SO EP:629 Dark Florida Bigfoot

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Did you see what it was? It was enough out here looking. I'm new to the window now and I don't need anything. I don't want to go outside. It's frant Hello, hit the fuddy out here? What quint On Melter? I thought of a bitch about tech foot nine? I don't know em Melter. Yeah, I'm walking right heady h I r.

and I actually won the contest. I won the Social Studies Fair with my dB Cooper report. I had theories, possible suspects, the whole nine. So fast forward then to high school, the curiosity only deepened. I remember going down all of the rabbit holes and symbolism and things like that. When once you are into it, it's everywhere. So naturally, Cryptis was just the next step into that rabbit hole. My nanny aka my grandmother, she actually had a sighting

growing up. She shared that with me. What happened to her was in Florida back in the nineteen seventies, the early nineteen seventies, before a lot of the industrialization that we see today was going on. She had just moved into this neighborhood. It was brand new. In fact, they were still building, so you had all the timber that was stacked up, and that was heavy logs that they had cut down and stacked and so they started getting nervous because they were coming out in the mornings and

they were thrown around like match sticks. So it was freaking out people in the neighborhood. What could be doing this. She was a newspaper delivery driver, so she had to get up at the butt crack of dawn. So she told me she started parking her truck super close to the house because she was genuinely afraid of whatever was out there. So this one morning, same thing, she had just parked her truck really close to the house and she hopped in it, but this time she was chased,

and she was chased by a bigfoot. And I remember her telling me that just this smell was just overwhelming, and that the odor was just so disgusting, and that this thing chased her up to fifty miles an hour. She said, so with that, she was never one of those people who went out and became a big footer. It was just something I remember her sharing. Even as she got older she developed dementia, we would ask her about it. When we would ask her, it was almost

like that PTSD moment. It would come right back, and it was like she was at that moment that morning, and she could still recall the story with the same detail as she did before. Her story never changed, and it really frightened her. I just have that curious mind, and I wanted to know more about it for myself, so I got into listening to podcasts and things like that. I'm like, I want to be one of those people

who find the answers, who go out there. I love armchair research, and I understand for some people that's all we can do. But since I'm able bodied and I'm already out there hiking I've always been a big hiker in nature enthusiast, so it was just blending in now bigfoot and cryptids into what I was already doing. This time just being a little bit more intentional with it, applying a different lens to situations, and that's what got me started on this wonderful bigfoot path.

wild man, those kind of things. And one of those stories from nineteen eighty six, I'll never forget that story that my great grandfather used to tell me about this gensing hunter that went up on the mountain as the crow flies. It's not very far from where I grew up. It was probably about ten miles maybe fifteen miles up on Lookout Mountain. They would tell me this story about this gensing hunter that had this encounter with a sasquatch

that was ten feet away from him. I would hear that story from them, and I thought to myself, this could be bys This could be one of those stories that keeps kids out of the woods. You don't go out in the woods at night, or Bigfoot's going to take you. And it really was literally four years ago.

I was doing research for the show because I narrated a lot of stories on the show in addition to the interviews that I do, and I was looking for some stories that I wanted to pull off of some of the databases I have access to, and lo and behold in Somerville, Georgia. I go to this database and there's actually a BFRO report from nineteen eighty six from

that area. It was the exact same story from this Jensen Hunter, and it really brought back all of these memories from childhood, and it really brought into focus for me the fact that a this story wasn't just something my great grandparents were telling me to scare me at night. It's a real legitimate story. And it also got passed on to other people and made its way onto this database. So that's one of those things that not that you

needed in this. But it's a validation of sorts that you know somebody who knew somebody who had this story, and for you, for your grandma that told her story. I think it's fantastics. You obviously got interested in the subject. When did you did you actually start getting serious about going out and actually looking for these things. I know you're out hiking and doing the things that you're doing, but when did you get really serious about your bigfoot research.

incredible conference. We had David Politis, Jeff Meldrum, Ron moorehead I think Ronnie LeBlanc was there too, so you had the biggest names in the game there and it was just so inspiring. So I got to go to that conference get some good information and make some connections and meet other people who wanted to go search for this thing too. So I made an incredible friend, my friend Marian. We started chatting, So now fast forward, I was doing this on my own, and then we had our annual

Bigfoot Christmas dinner party we have that. So now it's like December of twenty twenty three. We were chatting at the Christmas party and I'm like, I really want to start bridging some of these connections and collaborating. So we had planned to go on a camp out in the Everglades, and as an adult, I had never been camping. As a child, I had gone, but I don't even remember it.

So we had decided we're just going to go all the way in and we're going to go camp out in the Everglades, down in the skun Cape territory and see what's going on. Leading up to that. Some plans got canceled and we weren't able to go, so I was getting discouraged at this point, but we were able to actually go out to a place here in central Florida that's got five hundred thousand acres of just this

wetland and it spans across five counties. It's the headwater for several major rivers in the area, including the with Aalacouchie, the Oklahaha Hillsboro River. Tons of wildlife there so diverse. You can even imagine everything from birds, reptiles, amphibians, tons of bugs. It is a really target rich and vironment. So we decided to go out and that's where it began. We just we hit it off. Personality is really meshed well,

and she's a ying to my yang. We keep each other grounded in that sense, and so we started going out together and then by camping, dreams did come true. I was able to go primitive camping in June, and in Florida it is hot as hell in the summer, so in this particular area, nobody was out there. We were the only crazy people who decided it was a good idea to go out here in primitive camp. From the time to get out of your car, you're just drenched and splat. So what we did is we have

these e bikes because in Florida it's primarily flat. The farther north that you get it gets a little bit more hillier, but where we research it is pretty much flat. So we get on our e bikes, we lit up all our gear, and this camp site's about two miles in off of the main drag through some really I would say treacherous trail because it's not a trail that's like a foot trail. It's not the Florida Trail. It's an unmanaged trails, lots of tall grass in some places,

potholes the whole night. So we navigate in there, we set up camp, and we had been there for a few days. I believe this was our second to last day there, and we were coming out from scouting some locations during the day and checking things out in this swamp, and we're on the way back, and so this was a stretch of road that we had already traveled several times. And like I said, I have not seen a single person since we've been out there. It's just been us.

So we're coming back on the e bikes. I'm looking down because the parts of the trail are like limestone, and it took a mix of limestone and sand and sometimes mud. And so we're going along in lo and behold, I'm knocks out of my seat almost because I see these visible footprints in this mud and sand. So I slam on the brakes. I'm like, we got to get off and check this out. And so for people, I'm sure if they're listening to your show, they already know.

But you have the difference between the Class A and the Class B sightings. So the class as I've seen it, I've put my eyes on it. I cannot misidentify this as anything other than a bigfoot. And then class B would be anything like a footprint, you found hair, you found Scott, you heard it, that would be class B. You had everything else happened, but actually laying your eyes on it, so this falls into the Class B category.

We get off and we're looking at these footprints and there's a clear trackway that goes through mud, which thank goodness it did because you could really see the toes and the detail really well. We follow it. It leads off out it to nowhere into the woods. It's on the trail and it just veers right off into the woods into nothing. For those who have not familiar with kind of Florida's topography, if you are in the woods

of Florida, it is very dense. There is all kinds of things out there, from fire ants to snakes to you name it. It is just not a place where you typically would want to be walking around barefoot. And this was clearly you could see the toes. This was not bear this was just someone's bare foot print. And so we measured the prints and they were about twelve and a half inches long by five inches wide and

then were two inches deep. So the stride length that we were able to measure as well was five foot six inches and I'm five nine, so I'm super tall in a sense for a woman. I tried to emulate the stride length there and I was falling short. I couldn't make my legs go that amount of distance. So something big had made those tracks. We took pictures and documented it. We didn't have any casting material or anything

like that with us at the time. We were weighing back and forth because my friend Marian was using some reference that she had and was like, I'm just not sure about this. I want to make sure that this is legit. So she had actually gone on a expedition in the Ozarks where she got to meet Shane Carpenter, who I do not know if you're familiar, but he

has a property like four hundred acres. It's a private property where he's able to go out there investigate like untouched area because where we're at is obviously it's public land. Anybody can go there. So he has this theory and he's been tracking these prints that they find, and it seemed every two years that there were these smaller tracks that hadn't quite flattened out yet to that typical bigfoot

shape or characteristics that we're looking for. So she was thinking that could this be a juvenile track that we had found and that's why it had a little bit of that arch and had not flattened out yet. So I could sat on it for a little while because I wanted to be sure before I posted on. But in my bones, I was like, I know that we

found something cool here. Fast forward, I went to the Smoky Mountain Bigfoot Conference and I actually got to say with some BFO investigators there, and I love those guys because they sit around and they all tell their stories from their expeditions and things like that. So they're shooting the brea and sharing their stories, and I said, I'm going to share mine. I'm going to see what they think. So I tell them, I pull up my phone, I start showing them the pictures and they were blown away.

They're like, this is so cool. And then Lorie she asked me, She said, did this trail just go off into the lives into nothing? And I was like, yes, actually it did. So it just was a really validating moment for me. Like you said, finding someone else is you are onto something here. So I get back from the conference and then I'm on Facebook and I see that there's this trail cam footage that came out of

the same area in which we do research. To me, my opinion is it looked like a bigfoot with possibly the juvenile behind it.

was really good. It was great. So that was my Class B siting that I had. So that was in June of last year. Speak of the BFRORO. It was always on my bucket list to be able to go on one of their expeditions. I'd heard so many cool stories that have come out of it, and like I said, I got to meet some of the organizers and they're just genuinely great people. We've become friends. We had a Florida one and that was in February of this year.

So to go on an expedition, it's pretty hardcore. You have to fill out a ton of paperwork, You have to sign an NDA because what the organization is trying to do is take you to a place where you have the highest chance of having an encounter of some sort with bigfoot activities. So if we go around saying it's here next thing, everyone who's listening to a podcast

or a show is going to go out there. I'm guilty when I'm listening to podcasts and I hear something, I'll write it down and I'm like ooh, adding that to my memory bank. You have to have some sort of level of secrecy around it to remain the integrity of the site. Plus, if they hear a bunch of bigfooters are coming, you could have people who want to go out there and be jerks and corrupt the investigation. So I signed my nda, I paid my money. I

was in my friend Marian. She has been a bfour investigator gosh, probably for a few decades, but she had gotten out of it because she had kids and a family, and now that they're grown up and everything, she's got some more free time. She's retired, she's hopping back into it. So she said, do you want to go on the scouting trip? I said, do I want to go on? Of course I want to go on the scouting trip. So it was her myself, another woman than the event organizer.

So we had gone out to the Florida Panhandle. Basically the point of our trip up there was to scout out some locations for this next expedition. This gentleman had surveyed that area, he'd gone there a lot, He's had some experiences and things like that in the past. But we were just trying to hone the focus for where we wanted to take folks come February. So that's November, and for Florida. I know we were talking about it being

hot earlier. This was one of those rare moments that we decided to participate in winter and it was actually super cold, so on this camping trip, I don't think I hadn't even anticipated for it to be that cold. And the closest Walmart was like two hours away. So we're literally in the middle of nowhere in this campground, like the day after Thanksgiving. It's just us. There's a few other people there, but really nobody's out there, and it's super coold. It was going to be a freeze

warning while we were there. It was getting down to twenty seven degrees, so very cold. We'd scouted some locations in the days that we were there, nothing really happened, or just getting a general idea of some areas that would be good to place people for some night time in investigations. So our last night there the freeze warnings coming in, We're sitting around the fire, We're having some chili. We're just relaxing and unwinding and just telling stories and

hanging out. Probably gonna go to bed soon and hope for the best, hope that we don't freeze to death out here. At this point, my friend Marian, who had been cooking our wonderful chili, suddenly realized this. She doesn't have her phone because earlier in the evening I had gone for a little ATV ride with our friend Jeff, and we were going to check some things out and it's just it just a beautiful ride. Got to see some deer and stuff trailing us adjacently. It was a

bucket of dough, so it was really fun. And while we were doing that, she had taken a short hike on this trail that was nearby the campground that kind of looped around the lake. This is during hunting season, so she realizes while she's on the trail, oh my gosh, I don't have my orange on. So she takes her backpack off and grabs out her reflective vest that has the orange, throws it on and carries on. I should also note that this particular campground had terrible phone service.

I've never been somewhere like that that had just awful service. There was literally one point of the campground, maybe a twelve x twelve space, where you could just stand just a certain way and hold your phone just right, and maybe get a text to go out to let people know that you're okay. So we weren't really on our phones other than to take pictures or things like that, because it's really useless, and so she didn't notice it

until a few hours later. I'm really, oh, crap, Okay, so you think you lost it on the trail on your phone, on your orange. We'll go with you. We'll see if we can find it. So myself, her and Jeff decide to just take this little trip because it loops around and it actually comes up behind someone's campsite, so keep that in mind. It comes up behind someone's campsite. So we're going along and it's just creepy out there.

It's so cold, and it's by a lake, and the mist is just scheming off the water, so it already is giving off this really eerie vibe. I'm freezing, not prepared for this, and we weren't even thinking about Bigfoot at this time. It's really just dang. I really hope we find this fun and can go back and go to bed. So we're walking along. I'm losing hope that we're gonna find it. At this point, I look up and I see these two lights, I asked them. I'm like,

are we back at the campsite already? Because that would have been a really short Like this trail is shorter than I thought. I had never been on it. They go away, So these two lights that were up ahead, they go away, and so I'm like, what the heck is that? Like I said, it was hunting season as well, So then my mind goes to, ugh, is this someone's head lamp? Or are we going to run into someone who's illegally hunting at night or poaching out here? Definitely not

something I want to deal with. I'm like, Jeff, can you come back here? Because he was up a little bit. So he comes back and he said, look light at the area. Turn your fresh light on, and so we kick our flashlights on and we're looking. And so where I had seen the lights were about twelve o'clock on the trail, and now I'm about at the nine of clock ten o'clock position with my light. My flashlight hits these set of eyes and I just see these big eyes and I see it do this bobbing motion, a

really quick up down, up, down and then gone. And I know everybody talks about getting a chill and your blood runs cold. But truly in that moment, like even just thinking about it right now, like it did everything in me. I just got this almost like bad, Like I was scared. I genuinely was scared because even though I know we're a I here, we're doing this research. I think that until you have your own class A sighting,

there's always that little piece in your mind. We have faith that it exists, even though we've never seen it, and it's almost funny, it's almost God. We have faith that he's real, even though we can't sume. We just have that faith. It's still the same thing with Bigfoot when you have that moment of like confirmation and you see something that's just so strange that fight flight or freeze kicked him. And I was scared in that moment.

I freaked out a little bit. And Jeff's it knows that we can see it and it's hunkered down back there, like do you want to turn around? And I'm like, now we'll keep going. I'm brave and this is what I've signed up for. No, it's fine. Just in that moment and my friend Parry and she gets your thermal out and she's trying to therm, and she's do you want to see an it guy? I said, no, I've seen enough. I'm fine. I'm really good. If I see

anything else, I'm gonna be driving out here. We decided to keep going on, and I'm just like replaying this in my head. What the heck? I can't believe we'd just seen that, trying to rationalize it. And as we're going along, at one point, Jeff stops and he says, huh, I just thought I saw something like paralleling us. I saw something kind of black moving through and it even

took him a minute to process what had happened. And when we were shining the lights again and you can clearly see some game trails and stuff in this thicket where something could be moving about. But that was it for our activity. But we went back to the campground.

I'm like wired at this point. It was really hard to sleep that night because on top of that, we had heard about this particular area so definitely bigfoot sightings, but had also been warned by the locals of other stories of like black eyed children, skin walker activity in that area. So I'm just trying to figure out what the heck just half in one a day, see, is am I going to run into something else that's far creepier. So that was a pretty intense moment.

One was a daylight siding and then two at night. I was ten feet away from one of these creatures at one point, and it changes you. You never know how you're going to respond in those situations. I was a cop for sixteen years, so my fight or flight is usually ninety nine times out of one hundred, it's going to be fight. I'm going to go into whatever situation it is, guns of blazing, if you will, And

I did that during my sighting. I actually chase one of these things up a heel out in Washington state, but you never know how you're going to respond. So I think it's a perfectly valid thing that you had the reaction that you had when you see something like that unless you're out in the wilds of Florida, I don't care where you are, and you know that there's something there that's not supposed to exist. That is a very powerful moment. So it's a perfectly, in my opinion,

reasonable response that you had during that experience. Let's talk a little bit about your approach to the research. Are you more of a flesh and blood and I hate to say camp, but that's really what it is. You've got to plant your flag, or at least most people think you have to plant your flag in one place or the other. I have moved my flag many times

in this journey. I don't think you can be in this for more than a year without having to adjust your hypothesis about these creatures and their behaviors and what

we know and what we don't know. Did you start from a place where you were looking for a big, giant, hairy ape in the woods, or did you go into it with a more open mind of maybe these creatures are more than what we think they are Did you start in one position or the other, one camp or the other, and have you moved and has some of your experiences changed the way that you approach your research now present day where we are right now.

So for me that always seemed not necessarily the Missing for on one stuff, but just the fact that it could have some sort of supernatural element to it. That's why I think the paranormal really isn't that far off from Bigfoot in the sense of it's something unexplained, and I think that's sometimes what paranormal things are when in this cryptid world. To me, I feel like it's supernatural

where I love. But I've heard some really good to say arguments, but case is made for Gigantipithecus and some of those other things.

like the best. I try to just keep an open mind because if I'm presented with something that is different than what I believe, I'd like to think I have an open enough mind when presented with new information to change where I land on it. Right now, I'd like to say I'm open always. Like I said, I love certain theories and I love diving into the possibilities, but I try to keep as open as a mind as possible and not pigeonhole myself, because that's the thing, especially

when talking to witnesses or having things happen yourself. If you put yourself into one camp and you plant your flag and you're there and you're too narrow minded, you could be throwing out really good information. So I just think it's so important to just document everything that happens to you. It could be related, it could not be related, but just to document it, make a mental note of it.

And if these strange things keep happening and you observe a pattern over time, those are things that, like you said, can help move that flag a little bit over this way or a little bit over over that way.

being a flesh and blood creature. But during my experiences out in the Pacific northwest Washington State, specifically out in the Olympic Peninsula, we were actually out filming a documentary in the area where the Olympic Project operates. We were working out of their headquarters, and stay tuned for more sasquatch out to see. We'll be right back after these messages me Bobo, all the other folks. Ryan rpg Golembeskie

was there. We're filming this documentary and one of those experiences that we had outside my daytime sighting was seeing eye glow, large white glowing eyes, self illuminating. We weren't shining a flashlight. We eventually shined a flashlight where these two sets of eyes were, and I even wrote it down as you were talking. One of the things that I've heard so many times is this bobbing, weaving back and forthing. That is exactly what we saw from these

two sets of eyes. One was up a little higher, one was a little bit lower, so one of these creatures was obviously taller than the other. It'd be similar to me and you standing I'm six two or five to nine. It'd be like us standing next to each other, bobbing our heads and weaving almost. I got the feeling during this experience that these things were trying to figure out what the hell we were, just as much as we were trying to figure out what the hell they were.

So there was a lot that went into that encounter. I've shared it in other places, I've shared it on the show, so people are pretty familiar with it at this point. I got to share it on the stage in Florida during my presentation when I was a speaker there earlier this year, but that changed me completely. I

had this epiphany, if you will. I had this really emotional response to my encounter based solely on the fact that not only was I ten feet away from this creature at one point, but I had seen something that so many people. I've probably done more than a thousand interviews. I'm over six hundred episodes into this podcast at this point, and I've talked to so many people on the show and off the show, and so many people have told me they've had that experience. And I was like, oh, yeah,

I'm flesh and blood. So I roll my eyes and there's no way these eyes were glowing. That's bullshit, it's wu it's high strangeness. I take it with a grain of salt. That was your experience, But there's got to be another explanation. Having seen that firsthand, there is no other explanation. So I too, very much like you, try to keep an open mind to other people's experiences and say I may not necessarily believe that because I haven't experienced it, but I'm still open to the fact that

people are having these weird experiences. I've had UFO experiences. I've lived in haunted houses and had poultry guys types of experiences, hearing voices, other things. So I'm more open to that if you will. But that said, as far as evidence is concerned, obviously, I think the footprints that you talked about, I looked it up as you were

talking from my memory banks. I know, say a person six foot tall male has a stride that's roughly thirty inches right, what you found was sixty six inches basically stride that's double a six foot tall human male. My foot is not five and a half inches wide. It's awesome that you found that evidence. But is there other types of evidence or is there other things that you have found either in your armchair research or out in

the field. Are people that have presented you evidence. I love it that you have married, and as a friend, I got to spend three days or so camping with her out in Missouri. We were out in the Ozark Mountain big Foot Conference camp out. After that, Shane Carpenter

was there. I love Shane. He's a good friend. Some of the things that he has documented as far as footprints are somewhat contradictory, and I'm using my air quotes here the known specimens of Sasquatch, And I'll be honest with you as we're getting into the evidence conversation, and I certainly want to give you an opportunity to talk about some of that. Where I was on evidence before having my three class a's in two days, letting me know that one hundred percent, hands down, I know these

things are real. Where I was on evidence before that versus where I am now knowing these things are real. I was a little apprehensive to hear some of Shane's findings from the four hundred Right. I had Shane on the show a couple of times. I had he and Randy on separately talking about some of the things that they found. They're finding smaller footprints with arches, which is a complete and utter no no when it comes to bigfoot, right. These things have flat feet, they have a mid tarsal break.

There is no arch when it comes to these feet. But yet Shane and Randy are not only documenting it, but in my opinion, they're brave enough and resilient enough to put that out there and say Hey, hold up, time out. We're finding footprints of what we believe to be juvenile sasquatch that have arches. Do they start out having arches and then they lose that over time as they grow larger and they get bigger. I don't know. I'm not an anthropologist. I don't know if that's a thing.

But I used to be so much more into the evidence part of this, But once, honestly I found out that these things are real by seeing them for myself, I honestly don't give a shit as much as I used to be perfectly frank about the evidence. But maybe for you, whether you're in the same place or not actually having that one hundred percent class A thus far, hopefully it'll happen for you. But where are you on

the evidence? Is there other evidence out there, whether it be footprint evidence, whether it be maybe photographic, whether it be a trail cam picture, whether it be video that you give more credence to than others that may have brought you to the point of, yeah, I believe these things are real based on that evidence.

a tree. We watched their video going backward and foorders so you can just see it, and I'm like, that's incredible. And the stuff that they're picking up on these thermal images, it's fantastic. So those are some local researchers who I have gotten a chance to see. I know them very well. They're not hoaxing. It's not falsified, fabricated, or faked. I've seen the hard stuff myself, and I think that kind

of changes for you too. Like you said, you talk to people and you have these things happen for yourself that you can go oh, I know. And so for me, if I hadn't have found my own footprints, that was something that's a little hard for me. Because there are some folks who go out every time and they're finding footprints and things like that. And I'm not saying that does not happen, because it very well could. But I know for me, I haven't found anything comparable since that

moment coming up on about a year ago. That's the thing with bigfoot research is that I don't want to say it's boring most of the time, but a lot of times there aren't things happening. Yes, you go to these areas and you'll have something strange. Like for example, when we went back on the expedition, we had gone out and we were doing this nighttime scouting trip and we'd broken up into a few groups, and our group was the first ones there. The gentleman who we were

with said, Hey, I have this pop gun. I'm going to do a couple of pops, do some provocations, see if we get anything before these people come tearing down the road and set up shop. And we were all about a few miles apart, but we knew they were going to be coming. So sure enough, he does his pop gun a few times. I kid you not, we

get back this. I don't want to say devil, but it sounded like a female to me, But this just like ungodly how slash scream and then all of a sudden that kicked off the coyotes and they were going off. So when it comes to the evidence, I think it is hard seeing certain things posted online. I know I'm definitely I don't want to say I see it to believe a type of person, because when I saw the Patterson Gimblin film, I was like, yeah, this is legit.

When I heard Ron Moorehead's tapes from the Sierra Sounds, I loved them.

but if they bring to you certain findings. That's what I've done, is I've vet people based off of that and then my own experiences as well.

I so wanted that to be a real Sasquatch that I said, yeah, it's probably a real Sasquatch. I've went back and forth. I host multiple podcasts. One of the shows that we do my co host Wayne I think you were on with Wayne and Tiffany recently on their The Bigfoot Report. Wayne and I have talked about it on that Bigfoot podcast. We've done entire episodes on the Patterson Gimlin film, and it really came down to me

to going back to the people, right. I had to go back and examine over on the Sasquatch Archives, and fortunately I have relationships with a lot of people in Bigfoot. Todd Prescott, who runs the Sasquatch Archives, was kind enough to give me access to one of the interviews with Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin from six days after they

filmed Patty back in nineteen sixty seven. So I took that interview and I took copious notes about what was said, exactly how they told the story, and then I compared it to I think it was a twenty nineteen interview with Bob, who's in his late eighties at that point, and I said, are there inconsistencies here? Because it really boils down to the story. The evidence is there. The film has been analyzed as much as anything, I think, second only to the Zapruder film from the jfk assassination.

This thing has been torn apart by everybody who is anybody. It really comes down to what Bob says. And there were a few inconsistencies here and there, like for example, I think one of the gleaming ones that I actually pointed out on the show was Bob was very adamant that this happened on a Saturday. October twentieth, nineteen sixty seven, was actually a Friday. So there are those inconsistencies, but did it really make a difference in the story At the end of the day for me, No, it didn't.

Same thing with the Sierra Sounds. I'm very skeptical even to this day about the Sierra Sounds. Love Ron to death. I was just at Ron's house back, I don't know, three months ago, doing an interview with him, and he gave me access to a ton of the unreleased Sierra Sounds that nobody's ever heard. I've went through as many of those as I possibly can at this point. There are some strange things there, but I walked away from that. Again.

It went back to the person knowing Ron as many years as I have, being at his house and him being as gracious as Ron is. If anybody's ever met Ron, he's a very gracious person. I had to walk away saying I'm convinced one hundred percent that Ron believes those are real. Was he hoaxed in some way, shape, form or fashion. I still leave that door open for the skepticism there. So I say to you, how do you deal with that as far as your research is concerned.

How do you balance that skepticism versus that want to believe in these creatures and the people that are sharing their experiences. How do you, as a person just on that basic level. Deal with that as far as your research is concerned.

I can read people really well. So when screening folks and talking to witnesses, I know I don't have a law enforcement background, but boy, I feel like in another wife, if I did, I'd probably be good at it, just because I can really read people well in that BS meter you can tell. I think it's just about having that intuition of thattting them. If someone comes with completely outlandis story, I'm like, I just don't really feel like

this is legit. I will be polite, I will listen, but it probably won't make it on my show or

into my group or anything like that. So I think it's just about being intuitive and then also being true to yourself because if you feel like you found something, And in that moment when I had found mine and I was just really discouraged by some of the other folks that we were with, I was like, wow, I really feel like we stumbled upon something great or just this is whatever met with those BFURRO investigators, and then even my friend Marian came back and said, Hey, I

got to tell you. I was presented with new information on that trip. I learned something I want to share it with you, and it was about Shane's work that he did at the four hundred, and she came back and say, I really feel like I've changed my opinion on those prints. I love that I've heard. We can have those conversations where we don't always agree on this

or that or whatever, but we're still friends. We can disagree in a way that is respectful, mutual kind, and that we're not leaving like gosh, I'm never going to talk to her again. And it's good to be around people who challenge you too, because if not, then you're just letting everything through. So I think that there's a certain level, but at the same time, I think it's a good thing to be prudent and to be sure into that what you have, but also don't be so

narrow minded as well that you're pitchingholing yourself. So you got to find that balance. And I'm a Libra at the end of the day, so I'd like to think I'm a pretty balanced person. I weigh things out heavily both sides of the issue, and I come to a fair judgment. So that's how I try to approach my work.

make sense to me. Stay tuned for more Sasquatch out to see. We'll be right back after these messages in primates or great apes, like I think these things probably are very similar to human beings. Our eyes don't glow at night. We don't have the capability. Humans don't even have eye shine. We don't have it to pay them, loose to them to have eyeshine, which we see in dogs, deers, other creatures at night. But who am I to say that Ron is wrong about his theories because of his experiences.

His experiences have done nothing but reinforce that for him. I like to have those kind of conversations with people who don't agree with me, and I certainly don't agree with them. It's like the structures, for example, that's been a huge thing with tree breaks and tree structures. Is that something that you guys see down in Florida in your recent search areas. I've talked to a couple of researchers from Florida and it doesn't seem to be a huge thing there. But you may be in a different

area where you're seeing something different. What are you seeing as far as tree breaks and tree structures that you might as a researcher a tribute to possible bigfoot activity.

So where your eye levels looking, A big boy trail would be something where the foliage like a tree, limbs and other things are broken up at these higher heights let's say six foot and above. We're a human. If we're walking through and I hit something at about four feet, okay, it's expected, but we're looking for things that are broken a little bit higher up that kind of make these big boys trail. So it's similar to a game trail,

but something much larger is traversing through there. So we're keeping an eye out for those we haven't Personally, I haven't come across too many high tree breaks. I have seen some, but not many. But we're always looking, always trying to keep our eyes open. It's so hard being a big better because I feel like sometimes we're always looking down because they're like, where's the footprint, where's the footprint? But then we have to remind ourselves to also look

up and look around, So that's tough. I'm sure I'll probably have neck problems by the time i'm old. So again finding that balance with some of these tree structures. I have seen some really interesting things where you can clearly see that tree has been pinned down. Now was that natural by a human or by a creature? I don't know. I wasn't there. I have seen some that seem to make these strange a triangle x's and things that are just really odd. So I have seen that.

I actually just interviewed someone on my show yeahterday who does work up in Wisconsin, and he shared with me something really interesting, So I said, oh, I'm going to try to apply that logic here and see. So he was researching up in the northern Wisconsin Michigan area and said that they came across this tree structure and what they noticed was it was like a map towards the

game trails, and I thought that was really interesting. He said they followed it and it led to another structure, which followed the game trails led to another one, and that this map was almost like pointing the way. And he said that he had tried to do this in another area that he researches a few hundred miles away, and he did not get the same result. It didn't

lead to any more structures or anything like that. So his theory was, could it be that these maybe different family units or tribes or what have you, use them for different reasons and purposes, that they signified different things. So I was like, oh, that's really interesting. So I'm just curious because, like I said, I try to keep that open mind. And as soon as I got done interviewing him, I wrote my friends and I said, hey,

he just said something cool. Well, if we come across one of these structures next time, let's just try it out. Let's see if it does correlate with any game trails or if it's like a map or some let's just see it. So I thought that was really neat, So we'll see.

A lot of the headstones are so old you have no idea what they say, but the ones that we could see eighteen hundreds. One of the gentlemen was like, I'm going to put these little light balls out see if we get any activity. And I believe that. Another gentleman who was with us was like a sensitive, so you could really feel energy and he's, Oh, I'm just getting really bad vibes here, and I'm just kind of oh, okay, and so he pulls up the spirit box. It starts going.

He says that he has tested it at his house and everything, and he's got nothing, nothing that will come through he said, I've run it for hours and never had anything. So I appreciated that context because it was good to know that this isn't just like a random word generator and all of a sudden having these responses that are seemingly intelligent. At one point, one of the gentlemen went to bend down and look at one of the headstones and it says, come sit with me, and

I was like, whoa, that's super creepy. We were just having those little moments, and so back to the balls. The one gentleman Rick is, can you please interact with us if you're here, Just use your energy to light up some of the balls or something. Let us know you here. Nothing's happening. Nothing's happening. Oh okay, And I'm thinking this is like an eighteen hundred's ghost. They probably don't even know what these balls are like that makes no sense to them. And I always carry in my

bag these emergency candles. So I just posed the question. I said, would you like me to light a candle instead? Because when we asked about the balls or these two complicateds, it said idiotic. That was the word that came through, and I was like, that's so funny. And then I said, would you prefer me to use candles? And it said

not all of us. I said, okay, got it. And then we're getting these different words that are coming out, like purgatory, and we were having kind of some responses and one guy is just getting hit with this energy and he said, this is too much. I got to get out of this graveyard. And it really was like colder in there. The temperature. I know that seems strange, but it really was like when you stepped out of it, it was like you were were well into a different room. Literally,

the temperature totally changed it. We wound up saying a prayer to just leave any sort of batter or negative energy that was there, because he was really starting to experience some things. But that was pretty cool. I always

love it when sometimes those two worlds blend. Because as far as Bigfoot activity, that night, we had that howl, which was incredible, and thank god we did it when we did, because literally within two minutes of that, we could hear of the other group coming down the road because I guess they had the windows down and they were talking and listened to music and stuff, and they went barreling by it. Was pretty benign for the rest

of the night when it came to bigfoot activity. So it was fun to get to do a little bit of paranormal in ghost hunting while we were out there.

And actually I just got a code. There's going to be a twenty twenty five Bigfoot cruise coming up that's going to have our buddy RPG hosting it, and the big names like Jeff Meldrum, Mira Mayor, and Dave Politis that are going to be there. So if you use the code Dark Florida. When you sign up, you'll get one hundred dollars of free merch to go help them out and sign up for the Bigfoot Cruise. It is going to be awesome. That's on gather upevents dot com.

They're the same folks who put on the Smoky Mountain Bigfoot Conference and the Great Florida One. I would just tell folks definitely come out and hang out with us next year. But you can find Dark Florida on Instagram at Dark Florida Podcast. I do have a Facebook page for Dark Florida. Then on YouTube, I post the show there. I'm trying to get more active with posting a little bit of behind the scenes with field research and stuff, so be on the lookout for more of that over

there as well. And that's also Dark Florida.