I had it set for a person only. You know, you could set those things up for motion or for people, so i'd set it up just for people only, so it wouldn't go off like it's a cat or something or dog ran by, you know. And I woke up one morning and I had a notification on my phone. It said person. So I clicked on it, and when I clicked on the video, I could really see that good what it was. I could see something coming around
the corner of the house. And so I'd send it off to my father, who was able to get it cleaned up for me, and he got it back to me, and that's when we saw it. And it's standing right there in front of my bathroom window. It looks at the camera, it steps in the frame just for a second. It's long enough for us to get a good look at it, and then it steps right back out and it's gone.
This is Bigfoot Crossroads. My name is Matt, and joining me is another Matt. I'd like to welcome Matt Parish to the podcast. Matt is a researcher out of Washington. Is that correct correct? But you're originally from Texas?
Huh, yes, sir, from East Texas.
So how did you get from East Texas to the Pacific Northwest well sasquatch?
You know, living in East Texas, you always hear the stories and you see all the documentaries and everything that there's not really a whole lot of activity in the in the area that I was in. There at least that I that I could see, you know, going out to the field. So I would, you know, start going out taking my family on vacation to these big foot hotspots to look for the best I guess you could say viable habitat. And the Pacific Northwest really struck a
chord with us when we went here. You know, we came here and it just seems to have everything that's perfect for concealing a species like sasquatch. Then stood then we had our own experience in twenty eighteen when we were camping up on Lake Crescent and me and my wife actually heard something behind our cabin one night, and that's really what kind of you know, focused my attention on this area in the Olympics.
So how did bigfoot originally get on your radar in East Texas? Was it something you heard about as a kid growing up or.
Yeah, it was just something that I'd heard about growing up between my dad and my grandfather telling stories, and it was always kind of a kind of a boogeyman type, you know thing, you know, it was like like a fairy tale. I mean, it wasn't until I was in the first grade I actually saw a book in the
library about myths and legends and cryptozoology. And when I open it up and I'm flipping through and I see different things, but what really grabbed my attention was that iconic picture of Patty walking from the Roger Patterson film. And when I saw that, something that just kind of struck a nerve and I thought, that's that looks so real to me that, you know, there's there's got to be more to this than just the you know, tells and the boogeyman stuff. When when I was younger, you
didn't have Finding Bigfoot or Expedition Bigfoot. You didn't have all the TV shows. If you wanted to find anything out about Bigfoot, you had to you know, it's just like word of mouth, people telling stories, or you had to go to your local library to find something. We didn't have the Internet or it wasn't widely available. So yeah, like it is today.
So I've got very similar roots in this. I started out the same way, just desperately searching for books on the subject, and as you well know, it was lumped in with a lot of other things back then. It didn't really have its own section or anything. It was just kind of shoved in books about ghosts and UFOs and everything else. Did you have an interest in that stuff as well?
Not so much? I mean again, for me, it was I think you know too. If I had never seen that picture of Patty, it probably would not have struck as hard as it did. But it was it was being able to see that, you know, okay, there there is actually something flesh and blood in this picture, or appears to me, you know, my perception of it was that it was real and so that that really uh, you know, all the other stuff, you know, I'm kind of a I wanted to see it or you know,
something like that. So those things are interesting, but the not what really grabbed my attention.
Yeah, did it just like really captivate you so much? I mean, I just being honest, You're the first person I've talked to that's actually uprooted and moved to pursue Sasquatch and I find that really interesting, like, what was that decision kind of based around?
Well, I'd worked for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and for over a decade, and it was always the plan that, you know, we wanted to live somewhere in the mountains. We didn't really have a specific location, and then you know, we started visiting Washington State for you know, Lake said, I bring my family here for vacation. And in twenty eighteen, we were staying up on Lake Cresop in a cabin on the northern part of the Olympic Peninsula,
and it was around eleven o'clock at night. I remember it was actually on my birthday. It was our last night here in the Olympics. Aid down to go to sleep, and my wife too. There's no air conditioning, there's no white noise, it's just dead silent, and we heard only what I can describe as like the Ohio call for people that are familiar with bigfoot calls, but it was just this real long, drawn out call from the top
of this ridge. And I said up and I looked at my wife and she looked at me, and I was like, there's no way we're hearing this right now.
Happy birthday.
Yeah, and so you know, I said, we got to come back, you know, and I said, this is the place where I want to retire. Well, fast forward, twenty twenty one comes around and we actually had the opportunity to leave the you know, leave the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and early and so it just everything kind of fell into place. We had a housing lined up and it was just one thing after another. I said, it wasn't a very hard decision when the opportunity presented itself,
and so that's what we did. And everyone thought we were crazy. You know, we had a fire We had a fire sale on all of our stuff. We were up here on vacation when the opportunity presented itself and we got back and sat down on the couch and look at my wife. I said, well this sucks. I said, you want to go back? And I said, she said can we? I said, well, let's make some fun calls
and see what we can do. And you know, we had a fire sale on all of our property in about two weeks, and we packed up what we could in the car and moved up here. And it's been an adventure ever since.
Yeah, Yeah, that's amazing.
It all stemmed from that one night. If we hadn't heard what we heard, you know, that is just kind of you know, the solidified the deal for me, you know, back in twenty so.
Now, had you already kind of tapped into like the online bigfoot community before you moved up there.
Uh, not so much. I you know, I I've seen the groups and I kind of keep up with some of the news and stuff, but not not so much the online stuff now the social media, Yeah, not like I did.
Now, So you just got up there and just went on it on your own or.
Well, we settled in the Quinault rainforest, and so I started hearing from locals, and I started hearing from people, you know, the sightings, and I would go out and I would investigate.
Things, and I would talk to people. And what I found really interesting was, you know, nobody you know, from the South to coming to here. You know, in the South,
it's still kind of taboo. You know, people will kind of clown you about it, right but up here, you know, you open up and you say, yeah, I'm interested in bigfoot, you know, and then you tell people about your experience, you know, the experience that I had in twenty eighteen, and then they'll go, oh, yeah, you know, they'll listen to you for a minute, and then they'll go, well, you know, so and so over here had in it
experience or I had an experience. And then that's how you uh, just word of mouth, and then people find out you're you know, we live in a very very small community, so word spreads pretty quickly that what you're into, and then people will start opening up and talking to you and telling you their stories and their experiences, and uh so that's that's really how it kind of all happened.
You know. It's just kind of a hobby thing. On the weekends once we moved up here, you know, I had my regular nine to five job, and then on the weekends I would go out and uh talk to folks and look into their sightings, talk to witnesses and
if they had something like footprints all the property. Uh. One thing that I found hard about the rainforest is that we get so much rainfall here that a lot of times when I would show up to look at a footprints or somebody would point me in the direction of footprints, all you could really tell was that something did travel through the area that you couldn't tell if it was a bear or a person or you know, a sasquatch. So that made it a little more difficult.
But the stories and the eyewitness accounts cooberating with the evidence, you know it. It's it's interesting, you know. And then we started having our own experiences on our own property.
Well, tell me about that, because I mean, this is sounding like a very faithful story. Having the opportunity to you know, move like that to just a dream location, and now you end up on property where you have activity.
Right And we never ever anticipated, you know, I always thought so we live on a lake quaranat here in the Olympic Peninsula in the Quanault Rainforest, and all around the lake there's activity everywhere. So it doesn't surprise me now that we actually have activity occurring on our own property as well. So what originally when we were staying in our house around midnight till one o'clock in the morning that first year that we were here, we would smell something that was just like kind of a mild
musky smell. It wasn't like a real pungent hit you in the face, you know, rotten eggs. I've heard that from some witnesses. I've also heard witnesses describe what I'm describing. But it was just a mild, gamey smell, you know. And so we thought that possibly a bear was coming
up in the backyard, a black bear. And I went out and I got some floodlights and put put a blood light up on the back of the house because we didn't we don't have every conditioning up here, you know, you don't really need it, and that we do sleep
with the window open in the summertime. So I thought, you know, if it comes close, you know, hopefully the light will trigger and scared away, not really knowing a whole lot about black bears and their behavior in this area like I do now, so that that would happen, and I would go and I would look, and there would be absolutely nothing there around. Like I said, between twelve and one is when this would occur. Fast forward to the following year, and we moved just next door
into into the house next door. We were over there for about a week and say, and then my parents came up to visit, and we had just the house next door does had been vacant for some time, and it had been kind of a party house before. People were using it to party in there, and what it was actually uh employee housing for the lodge that sits on the lake, so they would have their little parties there and whatnot. Nobody was actually living in there, and
there was a lot of damage in it. I'm be honest with you, if I didn't even need a house, I would have passed on this thing. But it sits right up on the tree line, and we needed the house because my wife had gotten pregnant again. So we move in there, we fix it up a little bit. My parents come the second week that we're in there, and they're staying in our bedroom. And in our bedroom, it's right on the The bedrooms are right on the tree line to the rainforest, and in that room there
is a window unit with air conditioning. We went out and bought one so that a way that would be comfortable and my wife would be comfortable during her pregnancy. And then we slept at my daughter's room just next door, and we had the window often. And it was around two o'clock at night. This was in the end of June. It was around two o'clock at night and my wife wakes me up and she goes did you hear that? And I said, no, I didn't hear. She goes, I
think someone's outside. I said, I sit daring nobody outside, and she goes, well, something's outside. I said, there's a whole rainforest full of stuff outside, and she goes, she goes, no, no. So I go to lay back down, and I'm kind of a little little grauchy, you know. But as I'm laying back down, I heard what sounded like a clear, distinct whistle, and that caught my attention, because this is two in the morning. Was it was almost kind of like a the way a construction worker whistles, but not
as high pitch, if that makes sense. So they caught my attention. And now I'm awake, wide awake, and I'm like, okay, there's something out there. And then I could hear what sounded like a person walking away from the house. And I laid there for about another forty five minutes and I didn't hear anything. Then I'm not to back off to sleep, and so the next morning I get up and I go outside of my my parents. My dad, who's actually the chief police back home. He's been law
enforcement for thirty seven years. I've never really seen anything bother this. You know, he's he's pretty solid, but when it comes to his family, so you know, he things can rattle him sometimes.
Yeah, And I'm not.
Saying he was rattled, but I could. I could tell there was a difference about his presence. When I went onto the porch. He was something had happened and something was different. And I asked him, I said, how did y'all sleep last night? And he said, well. She said, let's let's talk about that son, and he said, how is how is your night? First? And I said, well, I said, you know, kay Lee's my wife. I said, she woke me up and she says she heard banging or something, and I said, and then I told him
the story and he goes, yeah, yeah. He said around what time was that? I said, you know, I told him it's about two o'clock in the morning. He said, he looks over at my step mom. He says, all right. He said that was the same time that we experienced something. And I asked him, I said, what did you experience and he said, well, he said, something came up to the side of the house there where your window unit
is and started banging on it aggressively. And the window unit's about six and a half seven foot off the ground, and so I said, bang, he said yeah, he said it was just like a real hard core aggressive something hard was tapping on the window unit. And so I asked him, I said, did you have you been over to the side of the house yet? He said no, he said, we just came out here, you know, you just said, well, let's go over there, let's check it out.
And as we walked over to the side of the house, we noticed that there was these seventeen inch tracks coming from the road, about three three and a half feet apart, roughly one in front of the other, and they came from the road and they came right up along the side of the house. And when we got up to where the window unit was, there was actually a rock that was about a half dollar size sitting on top of the window unit. Still something had picked a rock
up off the ground and was deeping on it. And so that really was my first realization, was like, you know what I've you know, this whole time, we've had stuff kind of happened around the house. But I always thought it was like local wildlife, you know, Yeah, that rut there was the first realization that we're not dealing
with a bear. Yeah, and then I thought, well, you know, it kind of makes sense because it's happening with the neighbors, and it's happening around the lake, why wouldn't it happen there at the house too. So that was really the first realization of what we were dealing with.
So was the activity at that house fairly consistent.
It's off and on that that I can tell you the end of June, the beginning of July seems to be uh active for us, and then in October and November seems to be pretty active. We get more vocals in October and November, and then it's just kind of
sporadic throughout the year. Random. Uh. What I think is occurring is we we live near the mouth of a river, and I don't think they're visiting my house per se, but I think that it sits on a travel route, because when you follow the eyewitnesses that I talked to, you can actually start to see a pattern develop and I think I think that they're just passing through the property going down to the river during the salmon runs.
But basically I think that's what they're what they're doing or whenever, the uh, freshwater clams because side of the lake that we live on, there's a lot on the on the beach there's a lot of freshwater clams there. So I think that that's what's occurring. And I think that as they're passing through sometimes they get curious and they stop. Because my house is the only one with children. I have two little girls, and then my wife. And then the person to my left is on the dead
end I live on the dead end street. She's a widow. And then the person to my right is her mother. Uh, she was in her eighties, so there's really nobody, nobody else around and and I think we're just like you said, on their route, And I think occasionally they get kind of curious and are maybe you know, we're like entertainment.
I guess what do you think their curiosity towards children is all about.
I've thought about that long and hard. I think maybe just kind of an innocence about children. I guess maybe they're not as threatening. They're you know, they're smaller, especially u little girls. You know, they have the high pitched, squeaky voices. My daughter, she shortly after that incident happened at our house that she had an experience, and well, we both did at the same time. I actually came
out of my bedroom. This was at ten o'clock at night, and I went to the kitchen to get a drink of water, and you know, we normally typically lay down ground nine thirty, ten o'clock, and she's in her room and so I'm getting I told you, we just moved into this house and it was a party house. And one of the things that they damaged was the kitchen window, and we so the kitchen window had to be replaced. It was busted out, and I had taken a piece of cardboard and placed up over the window until we
could get the new window in. Because it was a size that it was, you couldn't just go pick it up at home depot. It had to be ordered, special ordered. So we were waiting on that. But as I was in the kitchen getting my drink of water, that cardboards started to flex inward towards me. And I had it taped, and I could hear the adhesive from the tape, you know, pulling, you know, crinkling, as whatever was on the other side was just it wasn't like real aggressive. It was just
more like curiosity. And so I'm still not thinking Bigfoot, even though we had the activity, you know, the week before. I'm thinking bear again, you know, because we got a lot of bears out there. And so I'm watching this happen and I'm thinking, how quick can I get to my gun if this thing tries to come in the house. And around that time, my daughter comes running out of her room and she goes, I know you're trying to
sneak on me. And I said what. She's seven years old at the time, and I said what And she said, yeah, you were trying to sneak on me. And I said, what are you talking about? And she said you you were outside my bedroom window, trying to sound like a like a zombie, doing some type of weird foreign language.
Oh wow, yeah, like a.
And I said I said no, I said, I'm right here. I'm in them. I said, I'm in my boxers, a drink of water. I'm not outside the house. And then then the realization I seen it hit her and she realized that I was telling her the truth. And I said, what, what did it sound like? She said, well, she said it sounded kind of, you know, like like Chinese talk, she said, But she said like a zombie. It was just gurgled and raspy kind of And that's when I realized that there had to be two of these things.
One was talking to her at the same time, while one was playing with the cardboard. Because the minute she ran into the kitchen to say all that, whatever was on the other side of that cardboard stopped pushing on it, stopped flexing on it. So there's been other times where we've gone outside and it'll be in the evening time, and like, I'll go out there a couple of times, but the minute she comes out with me, there'll be like two extinct, clear whistles from the tree line. So
it's one of those things. I don't know what the fascination is with children, but I think it's maybe an innocence to them. Yeah, maybe less less threatening.
Now you said you moved into that house in twenty twenty one.
The first house that we moved into was in twenty twenty one. Then in twenty twenty two we moved into the to the house next to the one that we're currently in, but they're right beside one another. It's the same property. As a matter of fact, they're so close that if I were to spit, I could hit the other one.
Okay. So like we're going on basically three or four years now, and the activity has continued.
And we actually managed to capture it on a ring camera, on a ring security footage camera, and that I was just recently on Expedition Bigfoot, and that video footage was shown on the Discovery channel.
Yeah. I was going to ask you about that. So people don't just end up, you know, on Expedition Bigfoot. So how did that process work out?
So there was a there was a guy in the chat, you know. I once I started researching a lot more and talking to witnesses and stuff, I would I would go into these group chats and I would add myself to them and kind of keep my eye out for like people talking about my area. Right, So this guy posted this thing and he said, is there is there anybody with a unique or interesting uh sasquatch story for the area that I live in? And so I messaged him. I said yeah, And it turned out it was a
producer for one for the show. Oh okay, and I still didn't know. He said yeah, he said, well, we're looking to do just kind of like a small documentary thing, you know. They and I was like, like a YouTube thing and he's like yeah, and he's like sure. And then it wasn't until later on we got further on and we you know, I figured out it was actually
Expedition Bigfoot. That was who I was talking to, and uh yeah, and then they came out to the house and Bryce Johnson came out there and we did a recreation of the the events and uh he interviewed me and they showed my video that I captured.
So how did you get that video? What was going on at the time.
So that was that video was actually put out the ring camera. My my parents came and then I told you they had the little experience with us, and then the event with my daughter that was just like a week after they left. And so I told my wife, I said, we we got to do something. I said, there's got to be way we you know, I said, do we still have the ring camera that we had when we were in Texas? Do we still have it boxed up somewhere? It was that one of the things
that we left. She goes, no, it's boxed up somewhere. So I got to dig in and I found it in a box, and I set it back up again, and I put it actually on the side of the house facing the tree line.
So you just stuck it to the side of the house.
Well, I said, it on a porch that the my porch kind of wraps around on one side and the railing just before you enter the house. The railing, that railing faces the tree line down the side of the house. And so I actually I didn't even have it attached to the house. I just bettered on that railing. I just propped it up there facing at that tree line where we had been experiencing a lot of activity where they seemed to be coming and going from. And so I'd set it up, and I had it set for
a person only. You know, you could set those things up for motion or for people. So I'd set it up just for people only, so it wouldn't go off like it's a cat or something dog ran by, you know. And I woke up one morning and I had a notification on my phone that is said person. So I clicked on it, and when I clicked on the video,
I could really see that good what it was. I could see something coming around the corner of the house, and so I'd send it off to my father, who was able to get it cleaned up for me, and he got it back to me, and that's when we saw it. And it's standing right there in front of my bathroom window, and it's and it looks at the camera. It steps in the frame just for a second, but it's it's long enough for us to get a good look at it, and then it steps right back out
and it's and it's gone. And so that was that. That was really kind of like wow, you know, like, Okay, we've seen the footprints, we've seen the you know, evidence around that they're visiting the house. We've seen things in misplaced outside, we've seen the rock on top of the window unit. But to actually see it on film, now, that's that was really mind blowing.
Yeah, yeah, I bet. And so like you sent this to your father, who got it cleaned up for you, like you were saying, so I would assume that he saw it before you. The person that cleaned it up saw it. What was his reaction to this?
He was pretty mind blown too. They were all in shock. They were ready to load up and come back up here to Washington. We go hunting for Bigfoot. Actually they you know, they're sitting down there. They're like putting together a plan. Okay, now we got to now we know it's there. Now you know, there's no question, you know. And he actually said, you know, you said, if i'd seen this from someone else, you know, you always go, well, maybe I don't know, you know, But he said, you're
my son, I know you. And he said I know that where I'm looking at is real. He said, I'm ready to come back. So he was pretty excited.
So on the video, how much detail can you see? Can you tell what it is? Or is it just like a person shaped object or.
No, you can you can tell what it what it is. It's you can't see like great detail. It's not a blob squatch, but it's it's a little more than a blob squatch or does that if that makes sense. You can see you can see the face, you can see that not in detail, like I said. You can see the chest, you can see the hand in the arm, you can see the legs, you can see where the knees are bending all the way down to the feet,
and you can see both hands in the video. But it it comes around the house, it looks around the house two or three times and then it comes it very slowly. It doesn't it's not fast like Patty, you know, Patty's walking with a pace. This thing kind of creeps up a little bit and then it steps into frame just good enough to see that detail that just for like I said, one one frame, one second, and we were able to screenshop that and look at that and run it through a blue filter to bring it out
and to bring the detail out a little bit better. Yeah, you can definitely tell that it's not a bear. It's not it's not another person and whatever it is, it's above the uh, it's above the roof the eve of my house. So that makes the eve to the ground is nine foot four inches, so that would make this round ten foot tall. Wow roughly. Yeah, And so that
was that was the first first video. And then we just recently back in two months ago, I got a video when I went out to so I worked with other researchers and they get them tips and they're like, hey, you know, try this, try that, you know. So one of the things that I've been doing for the past year now is feeding, trying to set bait out for them and I can tell you, and I know a lot of people say, I don't believe, but I don't
know how these things know what cameras are. I'm not saying that it knows what a camera is, but something about cameras turn it off, and I have a theory on that. So but when I take the cameras away, they'll take things like food. They'll take plums. I can leave ten plums out for them on the side of the house, and they'll always leave four, which I kind of find amusing because there's four of us inside the house.
So I don't know if that's the initial tamp or anything or what, but anytime you set ten plums out, there's always four left behind. I can set out corn, but it has to be fresh corn, still on the husk, and they will husk the corn right there beside the house and take the cob and all of the kernels. Shrimp also seems to be a big hit, but I can't really say that that's, you know, because all the shrimp's gone. I mean, anything could be coming up there
eating the shrimp. But with the corn, you could say, okay, well that's I don't know of anything that's gonna husk it right. Raccoons and bears they'll shred the corn, they'll tear it apart. If a bear was coming up or a raccoon was coming up and eating the plums, I imagine that we take all of them, or it wouldn't leave consistently four behind. So that's one of the things.
And one night when I out there to place my bait, I was placing some apples and some paris or some fruit, and I heard right as I went around the corner of my house, I'd heard. And I go out there at the same time consistently, because I try to keep a routine in case they're watching. I go around the corner of the house, and in the back corner of the property, I heard.
A good sized tree fall over.
Now there was no wind, there was nothing. We weren't having any rain that night. It was just a clear night, and so I thought that was really odd. So I walked over to the edge of the property and I'm looking and I didn't see anything. So I took the fruit that I had, and I was holding up in the headlight, and I was kind of just talking to the woods, you know, like all right, look, guys, this
is what I brought you tonight, you know. So I go back and I'm placing my fruit out on the little table that I have beside the house, there between the house and the tree line, and I can hear something coming up right behind me, and it's just I can hear the brush popping and snapping, and I turn around and there's these two big red eyes looking back at me. I you know, I'd seen it with the headle lamp and it was reflective that the eyes were
reflected from the from the light. And this is about seven foot off the ground and about forty forty five feet away. Wow. But when when I think it appeared at the time when I measured it out, it actually was around fifty two feet from me, but it seemed closer. Yeah, And so this thing is staring at me and I'm and I actually managed to get it on film and I started recording it, and it it's just the eyes. The eyes, though, do this really unique thing. They are
bright red. And then as they would turn, because off to my left, I could hear like brush also popping and snapping in like where that tree hit fell. But as it would turn to look in that direction, they would transition to like an amber and then too golden color when you see when you would catch the side of the eyes. And I've had this video looked up by several people, wildlife biologists. They they don't know what it is. They can't, you know, they can't they they
can't figure it out. So that's that's exciting to me.
It's a big foot, yeah.
I mean it's it's a big foot. And that's what I told him. I said, you know, there was no smell associated, and we we had this kind of weird standoff, you know, I and I'm trying to talk really calm to as a matter of fact, when I first I said, oh hey, I said how are you? And then I said some explicits under my broth, yeah, because I was not expecting that at all. And so we had this weird little stand off. And I can tell that it's
definitely interested in what I'm doing. And so if we stood there, I recorded it think about five minutes what the video says, and I'm like, Okay, I gotta go. I gotta get back in the house because I didn't want to come off too threatening. But at the same time, I think this thing was I think it might have
been a young one maybe interested in the food. And maybe there was and this is all speculation, you know, that maybe there was another one that was really upset that I had it in the headlamp and that's what was making all the brush pop and snap and tearing stuff up to my left. Or it might have been trying to distract me to let the other one get out of there. I don't know, you know, it's like again, that's all speculation.
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to lose. Take your personal data back within Cognate, use code Bigfoot at the link in the description and get sixty percent off an annual plan. All right, now back to Matt. You said something that oh is so validating for me. If people have followed the podcast or know me personally and have talked to me over the years, you may have heard me talk about the famous incident that involved my best friend, who was skeptical of these
things existing. He goes down to Texas with me and has a sighting, and I'm there and part of that sighting I've talked to people about me pointing a spotlight at one right as it was going to cross the road down a ways from us. It was trying to get away, and it was headed towards the tree line next to the road, and I knew it was going to try to cross the road, so I shined the spotlight down there, and I caught it in the spotlight.
It was too far for me to see it, but I could see the eye shine through the tree limbs and everything, And as it turned its head away, the spectrum of color in the eye shine changed from red all the way to amber all the way to gold, and eventually to me looked almost like a teal color right before it went back into the shadows of the woods and I couldn't see it anymore. Yeah, I've told that story over the years. I I've tried to bush. You know, hey, guys, the you know, the eye color
changed as it changed its angle to the light. And now here you are the first person I've ever talked to that has witnessed the same thing.
Oh wow, Yeah, I'll send you the video I have. I have the video. I only shared it with a few people and I haven't actually shared it publicly yet. Yeah, I'll send you that video and you can you can see.
I'd love to see it.
Yeah, this is going on. And finally I decide, Hey, this thing has got to come to an end. We've I've got to get back in the house. I don't know what it's up to. So I slowly start backing off and I get to the corner of my house and I turn and I get within a few feet of the corner of my house, and I turn around, and as I hit the corner, I look back one
last time. I had my headlamp on, and this thing now was not where it was in the bush, but it was right on a tree, this big tree, and it was it had its head popped out beside the tree, and it was looking right at me. I just remember seeing the big eyes and the The interesting thing to me was that I remember a little bit of a silhouette of the head, the shape. I don't really remember details about the face though, because I think I was just focused on the My eyes that's the main thing
that really popped out to me. But it didn't have the big cone shaped head like you would see, you know, it had a little bit of a a There was a little bit of a cone there, but not like the you know, like you see on Patty or like you see on gorillas. This was more kind of like a cone like you would see on a chimpanzee. Just a slight, real dumb thing. So I thought, I remember that, and as it pulled its head back. But the minute my headlamp hit it that time, it ducked back behind
the tree. I mean it was fast, it was just and then I decided to high tail it faster because I realized that it had done closed some ground pretty quickly on me. And I'm not even entirely sure that that maybe was another one that was just behind that tree, and I just never saw it the whole time, because I never heard it come up. I never heard it move anymore through the brush as I was backing off.
I can tell you that a lot of times when I find footprints out there, typically if I look around enough, I'll find another set of tracks. So I don't believe that these things travel alone. I believe that they travel in groups of at least two.
Any like aggressive type behavior that you've experienced.
We had like passive aggressive stuff when we have guests that will come over and visit, like the experience with my father, you know, the banging on the window in it, right, And then we had we had one time. We had Uh. I was showing somebody the property one time because we're they're wanting to rent the house next to us, and
so I'm showing them and we're talking. We're going over the paperwork on my porch, and all of a sudden in the tree line, I heard it sounded like a baseball back crack, and so you know, and then it happened again and again, and the guy stopped and he's looking at the woods now and he's looking at my tree line, and I'm just trying to ignore it because I'm like, how do you explain this?
How do I disclose this in the lease?
So he so here as we get we start going back over the paperwork again, and then three more times whack whack, whack, and he finally asked. He says, is He says, is there somebody in the woods there? And I don't know. I I why I said what I said, but it was just really stupid. I said, that's just a bird or something. I'm like, how do I explain that to someone?
You know, we've got really big woodpeckers.
Yeah, we got really big woodpeckers going on around there. But yeah, you know, they ended up not getting the house anyways. But yeah, there was that, and then that's
really about it as far as aggressive activity. I know, one night my daughter was she was washing dishes, and I've convinced my wife the only window that we have open with no curtains or no blinds or drapes is the kitchen window, and I've convinced her to allow me to leave that window on Dunce so the way they can see us in the kitchen if they're outside at nighttime in the forest, and because I'm hoping that we can get them more comfortable to come in closer to
where maybe we can get that that really good piece some video footage or the evidence that we're looking for. So one night, my daughter was washing dishes, and where I was sitting, I had a clear sight of where she was and the window she there's a big kitchen window on Fernver that goes to the outside and that window at nighttime because there's no street light or no nothing on the outside, it's just you know, about forty feet and then you're in the forest. It's just solid black.
It's got a glossy shine on it at nighttime because it's just reflecting the light inside the house. And so I look over at her, and she's doing her dishes, and I was watching TV. But when I looked over at her, I noticed that the window was kind of a smoky off color, kind of a it wasn't that black shine. But I didn't know quite what was. You know, you look at something and you you go, well, that's not quite right, you know, but you don't know what.
You can't figure it out, you know. And so and I'm not even entirely sure it was something with the window. I was just I just knew that looking in there at her, something wasn't didn't look the way it was supposed to. And so I told her, I said, you know, I called her and I told her, I said, hey, I said, you you just stopped doing those dishes. I said, that's I'll take care of the rest of it. I said,
you can go play if you want. She's said, okay, cool, you know, so she backs away and as she starts, as she turns around the back away from doing the dishes, he and she's coming towards me. The whole whatever whatever was outside had decided to move to the right, and I could see it. It took it. It filled up the whole window. But as it stepped away when she did, I could see it going across in that window were
returning back to that black, glossy shine. And that's when I realized something had been standing right outside the window watching her.
Do dishes, blocking the whole window.
Yeah, blocking the whole window. And that that off color that I was seeing was the light from the kitchen going through the window hitting it. And that's why that's why the window looked different in different color. But as it moved, I could see it moving. You know, I couldn't tell you what body part was wet because it was so big, but I assumed that I was looking at maybe a torso area, and it just stepped to the side and then it was gone. But later on that night, we had just laid down to bed. We
had been in there for not too long. I got up, I went to the bathroom. I come back and I lay down, and all of a sudden we heard like a real out pop sounds. Something hit the bed room, the outside of the bedroom, right where I laid my head down, actually, which and you know, we've always kept the curtains drawn. You know, there's no way this thing knows where I sleep or anything like that. But I think it does know which room where we're in, you know, based.
I think they have a really good sense of smell. And so the next morning, I get up and I go outside and I'm looking and there was a probably like a tennis ball size rock that had popped the back of my house and busted a shingle right where I sleep. Wow. So I told my wife, I said, well, you know, the next way I come. Myfe said, did you find that? I told me. I said, yeah, this
is what I found. I said. I think it might have been pissed off because I told her she could stop doing dishes, and maybe that was its little way of you know, the same Hey, that weren't cool, you know, but really that's about it. As far as like aggressive activity, we haven't really noticed anything wild off the charts.
So I was just on a podcast recently as a guest, which is way out of the norm for me calling all beings shout out DJ and uh on there man. I hope DJ listens to this episode because you've done it again. So on that podcast, I mentioned that I've noticed, for some reason over the years, so many bigfoot sightings occur because they're looking in windows at houses, and it's always the kitchen window. It seems. For whatever reason, it
always seems to be the kitchen window. I don't know if it's just because houses are typically laid out where a lot of times kitchen windows face the back of the property and they're kind of higher up off the ground, and you've got a person standing right there at the window above the you know, the windows above the sink. Usually, I don't know what it is, but it always seems to be the kitchen window.
Well, I think maybe you know, I you know now that you're talking about. When you go into house, typically the kitchen window is the one that just maybe might have like the little decorative drape around it. It doesn't normally, at least here in the States, right it doesn't. It's not typically covered or have a blind over it like the rest of the windows. Would in the house, and so maybe that's maybe that's why, you know. And two, you cook in there, so it could be a food thing.
Associated you know, they're smelling foods, So I don't I don't know, but that could be two factors, two possible factors.
You mentioned earlier that you have a theory about the cameras, and of course you're not the first person that's, you know, theorized that for some reason they know to avoid cameras even if they don't know what the camera's actually doing. So what are your thoughts on that, because obviously you caught one on the ring camera, So why did that one get caught?
I think that when it got caught on the ring cameras,
it's only about fifteen feet from that ring camera. I mean, it's pretty close when we captured what we captured on the ring, But as soon as it got close enough, it looked right at the ring camera, and the ring camera's little I had other objects out there on the porch, potted plants, decorative stuff, but it to me, it looked like it looked right at that camera and then boom backed off and left and one of the things that So when I was in working for Texas Department of
Criminal Justice. I had contacted our One of the things that I was curious about when I first started all this research that I remembered was that we use dogs to find cell phones in prison facilities. And so one of the things that I was curious about was how do they How did the dogs know what are they looking for? How do they know to hit on a cell phone but not other electrical devices that you know, inmates would have in their cell like radios and whatever else.
And so I called up my kennel sergeant and I asked them. I said, hey, I said, how do you you know? I never really thought about it, you know, I was just called you guys when I needed you. But how do those dogs know to look for cell phones? And they said, Well, in the camera, he said, in all the smartphones now in the in the cameras, they use a chemical called nobium oxide, he said. And it's it's always you know, Uh, it's in your game cameras,
it's in your cell phone cameras, any camera. I said, really, he said, And that's what we trained the dogs to hit on, is that chemical nobium oxide. And so that really kind of stuck out to me, and I thought, well, maybe there's something to this nobium oxide, you know, because we could say, Okay, you could say, well, it's human sent that scares off them. I could get the human scent if you put up a game camera out in the in the woods. You know, I could see that,
you know. But how do you explain it when it's at somebody's house, right, and there's human scent all around the house, you know what I mean?
Yeah, and there's constantly changing objects and everything else.
Yeah, what was it? And it's like that this is just a theory, But I think that there are certain chemical components used to make cameras that might that these things might be sensitive to, especially if they have if they have a really great sense of smell, if anything like a grizzly bear or greater, you know, then it's not unreasonable to think that there's certain things that could turn them off almost act like a repellent.
Yeah, And it could just be a situation where it's not even necessarily the acute sense of smell. Maybe it's just something that they're particularly sensitive to that we don't know. But that's a really interesting theory and I'm definitely gonna deep dive that immediately because that makes a lot of sense. And I never thought about the the training of the dogs for the cell phones and anything like that. It makes a lot of sense.
Yep, that's what they're that's what they're looking for. And so I just kind of when he told me that, I was like, hmm, maybe you know, uh, you know, it's funny because I've put game cameras up out in the field, out in the woods, and we actually you know, you even try to conceal them and hide them the best you can, and like Elk will come right up and sniff them. Yeah, it's just you know, you could, like I said, there's a whole lot of things that
you could say. You know, no matter how good you try to hide that stuff, it seems like the locals always seem to find it. And but when it's up on your house, how do they you know, you know, especially for since so sus something I found interesting, something that I kind of look at right now.
Yeah, for sure. So you're working on a book project. What's the focus of that going to be?
So the book is basically it's what I've done is I've taken all the reports that I've been collecting over the last four years from my area. It's called the Sasquatches of Grace Harbor County, and I've taken the eyewitness reports and I've turned them, you know, because when you read reports and like the you know, certain groups, it gets kind of monogamous, it gets kind of boring because they're all kind of the same. So I've taken it and I've taken their reports and I've turned them into
campfire stories. But you can go back in the back of the book and reference the actual reports, so you'll be able to see exactly what took place. And so that's what I've done a little different with this book, and it's just the locals and their their accounts.
And when is that going to be available.
Well, it's hopefully next month. It's going to go off to the publishers and we'll be having it pretty quickly. Oh wow, yeah, so I'm hoping before summer we'll have it out.
And then you've got the Yakima Bigfoot Conference coming up.
You said, yes, yeah, So I'm going to be speaking in at the accommendation at the at the Legends Casino October twenty fourth and twenty fifth as a guest speaker for that Bigfoot conference.
And any previews as to what you're going to talk about.
There, Urban sask Watches, That's what I'm going to talk about. It seems that in my research one of the things that I've find consistently is that you know, a lot of times, you know, people go out into you know, on the TV shows, they go out into the into the woods and they find sasquatch. But that's not so much the case. It seems like these things are coming up to small rural communities, uh, and that they might actually possibly be thriving just on the outside of it
of these of these little communities. And so I think that a lot of times we might be looking for sasquatch in the wrong place, and really we need to look closer to our own homes.
I mean, case in point, your property. Yeah, my first sighting actually took place in a parking lot. So I'm a big proponent of the urban sasquatch theory.
Yeah, yeah, I think that's I think they've learned to adapt and survive just on the outskirts of our society and in small rule communities, you know. Not I'm not saying you're gonna find one, you know, out skirts of Los Angeles. But you know, I don't know. I'm open to I hear a lot of different theories and stuff. I have my own. I'm in the realm that it's a flesh and blood creature just from the things that
I've seen and the things that I've experienced. But I'm open to all the possibilities as the data comes in, you know, I'm open to change and adapt.
Well, that's what I was going to ask you before we finish off here. I mean, it's, you know, the question everybody asked, the question everybody wants to know, and the question nobody has the answer to. But at this point, what do you think they are?
I honestly that that is a good question. I I don't have an answer for that. I you know, I think that. So what I can tell you is that being the way people move and the way people will try to avoid other people, this thing definitely does not act like your typical wildlife, right, So, I, you know, to say it's a primate, I think it's a little
bit more than a primate. I'm not going to say that it's that they're type of people, but maybe maybe a mix, you know, we know that humans are crossbred with Neanderthals, right, So is it is it unreasonable to say that maybe, you know, like a rella commonly didn't crossbreed with a a species of primate or something. I don't know. Uh. I don't necessarily believe that it's like gigantic pithecus, like a lot of people say or or
believe that's a common theory. I think that it has intelligence like you and I do, in the aspect that it's able to avoid detection. It's intelligent enough to know where to go h and and how to stay just in the shadows to avoid people.
I mean, just case in point, you know the ring camera incident. Well, like you said, whatever the reason be, after it figured out it was there or sow it or whatever, it backed away and took cover again. Compared to the other example you gave of like an elk coming up and sniffing a game camera, the thing didn't come up and sniffed the camera or anything. It acted like a person.
I've even seen, like I followed these things through the woods, track these things through the rainforest there around on the outskirts of my property, and I've seen where they'll go to step like in a soft spot, like a muddy spot, and they'll retract their footback and then they'll continue on
the more solid ground just to you know. And I don't know if it's that they're trying to conceal their prints or maybe if it's just a preference that they prefer harder substreet compared to soft substreet, but it's something that I've noticed, or like when they go through a through a marsh, you know, you can see the transference from where they where they will step on logs to avoid stepping into the mud. Right they'll cross the marsh, you'll see the transference from the moss from the log
to another log. And so I always found that interesting that they will do things like that, or they'll avoid certain areas until certain certain specific time frames, you know, in the in the evening, they seem to like to come around in close to the houses between that midnight to three o'clock in the morning range, opposed to other hours when they when they know that people are going to be up and about, you know, they they like and they like to know that everybody's going to be
good in a sleep before they come in. So you know, in that aspect they kind of operate much the way a person would trying to avoid detection.
Right back in my research days, we would see where they would step on rocks to avoid leaving tracks, especially around creek beds and things like that, and other people have described actually witnessing this. I've never witnessed it personally, but hopping from tree to tree, like staying at the base of the tree where the root balls are and everything to kind of avoid the soft ground in between the trees.
Yeah, I've heard of something similar.
I don't know too many animals that aren't that self aware and go to those links to conceal that they're around. And the only thing I can think of, the only thing that they would need to conceal themselves from is us, and that would require an extreme amount of forethought to be going through those steps to avoid us in specific.
You know, I've talked to a lot of the different native tribes here in the Olympics, and I've developed a really good relationship with a lot of them, and there's you know, one of my friends told me they said that they are just you know, and this is his He said that they're just disgusted with people in general, that they are curious about us, but at the same time they're just disgusted. They don't want us to be
aware of their presence, and so I don't know. I just kind of find that interesting that they're willing to come in close enough to to see what we're doing, but at the same time avoid us. It's such great links.
Well, Matt, I appreciate you coming on here and sharing some of your stories and some of your insight on the subject. And man, it's an open invite. Anytime you want to come back. I'd love to have you.
Oh, thank you. I appreciate that it's been it's been a blast. I've had a good time.
Check out the website big at crossroads dot com. You can find links to social media, past episodes, march and nice. Everything you need all in one place. And until next time, remember there's something in the woods.