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 Big for Society at gmail dot com. Do you wish there was more Big for Society to listen to
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 Big for Society and now let's get on with the show, all right, Big for Society. We've got the privilege of talking to Austin today. Austin's an individual
that reached out to me through TikTok. He had made a comment on one of my recent Illinois videos, and so I reached out to Austin about what he'd shared, and he was good enough to reach back out. And he's got an introesting thing to share about an experience that happened in the Peoria area. But I will let him fill in the details about that. But how's it going today, Austin.
Pretty good? Cooling off here in Florida.
Finally, fantastic. Yeah, he sounds good to me. We're definitely cooling off up here in Iowa, but different way. We just got snow today.
Oh yeah, No, I still seeing alligators down here, all right.
If we start to see those, then we're having we're having issues up here, but we're in trouble. But it's it's a pleasure to have you on the show. I can't wait to hear about all that you experienced out there in the farm, little noise. I'm just going to go ahead and give it right over to you, man, take us back to what we need to know and what you experience.
And I'm not completely sure if it was a bigfoot or something another type of what is that word for them.
Like yeah, okay, yeah yeah, But so in other people in the area have actually talked about similar One of my cousins did, and a few of her friends, and even.
A guy I used to play darts and drink beer with. I think he even mentioned a similar sighting. So it's been spotted by other people and myself on like the dirt back roads because Farmington's like on the edge of the Peoria metro area. It's about a good five to ten miles away from the main city area, so it's a lot of cornfields, a lot of back roads and things like that when you go west and southwest of Farmington for sure. So it was October two thousand and eight.
I was on mid tour leave from Iraq because I was in the Army at the time, and I went back to Illinois to visit family and friends and hang out. And one thing I just liked to do was the freedom to just drive around. It was nice to just go out at night on long drives through the cornfields and stuff. It was still like a late harvest season. I think that year, I can't remember, but I definitely could see dry corn up and down both sides of the road at the time, so it was probably early October,
not sure about the exact day. So I'm driving through Farmington, going through the main drag, going through main Street, I think one sixteen or something, and when I go towards the back roads, there's a couple of back roads that go towards like Bushnell, Illinois, another town over to the west southwest, I think, and I'm driving down the cornfield
and I got music going. I think I'm listening to No Effects at the time, and I see this like figure had it been like first, I thought it was like a piece of metal waving in the wind that got stuck on a tree or something. But it was definitely like humanoid shaped once I got closer. It was walking parallel to the road in the cornfield, but its skin was like shiny and kind of jet black. It was tall, jet black, shiny, and I just I couldn't believe my eyes what I was seeing. It was very strange.
I was like, it's like frail like it I could I remember seeing like long fingers trailing down its side. I didn't get a good look at the head or anything. The main parts I could really see were like the elbow down, the lower arm, and then the legs. And I don't know if it was bigfoot or an alien or what. I've had other people. They'll say I've seen the same thing out on those back roads out that
passed Farmington and can't figure out what it is. But other people in the area have definitely mentioned it and talked about it from time to time. And I have a couple theories about what that could be, but I'm not completely sure. I'd be really curious to talk to that guy that saw the bigfoot creature re in the area. I'm yeah, to see the height and just because it was definitely probably seven pm, I'm thinking it was definitely dark out in October for that time, and I was
driving a rental car. I can't even remember what kind of car I was driving. Would have been like just one of your basic, average four door Sedan's, I'm sure. And yeah, I was going down the gravel road and it was just what the heck is that? And I just kept going, and I'm like, I wanted to turn around the loose gravel and dirt, and I was very safety conscious. I didn't want to get in trouble with the Army if I got in a car wreck while
I was away on leave, that's for sure. But yeah, I looked and I remember talking to my cousin about that and she said, oh, yeah, I've got friends that've seen that too, And it was crazy. Not even a week later, when I'm in Illinois, it was like the end of my time there. I was at a hotel party with some friends and someone shows up white as a ghost. Dude, I saw this like alien bigfoot creature, don't know what it was. It was all jet black,
like jet black shiny skin. And the only place I've ever heard another story about that was from a guy in Utah up at someplace called Lightning Ridge, where he had seen something with long fingers shiny black skin as well.
This is very unique. I think this is a first time I've heard of a sighting where jet black shiny skin. When you say long fingers, could you see the actual fingers or was it just that its arms wereholed or were really low.
It felt like it was looking like fingers, like they almost I would say, like the thickness of a grown man's two fingers together, and they went down to almost a point, looked like loose or something like maybe it was wearing some sort of overcoat or shedding skin or something like that. I couldn't quite It was very brief and it was very sudden, and I was like, what the heck was I seeing? And I spooked me out, and I didn't really bother turn it around to go back there.
Yeah, I don't.
Yeah, I wish I took it in more at the time, but I don't even think anybody really had a smartphone at the time phones took pictures. It was like two thousand and eight. People were still using the razor phone or something, So it wasn't really you didn't have cameras a great quality, and I wouldn't have even thought to take a picture at that time.
Oh yeah, exactly it was. That was a different time. You had to flip phones, and you're exactly right, you wouldn't really want to take pictures with those phones. That usually didn't end up being a good time. The shiny skin, the jet black, so it sounds like, what how about this? How much of it was covered with hair or was it not really covered with hair at all?
I didn't see hair. It was tall and shiny. The head, like what I could see of the head just looked like came up. I wouldn't say a cone, but larger than a human head for sure, almost like slightly conish, but more dome like. I wish I could draw it out, but I'm a terrible artist.
Now, you probably only saw it for a few seconds, I'm guessing.
Right, yeah, And I'm guessing I was probably driving, since I was driving a rental car and it's a gravel road. I was probably going slower than normal. I would say maybe forty miles an hour at the very most, probably thirty thirty five, so I'm not going terribly fast.
Could you see anything that looked like ears on it?
I could. I did not recall seeing anything that looked like ears.
No, okay, a color to its eyes at all.
Didn't see the front of the face, just the back in like the side of the arms and leg.
Anything weird.
It was way too tall to be a person.
Gotcha, and remind me what you would estimate the height to be of it again, like eight.
To nine feet. It was definitely above what there was dead corn I remember, on both sides of the road, and it was standing up above that. That's why, from a distance I thought it was like a piece of metal from like a barn, or something that got loose in a storm, like hanging from a tree nearby or something. I couldn't quite make out what I was looking at from a distance. Once I got closer, whoa, who is what is that?
Okay, but you're actually seeing it move though, correct?
Yeah? It was walking like at a slow like just general steady.
Yeah, anything weird about the legs Oh, those feel like they're backwards or the way that they're put together just was weird to me. Anything like that, not that.
I can recall, I think the most, like the parts that stood out the most were like the long fingers, wide fingers, and I don't think there were five. It was like almost like I could see maybe three in like a thumb appendage type thing. But it was definitely like the fingers. And when I say jet black, I would say the skin now that I think about it more, the skin kind of had a textured to like elephant's skin, but it was jet black and shiny. If that, if you can picture that.
It's really weird. Did you experience anything that made you think, oh, that is like a dog didn't have a tail or anything.
No, it didn't give me any animal. I really thought it was like either one a hallucination, two an alien three like a form of Bigfoot or sasquatch or something. But I just didn't really I didn't really draw the line to Bigfoot until I saw your TikTok video about that other guy that saw something near there. Uh, there's a few paranormal abnormalities that do happen in that area.
There's a little bridge on one of the backwards between Farmington and Canton called cry Baby Bridge, and it's you know, people will go out there at night and they'll hear voices and there's no one there, stuff like that. And when I took I took down some notes of thoughts I had. You remember those UFO hearings recently about the UAPs where they're talking about interdimensional beings. That keyword interdimensional
absolutely see. That's one thing I was thinking of is perhaps there's some sort of hiccup where alternate realities overlap with ours, and maybe they're only viewable by certain people. It makes sense why they're so rare. You'd think more people would see these things as urbanized and as spread out as people are all over these days compared to a hundred years ago and whatnot.
And something that has lately is there are certain areas of the country that seem to have just more strangeness than others. And you've got maybe there's an area like this in this area in Illinois too.
Like a hot spot like lay lines or something or some type. I was thinking maybe you had something to do with maybe the Earth's magnetism or mineral deposits and things, because when you look at western Illinois, specifically from Farmington to Canton to Macombe to Nauvoo, Carthage, Quincy, those kind of sections of Illinois, there's a lot of like tributaries
that flow into Illinois or Mississippi River out there. There's a little more like branches of forest and woods and such, like the Spoon River is a pretty popular one I can think of in Fulton County. You got the Kickapoo Creek that runs through Peoria County, and then I remember the Copperas Creek also runs a little bit south of Peoria down towards Mapleton and Banner and it empties out
into the Illinois River. And you know, these are I think it's old glacial deposits from the last Ice Age in some parts too, because if you look around Farmington, if you ever look on a satellite map, you see a lot of coal like strip coal mines from like the old days. That's not the type of coal that's useful to us anymore, so they don't really mine it these days. But a lot of these towns like Hannah City, Peoria, and a lot of those towns near Farmington where he
founded on coal originally. So I'm curious if there's some type of electromagnetic mineral something that might trigger these type of events, especially when you think about Bigfoot. In the Rocky Mountains, you have a lot of iron deposits in the Rockies, whereas Illinois it's a different You got a lot of limestone. I've heard of people finding mammoth teeth in a lot of the tributaries and creeks around Peak and Peoria areas. For sure.
Do you have any pink granite in that area?
You know what that's actually? I think I don't know if it's pink granite, but there So, there's a cemetery called the Smithville Cemetery nearby, and they have a monument in there on the north side called like It says McNaughton, and there's a little placard on it saying it was found on the McNaughton farm outside of Hannah City in some year in the eighteen hundreds, and the grant it looks like a granite stone. It's like an orangish pinkish color.
Oh, that's cool, okay, interesting, And it's a large boulder.
It's at least up to between my knees and my waist and I'm about six foot even. You don't see a whole lot of boulders and rocks out there, but you'll definitely see a few, like in the deeper cuts on the edges of hillsides and tributaries and such here and there.
Yeah, I just interviewed a rock climber and it's not out yet, but he was sharing how what he's found is that in areas with pink granite, there would usually be a lot of potential sightings of Bigfoot and other things.
And if I'm not mistaken, sometimes I think granite might contain traces of like uranium or other radioactive materials, if I'm not mistaken, something like that.
Another lesson say theory is have you ever seen have you ever seen pictures of animals when they have mange? Yeah, they lose all their hair and how different they look? Yeah, yeah, I wonder if that ever happens with Let's say, if Bigfoot is a physical creature, if they ever had the same thing that happen where if they were to lose all their hair, what would they look like?
Oh yeah, lose their hair, maybe get sick injuries because you were oh yeah, you know what have you ever seen those pictures of the bears that, Yeah, so like victims of wildfires. When I really think about that, it's almost like that. But we don't have black bears in Illinois. We've had some vagrant ones spotted here and there, but they're in like way north tip of Illinois that I've passed through from Wisconsin once or twice, and it was way too tall and thin to be a bear, for sure.
But yeah, but I can't think that. I never really smelled any smoke or any signs of wildfire. Nothing. Sometimes there'll be a big grass brush fire, but usually in my experience in western Illinois, that was always in the spring when people and farmers are burning off dead grass on the edges of their cornfields things like that for pastures and such.
Now, you said that you knew an individual that played darts that also had a sighting of this too.
Yeah, there's this one older man. There's a bar in Farmington, and the bar doesn't even exist anymore. I can't remember the name of it, but yeah, I played darts of this older gentleman every now and then, and I can't think of his name. It's been probably since I haven't talked to him since twenty twelve, But yeah, I remember him telling me he's seen a lot of either a Bigfoot creature or an alien or something north of Farmington.
So I'm thinking there's got to be something going on that could be looked into a little more between the Farmington and Canton area, because Farmington's only five or six miles just north of Canton. If there was a paved trail, I could walk to Canton almost.
There's so many just people don't realize. They think all the Bigfoot are out there in Washington and Oregon, and there's a lot of them out there, But there's also weird stuff that happens in the Midwest. There's your Illinois stuff.
But like even though, yeah, right now there's all these reports coming out about how there's been all these sightings in the middle of Omaha, Nebraska for the last twenty years and they're just now being released in the public, and it's as long as they have a food source and water nearby. What would be the food source in this area? Are there a lot of deer in the area.
There's definitely a lot of deer. One time I was driving the back roads between Canton and I'd say from Canton to Hannah City. Been between there, I probably counted like thirty deer once jumping out of a cornfield. At least A lot of people will tell their kids and teenagers to slow down driving on those back roads because deer can They could just pop right out in front of you any second, So it's definitely something you gotta be more careful and cognizant of. Depending on the time
of year as well. But yeah, I would say deer if they feed on that. There's definitely squirrels, raccoons, possums, plenty of possums. I see possums everywhere on the back roads, and definitely every now and then, livestock definitely get out and have gone missing. I think I haven't heard of any exact reports, but I knew of somebody that had a pig farm and their pigs were always getting loose.
What's the is it Peoria County that Farmington's in.
No, it's actually right on the edge of Peoria and Fulton County, so it's on the northeast corner of Fulton County. Like part of the city I think extends into Puria County. Maybe the school or a couple of businesses or something Farmington Propers in Fulton County.
Interesting. There's another fun website and if you've never looked into it, you really should not. A lot of people I think know about it. But it's Stan there used to be there's I think he's still around. There's an investigator named Stan Courtney for Illinois. So if you go to Stan Courtney dot com you can really see a ton of there's a ton of reports for Fulton County from the bf ro O Bigfoot Encounters. G C b
r O is another good one. So there's definitely over the years, Ben some solid activity.
And you said you're from Iowa, right.
Yes, I'm from Central Iowa just a little bit.
Well okay, yeah, because there's a I'm sure you've heard of the band Slipknot.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Corey Taylor. I haven't read the book yet that he has a book where he talks about his encounters with the paranormal and the unusual. Really believe I can't remember the name. Yeah, I think it's called like a Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Heaven or something like that.
He talks about his like spiritual and paranormal encounters and he definitely asserts that there's something out there okay with all these things, but he's he's a pretty vocal, like atheist, non religious type of person, but he's there's still an element of things that we do not understand out there yet that science can't yet explain.
So I just ide to check into that. Yeah, thank you. I've never really checked into Corey Taylor, I know who he is.
But yeah, so the band mud Vein if you've heard of them as well. They're from Peoria. My mom went to high school with the guitar player Greg Tribbett from the band Okay. She remembered him as he was just a normal guy, but and she had friends and had a cousin. I think that was good friends with members of that band and stuff. I remember were like friends and I we'd drive around Farmington looking for ghosts and things. The bigfoot thing really reignited with that recent sighting that made media.
And it's crazy. You're not the only person that I have been talking to from that area. I just interviewed a older couple from you know, I can't even really say specific it's around that area, I pretty much have to say, but there's just some people where they do not they don't even want to have their exact area. They're just okay with generalities. But yeah, it's that area the central Illinois. I think there's more to it. But if you had to think about what you saw and
in retrospect, how would you classify it? Would you say bigfoot or would you maybe say something else?
I kind of there's so there is one area I can I'll hint thatt to you, but I don't like to talk about it because I think it's very bad juju, very bad luck. And it is goes back to some Native American legends about things that can run as fast as you run, as fast as a car, and they
can take the form of animals. I don't say the word of them because I don't like to invoke anything strange because I told someone about it when I was in Iraq, and I kid you not, within an hour, everybody on my base got sick as heck, like we were all projectile, vomiting and just ill. We all just came down to this sickness. Yeah, I'm not going to mess with that, but I would say there may be some old legends and lore worth looking into that may
hint at something specifically. I think the lore that I'm alluding to takes place in southern Utah northern Arizona areas. But I don't know of any legends and things in the Midwest that maybe Native Americans may have stories and Laura about out.
You know what. I want to bring something to your attention that I just found on that site. It seems that in July of sixty seven, just west of Farmington, there's an account you can read and it's a link to Bigfoot encounters dot com where someone had seen a large creature that they say it was just a black mass in the massive tan colored reads by the side of a lake.
Yeah. That there's a lot of strip Mine lakes out by Farmington. That Yeah, that's a good description. That's yeah, massive black and that's all I saw at first.
And I feel like there might be I think you sharing what you experienced in two thousand and eight might be the start to who knows what might come out about this this Farmington area. I'm just glad that you came.
It's a small town, I think, to three thousand people. I haven't really been there in years. I went to like high school there for six months and then I moved to Utah as a teenager, and I'd come back and visit because I got cousins and stuff out there, and nieces and nephews and whatnot. I've been all over the world really, actually even lived in Oregon for a while, and I lived up in the mountains where you definitely heard things and you're like, it's not a coyote, that's
not a mountain lion. I don't know what I just heard, but I'm going to go back inside.
Austin, thank you for coming on the show and for sharing.
Oh yeah, you're welcome.
It's an experience that or an encounter that is is very I'm not sure how to classify it myself, and be interesting to see where this conversation leads with people sharing if they've seen things that look like this. If you ever find out anything else, any other information, feel free to reach out.
Yeah, maybe you'll get more more callers or something down the line here from this interview. Maybe someone's oh, yeah, I used to live there too, and I saw this.
You never know, I think. So it's been a pleasure chatting with you. Austin. Thank you so much for coming on the show tonight.
Hey, you're very welcome. You have a wonderful evening.
You as well. Thank you. You're at Bigfoot Society. Our goal is to provide a platform for those that have encountered Bigfoot to share their encounter and a safe and respected environment. But we need to hear your story. If you've experienced something that you just can't explain, please send me an email at Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com. Then we can start the conversation. And I know a lot of you have not shared your encounter at all.
It's been twenty years and it's time that you get this off your chest and then you can get some well deserved rest because I know you haven't been sleeping. I understand what you're going through and I appreciate every one.
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Here's the list. These are all in Oregon by the way, Oakridge, Dexter Fall Creek, to Shoot National Forest Area, Cultis Lake, Spirit Lake, Subtle Lake, Mackenzie River Area, Sweet Home Area, the area west of Crater Lake, east of two thirty West Diamond Lake Highway and north of sixty two Crater Lake Highway. You can use email Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com. A special thank you to all the big
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