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Today, everybody, this is Less Striding Yes, yes I know aka Surviving Matt and you're listening to Brian on Sasquatch Odison You guys, and welcome back to Sasquatch. Thank you so much for being with us for the show. It is Friday. I hope you guys have had a great week. You have an amazing guest lined up for you. But as always, I want to start fin inviting me. If you've had an encounter and you'd like to be on the show, shoot me an email and get me at Brian at
Paranamore Oral Productions dot com. Can head over to the website, check it out, become a member there and now support the show. As I said, we've got a great guests lined up for you. I got to sit
down with Brian Brown. He's a former North American Woodape Conservancy member and he does research out in the area of Area X and he's here to share some of his personal experiences that he had in Area X in the valley next door to Area X. But one of the main things I asked Brian on the show to talk about was the episode of The Low Files with Rob Low and his two sons when they came out to Area X and spent the night with
those guys out there, and they had some really interesting experiences that night. So until I can get Roblow on the show to have him talk about it in person, Brian is the next best person to talk about it because he was right there with him when it happened. So I think you're really going to enjoy this really quickly before we get into the show, I want to
mention this. I have the opportunity to go up to British Columbia, Canada, to the Radium Hot Springs area and do a Bigfoot expedition with Todd Standing in October of this year. As most of you know, I have famously called Todd Standing out for hoaxing many many times on the show. He's been a guest on the show, and he did defend his position on that. I really haven't changed my opinion on those videos that he put out that he
purports to be Sasquatch. But I am going up there in October to spend a week in the Radium area and do research in his area with Todd. I am definitely trying to put together some funds for the travel expenses and some of the equipment that I'm going to have to take with me up there. So I started to go fund me page. If you guys are interested in donating to that, the link is right here in the show notes. You can click on that. Any donation is welcome, from a dollar to whatever
you can give. If you donate one hundred dollars or more, you will get assigned sasquatch out to see T shirt that I'll stick in the mail and get out to you asap. And five hundred dollars or more, we'll get you on the show after I get back from the expedition, and we're going to break that down and talk about it, and we may even have Todd join us to go over and talk about some of the things that happen while
we're up there. So if you'd like to be a part of that and you want to donate to the cause, the go fund link is right there in the show notes. All you got to do is click it. It takes a couple of seconds and it is very much appreciated. But enough of that, I know you guys are here for the stories Brian's on the line. He's ready to go. You guys, sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. I folks, want to welcome my guest to the show. It is Brian Brown. Welcome to the show. Brian, Thank you.
I'm happy to be here. I am glad to have you. So let's get right into it. Let's talk about this big foot thing. Let's talk about Sasquatch. I always asked the same question just about of everybody who comes on the show. What got you interested in the subject to begin with? You know, for me, I think it's a couple of things.
I grew up in southern California, so I wasn't in northern California, but if you were in California, I grew up in the seventies in California, and so you know, Bigfoot was just everywhere back then, and it was just permeating the culture. So I was aware of the animal. When I was a kid. Of course, there was Boggy Creek. I'm sure everyone my age just one of the first things they'll mentioned is Boggie Creek. I
didn't sit running a toilet for years after that movie came out. If there was a window next or to me or sitting next to me, and then you know, six million dollar man. But I think the most important thing for me was I got a copy of John Green's Sasquatch Files when I was
really young. We were on a road trip and I just sat in the back of the car, I remember, and just I read that book like it's not really a book, like a thick pamphlet, really, and I read that cover to cover, you know, again and again and again.
It was that was really what sent me off was John Green. I was just sitting here before we hopped on and I talked to Todd Prescott about a week or so ago, and he's graciously allowing me to use some of the audio from some of the more rare interviews with Patterson and Gimbler and some of the other things on the Sasquatch Archives that he got from the John Green collection.
And that story in and of itself is just fascinating. John Green is probably one of my favorite Bigfoot researchers of all time, and anything related to John Green I'm all about. So I'm putting together a really cool show about the PG film and we're gonna hopefully use some of that audio. So we'll have that coming up in the next couple of weeks. So you did all that as a kid, when did you actually get into the boots on the ground. Was an experience that drove you into bigfoot research? Or was it
something else? It was something else. It was just that I was interested in it, so, you know, my interest kind of waned as I got older. And it's a funny story. I've told it before, but my wife was cleaning out our home office back in like two thousand and two and yeah, well late two thousand and one, tho thousand and two, something like that, and she was I just happened to walk in and she had this big trash bag full of crap, and on top of it was
this book, was this John Green book was Sasquash Files. And I was like, what are you doing. You can't throw that away. She's like, what that because that book came out like in nineteen seventy three or some crazy thing like that. And I'm like, no, you can't throw that away. So I grabbed it out of the out of the trash. Literally, if I had not walked in, it would have been gone forever. My life would have been so different. And I just I you know,
they just rekindled my interest. And so at that point, you know, the web was really turning into a thing. I had sort of recently gotten a job building website, so I was really sort of like, you know, thinking about that as a as a medium. And also back then, this was before social media, right, there was no Facebook, there was no Twitter, there was no nothing. What we did is there was Internet forms, and so I'm like, well there must be and I was.
I was a member of many forms, mostly like tech forms like mac forms and things like that. I'm like, there's gotta be forums out there about bigfoot so I can talk to people about this. I still I had I was in Minnesota at this point, Like as far as icons concerned, there were no bigfoot within like fifteen yard miles of me, and so I went looking for I remember I typed in bigfootforums dot com and there was nothing there. And that just blew my mind that there was no bigfootforums dot com.
I don't know why I thought there would be, but I just I was convinced there would be a Bigfoot forms. And I remember telling my wife, like, did you know there's no bigfootforums dot com? She looked at me like I had a second head growing out of my shoulders or something. She's like, who cares. Anyway, I went and I registered bigfootforums dot com. I set up some free forum software on my computer in my basement,
and that was it. I just I wanted to talk to people and learn about this, this phenomenon, and that's really what started the whole thing. It was just sort of an a gnawing interest as an adult at this point in the subject, wanting to talk to people, wanting to sort of create community around it, and the Bigfoot Forums is what introduced me. Eventually, the Bigfootforums was listed on Yahoo, which is this is again before Google.
We got list of the same day as the old TBRC Craig Woolheaters Organization, which eventually turned into the NAWAC. And so I got to know Craig a little bit because we shared that little, you know, bit of connection, and eventually that got me out to the International Bigfoot Symposium in Woolla Creek, which I think was in two thousand and three, and then that got me that introduced me to Alton Higgins and the parking lot of the Bigfoot Motel,
and that's it. You know, I once I met Alton, that got me an invitation to hang out with the TVRC folks, Like I said, that's what they were called back then, and that got me into Area Y. That got me into areas of Oklahoma that Elton was spending time in, and eventually into Area X. So it was that just interest to connect to people and want to talk to people about the subject that eventually got me into are X. How long did it take you once you were out there in
the woods with these people, Because I've talked to several people, had Darrell call, you're on Michael May's. I just did a Bob Strain interview. I've talked to Kathy Strain before, and some of the experiences that they had in those areas was pretty crazy. Right, They're out there, boots on the ground, first hour, They're having visual sidings of these things. How long did that take to pop off for you once you get out there in
the woods in those areas? Long time. Actually, the first time I went into the woods because of Bigfoot, because I was looking for woodapes or thinking about them, was with Bob Strain. He was he was my introduction. You know, I'm a city boy, I'm from southern California, you know, life along Dodger fan. I didn't know anything about camping. I didn't know anything about forests or mountains or anything, and so Bob was extraordinarily
kind. After the symposium, he took me to and a couple other guys to Laos Camp where Roger and Bob were camping when they made the famous film, and so we got to spend I got spent a little time there. That was the first time in my life I had been out in the woods in my life, sleeping in a tent. I was scared to death just because it was so dark. And anyway, it wasn't until I would say,
like two thousand in I was just thinking about this. I think the first time I was in Area X was two thousand and seven, So it was a good like four years later or something like that where I got into an area and I had been going out, you know, we went to like Scuka Meadows and place like that. So I had been going out,
but until nothing really significant had happened. And all that time until I got to Area X, and that first weekend, I think it was two thousand and seven, I was in there for a long weekend and I didn't see anything, but there were I mean, we heard a lot of weird things. I heard a whoop, we heard boulders getting chucked around. There was there was stuff going on, for sure, But that was really the first time that I had had an experience that I thought was was really really interesting
and potentially an ape. What was some of the most memorable things that happened to you out doing the research, whether it was at Area X or anywhere
else, when you got to interact with these wood apes. What was some of the things that stuck out to you, some of the experiences that you had that have stuck with you all this time, you know, I actually I recently made a list because you talk about this with you know, when you hang out with these guys, you tell all your stories, right, And I realized that I didn't really even know how many times I think I've seen an ape, and so I made the list, and it's about twelve
times. And some of those visuals are really, really, really good. Two of them in particular. Some of them are just real fleeting, so they're probably apes. But I don't know for an absolute fact, but I think that, you know, one of the most intriguing things that happened down there. I was in there one night with my friend Rich who's from Great Britain, and Daryl Collier. I think that might have been the first time Rich had gone into Area X, and we were the three of us were
sitting around camp and it was it was pitch black. We didn't have a fire going or anything. And Rich, who has this like supernatural night vision, he can see things in the dark that no one else can. He picked up it was just a real faint glimmer of eyeshine of an animal that appeared to be sort of holding onto a tree and had climbed up a tree and was looking at us from from behind a tree. And he could see this thing's eyeshine. And I mean, dude, it was so dark.
I couldn't see anything with my naked eye, but I had night vision, and so I held up my night vision and sure enough I could see right where he was saying. There were two little dots, two little glowing dots. Well, Daryl had a thermal scope that was off the rifle. It was handheld at that point, and he looked up there and sure enough, bright as day, you could see this this roundhead. It was holding onto
a tree, so that was looking around. You know, from our perspective, it was looking on the sort of left side of the tree at us. And the crazy thing is on the thermal, you could actually see its fingers on the opposite side of the tree and they were moving, you know, as it was looking at us. That was so crazy because that went on for like twenty minutes. That thing was looking at us, and again Rich could see it with his naked vision, I could see it in the
night vision, and we all could see it through the thermal. So that was like sort of three different ways we were seeing this animal. And it just stood there. It stood there, It hung there, sort of held onto this tree and watched us for a really long time. And it wasn't close enough that we could go do anything. It was pretty thick in there, so if we had started to go towards it, it would have taken off. So we just were sort of keeping an eye on it and seeing
what it was doing. All it was doing was watching us. And that's the thing that we've experienced, you know, I've experienced again and again in Area X. They just want to like keep an eye on you. They just want to like watch you, and that's what this thing was doing. Eventually I got up, I had to relieve myself, and I didn't even think about it. I just sort of like looked in that direction with my red headlight on and as soon as I did that, rich Soot dropped to
the ground and I could hear it take off. But I mean, that whole encounter probably took fifteen twenty minutes. And it's just so interesting because I think it shows how patient these animals are. That thing had climbed up onto that tree. We didn't hear a peep as it did it, and it just sat there. It would have sat there all night watching us if we
hadn't seen it. Again, they're just very, very patient animals. And that was That's probably one of the most super interesting things that's happened to me down there. And you said, out of all these visuals, there was another one that you thought was pretty interesting. Less talk about that any other things that you can remember as far as behavior that stuck out to you,
maybe even outside of the visuals that you experienced. Yeah, So I think the absolute best visual I had was again through thermal It was one night my friend Brandon was there, Brendan Lentz and a few other guys, three other guys, and we were in sort of the original compound area that the NAWAC used to operate out of in Area X. And it was a really hot couple of days. It was like one hundred and five degrees during the day. It was very, very, very very warm for that for that part
of the country. And so that night we just wanted to sit around again in the dark and turned into a thing. Sitting around camp with no lights turned into a thing. And it really happened after this night because as we were sitting there, and this was Brandon's first week in the valley. He had been there for a long weekend in the winter, but this was his first time in during the summer. And so we're sitting around and it's so
dark, man, we can't even see each other. And we're just sitting in a circle, right, and Brandon scoping around with the thermal and he says that he sees a heat signature. He thinks he sees an animal, you know, sort of from my perspective, it was kind of off to my right and behind him, and I'm like, okay, Nubie, let me see this thing which you think is ape, right, And I put the thermal to my eye and Brian, I'm telling you, as soon as it touched my eye, I saw an ape. I saw an ape.
It was standing. It was the absolute shape of an eight pointy head, broad shoulders. It was standing between two trees. And what was confusing me at the time is that it wasn't as bright as I thought it was going to be. The trees were super bright white, and that's just because they were the hottest thing in the image because they've been standing out in the sun all day long and it was ridiculously warm. So I saw this thing and I'm like, okay, I see your ape. I see it. It's
behind the woodshed, I said. He's like, no, no, no, it's over by the outhouse. I'm like, you don't know what you're talking about. That's the woodshed, not the outhouse. So anyway, we had this sort of like Keystone Cops moment where we were passing the thermal back and forth and he was saying the thing was by the outhouse and I'm saying, no, you're wrong, it's behind the woodshed. Well, I think you know, fast forward a little bit. I think there were two apes,
and that is one of the interesting bits of sort of behavior. I don't know if it's behavior, but it's an observation we've made in those valleys in that part of southeastern Oklahoma. As we very often see these animals together in pairs, are you very very often see more than one, which is kind of unusual. I think if you look at the data, and especially the Pacific Northwest, it's very often what you're seeing is a solitary animal.
But down there, if you're seeing an there's a very very good chance that there's another one around, because there are a lot of accounts of sort of two apes being seen at the same time, and usually it's a much larger one and a smaller one, smaller being like, you know, the size of you and me, and the larger one being like eight feet tall. I don't know if those are like mated pairs. I don't know, you know, Bob and Cathy Strain and I had a visual of two that were
actually sort of a normal human size and maybe a little smaller. So I don't know if you're looking at young I'm not exactly sure, but in this particular instance, I was just blown away by how classically big Foot shaped. It's sort of like that that image behind you, except the head was pointier and between these two trees. And I'm like, I got to the point where I was. I was shining a flashlight on that spot and it was a good gosh, I'm not good with distance, and it's been a while,
but it was. It was many yards away, probably thirty forty yards something like that away, and it was up a slope, so I would put my flashlight on it, and I didn't see anything. I saw the trees clear as day, but it was just like sort of a g I ate nothing in between the trees. And I couldn't figure that out because when I put the thing, when I put the scope to my eyes, I could see it perfectly, and when I put the light up there, all I saw was gray. So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna go up
there. I'm just gonna go up there. And that's the difference between Brian now and Brian back in two thousand and three. Whenever it was I would never have gone up there in two thousand and three, but now I'm like, I gotta know what I'm looking at. So I put the light on it the white light on it, and I started walking at it in a
straight line. I wasn't. I mean, I walked across the fire pit, which didn't have a fire in it because I didn't want to, and I didn't even blink because I wanted to because I knew there was something there. I just could not see it with my eyes. And I was like, once I got to the bottom of the slope, it moved. And then I'll tell you, man, like every hair in the back of my neck stood up because that ape had been standing there the whole time. But
it was gray, so I couldn't see it. You know. One of the things that you hear historians talk about at the beginning of World War One is that the German Armies uniforms were gray. And one of the reasons they were grays because you couldn't see him as well. It was early form of camouflage. It was just using a color and this animal was gray, and
until it moved, I could not see it. And then I saw it step out behind the tree and presumably walk away along the slope, and that was that was like, that just freaked me the hell out because it was so big. Then it filled up this whole thing, and I realized that I was seeing it the whole time. I was just seeing the color of them, you know. So I was probably the best visual I've ever had,
just because it went on for gosh, I don't know. I mean, Brandon would probably remember better, but it was probably like ten minutes that we were arguing. Then we figured out when we compared notes, the animal he was seeing was down on the ground. It was closer and sort of like on its stomach, kind of getting closer to us. And again, this is what they do. They kind of sneak up on you. They want to they want to just observe. I don't know if I don't know
why. I think they just find us endlessly fascinating. But his animal wasn't the one I was looking at at all. His animal was down on the ground, closer to us. And what I think, I think what happened is that animal up on the slope was sort of watching over the other one that was getting closer to us. Stay tuned for more Sasquatch out to see. We'll be right back after these messages. That's sort of the best guess that I have at this point. So we were actually seeing two animals,
two different animals. One that was way closer than us, that's the one that Brandon saw, and than the one up on the slope, the one that I saw. That's one thing that I haven't asked anybody else really that I've interviewed from that area outside. I think I asked Kathy the question because she had seen some that were a lot smaller, like you've mentioned, is
the size of these things. That's one of the things that's interested me about Area X is that you guys are normally seeing them at least two, possibly three at a time, and they're different sizes. I mean, every just about every encounter that I've ever documented, I'm three hundred plus episodes in on this show of people who have had experiences of a sasquatch, almost without fail,
it is this overwhelmingly large, hulking figure eight nine feet tall. I mean, I've even had people say possibly ten feet tall, eight hundred and pounds. And yet when I'm talking to you guys from Area X, Daryl sort of described it. When I talked to him, I think he used the word core. He called it a core area for these things. Is sort of his theory on it, as in they may be breeding in that
area and that's what you guys are seeing maybe smaller juveniles. Is that the case as far as you know, I know, you spend a ton of time there. As far as what you saw and the other visuals that people had while you were there that you're aware of. Is there a lot of difference in the size or there, Like you said, maybe eight feet tall and then down to even smaller ones. Is they're a pretty good mixture there, Yeah, for sure. I mean we've clearly seen really really big oness.
But I mean I remember one time I saw one that was peeking at me from behind a tree and it couldn't have been any bigger than me, right, And there's other guys that have been in there, people that I know who have seen sort of chimpsize the ones, little tangy ones. Kathy saw a little one jump from top of a tree to another tree. So I think the term of the biologists use as a refugium. It's a place where these animals feel that they can go and reproduce and do sort of domestic
things and you know, make more animals. And that's sort of my operating assumption about the place is that for whatever reason, these valleys, and it's not just the one valley the NWAC works in. The valley that I've been in most recently is next door, and we've had encounters there as well visuals. So I think that's it's this whole sort of region in these mountains where for whatever reason, the animals feel that they can they can reproduce and have
you know, baby apes and running around. But I think I think that's a pretty safe assumption at this point, based on the years that I've been in there, and based on all the accounts. So the people I know, we're seeing them all shapes and sizes. Some are really really big ones, I would guess, you know, the average size is probably just a little bit bigger than you and me. I don't know how big you are. I'm six feet tall. They're not necessarily huge the ones that we're saying
most of the time. Yeah, you say you're working in the area near there, what kind of experiences are you encounters? Are you guess haveing there? Is it's similar to what's going on in Area X. Do you see differences? Do you think it's the same apes traveling from one area to the other. Man I wish I knew that answer. You know, my assumption is that at least some of them are the same. You know, there's a there's a ridge that separates these two valleys, and on that ridge,
there have been several visuals. I had a very brief visual of a large gray animal up there, but there's been several guys who have seen a big gray one up there. It might be the same big gray one. There might be multiple big gray ones. You know. I've seen one, two three, I've probably seen four gray animals. None of the visuals have been except for that one with thermal. There's just no way to know if it's the same animal. That's sort of the sixty four thousand dollar question is how
many of them are packed in there? And you know how many of them are how many of room are there, you know, and what's their range? If you go to the NAWBC website. When I was in the organization, we were able to radio tag an animal, and I think that's the only data that I'm aware of in the world that shows potentially the range of one of these animals, and it was up and over the mountains and around.
That's one of the reasons why we felt really comfortable going into the next valley and thinking there would be apes there is because it was over there. This animal that was tagged was absolutely all through that region. But I just don't know. I don't know how many are in there. I assume that it's not the same, like half dozen apes. I mean, that does doesn't make any sense. So I assume that there's a population. I assume
that it has to be big enough for breeding and to reproduce successfully. So my assumption is these are different apes, but I don't know for a fact. But yeah, in the next valley over I had a brief visual just last fall, followed by some other guys that were with me twenty minutes later a visual of another animal in the same place. So again a pair. The one that I saw was large and light colored, probably was gray, if not gray, sort of a it was a light colored animal. I'm
gonna say it was gray. And then the one that the other guy saw was very very either dark dark brown or black. So yeah, they're they're all overthrow there. And you know, if I've been going in there since two thousand and seven, it means I've been going in there like sixteen years or something. And I've had twelve visuals, six of which I would say are pretty good. The other six are pretty fleeting. I mean that's pretty good. I mean, if you think you can go into a place about
once a year see and eight. I mean, yeah, we're talking about John Green. John Green never saw an eight. You know, he never got to see one. That's remarkable. It's remarkable. So it either there's a very concentrated population of them, or for whatever reason, as soon as somebody who used to be in the NAAC shows that, they just start following around, which doesn't get you sent them all right, So I think there
must be a pretty significant population in there. You mentioned tag seven, And I want to talk a little bit about evidence, because that's something that's come up in a couple of the conversations I've had with people who spend a lot of time in those valleys. Is the evidence right? I know for the NAWAC, their mission for the longest time, and part of that mission still is is to collect a specimen. According to Darrel, they're sort of switching
that into more of people carrying cameras. I mean, Darrel told him he doesn't carry a long gun anymore. He carries a camera because he's trying to get some footage of these things, some good photo documentation. I know over the years there was an incident that Bob mentioned, I can't remember the name of what he called it, but where one of these things was injured. I think it might have actually been Darrow that took a shot of this thing.
I know there were some blood collected in that. But over the time you've been going in there since two thousand and seven, what has been the most impressive thing, obviously, other than people actually seeing these things, which is pretty rare in of itself for someone to have a visual sighting, what kind of evidence has come out of there that has really stood out to you that either you've been really proud of a you've seen collected that has moved the
ball down the field in your mind as far as the research goes, well, there's been hair collected. Hair is problematic because you don't have to have a type specimen. There is a type specimen. That's what you always get to whenever you have these conversations, and why I do believe that eventually it's going to require the collection of some kind of specimens, some kind of either a part of one or something right, and I think blood might do it.
I don't know. I'm not a scientist by training in any stretched imagination, but what you owe, which you kind of get back to, is that there's nothing to compare this stuff too. So there's been hair collected, that it's not a great place to collect footprint evidence. That the ground just isn't conducive. I don't know if you've ever been over there in that part of the country, but the ground is very hard, very rocky. There just isn't a lot of dirt and mud, so it's hard to collect footprint
evidence there. The overwhelming amount of just personal accounts, you know, I've had rocks thrown at me. Is that evidence? I don't know. I mean a rock was thrown at me, a rock was thrown at several people. I think Tag seven is gotta be just, you know, head and shoulders, the most important thing that's been collected in Area X and and maybe I think one of the most important pieces of evidence collected with regards to what
apes just ever, because again this is an animal. The way this tag was situated, you know, the way that the testing that was done, on the way that the tag was actually affixed then how it would affix itself to fur, and we tested it or I didn't have meaning to do with it, but it was tested on on feathers, you know, So it wasn't a bird. It couldn't have been an animal that was under six feet tall, because it was at least six feet high up on the ground.
I mean, that was an ape that got tagged. Not only is it the first time I think that an animal tagged itself. You know, we've when this happened, I did a search for that. Never seen an account of that before. You know, usually when you're radio tagging animals, you're literally catching them and sticking it on them and then letting them go. But you're talking about turtles usually things like that, not you know, eight foot
tall bipedal apes. This animal not only tagged itself, but we collected data for months and months and months. That data I think is just really critically important. It definitely shows a range for this animal and it was over several months from summer through winter. So I think that has to be the most important data that the NAWAC has ever collected. You know, as many cameras as they've deployed, as have been deployed by people all across the country.
I mean, I've never seen a super compelling photo of a wood ape off of a game camp, one that would make someone who was on the fence, you know, get off the fence. We've recorded lots of audio down there, not only the NWBAC, but the folks that I'm going in there with. We've got some really interesting audio whoops and things like that, howls, it's more of the same, you know, those whoops and howls have
been recorded all over the place. If the folks in the Olympic Peninsula and the really terrific work they're doing recording audio and just gathering evidence of nests and things isn't going to move a needle, then really kind of tag seven doesn't do it. You start to have this circumstantial body of evidence that just is overwhelmingly indicative of an animal, and you almost have to be obtuse, so you should not want to believe it it's true. You know. I recently
heard I think it was on Cliff and Bobo's podcast. Matt Prutt was talking about how the problem with bigfoot evidence is that there's no such thing as bigfoot, so any evidence that shows that there might be Bigfoot can't be true because there was an all big foot, because this this logical circle that you get
into, and I think that's true. So as much as I respect Daryl and I'm not familiar with why he made the decision he's made to no longer carry a gun in there and try to collect a speciman, I do think that's ultimately how it's going to get resolved. I don't think it's going to be another video or a photo or another footprint crash. I mean, if you know, guys like Cliff Brackman, haven't you know, cracked the nut with all the all of the casting that he's done. That's not going to
do it. So I just I don't know that there is anything that is going to solve this mystery that's going to answer this question that doesn't involve, you know, flesh and blood. I definitely agree, man. That's That's something I was talking to Bob about just the other day when we were talking. Is I think anybody who goes out and is really trying to prove that
the species is real? And that's something I want to ask you in just a second, as far as the motivation for you I think anybody who goes out, and I'm not talking about armshare researchers like me who goes hiking on my property. I don't carry a long gun with me. I'm not trying to take down a Sasquatch. And I found things here. There's possibly activity on my property. I found what I believe to be a footprint just a couple of weeks ago. So I'm still up in the air right because i
haven't seen one of these things. I think any group that goes out and doesn't keep that in mind, if you're really trying to move the ball, and you're really trying to prove the species, somebody in that group has to have the intestine a fortitude to say somebody might have to take this thing down
because science requires what it requires. Now, having said that, you've had so many experiences, whether it be with the nawac out An area ex or where you're at now, I've asked this question of a couple of people recently on the show, because I'm very curious about it. What motivates you to go out and continue to go out in the woods. What is the motivation for you? What's the end game for you? Is it to prove the species to have more experiences. Is it to move that ball for everybody else?
What's the motivation for you? It's interesting because it's changed over the years. You know. At first, when I first started going into the woods, this was before I went to Oklahoma for the first time and met all those guys, I was just like super super curious, you know, sort of like you like, I believe that the preponderance of evidence suggested that this animal existed, but I didn't know for a fact that it was real, and so I was going out there to just try to, you know,
see for myself and have a good time. It was. It was camping with a little bit of player, you know, just because there was you know, there might be a big old monkey beametry or something. Then getting into Area X and learning the apes there, I think that my my sort of personal motivation became I just wanted everyone to know about this, you know, So all of the podcast that I did, all of the stuff that
I did, it was always about trying to educate people. And then in that way, I was really sort of inspired by the work of people like John Green, who I think that's what his life work was all about, just trying to educate people. And so in some small way, I'm not comparing myself to John Green, but in some small way, I was sort of following in his footsteps and just wanting to get as much information as about
these things out there as possible. So my personal motivation sort of shifted from being sort of just interested in the topic from like a popular culture standpoint, to being more interested in the topic, from like I want people to know about these things, And especially once I started having my own encounters and I knew for a fact that they were real, I really wanted to sort of
protect their habitat. And I know that there's some people just cannot wrap their head around the fact, like you think one should be collected as a specimen, but you're trying to protect them, like, well, that's how it works. You know, that's how science work. You're not talking about the individuals, You're talking about population, and so I wanted them protected as a population. You know, now I'm in a much smaller group now, and
you know we don't have private land operate on. I think that my personal motivation I've really shifted. Keep thinking about this thing that Rick Nol said to me a long long time ago, you know, I asked him what he would do if he ever saw one, because at that point he had not seen one. I'm not sure if he has up to this point, but he had not seen one. And this was back in life, you know, the early two thousands. And he said he would just I'm paraphrasing,
but he said, I'll probably just like disappear. I'll just stop doing you know, I'll go quiet, because like he just wanted to see one. That was his whole thing for doing it right. And at this point, the reason I go out is I'm still interested in talking to people like I'm talking to you right. I still want people to understand about this subject. I still want people to know that there's something in it, that these animals are real. But I also know that what I'm capable of doing now is
really it's more personal. You know. I go out there. I go out there for the fellowship, to boot my friends. I go out there to be in nature. I really like being in nature, camping, that sort of thing. And I just want to keep having experiences. I want to know, occasionally see an apor here, an ape for smell and ap or have a rock thrown at me I mean, so it's become much more personal, I think because I've gotten older and as things have just evolved around
me. That's a good answer, man. I appreciate it, and that's something I ask myself every day. You know. I started doing the show for the very same reason that you did. I wanted to educate people and myself and connect with people who had had experiences that hopefully I could learn from and I could collect data in a way that I can archive. I sort of consider myself an archivist in a way, because everybody I talked to who
has had an experience is it's out there in perpetuity forever. Once the episode airs, anybody can listen to it compare it to their own experiences or experiences
that happened fifteen twenty years ago. And that's one of the things that just keeps me coming back, is putting those dots together and talking to people and listening to what happened to them, and what happened to you in Oklahoma, happened to someone in Louisiana, very similar things, right I think about you know, way back in the day when I first started the forums and that sort of thing, for me, it was like trying to convince people that
I wasn't crazy, you know, that there was a real good reason to
be interested in this subject, and that I wasn't nuts. And then what's really interesting to me is as I became more certain that these animals were real, once I started to have experiences and saw them and smelled them and heard them and all that sort of thing, my interest in trying to convince someone who didn't believe, you know, trying to argue with a skeptic, I became less and less interested in that over time, which is not the thing that I expected to happen. At this point, I don't care. I
don't care if you don't believe me. I don't care if you think that anyone who goes out look at her big foot is nuts. It doesn't matter to me. Think what you want to think. But I know what I know, I know what I've experienced, and I'm just trying to experience it again, you know what I'm saying. So it's a real evolution. I think. I think it's really And I remember when folks used to show up on the forum and they've had an experience and they would say something like that.
They would say like I don't care if you believe me. I'm like, how could you not care if someone believes you like that? It's like, it didn't make any sense to me, But now I totally get it. I'm right there with him. Let's take a left turn here for a
second. I didn't even have this written down to talk about, but it's fresh on my mind because it's been sort of a thing that I've been dealing with recently, and somebody who has done as much as you have in this research, I'm curious about how you handle this because I'm having a difficult time dealing with what people call who was it yesterday? Tell me they don't talk about it. They don't talk about woo anymore. They call it high strangeness.
I was a guest on another podcast, discover Sasquatching. Chris was like, I don't call it woo. I'll call it high strangeness because I've experienced that recently with some of the people I've interviewed. You know, I've talked about it on the show already. There was a guy interviewed that started out with a very what seems to be a mundane just seeing an eight foot ape in the woods, that's not supposed to exist. That turned into a situation
where he claims to have sex with a female sasquatch during his encounter. That's pretty high strangeness as far as I'm concerned when it comes to a big foot encounter. And you know, I'm looking this guy in the eyes and he is as serious as a heart attack telling me this story. It's very cathartic for him. He's unburdening himself and telling me this story. I had a conversation with I don't know if you're familiar with Henry Franzoni a couple of days
ago. Henry has had some weird shit happened to him. There's some things that he wouldn't even tell me because he's He literally said, I'm not going to put it out here because people think I'm crazy enough already. I'm not going to tell you everything that's happened to me. So as a person who goes in looking for woodapes, we're not even talking. You guys don't even call him sasquatch bigfoot. You guys call them wood apes because that's what you
believe that they are. Yeah, if they exist at all, I think we're on the same track with the wood ape. Matt and I've had conversations, numerous conversations about that over the years. I said all that to say, how do you handle that as a researcher, as an investigator, whatever you want to call it, just for yourself? How do you look at those experiences that people convey and compare them to what you've experienced in other people
experience? How do you separate the high strangeness or do you separate it from just regular, let's say, Area X encounters with wood apes. Yeah, it used to really bother me again because I was so invested in trying to can demonstrate that I was in nuts for believing this that when people said crazy things like they've had sexts with Bigfoot, and again I don't know this guy. I'm just like, hey, like, why would you want to? I guess the like question number one. But let's just get past that for
a second. It used to really bother me. And now what's interesting about this is unless you're having the experience, if I'm telling you what I experienced, you know, if I'm relating to you, you're not. You're you're hearing, Like, how my brain what my brain did with that? And we're really complicated animals. And I will say that the first time you see an eight, even like for me, I was so close, one hundred
percent sure that they were there before I saw one, it did. I was on the boat right, totally bought it, and then I saw one. And there's been a couple of times when when I especially towards the beginning, when I would see one, where it was really like, it does things to your head, right, because you're seeing this animal that is a myth, it is it is a legend, right, it's a monster, and you're seeing it, and even if you think you're prepared, you're not
prepared. And this is my the advice I give to people who go out there for the first time, Like you're not ready. You think you're ready, You're not ready to see this thing. The first time you see it. You're going to be an idiot. You're gonna do something stupid. First time I saw an eight, I did something stupid like it like, you're just not ready for it. And so I think what I'm what I'm trying
to get at, is everybody's going to react to differently. I think we're very complicated creatures inside our own heads, And I think that the enormity of having one of these experiences it can mess with you, you know. And I think that there's also an aspect of it that it seems like if they're real, I know they are, They're just animals. How Come we can't get a picture of one. How come they're so hard to see? How come they can sneak up on you the way they do? How come they
can move so fast? Like our frame of reference, especially as modern humans, is not one that allows us to understand those things very well. You know. I will say, and I've said it before, that these animals are just faster than you can imagine. They're faster than you can imagine. They can move so quickly. And I say that to you, I say like, no, they're really fast, and they think, Okay, they're fast. I'm like, no, dude, they're faster than you think they
are. They are a blur. They're so fast. They're so fast that if you were on the edge of believing anything about them being supernatural, that might put you over the You might go, yeah, no animal can move like that. And sometimes they can move and make no noise at all. I have no idea how they do this. Sometimes they move in there ridiculously
loud, but sometimes they're super quiet, so they're moving. They're really smooth when they run because of their way their bodies work, and the biomechanics of their move that they don't move up and down like you and I do. They don't move like a bear. They're very smooth, they're very fast. They can be deadly quiet. They can just disappear, and some people think they literally do because to them that's what it looks like. It looks like
they just literally disappeared. Well, I've been out in the woods that I've seen deer and they've literally disappeared in front of me. I know they didn't, you know, I just don't know where they went. And that's what these animals do too. So I guess what I'm saying is we're just not prepared as modern humans to understand how animals in the woods work. We're not prepared to understand how an eight foot tall animal can sneak up on us like
that. And I think for some people the easiest way to explain all that is to allow themselves to go places that make no sense to some of us. I'm not going to throw stones and I live in a glass house. Right, I've said I've seen Bigfoot twelve times, right, So I'm not going to throw stones at these folks. But I'm just trying to explain somehow what might get you to a place like that where you might actually believe that
you had sex with the big Foot. Well, think Craty. You can tell a guy and you could see it in his eyes that he really believes it. I'm not going to argue with him, you know what I'm saying, Like, it's just what's the point. Stay tuned for more Sasquatch out to see. We'll be right back after these messages. Yeah, I agree, man, And that's a fair answer. It's kind of subjective, like
everything else that we're really talking about. For the most part with these things is I've often wondered, and I'm actually trying to put together a show now with some mental health professionals that are fans of the show, some of them have been guests on the show that have a background in mental health, to talk about why some of these things happen. Do I believe all Bigfoot is a mass hallucination? Absolutely not. Do I believe some people make up their
stories? I do right. I believe like some oaxers, I believe people have real experiences, like you said, and maybe the brain processes it in a different way than most of us might and it becomes more fantastical and it gets added to overtime. Again. I have everybody on the show to share their experiences, and it is your experience. I say that all the time. I do not sit in judgment of anybody's experience, no matter how highly strange it might be. I want to convey that to everybody. It is
your experience. I haven't aired the episode with the sex with the Sasquatch because I'm afraid that people won't take it so well. This is a serious show. We try to cover serious things and approach the subject in the right way. Here's an example of the weird way our brain works. And this is my own personal experience. When Brandon and I had our jewel at the thermals and he was seeing the animal down low and I saw the one up on
the slope. The thing that I didn't tell you about that but I have related this in publicly before, but I would not even write that down in our log. You know, the way that we operate out there as you write everything down. We have these journals, and I think it's super important. If you're going in the woods and you're looking for what aps, write everything down, when it happened, the time that had happened, all the
conditions. It's really important. But when we were sitting there, I had that visual and it was clearly an ape, and my hair stop on the back of my neck. I refuse to write it down. I don't know why. I don't, like, in my mind there was something happening in my head that would not accept that what I just saw had happened. It wasn't until the next day then I'm like, Okay, that happened, and I felt comfortable, and again, like dude, I had already seen what
ape like. This was not my first rodeo, right, I've been coming into the valley for a couple of years. At that point, I can't explain it. I can't explain what happened. If it had been me and one other person, it would have been one of the what I think is probably the majority of encounters never would have been reported, never would have been heard by anyone, because I would not have accepted it. And for whatever reason, my mind was rejecting that visual that encounter that I had, it
just would accept it. That's just the kind of weird crap that our brains do to us. Like I said, it wasn't until the next day that I was able to really come to grips with what I had seen. That doesn't make any sense to me. It just doesn't make any sense. Similarly, I think the first time I actually saw an ape was through night vision. It was at the end of a clearing. It was maybe you know, thirty yards away from me, and I saw the silhouette of the thing,
sort of like the head and one side of it. The rest of it was in the trees. And I didn't say anything to anyone. I just went and sat down in my chair like I didn't say anything. It just because again it just like it was. It was too much. It was too much for me. And this is why I know for a fact the first time you see when you're not ready for it, because I was there to see what apes and I saw one and it just freaked me out too much. I didn't go towards it. I didn't do a damn thing.
I didn't put a light on it. I just like, oh, Okay, I turned around that I said in a good chair. What you just said makes a whole lot of sense to me, because I tell you I may have said something about this on the show before. I can't remember it all starts to run together and become a bull after so many episodes. But I can tell you that makes sense because as a police officer, one of the things that I was involved in a couple of shootings on duty.
I was shot out a couple of times. I never had to fire my weapon, I never had to shoot anybody. But I had a really close friend of mine who was involved in an officer involved shooting and they had to take a suspect down, and I was literally seconds pulling up on the scene, and one of the things that I did with him was pulled him aside, immediately ask him a couple of questions and tell him to go sit in my patrol car and tell them not to speak to anybody, because one of
the things that we were trained to do as a police officer. If you're involved in a really high stress situation like that, your brain does exactly what you just described, and it completely shuts down and omits half of what you see and most of everything you hear and all your other senses just kind of go out the window. One of the things that we were always taught in
the academy. If you're involved in a situation like that, particularly in an officer involved shooting, you do not give a statement for at least one to two, possibly three sleep cycles after that incident, before you can actually sit down and be able to mentally and cognitively recall every detail and be able to give an account of what happened. So I think that's a really important thing
for bigfoot researchers as well. It's process what you saw, think about what you saw, keep it to yourself, and have a sleep cycle or two, and then try to recall what you saw in your case convince yourself that that's really what happened. So I think that's a really good point that you brought up. I want to be respectful of your time, but I definitely want to get into this. Most people have probably heard the episode that I
did recently. I've been trying to get Rob Blow on the show to talk about Bigfoot for months now, and I know you got to spend some time with him out of Area X and I actually read a brilliant synopsis of that interaction that you wrote. I read it out on the air a couple of weeks back. Would you entertain us with that and recount that time when Rob Blow and those guys came to town an Area X. What happened during that
situation. It was amazing. You know, they reached out. This is back when I was still in the NAAC and I was on the Border directors, and they had reached out multiple times trying to get us. I think that either Rob or one of his kids had seen the monograph that the group put out, and so they were aware of maybe they'd listened to some of the podcasts or something, so they were aware of what we were doing,
and they really badly wanted to be in Area X with us. So they kept persisting, and you know, we finally negotiated, Okay, fine,
you give us a donation to the group. And they also, oh, they finally like said they weren't telling people when they were setting up the shows and who was on the show, but they said, look, this is Rob Blow, and he's like he's really serious in this subject, like he really you know, he's been thinking about Bigfoot for a whole long time, right, So anyway, we finally said, okay, fine, give us a donation to the group and we'll take you in there. And they showed
up. It was like they were like God, they were like six different vehicles. They just come pouring out like the Marines, right like. We didn't know what to expect. We thought maybe they'd show up. They hired
them. We start filming whatever. You know, these guys like the cruise up, the cameras are on, the mics are up, and then you know, Rob and his two sons show up in this forward raptor seff one fifty raptor and they come out and we are filming immediately, no introductions known, nothing, so that when you see it on the show, it was saying like hey, Rop, that's literally when we're meeting Rob Blow and his kids. It was super freaky. And then we took him in. We
took him into the woods. We didn't take him into Area X proper, just because it's really hard to get into. We took him into the valley next door, which is where I spend most of my time now. It was so weird, you know you're in there. I remember we're driving down this forest road and there's like, you know, multiple camper vans because you know they have to have their dressing rooms. And like seriously, it was a caravan of like six or eight vehicles plus our trucks, so there's probably
ten vehicles in this caravan. And there was this family on ATVs driving by and they were looking at us like we were the circus or something like they were not expecting to see this whole like string of cars coming through these you know, old deserted forest roads. Anyway, we set up, we went in there and on the way in the road going in there, there's one part of pt through it is absolutely horrible and we found like a nut crushing
station. We found And it might look like it's like something we'd prepped for the show or something, it's not like we were driving along and I don't remember who spotted it first. It wasn't me, but somebody spotted it out
of the side of the car, and and that's what it was. It is a It is a thing that we found many times in in those valleys, is you know you'll find a big rock with a little rock on top, and underneath the rock there's like the remains of nuts because you know, like chimpanzees do the same thing, but we showed him that and it's just, you know, you're sitting there and like, I don't remember if that
made it in the show or not. I think it might have, and I'm like, I'm talking to Rob Lowe about this, you know, like this guy was on West Wing, he was on some of my favorite movies in the eighties. And there was another seat another bit later on where we're I got to walk with him, you know, in this loop that we did and I am walking with Rob low We they just took a while for
me to like, really, you know, rock what was happening. But I remember the reason why I wrote that specifically was because there was a moment. It was Rob and I and the sound guy and Brandon Brandon Lentz, I think it was just the four of us and we were walking along and we heard two whoops. We heard a whoop on one side of the creek behind us, and it was responded there was a turn call across the creek, and they were beautiful whoops, just gibbon whoops. Exactly what you google
boop, gibbon whoop. It was exactly what it was. They were gorgeous whoops, And there was some confusion because we were kind of lost. I was literally the first time I had been in that part of the valley. I had no idea where I was, and for some reason, I was leading, you know, this Hollywood celebrity biblical woods, and I didn't know where I was. So we were kind of lost, and we came around a corner and there was Mike May's and I think Rob had gotten confused because
he had asked Mike if that was him that made the whoops. Now that's not how anybody in that group operated back when I was in it, Like, we didn't do that to each other. We weren't trying to to trick one another. So I didn't have any doubt in my mind that it wasn't real what we heard. But Rob didn't know that, so he asked Mike if it was him, and I think he misunderstood Mike that it was him
though it wasn't. So if you watched the show, the way they edited the show is they edited it so that the Rob was correct, you know, they edited so that Rob's misunderstanding didn't, you know, confuse anyone. And I didn't think that was right. Because that's not Mike didn't Mike didn't whoop and he didn't fake us out, but just that that whole that sort of whooping experience. And then that and they got it on This is the thing that drives me, NICs man. They got it on audio. They
got because the audio guy I heard it back at camp. They got the whoops on audio. They're beautiful, they're crystal clear. But they didn't make the show because they had to sort of edit it to make it feel like it wasn't real because Rob thought it wasn't. But yeah, that was a
crazy experience, you know. That night, at some point the crew had to leave because they were all a union and the time was up, so the director took everyone back out and that was just us and the Lows, and then the director came back and then he was doing all of the filming. And I think it was I forget which one of the kids it was, but it was brand and maybe Darryl and one of the suns, and they were sort of a little bit away from camp, and Brandon had a
thermal and he saw what we now know as an ape. At the time, he didn't he wasn't sure what it was. He thought it might have been the director, because the director was kind of like rolling around and on the road and stuff. So but it turns out he saw an He saw an ape sort of head and shoulders or this thing through the thermal. So he had come back to camp and was telling us the story about how he had seen it, and then he's like, where was it? And he
points like right over there. He's like right over there. He's like right over there, and where he pointed, like when he pointed over there, we saw two little points of light that looked like a shine, and we've been talking about e shine with them and that was just like, oh my god, there's there's an ape right because that's where he said he saw it, And as soon as he pointed at it, we saw this eyeshine like
fast forward. It wasn't I shine. We didn't know what it was at first because it was like lights in the woods, which I do have other stories about at some point. But it turned out that it was these overlanders that were coming from an area that we didn't even think it was possible for people to be coming from. And that was just so freaky and weird.
That whole experience I remember one of one of the low kids in particular, was super freaked out because we didn't know what was going on, and we were supposed to be the experts, and if we were freaked out, he was super freaked out. Right, that was just like that. That was a moment of high strangeness and that it was completely understandable in retrospect, but at the time it was super duper weird. But yeah, just hanging out with those guys out there was great. You know, I don't know why
they made that show. It was a good show. You know, a lot of the episodes I really really liked. I think our episode was pretty good too, though the editing was was a little suspect, But I don't blame him. You know, hanging out with your kids, you know, doing cool shit like that. I mean that that sounds like that sounds great to me. I would totally do that if I had the opportunity. Yeah,
I thought it was a really cool story. Man. Do you think he left a believer after he spent time at Area X, Well, I think all three of them were. Yeah, I mean that was my thing. I mean we heard all kinds of cool shit that we heard. Whoops and and sort of like sort of like you know, sometimes we'll hear this real low like kind of sound, and they heard that, you know, there was the there was Brandon's visual within the thermal. I don't have any
doubt in my mind that they left thinking of these apes for real. And so the funny story is, well that some of that's funny. But then a couple couple of months later, I was in I was in LA and one of his sons. I posted a picture on Instagram and one of his sons like, Hey, are you here? And I'm like yeah, and I'm like kind of staying at this and we were staying at the Beverly Hills
Hilton, which is you know, that's where we were staying. And he's like, oh, I'm right over here, like I just come by and say hi. So I'm with people I work with, right, I'm with like two of the people work for me, so they know about my interests, but this other one didn't work for me. He had no idea. So anyway, I'm like, Okay, well, Roblo's kid is gonna come by for drinks and he's like he is. I'm like yeah, like I know him, Like how do you know him, like I met him a
couple of months. I didn't want to get it right. So then he shows up and we start talking about stuff. We start talking about X and all that kind of stuff. And this guy who is like my work friend right, like a guy that he's like a colleague. That doesn't work for me. He's like sitting there like just ordering more drinks. Like I cannot believe what he's hearing. Like that, you know, me talking to Roblo's kid. We're talking about rob Blow and Bigfoot and what hop's like crazy And
we're in the bar that Beverly Hills, Hilton. And then a few months after that, I have some clients in town. This friend of mine is with us. He brings it up in front of my clients and out pretty much everybody knows. Everybody knows, not only have been on TV with Roblow talking about Bigfoot and showing him, you know, big foot stuff, but like you know, everyone I know is aware now because of this TV show, Like there are no more secrets for me. Everyone's in on it.
The Bigfoot is out of the bag, Brian Brown. But you can't put that back in the bag after it's out, So do you have anything else going on outside of your research? Are you writing the book? Are you back in the podcast game? Do you have anything coming up that you want to talk about. No, Man, I am so busy at work right now. I don't have any any sort of I may be the only guy
who's not writing a book. And you know, I hear that. Matt True It's got his book coming out, and I really am looking forward to reading that because Matt's one of the smartest guys I know in this field, So that's going to be good. I'm not writing anything. I'm just going out with my friends. You know, we have we have a group with a research group. We're going out a couple of times a year doing our thing. I'm not podcasting again. I just don't have the time for that
stuff anymore. So now I'm just you know, I'm send me retired. I guess that's how I would describe myself. Well, I definitely appreciate you taking the time to come on and talk to me, man, I've been looking forward to this conversation. It was definitely a blast. So I really do thank you for taking the time to come on and share your stories. It's my pleasure. I really enjoyed it. They say, you don't wantta go home, but casting try, dis try, try everything, calling baby
baby my joy for me to stay right. You call it right away. Contract dons US to us us USS used to use JAS