You asked a question earlier about whether I ever felt like in danger at all. This night probably fell into that category. I was inside my camper and something came up outside my camper, but it was making the most ungodly sounds. I mean, it was a cross between growls and screams, and it literally sounded like it was right outside my camper. And I have to say that, as much as I want to in some ways see one of these up close, that particular night, I was afraid
to go outside. I didn't want to open my camper door. I didn't have a light. My flashlight had broken earlier that same day, and I didn't feel comfortable opening my camper door and going out into the dark to see what it was.
I'd like to welcome Mark to Bigfoot Crossroads. Mark is a Bigfoot investigator. His investigations have taken them all over the place. Thanks Mark for joining me, Well, thank you for having me on. I appreciate the invitation. Yeah, we just had a little bit of a hiccup with the infamous Bigfoot curse. Leave it to things to go wrong anytime you talk about Bigfoot. So oh sure you were saying what got you started on this journey.
Well, in nineteen seventy three, I was camping with a friend and he was a little older than me, so I kind of looked up to him took his word for things. But we were camping in somewhere around midnight. It had started to rain, just very light, and he was asleep and I had maybe dozed off. But I woke up and I heard what sounded like somebody walking
around the edge of our camping area. And we were under a tarp and had a fire going, but the fire had died down, so I threw some more wood on it and got it going pretty good, and I could see the outline of what looked like a very large person, and so I got a little bit worried, not knowing what it was. So I woke him up and I told him, and he got up and he looked and he saw it too, and he said, oh, he said, that's the old hermit that lives back here
in the woods. He said, I've seen him before, and he's weird because he has long hair and he wears a fur coat all year round, even in the summertime. And so I just kind of took his word for it that it was a hermit. But this figure continued to hang around for several hours till probably around three in the morning. Even my friend was getting a little scared, and so he said, well, let's walk to the house.
So we're probably half a mile at least from my house, and I said, there's no way I'm leaving this campfire, you know, in the dark and not knowing, you know, what this is out there. And so we ended up staying till it got daylight, probably five thirty six o'clock, and we left and walked up to my house. And at the time, Bigfoot wasn't really on my mind, and so I didn't think to look for tracks or you know, anything like that. We just got away from there. And
a little bit, I'll add to that. Not long after that, my brother, who was actually nineteen years older than me, had been back there. He had some cars that he would go from time to time and get parts off of and things, and he had gone back there, and he as far as I know, I mean, I felt
like he wasn't afraid of anything. And I wasn't there at the time, but my mother told me later, she said he came to the house and came roaring up in his car from back at what we call back in the back end, which was where this was at, in the wooded part of our farm, and she said he was white as a ghost. And he came in the house and she said, what in the world is wrong with you? And he said, I'm not going to
tell anybody what just happened because they'll think I'm crazy. Well, I suspect that he also saw what was lurking around the edge of our campfire that night, and so anyway, that kind of led me down the path to having an interest. You know, It was probably a few years later before it really dawned on me that what I had probably seen that night was in fact a bigfoot. But that kind of got me started on the path, and so then I've been interested every since.
The figure that you saw, you said it was there for a very long time. Was it just hanging out in the trees watching or was it pacing around?
What was it doing? It was walking around, but it would stay just far enough out that it was difficult to really see. But when I would build the fire up, it would move farther away, and as the fire would die down, it would come closer in. It was very much conscious of where or how close it could get before it could be very obviously identified. But it was definitely close enough that we could see that it was
a very large figure. You know. Like I said, I couldn't say that it was hair covered, but I just took my friend's word that he had seen it before and that he thought it was a hermit that lived in the woods, which you know, in hindsight is kind of funny to think about, but you know, we were just teenagers, so that didn't seem so to me at the time, but you know, it was also I would say, if it was a man, it was a very very
enlarge man. I you know, I didn't really have anything to judge size by, but you know, I come from a family of fairly large people.
I have a a brother that was six foot four and a couple of uncles that were six seven six eight, and I would say this figure was easily larger than any.
Of them, so I would have to guess at least seven foot. But again, it was dark. We were just seeing it in the fire light, and so didn't really have anything to judge size by. So that's just an estimate on my part, right.
You know, stories of Hermits living in the woods are something from decades ago. You don't really hear about them that much anymore. But the whole idea of you know, someone going off and living in the woods is to avoid people and get away from people. So it doesn't really make sense to me that a hermit would hang around people that it saw camping at night or even
be that active at night time. You know, humans can't see very well in the dark, and it's kind of dangerous and if you're living out there by yourself, I just don't know why a person would be hanging around a campsite and just walking around all night. It doesn't really make any sense. But it also doesn't make sense for an animal to do that either, So it kind of leaves you with only one possibility at that point, if you're using logic to reach the conclusion.
Yeah, and that's kind of what took me down the path of thinking it had to be a bigfoot. And you know, in hindsight, you know, we weren't small children, we were teenagers. But at the same time, I, you know, I've read a lot of reports of Bigfoot being interested in younger people, children in particular, and so that whether it's curiosity or you know, some people refer to them as watchers. You know, they tend to, for whatever reason,
have an interest in what people are doing. And so, you know, and like I said, in hindsight, I've kind of gone through all the possibilities like you just talked about, and it's really the only thing that I could come up with. And so that, you know, that really led my interest into trying to find out more about them.
Well when did you make that crossover from just being interested to actively pursuing this.
Well, I was. I was very interested in read a lot of material all through my life after you know, I probably probably a few years, two or three years after that was when I maybe first saw the Patterson Gimlin film and then I saw the legend of Boggy Creek and I started to kind of make that connection, and then I started reading material. I used to be a very avid reader and I read pretty much everything I could get my hands on, and I continued to
do that and be interested through my career. You know, I had a career and then I had children, and it kind of limited how much time I could devote to any actual research, and I did have other things happened, but I didn't become really full time research until twenty eighteen when I retired, and then I started really spending a lot of time on expeditions and you know, spending time out actually actively seeking out information experiences that I could have on my own.
He told me a story about a trip to Alaska. I believe was that part of your Bigfoot investigations or was that just a trip?
It was? Actually I worked in Alaska for quite a few years, and so it was while I was working there, I was actually living in a city called Cordova, which is on the east side of Prince William Sound. The only way in and out of that city or by a boat or airplane. There's no roads there, and there
are roads once you get there. So I was living there at a vehicle, and I drove out to a spot where there's a glacier and I wanted to walk up a trail to the glacier, and so I started up the trail and I had probably made it maybe half a mile. I'm not sure exactly, but I would guess about that. And it was almost like, not only did I hear something in my head, but I almost
like I felt resistance. As I was walking. I don't know how to explain that, but I heard, basically in my head, I heard something say stop, and so I stopped for a second, and I thought, what on earth was that. That was the first time I'd ever experienced
anything like that. I'd never at that time, I'd never heard of the phenomenon of bigfoot doing mind speak or ESP so I had absolutely no idea what it was, but I knew it felt very odd, and so, you know, I'm not typically afraid of much, so I thought, well, it was just a weird coincidence. So I start to walk again, and I made it maybe maybe three steps, so maybe tops ten feet, and I felt a very strong push back, and I heard in my head again
stop now. And along with that, I didn't hear the words, but I had a very strong feeling that if I didn't stop, something bad was going to happen. It was like the hair on the back of my neck stood up, my arms, you know, the hair stood up. So I stopped a minute and I thought about it, and I thought, well, you know, in my mind, I didn't again associate mind speak, but I thought, you know, there must be a bear around here or something, something is causing me to have
the hair stand up and whatever. So I turned around and I left. Didn't see anything, didn't hear anything audibly. But then later on, as I became more interested and we're watching a lot of videos on YouTube and still beating material, I heard people tell stories about very similar instances and what they called mind speak or ESP, and I thought, wow, that seems like exactly what happened to me.
So again, didn't see anything, didn't audibly hear anything, but in my head I definitely heard a very strong warning of not going on. And when I turned around and left, then everything was fine. I didn't have any more problems. I got back to my vehicle and went back home, and nothing else happened that day.
Why do you think some people experience that not others.
The only thing I could say is that you have to be in the wrong place at the right time. I think there was a reason, whether it was because there was a young one. I mean, this was a trail I was on that people walk quite frequently, so there had to be, in my opinion, some reason why this happened on this particular day. There was something there that they did not want me around, and you know. Like I said, that's the only thing I can think of.
I don't know that it's some people. It's just that you've got to be in the as I said, the wrong place at the right time, and then they will warn you. Now with that said, I know other peopleomen who have been in the wrong place and got what's called zapped where they you know, And I don't know if you're familiar, you probably are with that, and a lot of your listeners probably are, but a feeling of almost they call it zapped because I understand now, I
haven't had this happen to me. So there again, why does that happen to some and not others? Again, I think you've just got to be in that spot at the time when they don't want you there. And I have had people tell me that they felt like they were being told not to go on, but they went on anyway, and then that's when they got zapped. So that very well might be what would have happened to me that day had I continued on. I don't know that, but I've heard stories similar to that. So I think
it's kind of the same thing. You've got to be in that spot. And when I say some people it happen, some don't. I just think some people haven't been in that spot yet to have either the warning in their mind or to be zapped because they maybe didn't pay attention to that warning.
Oftentimes, whenever people share experiences of mind speak situations, it seems to be a warning, especially get out of an area, right. And I always found that kind of interesting in comparison to, you know, the horror stories that you hear where you know, people are claiming these things are dangerous and will kidnap you or harm you if possible, in some cases eat you.
But then you have these contrasting stories of people basically being saved by these things, you know, being warned like something bad is going to happen if you don't leave the area. All right, It doesn't really make sense that, you know, there would be that large of a contrast out there.
Well, but think of it in terms of humans. I mean, we have people in the human society that will help you go out of their way to do good things for you, and we have other people who would kill you for a ten dollar bill or less. And so you know, I personally, I don't have a problem with the contrast because I think they in many ways are similar to us, and that there is a huge variation in mentality and attitude, and just like there is in humans,
I think there probably are. Just like with humans, I think there's probably a thousand good people for every really really bad person, the ones that would be willing to kill you, or maybe even the ratio might even be more than that. Maybe there's ten thousand good for one bad. I don't know, but I think the same thing may hold true. And that's you know, that's kind of how I look at it anyway.
Yeah, but by nature, I just question things and oh, sure, you know, whenever, and I'm not doubting that mind speak occurs. I've talked to enough people. I've known people personally that have experienced it, and again it was a warning type situation. But then I start to question, Okay, well, if they
can communicate that way, why do they make vocalizations at all? Why, you know, why don't the bad ones use it to their advantage and get inside of our heads to confuse us so they can take us or kill us or whatever they're going to do to us. Do you think that it's possible that them being individuals like you're talking about that some might have abilities that others don't have.
Oh, you know, I really don't know. I don't have anything to really base an opinion or a judgment concerning that on. So, you know, though, back to what you were saying about, do you know, do some of them have the ability, the bad ones to use it to somehow trick people and maybe cause people harm. We don't really know that that doesn't happen. I mean, there are thousands of people that disappear in the forests every year, and many of which are never found. Now, what happens
to those people nobody knows. You know. The assumption is wild animals or they fall into some kind of an area and get hurt where they're never found. But is it possible that maybe some of the bad ones are using something to trick these people and therefore do them harm. I don't know, No one knows, but I think it's definitely a possibility, even if it seems out there a ways, it's something that could happen.
Well, that's kind of what I was getting at on that train of thought. You know, like you said, there are thousands of people that go missing in the wilderness, and we know that there's bountiful reasons why that can happen normally, but there are situations where it seems rather strange. And I guess if that happened to a person where it was used against them in a nefarious way, if you don't make it out of there, you don't get to share the story. So may it may be one
of those situations, exactly. I agree. So tell me about the first official big foot trip you made the first time that you're like, Okay, I'm going here and I'm investigating. Did you meet up with a group of people.
Did you go solo? Yeah? No, I well I had done a few things solo, but not with any results to speak of. And the first official one I went on was with a BFRORO expedition and it actually went to a place called Temco State Park in Tennessee, and so that was where we went. There was a let's see, yeah, it was on that expedition. I was not with them, but some other people had a visual sighting. They took
pictures of footprints. They didn't have casting material with them, but they took photographs along with the only thing they had for size comparison was some money. So they laid that down and photographed that next to the footprints, and I actually went back out the next morning with them and we went to the site where it happened, and there was a fair amount of physical evidence as far
as the footprint that they found. Unfortunately had been driven over by someone else before they got back the next morning, so they couldn't cast it that. They did have the photographs, excuse me, and there was some evidence of where we kind of determined it must have been a juvenile because it according to the people that saw it. We used another gentleman in the group for size comparison who was a little over six foot tall, and they thought that
it was very close in size to him. And then we could see where it had gone up an embankment. There weren't footprints, but there were definitely marks in the
soil where something had climbed up there. Now, the reason that we determined that we did not think it was a bear was that there was a was a very steep bank and there was a tree and there had been a limb sticking out that was probably about two or three inches in diameter, and you could see where that limb and they had reported that they saw it reach up and grab a tree limb and help pull
itself up, which a bear obviously doesn't do. But that limb was twisted, so whatever had grabbed it had obviously had the ability to wrap it's for lack of a better word, hand around it, and as it pulled itself up, it rotated that and actually twisted that limb, and then of course you could see the marks in the ground where it had gone up, and that was to me one of the more exciting things that happened on that trip.
But as far as myself hearing and seeing things, we were out probably the second or third night of the expedition, and there was a pretty good group of us, probably eight or ten people, and we had built a little fire and we were all sitting around talking and there were two things that occurred. One was orbs, and I know you had mentioned you wanted to hear about the orbs, and what we saw that night were small orbs. I
would say, very small by most people's identification. You know, I've heard of pretty big ones, but these range I would say from the It was hard to say because they were far away, fairly far, one hundred feet at the closest to probably one hundred yards at the farthest, but they were probably from marble to golf ball size. And the people said, well, you probably just saw fireflies or lightning bugs, whatever term you used for them, and
I would say, okay. The problem was they weren't blinking most of the time, they were moving around very quickly, and they were all different colors. They were not the same color, they were not even a similar color. They ranged from red to blue to green and white, all different colors. And they were in the woods, you know, just like I said, they were moving around that there was no rhyme or reason for what they were doing
as far as I could tell. But there were hundreds of them, and it was a very moving thing, a spectacular thing, whatever word you want to use. But I was kind of in awe because I'd never seen anything like that before. You say, hundreds of them, yes, yes, Wow? How long? Did this go on? Pretty much all evening? You know, it got to the point where, you know, we had seen them, we had all talked about them.
We kind of were in awe of them. But at the same time, you know, they became sort of a part of what was around us, and so we didn't really you know, after so long, after maybe I would say fifteen minutes or at most half an hour of watching these things and talking about them, you know, you just kind of tend to start talking about other things, and you know, we still kept an eye on them and watch them, and they did kind of come and go.
I mean there were times where they would almost die out to where there weren't any or very few, and at other times they would just like I said, there'd be hundreds of them all, and they were all in the woods. We were in kind of a clearing that was maybe I'm guessing, well, it was less than one hundred yards across. I don't know exactly how far, but I would say less than one hundred yards, and I'm
judging that on the size of a football field. It was I would say maybe sixty yards across, if I was going to guess, And we were kind of near one side of it, and they were pretty much in the woods all around the far side from us, and none of them ever came near us. You know, I've heard people talk about orbs that basically came right up almost
almost to them. This never happened. For this evening, they were all, you know, I would guess again, fifty sixty seventy yards away in the woods, and I'm guessing on the size because it was far away, but they looked almost, you know, from a distance, almost like from a pinpoint of light. Which are the ones that I'm guessing were maybe actually the size of a marble up to something that I would estimate to be the size of a golf ball, maybe a baseball, but I don't think they
got quite that big. That all different colors, And again, why they were there, what they are, I have absolutely no idea. It's the only time I've seen orbs in person. I've talked to a lot of people that have seen them. I've seen actually some photographs. People have been able to photograph them. And the other thing that sometimes, as you know, occur with orbs are what are called rods, which look
like a rod of light. And you know, I always think of like the lightsabers you know on Star Wars, only these move and they're like a rod of light. But there were none of those, just these very small orbs all through the woods.
Did they change in elevation compared to the ground or were they all on a similar plane.
I would say they ranged from two or three feet above the ground up to probably twenty or thirty feet up into the into the trees. And they moved both horizontally and vertically, so the same orb. If you tried to watch one orb, which at times was very hard because there were so many, But if you tried to watch one, it would sometimes move up and down. It would move left and right. I mean not like just across, not in that particular, but you know, it might. It might.
They were almost like they were floating, So one might kind of float upward into the right and then you know, across to the left, and you know whatever. They were just random patterns, but it was like they were almost like they were floating around. Would they change speeds? Yes, yes, sometimes very slow, sometimes very fast. Now I'm not saying I didn't really pay attention to whether a per one first went slow and then went fast or vice versa.
But I can say that I noticed some we're moving pretty slowly, others were moving very rapidly.
I mean just those few details alone. I mean, my brain's trying to, you know, do the thing that everybody does, like what could it have been?
Right?
And it pretty much rolls out everything normal that would produce light.
Yeah, yeah, I've been down the same, the same thought pattern, the same you know, this is what continues. You know, everybody says this, and I'm one to be right there. The more research you do, the more confusing it gets. You know, instead of getting answers, you just get more questions. And that's definitely where I'm at. I have more questions now than I had ten or twenty years ago. You know, when when I first got into this, and you hear this from people all the time, I was definitely in
the flesh and blood camp. I thought they were some kind of an undiscovered primate, whether it was an ape or a you know, I didn't really think human back then. It was pretty much it had to be some kind of an undiscovered ape or a monkey or whatever you want to call it. But as time has gone on, I have become more in the idea that if they're flesh and blood, they're closer to humans than they are to apes. And I'm not even convinced anymore that they
are entirely flesh and blood. I don't know what they are, but sometimes and I'm kind of going back to Bigfoot now instead of just the orbs, but the orbs are very confusing too. But anyway, the point is that as time goes on, and the orbs as well, I just get more questions rather than more answers.
I mean, what do you make of the orb phenomenon, because you hear a lot of it being reported in the bigfoot world. Is this something that's connected to the Bigfoot or just happening in the same environments.
Well, that's another one of those that I don't really have an answer to, and I don't think anybody really does. But I have heard reports of people seeing Bigfoot coming out of orbs, or so we say, orbs turning into Bigfoot. I have not witnessed that myself, but you're right, they tend to happen in the same places and often at the same time. And like I said, the interesting thing about the ones that I saw were that size were very small, whereas I've heard other people describe them the
size of a basketball or even bigger. I've heard people say they've seen them up to two or three feet across, and nothing that I saw that night was anywhere near that size. So what they are, what their purpose is, I do not know.
So in your different travels and investigations. Have you found yourself in any situation where you felt that you might be in danger or experienced aggressive activity.
No, but I let's see, how do I want to say this. I haven't really felt in danger. Well, that time, I guess in Alaska, I felt like I could potentially be in danger. I didn't know what it was. There was another time when I was on an expedition in the out in the eastern part of the United States where it wasn't a bluff charge, but something approached us very closely and fairly rapidly in the woods. Now I don't know what it was. I'm not going to say
it was a bigfoot. I don't know. But it made a lot of noise coming toward us, which typical wild life doesn't do. In my experience, I've spent a lot of time hunting and out in the woods, and you know, typically wildlife wants to be quiet, whether it's you know, and if they make noise, they make noise going away from you, such as deer if you spook one. But this was coming at us and it was making noise, and somebody commented that, you know, they felt like it
was similar to a bluff charge. But I didn't feel really in danger, just felt like, I don't know what this is, and I was on guard. So you know, whether that man I felt like I was in danger, I don't know, but I mean, it didn't consciously register that way, but we were all kind of on edge or on guard. And then you know, it just quit and there wasn't any more sound, and in a little
bit everything calmed down and we were fine. But that that's the only other instance, other than the time in Alaska, that I can think of, that there was something that caused me to feel like there could have been something strange happening.
I guess talking about that experience reminded me of several times of my own experiences in the field. That was one of the things that happened on multiple occasions and always kind of bothered me, was you hear them coming in very loudly, whatever it is, and then everything just goes quiet, and eventually the atmosphere changes, everything goes back to at ease, and you realize whatever it was is no longer in the area. But you didn't hear whatever
it was leave. There was no noise being made as it left.
Yeah. Yeah, another one of those questions, more questions and answers, and I would agree that's pretty much what happened. Happened that time, and even going back to that incident I talked about to begin with when I was young, you know, at some point I would say between three and three am and daylight whatever that was, it was circling our camp and watching us left, But it did so very quietly. I mean I'd been hearing it. I could hear footsteps as it circled around. But then when it left, it
just left and that was it. No more sound. So I was going to add one more thing. On that trip at Teleco. This was very strange. And you've heard of them mimicking people's voices, I'm sure sure. But we were, we were all talking, and I had heard this too. It sounded like somebody in our group was saying uh huh, like when somebody would say something, there'd be this uh huh uh. And so pretty soon one of the guys was sitting there near me. He said, is that you
doing that? And I said, doing a lot, And he said making that uh huh, And I said, no, it's not me, I said, I assumed it was one of you guys, and so all the guys were it was a man. It sounded like a male, uh huh. And all the guys said, no, no, we're not doing that, and we're all I kind of laughed, and I said, well, I said, I guess if it's a bigfoot, he's agreeing with us. I said, I wonder what would happen if
I did something, you know, disagreeable. So I just pretty loudly I said no. And it wasn't probably ten seconds, and this voice came back from very near us. It said no, and it sounded exactly like my voice. Oh wow, but that was that was another one of those hair on the back of my neck kind of things stood up. But you know, we didn't do anything. We all just kind of, you know, looked at each other with their
mouths hanging open. But that was that was one of those mimic moments that you've probably heard about as well.
So you've gone on several BFRORO audience and then you've gone on other outings yourself. Is there an area that you particularly like to go to that is more active than others. Do you have sort of like a home base of research.
Not a home base per se, But I've had very interesting things happen both in western Pennsylvania, particularly at the Allegheny National Forest, and then also in Florida in the Panhandle, although well, I should say more than one place in Florida. I typically spend winters in Florida, and so I've had very interesting things happen in Florida as well. But I do want to go back to Teleco because I had, as I said, there was some very good activity there,
and that's in Tennessee. So I don't have one particular area. I have several, and I'm sure that as time goes on, I'll probably find more.
Is there one particular piece of evidence or experience that you've had that really stands out in your mind as your pinnacle achievement.
Well, I don't know if it's a pinnacle achievement. It's probably a pinnacle failure on my part. I was in Amighainy National Forest, and I pull a pretty big trailer. When I go out, I've got a thirty three foot toy hommer, and I carry an electric buggy with me because I'm not able to really hike very far anymore. And so anyway, we had a fire going and we were sitting on one side of my camper. And I don't know how to explain this, but we'll just use
directional like left and right. So if I was facing my camper, which I was actually sitting with my back to it, but let's say I was facing it off to all the people that had gone out that night to do investigations had gone down a like a fire trail to my left, and they I had a radio at base camp, and they were radioing me from time to time, and there was one other guy there with me.
They had all gone to the left. One group had gone down I would estimate a quarter mile, another group about a half a mile down this fire trail, and they were sitting and there was while this was in a national forest, there was some private property to my right and up the hillways and where we were at it was gravel, so you could hear things moving around
in the gravel. And I heard footsteps coming down toward from the way of the cabin from my right, toward my camper, and I made the comment to the gentleman I was with, I said, it sounds like somebody's walking down. I bet some hunters had came up up to that cabin and they're coming down here to see what we're doing, and he agreed, and so a few minutes goes by, and then all of a sudden, we start hearing what
people call samurai chatter. I don't really like that term because I don't think it sounds anything like samurai, but nonetheless, it is a chatter, and it sounded amazingly similar to the recordings that were done known as the Sierra Sounds, but it was virtually right. So it came from my right and by the time we heard the chatter, it was like they were right behind my camper, which was
probably from me to where I estimate they were. It was definitely less than fifty feet, probably maybe only thirty. And my failure was I set there and I listened to this for probably a good twenty seconds or more. And there were obviously two different voices. One was lower pitched, the other was a little bit higher. They were both deep, but one was way much deeper than the other, so I'm assuming it was maybe a male female couple. I
don't know, but anyway, they were doing their chatter. And then by the time I thought to turn my recorder on, I literally the instant I hit the button to turn it on and record. They stopped, and I don't know if they somehow heard something although there was no click. I don't know if they since EMF It's hard to say. But anyway, they immediately stopped and we heard them walk
away through the gravel. Again, you could hear the crunch, crunch, crunch they left, And that's probably the thing that stands out in my mind as kind of the most impressive thing that has happened to me. Now, the next morning, when it got daylight, we did go out and look for footprints, but you know, in gravel there were you could see some impressions and some scrape marks, but definitely no castable or recognizable, not even picture something you could
take pictures of for footprints. But that was a very exciting thing that happened. And you know, somebody said, you know, that was a once in a lifetime happening, and I think that's probably true.
Did you have lights on in the camper and everything?
No, everything was dark. The only thing we had was a fairly small fire going where we were sitting.
Wow, yeah, that would be pretty inner. And again, if we're talking about the possibility of it being hunters or humans or whatever. The idea of someone creeping up on somebody's camper after dark like that, you tend to announce yourself, you know, and let people know. I just again, it doesn't really make sense.
That's what I would have expected, That's what I was expecting prior to the chatter starting. I was expecting somebody to say, hey, you know how you guys doing, or you know something. But instead we got the very distinctive sound that has been recorded, I think in more than one instance, but definitely that's and you know, I made the comment to the guy I was with later, I said,
you know what amazed me? And he agreed with this completely, But I said, what amazed me was that it sounded almost exactly like the Sierra sounds that were recorded twenty five hundred miles away. And that was very surprising to me because I would assume that, especially if these are flesh and blood and they're scattered all over the United States, that they would at least have different dialects, you know, similar to what the Native Americans would have had years ago.
They had different languages, and some of their languages overlapped. But you know, your East Coast Native Americans, I don't think talked at all like the natives out on the West coast, And so that was one of the things that really surprised me, was the similarity in the way it sounded.
Yeah, that was something that stood out to me, as well as how you can go to all these different locations. And I know that people have different opinions whenever it comes to stick structures, and I know that we don't have any proof that says bigfoot makes these sick structures. But what I can tell you is regardless of where you go, you find them in areas that are purported to have bigfoot or that have all the right things for bigfoot to be there. But the structures remain the
same no matter where you're at. They are the same designs. And I always wondered, so are they these things being taught and where they all one group at one time to have that knowledge and moved it to different parts of the country. Like the language thing, How does the ones on the west coast speak the same language as the ones on the East coast if they all weren't the same at some point.
Yeah, and I have It's not my own theory. I've heard other people say it as well, but I. As time goes on, I have become more of the opinion that these structures are also some form of language that we haven't figured out how to read yet. But as they build these structures, or they put you know, what some people call glyphs, you know, they make certain patterns with sticks and so forth, I think they are communicating
with each other somehow. You know. Some people say, well, they might be warnings of territory or you know whatever. I don't know what they are, but I do know that there are very similar I just saw a friend of mine had posted where he had taken a picture of a stick pattern that he had found in the forest, and a friend of his and mine also had also found a stick structure and posted a picture. These two pictures were taken about ten miles apart, but they looked identical.
So the odds of that happening randomly, you know, some people say, well, the sticks just happen to fall that way, all right, Well, how do you get two patterns, and these were fairly complex patterns. How do you get two patterns ten miles apart that look exactly the same, you know, barring that some person is going around doing that. But then I say, okay, why what would be their purpose in doing that, you know, and doing it out in the middle of the woods where they don't know if
anybody is necessarily going to find it or not? Right, and certainly, what are the odds of if they're doing it, if some person is doing it? Okay, they have to think that somebody else is going to find these two structures ten miles apart and think, oh, that's just like the one I saw the other day. So it's it's another one of those questions, you know, what are they? But I think they're definitely a communications system of some sort. I don't know what kind.
I've experienced something similar where we were investigating a location where these things were reportedly visiting a dumpster behind a restaurant here in Oklahoma, and on the backside of this dumpster were some peculiar markings made by something with a hand and fingers. Again, can't say that it wasn't human, but it was odd. But one of the markings in particular that was repeated a couple different times, it looked
like something took three or four fingers. And if you can just imagine someone drawing the number seven with all the digits at the same time. Yeah, this was post it online, and a researcher who at the time was with the bfro Stan Courtney up in Illinois, I believe, contacted me and had a photograph of the same exact pattern that was left on the window of his vehicle whenever he had parked in an area and gone out, investigated and come back. It was on the driver's side window.
Oh wow, he sent me a photo of that. You know, so again the same marking showing up could have been a person in both scenarios, I guess, but again very odd and the similarity, I mean, it looked like the exact same thing.
Yeah.
I started to wonder if the stick structures and things like that aren't of a spiritual nature instead of communication.
Well, that could be, But again I think if it is, then you know, there's still commune indicating in a way they're saying, okay, you know, here's here's our spiritual symbol, you know, from my literal way of saying it. And then other bigfoot come along and see it and they say, oh, you know, they're it's kind of like us. You know,
if we see across we relate it with Christianity. If we see the start of David, we relate it to Judaism, and so maybe there are different spiritual beliefs and they're using these symbols to depict that just like just like humans do. Again, I try to It may be wrong of me, but I oftentimes relate things they do or compare things they do to things humans do, and try to look at the purpose or try to figure out
an answer based on that. Now I might be completely wrong in doing that, it might not have anything to do with that, but at least that's the best way I've come up with to try to maybe get some answers to things.
This is something that we didn't really talk about previously, but you had mentioned it and we went down some other avenues, but I wanted to bring it up. In the worlds of Bigfoot and the paranormal and UFOs, aliens and all that. I don't know if it's a new thing, but it seems to be growing in popularity that some people theorize that all these things are kind of one and the same and they're all demonic in nature.
Right.
I know that you have a little bit of history in the area of religion. What are your thoughts on the possibility of Bigfoot being a demon.
Well, I think it's possible. As time goes on. Again, at one time I thought it was probable. I've kind of moved away from that. I don't really know. It's definitely to me a possibility, and I don't want to, you know, as you said, go too far down the rabbit hole. But they they could all be that, and
there's no way for us to really know. I guess the reason that I think it may not be the case is what we talked about earlier, that you know, theoretically, if they were demonic, they would all be all be bad, they would all be trying to do harm to people, and that doesn't seem to be the case. Now. With that said, I don't think that all people that are possessed by demons are necessarily obvious in their demonic nature. They sometimes are just people that collect information, so to speak,
and pass it on. And again, I'm trying to be kind of broad here, and I don't want to get too far down the hole. But like I said, I think it's possible. I don't know that. I think it's probable, But on the other hand, I really have no idea what they are at this point. I guess one of the things I would say that I think makes it a possibility is their ability, according to eyewitness reports, to do things that seem supernatural, as in appearing or disappearing,
or mind speak and a sense of supernatural. And these are things that could be attributed to something that is spiritual, i e. Demonic in nature. So that's I guess my primary thoughts on that.
Have you encountered outside of Bigfoot? I mean, what you believe was a demon?
I will say that I believe that there are people that are possessed who don't demonstrate that in the sense of what people think in like, you know, you're what was the movie The Exorcist? So heads spinning around, phone coming out of the mouth. Yeah, I don't. I've never seen anything like that. But I will say that I believe that I have been around people who were possessed, but their purpose of possession was simply to collect information.
And this is typically collecting that information from within a church, to keep an eye on what's going on. And I believe that because as a Christian, I believe that Satan focuses his primary First of all, Satan isn't everywhere Satan is not omnipresent like God is, so Satan has to have a way to keep track of what's going on, so he knows where to focus his primary efforts, and he does that through demons that possess humans. We know
that from the Bible. The Bible talks about demon possession and as instances of Jesus casting demons out, he uses those demon possessed people, oftentimes to collect information and relay that information back to him. And that's the closest I
can say I've ever came to demonic activity. I've never been involved in a exorcism, although I can tell you there are people outside of the Catholic Church that do exorcisms, and I have talked to some of those people, and their advice to me has always been to stay away from it unless you want to become fully immersed as they are. You don't want to get involved because once
you become involved, then they will start attacking you. And of course we saw that examples of that in the Exorcist, where the Catholic priest that was trying to do the exercist would be attacked personally, physical harm done, thrown across the room, you know, whatever so they said, don't get involved unless you want to become fully involved, and so I never really got very involved.
See that's part of the thing that bothers me is there are similarities between some of the stuff that goes on in the Bigfoot world and how demons are depicted, you know, and we joked at the beginning about the Bigfoot curse, but it's something that you become fully aware
of whenever you get involved in this. And then you also hear stories about people oftentimes starting to experience activity at their home after they start investigating and going out in the field, these things following them, and it has ruined lives. It absolutely has ruined some lives. So there's just some interesting similarities.
Here in there.
So I was just curious about your opinion on it.
Yeah, yeah, no, there are similarities. And I'm aware as well of people who have had them follow them home, and you know, they have said, well, the only way that they could do that, the only way they would know because many in some of these instances, the people lived twenty thirty forty miles from their research area and yet they were followed home, and they said the only way that could happen was if they were somehow spiritual in nature, because they would have to be able to
know where you were without actually physically being there. Right, So I have heard the same things, and I think that, you know, I have no reason to think that people saying that were anything but truthful.
You mentioned orbs. Have you experienced any other phenomenon outside of Bigfoot in the orbs, ghosts or UFOs or anything like that.
Not personal. Yeah, I've taken some reports from people of rakes, and you know, for anybody out there that's not familiar with the rake, the best way I can tell people to find out what they are is to type in R A K E and a search engine. Only you have to do more than that, because otherwise it's going to take you to home depot. But put in rake and then the word cryptid like cryp t I D or rake entity something like that, and it will bring up pictures that people have taken of rakes, as well
as drawings and depictions. But I've had several reports. I've seen pictures. I saw a picture a year or so ago of a rake that was captured in Pennsylvania on a trail cam. So rake would be the other thing. Now, as far as things that I've heard, and this is back to Bigfoot related, I will say that I was on an expedition in the Florida Panhandle, the Apalachic Colon National Forest, and there was a lady in the group and she could do amazing howls. She had been trained
in voice and she could just do amazing howls. And so one night I was not with her, I was with some other people, but we heard what we pretty well knew was her do a howl. But the odd thing was, over the next five to ten minutes, we heard three more howls come from different directions, and at one point, I think after the second one, it had came from the direction towards our base camp, and I said, oh, somebody at base camp just did a reply to her,
and they sounded just like her. And then we heard two more and they were from yet other directions, and so, you know, a while later, we all got back to base camp and we're talking, and then her group came in and we said, you know, wow, you know, those were some good howls we heard, and she said, I only did one. She said those other three were replies and they were not from anybody in our group, and they sounded just like her. They were the back to
the mimicking. I mean, they sounded exactly like her howl, but from different directions. And the odds I think again, this was at probably midnight one am timeframe. The odds of other humans being out in the Appalachic Cola National Forest that were able to replicate her howl, the odds of that are almost zero. And so that was that was definitely a very interesting evening. And that was on the last night of this was not a BFRO expedition, but it was a private group that had gotten together.
And then and then the other instance was in a green swamp in Florida, which is down in central Florida between Orlando and Tampa. And I had been out, we had done some night investigation and I got back and I was inside my camper, and you know, you you asked a question earlier, and I had forgotten this one about whether I ever felt like in danger at all. This night probably fell into that category because we had gotten back, I was inside my camper and something came
up outside my camp. Now I guess it could have been a wild animal of some kind, but if it was, it was something I had never heard anything like this before, but it was making the most you know, go back to our demonic thing ungodly sounds. I mean, it was a cross between growls and screams, and it literally sounded like it was right outside my camper. And I have to say that, as much as I want to in some ways see one of these up close, that particular night I was I was afraid to go outside. I
didn't want to open my camper door. I didn't have a light. My flashlight had broken earlier that same day, and I didn't feel comfortable opening my camper door and going out into the dark to see what it was.
Well, before we get off here, do you want to talk a little bit about CSI yeah.
That'd be great. I appreciate the opportunity to do that. I've organized a new organization. It's Cryptid Search Investigations, and my goal in this is for it to eventually be nationwide, just like the BFRO. And the reason that I wanted to do this is I want to do several things, I guess, and before I go on with that, I guess I should finish. The organization is a nonprofit. It is currently authorized as a five to OHO one C three, so any money that people might donate will be tax deductible.
I have some expeditions planned, none are set in stone yet, but hopefully one in the Allighaneny National Forest Area in October early October, and then late October one in South Carolina in I always have trouble say in the name of this place, it's oconey, I think state Park, it's o CEO n ee uh. And so we're going to be there late October, and if people are interested in those they can My email for the organization is cryptid search at my Yahoo dot com and then they can
email me for information about that. But currently I'm not having a set amount of money the way that BFRORO does. I'm asking for donations from people. I feel like if people that don't have the money to go on a BFRO expedition want to be involved, this is a way for them to get in. And that's part of why I wanted it to be a five oh one C
three so that donations are tax deductible. So for those people that can afford to make a donation of you know, a sizable donation, it will be tax deductible for them. I'm trying to think what else I should add to this. I don't have my website up and going yet, but it should be within the next week or two and it will be at cryptidseearch dot org. I have a Facebook page that's called cryptied Search. Now there is a space in between cryptied and search on the Facebook page.
And I'm hoping at some point to get a podcast of my own going. And I have a YouTube channel currently and Rumble called cryptied Search, so people can just start looking for crypted search. The other reason I wanted it to be a nonprofit is so that when I'm gone, it will continue. So currently the organizations, now I shouldn't say all of them there are I did find out there is at least one other nonprofit Bigfoot organization. But let's just if I can, I'll just use bfro and
as an example that is formed as an LLC. And you know, when the current person in charge passes away, maybe a long time, we hope, But when that happens, there's as far as I know, there's no succession there. With CSI, it will have a succession in that it's a nonprofit. We have a board of directors and they will simply get I'm the president right now, they'll get another president. Things will just continue on. And that was part of my goal in the organization was to have
something that would continue. People can definitely email me if they want more information, or they can follow the Facebook group as well.
And I will just say an organization like this is first off, a great idea, especially the nonprofit aspect of it. But for people looking to get their feet wet or to get involved in this, these type of audings are the way to go. This is a great opportunity to meet bigfooters that maybe have some experience, and meet other people that are kind of new to it and everything, and go out there with like minded people and learn things and experience this for yourself.
Right. We are going to develop as time goes on, specific scientific experiments and use them to help further the understanding. And by that I mean I can't say what any of these are yet, but I have some PhD scientists that are going to work with me to help develop experiments that we can do to further our understanding. And now, the average person that comes on an expedition does not have to be involved in that if they don't want to be, but if they choose to be they can,
and that's another thing that you know. I feel like there are some other organizations I think out there the Olympic Project comes to mind, but that are doing some actual scientific experimentation. But I think the organizations doing that are pretty few and far between most people that most organizations are just doing expeditions, and they provide experiential evidence, meaning people's experiences. Like you and I have been talking.
My experiences are experiential, but I want to get to the point where we actually have some scientific information going on that will allow more understanding of what's going on out there in the bigfoot world. The orbs, the dog men, the you know, on and on and on, rakes and pug widgees and you name it. We want we want more information on all of this stuff.
Mark, thanks for joining me. Thanks for sharing your experiences and your stories. I've thoroughly enjoyed it, my friend, and I wish you the best of luck with CSI all right, well.
I appreciate that, and hopefully you and I can stay in contact and talk about some of these things further.
Absolutely, if you've had your own encounter with bigfoot or something else you can't explain send me an email at Bigfoot Crossroads at gmail dot com. Check out the website Bigfoot Crossroads dot com. You can find links to social media, past episodes, merchandise, everything you need all in one place, and until next time, remember something in the woods.
