Ep. 339 - Sean Forker's Sasquatch Experience!

the guy. So it's just it's sad that he's gone.

So you know there's a yeah, four friends and someone I would have liked to have known in what period of six weeks?

And then of course he went into the Army. And he told me that he took an aptitude test when he went into the army because there weren't enough gigs for a working musician at the time to support a wife and family, and he took an aptitude test and when it came back the person who you know, the military dude who gave him the aptitude test, says, well, we're just going to keep in electronics, you know where you're good and while he goes, what do you mean,

he says, well, yeah, you aced your electronics section, so we're just going to keep you there. So that's what you obviously do for a living or something. And Wally goes, I don't know the first thing about electronics. He goes, what, well, you got you aced it. You totally aced it. And of course while he was in the army, things happened and he got the seed idea, and he basically revolutionized power supplies even though he didn't know a darn thing

about electronics. Pretty much every cell tower in the world runs on some component that Wally Harson thought up. So that's how he made his wealth, kind of on accidents through.

I can't remember which one it was, but there's something about a CDC adapters and you know it helped the whole you know, help mankind really, you know, like get better, cheaper power.

Bigfoot is really cool, right bigfoots, that's good. It's cool to us, and that's what matters.

those the episodes, we don't embellish them. You know, we talk about either topics in the field, whether it's some sort of research topic, or we talk with a uh, you know, an actual field investigator or somebody that puts the boots on the ground, or folks that have just had a long term interest, you know, because I also feel like as a post you know, I know there's a popular viewpoint out there that armchair researchers, you know, they're just you know commentators online, but some of them

are very useful and they could provide you with data pretty quickly when you need it. So we talk with the quote unquote armchairs and you know, anybody that's you know, pretty credible. We try to do a good job of vetting and sorting who we're talking to, and not to be snobs, but just because we have a particular audience that listens to the show. And now cliff it hash changed its format. It started with myself and Henry May.

Then we added James Baker, you know, the bake Shop a little while after that, and then we now evolved to you know, having Vance and has bit Matt Arner on the show. Matt's a law enforcement professional, so he brings a unique point of view to the panel. And I'm more moderate now than host. So it's it's changed over the years, but I think you have to bet out our core. The one thing we haven't changed is what our purpose is. And while it's entertainment, it's really more about the information.

more than what it is. And like I told you, you know, I think, even with myself when it's come the promotion over the years, it's I've always wanted it to be about the subject, not about me, not about anything else, you know, not that I'm not an interesting person, because I kind of think I am, but I just I don't know. I'm happy being a footnote in this story. And you know, wherever it takes me is where it takes me. But you know, I love this topic. I

love talking about it. Hence the podcast and why I've done it for so long.

It was just you know, it was just a story. Someone's going to come along and say, been hoaxing or all that, and I don't want to deal with any of that crap.

I'm just saying that it would be I would not be working for a living if that was the case.

he had this book by Vincent Price called Monsters. It's actually on the shelf in my studio here and actually I'd beaten the hell out of a book so bad it's kept together by duct tape. And in there it had pictures of Deloy's Ape, if you remember that story from South America, which was a huge influence on me, Like what the hell's this man monkey type thing? Of course, you know, we learned later it was, you know, nothing more than a spider monkey, but it was still cool

and in my mind, you know, hella awesome. And then when I was eight, on a road trip to Virginia Beach to see one of my uncles, I wouldn't shut up. I was driving my dad nuts in the car. So he gets a book, and the book happened to be Sasquatched The Apes among Us because my dad's also always

been interested in all this. And I read that book at eight years old, if you can imagine reading Sasquatch the Apes among Us and I read the chapter Eastern Action and realized this is in Pennsylvania because you know, back then all the TV shows talked about it in like the Pacific Northwest, and I'm like, holy crap. And then to me and I just started finding everything I can. Libraries had, you know, a few books on Bigfoot. I would get the books I can. I still might not

have ever taken some of them back. I'm sorry, I'll make it up to you. And like I was just captivated by all this. And then when I got to be a teenager, I was like, oh, hey, I can go out and investigate. And you know, I found the BFRO website, like when that first came online, the internet Virtual Bigfoot Conference. So like there was all this great information coming to me at a great time. I just happened to be fortunate guys to grow up at that time.

The Internet was starting to take off, and so that opened up a whole new world to bigfoot. And then I joined the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society and met Eric Altman, and Eric Altman who I call my mentor, and I think he's he still can't believe anybody would consider him a mentor, but you know, he brought me into this and taught me a whole heck of a lot. So that's really how I got into this. My grandpa's fast nation with weird things, and it just kind of, you know, took me by storm.

growing up with weird things. It was just a way of life for us. I never thought it not to be not cool or not normal.

Like what were some of the earliest things that you were doing, Like what did you consider field work or investigations at that point in your life.

live right in the heart of it. And you know, you could go up to the Loyal Soox State Forest, out to the Susquehanna State Forest and actually not far from where I do the majority of a lot of my research today and just ask people if they've seen things or heard things. Back then, you could see it on the internet. You know, in the early two thousands, I would get reports from the PBS Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society, so I would go out and follow up on them.

And you know, I was really doing witness interviews at an early I probably started doing witness interviews at seventeen, eighteen years old, so I was really still young doing that. And you'll learn I was always gifted with being able to talk to people. My grandpa used to tell me I could sell Iso and Eskimo when they were on vacations. So I just have a great way of connecting with people and trusting personality, and I get things out of people that you would never think. And this part of

Pennsylvania is a very conservative part of the state. You know, we're talking about very you know, generations of families that hunt, hunting cabins, hunting leases that if you start talking about bigfoot, you won't talk about it with your friends because they'll kick you out of the hunting cabin and then you you know, what are you going to do? But every once in a while, you'd get that one guy who would come aside and say, hey, you really believe in that. Yeah,

I do, Well, let me tell you the story. So I would get some of the old timers that would tell me some of those stories of you know, they were out fishing at their you know, local fishing hole, and one guy had something. He was walking back to his view vehicle with a lantern and something, he said very large walked in front of him and it was large upright and covered with reddish brown hair. He sees it faintly through his lantern light, and it was no bear.

And these the guys that live around here are outdoorsmen. These people know what animals live in their backyard or live in this area. That's the kind of stuff that, you know, made me think, well, they would know what a bear is, and if they're telling me it's not a bear, well then there's got to be something to this. So that that's kind of what kept me going. And then you would not get it just from outdoorsmen. But there was a lady, probably about fifteen miles from where

I live. She was riding her bicycle on a wooded road and she felt like something was watching her from the woods, and she could see a figure kind of paralleling her on this little like this little step down you know, the roadside, and then the burma the road and it kind of uh declines a little bit, and she could see this figure kind of stalking her as she's you know, riding her bike back to her proper and it followed her a good way, and at one point,

she said, she felt like it threw something at her and she could feel it buzz pass, but it missed her. And then one night, something had taken the garbage from outside her home, moved the can down to the end of her property and lifted she didn't say tore the garbage bags or knocked it out and ripped the lifted like it lifted the garbage bags out and neatly went through it. So at that point, you know, you either got a stalker or you've got something out there that's

you know, very curious about what. You are a lot smarter than most animals, and you know, obviously wanted something. So I mean it it was enough for her to you know, seek out assistance to the PBS and sent me that way. So a lot of my early investigations were were stuff like that. And I was doing that cliff like I said ten eighteen years old. I was following up on those storage That's.

it was looking for. It was just very unique. And then what was funny later is I would have a report probably in two thousand and thirteen or twenty fourteen, of a lady her dog was very insistent about going out outside. It was just got done raining dog runs to the end of the deck and it stops and she goes look at what it's doing. And down at the end of her driveway under this, you know, they have a light over it's a dumpster area and there's

a big foot going through the trash. And this is like, god, fourteen fifteen years later when this story happens, So some parallels there.

my buddies had up on you. Actually, now, you guys were oute up in Clearfield, rockedon Mountain, and I had a report a guy would call me early in the morning, probably about two thirty. It would range from two thirty to four o'clock. And he called me for weeks at a time, and he was something would be screaming outside his house, or it would be beating on the walls of his home, and we went out there, and of

course we would go out there, nothing whatever happened. But you know, he called the one night really been out of shape, and he's like, I called the state police. I want somebody out here, because like something was like pounding on the outside of his house and he sticks the phone out the door, out the window, and like you can hear something out there screaming, and the one like, either this guy's got like one angry neighbor out there that's really pissed off at him, or he's got something

going on out there. And but whenever we would go out there, we're never able to substantiate it.

but like he towards the end was genuinely concerned. And then we never got a call from him again after the state plea showed up at his house. So you know, either he was really yanking our chain and you know, going through extremes try to get us out there for whatever reason he had, or you know, I don't know. I kind of feel bad that we never really took it as seriously as we should have.

then talking to friends and whatever else obvious hoaxes. So that's one of them, you know, like one time it was a dinosaur sound from some movie or whatever back in the day, and another time it was a lion roar, but again played as a bigfoot clip like what is this? What do you think it is? You know that kind of thing, nonsense clipbait, clickbait. Again, that's one of the reasons unless I hear the vocalization with my own ears,

I don't really. I mean, that's it's not like I don't care, but it's coming close to me, not Karen, because what can I do about it? And how do I even know what that's real or not?

realize how incredible a road crossing actually is. Like, well, you know, that might not be that great to us, but now put that in context. You've seen an unexplained entity or being crossed the road in front of you, you know, to us as research it might not be, but now think about that as the witness, like holy crap. And so I had to put myself in check and say, hey, you know what, those road crossings are still pretty remarkable.

They're not happening. It's not like a bear or a deer or it's happening every day, so you know, get your head out of your ass, forker and start treating these, you know, like with a little bit more importance.

you're not going to get much out of it. Sides that you know that information something across the road here and there, you know it scared me, you know, so on and so forth, and that's you know, great, and I'm you know, sorry, you're scared, but I'm great, you know, thankful you appreciated that. But it does become a data point.

And what we use that for is just to find a way for us to kind of be a little bit more strategic and when we're deploying ourselves, uh, for the research, you know, and there's no definitive patterns in anything you could we we have all kinds of data crunchers now looking at things. You know, you have Terrestrial who's you know, a sweet girl. She she knows what she's doing. She's good at Excel and you know, data distribution.

And we got a guy that was part of the team that you know, used data to find Osama bin Lad and looking at our data points to you know, see if we can tie down a pattern or if there's a better place and time we should be to deploy ourselves to get evidence. And you know, we're still not finding a whole heck of a lot in that data. And you know, so aside from being a data I don't know what value it has, Cliff, But to me, you know, I'm putting myself in that position. Well, maybe

don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. And there's some usable data there, but I am still always looking for those a little bit more intense I don't want to say frightening encounters, but something that gives us a little bit more insight into behavior or you know, actionables from these things.

just walking or something like that. What sort of reports have you taken where the animal had exhibited some sort of odd behavior or unusual behavior, And for a sasquatch, basically that means anything other than simply walking away.

in the woods. So I always questioned whether whether I saw anything or not down in this little valley area that that family had used like a pavilion and a little camping area. But these family, you know, they would have ongoing you know, vocalization experiences. They'd have stuff disappearing from their property. They had several members of the family because they it's not really compound. It sounds like, you know, some sort of place getting ready for an FBI raid.

But they were just a concentration of family that lived in this land, you know, and you know, several of them had either you know, sightings of this creature or you know, some sort of non interaction but activity on their property. Now we go back to those folks, you know, Alex Petakov from Small Town Monsters went out there a few years later after I had almost ten years later than when I was out there, and to the same family, and they still had activity going on. He actually documented

UFO activity out there. Now I don't ever like to lump my phenomena together. I just don't see it value to it. But he got something on video out there of some sort of unexplained flying object, you know, or whatever you want to call it. But that area is just a very strange area. And these this family had ongoing experiences. They found footprints near windows of their homes,

so obviously there's a curiosity element to it there. But there was nothing really aside from that, you know, Like I said, glimpse of something I saw through the lightning that, you know, always makes me question whether I saw something there or not. It was still a very interesting place to go, very creepy. But now we go back to I told you about that lady whose dog you know, ran to the edge of her deck and she saw that creature rummaging through her garbage. And I used the

term creature entity. I apologize. I know some folks don't like that, but we don't know what it is for sure, so I just like to use generic terms. But she would have she had this really high window off her kitchen and she would leave bake goods out there to cool, and it was up like eight to nine feet up in the air, and something would occasionally take the bake goods off that window and you would never hear see what it was. We found those big, gloppy, pancake like

poops all around her property. Now, what was also interesting, guys, is that her husband was blind, and he would feel something different every so often when they were out there, like somebody else was out there with them, if they'd be sitting out by the campfire or you know, sitting out there at the house by themselves during the day. And their daughter had come to visit one night and as she's coming down the driveway, something leaped across the hood of her car and left some what it looked

like hairstriations and a dent on her car. And I didn't get to see those. My research partner at the time, Ernie Delp, took photos of those. And that's the first time the daughter had ever reported anything to her parents of having an experience there. But the parents, the couple, they lived out the old growth forces of Pennsylvania, out in the Cook's Forest. I mean, there's trees in Pennsylvania out there that are so big you can't put your arms around them.

had come and got our information. They didn't attend the meeting, but they called us a few days later and we went up and met them, and they were the most sincere, credible people. She was a nurse, he was a retired school teacher for Brooklyn. Like, these folks had no reason to lie or make this stuff up. They're not seeking any kind of notoriety. They didn't try to be on you know, they didn't try to be on the show

Finding Big Foart or anything like that. They're just people out there trying to make sense of some of the things they were trying to experience. And you know, unfortunately he the husband has passed away and the wife has now moved back to you know, North Carolina with her family, but she had encounters going on out there all the way up until when she left, of you know, just strange things that would happen around her property.

Eric Altman, Dave Rupert, Ryan Cavalen. We were out there to set up for an outing we were going to have with the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society that weekend in that coming week and there is this area that we all discovered and we called it the Meadow because it was this open clearing that was surrounded by trees. There's this little crop of trees right in the center, and we thought this would be a great area to kind of

host as our base camp. But we went out and you know, traveled the gas lines and traveled the mountains of the Clearfield area because historically, and that's one of our most active areas in Pennsylvania, that whole you know, rock and mountain Clearfield County area. There's hundreds of reports that have happened there over the years. And in twenty twelve, well,

I'll step back a minute. At the beginning of twenty twelve, we had two reports that came in on New Year's Eve of husband and wife, two sets of husband and wives. They were traveling down US three twenty two, close to the midnight time on New Year's and they had both seen about forty five minutes apart, a creature crossing the road or loitering along the road. And what was interesting is they both described that this creature had was like completely dark except for the bottom of the feet was

like a whitish color like. They remarked about how light the colors of the feet were. And these folks had never met each other. We brought them together. You know, just to kind of validate that these folks hadn't met each other before. No matter how good of an actor, you know, you can't hide the fact if you know somebody, or you just can't. There's always something that's going to

give away. These folks had never met each other. They just happened to be on the same road about forty five minutes apart, and they both reported the sightings into us. So that's what kind of took us to the Clearfield area again because it started to get hot. We did that town hall meeting a little while later, and we started getting a lot more reports coming in from people. So we decided we're going to continue to explore this area. So I it's about an hour and a half two

hours from where I live. We would go almost every other weekend back and forth to Clearfield for that year, Ray and I and just kind of checking it out, see what's going on, see if we're getting any other reports. And we'd get some maybe faint vocalizations here and there, but we never had anything dramatic happen. But we thought, you know what, we're still going to give it the old you know, we're going to keep at it. Well,

we went out there with the PBS. We decided we're going to put together an outing in that area, So we get the area prepped. Dave and Ryan and Eric are putting up game cameras, Ray and Dustin and I are getting our camp site set up because Dustin, Ray and I are going to stay there, Eric and then we're going to leave and they're going to come back

either the next day or the day after. We were going to stay out there for a couple of days ahead of time, just see if we can kind of get anything going on, or you know, just get everything set up. At about a quarter and nine, we're sitting there at the campfire that we had started and I see something through my peripheral cut through our campsite and just hall ass through the woods. As soon as I

seen it, I shot up out of my chair. Dustin shoots up out of his chair, and we both just start running to the forest edge and you could start you can still hear whatever this is taken off. It was large. It was lightish tan colored, but it moved like an NBA player, man Like I've never seen anything so large move so fast in my life. And it moved and people don't believe it moved like a sloth, like it just glided as I've never seen something move

so gracefully and so fast in my life. And I looked at Dustin, and Dustin goes, did you see I'm like, well, we saw something, because here we are standing into the woods like a couple of idiots. What you know, what the hell's going on? And so we're sitting there and then Ray's like, what's going on, guys, Like we just saw something? Like all, what the hell this is? So we're kind of like really excited now, like oh my god, like what did we just have a sighting? Like what

the hell is this? So we sit there for a while longer, seeing if we can hear anything or you know, anything going on, And as the excitement dies down, we're like, Okay, well we're going to get up really early in the morning and we're going to see if we can go out and do some you know, walking around, see if we're gonna listen some responses. We're going to get a few hours of sleep and then get out there really

early in the morning. So we put the fire out, we get into the tent, and we're laying there and all of a sudden, probably an hour hour and a half later, I hear something walking around our campsite. Now I can tell the difference between something bipedally walking and something on you know, four legs trampling around the campsite. And I'm just laying there and you can hear something just walking through the meadow like around our campsite, And all of a sudden, I see this little light turn

on and I see Dustin's sleeping bag. Dust It's like, you hear that. I'm like, I hear that. What the hell's going on? He goes, let's go out and take a look. Well, all of a sudden, we start seeing this faint orange glow outside our tent. So Dustin gets his boots on and jumps out. I'm getting my boots on, and he yells, fork Er, throw me my gun. So, you know, me being the epitome of gun safety, I

throw him his gun. And something had moved the logs back onto the fire and the fire starting to rekindle itself. We took the logs off the fire. As I go to get out of the tent, Dustin goes, Forker, look, and I said, look, there's this same colored thing that we had saw earlier running up the little hillside and you can hear it take off like a bat out of hell around the like it's like circling our camp.

So we start yelling at it, Hey, if you're somebody out here messing with us, stop it, you know, you know, identify yourself, you know, if you're messing up with us. This isn't cool, like, you know, because at first we thought it was somebody just messing with us now right like, and it wasn't heating our warning. And I'm freaked out. So I run to the center of this meadow because it's the only place we have any cell phone service,

and I give a call to Eric. Can't get Eric, so I called Dave Rupert's wife, Carrie, and I said, Carrie, we've got something going on out here. Can you get a hold of Dave and see if Dave and come back, because we're not really comfortable being out here by ourselves right now. She's like, Okay, we'll see if we can

get see if I can get Dave back there. So we're sitting there kind of the three of us, back to back, looking at this, you know, trying to cover as much area as we can with our eyes, what's going on, and you know, we can kind of hear movement, and we're still yelling for this thing to identify itself. Well, we're there for a while and then all of a sudden, we start seeing these two flashlights start, you know, coming

to us really quick, and it's Ryan and Dave. They had managed to stop off at the bar at on three twenty two is they're about thirty minutes away from us, and they managed to get back to us, and you know, they say to us for a while, and I really didn't want to be out there by ourselves anymore. But Dave's like, you know, guys, you're out here. We're trying to get evidence. We're trying to get proof. We'll sit out here with you a little bit, but this is

why we're out here. You guys can do this. Come on, let's go. You know, Dave can really build you up. And they kind of bib whacked in these trees and we kind of went back into what we were doing. Well, they're out there for about an hour or so with us, and nothing's going on, right, everything quiets down and they radio into us, Hey, guys, we think you're fine out here tonight we're going to go ahead and take off. We'll be back in the morning. We'll see you later.

So they take off and we're kind of out there. Of course, you know, we're not going to go back to sleep. We're just kind of sitting there and just hanging out. All of a sudden, we start hearing the foot falls again.

Shoot it now, kill it, just shoot it. And it's not phased by this, and so I'm like, what the hell are we going to do? Like I'm really freaked out. Now, this is a person. They have to be really deranged to be here now because we've got a gun on them and they're still not and so, you know, the only thing we could do is, you know, we all kind of grouped together and we charged at it. And as we charged at it, it took off like a bat out of hell. Like it just sounded like a

bulldozer going through the woods. And I don't know what it was. I don't know what it was. It scared the hell out of us, just like that feeling of it not going away when we were threatening to harm it, when it came back, it kept coming back. It just it scared the hell out of me.

with this. I don't want to do this anymore. I called my wife. I said, I'm coming home early. I'm just done, and I went and you know, we drove home to two hours to go back home. I said to Dave, you know, you guys might want to check the uh, you might want to check the game cameras, because I saw a flash go off and I thought that, you know, maybe something was out in the game cameras. And he say, Sean, he goes, there's no flash on

those cameras, and I'm like, what the hell? Like, you know, that adds one more strange element to it, right, And that was our experience. It's guys, it scared the hell out of me. I didn't want to do this anymore after that was it. It was large, but it was probably about six and a half seven feet tall, which you know, I'm five foot six so on a good day with shoes on, so significantly bigger than me. And it just moved the way it moved, Bobo was just so damn like a like a sloth, like I said,

like a just glided like it moved so quick. Just the way it flowed. It was just incredible.

with you, like unless you're really deranged. But it still doesn't match up to some of the other, you know, attributes that happened, and like it was just so bizarre, Like to this day, I kind of felt silly because you know how quickly I wanted to just abandon all this and let it go like I didn't want to go out in the woods for a while. I was just messed me up. Because I'll tell you the other component of it is, I've been a researcher for so long.

I felt like I was losing my objectivity. Like it really it messed me up from that perspective, like, and I think that's why I kind of I just wanted to quit for a while. Like, you know, maybe now if I wasn't out there with Ray and Dustin, who would validate the same thing I would, I would probably feel still a lot worse about it, like, probably still more messed up about it. But the fact I was able to share that experience with them like makes me

feel a little better. But none of us still feel good about it.

as someone who experienced this type of thing. The last thing I was thinking about that Actually, it's not something I ever thought about. Cliff was trying to get it on camera. Now, in hindsight, you know, I'm thinking like, oh man, that would have been great if we would have you know, had the sense of, you know, going to get that determament. We never thought about it. We never thought about it.

passionate about what I do. I love Pennsylvania. I love being able to showcase this state and its wonders to people. And they wanted to go and do a it's called

Investigation Bigfoot. I think it's a four or five episode mini series that we're doing, and I'm showing people, you know, some of the areas where there's been bigfoot encounters, there's been the historical sightings, and then I actually take you guys all to the place I had my encounter in my sighting, and I relived the story for you there. I bring other witnesses and introduce you to other people

I've met and investigated with over the years. So and I'm teaching Aaron Deese, you know, the gentleman who's kind of also the subject of the documentary, teaching them a little bit about how you research, and so that story is really interesting in itself, and I'm just really, you know, I'm proud they were able to ask me to be a part of it, because, like I told you, Cliff, I'm like the worst promoted Bigfoot. And I do that on purpose because I just like being able to do

my stuff and fly under the radar. But no, I'm glad to be able to share it. It was a lot of fun because there's some interesting things that happened out there, and you know, I don't know, and maybe

you guys have run into it too. For some reason, I think people think there's some sort of magic element to getting bigfoot or attracting a big foot, and like everybody's you know, I'm sorry, Bigfoot's not knocking on my back door asking for garlic every day, right, It's I've been doing this for over thirty years and I have a handful of experiences that I can say that might be bigfoot. Right. I get really concerned when there's people that have done it for far less time that have

encounters all the time. Yeah, I can't quantify that well, but how many times have you had an experience doing this? And like but somehow, you know, we're all, we're all been doing this investigation for a long time, but there are people that just seem to be these these quote unquote bigfoot beacons, like they're less magnets for it. I have a hard time with that.

then Matt Arner met my research partner. He and I researched the Northern Tier Pennsylvania through the Allegheny Plateau, and we spent a lot of time up in like up in the northern part of the state, Potter County, Bradford County, Clearfield Elk and there's a huge elk population up there. And you know, one of the things, we don't have the really really high mountains like you guys have out in the PNW. Know, I think our largest mountain here

is three thousand feet in Pennsylvania. But we had just been talking to an older gentleman who came to one of our little presentations and after we were done, he came up to it. No, he came up to us before. He didn't stick around for the presentation, and he told us about this area where he's been having encounters, not encounters,

but he found footprints. I'm sorry, but what was really strange about this area is like after like fourteen hundred feet, if you go above that, there's no animal activity whatsoever. And so Matt and I are going up in the mountains that night to do some research. And he wasn't kidding. For some reason, you go above that area. We went up to like twenty two hundred feet. There's nothing up there,

No coyotes, no porky pine, no nothing up there. And then we start settling down and going under that like that thirteen fifty feet and then all of a sudden, here's all the deer, here's all the like we stumbled up on a field. There's like sixty deer in this field. But why aren't they going up above that elevation? Like what's up there that's stopping them from going up that high? Because I thought, you know, maybe this is an old timer. You know, he's got a lot of observations going on.

Let's see if we could validate this, and Barbo sure enough, like this is the real deal, Like something's got to be going on up there to stop this.

you know, is it really worth pursuing it. And then Matt came to me with some information he found up north, and we start hitting that area pretty significantly, and just getting out there again and being really active in the actual investigating and the research kind of you know, brought the life back into it.

kind of cultivate it. And like we've gone years without really good videos, We've gone years without really good evidence and proof, and it's like, what's it going to take to really get some real legitimacy behind what we're doing and people to kind of take it serious, and we get more scientific minds involved that might be able to help kind of cultivate some interest or teach us something new that maybe we're missing that we could be using

in our research. And you know, just you know, getting out in the woods and just being out there and that kind of reinvigorated it for me. So I don't know, I kind of go back and forth, Cliff. I like, there have been times I've wanted to just like leave it, but then it's still unsolved, and I don't like to leave something unfinished. I think that's the big thing. Like I'll never be the guy that prove it, but damn, I really want to be a part of the journey

to do it. But you know, still, it's one hell of a ride. It's a lot of fun. There's nights out there where you get some great stuff and you come off of you know, you get one of the best ties of your life. And then there's other nights where it's you know, boring, and you're like, God, I can't believe I spend hours out here for nothing.

I have an essay in there I wrote I call myself their unofficial cheerleader in chief, and I've you know, kickstarted every single one of their projects. I've been a part of small Town Monster even sell merch at the conferences form when they needed an extra hand. I just love those guys. They're great people. I love spending time with them, and so I like doing you know, I probably do some more of that, and then, you know,

I got a book coming out. Matt Arner and I are writing a book tentatively called Elusive Truth, which is kind of biographical but kind of case file. So it's going to be an interesting type of book.

and some crazy people along the way. Like it's going to be a different type of book for sure, And I'm going to keep doing this. I'm starting to do more more lectures. I do a lot of speaking engagements for like Lions clubs and small organizations that you know, when they have some sort of charitable situation behind him, I like to be a part of that. Again, guys, I'm not the guy that likes to speak up in front of large group. I mean, I do it for a living, I don't, you know, as a hobby. It's okay,

but that's not why I join this field. I joined the field to be out and doing it and being involved. But if there's something that's going to get a benefit out of it, I'll do us speaking engagement or so forth. I got to get better at it, you know, I don't know. I just don't like the limelight to be on me. I'd rather have it beyond my cool friends and work behind the scenes. I like that stuff a lot more.

We can continue the conversation over there. Any last minute thoughts bobs before we close out the episode.