Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Cryptic Cocktail Party, a show where we have a few drinks, share a few laughs, take a dive into the unknown, I'm your host Dave, and today I'm joined by good friend, Bigfoot himself, Jamie Hurley. What's going on man? Howdy y'all. You know, just still being Bigfoot up here in New Hampshire, I wandered out into the wild last night to a good old Grindcore show, it was fun.
Yeah, I'm glad that Ben's been doing a lot of stuff with flight, that makes me really happy. If you're in the New Hampshire, seacoast area, definitely go check out Flight Coffee in Dover. Ben's amazing, the shows there are amazing, I don't drink coffee really, but I'm assuming the coffee's amazing, I've seen pictures on Instagram. I don't either, yeah.
They don't use any of that fake pump syrup crap and stuff, like all the stuff they make, because I don't know anything about it because I don't drink it either, but it is lines out the door. Yeah. They're doing well, they know what they're doing. I'm proud of that boy, I'm proud of him. Yeah. Fucking big things. Absolutely. He is a grill, so I mean. Yeah. But no, I'm glad you're doing good, I'm glad you ventured out of the house.
I mean, I think the last time I was in New Hampshire I got you to go out of your house for like a minute, and that was fun. Oh yeah, no, we went for more than a minute. Well I know, but you're a homebody, but also your actual body is falling apart whenever you step outside your front door, so. It's falling apart inside, outside, everywhere. But you look good, you look healthy at least, you don't look as like deathly. That's good I guess. Yeah, you got some color in your skin.
I'm taking what I can get. Yeah. Day at a time, I like to get back skating again. You sound like an alcoholic, just one day at a time man, I take care of that. I take a sippy poo right here. All right, Jamie, well I think I have a pretty good episode today. It's something a little different than what we normally do. Not in terms of like subject matters, so cryptids and paranormal and shit, but I figured the story, because we're going to go over a couple stories today.
I feel like whenever you're on, I never just do one story, it's always like multiples. But it's not fearsome critters again, this is something a little different. I'll just tell you what it is, it's cryptid hoaxes. I feel like there's been a lot of them recently and there's been a lot over the years. And I feel like no one talks about them because I think they're afraid that if they admit their hoaxes, then a lot of their evidence will go away. Their entire worldview is going to shatter.
Pretty much, yeah. And I feel like that's why you never hear like other, I mean some podcasts and stuff cover it, but you don't really, like even on shows on the History Channel, which for some reason shows a lot of cryptid and alien shit, and like Discovery, they use some of these stories and people as credible sources and it's wild that people just let it fly. You know what I mean? Oh God, yeah, like what's a crazy hair guy on ancient aliens?
Oh fucking, I almost said Zach Galifianakis, but it's Giorgio Asuchles. Yes. Yes. I think you know about a mutual acquaintance we had that actually had like a semi-personal relationship with him. I'm sorry, what? Like a, is this real? You never heard about this? No. Yes, this is real. Is this like an off the record conversation we have to have? I don't think so. I'm not saying anything like really damning.
Yeah, but I need to know the name, so we'll save it for later because this sounds interesting. Well no, I should, I think it's, because of what you just said, I think it's important we know like who this guy is, like he said they have like sometimes random crazy people on there just talking about whatever. He's not a random crazy person, he's like the producer of the show. Like he's like full on like. I know, he's like, I think he's published like books and stuff. Yeah. In all type.
The fact that Ancient Aliens is built off of like a grifter and hoaxer and people believe that wholeheartedly. Yeah. Which I guess is a good segue into what we're going to be talking about. No, but you continue, I need to know. So okay, so a long story short, and I can kind of tell you the details later, someone that we both know met this person at like an event that he was speaking at. Okay. And went up to get like an autograph and stuff.
And if my memory serves correctly, like got that guy's number and actually ended up like talking back and forth with them for a while. But apparently you get a little weird. You don't fucking say. Tell me the Ancient Alien guy is a little weird. I will say I have seen a picture of the Ancient Alien guy taking a selfie, flexing his biceps and back muscles. Dude, he's kind of jacked, dude. It's fucked up. Like that dude, if you even said the wrong thing about aliens, he could fuck your world up.
It was so wild. I'm shocked you never heard about this. I could tell you probably a little more details that I know off the record. I just want to know who the personal acquaintance is off the record. I want to know who it is, but we'll get to that. But anyways, Ancient Aliens is a good segue into what we're going to be talking about. Like I said, it's going to be cryptid hoaxes. Do you know of any that you can think of that have come to light?
Like full blown stuff that's been proven to have been like a hoax. Yeah, because I want to know if this episode is going to be short because you've already heard all these. I mean, there's like certain stuff, you know, like people say they found like Bigfoot tracks and stuff and it's just a guy who's out there with molds on his feet, you know, casting. Yeah. Or like, not Bigfoot, but other types of weird stuff like, oh, like crop circles.
Like remember the fucking, you just flatten it with like a piece of wood and a couple of strings and you're like, boom, crops. Yeah. Yeah. It's not rocket science. Yeah, no, I didn't include crop circles on this. But I think, I think we have some pretty good stuff. All right. So you ready to dive into this shit? Oh yeah. Okay. So first of all, I think it's safe to say that cryptozoology is kind of like a weird type of, I guess, quote unquote science. Sorry, everyone.
Uh, basis, basically what it is, is that like researchers are looking for evidence of creatures that may or may not exist. And even the evidence that they do find might mean everything or nothing. Like depending on how hard you believe in whatever it is you think the evidence proves and how you present it and what you present it as. It's a lot of really just like wishful thinking and blind faith when it comes to cryptozoologists.
I mean, there's really no, uh, there's really no like baseline established for what evidence could be evidence. Like, and I don't even know where it started. Like one cryptozoologist found like a dried out elk shit in the woods and then that is Bigfoot scat. And now every time someone goes out into the woods and sees it, like that's Bigfoot scat. It could just be a lot of weirdness, but we're going to get.
I think it started around like with just folklore, you know, like people telling stories around the campfire. Well, I know how cryptozoology started. I'm talking about talking about like the evidence they found that they find and what people who find it today, like why they think that's the proof. Yeah. Yeah. Gotcha. So like, there's a lot of wiggle room when it comes to the evidence for cryptozoology, uh, tracks, poop, hair, that kind of shit.
But since there is that such like that wide margin of like what it could and what it couldn't be, it leaves a lot of room for, uh, grifters, you know, whatever you want to call it to like come in and feed off of like their naivete. I don't want to call it naivete. That's kind of shitty, but like their blind faith in that what they're seeing is what it is. It's, it's naivete. Fear, fear plays a lot into it. Yeah, I guess. But this also doesn't just go for like cryptozoology.
It also goes for like spectrology, which is the study of ghosts and ufology as well. Um, but today I thought it would be fun to go over some of the more massive hoaxes in the cryptozoology and spectrology world. We're not going to go into ufology because I don't fucking care about aliens. I mean I do, but like not right now. Uh, so the first- They're already here. They're under the ocean. They're, they're in the earth. I already went over this.
Yep. All right, so the first thing we're going to be talking about today is the surgeon's photo. Are you familiar with the surgeon's photo? Uh, possibly. I mean, I've seen a lot of like photo, photo debunks over time. Yeah. So the Loch Ness monster has been pretty much a staple in the cryptozoology world pretty much for forever. It was first sighted in the 1930s and since then Nessie has been reported seen literally hundreds of times since then.
And a lot of the economy in the area is driven by tourists and cryptid hunters alike visiting the area in hopes of just like catching a glimpse or a photo of the lake monster. But in 1934, the Daily Mail had published a photo captured by a man named Dr. Robert Kenneth Wilson that at the time and probably to this day, it is the clearest photographic evidence of the Loch Ness monster. I mean, I'm sure you've seen it. It's like the, it's like perfectly framed clearest. I'll see. I've seen that one.
Yeah. I'll send it to you. I'll send it to you. But yeah, so it was like a silhouette and it's just fucking like chilling. Like no one's. But that photo for almost 60 years was pretty much like proof positive that something was living in the lake. Yes. I've absolutely seen that photo. Yeah. But that isn't until 1994 when a man named Christopher Sperling came out and just straight up admitted that it was all a hoax and that he had been involved in it. And this is his story.
So Sperling was actually the son of a famous big game hunter named wait for it. Marmaduke Wetheral who had been hired by the Daily Mail to hunt down the Loch Ness monster. Sperling went on to explain that Marmaduke hired him to make a model of the creature's head and neck and back and to fix it to the back of a model submarine.
They took the photo, cropped the fuck out of it so that they, so that way you couldn't see anything as far as like anything to like scale for reference or anything like that. And they had they had Dr. Robert Kenneth Wilson give the photo to the press because they believed that his reputation as a doctor, more people were prone to believe him and what he saw. And like I said, they did for like 60 fucking years.
And for some reason today, like some, if not a lot actually, still believe to this day that that photo is legit, which fucking blows my mind. Oh, I mean, yeah, it happens all the time. You can literally put undeniable evidence right in the front of someone's face and they'll just be like, no, I don't care. Yeah. It's because it will shatter their worldview of what they believe is real. Of course. It's like talking to any religious person. Yeah, because it's kind of weird like that.
It's just like the blind faith that everything is so real that if you even come like just a little bit, be like, that might not be what you think it is. Like, fuck you. Georgia. Georgia, you know, Georgia, a souk is going to beat you up for that. I'm not going to be surprised if we see more and more sort of cryptid stories and things along those lines. We've got to get out the development and video production, our AI, all that stuff.
With everything on the internet being thrown, especially with the population getting older, old people would believe that some very, this is disparaging towards old people. Like, I've fallen for plenty of stuff myself. But let's be real here. They click on a lot more bad links than we do. I mean, you already see that shit all over TikTok. Like fucking just shit gets sped around like craziest fact in its wild. Like the Miami mall alien shit that was going around for a while.
That fucking jellyfish UFO thing flying around the military base. Like people just want to believe what they want to believe. That Miami mall thing. One of my friends called me shortly after that and was like convinced. That there was aliens. Really real and a government cover up. Is this the same person that had a relationship with Georgio Asouglis? No, no, that would be hilarious though. That would be fucking great. But yeah, that was just kind of listening. I was like, what?
I was like, there's at least, you know, in the span of that area, what the hundreds of cameras, like closed circuit cameras, the hundreds, if not thousands of people with phones like everywhere and there's nothing. Yeah. Yeah. It's just shows like the power of, you know, storytelling, I guess maybe in social media or something. Well, I don't know. Speaking of the power of storytelling, the next story is pretty much based off these people's ability to sell their own story.
So the next hoaxers, I guess we're going to talk about is Ed and Lorraine Warren. Are you familiar with them? It sounds familiar, but it's not ringing a bell right off the top of my head. So everyone listening should be familiar with Ed and Lorraine Warren. They're easily two of the most famous paranormal researchers in the world. Second only to Zach Baggins. Shout out Ghost Adventures crew. If you're unfamiliar, some of their stories were made into wildly popular horror movies.
They weren't good horror movies, but they are widely popular. The Conjuring, Hunting in Connecticut, Annabelle. Yeah. I know who you're talking about now. They even helped cleanse the Amityville Horror House for whatever. But what if I told you, nah, man, just nah. Just nah, they didn't do any of that. Well, see, Ed and Lorraine were just like straight up grifters who were just really good at selling their own legend.
Kind of like Alex Jones or those people that sell like doomsday prepper food and shit like that. They would just. Yeah. Lorraine, not a psychic and Ed was a self proclaimed demonologist in exorcist. Like no, like it's just fucking silly. But there's a shit ton of evidence of them being fraud. So for this section, I'm just going to rattle off a few of them. Number one, they claim to have investigated over 10,000 cases in their lifetime.
So quick math says that if they investigated a case a day, it would take almost 28 years to investigate all of them, including weekends. That's even but but that's such a dumb lie to begin with. But according to their own books and stories, some of their investigations took multiple days to months to resolve. Ed also had a day job as a bus driver. They were raising a child. They wrote several books and made numerous television appearances as well as running a museum out of their home.
So I don't know how they would find the time to investigate fucking 10,000 cases. So that one alone is just like, nah, dude, ghost man that they they had they had clones of themselves. That's going to be the new thing that's going to come out. Sorry. So number two, they were involved in the Amityville Horror House haunting, which itself was also proven to be a hoax. Some evidence of this is that the Lutz family claim to have found a demonic hoof print in the snow.
Weather records at the time show there was no snow that time of year. They claims that all the doors had extensive damages and were like broken open. Yet all the original doors, hinges and knobs were untouched. They claim they called the police during their 28 demonic attack, the 28 day demonic attack. But records show they never did not even once.
And then also, Ronnie DeFeo Jr.'s attorney publicly stated that the whole haunting story was made up by Jay Anson, the guy who wrote the book that later turned it into the movie. George and Kathy Lutz and Ed and Lorraine Warren, all of them were involved in cooking up this fucking fake ass story just to sell their own fucking legend. Number three, I don't know. They still get more. I'm sure the list goes on forever, but I got a couple more for you.
The Conjuring 2, that movie, the storyline is based off the Enfield Poltergeist story and even the family that was involved with that were caught faking evidence. And as for Ed and Lorraine's involvement, they showed up uninvited, hung out for about half a day and then left. Unlike in the movie where they were part of the whole, like it was their shit. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. I've seen like all these movies too. Yeah. They're all trash.
The haunting of Connecticut was pretty cool, but I don't know. And number four, Annabelle the haunted doll, they ripped that story straight from a Twilight episode that aired seven years before they even met Annabelle the doll, AKA they just made it up whole cloth. They just ripped a whole storyline from a TV show and used it as their own. And like you said, the list goes on and on. There's actually a documentary out on Netflix now called The Devil Made Me Do It.
It's about a dude who murdered his girlfriend and claimed he was possessed by the devil. Obviously he wasn't, but they were heavily involved in that story too. Pretty much Ed and Lorraine Warren just suck super hard. The grifter. I mean, they're not still around anymore. Are they still alive? No. I think Lorraine might be. I know Ed is dead, I believe.
But even like there was one, I think it was like during like the haunting of Connecticut story or whatever, like the people that were haunted actually were denied an exorcism from one church, but we were granted it from another church and the priest who went there, he was like, yeah, this Ed guy is fucking full of shit. Even like the priest is like, fuck this guy. He's like, he doesn't know shit.
You know when the priest like, he's got his own grift going and he's going to get a donation at the end of it. Like, I can't even deal with this dipshit over here. So apparently he would like that priest would go to their lectures and when either of them noticed that he was in the crowd, they would like tone down like their stories a bit. So he started going to, he started going to their lectures in disguises so that he could like catch them in their lives.
Like not gonna lie, it's pretty funny, but it's pretty good. But yeah, no, fuck those dudes. The stuff and fun, the stuff and fun you could have before the internet was around. Dude, you could get away with so much stuff back then. It was wild. Anything. And if you got caught, you could usually just go to a couple of towns over or a new state, especially in the US, you know, considering how big this country is. Oh yeah, it's wild. You just go anywhere and keep, keep the con going.
The fact that they, did they ever get any charges or anything? No. Like against them? I don't think they actually technically did anything, did anything illegal. No, they just fucking preyed on fucking people and made up shit left and right. That's all they did. Cause they're fucking pieces of shit. You got ghosts in your blood. Better buy this, better buy an Ed and Lorraine t-shirt right here. Yeah, pretty much.
I mean, I don't know if they had merch, but if they did, I kind of fucking want it besides books. Oh, they, they definitely, they definitely had merch. They had it in the back of their van whenever they were leaving the place. They're like a cross-punk band. They're sound like Ed and Lorraine patches and like, what a fanny packs. He's like, he's like recorded DIY exorcisms onto cassettes and just duplicated them and hands them out. Like, yeah, whenever you're fucking ready. All right.
You ready to move on to the next story? You just explained like, you just explained like every noise artist in Brooklyn right now. That's pretty accurate. All right. So the next story in our last story is the Georgia Bigfoot. You might actually remember this one. In 2008, two men from Clayton County, Georgia named Rick Dyer and Matt Witten claimed they were hiking through the woods when they stumbled upon the corpse of a Bigfoot, not wanting to assume, leave any money on the table.
The two men carried the dead Sasquatch through the woods and back to one of their homes. I don't know whose home it was, but then they shoved it into a chest freezer. After a, after a couple of days, they made a, tell me it was just a big fat hairy guy. No, but just wait. After a couple of days, they made a YouTube video talking about their discovery and showing it off. They also reached out to a man named Steve Kulls, AKA the Sasquatch detective to come and verify and check it out.
Kulls along with him, brought along with him a man named Tom Biscardi, self-proclaimed cryptozoologist, and what one source described as a quote, known charlatan. So that's not good. The group plan to officially reveal. Bad start. What? Bad start? I was saying, well, if you already, if you already had known charlatan in your bio of your job description or what are your profile. Yeah, it's not ideal. All right.
So the group plan to officially reveal the news to the public on the 1st of September with Biscardi claiming that they had DNA of the creature sent off to a lab to be analyzed by a man named Dr. Kurt Nelson and that the DNA came back as a hybrid of human and ape genetics. And for only 11 million dollars, Biscardi would release the autopsy footage of the beast, which I guess was just him like chipping away at it. I guess. I don't know. That's such an obscene amount of money.
Why is the number so, why am so high? Why 11 million? He probably could have like got like a hundred thousand or something. Some news agency would have bet. You didn't have to go so high. Yeah. It's like he should have just aimed so much lower and, you know, like conned a bunch of local news stations and timed it all at the same time, so just released all the footage and got the checks or whatever. You could have made this work for you.
And I don't know why he just like, I don't know how they came to that number. I don't know how they evaluated the one hundred million dollars. Super Austin Powers. Like it's fucking bonkers. Now as you, as we've kind of already pointed out, the fact that this man, Biscardi, the fact that he was involved was already shooting up like a shit ton of red flags. He's already known as a charlatan and he's asking for 11 million dollars for big foot autopsy footage. Did he ask just anyone?
Did he just throw it out there as like a bounty or something or a reverse bounty, whatever? I think, I don't think he, I honestly don't know how he announced that he wanted that much money. I honestly, but Jamie, it was when they released this photo of the creature in the chest freezer that like real cryptozoologists like had a fucking field day. And I'm going to send you this photo because it's fucking silly as shit. All right. What it looks like something.
It looks like a dead coyote at a mass they bought from party city or something. No, like I said, they had a fucking field. Like they tore him apart. Lauren Coleman, the guy who runs the Cryptozoology Museum up in Portland, Maine, him and the followers on his forum picked that photo to shreds and were even able to narrow down exactly what big foot costume they bought and used for that photo. Oh my God. That's incredible. It's fucking wild.
But needless to say, when they held their big press conference to reveal the specimen, the media that showed up was less than nice and were basically just there to shit on them. I fucking love that so much. That's so fun. Oh my God. I think again, they shot too high, right? They shot too. And they could have, they could have kept it hush hush gone to like some report, a couple different reporters, you know, I'm like, listen, I've got this. Your company is going to, they blew it.
They really blew it. But dude, it's such a missed opportunity on their part. Like it's fucking so dumb. Like why would you do that? It's like they went to play roulette at the casino and instead of getting, you know, at least a 50% win betting on red or black, they just put it on double zero. No chance of getting it. You're like, we're going to get rich off of this right here. It's, they just taken the... I mean, props on them for like shooting their shot.
They really tried and they really thought it was, you know... I mean, what, I mean really what's the worst that could happen? What happened to them? What's the best that could happen? They were $11 million richer. Yeah. That's, that's something I always said when I used to like work in sales and stuff like that. I was like, what's the worst thing about asking someone or trying to like make a sale? They say no. Then you're in like the exact same spot you were to begin with. Exactly.
So yeah, they shot, they shot their shot. They did. Like they want to... They missed wildly, but they fucking, they fucking bricked it, but it is what it is, man. I kind of applaud them for it. That's yeah. Where are these guys based out of? Did it say? It's Georgia. Obviously. I mean, I don't, I, well that's where the two dudes who quote unquote claimed they found the Bigfoot car. I don't know where this fucking Grifter and the Sasquatch detective are from. I don't care, but, but good on them.
I applaud them. From all different parts of the land. They really are. Grifters come in all shapes, sizes, multiple pairs of feet. Jesus Christ. All right. So, but there you have it, Jamie. There's just a few examples of some of the bigger hoaxes that have been known in the paranormal world. What do you, what do you think? How are you feeling? I think we should make our own. I mean, it's pretty easy.
I was, I wanted to, I want, I wanted to do a fake episode about a lake monster and Lake Winnipeg, Nicknamed Winnie. Yeah. But it turns out Winnie is already maybe a thing. It's like, there's no one thinks as a monster there, but they kind of already just made up a monster. I think it is. Yeah. And they put it on like key chains and stuff and sell it at the. But I think I'm going to do it anyways. I think it'd be funny to see if anyone says anything.
We could, we could absolutely just like make our own and just go, you know, dude, just take some random pictures, you know, whatever. It's anything. That's all it takes. Like I could, I could take a blurry photo of like my dog's shit in the corner of my backyard and be like, this is a new, this is a new species right here. I'd buy it. Let's do it. Let's get on it. Let's, let's do it. Just see how far we can go with it. That'd be great.
Like just to see if we can make anyone believe that it's real. Kind of like the time that I think one of us was going to try to run for mayor in the town that we were living in just to see how, how far, do you remember that? Wasn't that just both of us? Or was it you? You were going to do it, right? I think some people were trying to convince me and other people. I think we were about to do it at one point just to see, you know, if it could actually happen. It costs money.
Money we didn't have at the time. It's stupid. And I, I haven't had to work with the government and anything from city council to other crazy stuff. It's the worst. Yeah. It all sounds bad. It's the, yeah. All right, man. Well that comes to the end of the episode. Thank you for coming on. I appreciate you. Yeah. Thanks brother. Is there anything you want to say plug? Oh, not too much right now.
Again, like he said earlier, props to Ben and flight coffee and Dover for keeping some, a real music scene alive in a place that's becoming more and more of just a free fabricated stupid city. Yeah. It's, Dover's not ideal anymore, but yeah, definitely go, go check out a fly coffee in Dover, New Hampshire. If you ever, if anyone listening is in and around the area, if you want, oh, you could also follow me on Instagram at crypto cocktail. Follow me on Tik TOK crypto cocktail party.
We have a Patreon. I don't really do much with it, but if you want to donate to it, it's $5 a month. You know, maybe I'll get around to putting stuff out there. We also have a discord server. It's so lonely in there. Please join the discourse. There's a link in my bio. I didn't even know you had a discord. Exactly. All right, man. Well with that, do you want to say goodbye to everyone? Bye everyone.