Welcome to Planet Strange! | Thom Powell

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, You've got the privilege of talking to mister Tom Powell today. You may know Tom from

some books that he's written. He's written a few for example, you know there's The Locals and his newest book, which is Planet Strange, and we'll be talking about that later. Tom has also been involved with many different Bigfoot related things over the years. He's written many Bigfoot books as well. But welcome to the show. Tom. How's it going tonight?

an example of pseudo science. And every year I would do a throwaway lesson on the day before Christmas vacation when curriculum wasn't a priority because the kids were pretty wound up and half the class had already left for Maui. So I did a Bigfoot presentation. The school district had that in search of with Leonard Nieboy, and I'd show it on my sixteen millimeter movie projector and it held

the kids' attention on a tough day. But I did make every joke in the book, although I was aware that there was this guy out there, Peter Burn, who was working in, among other places, the Clacamus Rivers, and he, you know, was very serious about his quest to find good evidence. You know, capture one.

were pretty compelling, so that got me curious. But I lived in Portland, so it wasn't really something that I had a lot of direct experience with until I bought a place out on the Clacamus River, which I did just because the kayaking and rafting was good and I had a moonlight occupation teaching kayaking canoeing classes. So I bought a place on the Clackamas River and one of

the neighbors came over one day for a beer. They were boarding horses on my property at the time, and he volunteered that, you know that bigfoot thing, well we get that out here. And I was a little bit surprised that I not only didn't take it seriously, But I had no idea that it was, you know, that it manifested so close to town and in the area where I had now just bought a piece of property. Then I saw a sign on the country store bulletin board saying there was a guy who was who collected

Bigfoot sightings and his name was Frank Kineaster. He lived in Estacada. Yes. I called him up and said, hey, I do this thing every year, and it would be really nice if I could have some kind of thing to show the kids in addition to this movie. Do you have anything? He goes, well, you know, we cherished these artifacts, but I could lend it to you. And

I said, all right, perfect, perfect. So he lent me a track cast, and he had a few other artifacts, you know, twisted stick and things like that that he thought were, you know, attributable to this asquatch. Well, one thing led to another, and I started sort of following the subject on my own, and then I stumbled across Matthew Moneymakers BFRO website. And this was probably in nineteen ninety four, and so it was a pretty primitive website

by today's standards. But being a mercurial fellow that he is, he had trouble holding on to investigators. They would work with him for a while and then his as slightly intense personality would be off putting. But he had a bunch of people quit on him, and so he didn't have anyone looking into the local sightings that he was getting from my immediate area. So I started doing that for him, bowing up on sightings, and for a while, everything in the Pacific Northwest went through my computer and

a crossed my desk. Eventually it became overwhelming as the subject expanded. Every time he would get on a show like Art Bell back in the day, then he would just be flooded with sighting reports. And really at times like that, I was overwhelmed as well. So I just cherry picked the sightings and took the best ones or

the closest ones, or the most interesting ones. But then I started seeing the patterns, and I'm saving everything on my computer, and eventually I got to the point where I had seen people's computers crash and they lose everything on their herd. And that's when I started writing it all down because I just felt like I started to get some of this stuff off of my computer and and into print, and so I basically contacted a bunch of the witnesses and interviewed them and uh and and

wrote it all down. And then one of the witnesses told Matthew Moneymaker I was working on a book. He was he was sure that it was a tell all book that was going to make him look bad and uh and that was the locals and quite the opposite. But anyway, so that was the end of my involvement with b fro uh. But you know, I was kind of done with them anyway, because I had learned the patterns and I knew that there were instances where uh,

someone saw a bigfoot dissolved into finn air. There are people who have had nonverbal communication telepathy, if you will, and there were multiple examples of that that I had available to me in the late nineties. So then I started looking for people who were having repeat sightings because then I finally decided, well, this is the this is the gold standard. You know, the cat's pajamas is these people who are having the things come around repeatedly. And

there were some. There was one couple in a place called Blockhouse Washington near Goldendale, eastern Washington, and they had them coming out of the woods and sitting around in plain sight. They even set a picnic table over on the edge of their property and people would come out and the sasquatch would sit there and keeping their distance. And then the people said, don't stare at them. They know, you know, they they don't like being looked at, but

just just act like it's nothing. But there these things were coming around on a semi routine basis, and that's when I met Alan in April. Why and they live up near Mount Rainier. And one of the things I had learned from gathering all the siding reports is that there are hot spots and the closer you get to Mount Rainier, the more stuff happens. And Alan and April lived within I don't know, twenty miles a Mountainier, and so I started going out there and interviewing them, and

they described, oh, yeah, there's three different generations. We call them Grandpa, Grandma, mom and dad, and then the youngsters. But there's three different generations. We see them. My daughter sees them the most. She sees them when she's on horseback. Quite often, horses are pretty aware of their surroundings and then they their their ears point at things that are happening in the so, you know, I had seen this before, but they were a really good example of of this

repeat encounter stuff. They have kept a bunch of bunnies and hutches on their property, and they learned that the sasquatches were able to open the hutches, and the sasquatches would take the the young rabbits but leave the breeders alone. So they seem to understand that, you know, it was not in their own interest to take the uh, the breeding rabbits, but rather the offspring whatever they're called in

and rabbit raising. But the main thing I was, of course interested in was a place to set up cameras, and they acquiesced and I got my hands on some early trail cams that were crazy expensive by today's standards, six hundred dollars for these things back then, and we started putting cameras around the property. Meanwhile I had well, actually, one of the most interesting things was I was aware of this situation in Oklahoma where the sasquatches were raiding

an outdoor fridge. So I happened to ask Alan in April, have you ever seen this? And they said yes. In fact, they had not put two and two together. All they knew is that every once in a while they'd come out and the and the fridge door was open in the morning, and and Alan, the patriarch, would would scold the kids for leaving the door open, and they said, we didn't do that, we wouldn't. Well, then he noticed that a side of a pig disappeared from the freezer.

There were ice cream bars in there that were untouched, but the side of a pig disappeared. And they have a pig roast every year, you know, Polynesian thing. They bury it and the coals and everything. Well they're they're pig vanished. And ice cream bars were untouched. So that sort of ruled out neighborhood kids. And I hadn't seen enough in other places that I was like, no, no, they do that. And so we of course put a camera on the fridge and made sure the fridge was

stocked with things. Nothing happened, and the activity shifted to another part of the property, so we moved the cameras over there. Well, then the fridge got hit again when the camera wasn't on it. So little by little it started to appear that they understood what we were doing, and they were reverse to the cameras. Every time we would put the cameras in the location where they where the activity was, the activity would stop. Took me a while to put two and two together, and I eventually

came to that conclusion. But my colleagues that in BFRO were still pretty skeptical. You know, in those days, no one was assigning the Sasquatches with the degree of intelligence that enabled them to understand and avoid cameras. Well. Now we laugh at that. I mean, you know, when when people say I don't I don't enjoy it. I just wanted to go away, what should I do? I tell them to put out a camera. That'll stop it for sure,

And and it really does. And over and over again, we we put cameras in the woods and had them either dismantled, powered down, pulled off the tree, and left face down in the ground. Just just a whole bunch of things like that that all point to the same thing. They understand and are averse to this idea of cameras. And so that was one of the chapters in the locals that was sort of groundbreaking, at least in the

time early two thousands. And then the whole idea of habituation, that there are people who have the sasquatches, you know, come around on some sort of semi routine basis. That was that was new with the time, isn't anymore.

but it translates into he who makes the wind blow. Wow. So there's something weird about weather with these things. And let's just say, I'm I suspect that they have powers that are a lot more sophisticated than we realize.

out of here. I met the guy. I went to Oklahoma for one of these festivals that they had right there in that area. And one of the people who attended was one of the neighbors. And he brought me over and showed me the place, and and man, I met a couple of different times, and you know, he he was very concerned about the safety of his family.

It wasn't interested in gathering Bigfoot evidence. But he was willing to uh play ball at least for a while with b FRORO before he got a little exasperated with their their ways of being and so on and so forth. But you know that it was it was in the early days when when the sort of attempts to gather better information were quite ham handed.

official investigators show up. You know when unfamiliar cars start pulling in and then that destabilizes a situation.

an early thermal camera. The batteries didn't work it, it didn't hold the charge, and in it, you know, seemed to be a promising thing because you could see into the night. But we never got anything with it. But that was the big technological uh innovation that had just sort of come on the scene back then. But they weren't getting anything after a week or so of of

hanging out and trying all these different things. So on our last night before we all had to you know, get back to town, the offices had to get back home. But they didn't have anything and were sort of like, look, what are we gonna do? And I said, well, all right, can I make a suggestion here. You guys have been sneaking around a lot. Well, I know these people Allan in April, and what I know is that they know your tricks and traps. The Saskes are up at Allan

and Apriles. They were on to us, and they knew the cameras and and so instead of sneaking around and trying tricks, why don't you try a different approach, and they said, okay, what do you got in mind? And I said, gestures of friendliness, accommendation. You know, we got all this food that isn't like. We got a case of peaches sitting here. Put them out somewhere and and just see if they don't, you know, take them, but but don't put the cameras on them, and don't hide

in the bush. Just just put them out there and as a gesture of friendlinessconciliation. And they said okay. So they took it off and drove up the road and found a big pull out on the side of the road where they turn around, logging trucks and big mud puddle in the middle of it, and they put the apples and peaches there in the center of the this kind of shot over turnaround in the middle of a forest road. And that's where they went back the next day to check their food and and that's when they

found the big impression. And all I remember is that they came racing back to camp snow that night, and snow was melting in the morning, and they came roaring into camp and said, you gotta zee this, Come here, Come here, come here. We jumped in the car, and to their credit, they did notice that it there was an impression. They were, of course looking for footprints, you know,

that's all we were ever looking for. It's footprints. But all of a sudden they at least Rick Rick Noele especially recognized that that that's that's something else, but that wasn't here before and uh and so push came to shove. What they deduced was that the thing sat down and reached for the fruit, perhaps so as not to leave the footprints that we were looking for.

And then here I am sleeping in my ARII tent with you know, two mil nylone and uh, and I don't know, a few of the guys had guns and stuff, but Derek was sleeping in this fortified trailer because you know, he wasn't sure, but that his safety was not on the line, and so that that was, you know, it was kind of humorous how how different, uh, the approaches were back then, and how unsure people were about putting themselves out there. But they did listen when I said

quit the tricks and traps. It didn't work a fair at Mountaineer, and once we started being accommodating, they started cooperating at least a little. But there they wouldn't appear on camera. But but then I finally found a work around on that, and that is I met this psychic dude through Ray Crow in the Western Bigfoot Society, and

he felt like he had communication. His name was Steve Fredericks, and I said, Steve, all right, well, you know we got this area, and we got these cameras and we've been putting them out for two years, so let's try something. Will you please use your juju to ask for permissions? And that kind of worked. He said, well, he said, he called me back after he felt like he had had the com intact and uh. He said, they were

very impressed that you asked. And but he also he said, there's a thing and that is we don't we have a rule against being seen, and we also have a rule against being photographed. This is what he was claiming he received by way of a you know, a telepathic response. And but then within two days Alan calls me up and said, we got something on the camera for the

first time, and it was a shadow. But it was a shadow that looked for all the world like the upper torso of a of a you know, primate, something upright, and it was the It was the first and best thing we ever got on the cameras and it was within two days of of of Steve asking. Uh. Now, I did not tell Alan in April that I was doing this, you know, trying to do a single blind psychological you know, you can't let each side of the

experiment know what the other, you know. I think they call it single blind in psychology studies, the double blind was when the researcher doesn't even know themselves which treatment is being administered to. Well, anyway, after we got a camera image, but not a very good one, I didn't tell Steve that we got anything. I didn't want to, you know, sort of lead him on or anything, but I said, Steve, I want you to ask for a bone.

Forget the camera. It's not a thing I want to And Okay, they're not going to like that, but okay. And so then he called me back he said, I did get what you said. Two days later, Alan calls me up New Year's Day of I think it was two thousand and one and said, we just found a bone at the base of a camera tree. So I'll

be right up. And so I drove one hundred miles up there and he handed me the bone and it was about the size and shape of a coffee saucer, but it was real thick and it ended up After checking around a whole bunch, I finally found a guy who raised EMUs and he was able to positively identify it as the breast bone of an emu. And uh, so I asked Alan, do you know anybody who raises these things, because you know people raise them domestically for I guess meat, And he said, yeah, my dad raises EMUs.

Where's your dad live five miles away? Well, do you have any explanation for how an EMU bone got from it even five miles away to your house. No, I really don't. And of course, you know, in retrospect, it's in my view, indicative of a sense of humor. Uh. You know, what I was asking for was of course a little bit audacious. You know, would you dig up one of your relatives so that you could provide a bone to some person who wanted proof of I don't

know what. Uh. But when I finally told Steve Fredericks what happened, uh, he hit himself on the forehead with his palm and he said, you know, I never specified one of your bones. I was, yeah, it's a bone, so and and they complied quite literally. What's amazing is the timing is that it all happened within a very uh small period of time, and and that the people who found the foot bone did not know that I

was doing this. And Steve Frederick had never visited the site, didn't know where it was, so he could not be accused of seeding the or salting whatever the word is for, you know, leaving imitation evidence for serious minded researchers to scumbore.

manifest a sense of humor. For instance, one night I sat there at Alan and Naples and I, oh, you know, in those days, we were all thought the tree knocking was it? You know, that's just how they We were sure that they were hitting trees with sticks. So I sat there all night with a baseball bat, three times in a row, whack whack, whack, and did that every

fifteen minutes for the better part of the night. And eventually at four point thirty in the morning, I left because I had a dentist appointment or something mid morning, had to get back home, and I had a one hundred mile drive at four point thirty, and I pulled into my house at just at sunrise, which you know,

in August is about five thirty five forty five. And as soon as I got out of my car from the woods in the back of my property comes whack, whack, whack, And I was so tired I couldn't even walk to the back of the property. I just had to get in bed and lie down. But what's funny is somehow the idea was conveyed one hundred miles from Allen and Aprels to my house, and there they were responding only there. When I reflect on that, it's it's to me, that's that sense of humor.

Brighton Bush River to a place called Detroit, Oregon. Pretty small town on the Santiem River, but it is It basically speaks the entire Clockamus River basin, especially the upper part of the basin upstream of Sticada in the National Forest, where a whole bunch of sasquatch sidings have occurred over time. You know some famous ones like the one where the guy saw the sasquatch lifting up rocks and grabbing pikas out of the ground and eating them. That's up on

what's called Burnt Granite Ridge. But there's just a whole bunch of siding activity that happens in the in in along the Clocamus River and along the tributaries. Cloacamus County, which contains the river, of course, uh has more sasquatch sidings than any anywhere else in Oregon. There are places in Washington that has more. There's places in northern California, but in Oregon, clack in this county is number one.

So Joe just did his best to collect in chronicle as many of the historical sidings that came out of that area, plotsam on maps and so on. I think the only thing that's perhaps misleading about doing that is people want to put themselves in that same place where a sighting historically happened, or maybe even more than one. But in my view, I think that's a little misguided. I think that the sidings are not necessarily attached to any single spot. It's it's just that the person was

in the right place at the right time. Rather than put yourself at the exact place where previous sighting has happened, I think you just kind of got to go up there and camp out and hang out and let them come to you.

and up any of those creeks. Things have happened, So it's not just the road itself, it's all the ancillary roads that are are part of that part of the Mountain Hook National Forest, but they all have stuff going on the side. Roads start to get a little beat up and primitive and they're mostly logging roads. But it's a great piece of public land and you can just drive on up there and set up camp. But it

is not overly difficult to get in there. But there are places that are designated wilderness, like the Roaring River, and if one wants to get into there, that is actually trail less, so you sort of have to navigate drop into these steep drainages and try your best not to get lost.

Would would that they could. It's a statistical thing, and you know, the the chances of having something happen are one in a thousand on any given day. But if you go up there a thousand times, something's going to happen.

You know. There's this guy Les Stroud who did a show called Survivor and he would go out into the woods all by himself and hang out, and eventually, on at least one of his episodes, he was approached and something was moving around and really gave him the hebgb's and that's when he sort of started taking the sasquatch things seriously.

and and you you might never be seen again. But but Burnt Granite Ridge is where that happened, and those rocks are still staffed there if one finds their way up there, you can still see the remnants of what Glenn Thomas described thirty years ago.

what's her last name? Anyway, she was doing a bfr row outing and had a bunch of people up there. We went up and joined them, and one of the participants had a GPS unit taken out of their plastic case and and then uh Ceily, my wife and I found it in the middle of the road a mile and a half outside of camp, and they couldn't explain

how it got there. And then we went up on a climbed up onto a promontory over this rock quarry and we're sitting there and my wife took her watch off and left it on the rocks, and then we did some other stuff and came back and then she realized she had didn't pick up her watch. Well. Then the next day they some kids were part of our group, said oh, we saw that watch. We climbed up to that promontory and we saw the watch, but we didn't touch it because it wasn't ours. And I said, well,

we've been nice if you brought it home. But I guess we'll go back and get it. And the girl said, well, the other thing we noticed is that the time wasn't set to the correct hour. We had just had a time change and so my wife hadn't reset the watch. Well, then when we went back to get the watch, we found it right there and that time had been updated to the correct time.

that that are really hard to explain. But it is definitely not necessarily proof, rather just an indication that something intelligent and and with a sense of humor is sort of leaving things and inviting you to notice.

bit of back and forth. One thing that Judy what's your name, Henry I think from Washington brought us to was she said, take a picture with your phone, do a little un arrangement there, and then take a picture, and darned if you won't come back the next day and things have been moved. Well, I said, Judy, so are you really of the thinking that sasquatch has nothing better to do than walk around in the woods and rearrange all our little pieces of woods art? And she

said no, no, they do it with energy. They don't have to physically be there. Look like, oh that's that'll you scratch in your head. But I think there's something to that. You know, it's pretty again audacious to think that they follow you around and and and rearrange your pieces of stick and ag that you're leaving there. But but however it's done. You do get these acknowledgments, which is fun, but it's it's it's again not really the

kind of proof that people would like. You know, you're you're not going to be able to take that to Jeff melderm and say, hey, I got proof they move my rocks.

knows where their Sasquatch family or whatever. And you know, my Native American sources said they come from underground. They emanate from within the earth. So that's really what Planet Strange attempts to address, is what is the evidence and the indications of this subterranean realm? And I do believe that it is the place where the Sasquatch and the extraterrestrial phenomena intersect, and they do intersect, they do know

each other. I believe the Sasquatch are essentially doing the heavy lifting, and they are the observers and guardians of what happens here on Earth. But they answer to a higher power, which may come and go from the planet, and I think they do. I think they originated from somewhere else in the galaxy. But I think it's probably a mistake to suppose that the extraterrestrial phenomenon as it manifests today necessarily comes from space. I think they are

already here. They have been for one hundred thousand years. They're comfortably ensconced on planet Earth, and those lights and things that we see in the sky emanate from again within the Earth.

So that's what I attempted to do, is take a bunch of unexplained things and then suppose that perhaps the question that we're not asking is how they interact. One of them being does this asquatch have any interaction with the extraterrestrial phenomena? And I think that the answer is a definite yes.

they ride the steel snake. What the steel snake? You know? Trains? Well, Stan Gordon had had these outlier sidings from Pennsylvania or Kentucky where the Sasquatch were seen riding standing on the coupler in between the freight cars. Uh, traveling on trains. That's crazy, but it why not? You know, they they're they're quick, and they're agile, and and I see no reason they couldn't jump on the thing and save themselves

a whole bunch of steps. Uh. You just wonder whether there's ever a hobo in the box car who who had those Sasquatch jumped in.

things a lot but don't always talk about them. But if you can find a priest, or a airline pilot or I don't know, just somebody of elevated credibility that strengthens their sighting. But you know, it does seem that the well alan in April for instance, you know, really unassuming salt of the Earth folk, few semi operational cars, lying around, their son living on the property in a trailer. You know, just real Salt of the Earth types are over and over again, the ones who seem to have

the repeat sidings West Virginia, Oklahoma. You know, it's almost like they're chosen on account of their lack of credibility in a wider audience.

everyday people. That's what I That's what I love.

they they don't have any particular credibility. But if if if you give them a chance, they'll.

It's a it's a just a fun time chatting with you. Before we we end our our talk today, is there anything else that you were wanting to share or is there a way that people can you know, reach out to you or you kind of a little bit, you know, you you write your books and then maybe uh in the shadows a little bit.

patterns to the sightings. So I would say, you know, anybody can get to the point of leading the sort of the knowledge starting by just reading books. And I think sometimes, I mean, it's it's fine to watch stuff on the internet, but it's one of those subjects that you just sort of have to get into book lengths sets of material in order to really start to put things together. And you know, I guess more and more I'm seeing that people rely on electronic sources of information

and uh, and the books get pushed aside. But I mean, I'm not just hawking my own books, but just reading the literature that's out there. There's so much of it. There's that this guy Chris Noel up in Vermont, and

he's really come into some really interesting things. And his analysis of the path of the of the data suggests that there they show indications of being a savant and you know, extremely aware of of of details and they can walk into a woods and and notice the one thing that has been moved since the last time that they were there. Uh So his work is really interesting. I'm trying to think of who else. Well, you you know,

you got Joe's one the Bigfoot Highway. That's he he doesn't really he just reports and and that's kind of the way John Green and all these guys did for all this time. But I think more and more I'm sort of of the feeling that, at least with my own books, that you know, you can't just report, you have to speculate, because you know, that's sort of how we advance the knowledge.

was originally going to be in the Locals. It was the thirteenth chapter, and in two thousand and two or whenever it was, I had some people proof for it and they said, ah, man, I think you should get that chapter out of there. It's just too much. And one of my proof readers said, why don't you have that be the first chapter of your next book, because you're really you're going way out on a limb with

this idea that you can communicate with these creatures. And so I took their advice, and obviously in retrospect it was maybe a little bit, but it did up being the beginning of of then what ended up being the next book, which was Edges of Science. But the one that's lost in there is the novel and and that's called Shady Neighbors, And it doesn't necessarily advance the knowledge, but it's a it's a cute story, that is, you know, I wrote as a sort of a family friendly but

still edgy, kind of a Sasquatch treatment. And I was working at the middle school of course at the time, and so I I wanted to write something that you know, teenage audience could read and and you know, get something out of very cool.

all about sharing the show wherever you can. If you've had a Bigfoot encounter related to the following or know someone who has, please reach out to me at Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com or pass on my email. Here's the list. The Subtle Lake area of Oregon, Rainbow Oregon, McKinsey Bridge area, Sweet Home, pretty much that entire area, the north part. If you get what I mean. I'll see you back next time. Listeners. SASA Summerfest this year

July eleventh through the twelfth. It's going to be fantastic. Eleventh through twelve in Greenwaters Park and Oakridge, Oregon. And listeners. If you're going to go, you can get a two day ticket for the cost of one if you use the code b f S like Bigfoot Society, but BFS and I'll get used some off your cost. Priscilla wasn't nice enough to provide that for my listeners. So there

you go. I look forward to seeing you there, so make sure you head over to www dot Sasquatch Summerfest dot com and pick up your tickets today