. You know, this thing moved quicker than a deer. And it was down that
ridge in a heartbeat. You could hear it going up the other other ridge across these all little little valley you can hear it running back up the ridge over there in just seconds. So that tells me there. I don't know what it was. Could it have been a big foot, absolutely, it could have been something else possibly, I don't know. But what makes me think it was a big foot was the speed, the quickness of it. So and you know, over the years, visually that's the only visual ones.
But I've heard vocalizations and wooden ox and all kinds of b encounters. But those the two that I talk about are the first ones and the last visual. The first one and the last visual. That's the two I talk about the most. Yeah, because that's what you can actually hang your hat
on a little bit too. Oh yeah. And you know then people see it on travel Channel and you all get it to you get to finding big Foot fans coming up and you know, I can't believe you, and they look at me and say, I can't believe y'all kept on telling him not to run, but you run anyway, And I'm like, guys, listen, TV is TV Okay. Ninety percent of that show happened. Ten percent of it was amped up a little bit, and I'm always forthcoming with that.
I'm always honest to fault. They amped a little bit of it up, mainly the guy playing me, And it was so funny because when I walked out of the studio that day, I told the producer, I said, make sure when you get the actor to play me, he's good looking. And man, they did not disappoint. I remember that watch like it looks kind of like him. If you blur your eyes, you squint a little bit, maybe maybe look somewhere else. Yeah, that's my stay tuned
for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bogo. Will be right back after these messages. What was your episode called? Was it hunting us? Because during the production of it, you all done the TV thing. You know how grueling this is. It took me ten hours to do the forty five minute second and I told the same story at least one hundred and fifty five times, and at the end of it, the last time I told it, I was almost in tears. And when I was talking, I said,
you know, was it paralleling us or was it hunting us? I don't know. I would say no, because it it was hunting you, you would have been all dead right, Yeah, exactly. I think they were trying to just run us out. I feel like they were just juveniles. I feel like if they wanted to do us any harm, we wouldn't been having this conversation. What was your episode calling and you said was the end of it? Was it hunting us? It was episode six, season
two. Let's see. Yeah, uh, these woods are hunts Season two, episode six, The Hunted. I'm sorry, the hunted? Okay, yeah, And it says three hikers encounter Bigfoot and a tour guy awakens a civil war spirit. That was a great episode. Yeah, and you know, the producer has we've we've kept in contact and stuff and talked about a few other projects, and you know, he said that that's actually one of the most watched episodes, and I'm like, that's that's that explains a lot.
I've done a few other projects. We got this new YouTube series out called I Believe in Bigfoot, and uh, my first encounter is actually the first episode of that. David Bacara from Expedition Bigfoot. David is a really terribly good friend of mine. He is such a nice him and Milanda both. I can't talk enough good things about them people, because they are just genuine people. And David told the guy that's making this documentary about me and he got a hold of me, and Ron Moore heads on it myself.
There's several other researchers out there on it. But I got that thing going on, and then I'm writing. I'm writing a book right now, been writing a book for about four years. I'm finally getting to where I've got. I've got an interview with Cliff and we've done at OBC that year, Remember that, Cliff, Nope, I don't remember anything. That's a general rule. Now that's a that's a rule of mine too. I write everything down and then find it later. I'm like, oh, that's what.
Yeah, I don't I mean, I don't know. I do a lot of these interviews and stuff. I just don't pay attention to what what what's going on with them? And I guess not remembering things like that alleviate some responsibility about what I said. Yeah, I mean I can attest to that. That's that's a good answer. I like that. I'm gonna quote that actually. But no, I got this book, Bigfoot out of the Woods. It's going to be a general book about Bigfoot, the history of it,
the past, present, and future where we're we're leading to. And I just got finished writing the chapter about AI technology and stuff and how we could utilize it for research purposes and it not hinder us in any way, shape or form. I feel like this audio AI, I feel like we could do some stuff with it, with the Sierra sounds or any vocalizations caught on a recorder, we could actually possibly talk to these creatures in their own language. Someday, someday. Do you have do you have some like your
researchers. Do you have cameras or long term recorders out I do have cameras. I have several trail cams out there. Three of them are the cell phone cameras. The they have the little ANTENTNA on them. They probably give it back in real time, right yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, And I can access them at any point, like I can pull them up right now. It's really bad for batteries if you pull up the live view. But but yeah, they do very well. I've gotten several pictures
of deer, black bear. I got a big black bear on one trail cam, Bob kat here and there, I had a blur. I don't know, And I'm pretty real when it comes to this stuff. Some people would look at and say, oh, that could be a big foot, and I'm like, it could be every any it could be a million other things. Let's not go straight to bigfoot, because I'm sorry. I think
these creatures I think, I don't know. I don't know if they have I think they have abilities that we can explain, but I can't explain if that makes any sense that don't you think when we do discover in the study that it will it seems like explainable, but it will be explainable like normally, like a conventionally. I think it's going to be, like, you know, to put it in this perspective, there's this picture on Facebook everywhere
else I don't know. You can google a snow leopard photo. So you will sit for hours looking at this picture of this cliff with a little snow on it, and it'll say find the snow lip and you could sit and look at it forever. But when you find it, you can't not see it like it's right there and you're like, oh, that's how that's it's right there. I believe that when we discover this creature and we have that verifiable proof that everybody wants, I think that all the abilities will be explainable.
So so, Michael, what an opportunity do we have to see you for the rest of the summer? You doing any events pretty soon or anything like that? Or in August? I have the Central Pennsylvania Bigfoot and Paranormal Festival. I'm actually a keynote speaker there, and that happens in Ellisburg, Pennsylvania, August third. Okay, we'll put the link in the show notes for people who are interested in that. Then I'll be over hanging out with
Eric Altman at the Pennsylvania the Big Pennsylvania camp Out. Oh, always a good time. I did that gig before. That's that's a great gig. I saw Eric over at the Forest County thing and he Eric and I have known each other for about fifteen years. First time we've ever met in person. Talked on the farm. Good good guy man, and he told me that he wouldn't take a no for an answer. He wanted me to come
to it, and so I'm going to it. And then in October I have the This is one that you people listen if you live on the eastern United States or you have the means to make it from the west side over to the east side. The South Carolina Bigfoot Festival happens in Westminster, South Carolina. It's a small town outside of Clemson, and my grandmother lived there for many many years. I spent most of my childhood there. But not just because of that, but this festival. It brings in so many people.
There's such good, wholesome people. I've not met anybody there that is malicious intent or anything like that. Always have a good time. We had the first year that i'd done This was two years ago, and they put us up in a cabin and they didn't tell us that there were bigfoot reports from around that area at the cabin, and we were out near the campfire one night, and sure enough we started hearing vocalizations and wooden knocks and everything
else. So it was it was wild. But cannot wait to do that one fantastic, fantastic. What do people want to get ahold of you for? Anything? Like? Maybe give give you a report because you're in central Kentucky and you know they think that it might be in your neighborhood or something. Is there a way that you collect reports and data that people can grab you? Yeah, you can go on Facebook is the easiest, probably the easiest way to grab me. Go to cook Cryptied Research. It's my one
of my social media pages. I also own a barbecue sauce company called Sauce Watch and that's s O S S s q U A T C H. And you can go on that Facebook page or the website and check it out and I will uh and you can pick up that stuff anywhere. You can find me at one of these events speaking or whatever, and I will tell you. What if you tell me you heard me on Bigfoot and Beyond, I'll give you. I'll give you a handshake. There you go, a free handshake. Awesome. Yeah, I'll do a curtsy. Yeah, I'll
even pull a little bit. Well heck went back to my see I'm gonna I'm gonna that one out. I definitely want to see you. Curtsey. Yeah. Sweet, well cool, Michael scart you came on and joined us, and I'm talking to people. If you got Discovery Plus or I don't know if it's on YouTube or not, but that episode what season two, number six, check it out. It's pretty fantastic. Got it on films.
It's your your hair gets raised on that. So thanks so much Michael Cook for coming and joining us. And till 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 an understand up a const