SO EP:477 Bigfoot In The Pine Barrens - podcast episode cover

SO EP:477 Bigfoot In The Pine Barrens

Jun 28, 202458 min
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Episode description

In this episode, Brian welcomes Jacob from New Jersey, discussing his lifelong interest and experiences with cryptids, particularly Bigfoot. Jacob shares how his fascination with the paranormal began, fueled by local lore, magazines like 'Weird New Jersey,' and tales from his childhood. He recounts a gripping experience in 2018 while volunteering in the Pine Barrens, where he encountered an unexplained phenomenon that intensified his curiosity. Jacob also details his participation in a 2021 BFRO (Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization) expedition in the Pine Barrens, describing various incidents that left a lasting impression on him. They delve into the historical and ecological landscape of New Jersey, including the infamous Jersey Devil legend. Despite maintaining a scientific and skeptical approach, Jacob admits his experiences have left him open to unexplained possibilities in the world of cryptids.

 00:00 Welcome and Introduction 00:14 Jacob's Early Fascination with Cryptids 02:49 Volunteer Work in the Pine Barrens 08:04 First Unexplained Encounter 11:14 BFRO Expedition Experience 22:52 Final Night at the Bowl 46:00 Reflections and Skepticism 52:02 Conclusion 

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Transcript

Today, I want to tell you about a journey that I've been on for most of my life. Ever since I was a kid, I've heard tales of bigfoot and wild men while spending time with my friends and family. As I grew older and read more about the paranormal, my interest in encryptids and other things strange only deepened. That's why I'm so excited to share with you

what I've personally become involved with the Untold Radio Network. The Untold Radio Network is a live streaming podcast network that airs a new show every day across all podcast platforms, YouTube, and more. They have eight different shows on all sorts of exciting topics such as bigfoot, cryptids, UFOs, aliens, and much more. I even have my own show called Weird Encounters, where I talk about all things strange. This is more than just a podcast network.

It's a community that allows me to meet so many amazing people who share their stories and experiences with strange. If you're interested in hearing more of these stories and learning more about the paranormal and encryptids, make sure you check out the Untold Radio Network for all kinds of exciting shows. It's free to subscribe. So what are you waiting for visit www dot untold radionetwork dot com. Today.

Hey everybody, this is left Drive. Yes, yes I know aka Survivor Man, and you're listening to Brian on Sasquatch Honest either and welcome to Sasquatch Pots. Thank you so much for being with us for the show. It is Friday. I hope you're having a great week. We have an amazing guest lined up for you. But as always, I want to start by inviting you. If you've had an encounter and you'd like to be on the show, shoot me an email and get me a Brian Apparentimalworldproductions dot com.

Get head over to the website, check out the blog, become a member there and help support the show. I got to sit down and talk to Jacob who had some really interesting experiences at work in the woods looking for snakes, which is an interesting story in and of itself, I think, and then on a BFRO investigation where they had some really interesting vocalizations in the pine Barons of all places. I'll let Jacob tell you all about that in

just a second, really quickly. If you haven't joined us over on Facebook our group Bigfoot encounters and field research has reached over eight thousand people at this point. We'd love to have you join us. There's a button right here in the show notes you can click. It'll take you over to Facebook and you can join the community there in the Amazing Conversations. Also, if you haven't signed up for the Bigfoot weekly newsletter that goes out every Sunday, there's

a button right here in the show notes that says get our newsletter. All you have to do is click the button. It'll take you over to Paranormal World Productions dot com. You'll get a pop up window to sign up or the newsletter. If the pop up doesn't work for whatever reason on your device, just scroll to the bottom of the homepage and you will see the newsletter sign up up there at the bottom on the footer. But enough of that.

I know you guys are ready to get into it. Jacob's on the line, He's ready to go. All this left for you to do is sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. I want to welcome our guest to the show. It is Jacob from New Jersey. Welcome to the show Man. Thank you Brian for having me. I am glad to have you. So let's get right into it. Let's talk about this bigfoot thing. Let's talk about the weird paranormal stuff. What got you interested in the

subject to begin with. I grew up in southern New Jersey. As a kid, I was always interested in the full aspect of cryptids, grew up on watching Monster Requests. New Jersey actually has a magazine called Weird New Jersey. I was always reading the books and reading all the magazines that they put out. Basically, in a nutshell, We're in New Jersey is a magazine produced by two people who are on paranormal shows on History Channel and Travel Channel.

Basically, they write all sorts of some of the abandoned places, some of the paranormal places in the state. They do deep dots with some of the local lore and folklore in the state, like obviously the Granddaddy of New Jersey Kryptis, which is the Jersey Devil, talk about Big Red Eye in North Jersey, some of the creepy haunted roads up in the state. A lot of that stuff drove me into learning about it, and I was always

the kind of a weird kid in class. I would go to the library and look at the Ufo books, the Lockness Monster books, all that good stuff. Obviously, the granddaddy of all that stuff was a Bigfoot. I always haide a fascination with it growing up. My grandmother grew up in Ohio, and she would tell me stories as a kid of all the history and all the tales that she was told as a kid growing up there. Basically

from the young their age, I was interested in it. Getting older and stuff, I lost that interest to some extent because obviously you go to school, you go to work, you lose interest in that type of stuff. It wasn't really for a while that I didn't really think about that stuff, and growing up I was always I wanted to say, skeptical, like I

love a good fairy tale, I love a good story. But all that stuff to me, for the most part, was just you know, this is just fun stuff, cool stories to kind of keep imagination alive and keep going out in the woods a little creepier at night. But I never really took it too seriously going out and reading that stuff or looking into that type of fiction and folklore. So I would say I had a pretty key interest in it from a younger age going into adulthood, a lot of my other

hobbies overtook my interest in that type of stuff for a while. Basically, the Jersey Devil in that type of stuff was all great story. I loved reading about that stuff, but in my eyes, it was all fiction. Didn't really take any of that stuff seriously. For the most part. I actually had more interest in ecology and reptiles and amphibian is actually my biggest thing

growing up. So when I was getting older, I did everything in my power to try to find a career in herpetology learning about that type of stuff. So a lot of that stuff kept me out in the woods and kept me interested in moving forward with that type of stuff. When I was going

into twenty eighteen, I was doing some volunteer work with the state. I was basically tasked to go out and look for areas that could potentially have some rare and endangered animals out in the pine barrens of New Jersey, which is basically my stomping grounds for the most part. The pine barons are basically a one point one million acre pine forest in the southern portion of the state.

Fun Factory has a seventeen trillion gallon aquifer underneath it that is some of the Earth's cleanest water that it's actually protected by the United Nations for the most part. The colage of the pine barrens picture like a beach, the dunes on a beach, You know how there's all sorts of little pills and stuff cover that in pine and oak forest, a blueberry, huckleberry understory, flowering plants, and all sorts of cedar streams and cedar swamps completely taking over the landscape.

When I was younger, this stuff fascinated me. I was obsessed with going out there and trying to get lost. And you just had this ecological landscape, this huge forest that was in the center of four major US cities, and you have New York City above, you have Philadelphia to the west, you have Washington, d c. And you have Baltimore to the southwest. So there's a huge belt in the huge population centers all around this section

of the forest that surrounded by almost fifty million people. So in my eyes, it was always fascinating to see how all these animals and these habitats ribus survive over time and basically survive the urban sprawl and suburbs and all that. So I spent a lot of time out there researching and doing that type of stuff. I was out there with a friend of mine. We were going to an area that we looked at on Maps for a while. Basically, this is it's called a paleo dune, and a paleo dune is a larger

dune. It's a higher elevation landscape. Basically, if you looked at it on Google Maps, it's like a sandy bald area. It had pine oak forest, very wet. It was actually in a wetland area, so and our eyes, that was basically where we wanted to go to look for these rare and endangered animals. For the most part, you were tasked to go out there and document any sort of rare and endangered snakes that might be out there because they were in decline. It was in the vicinity of a roadway

which may or may not have been under threat by construction. We get out there, it is about an hour and a half hike into this section. It is completely flooded. It's got greenbrier, campbriar, all sorts of stickers, all the lay in. We had knee boots and the water was almost coming over. So it was definitely a pretty taxing pike to get out to this section of the forest. But we were determined. We got out there. We basically walked up on this dune. It was beautiful. It was

mid June of twenty eighteen. Blueberries were completely budding, tons and tons of liking and flowering plants were around as green as it could be out there. Basically, what we did was we got our stuff together and we had it all out and we're going to go hike. And the dune was work where one section went off to one of the main roads and dirt roads in the Pine Barents and also Cranberry farm, which cranberry is a huge industry in the

Pine Barrens. It's like the number one export of fruit or any sort of food. And the other four went deeper into the state forest. We basically decided to take the route deeper into the state forest. We walked down the trail and we were heading down basically looking for any sort of signs of anything. To the right of us, there was like this wetland area. I don't want to call it like a swamp, but it was basically an area

that gets wet that time of the year. The Pine Barrens is weird with them because a lot of the lowland areas will get completely flooded and soaked late spring in early summer. Once July, all this rolls around its bone dry. I walk up and there's actually this very old hunting stand. It's about twenty feet up in the tree and it's not like a hunting stand that you would get at Walmart, the ones that you sit in, And this is like a full on shed up in the trees, like it was totally made

up with nails and boards and all sorts of stuff. And it freaked me out for a second. So I'm like, you could probably live in that, And I was a little bit freaked out. Actually, in the pine barons, we have these they call the people the rednecks out there and stuff, the people that had the pinies. So I'm like, oh, man, I hope that some piney with the rusty chainsaws that come out of the woods, because after us, I'm already getting like this weird feeling, like

I don't know if they should be here. This is a little weird. But we kept going forward. My friend walks off and use the bathroom or whatever. I'm still looking at this shed and I'm looking around, because I'm looking for any sort of boards or any sort of cover that might have been

underneath the shed that snakes might be using. I'm looking at it. I'm just thinking, man, I just hope there is no one else out here, because when you're out in the woods, especially in the vicinity of where we're at, people who are living out there are probably trying to be away from people for a reason. I'm just hoping that and just stumble upon some

weird dude out there. So I'm looking up at this and I start to hear what sounds like this bipedal crunching about sixty seventy yards into the wetland area. I'm listening and all this fear culminates to like panics. I start yelling out to it. I'm go, oh, is anyone there. I'm trying to get whatever this is attention, because in my mind there's no doubt that there's a person coming back to the shed, because that's all I thought about

my mind as a person. So I'm looking and looking in the trees, seeing I see anything, and all I remember is seeing this first spit second not long enough to get a really good book at it, long enough to known't imagine or anything, just greasy, sleek black bord go from tree to tree in the swamp. I'm looking at it. It goes for another couple seconds and it just stops. In my eyes. I think I just saw

some greasy, hairy dude. Somebody does over scowered in weeks, and I'm pretty sure I saw the top of his head or his hair or whatever. I back out of there and I start to head out, and I'm freaking out because at this point, I'm like, this has got to be a guy stalking us or something. I grabbed my friend and he's looking down at something, and I'm like, let's go. We got to get out of

here. I'm panicking at this point. Basically this hour and a half like in Turns until forty five minute like that the Clark, because we were rush and we were getting out of there. It was pretty terrifying, and I think that would probably be my first brush with something that I couldn't playing at the time because there was no reason for anybody to be out there. Okham's Raiser came into play, and I thought the first thing in my head was like, this has got to be a person, And obviously I can't say

for sure what it was because I never saw what was walking. But in my eyes, there could only be two things out there that's walking by ipatially like that. It made no sense for a person to be out there. So I always call that kind of my first rush with something unknown that maybe opened my mind to the possibility of more things that kind of shocked me. A few weeks went by and I thought that was a person. It wasn't

really until I saw another newspaper clipping in the Pine barns. In April, there was a class a sighting in more the northern Pine Barren region that actually got a lot of traction a lot of people. It was all over the news that Alady was driving home with her husband and her dog. She was actually looking out the rear view mirror. She saw the thing jump across the road behind her, probably one hundred george behind her. I've always looked at

that kind of weird. Why would you say that it jumped from bo in her rear Vietnir, Why would it have not been in the front if someone was making up a story. So I was always like a little bit intrigued by that. That's when I started having the thoughts in my head, like, there's no way, is there a possibility? What I experienced was what I thought it was, And obviously I was getting a little bit nah, there's no way. So I would say for the most part, I was

just trying to taught myself out of that thought. I thought of that for a while, but I didn't really pursue anything. It wasn't one of those encounters that made me want to do any more research, but it was that little thing in the back of my head. Did I really experience what I experience? Did I? I wasn't really too sure. A few years would to go by. I was looking online on Facebook and I saw something about a BFROL expedition happening in the New Jersey Pine Barns. I was like,

I should probably knock it off my bucket list. At the time, I was I would say on the about that type of stuff. I was very skeptical of a lot of the stuff. But I watched the shows, and I'm thinking, as I watched the shows, these people are definitely reacting to some coyote hals or some alhoots or whatever. I'm not even thinking that they're even experiencing anything related to Sasquad. So I'm like, let's just go on it and just see what happened, see what these people are reacting to.

Maybe have a little chuckle to myself, you know, maybe I'm not crazy. I saw a person and it wasn't a big deal because obviously bigfoot expeditions attract the craziest people out there. So I spent the money to go on the expedition. Not the best financial decision at the time, but I really wanted to knock that off my bucket list. Basically, I went. I never can't before in my life. This was like my first time ever, and I'm an outdoors person, but I do a lot of day hugs,

so I get there. The person who was running it, say was Eric Spinner. He's a researcher for New Jersey. Basically, he was very helpful. He helped me set up my tent because I never saw up a tent before. He was very cordial, kind of introduced me to everybody because I'm the new guy. I'm getting myself set up and you know, the guy next to me in the tent, you know, me and him start talking. Pretty normal guy at first, he is, Yeah, the government released

a bunch of dog men and bigfoot. Oh no, what did they get myself into. I was like, I'm going to regret this. This is going to be bad. This whole expedition is going to be like this. I was just beside myself with everyone on this expeditions crazy. I get myself set up with the BF for expeditions just like a check in thing where everyone gets together, they introduce themselves, they go over with God. I'm interested in the subject. If they've ever had any sightings, there, any stories,

heard some pretty compelling stories from people. Then basically we have a dinner. Usually people try to cook or they'll bring food to the expedition. I was blown away by how professional a lot of the people were. They all had walks, they all had therms. They even had bionic ears, which is like the large I don't know how to explain it, but think about a large bowl, but you have headphones and you can hear a thousand times

better than you can with your naked ear without any sort of help. Like, all right, these guys definitely put in a lot of money for this stuff, so I'm definitely pretty interested by the fact that these people are so die harready Gung Ho about this stuff, but obviously I was still very skeptical about everything. I was like, this is a lot of money for just going out in the woozard. Here's some owls and foxes and stuff. I

wasn't really taking it too seriously at the time. Night one on the expedition. Every expedition is about three nights. It's usually at Thursday night, as Friday night, Saturday night, and then Sunday morning, which you know, nothing really happens on Sunday. Some people will choose to stay an extra day

just because usually there seems to make more activity when everyone leaves. We got out and the first night we did something called a pied piper routine, which is where you will have a group of people go up the trail well and you'll have another group to the side of the trail watching them with They will basically watch and see if anything's following them, because a lot of times they say that they'll follow in parallel. And groups of people and watched it went

out the trail and there was a fork in the trail. Another team went this way, my team went this way, and I was with the runner of the expedition. So we get up the trail and we're hanging out this intersection. We're probably a good five hundred yards away from the other group. We got walkees and everything, and we're just sitting out there shooting the crap, just listening. The runner of the expedition shows me the bionic gear and

he's having me test it out. Don't move your feet around so much because in the headphones it'll sound like ten thousand times louder and it'll completely mess up to the audio. We're sitting out for an hour and a half just listening. We didn't really have much happen that night for the most part. The first night, heard what could have sounded like coyote in the distance. It

was like a distant howl, and that's something that sounded weird. It was almost like chatter for a second, but it was so quick and maybe one word, if that's what you want to call it. But it was fleeting and just out of my hearing. So I put it away and didn't really think about it too much, and basically we headed back down the trail and headed back to camp probably around two o'clock. It wasn't like they're up there

all night. I actually headed home that night because I had to work the next day, but I was going to come back because I'm only about forty five minute drive away from the actual campground that we were staying at. I headed back, came back the next day and actually took a date, like with some of the attendees there. Encountered that I told you about that her

about in April with the road crossing in the rearview mirror. We went to go check that out because in our eyes, that would be cool to go to an actual setting location for a Class A. I should have said the year September twenty twenty one is when this expedition took place, so this was three years prior to when this expedition took place. So we get out to this area and we're walking down the trail. It's a nice warm day.

We get to the setting location. We're walking through some thick stuff along the creek and suddenly there's this huge splash in the swamp. And stay tuned for more sasquatch out to see we'll be right back after these messages. It turns out as a bunch of ducks that came down and scared the crap out of us. So we get to the area. You whooped around, and you know, I didn't see if anything happened. One of our guys did fall into the water on the way back to the car. See you told me

it's an expedition until somebody falls in the water. So we got that out the way pretty quickly. But we got back to camp, sat around, eats, some food, hung around the bonfire. Beautiful September night. Stars are out. It's pretty crazy out there. You got in the middle of New Jersey or the middle of the pine bearings. The stars are as clear as they could be. We're just sitting out there, We're talking and everything.

I'm trying to get ready for that night. The plan was where we're going to go to this area called Capon, the person who runs the capond and it's basically this really tiny like pond alongside of the huge old Cranberg Bug and this is an area that he had a lot of activity in the past. That was going to be our second night up. I'm almost on a suit in the chair and it finally ready to go. So we get out there. Like I said, at this point, I saw more questions and

answers. I'm not convinced at anything. We get out to this spot picture a dirt road and then to the side of a smaller horse traw Our vehicles were totally scratching the sides of the thickets and it was totally miserable getting all the way down there. We finally get to it and it's this clearing next

to this ponds. Basically, what the exhibition leader likes to do is she wants to sit out there for about forty five to minutes to an hour, just staying silent and not really talking and letting the forest settle down after the noises of the vehicles moving through and everything. He tries to keep everything as silent as possible after that because he wants to would so readjust hermit per se. We had about setting people with us. We all closed the truck door

silently. We walk down the trail and have it circle where we're all sitting in a chair and just watching each other's backs and just trying to stay as silent as possible and just listen. So about an hour goes by we're still sitting there. I can't remember if there was another team across the Cranberry Bog because there was another really big hot spot across from it that a lot of people talk about. We actually went there the next night. This was another

area where he had a lot of activity. We're just sitting there listening. She goes to me, it's like, you want to do a localization, and I'm like, bye, golly, yes I do. I'm the new guys. So I'm like, I'm gonna do a loop and just see what happens. I unleashed my inner hower monkey and I just did this the loudest wop I could possibly do, just to see what would happen. Right after I did it, I got three woop responses coming from the Cranberry Bog area.

It was like one ladder woop and then a less loud loop and then work wid er woop. Almost something was moving away when I did it, so it was just like totally moved away from us. I was totally taken back by that. I was like surprised. I'm like, okay, that was weird. Maybe I didn't hear it right or whatever, but that definitely

sounded like a whoop. Maybe it was something else because we were next to the Cranberry Bob and thinking maybe it was a goose possibly, So I put it away and didn't think too much about it, sat back down, and I start to hear. And this messed me up a little bit because this was at the time I had no answer for what I was hearing. But I start hearing this chattering I want to call it was on the edge of my hearing, and I would hear it when the wind picked up a little

bit. It was almost like the wind helped the sound of the chatter get to my ears faster. It sounded like what they call sanurai chatter, and this here sounds It sounded like two things having a conversation with each other. I know a rackcketting chatter sounds like I know a lot of the animals at night will make chatter. This was very deep. It was something popping very quickly. It was under my hearing at the time. Nobody else was really

hearing it. I feel like it lasts a lot shorter than I remember it, but it might have been like five or six seconds of hearing this. I've talked to some people afterwards. I think maybe one of the persons possibly heard it once again, all I was the only when heard it when I was listening. That kind of got me questioning stuff a little bit. I was like, that's pretty weird. It sounded like the Sierra sounds. It

was very distinctly two things having a conversation with each other. I'm not even going to attempt to try to say what it sounded like, but it was definitely something two things having a conversation for sure. The rest of the night really nothing else really happened to. One of the attendees actually has this insane banshee like screen. It's lows, so she does that. She has something in the distance. Respond that sounded weird. Sounded like almost an Ohio how

type noise. But once again, it was just so out of hearing it was barely in hearing grange, so I could barely pick up what it was. We're probably out there till about one o'clock and we you hit the road and we head back to camp. They're pretty close to the vicinity of the campground. This is about a fifteen minute drive from the campground, all down dirt roads and stuff. You have that thought in your head when you winging your tent. Man, these creepy sounds I'm hearing out here. Man,

We're not that far away from them. I really hope these things don't come into camp or anything that's apparently what has happened at this campground before they would actually have stuff come in and investigate. It was deeply on my head getting back to camp and everything. Saturday rolls around and it's the last night of the expedition. I get up, we make breakfast, day goes by.

We're all just connecting. We're taking day hikes, we're doing day scouting, which a lot of the times is what people do during the day on the expedition, so they'll go out pull day scout, just check stuff out. For me, I was looking for snakes. I was going to some of my spots looking for snakes around there, so I wasn't really even doing anything they put related. I was just out and enjoying the time I was there. Saw some pretty cool places. There's actually a place not far from that

called Devil's hair Brush. It's basically this huge bog that has a whole bunch of dead trees in the middle of it. So it's actually a pretty cool geological formation out there, so I want to check that out. And got back to camp probably around four o'clock, five o'clock before it got dark. Same thing. We just ate dinner, hung around the campground, just got to know each other a little bit more before it ended. Basically, we got ourselves ready for the final night ops. I think we headed out around

nine o'clock to this spot that we're going to go to. The bluecation that we went to for the final night operation was a place called the Bowl. The Bowl was an area that has had a lot of activity. Tons and tons of white sour seen there. Supposedly ords the guy who runs the expedition, and that's one of the main areas of research. It's this place called the Bowl. They'll see like red pin dot lights there, so it's a really funky place supposedly. So we get to the Bowl and basically there's three

teams. There's a team that was going back to Capond that we were at night prior. There was a team actually all females in the center of the bowl, and I was on a team that went to the dam and was kind of monitoring the lake or the fanburry bog there. We're gonna have thermals and we're just going to scan the shore lines and just look at everything see if we can't catch anything on THEURM. We're all set up it's messed up at the time because we were using the girls as baber se. We'll try

to see if things you would come in and check them out. We were all at the dam and it was pretty dead for the most part. For most of the night, it was around like eleven o'clock. Nothing's happening, haven't heard anything, nothing on the radio. We kept shotting beavers slapping their tails in the water nearby, so that was like the only action we were really getting. So, you know, we're sitting there talking about all sorts

of stuff under the sun, everything from the research. Everyone was staling politics. Started to get my ear tapped off by one of the guys about how my generations and stuff fup for everything. I'm like, can something please just happen, get me out of this conversation, please, I'm getting my ear talked off by him. And then all of a sudden, we get this radio call in from the all female group at the bowl. They were just like, hey, can you guys come back to the bowl. I forgot

her name. She's having a conversation with one, so I'm thinking of conversation she's talking with one. What like in my head, I'm thinking, like what are you talking about. I was so confused at the time. I didn't know what she was talking about. I'm the new guy, apparently, so I was gonna be the one going to the bowl with one of the investigators. There. We're going down the trail and basically how this trail goes and it goes up like this, and then there's a turn and then you

can see the bottom of the bowl. Once you make that turn, it's about one hundred yards from the dam to the actual bull itself. We're walking down the trail. Once we get to this bend in the trail, right where we're able to be seen by the all female group to the left of us, we have these two loud power knocks just bam, probably not even fifty yards away. Obviously, I was freaked out by that. I was

totally took off guard by what I heard. I started pointing over there, and pointing is something you don't want to do in expeditions, according to some of the people who run it, because then might what the Sasquatches know that you see them when you heard them, or something that may borrow them from wanting to do anything else. I didn't understand that at the time. But I was like, I'm the new guy, not fit question, and he was like, don't point, don't point. I'm like, all right,

knocks nine o'clock. You're supposed to say nine o'clock, ten o'clock, six o'clock. We finally get to the bowl. They're all standing looking up at the top of it. I don't really describe how the ball was, but it's basically this topographical formation where it is like a bowl, where it's really high on three sides. There's a road that runs next to the top of it, and behind the lowest side is a sweeter swamp, so it's a very dense hardwood fares steps to the So we're all looking up at the bowl

the top of it. She's like, one of the women's go ahead, I'll whoop again. She does this really soft like woop, very soft, just very gentle. I'm listening, and I hear, probably about one hundred yards away, something responds to it sounded very similar to what she said. It was a whoop, and then it would knock, and then she did it again. She whooped, and it got a little closer, and it whooped again, and it would whistle and it would go back and forth.

Probably another dozen times it would just woom, and it would either whistle or it would not, or it would do a double whoop or something. Actually, a couple of weeks later they actually had another paranormal group come down there. They had the same type of activity happened with this thing whooping, because at first they thought it was like a goose or something that was out in the woods. But this thing was clearly coming in closer when we would woop.

I mean, it was getting to the point where you can almost hear rustling moving around and stuff. I'm just spinning off what it could be, and I had no responses for what it could have been. This was clearly something whooping like making that whooping noise wasn't the nowl foxes and kyotes don't really make whooping noises like that. So in my head I'm thinking, like,

Okay, there's only two things this could be. This is either a person messing with us, which at the time I thought was a possibility, or this is what we're here to see or experience. In my head, I'm thinking, okay, it's last night. They want us to get our money's worth. I'm thinking there's got to be a person out there messing of some of the attendees, messing with us, trying to get us to get us to come back and spend some more money. In my head, I'm thinking,

all right, that's probably what it is. But I'm listening and I'm like, this is really good. They must have this guy must have a walkie. There must be another guy saying all right, now move closer to this way. So I'm thinking, there are they like talking to each other and I'm blestening. They're not. I'm not hearing anything. So then a few minutes goes by and we're still looking up the where the top of the bowl was. One of the attendees was like, I see eye shine.

I'm like looking around, I'm looking at the top of the bowl. I look. I see our cars part to the left and I'm like, oh, that's just the red security lights and she's like, no, look to the right of that. So I scan from the cars to the right. There's a large pitch pine tree. I'm looking and my eyes are adjusting, and I just see these two royal blue what I can only describe as these

like reflective saucers looking from behind the tree. And it went from behind the tree to the other side of the tree like this, and it would like crouch down a little bit and move left and right looking. This probably lasted for about five seconds or so. Just I'm watching this thing moving around, and I'm just blown away by what I'm seeing. I couldn't explain that to the people. What I was seeing in this moment. The reflective eyes like

a blue royal blue color. I can only describe it as the moon reflecting all of them, very reflective. Definitely, we didn't seem like anything coming from within. I'm watching this. I'm just completely blown away from what I'm seeing. So this went on for about five seconds. I'm taking it back. I'm just thinking, Okay, how the heck did somebody pull that off. That's when the thought started come to my head. Maybe they didn't.

Maybe you're actually having a legitimate experience with this. Basically, I kind of catch my breath grouping after seeing that, We're sitting there selecting ourselves, and the whooping whatever was up the top of the hill stopped, but the cuar swamp behind us, we started to hear something moving closer to us. We started to hear what sounds almost heavy breathing. I started hearing these moaning sounds coming from the swamp behind us. It was something clearly from left or right,

moving closer. And the time, I'm thinking, are we getting slangs right now? Did that thing at the top of the hill. Was that like distracting us so that these things were moving in behind us? And obviously I have no idea that's what they were doing. My head, that's what I'm thinking. They're really working together to surround us right now, check us out from behind. I was listening. I wish I brought a recorder. You know, a huge new guy mistake. I totally dropped the ball on

that one. I can't even describe them to save my life. That sounds that we were hearing. It was definitely not normal. I never heard anything like that in my life. Clearly something moving closer to us to check us out. One of the attendees apparently said that she felt rocks pebbles sit in the back of her back. I'm not one hundred percent sure that's what she really experienced, but she said she was feeling like something was hitting her from

behind. So as this is happening, we're getting ready to end the night, trying to get out of there and get back to the cars. They decided to take a walk down the road a little further away. Same thing. They described that. They were walking down the road and they heard what sounded like a very low, very somber how moving away, as if it was saying goodbye. At the time, I wasn't really sure what they heard. They headed back to camp. I was just beside myself. I really

didn't know what to think. I was just beyond questioning everything that happened that night. It spiraled me into looking into it more and trying to do as much research on the topic as possible as somebody who's skeptical, as somebody who tends to know a good amount about natural sounds and native animals and stuff. This wasn't anything that I would pay somebody a thousand bucks to tell me what it was. It was definitely not normal as somebody who skeptical. I had

to be skeptical my own skeptics at the time. Maybe the most logical thing that it was what you experienced, Like maybe it wasn't people or anything. I told my family about it and about what happened. They're telling me like, oh, it was probably people. It was probably people that got paid to go out there, I don't think, so it didn't make sense. There was no people out in these woods. There's people on our team who

had fears, who had therms, people are very loud. You're not moving through the woods in the dark without being extremely loud, or hitting trees, hitting all sorts of undergrowth and thorns, You're going to be very easy to hear whatever we were hearing. This was definitely something that was adapt to moving at night, moving around. I was definitely questioning everything. Like I said,

it was one of those rare things. Just like both options for what this could have been almost made no sense because obviously sasquatch or bigfoot doesn't exist. It's not supposed to be something that israel in my head, there's no way that could have been what I heard. At the same time, it would have made no sense of those people either, because despite the pine barons being very open and most of the time you're able to move through it pretty

quickly, there's some thick areas too. This is definitely one of those areas where there's a lot more thickets and thorns and greenbrier. It was definitely something that stuck to my head to this day and e spearheaded me into doing more research into it and looking more into it, doing a lot more research on the folklore of New Jersey just recent sightings. It's pretty shocking to see what people will report. I've always asked myself too with this topic, why New

Jersey. New Jersey is actually the most densely popular to see it in the country. I think we have about ten million people in the state of New

Jersey. I've always wondered, how would these things even exist with the amount of human traffic car traffic, Because any given weekend or day, you have thousands of people all throughout the Pine Barn shriving around, whether it's off roading, hiking, kayaking, canoeing, there's always a good amount of people out there doing something, especially on the outskirts of the suburbs, some of the

town city areas. You have a lot of greenways and green belts that are pretty much scattered throughout the state where you have waterways, gas pipelines, power line cuts. So do you have that ability to move throughout the without being seen? That's if they exist. You have the ability to go under the cover of night move to these areas without being seen It's pretty crazy how in

New Jersey, especially how predictable people are. We wake up eight o'clock, go to work, sit in traffic for an hour, head home around five o'clock, you eat dinner around six, and then go to bed at nine o'clock. I'd actually done door toash some of the most populated areas in the state. If you're there at two o'clock in the morning, there's nobody else on the right. I've delivered plenty of fifty dollars, talked about orders the

stoners at two o'clock in the morning, there's nobody out there. Definitely think that there's that ability that something could go unseen and undiscovered if they're just able to understand the basic human patterns and how we function and how we focus. Especially at three o'clock in the morning. At night, there's nobody out in the woods, really, just crazy people like custom and research. It's definitely interesting looking at the maps. I'm sure you're familiar with Big Flip Mapping project

and all that other stuff. They have great information about greenways and green belts. A lot of the sightings I've seen do come from river corridors, power line cuts. There's definitely plenty of data to some extent of them moving around and moving from place to place on powerline cuts and green belts. Like I said, it's definitely something that has been extremely interesting. It's gotten me out in the woods a lot. I do continue to do research. It's very

basic, you know, going out in the woods and sitting. I do need to buy some recorders and get out and do more things like that. I'll tell you another thing that actually happened to me recently. This was last year. I was out in one of my research areas that I've been checking out for a while. Right on the wall for River, this beautiful hard widow forest that runs up again. So it's actually probably within mile away from

some really heavily populated areas, so right under the nose. If you looked at it on maps, you would actually see it's almost like a wall of green right alongside a major population center where it's just suburbs and towns for miles. And stay tuned for more sasquatch out to see. We'll be right back after these messages. How it goes is there's this huge power line cut that goes through and then right it it's on all arts and all waterways and everything

like that. It's a really interesting area to go to. So I came out here. I wasn't even really doing any bigfoot stuff. I'm trying to make it a habit to go out early morning, take walks in the woods and just see what I could hear. See if I can't pick them anything, even if it's going out there again, owls and b canon, coyotes, just going out listening. I parked to this place we call this plot the one Weed Bridge, me and my friend to go there and do research.

I did this triangle loop where I would go up the loop, go all the way up, come down that there's a tread that went along a cedar swamp that takes me back to the swamp where I parked that or the bridge that I parked that. So I started out walking around four point thirty in the morning. This is a Wednesday morning, So I went out there where there should be nobody out there that early in the morning. I'm not down that people go out there, but it was not a weekend or anything

like that. So I go down probably halfway through the hike, and I'm less saying I hear like some distant coyotes or dogs barking and howling in the distance. I get to this area known as the Ford, where it's a really skinny, shallow section of the Mulka River. This is actually a section that samurai chatter was actually heard out before. Supposedly there's a couple other instances where people hurt by pugle footsteps. Since actually about a mile or a half

away from another class state siting, supposedly. So I'm walking along the river and I decided to do like a outroot because there's a good population of bar owls along this section of the river into the Cedar Swamp. So I do a couple of these into the swamp. I don't really hear anything. Nothing happens. The first time I go up the trail a little further this point that goes into the Cedar Swamp. I do another one. I hear what

sounds like a small animal moving around in the swamp. I'm thinking to myself, I just spooked a small fox or a little possum or raccoon or something, because whatever it was sounded small at first. And I started to hear this thing something closer to me. I'm listening it's bipedal footsteps. Again, So I started to panic a little bit, like, oh, now, what did I just do? This thing is moving closer. I forgot to

describe it. There's a small canal that runs along the swamp itself that this thing steps in the water, I'm gonna just book it and get out of here. Once that happens, I hear the splash, so instead of running away, I turned my camera on, I turned both of my flapslights on. I just last the spot where I heard it at I'm thinking, I'm either gonna get the best footage i've whatever ever, or there's nothing there. I shine down there, I'm shining all around. I'm looking. There's nothing.

You can see the water still moving after something stepped in there, but I could not catch anything. At the same time I put my light on, this bar owl just goes off. If you know what a bar owl sounds like. They had this sound where they'll actually like it sounds like a screech at first. So of course, when I'm at the height of being as scared as I was, this thing screeches and goes to I almost have a heart attack when anything happened. That was just totally the worst time for

the alley go off. Funny story, I'm backing away from that. At the time, I'm scared because I did have something walk up on, you know, if something was coming to check out. It was totally something my beetle d of taking the trail a little further. There's this nice, wide open sand road that I could have taken where I would have had better visibility in Cae if something was following me or something, I had much better visibility. Then there was this dirt bike trail. So what do I do.

I take the small enduro trail instead, where I'm surrounded by bake trees and totally worse. Sure I could have taken the entire time I'm walking back to my car, I'm looking behind me and obviously nothing's following me. It was just one of those moments where all of that just culminated into this terrifying encounter that it's probably the main reason why I don't really try to get in the woods alone anymore, or at least you really never know. And it's not

even necessarily due to bigfoot or anything. People. It's people, wildlife, it's stuff you don't want to be alone. Running into some weird, funky people that were any sort of wildlife. The pine barrens is very safe as far as wildlife, because the worst thing you're going to encounter is either a tick bite or a possibly But for the most part, there isn't much out there that's gonna harm you. That's definitely some of the experiences I've had out

in New Jersey. I do continue to go out and do my research. My friend does a podcast. Actually that's my research buddy bag I go out with. I definitely try to spend as much time researching everything that's happened in the state. As far as folklore goes, obviously everyone is about the Jersey Devil. I don't really believe in the devil too much, but it's a great story. I can certainly tell you that if nobody's heard of it before.

Basically, in the week seventeen hundreds, there was a family known as the Weeds family. Mother Weeds had about twelve children. The story goes, she found out that she was pregnant and she's got another baby. This is gonna be her thirteenth child. In a fit of rage, what she basically said, let this one be a devil, or let this one be a demon. So the day comes where she goes birth to the baby. It comes out perfectly. There's very different variations of the story. It depends on

you ask how the story went. People say it came out look being like the Jersey Devil. Some people said it came out looking at the normal baby, which is probably the most popular one. After being out for a while, began to grow these leathery bat wings, grew a tail, it grew this goat looking head. It grew and got big, attacked and killed the mother, and the attacked some of the midwives that were there and killed some of the people there. Some people say killed everyone, but some people say

it just flew out the chimney into the night sky. That's probably the biggest story as far as folk work goes for the Pine barrens. I've always found it fascinating how people will report seeing the Jersey Devil to this day. I think that it's a culmination of rumors disdained for the Leeds family at the time. A lot of people don't realize this, but the Leeds fan was very

must disliked back then. They had a story made up of them, were stapegoaded as being these devil worshippers and that's basically how it seemed like the Jersey Devil story was formed. Let's really interest in looking at some of the folklore in the state, of all the things that goes into some of the local legends and folklore. I've always been fascinated with the Jersey Devil story, but I've always figured that it was just folklore. Like you said, it had

something to do with the family. It's a cool story that somebody made up. When I hear the Pine Barons, just in general, I think most people have this experience because of some of the folklore, and we've heard the Jersey Devil, it just evokes this immediate reaction to your core. Oh it happened to the Pine Barons. So it's really mysterious. But I think it's very interesting some of the things that you experienced, for example, on the

BFRO expedition. I think a couple of things that you said really stuck out to me, and it resonates with me because I've been in your position as a very skeptical person about this. I've been on expeditions in the past. It's interesting unless you're in those positions to say I'm skeptical. But sometimes Ockham's raisor Leans towards you're really having the experience that you're having. I don't know

if this is something you went through before you went on your expedition. People were reaching out to me saying, hey, man, what if you have an experience when you go up with Todd? How are you going to handle that? Have you considered how you're going to respond if you see one of these things? Or I have an experience. So I really had to recalibrate and say, you know what, because I was really very much like you. I don't know if you went into this thinking it, or maybe you

had those moments during the expedition. I thought I was going up there to be hoaxed. I've got to go get my quote unquote money's worth. I figured this would be the perfect time for Todd to hoax somebody, because I've always said I thought Todd wanted to bring me up there. He wanted me to have experiences, and then he wanted to come back and tell my audience about all the great experiences up to further his business. That's a smart business

decision on his part, right. I had to recalibrate myself and say, there is a possibility that there may be sasquatch in that area. If I have an experience, I have to lay my preconceived notions about Todd and what he might do or who he might have out there trying to fool me,

and consider that I might actually have a real experience. I believe I did have a couple of real experiences there, because once you get in those situations, and once you get into the areas, very much like you I COM's Razor tell you, it doesn't make sense for a person to be out here. We were almost twenty miles deep in the middle of the woods, in the middle of nowhere when I was at Radium. There's nobody else out there

but us. When it becomes one of two things that's making these wood knocks or making these samurai chatter sounds that I heard and recorded when I was up there in Radium, then you have to say, if you remove the human factor, it really only leaves one thing. When you came out of that, in particular with your BFRO expedition, once you came back and you had time to really think about things that went on and reflect on that when you walked away from that. Sitting here now, a couple of years later,

How do you feel about that expedition? Do you think you really had experiences with bigfoot while you were out there. I can't really say one hundred percent that experienced bigfootsus I never saw bigfoot, but everything that happened to be on expedition certainly lined up with what people described with bigfoot encounters, whooping, knocking, and definitely resonate with your experience in Canada in that area. Obviously,

we were not as deep in the woods as you were. I've and radiant, but the Pinemarns is still a very remote pace at night, and you're not going to have people out there who are just gonna be running around looking for bigfoot research or trying to spook them or anything. Looking back on it, I do legitimately believe that I encountered something. We as a group of people, we definitely experienced collectively what I do believe was sex squatch activity.

Obviously without seeing one. That's the closest I can really say to it. You have to think while you're out there, and you're out on expedition, like you're probably going to have people who are going to look at you thinking you paid all that money. That's a lot of money that could go into someone's pocket. You got to understand the circumstances of where we were at. It was very hard for people to just sneak up on a bunch of people

armed with thermal cameras. It's not very forgiving as far as being able to just run through the woods at night and sneak up on a bunch of people and not be seen. Is it possible, Sure, but it would have to be like playing like a navy seal ambush or something. I mean, I'm skeptical about a lot of the stuff I hear and all that stuff, But when you have this encounter, and you have this experience, it certainly does raise that antenna. Like man am I being too skeptical to the point

where it actually sounds more crazy to say that it was people. Because I'll tell you this now, Brian, this was not an animal. This was not any native animal woop bang or howling or whatever we've heard. I'm pretty good with animal sounds, and some of the noises of animals I can fix. And foxes. I know fox makeim screening. I know that rauccoons chatter, I know Kayati's will how and tits will sound terrifying. I believe me. I've heard of paka kayti's take them namel before. It was the most

horrifying noise in the world. Bar owls actually make a monkey chatter type sound where if you looked it up, it sounds pretty freaky. It sounds almost like samurai chatter. This was none of that stuff. This was totally something that was being made with lips and a tongue, and something was definitely responding to our calls and something was up be coming closer. Like I said, even to this day, I got in the woods and if I hear something, I will immediately, Oh, it's a bar owl, it's a fox,

that's a kayti. It's pretty simple, especially with the small amount. We don't have a huge diverse ecosystem of mammals and birds out in the pine barrens, especially any large ones that you might hear at night. So yeah, I definitely leave that expedition thinking to myself that this was an experience of some kind. And at this point I said, I don't really care what

people think about it. It's like I said, I even have to look in the mirror, like, man, do you think you're just a little bit overboard with this type of stuff, and do you really think that this is probably not exactly what you experienced. I tend to look back on it, and I think, no, I experienced what I experience. It's not just the fact that I experienced my experience. Hearing people who don't know each other experiencing a road crossing on the same road around the same time of the

year, five years apart. How does that even happen without them knowing each other. How is it that people will go out put their livelihoods on the line to say they experienced something, Because you got to think a large amount of people. I'm sure there's people out there who are legitimately have never experienced anything. That's fine. I welcome skepticism of every kid. I would rather be in a room full of skeptics and a room full of bel years,

because I would like to have my mind change. I would like to have somebody say, oh, you know what, there's actually a migration of these type of birds they go up there at that time of the year. Maybe that's what you've heard. So I woke them all sorts of stuff like that. But like I said, this was something that looking back on it, it definitely seemed very unlikely that it was people. It was definitely something that seemed like it was more or less activity. I've never seen a bigfoot.

I think I've had two possible Class B sightings, and then the eye shine on that expedition at this quitt iniceable to this day. Like I said, until I see one, I'm never going to say I fully believe in it. But man, it's my ears and eyes open to the possibility of it from what I experienced on that expedition. For sure, I'm somebody who will certainly put aside any sort of belief to look at the most logical reason. I'm a scientifically based person. I've done work with snakes and wear animals and

stuff. I looked to think of myself as scientifically minded, but it's almost gotten to the point where your own skepticism can get in the way of really making any sort of progress as far as research goes. So I'm very open minded. At the same time, I do question everything I hear from my owneers from other people's experiences, not that I disbelieve them necessarily, but human hearing and human eyes are flawed. It's hard for you to remember exactly what

happened. I'm sure there's some details I missed on my expedition that maybe I didn't have in my notes, but I made sure that once after that expedition happened, I wrote down as much as I could from that night so that my brain was as fresh as possible from everything that happened was on that piece of paper, and nothing was skewed, nothing was messed up, because man, if I'm not going to bring a recorder with me, i'd better write

down exactly what happened. Truthfully, That's what I did after that expedition, for sure. Very cool stuff. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your experience, Jake. I've had a blast talking to you. Thank you. Thanks for having me on, Brian. They say you do go, you can't stay, and I don't want to feel world out. Chart this chart, that chart everything. Call me right back, ride back the joy

for me, enjoy staying right there, Come in right away. Yes, still stas stass ss st st state still cost games in states, US sets us ness never him

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