Spanning the entire globe, involving hundreds of different cultures, explaining the same phenomenon by different names of the nature of the footprints, namely their remarkable consistency, their biomechanical appropriateness, you know, those aspects that are are extremely compelling. Hey, guys, welcome to the show. This is the Bigfoot Influencers Podcast. I'm Dana Hallerin and I'm Tim Hallan. We are just thrilled as always to do this. We're so happy you guys are turning and tuning in and
we just appreciate each and every one of you. Make sure that you head on over to the Untold Radio Network. We have a I don't know how many shows we're up to now, Dougs. Might you know, Mike, it's definitely more than seven. Yeah, I think it might be ten or eleven now. Yeah, we've got a ton of shows. So there's anything you like or you're interested in, you can find it on the Untold Radio Network. And yeah, just go over to there on YouTube, like and
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tune in. I was in the chat last night. I'm watching one of our other shows, and uh, Charlotte was on Air two and Charlotte joins in every week. So we just we just appreciate each every one of you. So, but tonight or today, super excited for our guests. Yep, we have right Robert Lighterman. Yeah, pretty sure. That's he'll help correct if you pronounced. I think that's probably how you. Robert's a legend. He's been around this for so long, and uh, he's got a
lot exciting things. And I'm not going to take away from his thunder. So we'll bring in, bring him in, and we'll kind of talk about where he was, what's he's what, you know, what he's done, what's he doing now, and and get into it all Right, sounds good, So let's be Robert in. Hello, Hi Robert, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us. So how you doing. I'm done good. Yeah, I guess it's a Saturday morning afternoon. Rather. Yeah,
you're you're on the You're on the West coast. Were on the East coast. But we're used to doing that. We've had a lot of our guests, you know, you know, like Bob and Kathy Strain who you know, and some folks like that and Daniel Perez and folks are out on the West coast and our folks up in the Pacific Northwest. So we make it work. We appreciate joining us on midday, so we thank you so much
for that. Absolutely. So do you want to give um there or maybe like maybe Robert, Robert, why don't you intro yourself and give us give our viewers just like a little bit of what you're all about and and what you know, what what you do there? Yeah? Well, yeah, I mean California. I've been born raised pretty much out this way. A lot of people assume California is like southern California, but you know, that's just a part of it. I'm in the northern part, north of San
Francisco. I love people like to claim that's northern California and stuff. But yeah, I got into big footing. Uh, I guess a while ago. As a kid always had an interest in it. We all watched the legend movie Got Scared. I guess first time I watched I was at a movie theater. That was pretty exciting until I had to go pee and then I had to walk all the way down to the bathrooms. It was scary,
and and then I kind of follow the shows here and there. But I really didn't put much much faith into idea that it was just like an entertaining thing. It wasn't until like college, I started reading stuff instead of my assignments. I started doing some entertaining reading and started keeping notes. And at probably the time I got suckered in, well, originally was when I was working as a park ranger. I was doing interpretive programs, like on
programs on natural cultural history. I go, well, let's just do one on Bigfoot. That'd be fun. So I did a bunch of homework on it, did a lot of research on it. And it's one of those folklore and mysticism sections, so you don't want to, you know, get too serious about it. So had slides. I had tabloid magazines from my handhelds, you know, little show things, and I just had the slides about the process. So I told the story and then I kind of added
a bunch of humor to it. Us they could. That kind of got me started. So the boss was okay with that. You know, that was all good. And at the end one day, you know, this guy shows up, John Fredis and he shows up. He's got this pickup truck. He's got he's shift speaker on it. It says bfrro on it, and he goes, hey, I'm a fellow peace officer. I kind of worked down in the North to live up north. Hey, we want
to do some some call blasting. I'm like, what, you know, we just take an alleged, you know, bigfoot calls and then we blast them all over the place. Back then, we're talking about nineteen ninety nine ish. Well, back then, the part about call blasting was how far can you send the calls? You know, you got to let the people
halfway around the county know yet you're out calling. So and he happened to show up on a Labor Day weekend, and that in the parks is kind of a really busy time with a lot of people, so you kind of don't want to know your your customers. And we also have these birds. We have to types of birds. One of them is a marbleo miralett. It's a plagic bird that endangered and it nests in old girld forests down where we're at, so it's family protected so you can't scare it during certain times
of the year. Nothing called a spot at out and that was another one that was protected. So we had sound ordness and said you can't make any loud noises basically during the summer period of the wait till the winter time. And so I encouraged him to go somewhere else and you can't do it here. So I told we're to go, you know, out that way, and I thought that was kind of the end of it, but ends up being where It turns out that I actually wrote wrote up something on their visit
and then they were there because there was a sighting. It was a father and a son over at Burlington Campground at Humboldt Redwood State Park and the dad and some were on the river trail and they were walking, you know, taking it, taking a tour and then the sun's shoe lace came untied, so he said, hey, tie your shoe. So the kid been overtireed shoe and the dad was standing there, and that's when the dad saw what he described as a half naked individual harry from a waist up walking back and
forth up the side of the hill. They cleaned some trees and then he said it stopped and rubbed his back on the tree, and that's when he got excited. And then when he got back down he reported to the BFROL. That was in August of August twenty third, I want to say, of nineteen ninety nine, and when John Freddy stood up, it was September. It was a labor day weeket so you could see how how quick that was turn around. So when all the customers were gone, I decided to
go investigate it myself. So I went up there with another park person and she was a good tracker, so I had her user tracking skills. So based on the photograph of what that was put up by the BFROL, we located the location they were at and we went up the hillside and we found a camera, a camera strap, a old cigarette, and a big stump that fit the bill. So thus became the investigator, the bigfoot investigator.
That's my first big foot you know, follow up report investigation. Okay, so I'm sorry, I'm sorry I have to interrupt you for a second. Yeah. So you so you went up. So she tracked, she was tracking something. Yeah. What she was doing is she's a skilled tracker. So she was looking for disturbances based on the photograph standing on the trail looking up the hill. That's how we have to match the location. So because a photograph was taken by the dad, the photograph was taken by the investigators
from the BFROL investigating of the side. Yeah, at the site, and then when they posted it, they put pictures up and one of those pictures was taken from the trail shooting up the hills where the father allegedly saw whatever's going on. Yeah, and so we're using that photograph along the trail, walking toward Is this it? Nope? Is this it? Nope? Until we finally found a matching area and lo and behold, there's a stump up there, a huge redwood stump that was burned out and covered with with moss
and stuff. So we went up the hills looking for all sorts of sign you know, disturbances, broken branches. Well, what we found was a pathway premius of game trail pathway and in late September and in towards late September and August around that time they read which off starts that the rabbit chief started dropping their duff, so it starts covering everything. So the trail wasn't real good to track. But we did find a pathway which led past that stump
we talked about, and that's where we found the cigarette. But that's where we found the camera strap. But we also know it from John right, which was probably from John. Well, I'm not gonna blame John, oh oh yeah. We don't want to get John because he's still out there doing it, so we won't get he's still working hard than that. It was it was, it was, it was from their group, and it was just something you kind of forget lee behinde, but that just told me that's
where they were at too, and it matched everything. And the description was an alleged bigfoot rubbing its back against a piece of wood, whether it's a
tree or whether it's a stump. So you're looking for what you're looking for, disturbances of scrape marks, right, So we went up to that big stump and we looked at it and it was an old burnt stump that had a fire a long time ago, an old redwood stump, and you scratched it and it took off the charcoal and it took off the moss that was growing on it, and there was no indication of anything rubbing that stump. So it wasn't a stump, not that stump, and so we were like,
oh, I don't know. And then we looked off to our left and we just followed that old game trail pathway. There's a spur that went over to this other redwood tree that's probably about probably about a half ish in diameter, and the bark on it was a younger redwood tree, so it was pushed down and moved to the side. So we looked at that,
going huh. So from about a foot off the ground to about six foot up, something rubbed against that redwood, young redwood tree, and you could tell the bark is filled fibers and soft, and it was pushed back and so we go, oh, look evidence. And I didn't think about collecting hair samples or looking for any hair samples there, I just go look,
well, we now we know what was rubbed against. And there was another spurd trail that went past that and went over towards some shrubbery and it went right over the top of these big piles of shrubs and it went downhill, and I'm like wow, So it wasn't a footpath. It was just like an area that animals use and you can't find the details to it. So it's a game trail and you can't see foot placements, but you could tell
something big with through there. So I thought this was pretty cool. I went ahead and said, yeah, this is it, So I guess I'll follow up and see what we can figure out. So my partner there, she didn't want herself in any of the photographs, So if you're doing any bigfoot investigations, some people don't want to be photographed to be associated with it. At this point, you still weren't really into it. You were just
curious of what was going on, right, Yeah, I wasn't. I could take it to leave it. I was just providing interpretive programs and just educating people on it. But I just thought this is an opportunity to, I don't know, just prove it, you know why not. So I decided to go ahead and do that. So now we're taking photographs, but she doesn't want to be in it. So I got pictures of the tree, got pictures of the ground, I got pictures of the stump, and
I was used for a size reference. So I stood there with my stetson. By the way, as a park ranger, you were stetson when you do your interpretive programs as part of your uniform, so you can't just be shop without it. So got my statson on. I'm posing in front of this picture. It's a great shot. I go, this is gonna be
good. And then I do a little write up. And what I did with the write up is I just wrote what we found, which is not confirming a bigfoot sighting, but it was confirming that there's a disturbance there, that's something actually most likely rubbed against the tree and mostly exited stage left and went down over the hillside because you followed the pathway. And so I wrote, I put that together instead of putting as a report for the department because
they're not excited about those kind of things. I send it to the BFRORO Matt Moneymaker and within him receiving it. I got this phone call says, hey, how would you like to be a curator for the BFRRO, And I go, what's a curator? Well, you know somebody who follows up on sightings or talks to people and sets them up, Like okay, I'll do it. Sure, why not? So that became my first investigation of
following up in big foot reports. And I become a member of the BFRORO in nineteen nine December of nineteen ninety nine, and that just opened this door of Pandora's box, if you want to call it. And now I'm following up in reports and meeting interesting people. Afraid it's now a good friend. He's setting them up for interviews that I kind of bomb a few of those in the beginning. But I still can't come out and say, hey,
I worked for the State of California. I'm a state park ranger. They give me a gun, and I believe in flying spit space ships in the UFOs and all sorts of crypted monsters. So I continue to do my interpretive program. But once that article went out, it ended up back in my supervisor's box, because all of a sudden there was a complaint. The article went up. It was posted more so than I expected to be, And I said posted it was through the BFRORO. So this time that they tracked
someone was especially in nineteen ninety nine. Then they were able to be that diligent to track it back back down. Yeah, that's when I stay up at night going listening to That's like the Internet system when you were waiting to get It's like my god. Now now you push a button, you expect it, you know, before you push the button. But anyhow, so I got to sit down with the supervisor in the office saying, hey, did you write this? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I wrote it.
Who took the pictures? I go, well, yeah, yeah, big for dead you know, want to be in it. So I got a cease and to disorder from my supervisor saying you can't use any more state time or state equipment or write anything else about this. But the problem was, for the last couple of years I've been doing interpretive programs on the subject matter. So now I'm not allowed to research my subject matters that I got the approval to give to the public. The article did not say hey I believe
in this stuff. It just it just regurgitated research information like you're supposed to do anyhow. So after the season to Disorder, I think nine months later released Scary Stories, was looking for somebody to interview. And because of my involvement and because I was a ranger, a person in responsibility positions that's still
going along with the Bigfoot research stuff, that let's interview that guy. So they had to go through the department to do it, and so the deal was made where they can only ask me questions that the department decided we're okay to answer, right, So their department sends a list to the guy. I get to take my nice shiny white truck, all washed out in my ranger uniform, and drive all the way towards Cress's city in del North Coast
area. Jed Smith and I get to be interviewed for real Scary Stories, a program about kids you know, in the woods getting lost and chased by creatures. I guess and yo, I get to be interviewed. So during the interview process, it's a beautiful shot. You can imagine me sitting in my white patrol car wearing my stets in the sun is setting. I'm on the side of a hill, it's beautiful. It's the most beautiful shot because all the sun sets and the orange is reflecting off the clean white pickup truck.
Can you guys, can you guys picture on that? It's an awesome shot. I wish I was there right now, but anyhow, so I'm sitting there and then they started asking me all these questions that I can answer because they're not on the list that was sent to me. So they asked me, I can't as to that. No, no, I can't answer that. Now, I can't answer that. I finally say, well, if if you're looking for information like that, you know you'll need it.
Whatever. Anyhow, so I made the cutting room floor, of course. But another gentleman. He has passed away since, but he had a cast, and unless cast he had there was hair fibers on this cast and they were still attached to the cast. And he was standing there holding his cast with the sun setting behind him, the most beautiful sunset ever. He made the show. I did not, But that's okay. But that was my first No you can't no, no, no, no, you can't talk
about Bigfoot. Oh yeah. Nine months later, guess what we're sending you over. We're going to pay your travels and everything. So it didn't make it there, but I still got involved with the researching and a bunch of other interviews. So it was kind of fun that first initial push to get you into something that most people think, Ah, you got to be crazy to be involved with something like that. And so my nickname now, which I didn't know about until Bobo James Bubbo Fake told me that I was the
Bigfoot Ranger. Oh, I'm the Bigfoot Ranger now. So Robert, I have to ask you a question. So why do you think your department didn't want you answering all the questions because it's a subject matter that could be controversial, and every time we were talking to the public, we're not supposed to be involved with controversy. So we can talk about is myth and folklore, which I did you know, humor gets a long ways, So myth and
myth and folklore it was just fine. But when you start doing an investigation on it, that makes the department go, what are you doing? An investigation is every time you represent an agency and you do something, if it's good or bad, it reflects poorly or positively on the agency. So if you're going to go out and do these kind of things, you probably should get permission. So I guess what I probably should have done is says, hey, is it okay my department if I write this article and send it
to whatever. But when I write the article, I'm not writing it on state time, already on my own time. And and it's it's an interest in mine. And I didn't think it'd be a big problem. And if I had to do it again, I would have done the same thing, because I still don't think it was a problem. But it did open doors. It did open doors for me to investigate things. It made me reevaluate the whole process at that moment, though I'm still thinking it was it was
something else that it Maybe it was a bear. It was a long distance that rubbing against something and walking back and forth in two legs is not an unusual behavior for a bear, but the person it was all the way down though. You said as low as one foot off the ground. Yeah, one foot off the ground to about six feet on this tree. So something.
Wait, if you set the squad a position and lean it back against something and move up and down, then you're gonna have that, you know, free range of motion, which means nice squat and full extension, which is you know that's like five feet I guess if it's about six foot up and it's six foot off the ground and it starts a foot up just about five foot, so five foot of contact. Whatever was rubbing back and forth on that. But they said that this creature or whatever was only Harry from
the waist up. That's the report was. It was human like features Harry moving back and forth, stop slide up and down against something which they the guy thought was a stump, which ended up being not the stump. The evidence say it was just like hairless from the waist down. I don't have pictures. Oh, okay, I didn't know. They described all you saw was the waist up based on parking. Oh he didn't see the bottom, okay, No, No, he only saw the upper torso and moving back
and forth. When you're looking up hill and there's a vegetated slope, everything's going to be blocked except for the gap. Like if I was a predator and I was looking for a snack, I would I would flank a game trail that's used a lot, and I could be up above it and I'm harder to see, and the people down below can't see me very well, but I can get a good look looking down. So we have something that's up on the hillside doing his thing, and somebody down below got lucky.
I was able to see up through gaps, but they, based on the vegetation on the hillside, they could only see from the waist up and only through the gaps of the trees that allowed to do that, which brings up another situation that Bartetino was had some thermal footage of and he filmed it for forty five minutes. Something in this Siera is that was a heat signature that was moving back and forth between gaps and trees and not stopping and rubbing his
back, but moving back and forth. Well, another one was stationary and something was dropping a rock, something was throwing something, and something was moving
farther in the back side of it. So I guess that's not an unusual thing for somebody to look up and see something and because of the topography, you only see it through gaps, right, Okay, that makes sense, And so based on you know, the six feet tall yeah, and if it's the middle of the middle between scapular bones, I guess in the middle of the back you could you can kind of guesstimate maybe how big it could have been. Well, yeah, well how long of the legs. How
if those long legs, then that's a long squad. I would expect as long as the legs were really long, I would expect it not to be so far down. I mean, you're only scratching your back, right, how far are you down? You need to go? Really yeah, And bears do stand in front of the trees and scratch their backs, but they take You know, the steps are short because the way the way they're built.
And I mentioned before that I couldn't really pinpoint the exact strideln. All I know is that the path because of the fall Redwoo Duff covering the ground that you couldn't see details, but you could see where it gets packed. Bears will walk the same path, and they love to stick at their feet in the same holes, and that's why you get these little indentations. But they're not long stride laps. They're short, which is a dead giveaway for
them. But this hadn't been an active pathway that is beat in, so I couldn't use any of that. All I can go by is with the RP the reporting party saw as they he was looking up for that short window. And when you go up to the site you can see what evidence are there based on foot traffic or rubbing against the tree or even hithhe What I would I love to ask is the height of the stump. The stump was a decent height stump, but he said it was rubbing against the stump.
But there's no way that could really happen very well because the stump is a certain night and the trees are off to the side. But when you're looking up a hill at a distance, and it's almost like a three dimensional model, right, you have all these things in front of you, and it's hard to judge distance, is hard to judge how far something is away. A prime example is the Patterson film. When you're looking at it, you
don't know how far those trees are by just looking at the footage. Right, you have trees in the foreground, You have trees in the background, and it's moving it she's moving. She does her once over in three point fifty two and she looks back, and then you have that you have that tree in the back and the stump over here, but you can't tell distance very well because it's just so far away. So in this situation, that's
the same thing. So Robert, here's a question for you. So you're you're retired now right, Well, I'm retired from park rangering, but I starting to college and so you know, like, did you ever get any other witness experiences from people who are visiting the park? Yes, That's one of the neat things about it is when you give a presentation about a subject about cryptos. Let's say, I don't know, like like bigfoot creatures, whatever. You give this presentation, you do a tongue in cheek, you
flash your tabloid magazines, you know, you tell your stories. And then when your presentation is done, people come up to you afterwards and they say this happened to me, or that happened to me, or and I there's a there's a list of activities that at the Humble Rudbod Park they have taken
place over the years that the visitors believe they were sausquashed activities. Uh anywhere is from screaming to shaking trees to uh stepping, stepping out of creeks or whatever, moving along uh trena is something you hear screams like in Burlington Campground. It's the only campground we have open on the off season, and we
close a lot of the loops down so we get a minimal visitation. But sometimes in the winter with no access across to the other side of the large part of the park is people report heard screams at night, you know, from the campground. We hear about that. I know. So what do you I mean? So my question, so, can you share maybe like one of the most compelling experiences that you heard from a witness. Well, let's start with the one that Daniel Prez investigated a long time ago. Caltran's
employee. Early morning hours, not that yet, it's kind of dark. He's driving around trying to do his early morning stuff, and he sees what he describes as a bigfoot basically running across the roadway near the founder's grow, running across the roadway and disappearing at early morning hours. And his description was bipedal, which means two legs, not on all fours. And it was
early morning hours. And that's that's interesting. You see bears all the time, and I've never seen a bear run across the road on two legs. I've seen them run across the four legs and stand up at the last second, trying to turn and look before they go kind of uphill or something. And I've seen I've seen that. Yeah. I remember one time I went to the Olympic Peninsula for nine days of bigfoot research and I was with a friend coming back and we got to one O one in Redwind National Park,
right almost hit the peak, and I'm driving half asleep. If you're driving for a long time and long, behold, this dark, hairy figure runs across the road in front of us, a slam of that breaks to miss it, and as soon as it gets out of the front end of it,
it swerves towards us and stands up. It was a bear. But you know, for that second, they're like, we did it right, especially on your way back from nine days of big Yeah, nine days of researching and having the whole concept of the big for phenomena to rea reassured that there might be something to this based on your investigations up there, and you're like, I'm waiting, Yeah, I wish I would have saw one.
And then que the grizzly bear, you know, queue the Bigfoot and it runs in front of your car in the dark at the most unopportune time when you're half asleep, and I'm surprised, Well, I'm not surprised. I mean, I would expect a lot more people to have these grade encounters. So the last second when they're dozing off and see something and only for a brief second, and then try to decipher what it is that they saw. But yeah, but I'm going back to the Humboll Redwood stories. I had
a search and rescue I was on where individuals get lost. What they do is they they they kind of don't pay attention, and then they go get a little confused, and then they decide they're gonna hike uphill even though they never hiked up Hell, They're gonna hike uphill and then really get lost, and then they're gonna call nine to one one in the area where sell reships is not very good, and then you're gonna hear where you know, and
then you're trying to figure out what what's going on with that, And then we get called out to go search for them, and of course we find most of them, and then we call it off. We're good. We got these guys. So I'm driving back and I was on a quad. I parked off of them a toll road on the turnout, and I rode my quad up up into the northern portion of the park. It's pretty wild. I love it up there. It's great. And then I ride my cord back. It's dark, it's like almost ten o'clock, and I park
it and it's good. We're all ready to go. So I load the back of my pickup truck, I secure it, I take care of everything, and I'll go, okay, turn the engine on, get it all warmed up. And then I'm thinking, you know, I better go back outside and remake sure I secured it, because when you're out late sometimes you go do thinks she should because you're half asleep. So I opened the door
back out and I go to check in. I hear this whack from the trees way above me, probably within fifty yards away up the hillside, and I'm like, huh, that sounds like a knock to me, and it's not the first time I've heard it, but whack, big knock. Update what's the coincidence? The timing of that is I'm getting ready to leave and I get back down on my car and there's this big knock wearing the hillside and it's really not way up the hillside. It's it's within a stone scrow
with a good arm. And it's time for me to go. It's late, and I'm like, do I wait? So of course I waited about ten minutes, and of course I don't hear anything, and they go, okay, get back on my car and finish heading back. My partners are waiting for me to get back before we can all go home, right, So I'm not going to string them out. But there was nothing there. And now the time I was at for a real long walk, I was over at the Rockefeller Forest. I was on the other side of the creek
and it's getting late. I'm walking back. Everything's good, and you know how you kind of get in that zone when you're walking. It's like you fill at peace and you're thinking and you're walking. And there's one section where I double back and I was just going to cross the footbridge and as soon as I passed this large tree, whack, I hear one of those again, and it's just beyond the big trees. Of course I stop, ago
did I hear that? And I creep back a little bit. I'm trying to peek around that one tree near me to see if I can see anything. I don't see anything, so I go I look around to find nothing. It's just like, was it a tree knock or was it one of the old ancient redwood trees that have large buttress cracks that run the whole length of it that allow the flexibility of the tree. And they move and they pop, but you're a whoop. But then you say, well, the
wind's not blowing, and why was there only one tree? And so you always have to be rational about the things you run into. So it was like, oh, I don't know. So I waited there for a bit, started getting dark, and of course it doesn't happen again. And then I have to hustle walk back to my unit because it's like two miles away and it's getting dark, and I didn't make a flashlight because you know,
it's extra weight you don't want to carry around on your belt. Because I'm carrying all my Batman extend or stuff in my boots and my stets and sometimes sometimes ball caps. And we go off with the long walk and it's not that long it's only about an hour or so, and then it stuff hits a fan. Then you got to go back to your UNI get other such stuff. But anyhow, so that's a couple of things. So then of course you talk about the shadows you see and then they're not there anymore.
Uh. That's always makes you wonder about And then you hear the calls occasionally and you're like, well, I don't know if that was a coyote or something else. But it's like if I if the visitors recorded the calls at the Burlington campground and they can play it back for me, I would be able to compare that sound of what they heard. So I don't know what it is, but I've heard a few calls and I go, well, it's not quite a coyote, it's not a fox. I don't know what
it is. But with it it's basically inconclusive if I can't really match what's making that noise. But it's another one of those things that you see or you hear or hear or experience. They make you go hmmm. Because you're a skeptical person. You have to be to make right decisions. Right, there's a point where I'm less skeptical, but I'm still not raising the flag saying yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's out there. But I do that because for years I've always been taught to be skeptical about things that
don't jump to conclusions like the film site. If I would have jumped to conclusion that we think we found it and we didn't find it, I look pretty stupid. So if your name's on something, you want to make sure it's done right, and so you wait till the all reasonable doubt. So I still function that way. I annoy a lot of people because I always
say, well, that's what's the other facts? Like Bart, my good old friend Barkatino, we were investigating an area in an undisclosed location near Redwin National Park and we were on the trail right and our job that day. We've been on the trail many times before. So we hike up. We find a place slightly up the hillside, and we sit and we wait. We get there sometimes right before it gets start, and the whole point is to sit there right If we gets stark and you wait and hear what you're
here, and then you start doing either calls or knocks. Well, a month earlier, Bobo and Bart were walking the very same trail and they had some knocks and sounds and they had something flanked them and move around, and so they left the tarp on the ground with a recorder going and they left. They came back later, retrieved the recorder in the tarp, and they under tarp. They have recordings of something going walking around on the tarp.
Interesting. So a month later Bart and I in same location and that's when we are out there doing these sounds and knocks, trying to get a response back. Well before the fighting Bigfoot show, it's try to get it with some response backs. So we I forget if it was a call or knock, but we do it and get nothing. We wait a little bit, we do it again, we knock, and within three minutes we get a knock back. And that's just a coincidence, right, you know timing.
So we wait seven minutes and we do a call, and three minutes after that a tree falls down. So I call it the tree failure event and Bart calls it the tree destruction event. So those are two mindsets of the same action where Bart has more luck with this therm and he's more on the page of I know it's out there. I'm totally convinced. Roberts on the point there, Well, I've got so many things that have happened, but I can't confirm what it is that made these things happen. So this is
a tree failure. And Bart is on the other side of goal, and this is a tree destruction, tree failure, tree destruction. We both witness the same thing. But I'm still holding reserved for a lot of things. So that pisses a lot of people off, just my good friend Bart, And every opportunity he gets to say, well, Robert, what are you going to say now? You know? And I had to come up with some of that excuse why I don't believe, I'm like, well, you
know, it sounds a little different. So he's always, he's always. Every time we have a crazy thing happened, he pulls me to the side and you look in my eyes and he says, so, what do you say now? What percentage of believer are you now? But if you do the math, it comes down to forty nine percent is a null and a
fifty is a yes. So I'm on the fifty one percent. There's something weird going on out there, and we don't I'm not so sure exactly what it is, but it could very well be a bipedal primate running around. But I can't say I've seen one. I can't say I heard one. I can't say I smelled one. I can't say that's the guy who threw rocks at me. I can't see those are these things because if you don't see who's doing it, then sid you got to figure out what it is.
All all those things happen to you. But unless you could, you can't attribute it to it unless you saw it. And he's so here's the thing too, Robert. So, Kathy and Bob Strain are friends of yours. Correct, Yes they are, and we've interviewed them, and Kathy probably for me, has one of the most compelling eyewitness stories that she had in Area X. Yes, So what do you think about that? I mean, being that you you know you are skeptic, which is I agree with
you one hundred percent. Is so important. We should be a skeptic to everything in life that's happening around us. We should always question things. So what do you say to that kind of experience that Kathy has, And especially since you know her so well well, I have No, I have no reason to doubt what she's experienced. Those are her experiences, and I've listened to her share those things. It's crazy, you know, it's something reacting
to what you do. It's running around's fast, it's smart, it's more than one and that whole area X thing, it's incredible, and I listen to talk about it, and I'd like to go there when these days to experience that as well. I'm not going to say that none of us have happened. It happens to her, and I believe everything she says about that. Those are experiences and she's had them, and she's not the only one who talks about these things. She's been added a long time. And you
know, so it's Bob, her husband. And when they tell me these things, I take it for what it is. I believe them on the stories. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get a little jealous, of course, to say, well, how come I wasn't there, or what had that happened to me? Why didn't you invite me on the trip? Hello? Of course, I've also had something a lot of people don't experience.
They call it the samurai talk. And yeah, I was with Bobo and this is kind of funny little story here, because the first be Over expedition that I had the privilege to organize through Matt Moneymaker was and I want to say, two thousand and four, and it was in the Redwoods, and I had to get some guest speakers, so I actually had Kathy, she did a tracking class. I had the two Sarah sound guys on that one, and Ron moorehead and Dave Barry o Alberry. Yeah, I'm sorry
Alberry. Yeah, I'm a Dave Bury friend of mine. I kept calling him Dave Berry. Sorry, I'm dyslexic, but I also switched those names. Yeah. And I have a cousin in Louisiana who I can't pronounce any Louisiana words properly, and I can't even finish my sentences because he's always that's uh, you know, that's Chapelia and I chapel a. Well there's an A and a T, you know. So that's where I'm at, going back to what I was talking about, if I almost forgot, See when
you get older, you kind of forget that. I know we have that too. So where you were talking about Kathy and Bob Stream and the yes, okay, organizing right, right, Yes, So I have the sound guys, I have and Ron moorehead show off for this. So they're given their talk and they're talking about all this incredible sear sounds, right, and then they're playing the tapes and I get to hear this, and I hear I'm like, why shou I could do that? You know I can make
stuff like that. And I'm selling the tapes for them, you know, ten bucks to pop and by up for myself. And then I'm in the back of my mind, I'm going, how do they know? Did they see? How do they how do they really know? So be careful what you asked for. Nine months later, I'm on a I'm on a special Uh well, well the Shelby Car Club is going on a bfor expedition. It's a special expedition. So, uh, Mail's there, Bobo's there,
I'm there, Matt's there. We're taking our clients out from the East Coast Shelby Car Club and we're on this We're on this walk up the same area where Bart and I have had some strengths to happen to us and yhow so we're we're using night visions, you know, gen Well, ours are like Gen one and a half, so you see, it's hard to navigate. But Mail has a g Gen three, so he's done really good with that.
And we're walking up, going really slow because we don't turn the lights on, and we get overrun by this group that that Bobo's leading, and they're using their infrared, which means in the low light, your night vision could pick up the infrared beam you can see like a flashlight. And we're just stumbling along those root systems trying to get there. So they go in. They passed us up. Ten minutes later, the radios come on the
portables. It sounds like they're being attacked and ripped the part. And so basically what happened was is while they were up there, they started hearing calls and movement around them, and it chased them out. And they had they had a Gen three night vision, but they couldn't see anything. So they came out. We went in and we sat there and nothing happens to us. Becareful, you know, nothing we hear olves, maybe it was ols they heard, so whatever, so we kind of leave. We're like disappointed.
So we come back the next day and I'm bringing a few other people. It was Mail, it was Bobo and myself. We're looking around and we find tracks, large bipedal tracks in the softer soil at the bottom lands there, which makes me think humph. And then we find a medium size and a small when it's like Papa Bear, Mama Bear baby beer. But they just don't look like bear tracks, and so we're like, oh, this is this is odd and it's the same area where the weird stuff took
place. So we like, finish your expedition. So Sunday rolls around. I know, I'm just just I'm sorry. I'm worried. You got a lot of stories. I gotta laid the foundation before. Now we love you are an amazing storyteller. Keep on keep on telling us, Robert. So, our our days are fri our days are Sundays. We send the clients and say bye bye clients, Thanks, it's been a great time, and then we go out. We spend Sunday night by ourselves. So, Garrett,
where do you think we went? We went to the place where the strange thing went down. So we're on the hillsides with our listen. Matles gott is listening device farther up the hill. I'm with Bobo. Our clients are free. But before we get there, I was supposed to Matt was supposed to join us. We're supposed to walk up the trail, but right before we left, something large crashed through the brush at the end, and Matt decided that he's going to ride with somebody else to go drive up and
down the one road. So I'm going in. So I'm going in and trying not to use my flashlight because there's something huge out there. We do have elk, so it could very well have been, and they do frequent that area, but it was scary, something huge crashing into the brush making noise on purpose, but not me. I'm too stupid to go in, so I go it's probably just helf. So I go in there with my
intermittent light, and I thought I was a smart guy. So right where we made our plan to go up the hill to spend the night, we flagged it with flags and I was being real smart. I'll use a white flag. No, no, I'll use bright red flags. They were bright pink or orange. And I got to that area scared shitless because there's something I know it was out there, and I'm trying to move fast, so I try to call my buddies who were up there on the radio, and
they turned them radios off so they won't even listen to me. And they turn them off because Matt was talking a lot in the radio, so they want they want to listen to it, so he turned them off. And then I'm trying to get in there. Hey, where are you guys come getting? The problem was I got to the location and then I couldn't find the flags. Well, when you take flags and you put them all the bright colors at night, you don't see bright colors about flashlights. They blend
in like leaves. You can't even find them. And I don't want to turn my light on because you know, I don't want to give away the location. There we're trying to keep it quiet, and then I go, well, what about night stuff? Well, Robert didn't have any night stuff, so I turned on the light intermittently t I find you fund the flags. I made my weight top the top and then thank got them nept there. So while we're up there, Mel's farther up. He's running into recorder.
Bobo and I were cooking bacon, eating bacon, cooking bacon eating bacon. They give them some of the milk. The whole idea of the bacon thing, which is Bobo's favorite thing to do, was during the daytime, a lot of the smells go uphill. At night time they go back down, and so we're trying to flood the bottom flat areas where the activity took place with smell of bacon. We're thinking this would be good, and plus we got the bacon. It was good, and so we got nothing right.
So we're kind of half asleep. So Bobo and IM are kind of sitting back to back. He's a lot bigger, so it's small like my back's to his like hip or something, and you know, so we're sitting on the still side waiting for I don't know something, and then I was I was woken up and it was it was really something I've never heard before, but I take it back. I have heard it before, but never
out in the wild. And it sounded like well yoke. And then I was awake, and then Bobo's awake and I go, what the hell is that? And he mouthed, I don't know. Well that was the samurai talked That was very similar to what we listened to that Ron was playing and I'm thinking nine months earlier, I was making fun of that stuff, and here I am on the hillside in the dark, and we had this same
similar thing going through. Now, if I were to say what was being said, I'd say it was like, can't I go out there now? Can we go out there now? No? And that was my interpretation of what was being said. And yeah, that's interesting because we were just talking to Rick Nelson, Yes Nelson, we were talking about him. I'm sorry, we haven't talked to him yet. We listened to him and he and
you know, he said that it's a definite language. And you know, like sometimes if you hear a foreign language, you can you can almost understand what they're saying, just like you were saying, Robert, like you can almost translate just by the way that they're you know, they have like you know, when it's a question or when they're responding and stuff like that. So that's interesting that you say that it's the voice fluctuations. Whether you speak
a language or not, it's the voice fluctuations. We let you know the meaning behind it, whether it's aggressive or whether it's soft, or whether it's funny. It's almost like whether it's a question yet or a statement, and
it sounded like it was. It was like a question followed by a A A A the answer and the answer was abrupt, and we didn't hear anything for a while, but we eventually heard something moving on our flank sites around us, moving up the hill, real quiet, and just just for references, I want to say that was in two thousand and four, no, late two thousand and four, two thousand and five, when the Shelby Club thing was going on. First expedition was two thousand and four when I heard
the sounds from from Ron and stuff. And then it was later on in Oh Gosh, Time Flies. And then was quite a few years later when I was with Bart when I when I heard the when we went up to listen to sounds and we had the knocks return and the tree fall down, as Bart said, the tree destruction. She felled down. And that's the same exact area that everything went down at. And here's another coincidental thing. Is you have something that happens in one area, it's just a coincidence.
Right then you start saying, well it happens, do I do this? And you say, well, that's more. Is that a coincidence? Well we did it twice and happened both times. Well that's no longer just a coincidence. That's almost like a pattern. And so you have an area that's had several things happen up there, so it's not coincidental. So here's the skeptic guy who is actually fifty one percent, so he's actually a believer, had fifty one versus forty forty nine, who still looks at things scientifically and
wants to prove beyond reasonable doubt. Because there's so many people are so quick to jump at the bandwagon, there's also so many people willing to condemn your investigation because you don't do it right because you go in the investigation believing that you have something without really proving it. So you go in with preconceived ideas of what you have, and you're going to find exactly what you want to
find. When you go in without preconceived ideas and be open to the investigative aspect of it, you're more open to ponder the evidence and to prove or disprove it. And when we had the therm siding with Bart in the Sierras, that's the approach we did over the nine days investigation and that was quite interesting. And for that investigation, my job is to tear it apart and
just prove it. And that's like a whole story for another evening. But that was Bart's thermal footage and I was just the lead investigator who told me to tear it apart, and that's what I tried to do. And that's that's such a super smart way of approaching things. Yeah, well, this day and age where so many people are critics, like, you have people who are jealous of your success and they'll blow holds of what you have.
And then there are people who want to make themselves look smart by putting you down. And then you have people who are just skeptical. No matter what happens, they're going to have a skeptical approach to it. And it's okay to be skeptical, but you should be fair. You should be fair too. It's so interesting, Robert, are you getting like a less Droud vibe from Robert? Like are you related to less Droud? Because you you sound like him, you kind of look like him, you know. It's really
it's funny. I should send the picture up. I don't have it here. Uh, it's a picture of the shroud in his book cover with this bandana over his head and sad. Yeah, and then I have a picture of me holding his book doing the same thing. Oh my god. Okay, because Robert and you also have like his same kind of philosophy too, with the approach to Bigfoot. So we did actually interview last he was one
of our first people. But I'm like, you need to do your DNA and check that out because well, my, my, my, my Canadian ancestry is from Quebec. That's what it is. Scotia. Do you have I mean, did you ever live there? No? No, Barn raised south central Los Angeles and immigrated to uh northern California. Hm. So I'm looking at my phone right now. Is while we're talking, I was gonna send you that picture. I almost thought it to you, but but I
didn't. I didn't want to be too forthcoming of depending like the round you know now you are from the get go. I was like, he's like his brother, something's going on here. I don't know what is here. I was thinking the same thing. Oh here, that is so funny. Yeah, that's awesome. While we're still talking, I'm looking for that picture right now and I have it in my phone, so I'm looking for as we talk, I can almost multitask. That's cool because we're like, we're
getting to like the last ten minutes here. We got to get into the book. So yeah, we need to talk about your book, Robert, because we want everybody to know about what your book is and what it's about. It's actually your second book. Correct, I'm sending you that picture right now. Okay, yeah, so can I see I could probably pull it up. Oh my god, can we can we do this? I don't know if this works. No, I'm gonna I can probably do it on film here. That is so awesome. Doesn't get mad at me, dude,
I mean, so apparently I'm not crazy. So I'm not the first person that's thought this. No, no, you're not the first person. It was brought to my attention by somebody else. I thought it'd just have fun with it. But I mean, I think now because this was taken that was a picture of Less taken a while ago. But like Less, you know his age since that picture, so he's got a little that little bit of you know, sprinkling of white going on, do you know what
I mean? So I think even now more than ever. You really look and you sound like him, and you just weird have the same words, you have the same philosophy. So it's pretty cool. But anyways, we want to hear about your book. Yeah, the Bluffcak Project book. Yeah,
so tell us about that. Well, it all started, No, it started when I was into videography and I met Steven Stroyford a while back, and I think in two thousand and seven, it was a special event at the forty fifth anniversary and I was with I met Steven at the uh at the uh in in Willow Creek, and then after that event, we went over to Lost Camp and we chatted around the campfire and he was talking about this lost film site which he went to the two thousand and three when
they couldn't find it anyhow, he's talking about it and and I said, oh, yeh, that'd be great. And a few years go by, and then in two thousand and nine I get involved with videography. So for the BFRO, I'm after videotaping everything and I edited out so we have over one hundred had over one hundred YouTube videos on the on the BFUR YouTube channel that I was editing and doing so that was a big thing for a couple
of years. I you know, give the guy a camera and he goes crazy, right, and so then teach him how to edit, you know, instead of instead of giving me fish, they taught me how to fish. So I was just like going crazy with it. So I decided to do these things. And one of the projects was Steven, so Stephen and Ian we're going to go find it film site that got misplaced. And at
that point I really didn't care where it was or anything about it. I'd been to the area, but it wasn't big, it wasn't important to me. It was just, ah, yeah, that's nice, I'll go somewhere else anyhow. So I liked the area, but didn't care about the film site. There's only zealiz go to the film site, you know, and
I'm not as zealot, so I wouldn't do that. So I go over and and I show up at the bookstore in twenty ten, and now on the on their new videographer who's going to film them up in the research. So I kind of got suckered in after a few days. The next thing, you know, I was no longer the videographer. Well I was the
videographer, but now I was a member of the team of three. It was I was asking questions because I was learning that Stephen was He's a great speaker, he has a lot of knowledge, and he had blogs going on, so everything was a PowerPoint. So we sat down in his office at the Big Foot Books and we went down his blog like it was an outline, and I learned so much about it, and I got to the point where I was, hey, this is kind of pretty cool, you know,
may hey, we should find it. And then it's like, that's why we started. So in twenty ten we did the basic bulk research. About twenty eleven, we kind of had an idea where it was, and we finished out into twenty eleven where we were convinced. I was probably the
last guy to get convinced. But it started out with Steve and Ian, then me and then Uh then then Uh then Ian kind of backed out a little bit because of health issues and family back east, and then I pulled in Rowdy and then we ended up pulling in Jamie ended up pulling in a bunch of other players too, and kIPS involved with this, Tates involved with this, uh, Dustin seevers is involved with this. People gonna get mad if I can't remember all their names. I know, I'm yeah, and
we're not going to get into the last names. Just too many. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll not. So it's it's it's a group and we've been doing it since then. But so in the process of doing the videographies, uh, it's like a well in twenty twelve, we bring him up, Bill Munts down and we show him the site because Bill Mum's never been there before, but he did magic. He's got a great book out something about Patty and yeah, I can't remember the name right now,
sorry, but he did a lot of work. So we brought him down and showed him the site and it was it was a great to watch him walk down there and just as soon as he got close to the big trees, this thing developed on his face. And he stayed there for the longest time and it was really cool talking about it. And he had his trees and he's double check out what he had. But we do have to
We had to remind him a couple of times. Well Steven did that, you know when he's on podcasts, that there was this group called the Bluff Creek Project who kind of helped you find the place, so you got to remember that credit where credit is due. So about ten years go by and then I'd said, you know, we should make this an a book, hard copy for I'd written several books at that time, fiction, mostly fiction, and I go, well, this is kind of like not fiction.
It's true, it's nonfiction, so we should do it. So I wrote the nonfiction book. I got other members of the team to contribute articles. Steven did the forward for it. And it was a great project. And it's kind of I love it, you know, it's it's it's it's just a perfect way to get away from me, perfect weight to hold thing's up, keeps the doors, you know, open when I want to do it. And so we've been trying to tell people about about the film site and
make sure they got the facts right. There's still some people who don't believe it, but they don't go down to the right area. But that's just the way it is. So how long did it take you? So you started the project and you said twenty ten, Yeah, well, twenty ten is when we started doing the video part of it, and ten to twenty eleven. The twenty eleven to twenty twelve. I'd say about two years ish,
two years to pretty much be convinced. I mentioned earlier that your name means something to you, your reputation and being the person I am and who I work for, I want to make sure that I'm interpret it correctly. So we want to make sure the book was right, and we and that's why we didn't jump too early on the gun. We want to make sure it's done right. So I was like the last guy to say, okay, okay, I believe you, because I just wanted to make sure that
everything was right. And people enjoyed the book. It's not just about Bigfoot. It's got a lot of other things associated with it, and it was kind of fun to write. I remember some people look at it and go, wait, you got too many pictures in here. Well, yeah, pictures speak, pictures tell stories. Yeah, there are a lot of pictures
in there. So it's a big book. Like it's a big book book because all the pictures in it. But yeah, there's a lot to say and a lot is involved in the story, and the pictures helped describe what's going on. And we've got maps in there. We threw maps in order to find the film site, we had to grid out the fanbar. And since rene's the hindins over seventy one, you can't climb the hillside and take that picture. It's a forest, so you had to go on site.
Do north south lines, create blocks squares of thirty foot, draw in the artifacts of the thirty foot then compare what you have with the hindon seventy one and then you have your match. And that's what we did. And they also have the background trees. A lot of people just use the background trees. Well there's a lot of big trees, but they're not always in the patterns you see. But it was easier for me in my mind to understand it if I use the artifacts, which are the stuffs, logs, positions,
and compare it with the background series. And that was helpful. And since they're still there, I mean, because the film was you know, nineteen sixty seven. So Robert, how can people follow you? Like are you active on social media? Well, not real active in social media. I'm still like that recluse guide that you know, you still banish. So when it comes to stuff, but the Bluff Creek Project, it has everything that has we also have a camera project and they post the camera footage.
We have the special events like on after big Foot Days, and we have a booth and we talked to people about it. I went to beach Foot, which is kind of nice. Did that just happen? He just got back from Beachfoot? Yeah yeah yeah. Uh. I Kip, my good buddy Kip talked me into speaking there. So I spoke there. It was kind of fun. And I also did some more speaking stuff over at Willow Creek and so it's kind of fun doing all these different things. I'm looking
at it right now in the book too. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. For the folks that are watching and not listening here, I just pulled up the Amazon website thing, the Blove Creek Project, and for you are listening, you can you can just type that in or Robert's name and you definitely can find it there. So I just want to make sure we shared that as well. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, Yeah, it's it's it's a nice book. I really like it. It's it's done very well.
And uh we got we got a few good reviews and and I guess the most thing people say about it is that it flows. It's it's a good read. It's not just about the bigfoot stuff. There's a lot of ride of other things associated with it, so so which is kind of nice and that I really appreciate. So, yeah, we don't have Yeah, we don't get that. We will. Yeah, and we could have. We
could have done a whole show on just on that. Probably. Yeah, don't worry, Robert, our cat jumped on our laps while we were talking a few minutes. Well, I just had some people walk in the house to it. Okay, no worries were our time. Yeah, yeah, no worries, Robert. Yeah, but we thank you so much for being on the show. You are like super super interesting and you're such a great storyteller. You know, it would be awesome to actually meet you in person
one day, so hopefully that'll happen. Him and less together, Yeah, you and your brother lest Yeah, he's probably it's probably a third cousin once removed or something. You never know, you know. Yeah, well apples don't fall very far. And you know, I'm not going to say, yeah, what we're related. But it is funny though, you know sometimes that the mannerisms people tell the mannerisms. Yeah, and you know, get that nice shot in there. Yeah, yeah, I think so for sure.
I'm going to ask him. Yeah, we're going to ask him next time we talked to him. All right, Robert, thanks again, We really appreciate you being on the show. Well, it's been a pleasure and thanks thanks for talking and hope hopefully you pull me back on again. And I absolute, oh my god, you're full of stories. We love you. And Robert's going to be in the next book too, really cool, excited for that. So thanks again, Robert, thank you. Right,
it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much. That was super cool. So, I mean he's he's been around. I mean, he's just such, he's got so much information in his background, the woods. He's just everything you want and he's his objective point of view is Yeah, I love that open minded. But but a skeptic you have to have to be. You have to be unless you see something making a sound or doing something you can't you know, you have to. That's a whole different skeptic and everybody,
this is our kitty. Ya. No, it's been jumping yeah on us during the whole podcast, jumping on the whole time. She wants love. I think it's because we're getting close to dinner time. Maybe everybody say hi, leayah hire everybody. We thank you guys. Thanks guys so much for being here. We're so don't forget to comment. If you have any questions, you can comment. We're always around to uh to answer your questions and we appreciate you. We're going to play a quick promo video before we
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