Here we are. The second day, something was throwing fox and it was hitting one roof. Everybody would run over there. Then it would hit another roof on a different cabin. They'd run over there. If you think about it now, it's comical, you know, to be running around, you know, like you're going to catch them or something. Anyway, they finally came back. When we're sitting down. It's broad daylight. You used to in an old days, being able to drive in a like a round driveway to each cabin.
Most of it is overgrown and grown back, and there is this one place. We call it the bottleneck because it is practically the only place you can walk without getting harms. You know, it's grassy, but it's reasonable. And we were sitting in a semicircle and there's five of us, and we started hearing something walking and we had just assumed it was a fox that we had been feeding, coming up to see if we had eight thing to eat,
you know. And I'm sitting in the chair that's looking right down the bottleneck, and all of a sudden, there they are.
Kathy, Welcome to Bigfoot Crossroads.
Thank you for having me on.
Yeah, glad to have you for my listeners that aren't familiar with the amazing legend. Kathy Strain, tell a little bit about yourself and how you got started in this crazy Bigfoot stuff.
My name is Kathy Strain and I am the forest archaeologist and tarbo relations program manager for the Stanisauce National Forest in California. I have a bachelor's and master's screen anthropology and been doing the archaeology for thirty five years and probably Bigfoot just as long, if not longer. I got into Bigfoot, and she Bigfoot got me into anthropology, which is really a strange way of going about getting a job. But essentially, when I was in fifth grade,
oh well, let me back up. I saw legend of Boggie Creek when I was a little girl, and I just fell in love with the idea of an undocumented animal out in the woods somewhere, you know. And in fifth grade I asked my teacher what do I need to do to study Bigfoot for a living, and she goes, well, you probably have to go into anthropology, and I said okay, And so I just was stayed straight on that path. Figured it out pretty quickly that nobody was going to
pay me to study Bigfoot. But by then I'm already you know, in love with the concept of anthropology and archaeology and all that stuff, and so that's how I got into it. And I'm just really thankful for my parents always being so supportive of all that stuff, because you know, when I was young, when we my family was one that always camped and hiked and stuff. We
never went to like Disneyland or stuff like that. We were you know, national parks, national forests, you know those types of places, and my dad would indulge me and pretend like what we were really doing is going on a Bigfoot expeditions. Of course, you know, I was keen on that during the day, but not so much at night. But anyways, so I've been studying bigfoot for a very very long time.
That's so awesome though, that like as a child, everybody was supportive of the idea, and that you actually followed it through into adulthood. I don't think I've ever heard of anybody that's done that.
Yeah, most people don't even think about bigfoot until they have sightings, right, and then they want to know more about what it is that they saw, and then spend a lot of time trying to get a chance to see it again and so and so I'm the exact opposite of that. So it was I didn't have a
sighting of a big foot until twenty twelve. So can you imagine being and then doing this for that amount of time and never I mean I had seen other stuff, has seen footprints, I've heard noises, I've been yelled at, you know, all that stuff that goes with that. But I mean I didn't have my first sighting until twenty twelve, So that's a long time to you know, keep hoping.
Yeah, I wanted to ask you a little bit about your time with the BFRO. That organization has been around since I got involved, and they're still kind of like the main name that comes up in conversation as far as research organizations go. Not that there's not a lot of other great ones, some that you're actually involved with, I believe, and this may be difficult for you to answer, but how is life in the BFO back then different than what it seems to be now?
Well, back then we were more interested in witness accounts and calling them and following up, trying to find the most recent stuff that we could find, trying to get you know if they had hairs or blood or any kind of evidence, and I don't. I can't tell you what the BFO is like now because I'm not in
it and I don't follow anything that they do. Doesn't seem like I last time I was on their website looking for a report I had done years ago, it didn't look like there was anything really new going on. So I don't know if they still follow up on sightings or not so, but it does seem like they do a lot of paid expeditions though that that looks like that's that that we were, well, we kind of sort of started doing that when I left.
Right, Yeah, most of the groups were really based around, like you're talking about witness accounts, you know, people reporting their sightings and then talking with the witness and investigating the property or the location or whatever. And you don't really see that much of that sort of investigation going on. Now. Do you think research is kind of missing a step by kind of putting the witnesses to the background and just doing their own thing.
I think that is a mistake because one of the things witnesses are good for is time and place, and that will lead you to you know, patterns and patterns are what we can use to then hypothesize what may be going on in this area at a certain time of year, especially if it's consistent. You know, consistency is one of those things that's really important because then you
can start seeing those patterns. And if you don't talk to witnesses, you know, how do you really know what's going on, And especially if it's in your research area, I think it's very important to find out where the hot areas are at that very moment in time if you can get a witness to report it. You know, I saw this yesterday. A lot of times at the BFO.
We were getting stuff that was from like twenty thirty years ago, and people just wanted to get it off their chest, you know, kind of feel like they've been holding this in for all these years and now I got to tell somebody what happened, and then they contact a bfurro for that, And so it's a form of therapy, I think, in a lot of ways. But you know,
there's a lot of reason. I just got an email this more about some stuff that was happening here in where I live, and I hadn't heard about it myself, you know, but generally somebody inadvertently contacts me one way or the other. But even then, this is stuff that happened months ago. And then what the email this morning was about something that just happened this week, and so yeah, so that stuff is pretty important, you know, to me is to figure out, first of all, what did you see?
What was your experience? When was this, what time of day or night? And then what did you see? Because sometimes, you know, people, I don't do other cryptids. I only do Bigfoot, and so I like to find out right
off the bat, what is it that you saw? And then if it's the you know, ends up being something like dog Man or I don't know, a ghost or something, then I can go, well, this isn't something that that I can deal with, so let me patch on to somebody else, or thank you for your story kind of thing, and so. And I find that very interesting because I don't have an interest in anything else, and I don't have the brain capacities to be interested in something else,
and I just don't. I find it very, very very unplausible that there are all these other cryptids. And I got I talked to a class like last week, I guess, and somebody said, well, what about Boogerman and what about blah blah? And I said, look, those are all those are just local names for the same thing. There isn't room for, you know, fifteen different kinds of cryptids in one place. I mean, it just isn't. That's not logical,
you know, it's there. It's very plausible that we haven't found one or two large or small cryptids, but you know, not fifteen or twenty. So it's it's even if you want to give somebody well, my bigfoot is browns and those ones over there are black, Well that's just diversity. That doesn't make it a new cryptid, you know. It's it's those kinds of things that sometimes aren't like Dollie, you know, did you guys think this stuff through? You know, And there's dog man really dog manners that just a
poorly described bigfoot, you know kind of thing. But but you know, there's all these other things that I get asked all the time about other kinds of cryptids, and I just will get people and go, I have no idea what you're talking about, never heard of. It sounds like it's like it's made up to me. So I don't know about that so like a wraith. I think I was asked that the other day about what a wraith was, and I said, well, I don't know what a race is, and I don't care what a race is.
The bugs that they're bugging me, I don't care.
I mean, that's kind of become a thing though over the past I don't know, five years or so, it seems at least, you know, to twenty years ago, it was just Bigfoot. There wasn't anything else, and then every once in a while you would get a report of where somebody said, well I saw a bigfoot, but it kind of had like a baboon snout on it or a muzzle of some kind. And now I think dog Man is actually more popular than Bigfoot on the internet. Uh, And you've got all these other cryptids that people are
talking about seeing, you know, Mothman's everywhere. Now it's not just a one time even a point plusnant.
Yeah, there's some a rake. Yeah, what the hell is a rake? You know? And it's just kind of like, you know, where did where did this all start? And it's interesting because I think dog Man, I mean, it's fairly recent in time, isn't that, Like from the nineteen eighties. Yeah, like with the first twenty. So I mean, it's kind of like there's no precedent for for these cryptids, and
you know, and you know who's going to know. Native American people are going to know because they lived with whatever is out in our forest or o natural environments for the longest period of time. And I don't see a description of something called dog man in Native American stories. There's nothing like that. And so you know something that I mean, I guess if the world was the world of creativity and new cryptig you could just pop out
of the earth and become something. But somehow, me being a scientist, I'm going to say it's unlikely to be that way.
Whatever it comes to Native American folklore. That's I mean, I would defer to you, you know a little something about it. You wrote a book a while back, Giants, Cannibals, and Monsters, all about bigfoot in Native American history. And so what you're saying is, if I understand correctly, is there isn't Native American folklore that involves a dog man or a rake or a mothman or any of those things.
And not that I'm aware of. And I guess I literally haven't read everything possible out there, but you think it show up, you know, even passively. And so you know, they wrote their stories are about their natural environment and how to convey the importance of their natural environment to
the next generation. Of course, they had oral tradition and stories that you read were then captured by ethnographers, you know, in the late well late to early eighteen hundred some earlier, back on these coast because Europeans arrived there sooner, and so there's no reason let me just put it only they just wrote down what they were told. There's not any kind of well I don't believe this, so I'm
not going to include it. I'm just documenting what you're telling us, right, And there's nothing that that's even remotely like there's this thing. The only thing that has two legs and walks up right is the bigfoot. You know. They have other animals such as eagle, condor, you know, hawk and stuff like that that sometimes take human form, but there's still hawk, you know, there's still egle, there's still that you know, bear talks, you know, but he's
still bear, you know kind of thing. And so there isn't anything that that you know, to be fair dogs in general. I mean they've been around a very very long time. I mean, we have very old graves that have dogs in them, so they've been domesticated, and so I would think Native Americans would know what a dog is and be able to say, well, this dog man or this dog with two legs showed up and there's
nothing like that. And so when you think about it, unless you have something that's a really good description of what you're talking about that is much older than modern times, you're hurting yourself because you're you're making something interesting. Well, i mean, let me put it this way. If you're
interested in it, it's no big deal. But when the Internet is overwhelmed with something that's obviously completely made up, that what a gross use of your time to, you know, study something you are never going to experience.
Well, how does the bigfoot folklore in Native American history compare to our understanding of bigfoot in the research community.
Well, it's the same thing.
The folklore versus the reality. You know, are there differences? Are there similarities? Are they describing the same thing?
They're describing the same thing. It's pretty ubiquitous across the United States Alaska, Canada. There may be different behaviors sort of associated with them. So like in the Yokic tribe, he is a creator and a good guy and he helps the tribes significantly versus other tribes sees an awful monster cannibal who eats their children. And so did that happen in reality? I mean it's pretty prevalent. I mean there's a lot of cannibal stories associated with Bigfoot native culture.
So I suspect that it did once in a while there and that's how it got. You know, this guy
eats our kids and eats things he should be. So but the general description tall hair covered, throws rocks, you know, beats trees, that kind of stuff is is typical of what we think and so and I don't know, and I certainly know that there are people who have described modern day witnesses saying one was very very aggressive and ran us out of the area, and this other one, oh, the Bigfoot just you know, said hey, what are you doing?
You know kind of thing, And so there's there are You would expect a living population to have different personalities in different aspects of their territory, to behave when they feel like they're threatened, and so I'm going to tribe traditionally described a bigfoot as being hostile. That's I think just that particular bigfoot is a butt heead, you know kind of thing. And that's what I would expect in a living biological animal, is that you're going to have
personality differences, just like you have in everything else. And so yeah, there they are describing what we what we call bigfoot as well.
So you're up in the Pacific Northwest, yes, I mean California. How did you end up with the North American Wood Conservancy way.
Down here, way down the well? I in twenty twelve. I had known Alton Higgins and Darryl Kloyer and all of them for very long time effected from the bfro O. And so I was at speaking at one of the Texas conferences and afterwards they were they were telling they had been telling me this for years about this place called Area X, and aria X is not some kind of like crazy, you know, ominous place. It's it's they had three research areas X, Y and Z, and Y and Z ended up being duds, and so are X
became the place. And they were talking to me about what was going on down there. And they say, hey, we would really love for you to come down and spend a week there with our members and tell us what you really think is going on? You know, is this stuff that we're saying really happening. And I said, you know, well, Bob's got family in Texas, So I said, when we'll just make it a family trip and go spend a week and X and see his mom and dad and sisters and brothers, and make it make it
a trip, you know. And so I'm now kind of sort of sorry that we went to X before we saw the family because we were we were really in shape to well it's a long story, but essentially when we went to X first, the first day was so boring. It was made twenty twelve, you know text. You know in Oklahoma. This is in Oklahoma. Everything is trying to kill you. I mean, the spiders are the size of my head. There's green brier that's trying to pull your
shoes off, there's hidden rocks, there's snakes everywhere. And I always say it's a foreign service employee that I've been on every bad road and on earth, and I'm not afraid of a road. That road was the worst road I I almost cried. I was like, I don't think we're gonna get it back out of here. I say, I think gravity's gonna carry us down where there's no way we're gonna get out of here. And of course Bob's an outstanding driver. So yeah, we got back out.
But then the second day, these the cabins that we were out, and I'm gonna use the term cabin very very loosely as four walls with a roof, but other than that, it ain't much, you know, And I got it one of these days I got to tell this funny story. But I thought, now I'm gonna tell next. I forget that the door of the one we were in didn't really shut if so, because we are who we are, we basically put a door stop up against it.
So if Bigfoot decided to come in the magic rock, we called it the magic rock for a Lisa alert us to something coming in the door, and I think nail. I was like, God, dang man, talk about how it's funny now, but you believe me, there are times when I was down there where I was grateful for that rock there. I sort of kept the door shut sort of anyway. So so here we are the second day and all the roofs had are tin or sheet metal, and uh, something was throwing rocks and it was hitting
one roof. Everybody would run over there. Then it would hit another roof on a different cabin. They'd run over there, and so it's, uh, it was pretty pretty if you think about it now, it's comical because it was like, man, they're just having fun. We were like the television apparently, and when we know they were rocks, they weren't hickory nuts or anything like that. We were verifying that they were rocks, and I did a little bit and then I got this is silly, you know, to be running around.
You know, it's like you're gonna catch them or something. So anyway, they finally came back and we're sitting down. It's broad daylight, you know, so very good, you know, viewing, and there's you used to in an old days, being able to drive in a like a round driveway to each cabin with that's long past that time. You know. Most of it is overgrown and grown back. And there is this one place we call it the bottleneck because it is practically the only place you can walk without
getting harms. You know it's grassy, but it's reasonable in the sense of, you know, there's not hidden rocks, there's none of that stuff. And so I was sitting we were sitting in a semi circle, and there's five of us, my husband, Bob Mark or Brian Ken and myself and we're sitting in the semicircle and we started hearing something walking and we had just assumed it was a fox that we had been feeding, coming up to see if
we had eight thing to eat, you know. And I'm sitting in the that's looking right down the bottleneck, and all of a sudden, there they are, and it was two of them. There was a big one and a little one, and by big, I don't mean like you know, huge, I'm talking about a Canada gangly teenager size, and then a small one like small I don't know, six years old,
seven year old type of size. And they're come and ride at us, and they're walking along probably no more than sixty feet if that is probably not even that I know I measured it, but it's not on the
top of my head right this minute. But they're walking along the bottom of this hillside, so not like a mountain side, a hillside and like they're going to try to get behind the shed of the cabin, and they're doing this kind of back and forth where it was clear the big one is trying to make the little one not go where it's going, and she kng go color.
She can't get the little one to follow directions. You know, it's like this keystone cop kind of thing where there she's going like, no, let's go this way, and no, no, I'm gonna go this way kind of thing. And I jumped up and I said, there they are, and I ran at them, and of course, you know, crazy lady running at us, I don't you know, they bolt up that hillside like they were on a bungeee court. They
just went straight up. And I knew I only had seconds to get as much as I could in my mind, you know, all the details I could get right, and so I ride. I know, I was just a little bit behind them at the bottom of the hill. I didn't try to run up that hill. Oh my god,
I would have died. But I got to look at the big one as it went up the hill, and so it had the most beautiful booty, bodacious, muscular, beautiful, thick muscular thighs, and she put her her arms next to her side and like power walked, but more power fly. I guess out of power rent. And I didn't pay attention to the little one because it was it had it had bolted down a little even further away from me. And by that time, so it was like, further away
from this one. It must be something in their upbringing where you know, don't run away from something the same way tried to try to break up, so you know that kind of whatever's bad will only follow one of us. Scatter and scatter, Yeah, and so and clearly the little one was the one, you know, the big one was was the one that wanted us to, like, if you're going to follow something, follow us. And uh. Anyway, so they just went poo right at the hill. We didn't
see him any more. We know, they got to what we call it, we called the ledge and uh, and then we could hear him walking the rest of the way up to where they needed to go. And so then we you know, so of the five of us, four of us saw the same thing, and the other guy was looking off somewhere. You know, we always like to say he's seen more people see Bigfoot and he seemed good. But that guy, you know, because he's always doing some talking. Are you doing something? And anyway, So
that was the start and it just got worse. The rest of the week was just constantly having rocks thrown at us. Have It's just it was just crazy and you and it's it's available to read and the I call it the O Cheated Project, but I know it's watchachip project. But it's on the on the North American Wooded Conservancy web web page where you can download this monog that we wrote about these things that happened to UH, to us and other members too. I mean, it's about
all the operations. And so when after that week, we got out to Civilization and we stopped and Bob looked at me, and I looked at him, and I was just like, holy crap. You know, we felt like we had just come out of like I don't want to make it sound trivial, but you know, like out of Vietnam, like we just got out of combat. We're finally safe, we can actually sleep, and you know, just you know, but the thrill of all of it, you know, it's
just like you you want to have those experiences. Again because it was incredible seeing them, you know, and and oh and I went to backcheck it. So for me, I always I had the impression it was an older sibling that has was being tasked with watching her brag little brother. And so that was the impression I had, is that the brady little brother brother was maybe intrigued by my higher pitched voice and was curious about is there you know, a small child here or something to
that effect. And anyway, so I don't know in particular, but that's what led us to join the North American Wooded Conservancy, was to be a part of this organization.
That's a hard sell.
Yeah, it's a hard sell. I was like, well, because it was basically I want to go back. How do we get to go back? They were like, well, you have to be remembered. I'm like, we're remembered now. And so the the next year, Bob and I decided to go three weeks each but apart from each other. So he went three weeks and I stayed and watched the kids, and then I went three weeks, and then he stayed and watched the kids. And so, and his three works were pretty horrible. From I think he could probably tell
you that straight. Nothing happened at all, and in my three weeks, we had all kinds of more. At one point, I got so tired of recording the rock throws that I just said, I'm the journal with the person who writes in the journal. I just wrote, I'm calling it. You know, there's just too many to record because it was just so and they were trying to get us to move, you know, and that's we had a a tree pushed down on us. We had I mean, just it was just crazy. And yet you know, and I
saw a baby bigfoot in the trees. It was going from tree to tree, and I was like, you know, and you know how you were in this situation. It happens. It happened not so much the first time because I think I was ready to see a bigfoot, and I was there to see a bigfoot, so it wasn't that big of a you know, so I knew what I was singing. Versus when I saw the baby, I was like, oh,
look at that chimpanzee. Why is there a chimpanzee in the tree, you know, And it's just kind of you stupid idiot, that's not a chimpanzee, you know, kind of thing, and I was like, oh, oh, it's in the tree, you know kind of thing. And it's just one of those things that your mind automatically wants to see what it wants to see, you know. And I've seen dozens of chimps because I'm an anthropologist, and they made us
go to the zoo and blah blah blah. So so we did that that year, and then the following year, twenty fourteen, we went again. We've been many, many, many times, but that was our last sight. My last sighting was in twenty fourteen when I saw what we call Old Gray, and he is. He's the stereotypical size bigfoot when you when you want to think about Holy cow, you're huge kind of size, eight.
Foot tall, three and a half foot wide shoulders.
Yes, yes, the blot out the sun if he was between you and the sun kind of size, and made Bob look like a little tiny butterfly against him. But that that's we've been since those times, but we haven't had another sighting since then.
Being from Oklahoma, the Pacific Northwest has always been, you know, the mecca of Sasquatch. Nobody's denying that. I talked to my friends out there all the time, and it's just sort of this halfway a joke but not really joking. Out in the Pacific Northwest, I know researchers that will spend years and years and years and like their highlight event was that they found a track or they heard a vocalization, and then you come down here and it's just like, oh, yeah, have you seen one this year?
Mia?
How do you come from the Pacific Northwest to this? And then go back to those colleagues and be like, you guys don't understand these things are like crazy down there.
Well, we thought about for a good while until we had grandchildren and of just plan on moving there and just spending all our time, you know, in retirement doing this. But then the grandchildren, you know, that's become kind of tough on us because they're so wonderful. But yeah, it's it's well, and I think it's different in the sense of in the we have the Sierra Nevadas here in California where we have had lots of activity but never
a sighting. You know, We've had prints, we've had them yell at us, We've had all kinds of stuff, but it's so vast compared to what Oklahoma is. You guys don't have the same size of mountains that we have. We're the same size of trees. It's certainly dense and vegetated much more heavily than most people would even believe. But I think the available habitat there's plenty of it, but it's not as vast as what we have in California.
And so for you to be in the right place at the right time time is greatly decreased or increase. It's your your opportunity to see a bigfoot in such a vast environment isn't as likely as a place when you're in Oklahoma, or you know that that piece of Texas, that that one place that has a tree the east side, Yeah, the east over there.
So the haystack is much smaller here, is what I always say.
Yes, and so you can find the needle much easier than you can uh in the Pacific Northwest. And so yeah, I mean I say that a lot, and I encourage people, you know, like you know a good place to be, but you know you can only you can only suggest
something so many times. You know that there's also some issue with we believe that we need a body, and so we're willing to shoot one in order to get the evidence that needs to be gotten to uh determine what Bigfoot is and how we can better protect their habitat and that in a lot of ways, I think everybody in the Pacific Northwest thinks everybody in the South thinks that way, and so I think that's maybe an influence that they, you know, they just want to be
you know said, uh, somebody said it to me yesterday. You know, your friendly little family Bigfoot, that's your forest friend. That's the word I'm looking for, or the Bigfoot people or stuff like that. And you know, they they have a different viewpoint. They're not out to find evidence necessary.
And I'm just saying not all, not all researchers out west, but there's a good number of WU researchers in the Pacific Northwest that are that are not interested in or you know, they already saw them in their head, so you know that counts and see them in there all the time. So you know, what do I need to go to Oklahoma for? Because they're living on my property and I feed them and say hi to them all the time, so you know, and so I just I
don't really. I you know, I just tell my story and you want to know more than that's fine, but I just don't. I'd given up on trying to talk sense into people, but you know you have to and to be honest, I actually talked to a researcher like over the summer who actually doesn't really want to see one, wants the bigfoot, likes the experience, but really doesn't want to see one. And so I didn't realize that I made the assumption everybody in bigfooting is there to have
an experience. And you know, I guess that's not that's an assumption on my part. That's not. Everybody's in it for the same reasons.
How do did affect your research after you saw one?
Well, we never shut up about it for a good six months. We sat out in my garden every night for at least six months, if not longer, reiterating everything to each other. It was it was pretty like and this is actually gonna be a funny strike. So ah Bob had a friend. He was a psychologist for a college and he was interested in bigfoot. But I don't know necessary if you believed in it or not, but he was so intrigued by our experience that he invited
us to San Francisco. And I'm going to tell you it takes a lot for me to go to San Francisco because I hate that sound. Everybody everybody, just like Oklahoma, everybody there is trying to kill you, either with their car or something. I mean, they the worst drivers in the history of the world live in San Francisco. So anyway, so we go and go to the guy's office and he goes, okay, so tell me what happened, and so me and Bob just go but you know, it just
spew it. Fifteen minutes later, he gets up from his desk, grabs his coat and his hat, and he goes, you guys can stay as long as you need to, but I gotta go. And he just walked out of the room. We watched him walk down to his car getting his car and leaf Wow. And I was like, what, we came all the way here because he wanted to talk to us and assumed to ask questions or whatever. Nope, he just left and so and I was just like,
and that guy didn't even talk to Bob again. Oh, I don't even know how long, like four or five years went by before he kind of talked to him again. So it was kind of like, either we absolutely blew his mind away and he could not deny what we saw because we're truthful people, or he thought we were completely crazy and don't want to have anything to do with this.
We don't know. He said nothing, and so so I think in a lot of ways that changed our research going forward of at least for the first few years after that sighting that it was very intense. Botha was inventing new equipment, you know, to to take with this, like this would be more convenient if we had this, this, and this, and we could do it in this order so we could be faster, blah blah blah, and you know, and that kind of you know, we calmed down a little bit in the sense of like, Okay, we don't
need all these things. We can actually go fairly light into the field without all these gadgets or whatever. You know, it depends, you know, because our goal is pretty simple. So anyway, so yeah, I would say it didn't change our mindset in the sense of you were always pro killed even when we first got together, and so that wasn't that kind of thing, and necessarily but it definitely change our aspect on These guys are just not going to stand there and let us take a shot at them.
These things are fast, ungodly bid, you know, when you first see then you're like, holy crap. They are built for the environment. I mean, they have an advantage over us greatly. I mean, I don't know that anybody's got more powerful muscle structures than them, you know, because they have they do. I mean they must walk, you know, ten miles a day up and down that terrain, you know kind of thing. And I think it just made
us up our game. I guess is the best way to say it, this is that this this is it. No wonder nobody's gotten a body because a it's unexpected when you do see him. And all of us had a gun that day. That that all five of us, you know, the four of us who saw it. All of us had a gun. But of course I blocked the way because then I'm running at him. I'm not even thinking about it. I guess what my idea was.
I was they were just going to stand there, stunned that this crazy lady was running at them, and I was going to be able to grab some DNA before they killed me. You know, that's where my mind was going. And but definitely upped our game in the sense of these are powerful animals adapted to the environment, and we are poor substitutes for that, and so we have to up our game by getting better at what we want to do. And you know, so that's how we changed.
It didn't change, you know, we certainly didn't change going, Oh my god, Bigfoot is so fast. You must not be an animal. He must have floated up that hillside. Now there was any of that. We knew what we were seeing was flesh and blood and that so that never changed.
So you were already convinced of their existence before the siding.
Oh yeah, okay, yeah, I've always been a believer because, by God, Legend of Boggy Creek was a documentary, was not. It was not a fictional movie. And don't you tell me what difference.
Are you more open to stuff you find in the field because you know that they're real. So there is a good chance that they made that limb formation, or that it really is a track or whatever.
I am honest in saying that I used to make fun of people, not to their faces. Of course, who said that I saw the bit and it was keeping
up with my car. That I believe that now, and so that changed my mind about that, and it also changed my mind about you know, people would always say, well, I didn't even hear them coming, you know kind of thing, because although we heard them walking towards us and heard them as they were doing their little q Stone cop routine, the second they went up that hillside, there was no more sound at all. I mean, it was just like they had, you know, pillows on their feet or something.
And I don't know how they're capable of doing that, but I believe it now when people say, yeah, that they were quite you know, I always believed in rock throwing because tribes had said that, but I didn't know they were so stink and accurate. You know, I did have one rock. I could hear it coming through the trees. I'm lucky I moved because it hit the cabin wall instead of hitting me. But I actually think that was
an accident. So I think they're actually very, very accurate at that throw, and they've done it enough times and I think it's part of maybe how they hunt, maybe because it's awfully accurate. And one time we had a rock Road. First thing in the morning, Bob was outside. It's just me. When we request to go in there by ourselves, we're allowed to do so. For us one of the favorite teams, so if we sign up for
a team, everybody wants to be on our team. But we have been in there by ourselves on multiple occasions. But one morning Bob had gotten up before me, and he was standing outside. He was just doing a little metal detecting, trying to pick up some nails that had fallen on the ground. And not metal detecting, I'm sorry, I mean magnet using a magnet to put to pick up nails. And I got out and come outside, got off the porch and said, hey, honey, how you doing.
And and he had just sat down in my chair when we heard the rock coming. And we're both looking up at the same time, you know, like, oh, there's a rock coming. And it hit the absolute and of the roof edge and then popped off and landed right in between Bob's feet.
Wow.
And so that had to be intentional. I don't see how that right. They couldn't have happened in just an inch one way or another. It would have hit him in the head. You know, so I and if they had wanted to, they could have done that. I mean, they could have easily overwhelmed Bob and I. You know, if there's two or more of them, they could take us easily, you know. So I never had the impression
they wanted to hurt us or anything like that. But so that accuracy when people had said that, you know, I have many witnesses stories where they've said, well, they just gotten circled. You know, these rocks were coming in and eventually there's like this circle around them, but none of them hit them. And I was always sarcastic in the sense, well, statistics would say, you know, that's one would eventually hit you, blah blah blah. And so I
don't believe that anymore. I think they know what they're doing and they can basically, if we could shave them and put them on the Dodgers, we'd have a really good picture, That's what I'm saying.
Yeah, I agree with that. One of my very early experiences years ago was sitting in a campsite that had one of those metal lantern poles that they you know, mountain to the ground and everything, and it's kind of like a shepherd's cane and little rocks dinging off the pole, watching them ricochet off the pole. Always sat at the campfire, and my mind just like blown. There's got to be somebody out there. How would even But if it's a person, how are they that accurate?
Yeah?
And then I just talked to a couple of doctors recently on the show that had an experience where pine cones, green pine cones were thrown and just landed right by their feet. I can't remember how far away they said it was, but it was quite a distance. You know, they didn't see who was throwing the pine cones or anything. Yeah, but it was just like a barrage of pine cones in each one landing right by their feet, never hitting them, but landing right by their feet.
Yeah, it's it's amazing. And you know the other one last thing is I heard that samurai sound that yeah, can hear on the Sierra Sounds. We heard that in the first trip, and so having heard that myself, that definitely changes my opinion because once I heard it, I have been flashbacks of things I have heard in the past,
but I didn't know what it was. And I realized I've heard this before in the forest, and and I kind of you know, I know Ron Morehead and Alberry and so I didn't you know, I never doubted their truthfulness about what they experienced because that happens to be on my National forest where that those recordings were taken. And but you know, I didn't put much stock into it of like, what is it, you know, animal's babble.
You know, when a monkey or a chimpanzee gets handed a treat, you know that they react emotionally to it, you know kind of thing. And so I don't believe that it's a language in the sense of that, but I definitely had a sense of what the animal, what the bigfoot was feeling when he made that, because it was very frustrated. The sound of his voice was frustrated.
It was it was starting to be daylight. One of us outside, we're not reacting to the hundreds of rock throws that are landing on the camera, trying to get some sleep, you know, kind of through it. And it was a you know, kind of like if you don't come out, I'm gonna tear this wall down. And we were like, nah, we don't really care anymore. That magic. Yeah, So yeah, So I mean in that sense, yes, I now believe when somebody tells me not like supernatural stuff.
But as somebody says, I've I hadn't heard anybody say this, but if they said Bigfoot picked up my metal being invented in half out of frustration, I would probably go ooh, I want to see that. Being I believe you, I truly believe bigfoot can do some serious damage to something or you know all those tree breaks that you hear about, you know, kind of they have the power to do
that kind of stuff. And so so yeah, in the sense, it made me more open to non supernatural abilities that Bigfoot is capable of.
Well, let's talk about that for a second. From a scientific aspect, it's impossible to me at least that everybody talking about paranormal stuff in relation to Bigfoot is lying. So where are these beliefs and claims coming from.
I'll tell you my opinion. I think that we're dealing with wishful thinking to some extent, and I think a misinterpretation of what they're seeing. For example, so we had a wildlife biologist on my national forest who saw a bigfoot, not only saw a bigfoot, basically he was walking and this is a hot bigfoot area anyway, And even back then, he was walking back to his truck, proof that for certain employees actually get out of their truck and actually
do work. But was walking back to his truck when he came across a deer that was had a broken back leg and was dead, and he went wow, you know, and for him, of course, he's like, be on alert. You know, there's an animal out here. They just killed this deer and probably wants to come back and get it. Keeps on walking and then he comes across another deer that's alive, but it's just standing there, shaking, standing there.
So it meant, you know, mesmerized by something that he walked up and was able to touch the deer itself, and he's like, what this is weird. And so he noticed where the deer was looking, and he looks up towards where the deer was looking and there's the bigfoot right there. And he gets full can describe it everything, and then he said, it just disappeared. This is a wild life biologist, and so I was able to uh,
it happened just like two months. Anyway, he went back to his office and quit because he that's too much tram you know, out of his world. So this happened like two months before I got there, and so I was able to call him up and I said, hey, you know, I want to talk to you about this. And he says, all right, I'm gonna tell you, but if you don't ever call me again, you know kind of thing. And I said, what do you mean by disappeared? I said, do you mean literally disappeared? And he goes, no,
that was a bad choice of a word choose. I mean I just couldn't see him anymore. I said, well, explain that to me even further, because well, I think he went behind the tree, but I didn't see him go behind the tree because I was in such shock what I'm seeing. I was trying to process it all. And then his next thought, it's not there anymore, you know kind of thing. But he didn't actually see it leave. And I think that is more or less certain things
that are happening. Is when, like again, if I knew then what I know now, I think differently about it. But when I was I used to live higher up in elevation, but I got sick of the snow. You know, I'm not I the thought of shoveling snow today. I'll even move again if I have to. I had was going to work early in the morning, and I looked. We had one of those kind of luge kind of driveways, kind of wearing you to go too fast. You get a shoot across the road and you're going to hit
your neighbor on the other side. So I had come down and I'm waiting to turn onto the main road. I'm looking. We always have. We had a blind corner, and I look across in my neighbor and I see a black trash bag full of black full trash bag sitting right in the middle of his driveway and right at the at the entrance. So you know, he wouldn't nobody would able to come into his driveway or at his driveway without moving it because it was right in the middle of it. And I went, huh, that's really odd.
I didn't think today was trash day. And I'm thinking it through and I said, no, trash day is going to be tomorrow. I don't understand what's going on anyway, I'm not really caring about it. And I'm looking and I say, okay, I'm free to go, and I go to turn to get on the road, and I look over at the driveway and that bag's gone, and I'm going, what the heck? And so I braked and I'm looking it's like, you know kind of thing. I'm looking around
like what just happened? You know kind of thing. And so, you know, I keep this on my mind, on my mind, and I'm going, no, I know, today's not trash day. And what he has a can? Why would he put just a trash bag, a full trash bag, not in the can? Our garbage people wouldn't even pick that up. It has to be in the camps. And had I thought about it more, even though even then I believed in Bigfoot, but I didn't know that maybe they could
make themselves look like something common. And so I think that was a Bigfoot because we had bigfoot activity in that area. In fact, that was where we heard some howls and then we found it's a longster. But that's how we found some evidence. So we call big hell evidence. And so I think that is what may be the cause of what people are calling paranormal, is that it's you're expecting X, y Z and instead it becomes ABC and you're interpreting it as being something when it's not.
It really is just your mind working through the situation to keep you calm, keep you from fight or flight, keeping you from going into shock, keeping you from all these processes that our body senses, you know, kind of thing for those that have you know, he speaks to my mind. You know, we all know what that is kind of thing. But yeah, it's I think I'm more intrigued with the disappear kind of supernatural kind of thing
because it either can or can't. And there's no other animal on the planet that can just disappear, but they can camouflage themselves, right, And so is that a possible explanation kind of thing? And so I think they're they're logical, but when they start getting you know, the full long crazy crap, that's a psychosis that there's nothing we can do with that because Bigfoot cannot come into your house as an orb and reappear and for you only you know,
that just doesn't happen. So so that's what I think.
If they can, a lot of us have wasted a lot of time.
Yeah we should. We should have just been doing that mind speak of come on this, can you come on out and just show me your bill and then I'll be done and I'll be happy, and I'll leave you alone. I won't try to kill you after that point, you know, kind of thing you think if they had that ability and they you know, in areas, all of us had guns. They you know, we were routini. Daryl took a shot at one, you know. So if they had the ability to mind speak to us and say, hey, we would appreciate it
if you not try to kill us. Do you think they would have done.
So, with which they've reportably done with other people, uh, you know who were armed. They've you know, reportedly mine spoke to them. Why do you have that firearm with you? Don't you know, don't bring the gun with you, and things like that.
Yeah, they know what a gun is, you know.
Yeah, that's a whole nother rabbit hole that we could go down. Yeah, years ago, you and I were part of this group called the Alliance of Independent Bigfoot Researchers. Ye, and I could be getting my memories completely wrong. I hope I'm not. But I remember you sending me a photo asking me my opinion on the so said photo. Are there secret photos and videos that you've seen that are just mind blowing that don't get released to the public.
I have seen one. People just don't They don't want to get involved. Have you met our community?
I have.
Do you want to get into in aruns? Whatever? But I know there's I know that there are indeed videos that are indisputable out there that people don't want to share because they don't want to deal with publicity. Certainly, don't want to deal with the Bigfoot community. Certainly, you know, don't want to be told they are liars and hoaxers, even though you can easily you know nowadays, I'm on a television show called The Proof is out There on every Friday night on the History Channel. I just want
to get that plug in there. But you have a guy that can analyze any photograph video and tell you exactly what happened in that video by the megadata meta data. And so if you have a video, this guy will call you out on no, this is a hoax because you did XYZ. And he can even measure to see if it's a suit and all this stuff. I mean,
this guy is unbelievable. And so I think these would definitely pass the muster in those as I'm told I, like I said, I've only ever seen one, but no, you know, just you can look at it, but we'll not to talk about it kind of thing. And I understand it. You know. They they they're fearful for what, you know, they don't want Peter come into their door, you know, like, why'd you take a picture video of
this or whatever? Would whatever the perceived wrong is, somebody out there is going to be pissed off about it and make threats and all that all that stuff that goes with it. So I don't blame them, but I also have to say, you can stay anonymous. You know, we could do this because you're not helping the animal at all by keeping this information to yourself. I mean, you know what if this video proved Boofot's real and
we don't have to kill one. You know what if this does this and then we don't have to do this, And so yeah, I think those things exist. I do. I think the government no bookfut exists and maybe has one already. I don't believe our government can do anything correctly. I don't think so. But I do believe there are people out there that have a lot of evidence that just are in a spot that they're not interested.
Yeah, I mean I've heard very strong claims before as well. And then whenever I, you know, was privy enough to have the information shared with me, the evidence shown to me, I took one look at it and I was like, yeah, this is completely bogus. Like so, I think it's you know, kind of a double edged sword there. But I know that there are rumors at least of some videos and photographs that are out there that, like you're saying, they don't want to be shared, but they're pretty amazing.
For example, that casino that got a bigfoot on the security cam. Yeah, that you can measure him, and he says, you know, you can see the lamp post. You can see the height of the lamp post. But I, for me, you think it'd get more people come to your casino. But they didn't want the bad rap. They didn't want the reputation for that or weirdo's come in there to do bigfoot research or whatever. And so I always heard the tape was destroyed, but I recently been hearing stories
that it is not. I'm destroyed.
Would you destroy the tape?
Just saying I couldn't destroy that tape Now.
I was going to ask, have you seen anything on the proof is out there that you think is authentic?
Yes, yes, I have. We had. I analyzed a video the first cited where I'm season five, we're filming it right this minute, and Cliff Barrickman's on it and Ken Gerhard uh and so uh it's a good show. But the first year I got a video of a small bigfoot that this lady just happened to be filming and she kept going, what is that? And you can just see it poking its head out right it, you know, right at certain times, trying to see if the lady's still there. And I believe that was an authentic video.
I mean, it was pretty compelling of the sides of the animal with what you could see. I mean, it never really fully came out behind the rock, but you certainly get a good sense. And then, you know, I kept thinking the entire time I'm watching this, run out there, lady, take your flashlight, run out there, be like me, because you know, and that's one of the funniest things that I was, like, you know something that's just right there, Well, then go over and art the bushes and see what
it is. Kind of thing. The worst that can happen, you'll die.
Yeah, Oh well, but you're recording it, so it's fine.
You'll get it. You know, it'll be the spectacular, most disgusting video of your arm being ripped off. But at least we'll prove it it lives, you know. Yeah, but there's been some other videos where I have thought, oh wow, you know, that's pretty tough. But a lot of times the videos, you know, I always like to say, an animal, a real animal, moves like a really animal in its environment.
So if I'm I'm the animal of my house, and I should be able to move through my house like I know what I'm doing, right, And we get these ones where there's supposed to be well, first of all, don't believe anything that comes out of Russia. So all those videos are every one of them, and they're they're talking about YETI wouldn't it be cool if we saw YETI right now, because I always want to know what
is even if it's in Spanish or whatever. I get it translated because that's the tell tale of what they're talking about. And this is just trying to cross the road, but he stumbles and falls due to the snow, and you're like, oh, come on, you know, if you try harder, people, this is just not reasonable that Yetti wouldn't be able to walk through the snow in his own feet and skin. You know, it's not just stupid.
This is not intended to be a shameless plug for myself, but on the Facebook page for the podcast, I post a lot of video clips that I put out there just to see people's reactions. I don't necessarily give my opinion one way or another, And a lot of times I'm completely convinced that the video is a hoax, but I go ahead and put it out and just you know,
let the person decide for themselves. And I am always just really astonished at how many people believe a lot of the stuff that's out there is just completely real. There was a video I just posted recently, and I'll call this one out. I don't care. It was reportedly taken in Tennessee. This guy films a bigfoot in Tennessee. Oh look, it's a bigfoot? What is that? Oh my god?
And uh, this one did make it to a television show very similar to the one that you're on, and the experts weighed in on it, you know, and there. I noticed maybe it's clever editing how each person's testimony, each expert, you know, evaluation was just them talking about things and not necessarily saying if they think the video
is real or not. But this person that filmed it has been a guest on some major podcasts after he filmed it, and like the video went viral and everything, and it's literally if you google bigfoot costume, it's the first costume that pops up in the images. I mean, like it's obvious what it it is. And I'm just like,
how do people even believe that this is real? I mean it's, yeah, it's out of focus, so you can't prove that it's the costume, but you can tell it's a baggy costume, and it's the same shape and coloration and the face shape, everything about it's the same. Like I instantly recognized it. But I find like the Russian video that you're talking, I know, the exact video that you're talking about, Sonny Vader on YouTube who's been making bigfoot videos for years of a very large man in
a gilly suit. People just eat it up. They it's like they want to believe, they want it to be real because they they don't want to go out into the woods, but they want to see one so bad that they're willing to almost convince themselves that what they're looking at on the internet is real. And it just it blows my mind. Things didn't used to be that way.
You're right, it didn't used to be that way. And it's kind of sort of like aliens, like that, ancient aliens. I'm not assuming as anyone moves an alien And it's kind of like, come on, everything in the world can't be explained because aliens did it. And I find it in a lot of ways, it's kind of insulting because you're like, you mean, humans couldn't buy that, build the pyramids, you know, just just not capable of doing that. Is
that what you're trying to say? So anything tough to do had to be done by aliens and so but there are people who just just eat that stuff up, and I'm like looking at them, like, are you eating this up? Because it's entertaining? Are you eating this up because you actually believe aliens built the pyramids? And you know, I don't know, I don't actually no, I don't really ever get an answer out of those people. They just go, well, you know, like, no, I don't know. I don't know.
I don't care if you watch it for entertainment, but surely do not watch this stuff because you believe it's a real representation of history, because it's not, you know, right, So yeah, I don't. It does seem to be much more prevalent than not. Even all that long ago didn't seem to be.
It doesn't seem like it was that long ago at all. So what future projects do you got coming up? Squatch Fest is coming up? You're speaking at that.
I believe I speaking at squatch Fest. Filming the proof is out there. That's really all I have because it takes up a lot of my time because I actually have to learn new information and keep it in my brain and long enough to talk about it. And that's a lot of work. I don't know if you know that about But right now, that's all I have on my calendar because we're heading into a new year, and really my work schedule hasn't really allowed me to do a lot because my National forest is hot on the
that's not a very good word to use. We are moving, moving to reduce fuels. We are the number one fire shed in the entire United States predicted to go up in the next catastrophic wildfire, and so we have homes intermingled in near forest lands, and we're trying very very hard to quickly remove remove these fuels so we do not have that situation like what happened in Paradise and other places in this nation. And and so that's kept
me pretty occupied the last couple of years. Well, we have made a tremendous amount of progress, but you know, we'll get there and free my schedule up where I can do. You know, in a lot of ways, I love doing talks, and I love seeing friends and you know, doing all that kind of stuff, and I wish I could do more of it, but you know, until I retire to Oklahoma, I have to make my work unbalanced, a little bit different, more work than anything.
So well, Kathy, thank you for taking the time to join me and share a few stories and a few thoughts on this crazy subject that we've been having our noses buried done for so long. Jeez, I feel like a drug addict, I know, But.
Then you know, I I love it in the sense of I mean, it's it's essentially, you know, such a huge part of my life. I mean, I wouldn't have married Bob. I met him at a Bigfoot conference. Yeah, so that's a huge, big deal that we both have this common and met it right at the right time kind of thing. But it's it's just part of my life, you know, in a way that's probably different for other people, in the sense of I wouldn't even be who I am,
I wouldn't be Kathy's stream without Bigfoot. It's helped me become the better version of me because God knows what I beat and with Chuba camera, what would I be doing. I don't know.
If you've had your own running with sasquatch or something else you can't explain, and you'd like to share that story, 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 there's something in the woods.