Welcome to Big for Society. If you have bigfoot activity to report from the same areas discussed in this episode, please reach out to me directly after this episode. And if you'd like to be on the podcast to discuss a personal bigfoot encounter, please reach out to me directly at Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com. Do you wish there was more Big for Society to listen to you
every week? Well there is now. If you become a supporting member over at Patreon, you get a special members only episode every single week on Wednesdays, and sometimes even more episodes. Head on over to patreon dot com. Forward slash the Bigfoot Society and now let's get on with the show. All right, Bigfoot Society. I've got the privilege of talking to mister Johnny Tucker today. He's a bigfoot researcher down there in North Carolina. How's it going, Nan, It's going good.
I was kind of hoping for an early spring, but we're going through another cold snap at the moment, but I think he's going very well. Thank you for the invite on the podcast, Big Society, and congratulations on your success.
Oh yeah, I was happy that our mutual friend Miss Vee was able to make the connection. And it looks like you've got some really interesting things that will be will be looking into today. And you've got I've got a few sounds that you've recorded. Well, we'll listen to those further in the episode. But Johnny, what was it that got you first into this, this whole Bigfoot thing to begin with?
Well, I'd have to I'd have to give credit to my parents because back back in the day, I was probably about seven years old and they took us to see one of the movies that came out I believe it was back in the seventies. It was one was called A Creature from Black Lake, and I believe the other one that came out up on the big screen was Sasquatched. And ever since then I was pretty much terrified.
And but the whole allure of does Bigfoot exist? That that stuck with me throughout my my whole life basically, and then from ever since, you know, to the TV shows that came on Legend of Boggy Creek in Search of a Monster Quest, and then when YouTube and the Internet came out, just defining stories Bigfoot stories and encounters, it just pretty much just blew the doors wide open, So it's pretty much stuck with me my whole life.
When was it that you first realized that all the stuff you've got going on down there in North Carolina?
Well, it was a I always kind of thought that Bigfoot was out on the west coast for for some reason when I was growing up, because I grew up in a big city just north of Buffalo, New York, so I'm pretty much a city slicker, and we really didn't have we probably had to travel about two and a half hours down to the Alligating Mountains, which is down the Pennsylvania New York border for if any bigfoots
were existed, that that would be the area. But got down there, so I pretty much thought it was west coast thing, maybe Smoky Mountains. I'm more toward the eastern part of North Carolina, about two and a half hours from the coast, so the mountains for me is a good four hour drive, so I kind of figured it
would be more up toward the mountains. And it wasn't until an episode of Finding Bigfoot where they did some research and some investigating in the u National Forest, and you know the Ure National Forest, it's about a three hour drive for me, it's pretty much right in the center part of North Carolina. And then from from that, I just pretty much was doing some Google searching see if there's any kind of sightings or activity that it was closer to me, closer to the to the east coast,
checking out the BFRORO website. There was a few reports up and around my county. I don't think a lot of people who have had big foot sightings or encounters their report to the BFRORO. Probably one for a couple of reasons. One, they probably don't know that the BFRO exists, and probably they just want to keep it more more more hush hush. And the BFRORO website. I was checking out a big foot mapping project. There's some sightings up around where I live, and I work with a guy
who had some family land. It's about forty minutes from to my west and back in I believe it was about six years ago, maybe seven years ago. He had either posted up on Facebook or had commented on someone's Facebook post that he had seen a white sasquatch on his family's land. So that pretty much brought it even closer to me. And from there just doing some Google searching.
There is a crypto Zoology and Paranormal Museum. It's about a half an hour forty minute drive from me and back in the all of twenty nineteen, they actually had a festival up in this state park. It's called Meetnock Mountain State Park. It's pretty much in a rural part of the state, forty five minutes drive from raleyh Rono Rapids, the big city, so it's out in a rural area.
And I said, heck, I'll go up there and attend it, and met some great people, a lot of local people, a lot of local hikers, a lot of local folks up in the area that have either had encounters encounters meaning tree knocks, finding tree structures, sightings, finding footprints in and around the Meetnock Mountain area. And from what I took from listening to everybody and talking to a lot of folks is that it wasn't it's not just in
the state park area. It's pretty much up in that part of North Carolina, northern part, northeastern part, Central Park. So that's what really got me into it, and it's I realized that maybe I don't have to go out to the west coast to encounter or to see if this bigfoot phenomenon exists, I can just go a little ways up the road. And that's pretty much what I did. I started hiking, doing a lot of hiking and experiencing a lot of stuff out that way, and for sure it is real.
Was there a certain event that really, you know, pushed you over the edge as you were starting to go through your research, something that was like, wow, okay, there is no question that what I'm dealing with is right out there right now.
There was. I started the way that my work schedule was. I had my day's offer during the week and pretty much in the afternoon. So being a rural park, there's really not a lot of people. You get a good weekend crowd up there, but during the week it's really there's hardly anybody up there. So the first time I went hiking was October that year, and I had a little tire thumper in my car and sparked up in the parking lot. There's nobody around, and I started to
do just a couple of tree knocks. I really didn't know what I was doing. The one trail that I went down, it kind of goes downstream. It's about a time and a walk down to the creek. So about halfway down the trail, I didn't know the tree knock and just kind of just ran stealth or just ran quiet and made it down to the creek. And the atmosphere that day it was like super hot, if even before October it was super hot. It was just dead quiet,
really nothing ruin. And here comes a tree knock back from the other side of the creek up one of the bluffs. I mean, just as crystal clear as you can think. It sounded like it probably sounded like a pine tree something hitting a pine tree, but just clear as day. The second time went out hiking was a week later and one afternoon, started at about two thirty and took a different trail that went upstream, this time a little longer of a loop. It's probably about a
two and a half mile hike. And I got to about halfway on the trail and it kind of loops back. You're going to come back through a very tight, narrow section of woods and then eventually out to a field where the parking lot is. So I noticed that there was a couple of X structures back in the woods, and there's also some tree breaks back there. But for some reason, when I made that turn and just about the head back in, there was just a super super
feeling of something watching us, just in anxiety. It was kind of like my sixth sense just kicked in overdrive. Really never experienced anything like that before. And I was really deciding whether or not to keep on going or to go back the long way. And at that time, it was probably about four o'clock in the afternoon. It was mid October, so the sun was coming down below the tree line, so we were starting to get dark.
So I kind of sucked it up, started going down the trail where the trees both sides of the tree lines kind of enclosed in a little bit, did one more tree knock, and then ran silent out there. But in the meantime, there was being up in this area. There's there's a lot of hunters and they hunt with dogs, so a lot of times that the dogs they don't
come back, they'd get lost in the woods unfortunately. But there was this dog that was somewheers, not close to me, but somewhere back in the woods, and it started barking just randomly, nothing to be alarmed about. So I say I was probably about fifty yards if if not even closer to coming out into this smetal into this field. The dog was still behind me, back somewhere in the woods,
but it was barking even more. I had stopped all of a sudden, back where I was not directly back behind me, but back in the area that I was, comes this super loud, super it was a low yell. It was basically like a super powerful yell back there, and it was it was a person couldn't do it. It was just like super strong. I mean like it echoes throughout the whole woods and the dogs shut right up. So I don't know if it was if the yell was directed toward the dog or directed toward me coming
through the area. So I made it out. I went to my car. It was about four thirty by that time, and in my car, and there was two other cars in the parking lot, so I was like, well, I'm just gonna sit here and just just in case somebody, just in case if somebody was behind me just like screwing around, They're gonna come out and I'll be able to see if there was anybody back there. But two cars in parking lot, they were up in the pavilion area using the restroom. They came out and they left.
I sat in my car and I was just like Wow, went home, got on YouTube, googled everything, black bear, black bear sounds, yelled black bears everything, and it did not even come close. It was like like an unbearished yell. It was a short yell. I would describe it as if if a person was trying to scare somebody and they were say, if a person was hiding behind something and then their friend comes up and then they go raw, And that's that's really how it was. But it was
so so powerful. December of that year, just a few months later, there's a service road that and that's a really small parking lot and you can access the back trails just going it's probably about an eight minute walk down the service road. And had stopped there one afternoon in December. I was just going to take a quick walk right down to the bridge that leads back up to the service trails. And there's actually a creek that
runs the whole length of the park. So there's there's a bridge and you go over the creek and then
you go up to the back trails. So I was probably about maybe about thirty yards fifty yards from the parking lot, had stopped on the service road turns to the tree line, and I was trying to get my cell phone up and running, and just directly where I had stopped, you're going to have a lot of small brushes, a lot of dead briers, and then probably back maybe fifty yards, if not even fifty yards, you're going to have a taller section of pine trees, the taller pines.
But back behind the pine trees, here comes this super loud howl and it was short. It probably lasted about three or four seconds. And described it as if you watch Finding Bigfoot with Matt Moneymaker, he does this this this howl. It's probably about the three or four seconds of his howl that that's how loud it was, and hurt something walking back there, just stop being kind of pacing back and forth. There the leaf litter December, it's like super thick, super dry, and I just like froze
on my track. So I was like, wow, I really didn't know what to do. So I basically just like howled back at it just to see what would what it would do to come if it was going to come at me. Or if it was just going to stay back there. But I went back in the air the next day, had a friend of mine and just
trying to debunk it. Just had my friend go down go down the service road to where the trail head was and just like yell as loud as you could also over into the parking lot just to yell as loud as you could and it was like nothing, just nothing compared to the powerful uh how that was. It took me about a month to get enough nerves to go back there, just to check out what the area looked like. But when I did, just before you get into the pines, the pine barrier, there was a small
X structure. It wasn't huge, It probably came up to my chest. And there was also a tree break back there. And the tree breaks that we find around here, they're usually between six and seven feet, so there's an X structure tree break. So Ever, since then, you know, I was pretty much new to it. I bought this audio recorder and I carried it up on my backpack everywhere I went to just just to cry to document just
in case something like this happens again. So it wasn't until March of the following year twenty twenty, we had a pretty a pretty mild winter that year, and I wanted to test to see I've heard people leaving audio recorders outside overnight, and I pretty much just wanted to test and see what the battery capacity would be and
how much memory would be to run overnight. So I went down to a remote part of the creek and left left the recorder up in just like a little notch of the tree, and came back the next morning and picked it up and just listening to the audio for that night.
Big for society, who will be right back after these messages.
It was nothing special. It was just just normal, you know, being being in mar It was still pretty quiet. So a little bit of crickets, a little bit of this, not even a little bit of deer running around, because you can tell when a deer dog walks, walks through the brush. It's kind of like peg leggy type. At two thirty in the morning, something starts to walk. You can you can hear it walks. It's in the distance and it walks at a It wasn't a run. It was more like a quick walk, not a fast walk,
but a quick walk. It starts off walks right past the area that I had the recorder set up. Now, this is down by one of the areas of the creek, and at the time there was a there was a down tree there. So you hear this thing walking, it's coming closer, it's combing closer. You hear it step over the tree, and when it does the step over, it sounds like a two legged step over. It goes a little bit past, and it settles down in the area for a couple hours. You can hear it shuffling in
the leaves. You can hear it kind of shifting its weight. Now, four o'clock in the morning, it does a tree knock. Four forty five in the morning, it does a second tree knock, and then you can hear it leaving the area, shuffling off into the area. And it wasn't like a real big blast. I call them power knocks of like if you get a baseball bat and just hit a tree as hard as you could. It was. It sounded like it had either a stick or a club and
it just like casually just like hit the tree. But ever since then, that was pretty much my eye opener.
Listening to that audio was my eye opener. Because you can argue, you know, the footsteps coming through and I think it took something like about fifty seconds till when you first hear when you first hear it, walking to where its settled in, the whole timeframe was about fifty seconds, and you can kind of argue that you know, two legged, four legged, but if you when you're throwing the tree knocks. After that, that was pretty much my eye opener moment.
And from that point on I was one hundred percent committed. And the most important thing about that audio clip is that it did not circle back and come back where
it came from. It kept on going, and so I basically just kept on going with doing audio, leaving audio recorders up probably about a quarter mile up searching that area rually really well it's its root and right knox to the creek, and just trying to develop some patterns, you know, over the next five years, coming across footprints up up in the creek beds, finding tree breaks, finding tree structures, and basically just hoping to come across one
of these creatures one day. But that audio that night, between the walk by and adding in the tree knocks, that that was my eye opener moment.
Should we try to place some of that audio right now? I'm just going to go through how you sent them over to me here. Okay, So I think we first we start out with a few tree knocks. So let's let's play those.
I can get. I can give you some times and dates on those if if you'd like, absolutely we had to go through the list. That first one, that big power knock where hits the tree twice and the tree falls. That was in June of twenty twenty one. That was two fifteen in the morning. That second one, that close by one, that was just last October, the October of twenty twenty four, and that was four forty five in the morning. That was that was pretty close.
I want to I'm going to play the second one again. It just it sounds really interesting.
Wow.
Wow.
Do you think that was hit on something? Would or or what? Do you think?
You know? I'm glad you asked that that. There's there's tree knocks that I've heard in person before, and there's three knocks that have gotten on audio recorded that you can definitely tell that it is a stick or branch hitting a tree. It's just that would knock tone tone to it. And sometimes when that happens, if if you ever hit if you ever go out in the woods and you find a you know, like a four foot or a four three foot branch and hitting it as
a tree, but the top part might break off. In some audio recordings that I've gotten, it's it's definitely a tree would hitting a tree, and then sometimes you can hear that part kind of break off. Now that recording there, I've heard in person before, and I've also got this.
Same tone way back out in the woods probably I think it was in twenty twenty three, but it's that same tone, but it does have kind of like a metallic kind of kind of undertone to it.
So really not sure. But but to back it up, I've heard that before. I've I've had friends out there that has heard that tone before, and I picked up that tone also back out in a different, even even more remote area.
So let's continue here. Next step, we've got it, says knock in a whistle from twenty two. I'm going to try these here. That first one really has a baseball bat type quality to it.
That was back in descent. It was actually December twenty ninth, twenty twenty two, and that was caught. I think it was nine to fifteen PM, and that was in the same area that my first audio recording or the thing walked and then did did the two tree knocks, that was right in that same area. So yeah, it actually sounds like maybe it hit a tree and some dead leaves from the tree came down and fell, and then that whistle, same recorder, same location, forty five minutes later, was was the whistle?
What's the What type of recorder are you using?
I used a little Sony. It's nothing really spectacular. I think it probably you can probably pick one up for about sixty five bucks. I don't I don't have the item number. It's just it's just a little rectangle shape sony recorder. I usually put it in a if you go to the eye doctor, he might give you like a cloth sleeve. I just slip slipper rickon sleeve and sometimes I run an external microphone. But just yeah, just just a little Sony. It's it's really not hard to pick up at the store Amazon.
Interesting. These are These are really good. I'm going to continue here. This one's a little bit longer. Maybe some whoops, we'll see what we got here. Oh, you're still there. Nope, okay, all right, let's call him back real quick. Sure, got hey, no problem happens all the time for some reason or another. Okay, I'm used to it, all right, So I think these this next one is a little bit longer. I just want to make sure. Okay, audio is still coming through. Good. So let's play this guy here.
Houck house. What's up?
What fu?
Hos f.
W co.
Relation this?
You?
You didn't?
So that was really interesting? What did we have going on there?
Okay? That was that was recorded in an area which I believe that there was a juvenile land for a couple of years, just kind of like hanging out. I don't think it's back there now because a lot of the activity back in that area is kind of decreased. Well, the backstory on that is, back in twenty twenty, we found some footprints along that one service road that I was talking about. It was it rained the night before and now I was out there with about three other
people came across some footprints. It appeared that it was walking along the service road. It had stepped in the service road with its right foot, went down to the creek, had a slipprint down to the creek and then it came back up the same way it had stepped on with another part of the service road, whereas you can able to see the footprint with its left foot. The measurements of the footprint were twelve and a half It
was five and a half inches wide. So the summer of twenty twenty two when that was recorded, it was a real dry year here and the creek not a lot of water in the creek, so there's a lot of exposed creek beds, and over the summer, I was noticing that same size footprint up in a couple different areas of the creek bed. Not anywhees near the trails, and it appeared like it came down off of one of the bluffs and it had stepped in going down to the creek. So I was going to meet a
friend of mine. This is going back. I think it was in It may be in August. Yeah, August of twenty twenty two. We had got a campsite there, and we usually do is hit a campsite and then we'll head out in the trails, head out in the woods with thermal equipment trying to see if we can see anything. So I had got there. I think it was about
five point thirty. I went down to the creek and I think I was probably about fifty feet from the edge of the creek, and there's there's there's not a not a soul around, not a carner parking lot, and on the other side of the creek. All of a sudden, it sounds like someone took a baseball bat and just hits a tree. The tree starts to break. Can hear the fibers in the in the tree cracking. The tree
did not fall. I pretty much went downstream, hooked the audio recorder up back up in the woods, came back upstream, got my hip waiters on, went down into the into the creek to try to find some prince. All when this is happening, you can literally hear something back up. It's it wasn't close up, but it was back aways, just going through the dry leafletter, just pacing back and forth. When with a friend of mine got there, I was still up, still down into the creek looking for prince.
He was up on top the probably about an eight foot bank, you know, from from the bottom up to your first level, and he livery said, Johnny, there's something back there walking. It was just walk pacing back and forth. You can hear the occasional branch break. We left the area. There was a tree knock thirty minutes after we left the area. That recording there happened at midnight. Now that area, like I said, I believe was a juvenile was hanging
back out there. Evidence wise, I found a couple of eight inch footprints back now this is going back twenty twenty and recently last year found some nine inch footprints down into the creek bed and also at the bottom of like like a mud patch, and possibly as possibly that could have been the juvenile either mimicking or calling an owl, because the owl at the end pretty much answers it. I've been doing this for five years. I've
never heard that before. Absolutely never heard that before. And that last tree knock that was the same location, the same reporter, that was at six fifty in the morning. That was when that tree not happened.
Some wild stuff. Do you ever hear owls out there that sound like extremely large? Do you ever run into that at all?
Not often? I mean, here are a lot of owls out there, maybe here one that's deeper tone than others, But nothing that would really stand out.
Though, gotcha. Well, we've just got a few more sounds to go through. I'd say, let's go right through them here. I want to make sure we get them all. So let's see. Next one's about thirty four seconds. I'm going to play that here. We've got two different whoop styles in that one.
That was That was March of last year, Big.
For Society will be right back after these messages.
And I had two recorders set up. They were about three hundred yards apart. I think it had been about like ten pm at night. That higher pitch whoop that kept the higher pitch one that just kept on going. I think that that was the juvenile. It was either back up on the blow for back up up up in the up in the forest. But at the end of that clip, I don't know, I don't know how how clear it came out, but there was a response
in an adult one whooping back at it. And I think the next the next audio reporter or next audio clip I sent you was actually the adult doing a whoop.
All right, let's see here.
Yeah, that's it, that's it.
I do that a few more times here. M Oh, that's wild. Oh man, if I I've never heard anything like that out in the woods. Well, I mean I've heard a roar, scream, but no, no, like like this is. This is a pretty interesting whoop that you've been capturing here. And man, I don't know how I would how I would deal with that. That would be pretty cool. It almost makes you think you're at the zoo for a minute.
Yeah, yeah, Like I said that, I had the recorders about three hundred yards away, the small one if the higher pitch woops, it came louder. The one record I head upstream, the adult woop if you want to call it that. Both recorders the three hundred yards away picked it up. So it was either between the two recorders or I could have been back up on one of the bluffs. But both recorders picked them up. And I think that last one with the whoop, that was in
a different location. It's probably about a mile and a half away, and that was in November of last year.
Okay, let's see we got another wop here. I'm gonna go ahead and play that. That's fantastic, Holy macrel.
Yes, wow, that's a good one.
That's I mean, have you ever looked at these in audacity? Or anything. I don't know if you're familiar with how.
To do that. I'm kind of like a beginner on the audacity. Okay, so I kind of played around with it a little bit, but I for sure have not mastered it. I have not mastered it at all.
We're gonna go ahead, do the last one here. Holy shit, Yeah, that is so cool.
Yeah. I used to work midnight shift a lot, and I would come off midnight shift. I'd go up to this small parking lot up up where I go. I get up there first thing in the morning, eight o'clock in the morning, and you'd be the only one out there. And it's a short walk down to the creek, like I said about, probably about eight ten minute walk, but
three or four, especially in the summertime. Three or four times you get there, get out of the car, you pop your trunk open, you'll hear this crisp tree knock coming back in the woods, just as crystal clear as possible. Now, I was going there for three I was hooked. I was going there for like three or four days a week. So I had figured maybe they had recognized me from coming into the area, and maybe they were giving me
like a low knock. But I had talked to this other big foot researchers got many many years over me, and they suggested that they're doing a knock just to warn if there's another one in the area that there's a human coming in. That's why they do that single knock. Interesting, but that audio click there went down to the creek, I didn't have any of my equipment with me. I was basically just got off for work one up there.
I wanted to go down take a look in the creek bed just just to see if anything was stepping out that night. And I didn't even have a tree knocker with me, and I usually get to one part of the creek and I might hear a knock come up on the other side, back up in the woods. So went down there and didn't hear anything. So I started to go downstream, and as soon as I started going downstream, there was a knock other side of the creek. I'd have to see maybe one hundred and fifty maybe
about one hundred yards down it knocked. So the only thing I had to do was I was just doing like the cheek pops, So I was cheek popping. We kind of passed each other. We were kind of parallel, did the cheek pop, it knocked back. I went down to where it was initially it was back up where I was, and it did it again. Then I came back up and just sat on the creek bed and just on hopes. I had a little pair of just
on hopes that maybe I could see something. Maybe. I mean, it hit is so thick out there in the summertime, but that one there was the last pop. I was doing the cheek pop and then you hear the hawks squawking, and then it knocked back on one of the bigger trees back up on one of the bluffs there.
Is that the I mean, if that happened to me, it would feel like there's a communication going back and forth. Have you experienced anything else like that in that area before, or is that a pretty rare occurrence?
That was probably the best one. The only other thing that I've experienced is just when you're in the area, you'll hear a tree knock. It could be close up in the woods, it could be other side of the creek, up on the one of the bluffs. Never had any kind of other interaction. I thought for sure that day there that one was going to come up and like look over and check me out or something. But that was pretty much just just cheep popping back and forth
with that thing. That was probably the most interesting interaction. Now. I was there summer of twenty twenty three. We had a big storm comes through the area and got up there one morning and I wanted to check to see if there was any footprints up on the trails. So pulled into the parking lot and at the time, it's it's it's a small parking lot, probably fifteen twenty cars
probably probably parked there. You'd be maxed out. But at the beginning at the front end of the parking lot there was a state truck and there was also a guy in a caboda and he had a chainsaw on the back, so they were kind of like talking back and forth. So I was under the assumption that he's probably going to go and do some trailer maintenance after the storm. And the koboda was running, so it's got
a loud engine. So I parked back as far as I could, right against the tree line, started getting my stuff out, open up my trunk, and here comes a knock in the woods or back where I was it was louded. I mean, actually it actually sounded like it hit a branch first and then it hit the tree. So I immediately like looked at them. I'm like, do you guys not hear that or not? But the sound of the the engine and a koboda was just like drowning, drowning it out to them. I went up to the
tree line. I had my thermal and where that location is. You're up on a parking lot and it kind of like it's a gradual slope down to the creek. Didn't see anything on thermal. I went back. I actually and I yelled, and I yelled into the trees. I said, where are you at? And then I heard a grunt of a pause and then a low growl, So it was a grunt pause, low growl. Back went back to my car, started getting all my gear up and ready
to roll. By that time, the guy in the caboda was right at the trailhead and going down one of the trails. And then another tree dock comes back, but this time it was more toward the right and more toward back. More so I'm thinking that there was one out there that morning. The guy in the Koboda's scooped them. So that that's that's that's a pretty good area in the mornings.
That's wild. Do you have a recording at all of of the that grunt interaction?
I don't. I don't. I I had popped my trunk open and was just trying to get off all my my gear and then I heard the knock, went over there with my thermal. I didn't even have my record or anything going.
So this this reminds me of something I've heard from the Olympic Project guys Chris Spencer. So what they say, and they've they've said this a few different times, and I try to keep it in mind when I go out is a lot of the stuff that they get is right when they get out of the car is there's a lot of it's almost like hey, he's they're back, you know. And so usually they have they'll have something run and like on their head, which would you know, just to make sure they catch it. But that's wild.
I used to do a call in show and I would have all sorts of people call in to talk, and I had this old timer callin from North Carolina wants talking about how he would go out in the
US and have some really interesting interactions. And it was to the fact where he was even having conversations with your I don't know what you would call him down there, if you have, like park rangers or for forestry workers or whatever they would be called, but it sounded like from the way that this old timer was talking is that they are well aware of the different types of bigfoot that are down there, how they act, what they're like,
and they're just very, very familiar with them. Have you ever picked up on anything like that or had any conversations yourself?
Uh? Yeah, had I'm well, this really wasn't a I met they were doing a control burn up here a couple years ago in twenty twenty three and ran into want to be a forest somebody that works for the forest Apartment, But he basically said be careful, and I told him I pretty much knew what's out here. We had conversations with the park rangers. They said that they cannot say that they exist because it's in it's not a proven species, but they're not Let's see how I
want to say this. I think they know, they pretty much act like they know they but they're there. They just cannot come out and say it's there because it's it's not a proven species. And I think it's got a lot to do with public opinion. I mean, if they say, you know, big foot's running through the park here, you know, there's probably not going to be it's probably
going to slow down travel in there. But I my f from when I can get I think that they know, but they just cannot come out and say this is what's going on.
Wow. So you've actually had those conversations with people in the park.
They're they're actually very comfortable talking to us about it. I mean we talk and they listen, and they don't, you know, shoe us off and say, hey, you're you're crazy to get out of here. They're very they're very open to it conversation wise.
That's crazy. I know that's the case with places like Saltfolk State Park up in Ohio, but I was not really aware that it's also the same case down down there in North Carolina. And are you a type of guy that you have like big footstickers on your truck or it just it's just naturally Okay, Yeah, yeah, I gotcha.
Yeah, yeah, I got a couple of big footstickers on my car. Yeah. I think also it depends on where you go to I mean where I go, they might be more open to talk about it or not talk about it, but like accepted. But if you go, you know, other places in the state, they might be more defensive about it. I guess we got a good group up this way.
That's that's good. Are there a lot of visuals that are reported from that area ever?
Actually, one gentleman, his name is Stephen Barcelo, who runs the Cryptozoology per Normal Museum. He's got some thermal footage that he's gotten up one I think it was back in fall of I think it was fall of twenty twenty. There was a three day camp out. I was there for the first For the first day we kind of
like split up into two groups. The group that I was with kind of took took the high way or took the high road up the bluffs, and the group that Steven was with they kind of like went around and stayed down by the creek and they were hearing some stuff the night that I was there. The second night I had to go do some I had to split so I wasn't there and it was a smaller group.
Steve Stephen and the guy that he was with went back down to the area that the the arey and that they were hearing some stuff on the night before, and from what happened, a few guys went down to the bottom of the bluff. They were making a bunch of noise that either know, they're either talking or playing some some instruments. Uh. The one one guy likes to
go out there and play Native American music. I guess Steve Stephen hung back and he was the only one with the thermal at that time, and something had come up the bluff and was checking out the guys down below. And he's got I think he's got like three pictures of it. One of it is standing between two trees, is kind of like out in the distance a little bit. One of them is either either kneeling down in high
brush or in high brush. But he's got a really really good picture of a side profile walking and it's it's like a million dollar picture. But yeah, that's the pictures that we've gotten out of there.
That's awesome. I met Steven a few years ago. He's a great guy. I believe it was done in Lexington, Kentucky at one of the cryptic con conferences Big for Society will be right back after these messages. So I need to reach out to him. And I've never actually chatted with him on the show, I think, so we'll have to make that happen.
Did he show you his strong picture?
You know, I don't think. I don't think. Man, that's a good question. It's been a few years. I think I would remember something like that really well. So I'm going to say I don't think so.
But there was.
I mean, it was one of those things where it was like twenty people hanging out in the bar and there was everyone from Alex Pettakov to Eli Watson and Mark Marcel and Seth Breedlove and all these all these people all around you, Tim Hallery, and I'm gonna I'm going to miss some people. But it was it was one of those fun conversations that is hard to ever have again.
Sure true.
Let's say a person comes up to you and is like, yes, Johnny, if I want to go out and I want to try to have an interaction with a bigfoot in this area, how do you recommend that I'd do it? What's the stuff that I need to try?
Probably I would say do your big foot one on one first, and kind of either go up on YouTube and just familiar eyes yourself, what a tree knock sounds like. You have the difference between a tree knock and a woodpecker and up up this area gunshots. Just know the difference. Not everything's a bigfoot out there. Do your do your research on what animals are actually in the area, just
just to have a basic knowledge. And I would say just basically just go out with just like I do, just an open mind and a level head, and don't be aggressive. I mean, just go out by yourself, nice and quiet and just to see what happens. Just just just just to just to have good, good intentions. I would recommend.
I think that's extremely important. You brought that up. I'm glad you did that. There's a few people that might hear that and be like, oh, I think that's crazy, and I have to say that it's not. And I'm on board with you, Johnny that it is. A lot of it has to do with how your intentions are. You have these the things happen in the woods, you're going out to them. Do things ever follow you back to your home after you're done with these expeditions.
I've heard I live kind of like in the city limits, so if anything anything follows me back here, I mean, good luck, man, I'd give them props on that. But I've I've heard one night back there's there's a good section of woods that unfortunately it's developed now, but back I think it was just like a couple of years ago. I've heard like a really strange, long, long howl back there,
which could be suspicious or not. But that would be the only time, if if you want to categorize that, if someone something follows, you know, follows me back home, I think that would probably be the only time that possible.
Gotcha. Last question for you, what what kind of things do you bring with you when you go out to these areas to make sure that you are in a good place and not gonna get messed up out there.
Personal protection. I usually carry a pistol with me everywhere I go. Equipment wise, thermal equipment, thermal scopes you can use that daytime or night time. That's basically your eyes out there. Other clipping, I use audio recorders. We carry a police issued body cans. These things are great. I mean you can clip it rate up on your chest rig, internal battery, internal memory. On a full charge, it'd probably record for about fourteen hours. It's got IR it's got audio.
So that's if anything happens and you're in a try to pull your cell phone or try to get things going this you just leave it running and boom, you got it.
Where do you pick up something like that?
So I'll go right up on Amazon? Yeah, Amazon, I believe though. The ones that I use is a patrol Master body can I got. I got a few of them, and you don't want They're good for it too. I mean it fits right in the palm of your hand. They're small. So if you think that you gets some activity in a daytime, especially in a daytime because night you know, it has two noticeable IR lights that come out and it's probably only going to show maybe like
about twenty five feet. So but in the daytime, if you think you got some activity, stick it up in a tree. It's it's really really stealth, really discreet, wide angle lens and you can really monitor a good area if you think that something's like coming through, stepping in the creek or anything like that.
It picks up pretty good audio, yes, yeah, real good audio. I'm going to have to check that out. That's very that's an interesting idea. I hadn't thought about that, but it makes it makes total sense. It's kind of like, I guess having a GoPro on you, but maybe a little less intrusive. So I'm going to check that out.
Less intrusive and battery life is phenomenon on these things.
Okay, okay, well, thanks for the recommendation. Definitely definitely checked that out. Johnny. It's been just a real fun chat with you today, and you taught me a lot and we played some fun audio, heard some good accounts. I just want to say thank you for coming on the show man.
Appreciate you having me on. If you got a few more minutes, I can tell you about the one that I seen back a couple of years ago.
Yeah, totally, let's do it, man.
So yeah, April fourteenth of twenty twenty three, up to that point, out there, finding footprints, finding tree breaks, getting all the stuff on audio recorder, and everything is kind of pointing in the direction that it's a bigfoot. It's a family big foot that are out there. And I was two thirty in the afternoon. It was cloudy, it was a two lane country road traveled one hundred times to one side. It's a left hand side. It's a
short step up and goes into the woods. On the other side of the road, it's the woods are back, probably about twenty feet. I was headed down the straight part of the road doing fifty miles an hour, and I was going to come up on a slight incline and there was a truck on a trailer that was coming down the hill. So I was headed toward the hill. The truck and trailer was coming down the hill and it was like one of those fifth wheel hookups that probably one of those empty up around here. They call
them Big tax sets, that's the brand name. And looked on the right hand side, and there's something standing there. It's between the road and the tree line. And the most important part of the story is that the creature. I'm looking at his left hand side, so I'm watching its left profile the whole time. Its left arm and its head was much much darker than the color of the hair and its it was either the either a dark brown or it was a black. The color of the hair and its body was like a light tan.
It was like lighter than a deer, so I was hit the straight part. I looked up and seeing the truck and the trailer coming down, this thing was standing right hand side. It was when I first seen it. It was between the truck and the trailer. So right after that fifth wheel hitch, the truck had passed its location. And what this thing did was it swayed back and it started walking up and on the road, across the road, and the first thing that stood out was this thing
was tall. I mean ever though that the truck and the trailer was on its downslope, it was a lot taller than the trailer and got into the first lane, and right in the middle of the of the first lane, I can start making out the side of its head,
the shape of its head. By the time it got into where the lines go down the road and into the left hand lane, I pretty much had like a full unobstructed view of this thing, just looking right up at it, and I can describe it as we kind of did like a measurement out there a few days later. It was between seven and a half and eight foot tall. Like I said, I was looking at its left profile the whole time. Super long arms. The arms actually you look like it went down to where it's knees should
be wide arms. I mean, at the distance where I first seen it, the arms looked about as wide as a telephone pole. It didn't sway its arms at all when it was walking across the road. It had its arm down to its side the whole time it's back. Its back was like perfectly straight. But the head on this thing was huge. I'd kind of like described it as like a shape of a football. It was. It was peaked on top and was peeked down at the bottom. It was now sitting on on its shoulders like a
person would would have it. It was kind of it was it was front and down a little bit, almost like if you see these big bodybuilders and the World Man competition and they had these really developed traps and neck muscles. It's what kind of it appeared to be there that possibly could be it. But its head was slanted a little bit. It looked like the bottom of wards chin woods. It was actually like resting up on its upper chest. And the closer I got the it's
hard to describe. It's if you're picturing like a football, the outer part of the football. The head was was it was a darker color. Butt right up in the center on the outside was a lighter color, so that that might have been where the face was. But I was saying, walked across the road. It did not make any ebobbing motions. It went across as smooth as silk. I never seen anything like that before, and did a little little step up on the other side of the road.
It's probably about like a three foot two foot step up. It turned just slightly away from me, and I could see where its right shoulder blade was, and it could see the color of the hair color on its back, and it went up into the into the woods. But yeah, that was That was April fourteenth or twenty twenty three, And yeah, these things exist. I went from a believer to a nowhere in seven seconds.
Yeah, I mean that that would be. I mean that that's it from from here on out. I mean, there's no absolute question. My goodness, wow, cool. Do you feel like what you saw that day was something that was more ape like or human like or just something completely different?
You know, looking looking at its side, other than you know, having arms and a chest and legs and all that, it kind of look, let's see, almost like the stature of a gorilla, because a gorilla has as a really elongated head and just like a strong build. But if you watch a gorilla, like if they kind of like wobble a little bit, this thing walked across like like no motion at all, just just across. So it was kind of like like a stature, kind of like a
strong stature of like a gorilla would have. What it was different though, And like I said, we went back and measured it. It was we had it been between seven and a half and eight foot tall and what back in I don't know if it came out of the woods. This this is the this is the strange part. I don't know if it came out of the woods or if it was squatting down when this the guy with the with the truck and the trailer was coming down and it just had stood up just before I
seen it. But I went back in the woods where if it came out of, and there was a bunch of pine trees that were kind of like stacked in kind of like a weird kind of configuration. There's also a tree break back there. And I also put a recorder up in the in the area where it went into elected there for a couple of days, and it got got a couple of good tree knocks back there.
I think a lot of this one was probably about two o'clock in the morning, maybe ten o'clock at night, but it was It was was not what I had expected to see, because you kind of mentally prepared just in case something you're run into something you don't want to be like a total total shock to your system, so you mentally prepare like every time you go out there. And I had thought maybe it was going to be looking more like the like the Petty film, or maybe
even like a methander of the Fander Hall. And it looked it definitely did not look human. It just looked more like like like a monster. That's the only it's the only term like I can use it. Just it looked very creaturish.
Is there a certain thing about it that made you think that you were looking at something that was like a monster?
I was. I was zeroed in on its arm and its head, but the whole time, not from the time it walked across for sure, because if it would have ran across the road, it probably would have cleared it in just a couple of seconds. But it appeared to have taken its time, and I think the whole time that it took it it may have been about seven seconds or so. Well, Yeah, I was zeroed in on
the upper upper body of it. It's it's it's head, yeah, I mean just just just the shape of its head and how it was positioned on its body was was very monstrous. I mean, I've never seen anything like that before.
What you saw that day, is it something like if M It's a really interesting question. What what you experienced, what you saw, Did it feel like it was something that could be worked with or if there were a lot of them, we would perhaps be in trouble.
Well, from my experiences out there, other than that that grunt and that grawl that one day, and I mean the yell and the hitting the trees, And I've been out there a lot, and when I go out there, I'm usually out there ninety percent of the times by myself, out in the woods, out in the creek beds, different times of the year, different times of the day. Never
had anything aggressively come at me. And from other stories I've heard with campers that that camp there, and they've had they believe that they've had something come in their camp or run through their camp. It's it's more in this area here, it's more curious. I think that if you encountered this thing and it had a bad day, or if you got close enough to it that it got pissed off, they're probably I mean, they probably tear
it apart. But I think, just just my personal opinion, the clan or the group up there are more curious. And oh plus you also got to think too. I mean, the people that go to a state park, they're they're pretty they're pretty predictable. I mean, no one's going there in there hunting, no one's going there with the vicious intent. They're pretty much keeping to the to the trails. They're in at a certain time, they're out at a certain time. They're pretty you know, I would think they're pretty much
a mellow group. And if anybody's there overnight, they're pretty much contained to the campground area. So I'm just assuming that maybe they're used to that mellowness of the of the people that go there. And you know, wild animal too, I mean, it could be just animal mentality. If you get close enough to it, it might turn on you.
Extremely interesting to think about Were there any other things that you wanted to make sure that you shared before the end of our time today.
No, No, I'm really appreciated that you invited me on the show. I had a great time. And just to keep a level head and an open mind when you're out there and maybe you'll run into one.
Johnny, is there a way people can reach out to you? Or you a researcher that kind of stays undercover in a way I used to?
I'm up on Facebook? Can you find me up on Facebook? Johnny Tucker on Facebook? And if anybody like to message me there, message me in private. You can do it there. Knee doc Bigfoot at gmail if you want to send me a private email, and on my website is meee doc bigfoot dot com. She'd like to pop in every now and again and see too kind of interesting things I find. But yeah, I'm up on Facebook. I'm out in the woods and investigating and trying to find stuff
as much as I could. It's kind of like a passion for me.
That's great, and I would, you know, recommend if people know things about the area that he's been talking about, feel free to reach out to Johnny. You can always reach out to me as well, but definitely reach out to the people that are in that area that can make good use of that information. But Johnny, thanks so much for coming on the show today.
Jeremiah, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much, and I will keep in touch.
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