Kitbag Conversations - Proto Kitbag 22: Tales From The Grid Square
Episode Date: May 2, 2024Hey all, this week a community favorite Tales From The Grid Square (@tales_from_the_gridsquare) and I chatted the paranormal, incredibly dull and bizarre situations revolving around the military. A co...uple highlights are: -Why he started the page -Fun stories from our own experience -Interesting stories what he has received -Alot of Bigfoot talk -And his recently published book If you would like to purchase a copy of his first book, "Tales From The Grid Square: Vol one", you can find it here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09ZL9BQ1D/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_DW69FAYZCGNZJM8SXBQR
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hey everyone, so after a very brief hiatus, I am back on the podcast.
Thank you for listening or staying long as long as you have.
This week I am joined by Tails from the Grid Square.
You might have seen him.
He's very spooky.
He wrote a book recently. He's very spooky. He wrote a book recently.
He's very interesting.
One of the more unique pages on the platform.
So, hey man, how you doing for that?
Hey, how's it going?
I'm excited to be on, you know,
we've been talking about a while for this
and I'm glad we've finally got to take a work.
I'm very excited.
I know we've talked about this for a while.
We tried to plan a Hawaii or not Hawaii, a Halloween one.
And it didn't quite line up between the two of us,
which is completely fine.
But as long as we're talking, man, that's all that matters.
Oh yeah, you know, honestly, I tell people too,
a lot of people are surprised about this,
but I'm not a big Halloween guy.
It's not my favorite holiday.
You know, oh yeah. It's kind of not shocking, but surprising to a lot of people. I'm more a big Halloween guy. It's not my favorite holiday. You know, oh yeah.
It's kind of not shocking, but surprising to a lot of people.
I'm more of a Christmas guy.
That's my like December timeframe.
Like that's my favorite time of year.
Really?
So right now it's kind of, it's kind of fall out.
You know, you're in Hawaii I know,
but I don't know your background or anything,
but you know, snow starts falling,
you get a little cozy, everyone's staying inside,
start reading books, you know, probably your book. I don't know, but it's more cozy, it's more quiet.
Oh yeah, no, my favorite time of year is when we hit that November time frame all the way up until
about, I'll say like, maybe middle of March, like right when it's still kind of crisp, you know?
Yeah, right before it all becomes gray and mush. It's a it's kind of crisp outside.
Yeah, I love that timeframe. But
so I mean, for those who don't know, so what's the background? Like what is the who is
Tales from the Grid Square? Because I know your whole thing is scary stories from the military,
but I mean, are you Mill background or are you, you know, anything for the listeners in the back end?
Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah, so I'm a military.
So I still am. Still in the Army.
Been in the Army seven years now.
Been all over the place, upstate New York, Fort Lee, Virginia, out
to your out out in Hawaii now. I had a pretty interesting, pretty boring career, I'll say
it like that. Not interesting. I'm not really some cool guy, Special Forces type like some
people think I am. I'm just a regular army dude doing just boring regular support stuff. But I've had like a long time
interest in the paranormal ever since I was a kid. Like I ate that stuff up big foot UFO
love UFO stuff for a long time. ghosts, anything weird and kind of like that like fringe not that
I guess fringe is the wrong word but like paranormal aspect of society. I always had a huge interest in that.
Grew up around the military and all that. And, you know, I during COVID, there are some other
pages that every like Tuesday or Thursday, they did like a, like a story on their Instagram,
like, like, you know, all the no mean pages that are out there. They would collect them repost
people's's stories,
just screenshots of what they got. And some of them were pretty interesting. And some of them
were pretty surprising. What was more surprising was that there was more than two. And then so
fast forward, about a year later, I go do an exercise down at Fort Polk. And at Fort Polk,
down at Fort Polk and at Fort Polk, for the listeners that don't know,
Fort Polk has like kind of this unofficial legend
surrounding it where basically there's just weird stuff
that happens out in the training area,
which is like a massive training area
for the army to use to pretend like they're going to war.
And it's everything from like UFOs to ghosts to orbs,
weird weather phenomena, shadow people, even
Sasquatch and Dogran. All sorts of weird stuff happens out there. So I went out there. And while
my experiences were fairly, like, in my opinion, kind of lame, they're not like anything super
exciting, like I didn't get fought, like fight big foot, nothing like that, like,
you know, or am I gonna get like attacked by a skinwalker. But, um, it got me thinking.
And I started asking around and finding out that, uh, like there's people that
have in the service that have had like some weird experiences, whether that was,
you know, here at home, like on training or out at sea, deployed somewhere on the
sea or, you know, in Iraq, Afghanistan.
And so one night I had a couple of beers.
Um, and I just was like, had this drunken idea.
Like, what if I start this page where I try to collect people's stories from the service,
like where they're in the military and repost them?
Because you know, we all know like, you know, in the regular world, if you see something
kind of crazy, you don't, sometimes you're hesitant to share that because people just
might think you're crazy or you're making it up.
So you kind of keep it close to heart.
And it's like, I feel like a double effect in the military because then, you
know, you don't want people questioning, are you mentally sound to do your job?
Um, so then I had this idea with this page, like it would be anonymous.
So like, it would be you.
I would never divulge like, um, your name, unless you wanted it like that. Uh, I would keep it be anonymous. So like it would be you, I would never divulge like your name,
unless you wanted it like that. I would keep it completely anonymous. We would, you know, keep it,
tell this, you would send me a story and it is, it was the detail that you wanted. I may ask her a
couple of questions and interview you to maybe get a little bit more detail about like the incident
itself, but not never about like who you were, or if like you want to just keep it vague, like I was an infantry unit in Iraq or something like that, you know, whatever
people were comfortable with sharing. And then I would repost it. And of course, it
wouldn't be tied to them except for the people that know. And so I started it. Didn't really
know where I was going to take it. I was able to start getting some stories coming in with the help of a lot of the the mill meme community of people that run like different pages.
And then I was lucky enough to get on Sasquatch Chronicles and the confessionals podcast
and produce some like really good episodes for them that were really popular amongst the
listener group. And it really helped like take off my entire this entire project.
And it's actually way more successful than I ever thought it would be. And then I got the idea. I have all these stories and like what do I do with all these stories? You know,
there's all these plenty of podcasts out there. There's lots of podcasts. I personally, in
full time in the military and at the moment in my current position, it's extremely difficult
for me to produce something that's quality like your own podcast.
So I thought, how can I get these stories out to people
who would maybe wanna enjoy them?
And I don't know if you're familiar with Nick Ladlaw
of Battles and Beers?
Oh yeah, of course, yeah.
Oh yeah, so I ran into him
because our pages intersect of intersect and a
lot of themes, like most of the people that tell me like crazy stories when they're at
war also have crazy stories in real life, war stories that they send to him.
And he was, when he released his book, it really got my ideas going like, I should release
a book like all these stories that people have, you know, put them on paper. And then it's like, it's there.
It's like, it's preserved, you know, like no matter what, if like every single digital
document was destroyed, my page was destroyed today.
Like I still have a printed copy of tales from the grid square on my bookshelf, you know,
and like all those stories are now recorded for time, just like his.
And he's actually been a huge mentor for me.
And it's helped me coach coach me up along
the way of like actually building the book and how to format it and set it up and you know I
did everything myself from there and boom Tales from the Grid Square volume one that was split out.
Yeah I talked to Nick a few weeks ago and he is definitely one of those he knows what he's doing
like I mean his background no grunt whereas like, what if I wrote a book?
And boom, just took off.
And you certainly have a very large following
on the platform.
And it's one of those where, I mean,
when I first started reading your stuff,
I went like the giants of Kunar,
I heard about this when I was at Lance Corp.
seven years ago.
And so I didn't know anyone actually accumulated
this information, which is really funny, but
Oh, yeah. And like, that's like the, you know, the hilarious part is there's always the people, the naysayers and like, you
know, skeptics, that's, it's totally cool. Like, I'm all about like skepticism, because that's how we we actually find
what's, you know, what's really happening. And I always tell people like, I can't verify any of these stories, you know, I'm just a regular POG. That's never been in combat. Right. So like, you know,
you tell me a story in Afghanistan, and somebody else is like, Oh, that's not the correct detail.
Like, well, I'm not gonna know and like, neither are you. So I always tell people at best,
take the stories for being true. At worst, they're entertaining fiction, you know, I
can't verify if they're true or false, or what happened or what actually happened. But I take everything somebody sends
me at face value as like a true story. Every now and again, I catch one that I just read
and I'm just like, sus, or like, nice try. I read this on No Sleep 10 years ago, because
I've been a longtime lurker on No Sleep and 4chan and Green Text and stuff
like that.
You're like, this is a rebranded Russian sleep experiment.
I know what this is.
Oh, yeah, I had one, somebody sent me one that was, it was the, what's it was a, it
was a Green Text from back in the day.
That was like a creepypasta.
And I can't remember what it was exactly called, but it was basically like
dudes in it the the skinless man in Afghanistan that only like certain people can see
If you remember ever read that one. Yeah, so I mean
Benadryl guy if you drink if you don't so many Benadryl's just yeah the hatted man is up as they call him
Do the hat man's real don't don't knock it man. Like you look into the hat. I mean. Don't knock it, man.
Like, if you look into the hat man-
I mean, I haven't tried it myself, but-
Well yeah, so like, the hat man's funny, kind of like a side jab is like, the hat man's
one of those things that's either a mass hallucination or a singular entity that people keep seeing.
Like even my wife, who is not into the paranormal and doesn't believe in most of the stuff I talk about at all is a very big skeptic.
She as a kid saw the hat. What is like now? She told me a story about how she would see this shadow like all black shadow of a man in like a duster in a bowler hat standing in her house staring at her and her sister while they played. And like, the way that she described it, I was like, Vicki, like, that's the hat man.
Like, hun, like you saw the hat man.
And I would show her pictures of like
what people depicted the hat man as.
And she's like, that's what I saw.
That's exactly what I saw.
And so it's like, it even goes to show like, you know,
how crazy this world could really be.
She had never heard of the hat man until this moment.
There's no way that she could have thought it up
it's one of the bizarre especially when it comes to the hat man because i was you know just casually listening to the pka a few weeks ago and they were talking about the hat and where some
guy took something like 50 000 milligrams of benadryl and he was like I want to meet the hat man and essentially, you know, created his own, um, mental.
He, he, he ruined his brain.
Essentially.
It's like trying to meet this guy, but he was like, Oh yeah, I
interacted with the hat man and he was real and blah, blah, blah.
And I was going, all right.
So this guy intentionally went there, destroyed his brain.
But I mean, he confirmed the hat man is real because he saw it on, you know,
Reddit and thought this would be funny.
But. Yeah, I don't know.
I don't recommend taking that much Benadryl.
I knew a guy that did that when I was, you know, a young guy back in the day living in the barracks.
And he took so much Benadryl that you would have like these insane lucid dreams where I wouldn't say he was sleepwalking,
but you could have full on conversations and nonsense with this man.
And he would never remember any of it.
Like you could punch him straight in the face and he would not wake up.
I remember when I was a new kid guy, it was a, it was a weight lifter himself.
And, uh, he had like back pain.
So he took something like he drank the whole bottle and like, well, it was like,
I'm going to go to bed. But then woke up the next day.
He had no idea what robo tripping was or anything. Woke up the next day,
just completely lucid. He said he was, he felt like he was floating.
He went to work. He was like, it was surreal. I was cognizant,
but I could not respond to anything. And this is an intel analyst.
Second was one of those bizarre,
like he walked into work and his, you know,
staff officer was like, go home.
So.
I can say I've only been there once when I,
I have extremely lucid dreams.
When I get stressed out, I've come to learn fun fact about myself, right?
But my lucid dreams can get so bad.
They're insane.
And when I went to talk to the doc originally,
the docs were like, dude, you're having night terrors.
And I'm like, I just sit there like, how?
I have never had anything traumatic happen to me.
It's had a pretty boring life.
But basically they gave me medication to like,
for night terrors.
And I stopped taking that after like a month
because like same thing, like you described,
like if no one has ever dissociated before,
I do not recommend it.
I would literally go through the entire day
and like, I called it browning out like you don't black out
but like you kind of like it feels like you take a step back and you're just watching your body go through the motions and
You're like you're just not in control and then you suddenly come to and like you're like half
You're like taking a step into a Humvee and fall and bust your fucking head on the seat or something like that
Like where's this going? Oh, it's like what fuck or, you know, I think one time the scariest moment was,
uh, I took the meds, I went to sleep and I should, you know, I was walking back
into my room, like, like we're talking like almost 16 to 18 hours later, uh,
walking back into my room, dropping,
cause I was on deployment, dropping my bag
and I just stood there like, and I took a deep breath
and like, what the fuck just happened?
I have no idea.
I like apparently went through the whole day
with this meetings and all this,
and I had no recollection of ever doing that.
I disassociated so bad.
That's funny.
The-
You're not recommended.
I had a situation like that a few years ago.
I was still in the military and I was,
in Japan at the time, it was in Okinawa,
because I guess, you know, from my background,
I was a Marine and I was in Okinawa
and I had a few beers the night before
and I woke up the next morning, kind of hungover.
So I was like, okay, so I'm going to have a few
painkillers and I'm going to take some pre-workout. I'm going to go to the gym. And I felt like I was
levitating. I felt like I was just coasting, like not a single thought was had that entire morning.
I was just floating around, throwing weight around. At that point, some of the most
significant weight I've thrown up in the gym, went back to the barracks, sat down, I was like, Jesus Christ, I need a water, I need a Gatorade, some propel or something.
Because it's like, yeah, that lucid, cognizant daydreaming is insane.
Yeah, don't recommend, not cool. I do want to mention, I don't know if you've heard about this, is when I went to Japan
and I was stationed there for a little bit, there was a lot of the younger Marines and the Air Force
kids that had a dream journal because they had, in their own words, the most detailed dreams of their
entire life. And they believed it had something to do with maybe the water in Japan or the
environment or something in the soil or whatever. But I mean, in my own
experience, I had the most detailed dreams my entire life living on an
island. And some kids were drunk, right, writing up these, uh, like
dream journals is as corny as it sounds, just to keep everything intact.
And they would set alarms and wake up in the middle of the night and write
everything down and go back to sleep. And, and then they wake up and they would set alarms and wake up in the middle of the night and write everything down and go back to sleep and
and then they wake up and they're like I have this whole collection of lifetimes I've lived and sometimes they're like oh I was in World War Two a few weeks ago in this dream and I was like that's unreal that's insane.
Oh wow you mean the fact that one of the most cursed places in the entire world like dude that's fucking wild. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't.'s fucking wild. I don't- I don't-
I don't doubt that for a minute.
Oh, fuck yeah.
Oh, dude, really?
Oh, you're at Fuji then, huh?
No, no, no, no.
I was on Schwab.
I was on that male prison colony on top of the island.
But yeah, there was so much going on.
I mean, the suicide cliffs were just down the road.
It's a small island, so I mean- Oh yeah. You're mingling with so much history on. I mean, the suicide cliffs were just down the road. It's a small island. So I mean, Oh, yeah,
mingling with so much history in one little area.
Dude, yeah, that I was actually Sony mentioned that on my
deployment when I was getting my crazy lucid dreams. Now, he
might be honest, I'm here, where I was, I wasn't really
deployment, but it was like rotation to Europe. And where we
were based out of was stork barracks. This is not going to
like talk to me. So I'll just share this. So we're at stork
barracks. Yeah, which is in the town of we're also known as
Illesheim. And back in the day, like in World War Two, it was a
Nazi airfield. Like, they
it was like a secret airfield, they flooded during the day to
look like regular farmland, and then they drained it at night to
take off. And there was like, when I tell you that place was
weird, like, so like, I wouldn't say I still kind of like doubt
myself sometimes, because I was very stressed out during this
timeframe, running running stuff and kind of running around. But you know, people, I saw a video and people had all sorts of stories about ghosts and stuff
they saw there. I wish I still had the Snapchat, but the soldier recorded a video because he kept
seeing something down in the basement. And so when you walk into the basement of the barracks, right,
like, so what they didn't tell us was where all the barracks were built on used to be where
the Nazis would have like they're set up their buildings. It looked like basically like a
fake town, like farmhouse and stuff like that. But the basements were prison cells. Like,
you would go down there and it was just rows of perfect like 10 by 10 squares is where
they used to keep people and they would do experiments on them.
Like in regards to like aviation,
like they would fly dudes up
and like choke them out on oxygen.
It's like twisted stuff, you know,
with like typical Nazi shit they did
in the concentration camps,
but they did it on this airfield.
You know, of course nobody neglected to tell us any of this,
but people- They don't wanna let you know that you're like, Oh, this place is kind of
bizarre. Anyways, good night. Yeah. Yeah, by the way, you'll definitely see some shit.
And like for me, I'd never like going into basements because I would instantly feel just
freaked the fuck out for no reason. But I digress. I had a soldier when he was there
before the rest of the unit came. He was on like torch and he said he hated going down there so much he kept seeing stuff
and so he went down there with the camera with his phone on record and he caught this
video of as he's walking down the like this, like I said this row of like 10 by 10 perfect
rooms.
You see this shadow and I swear to God, it looks like a person.
Like, cause he has a flashlight too
and he's holding his phone in one hand and a flashlight.
You see the shadow run up.
And I don't know if you've ever seen the video
from Eastern state penitentiary,
like from like, this is like in 2008
or something like that.
It's like, this is shadow figure that runs up
towards the camera on Ghost Hunters,
when the TV show, it ran up towards the camera and it like does a perfect 180 and
runs in the other direction that he caught something exactly like that and
it freaked me the fuck out and he was freaked the fuck out but people saw shit
like that all the time on Illishine you know because I used to see like I used
to look at barracks across from me where like clothes that closed down like closed down. Like they didn't have any people in them, but, uh, they were locked up.
Like things were chained tight, you know, the doors were locked.
There were barricades to keep people that keep soldiers out from doing stupid stuff.
But I would cover my windows at night looking across at it because when I would wake up
when I first got there and look across, I would see these little heads and like white little eyes staring back across me
across the street, man.
Fucking freaky place.
This sounds like Gremlin's, you know,
Gremlin's three test script, you know, just.
Yeah, like, and no, oh God, that place was,
that place at night was so freaky.
And yeah, like you're onto, I think you're onto something with.
Oh, wow. Also in Okinawa, a place of extreme suffering and pain.
People are having extreme lucid dreams.
I don't know. I'm just making a connection now to a really weird moment in my life as well.
It was bizarre. It was like, you know, incredibly religious kids.
So there's like, you know, Catholics, Protestants, but there are also like atheistic kids or Muslims. And they
were like, you know, we're all on the same page. There's something bizarre about this
place. And everybody was under the assumption that something about the island itself, or
maybe it was because of the location, but they were like, we were having very detailed,
very detailed dreams. Like you could wake up in the middle of it
and live a lifetime.
And it was, I mean, in my case,
yeah, I couldn't recite a dream
off the back of my mind right now,
but it was, there was a lot going on there
and it was bizarre.
Cause once someone, you know,
you don't know until someone mentions it
and you go, actually hold on.
But yeah, that was certainly one of the more interesting military experience, I guess, in the paranormal realm of bizarre situations.
Yeah, like, I don't know. I don't think I would ever want to be stationed on Camp Schwab in Okinawa, considering, you know, all the fucking shit people see there.
in Okinawa considering, you know, all the fucking shit people see there.
I mean, I mean, it was not an intentional location. You know, just walk in one day, check your military email.
You're like, oh, I'm going to a prison colony. Great.
Well, it's like, you know, Hawaii, like you come to Hawaii.
Yeah, you know, but it's like Hawaii, like you come to Hawaii and you're like, Oh, like, you know, this place is cool.
Like, nah, this place is cursed, man. Like, don't let anyone fool you.
This place is cursed as fuck. Um,
it's just like, it just goes to show that there's a lot of,
I was going to say, I don't, when I was younger, like a young Marine,
I used to hear these stories about these Marines
stationed on Hawaii on Ka'e'be.
And the locals would tell them legends about like, oh yeah, the land that you're standing
on used to be a part of the ritual killings of the old Hawaiian kings and blah, blah,
blah.
Just tell them these bizarre stories.
And then young Marines or sailors who were the corpsmen would sit down and go like,
oh yeah, if you look off into a in the fields at night, sometimes you can see like what looked like
soldier figurines walking in a field and they're like there's no legs or anything because everything's
cut down but it's like, like oh yeah, all these like, because the local warning tribes fought each other so often that their spirits are internally
entwined into conflict and they're like, Oh yeah, this is like, again, you
know, comes down to is it real or not?
Who knows, but it's, you know, Christians, atheists, Muslims, Hindus,
everyone's on the same page of, yeah, something's bizarre about
K-Bay, Hawaii.
Or Hawaiian general.
Dude, it's because it's the night marchers, man.
And for your listeners, the night marchers are real.
At that point, you start talking about the night marchers,
which are just a ghost of these ancient Hawaiian warriors.
Like people here, yeah, they tell you that's legit,
because yeah, where K-Bay is,
and yeah, some of the training areas the army uses,
those are all like ancient battlegrounds for these Hawaiian warriors. And yeah, there's
a lot of locals here too. A lot of soldiers and service members that'll tell you they're
freaking real. It's supposed to show you like, kind of like a side note, really interesting
thing like you mentioned ancient Hawaiians, like Hawaiian culture is so ancient and like old that even like modern day Hawaiians like, you know, like by the what we consider like kinkamehameha when he like United Islands like their history was so ancient, it was lost to even him.
Like super fascinating if you're listening to everyone look into like kinkamehameha, like whose whole life reads like an action movie
and just like Hawaiian culture in general.
It's a very, very interesting and very like mystical
and just all around, just not even bizarre,
just very like elusive culture to learn about.
But yeah, man, Night Marchers are real. The Night Marchers, I've had family who've lived and or visited Hawaii and the locals, they always said like, oh yeah, these locals told me like these folklore and I'm like, brother, that's not, that's real.
It's real to them. They're not going to tell you some bizarre story at a
7-Eleven just to spook you. They're like, where are you staying? Oh, let me tell you
a story real quick. Let me tell you an anecdote while I buy this roller hot dog from a 7-Eleven.
Dude, yeah, that's how it is. Like honestly, the best way I can describe Hawaii to people
when it comes to like that realm is Hawaii is just a tropical Appalachia, you know what I mean?
Because we all know like Appalachia is just cursed
There's something going on in those mountains
But here in Hawaii like even the locals like I've tried to go do some like ghost hunting or exploration
Out here and likes to some of these sites And I've asked some locals I'm cool with
and you know what they all tell me?
They just tell me this.
They just say, hey, the first thing you know about
something to this effect,
the only thing you need to know about
what goes on here in Hawaii is that it's demonic.
And they just leave it at that.
They refuse to take me to these places.
I mean, even if you go to like these old, because you mentioned it earlier, ghost hunters.
And then, I mean, back in the day, I mean, ghost hunters these days are kind of like,
personally, I think they've fallen off. I think we got to, to mainstream or anything,
or trying to make something up just to stay relevant. But 20 years ago, those guys were
legit. And they were, yeah, they would go to like, you know, a gas
station in Pennsylvania. And everyone's like, yeah, these lights keep capturing something at
night. And they find out that it was built on an Indian burial ground. They're like, yeah, here's
your I figured out your problem. You have a very significant issue on your hands.
Oh, yeah.
No, and that's even like kind of a segue
back into the military topic is,
there's a lot of hidden history in like
on these military bases
that not a lot of people are aware of.
Just kind of come back into Hawaii.
Like a lot of the historical sites
and sacred sites that are in the island of Hawaii are technically
fall on military land here.
Places like Makua Kōakole Pass, which is like a, for the warring tribes, it's a huge sacred
spot because that was where they could cross back and forth between the different parts
of the island.
Those are on military installations.
Same thing if you like, go back into like, look at other mainland
like bases like Fort Sill.
Like Fort Sill is built on Indian burial grounds.
It's Indian sacred land.
You know, another good place is like Fort Campbell, the Tray
Leteers that not, you that not a lot of people don't
know about because it's not taught in schools, where the Cherokee tribes and the tribes on the
East Coast were forced off their lands and basically this death march into the reservations we
know today. The Trail of Tears actually went through what is now known as Fort Campbell.
It was called something else at that time, but modern-day Fort Campbell sits exactly on that path of the Trail of Tears
And then like, you know other places like Fort Lee, Virginia had like a lot of history of dating back to World War one, you know
Some of the first color regiments in the United States military were created at Fort Lee after the Civil War, of course
You know
So there's a lot of hidden history out there that I think feeds into like some of the stuff that people are seeing at least
in the United States.
As it comes to places like Okinawa, well, you know, even the locals are talking about Okinawa before World War Z even happened.
Of like how spiritual that was.
I mean, if you want to take it a step further, it's usually like superstition these days is kind of cast aside, but in, like you said, Hawaii is, or the Pacific is almost like an island Appalachia where superstition is real and they won't let you forget.
But if in the mainstream, everyone goes, oh, ghosts, it's not real. What are you talking about?
You have these very, I don't want to say spiritual or anything, but there's a very consolidated energy in a very specific area.
Like you mentioned the Trail of Tears and that was a very significant event.
And then if you go to Fort Campbell, man, it's a bit like I've been there.
It's a bit very interesting area to hike at and or sleep over at.
Or I mean, just talking about Okinawa or any World War II Pacific battlefield
because those islands are littered with so many stories in thousands of lives and it's just
crazy to think that yeah there's nothing here come on.
Oh yeah you know it's funny you mentioned Fort Campbell's just to get something that
you know the listener is a little bit this paranormal, you know, military
collision course is Fort Campbell actually has a nice
little hidden legend behind it, that a lot of soldiers swear by
that I've talked to. And I don't know if you're familiar with the
legend of dog man, are you?
I'm not no
right. So yeah, dog man is, is notman is not exactly a mainstream kind of cryptid, but it's kind of like, it's
a newer cryptid, right?
So basically the gist of it is, have you seen the movie Dog Soldiers?
Of course, yeah.
Right, so you don't remember the werewolves, how they look? Which by the way listeners if you haven't seen dog soldiers
incredible movie need to watch it it's awesome.
Same with plug yeah.
But yeah so anyway so the dog man is this like large bipedal like basically wolf thing, like, you know, walks like a man looks like a wolf,
looks like the werewolves from, you know, dog soldiers.
Like a little bit more muscular, a little thicker, right?
Not like as emaciated in the movie, but kind of like the same concept, but just an upright
walking wolf.
Anyways, it's kind of a North American thing.
People have reported it
a lot in these rural southern places. It seems to be the way the most famous case though
is in Michigan. There was the Michigan Dog Man, which I think was cited in the 90s.
Um, the land between the lakes is another famous dog man case.
I was gonna say that like I'm from Michigan and there's always this famous
story of it's either a big foot or you know something in that category where this I want
to say it was in the 60s 70s or 80s you know one of those uh Cold War periods where this teenage
girl was at an intersection and this thing just crawled out of the wood line and just beat the
hell out of her at the red light and as as soon as it turned green, he left.
And she went to the police and went, yeah, I was attacked by a Bigfoot.
And the cops went, okay, so it was a rapist or not?
Can you give me an honest description?
She was like, no, it was a Bigfoot.
It's, you know, like, what do you do with it?
But yeah, I don't mean to interrupt, but yeah, it's one of those funny stories.
Oh, yeah, that's like, yeah, that's like the kind of the bonkers beginning of like the Michigan dog man.
Um, yeah.
So anyways, there's another famous legend in the land between the lakes.
I've never even heard of that state park before.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So like, there's like this kind of weird story about how this couple was like this family was living
in a mobile home is basically just like eviscerated and torn apart by this cryptid that was, you
know, documented by the police and covered up.
It's kind of like one of those weird legends.
But what's funny is there is a legend from the native tribes that live there that went back so far as like before America times when they talk about, you know, you've heard of the Rougarou or the Rougarou or whatever it's called.
Hey, you still there?
Can you hear me?
Ken Rougarou.
What?
Yep.
Sorry. I was gonna say, so like, have you hear me? Ken broke up. Sorry.
I was going to say, have you heard of the Rougarou?
I do not know.
The Rougarou, backtracking a little bit, is a Cajun legend about another upright werewolf
looking thing.
Right?
And so there is a legend amongst the First Pe of this thing called the Rouguerot,
or the Rougerot. It's a very similar kind of pronunciation, but that's where the name Rouguerot
comes from. Basically just an upright wolf that walks like a man. Anyways, they tell this legend
in the land between lakes of this creature that has always dwelled there. Well, Fort Campbell is
not too far from the land between the lakes, you know, um, a couple hours drive
But in the backs backwoods of Fort Campbell was known as the back 40 this big training area again
Like the training area that only the military uses its awful miss the civilians. It's like just a massive amount of
You know woods and terrain and everything like that, You know, a lot of soldiers out there report seeing this creature that resembles a large, upright wolf.
To the point that even, you know, when they bring it up to their leadership, the leadership's like,
hey, like, don't talk about it. We know. We believe you. But don't mention it.
But don't mention it.
That's a, that's funny, man.
I mean, I was in Marine Corps reserve for a little bit and we had a centralized training event that was a four day field op in Fort Campbell.
I'm the exact same training ground you're talking about.
And it was in like February and it was cold and it was snowing and it was wet.
And all I could hear here at night is like howling and the fire watch
kids just look pissed
off and I was like, yeah, it's not a far stretch of the imagination thing.
There's probably a werewolf out here.
It's just so miserable sometimes that your mind probably just runs away.
Yeah.
And so, you know, kind of like a funny thing I connected was in a lot of the stories, so
like for your readers that are listening,
I wrote like a small article on this
for the Lethal Minds Journal,
which can be found on Instagram,
just the Lethal Minds Journal.
I think it was volume four.
I wrote an article about the dog band at Fort Campbell.
And on one night, I had, I believe it was four soldiers
And on one night, I had, I believe it was four soldiers
in one night in different locations corroborate the same story
of seeing a large bipedial wolf.
One of the soldiers watched another guy that didn't,
I couldn't get his statement unfortunately
because he got out of the army,
was dragged by this creature down a drainage ditch
that actually ripped open his clothes.
All these guys saw the same thing, a large bipedal wolf.
I had another story from a calf scout
who was in the same exercise, not the same night,
it was actually the night before,
that their humvee stopped in front of this large black mass
that they could only see on the naked
eye. They couldn't see through MVGs or thermals, like stand up in front of them and it resembled
like a large bipedal wolf and it just kind of stared them down before it walked off into the
woods. And like a funny thing is the soldiers on the night, those four soldiers that saw the same
creature, when they initially described it to me, they described it to me as a large,
upright creature with antlers, right?
What does that sound like to you?
Nice.
That's insane, man.
It's, yeah.
So it sounds like a skinwalker, right?
So this is where I kind of,
this is where I kind of connected it is.
Did you ever encounter one of those,
I mean, I mean, talking about the Indians from earlier,
they always talked about the Windigo
and you never see the Windigo mentioned in mainstream today,
but I'm pretty sure you have come across
at least two stories about those guys.
Oh yeah.
So like, I think, so like, you know,
like skinwalkers for the listeners
like Skinwalkers are a Navajo legend which is like you know the tribe out in like the the southwest
um and if you kind of boil it down to like the basic all a Skinwalker is is a man who has made
a deal with like dark forces to be a shapeshifter, like a witch doctor, right? What people describe seeing
as these like skinless, these like skinny humanoid long-limbed creatures, pale crawlers that they
call the Windigo and skinwalkers, I think are a different creature that's one of the same that
inhabits North America. And man, like you ever heard of the rake of course right so the rake is a fictional
creature created for the slender man mythos which i'm sorry for people that are listening slender
man is fake it's wonderfully done it's a great like great throw that out there like the windigo
is real by the way slender man is fake yes i am very i don't mean to interrupt but yeah
i know i'm sorry i have to kill the fun because I'm just well versed in the internet, right? Um, I think a lot of y'all longer, a lot of the younger generation
was like rediscovering some of these things I grew up with and you grew up with. But anyways,
I digress. But the rake was created for the Slenderman mythos. And when it came out, people started this, you know,
and the rake is depicted as a, you know,
a humanoid creature with big black eyes
that runs around on all fours and is all white.
And it's kind of like an emaciated looking human
with longer limbs than normal.
And when that came out, people started coming forward.
Like, I have seen that.
I saw that in the woods in North America.
I saw that in Nova Scotia. I saw that in Canada. Like people started coming forward like I have seen that I saw that in the woods in North America I saw that in Nova
Scotia I saw that in Canada like people started coming forward how seeing how they've seen these
emaciated white creatures and they just started like being described as skinwalkers you know and
you and I know in the in the military like when you like skinwalkers become like a meme you know
everybody talks about skinwalkers like as like a a kind of like a if you know, you know, you know what I mean?
It's a universally accepted meme of the spiritual world.
Like Luhan makes fun of that all the time.
Oh, yeah.
She's hilarious.
But you know, it's even funnier, right?
So oh, yeah, I remember I remember seeing a meme of her on another page called own the
gas mask.
It was with that cut of Kevin Spacey from Call of Duty's Advanced Warfare.
What's your senior's advanced warfare? Superimposed on an immature dude. I was dying.
And then like,
It's not the moment where it has the talk over here like in the 1980s,
the US Army came together with the collective
Yes, it creates psychological. I've already feel that's a classic
Always laughs because people took that meme and like ran with it
Like she's really a Psyop and I'm like dude, you guys are giving the army way too much credit right now my guys
Way too much credit
Like scroll back at her Instagram like six months
It's it's very funny.
Anyways, I digress. It's so funny like the skinwalker kind of being like an inside joke
in the military. I'll give you a good example. There's a squad in Camp Orno. I won't give
the exact unit
because I want to dock someone accident,
but I mean, this will probably dock some anyways.
So their squad name in this weapons platoon
is Skinwalker, right?
And they're called Skinwalker
because the squad leader.
Or I think Fick Marie is not there anyways.
Oh, maybe you know a different Skinwalker squad.
I think, I don't want to dock them out too much because you know, the guy told me, but
anyways, um, you know, they're on Camp Horno, which for the Marines out there, like I know
all about the horno skin walker.
There's cave systems all over horno.
My guys, we might be onto something.
Um, I just know that cause I grew up on Camp Pendleton as a kid.
Uh, part of my weird background.
I mean, I mean, for you, man, I used to be a Marine.
I spent a lot of time on Pendleton.
So it's a yeah, I mean, I understand anyways.
Oh, yeah.
Anyway, so they're called the Skinwalkers because this squad leader of this weapons
platoon squad, he told his guys like, yeah, like when I was a kid, I saw a skinwalker and I think
it's followed me ever since. You know, they didn't buy it.
They didn't believe in whatever. So they're out there like, you
know, in the sticks somewhere in Pendleton, I think like way out
there like, you know, with a bison, basically Rome. They're
out there one night and they keep hearing like the
screeching and like hearing these noises in the night like
what the hell is that? They didn't sound like a coyote.
And they hear the coyote howling, yipping at something,
and something screeching back at them.
And they basically see this emanciated pale creature running through the...
And the squad leader's just like, yeah, man, that's the skinwalker I told you guys about.
He follows me.
So now they're the freaking skinwalkers. He follows me. It's my, uh, it's my friend.
That's just Craig, bro. That's like, oh, that's my friend. Uh, that's my friend Fred. Yeah. He's,
he's a good guy. Yeah. Don't get too close to him, but, uh, that is so funny. He has, uh,
I mean, I've talked to you about this on, you know, our DMs before, but
I remember when I was on camp or Edson range on Camp Pendleton when I was in the boot camp
a couple of years ago. And the journal instructors always talked about this thing, like the Edson
range ghost, where it was about a, it was almost a headless horseman figure where a Marine,
a horse Marine from back in the day was knocked off his horse and died. But his like apparent
spirit haunted Edson range to terrorize. And this, you know, of course they're selling
it in this way, but they're like to terrorize Marines who don't get expert on the rifle
qual or something like that. And it was, which is, yeah, base, of course.
But, you know, and then I talked to family, I'm like,
you ever heard of this thing? They're like, oh yeah, yeah.
Yep. I heard about the Edison range horsemen.
I was like, interesting. So everyone's heard about this.
Okay. So it wasn't just me getting fed.
Which is funny.
It's some nonsense.
It was just funny because now that you're here,
when I was a kid, right, I told you, like, I was stuff, you know, for the for the listeners, I just won't talk to
me too much.
But, you know, by the time I turned 18, half of my life had been spent in Oceanside on
and off, right.
And I spent a lot of time on Camp Pendleton.
My dad's a Marine, you know, I've been all over Camp Pendleton.
And you know, of course, I think I think when I was a kid, I must have been like 1314, I asked, it was like close to Halloween. I'm like, Hey, guys, have you ever heard of ghost stories? And they told me about this headless Marine that wanders around. I didn't know it was Edson range, but like that haunts.
It's, yeah.
Or the shadow marchers, which are another one where if you went up, you know, Motherfucker Hill.
Motherfucker, yep. Yep. So if you like, I used to hike that with my dad,
but some of the young Marines that would go with him would tell me like, oh yeah, if you come out here at night, you'll see like, I used to think that they're just trying to scare
me, but they would tell me like, yeah, you'll come out here and you'll see guys that are dressed in
like our older uniforms, like marching with us and they'll just like, kind of like vanish into thin air
or like walk off the path into nothingness.
So that is bizarre, man.
That is, I think bizarre is the word
to describe this episode.
It's just, yeah.
It's like, I mean, especially when it comes to the military,
the community is so small that, I mean, of
course the famous one is, you know, the giants from Kunar where that one SF guy got killed
by a spear and they killed these giants and they were treated back into the mountains
and everything.
And everyone in the military is told about this crazy story, but they were like, yeah,
it's just a story.
But then if you go, if you collect, I don't know, a dozen Marines from the last 20 years and you
put them on Camp Pendleton, they're like, Oh yeah, the night marchers. Oh, they're real.
You're like, okay. All right.
It's funny you talk about like, you know, the giant of Kandahar, the original, like
for the listeners, I was in episode on Coast to Coast AM with Ark Bell, which is an old
talk show radio. And, you know, when I first listened to that story,
I didn't really buy into it too much because like,
you know, some of the details are a little hokey,
doesn't really like, they just don't,
they sound a little off, right?
But ever since I started the page,
I think, hold on, let me go over my notes real quick.
Notes as in my head, one, two, three, four, five, I have about six stories from
Afghanistan of people that have seen humanoids that were around seven to eight feet tall,
or just like as big as trees out there. From a distance, not up close, but you know, from
it, even from a distance, you know, they stood up
and they towered over trees or they towered over
like the boulders and stuff like that.
So you're a cog and you go,
well, that's certainly not six foot tall.
Yeah, that's wow.
That's a big boy over there.
God damn.
But like, you know, and then I, I,
I spoke to Wes Germer on Sasquatch Chronicles and
Tony Merkel on the confessionals podcast.
Um, both really two outstanding podcasts.
If you love the paranormal, if you listen to Sasquatch Chronicles, you're going to
definitely believe Bigfoot exists.
If you listen to confessionals, you're going to have your mind blown.
There's a lot of crazy stuff that's covered in those two podcasts.
But anyways, I digress.
Both of them told me that, uh, they have spoken to many soldiers, Marines, airmen, whatever off
the record, who have talked about how they've seen giants in
Afghanistan. And, um, you know, I definitely buy it, there's
places in Afghanistan that are so remote and so ancient, even
the Afghanis don't know anything about it. And I've spoken to
several people from Afghanistan that were telling me about how like, you know,
the mountains are basically so ancient.
Like even the people that, you know,
live there don't know much about them.
There's actually a state park.
And I learned this from West Gurmur on
Southwest Chronicles.
And I kind of like confirmed it talking to these people
in Afghanistan.
There's a, believe it or not, before the invasion,
there was a, you know, a national park of Afghanistan that was up north near the border of
China. And the name escapes me, but it's a very small, like 13 mile wide, or 13 mile long,
like two, three mile wide, like national park on these mountain peaks. And very weird place to have a national park, very random spot. And when he spoke to a
gentleman, Wes Germer, that, you know, off the record, who was operating out there, I think he
was in the army. And the locals would tell them like, hey, don't go up into those mountains, you
know, the national park. And they would say, like, if you go up there, there's giants, they're going to kill you and eat you.
What?
Just passing by like, oh, yeah, by the way, you're going to be.
Yes.
And you know, it's funny, it's kind of segue into that.
I spoke to, I know another guy who was, you know, I'm not going to say what you Nick,
because I don't want to like give out titles too much about him because he's very private, but he was also on Sasquatch Chronicles.
He was involved in the very early so remote that when they were given
out like kind of like the humanitarian aid they had like picture books for kids and they had
pictures of the ocean of like whales and stuff like that and the men were starting to get upset
with the soldiers like why are you showing my child this this is a lie like no creature like
this exists right like the ocean doesn't exist they were so far they didn't have electricity
they didn't have internet nothing they were so far detached from what we consider civilization.
That concepts like the ocean and whales and like, you know, airplanes, they referred to airplanes in the sky as exes.
Because they had no other word for that, right?
That's how detached they were from like the modern world. Anyways, you know, somebody made a joke to the interpreter about them. Have
they seen any yetis? And the interpreter just went ahead and
just said it right, because that's what he started to do is
to translate to the village elder and these men in the room.
And they're all like, Yeah, we have yetis here. Like, yeah,
they come in, they, they, you know, attack us and they eat our
people. Yeah, they're like, you know, they've described these
creatures that sounded like Bigfoot, as if, attack us and they eat our people. Yeah. They're like, you know, they've described these creatures that sounded like Bigfoot
as if you, how you and I would describe a raccoon that comes and takes our trash.
Like they were vermin, right?
And it was like, he said he, it was so surreal.
Like these people have no idea what a Yeti is or a Bigfoot or something like that.
Right.
And they describe perfectly what we would consider a Yeti or a Bigfoot.
And they describe perfectly what we would consider a Yeti or a Bigfoot. That is wild. I mean, I've heard about those in the Hindu Kush where along the, you know,
a Pakistan where the Pakistanis usually in this, this is 100% verbatim what I heard on
Monster Quest 15 years ago, but it was the local tribes
would go like, all right, he's back. We got to go fight him. They were like, he's got
to stop eating our cats. And so the village would round up and create a riot to fight
like yetis or Bigfoots or anything to stop them from eating their cats and their corn
and their food. And they were like, yeah, this thing's kind of a problem. And it was like, yeah. And then the these old Pakistani village elders go like, oh yes, there's
a long standing tradition. So they think it was like a, like a spiritual, like, oh, the villages
curse because this guy didn't do something properly. So now we have this big issue on our hands.
But then nowadays, when everyone has the internet, they're like, oh actually, I think it's Bigfoot
I think we have this yeti situation on our hands
Jesus Christ, that's fucking wild again. It's
It of course if you talk to anybody who goes like well if I had a gun I would kill it
You're like, I'm sure people have tried
But like would you though like, you know, it's like, I think back to that
giant story, you know, maybe that giant was just chilling in his cave and all
of a sudden to hear all this noise, it runs out and there's these like American
class in his front room and he's like, what the hell?
Yeah.
He's just like, why are you pointing guns at me?
Like, and they start shooting at him.
Of course he's like, all right, you know what?
Fuck you stabs you with.
There's another story I have.
Hold on. It, it, I would just thought stabs you with your there's another story I have. Hold on.
It it I would just thought about it.
I was going to say it slipped away.
But these
like paranormal stories in the military
and going back to like the military side
where I mean, especially post 9 11,
there's so many deaths in the military where
and I'm not trying to make a joke about this
or anything, but like even in barracks, it doesn't matter if it's Camp Lejeune or Fort
Campbell or Bragg or San Diego or Cherry Point or anything like that.
It's like, yeah, I mean, military members killed themselves.
They're like, all right, so if you have this collective identity of multiple guys doing
this in one centralized area,
you might have a problem with, you know, seeing something in the mirror.
Yeah. What Fort hood has entered the chat.
Yeah, that's the big one.
Dude, I just, uh,
I read the Fort Hood report and I just sat there for like 30 minutes like, bro, what the fuck?
Sorry if I'm cussing too much.
You may just like, I need to take a laugh.
If you're walking around the backyard pacing like, you know, Spock with your arms behind
your back, you're like, Fort Hood again, of course.
I'm going to lose some weights.
I'm very upset.
That's funny. It's not funny.
It's coincidentally strange. Like you said, if you go look into a lot of bases, especially like Fort Benning, Fort Leonardwood, these big training bases,
like a lot of these dudes have the same story
and it's like, okay, like, yeah, they're boots, you know,
they're scrubs, but hey, man, if like a dozen dudes
are coming forward with the same story,
can we really ignore it?
What about those, have you ever investigated Gettysburg?
Because that's usually the big one like Gettysburg, Gran Tidum or Lexington or Revolutionary
battlefields where Civil War reenactors and or amateur.
What is the term?
Reenactors.
No, the guys who are in like the paranormal stuff.
Oh, um,
parentologist. I don't know.
Anyways, those guys go to
Gettysburg. They're like, I'm going
to stay the night at, you know,
at the little round top
where a bunch of guys stabbed each
other and then they film.
They're like, yep, caught something
on camera, never coming back here.
No, I will. So I've been to Gettysburg once and I'll definitely say, so I went on an LPD.
Sorry, guys. I'm an officer. I know worst drink, yada, yada, yada. But I went on a staff ride to
Gettysburg, right? And it was awesome. We were all going to sit there and we were all drinking in some courtyard like late at night. But when we all broke, we had to walk
about a mile back to the hotel through historic Gettysburg. And I'm not going to lie, the
air was extremely heavy. Like super heavy. And looking back, I was warned by our tour
guys that we, because we did a whole ride around there
You know the battlefield during the day. They're like, hey don't come out here at night
And I was like why and like just don't come out here at night. Okay
But yeah, when I was out there, here's your sheet of the bathroom. Here's your complimentary toothbrush. Don't go outside
And I was actually
Fun fact I was actually thinking about going out on my own to the
walk around the town at night.
And I was roomed with my chaplain at the time who was a, you know, he was a, you know, Southern
Baptist.
And I was like, Yeah, chap, I think I'm gonna go out and explore.
I've heard like some interesting things that come see at night.
And he just looked at me dead in the eye.
And he's like, you know, he said my name.
He's like, listen, don't go out there.
This is not your place to go out there.
And I was just like, you got a chapter going to bed.
You look at the chaplain, you're like, if anyone's going to give me some
sound advice, it's this guy.
Oh yes.
Um, but I did.
Oh, sorry, Glenn.
I was going to say I was in Gettysburg a few months ago because like I live in Northern Virginia.
So I thought like, oh, you know, might as well swing by Gettysburg.
It's only like an hour away and the scope and the magnitude and you think it's this tiny little thing like
like this little insignificant Hill like in any other Civil War battlefield, but not dog.
It's like six miles long. It's huge. So I mean even going to out and I went there like, you know, 1045 in the morning.
I was like, yeah, it was definitely like a different situation. You just pull up and go. Yeah, bunch of guys stabbed each other to death here. That's a it's not a almost like if like you or I were to go to Verdun or something like that or anywhere
in the fields of France, you're like, yes, it's pretty heavy.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And so like, I'll give you kind of like a fun fact. So when I was
stationed at Fort Lee, right? There's a few Marines that go to Fort Lee, mainly all the
support guys like mechanics, cooks, stuff like that,
go to Fort Lee. It's a big logistics base in the Army, all like mainly all the logistics MOS is trained at Fort Lee. But what's fun, cool about Fort Lee is not on the grounds, but basically
there's a gate that opens up to it is the Petersburg National Battlefield. And the Petersburg
National Battlefield is one of the final battles of the Civil War. It's a very bloody siege that took like months to finally
you know capitulate but uh you ever seen the movie Glory with Denzel Washington?
Right so you know the Battle of the Crater?
Yeah so the Battle of the Crater was at Fort Lee.
It was at Petersburg.
Yeah, you can actually look sorry if you hear the howling in the background.
That's not a dog man.
That's just my stupid ass Australian healer who likes to bark at everything.
Yeah, it's not the wolf man.
It's actually my dog.
It's my dog.
It's actually a wolf man. But yeah, wolf. I said it was a wolf man,
comma man, not man. Anyways, I digress. Um, so you can actually walk out and you can stand
in the crater from that movie, right? Like when they, when they mind this and they blew
it and you know, they, they decided to pull the colored troops out
who had been training to storm this freaking position
after they blew it up.
Kind of historical note,
if you didn't know anything about the movie, Glory, right?
Like that colored troops battalion,
they had trained and drilled time day,
every single hour of the day for like weeks
about storming those positions once they blew the mine basically, right?
And they pulled them out at the last minute because they want they didn't want colored troops to steal the glory, which is the sad part
And these guys had already
time in and time out
Yep, and so
The they put in the you know, the regular
troops and of course, you know, the mind goes off, the craters
formed in these dudes bungling. So all these dudes rushing to
the crater, including the color troops, you know, they basically
all get massacred in this kind of like, it'll it refuted things
like you can stand there. Like I said, the air is just heavier.
It's like, I spent a lot of time at Fort Lee. I rocked a lot in the training area at night, man, or
in the early early mornings, I did not like being there when
the sun was down. I if I would had to go there when the sun was
down. I stayed till like the hardball roads. Because when you
started getting off into like the, you know, the trails into
the wood line out to the crater. Yeah, it started getting weird.
It started getting creepy. And I swear to this day, I used to
see shapes and shadows. And it's like, it's like a repressed
memory. You know, I used to see shapes and shadows that
resembled like dudes in the uniform from the Civil War.
And especially at the crater, I never like going to the crater if the sun was down, right?
Because you just, you know, a lot of dudes just died there.
You know, and Fort Lee battlefield is just a weird quiet place.
Not even the homeless dudes go and hang out there.
Right?
Like the homeless guys don't go there at night.
There's no homeless shelters.
There's no homeless towns out there's no homeless towns out there because like-
Like on sinking ships, you gotta follow the rats.
Like why aren't they homeless here?
All right, we're gonna follow those.
And there's, you know,
they're all outside the perimeter of the battlefield,
but they don't go in the battlefield.
Maybe they have respect, right?
There's a lot of places for people to hide out there,
but you know, I think it's a lot of,
because they know like, hey, this is all the ground.
It's just a weird place. There's, you know, kind of like
off the sides ghosts, you know, the 60s and the 80s. There was
even Sasquatch sightings out there before Richmond, Virginia
was developed. Just a weird little area. Oh, yeah, like if
you go look up Bigfoot Field Research Organization and type in Fort Lee, I think you'll find two reports of a Sasquatch sighting that happened
on the battlefield and another one on what's called Ordnance Island, where all the mechanics are,
which is just like, you know, a separate like cut of Fort Lee. Very, like I said, very strange area,
very heavy area with that battlefield, you know,
that not a lot of people know
was like a very, very, very heavy battle.
That's fascinating.
Again, just going back to like the history standpoint,
like, yeah, not a lot of people know these things.
So if I wanted to be nefarious,
I could just start throwing paranormal stories on top of that be like oh there's a reason no one goes
there it's not because everyone forgot about but because they want to forget
about it you know one of those things it's it's like when I was a kid I used
to definitely watch those ghost hunters and literally anything on sci-fi channel
or Discovery Channel after oh yeah I would eat those up and those bizarre, um,
UFO stories or stories of like army reservists in Missouri,
getting a firefight with a big foot here. Like, um, you know,
I'm here, I am six years old going, yes, real. This is, this is intense.
What does no one else know about this? And you go to school and everyone's like,
what are you talking about?
And everyone's like, no, I saw it on Discovery Channel.
I promised.
Wait, wait, wait.
Let me backtrack here.
Reservist getting a firefight with Bigfoot?
This sounds insane.
Haven't heard of this one before.
So, and again, here it is me reciting a episode,
I want to say of,
Mr. Darker, whatever that show was on Discovery Channel that came out about 10 o'clock in 2007, but it was like bizarre stories or paranormal stories or something
like that.
Anyways, where these, I want to say they were army reservists were on patrol and then they
just looked at the top of Ridgeline like Missouri and saw three or four humanoid figures and like two little ones and two big ones, which is essentially
like, you know, a mom and dad and a couple of babies that were huge and they were hairy.
And it was the middle of something like January, February.
So it was cold outside.
So all these guys, you know, they have their movies and they're all bundled up, but they
see these humanoid things at the top of a ridge line with huge hands
and they stink and you know, the air is very heavy and they look over and they're like,
these guys aren't wearing any clothes. They look very hairy and the air smells terrible.
And so like a rock's thrown at them essentially like they like a bear you walked into their
area. So they threw a rock at them and cause they had the sim rounds, they started blasting sim rounds at these big feet essentially. And then it was
like an exchange. I'll find it for you and send it to you here after this. But it was
like an exchange between like milsim and big foot rocks just blasting each other. And like
some guy got hit in the head, I want to want to say and they this patrol left and it was like a fire team or a squad I can't remember but they went back to their little
OP and told the little lieutenant like hey man we just came into some very serious stuff and I
pretty sure it was not the red cell and this CO was like excuse me so it was just they were like
yeah we'll uh we'll get to this later put that on the after action report and we'll come back to it.
And he was like, no, you're not listening. This is not the red cell throwing rocks at us. This was something else.
I, you know, honestly, in your opinion, like, how many people would have taken to take down a Bigfoot? You know what I mean?
Like, what's the census on those guys like seven foot two, seven foot four?
So like, I don't know, like, you know, yeah, they're big dudes. I feel like so like,
even if it's around, you know, these have knives, like, I feel like, I feel like a squad could take
down a big foot, you know what I mean? A very well-trained fire team, like five, four or five guys
could take him out, but you know, seven, two, lean mass,
pissed off, who's never experienced anything loud before.
He's probably gonna have like a sensory overload
with four guys shooting at him.
I mean, I'm sure they could take him.
Yeah, I think like you could have
you'd have three squads, right? So there's no sorry, there's four fire teams to a squad.
I'm a POG, so I forget these things. This for the Marines is three. Oh, nevermind. Yeah, Marines are
screwed. Anyways, well, I guess you could have, you could have two fire teams, right?
Two fire teams focus on like one left side of the body, one's right side of the body
to immobilize.
And then you have the third fire team is the kill team.
They go for the eyes and the throat and the head.
I feel like you get, I feel like one Marine squad.
Yeah.
Then there's the outliers like, well, what if he has a stick?
Or I challenge like if we just took one Marines weapon
squad, who are just also at this point just gigantic fucking
silverback gorillas that have been shaved. I feel like one I
feel like one Marine weapon squad could take down a
friggin Sasquatch.
Oh, yeah, because they all drink whole milk. They're all
power lifters. They're, they're all strong, you know, they're
not very fast usually, but they're, I mean, if you throw a few shots of a Jim Beam and
then they'll probably be pretty, uh, pretty warmed up to go fight a big foot. I mean, it's,
yeah, it's, I mean, if I, if I, I'm just mentally like going over all these crazy stories I've
heard and like, yeah, there's actually, now that you mentioned it, like, yeah, I think there's a bunch that I heard just over the last few years, because I was in for like five or five years or so.
And yeah, there's just stories you hear all the time. And you're like, Oh, that's whatever. But then when we start putting them all together, you're like, actually, I've heard these all over the place. And then if
When we start putting them all together, you're like, actually I've heard these all over the place.
And then if back in like the GWAT era,
some fire team gets in the sim rounds,
shoot out with big foot, you're like, interesting.
All right, so this probably checks out.
These are things to be considered.
You know, yeah.
And it's, you know, and a lot of times like people think
that there's like some nefarious,
like methodology behind it, like, you know, a
cover up or anything like that. And, you know, honestly, like this one dude who
told me some pretty crazy stories in Afghanistan, he was like, you know, you
see it once and then you remember like, you're like, wow, what the fuck was that
you dwell on it? And then you remember, like, oh, damn, I'm in a war zone. And
there's like physical people that are trying to kill me. Like I got to focus on my job.
And I, you know, just even if you weren't shooting at you, you know,
you got to do your job and you got to think about how you're going to do your
job the next day. So, you know, you push that stuff to the back of your mind.
You know, another guy told me it's the, um, the terror that you laugh off in the
moment is the true terror.
Right.
And I think that happens. A lot of people just, they see something
in sufferably insane, right.
And they're just like, they put it in the back of their mind and they
keep chugging along because they're good Joes and they're good airmen.
They're good Marines.
They're good sailors.
And, you know, then it comes back like they're sitting there in the dark room
or at the smoke pit with their bros. And there's, you know, they're, they're, you know, they come back like they're sitting there in the dark room or at the smoke pit with their bros.
And there's, you know, they're, you know, they're, they're people and they're like, hey, man, like something weird happened to me.
And that's when it comes up.
Those are the stories that I'm calling after.
Yeah, those ones there.
I don't know if you've ever heard of like White Sings New Mexico.
But that's like, I heard his curse.
Yeah.
So I was there years ago for a that baton death march. They do the annual one. I forgot what it's something like they do it once a year.
Can't really remember the month, but I remember one of the guys I went with stayed at a hotel out town, like a holiday in he's like, I took shower, you know, went to bed, we'll start listening to some music and played on my phone and the bed starts
shaking and the TV turned on and he was like, I don't have time for this.
It just rolled over. He was like, I'm going to bed.
I have to wake up and hike in the morning.
I don't have time to deal with whatever this is.
And he said, not right now guys.
No, it's like, you know, here I am. I'm like 14 or 15, I'm like, what?
What?
It was like, yeah, man, I don't know what the hell that was.
Anyways, let's go hike, let's go walk in one line for 26 miles.
I'm like, you just brushed over a very interesting story.
Or what could have been.
Yeah, like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, ask me like what uh fight that type of integrity oh yeah and you know what like honestly scares
me the most like what gives me the shivers at night is you know it's not like yeah trust me some
of this stuff is scary as shit like i am a huge scaredy cat right fun fact like i don't like horror
movies i have like some choice horror films that i like. I'm not a big horror guy, man.
I really, I really not.
I'm a big security cat.
I find this stuff fascinating
because there is an explanation.
And sometimes that explanation is just totally bizarre.
But what really keeps me up at night is, you know,
I think back on all the stories
that are lost to time now, right?
That either have just, you know,
the guy or the gal will never ever say
because of, you know, fear of whatever, like in judgment,
or, you know, did they just passed on?
And like, those are this,
that's what keeps me up at night.
Like the truly incredible things that we that have been lost
At time right like one of my favorite quotes from a movie is from Blade Runner when you know
They get to the very end. She won't lose
You know, oh
Dude, yeah, that's great. Or you know, like I see things you people wouldn't believe. God, that whole speech just gets me and that's that here's the rain.
I think about that speech. Tears in the rain. I think of tears in the rain every
single time. Like I dwell on like the stories that have not been told because
like there's no one left to tell them. You know,
when you when you mentioned that, I remember I was probably I was I was a teenager. I was probably
about to graduate high school. I went to like a hobby shop and found this like, you know, because
all the nerds hang out and they read fantasy novels or whatever. But there was this one that
had a cover of two Roman soldiers fighting a giant in England. And I was like, what the hell is this?
And they're like, Oh, yeah, it's based on this one, like an offhand account of a Roman legionnaire who under Caesar invaded Britain and found giants.
And so they fought these giants and then Caesar's like, yeah, those are just Gauls. And then the Roman legionnaires were like, yeah, I don't think that was a Gaul. I've seen these guys before. I don't think that was what that was. But, you know, the book I was looking at the cover and everything
it was based on the story. It was completely fictional, but I was like, interesting. So
I started reading about it and I was like, Oh, wow. Like, yeah, Romans definitely had
their own paranormal stories. And they came back to their officers and went like, I just
had this bizarre encounter and they went shut up. They're like, okay.. They're like, oh, okay. But, right?
Like, oh my God, that's, that's pulling back the eggshell
so much right there.
Like, ah, imagine what the Romans saw.
Imagine what the Spartans saw.
Like, you know, I love the movie 300 and the comic 300
because of the overtop nature.
Like, and I tell people like that's lost on them.
Like that's not done for Hollywood, right?
Like that's done because they saw it.
Like that is how they saw firsthand accounts of like who was at Thermopylae?
Who was the who was the Greek poet?
Who wrote about that?
I can't remember, but it was.
Dionyses?
Dionyses? Maybe. I don't know, but it was. Dionyses?
Dionyses? Maybe. I don't know, but he always painted the Persians as literal demons.
Like, I remember when that movie came out and I was reading like, you know, like Yahoo or AOL and a headline of Iran Bans 300 for defamation. I was like, you can see that.
300 for defamation. I was like, can see that.
Yeah, understandable.
If I was a betting man, I would have said that that would have happened.
You know, oh yeah, or like the first time that the Romans saw the elephant, right?
They thought the elephant was a demon.
Yeah, when some rogue Carthaginian runs south on a elephant, they're like, what the hell is this?
Like, what?
Oh, yeah.
This guy walked the other way to get here.
That doesn't make any sense.
One thing I really want to do is, and this is like more of a general statement is reading
Marco Polo's book and Christopher Columbus's book and looking at the similarities because I don't know if you've ever heard of gap theory before.
Yeah, I'm familiar.
Yeah, or it's like, you know, for the listeners out there gap theory is essentially saying pockets of India, you see radiation levels where it says like the Chernobyl levels going, if I was a smart man,
a nuclear bomb went off here. And then if you go to Switzerland or Peru or Chile or Iraq or anywhere,
everyone has the same story of like, yeah, there was like a, there was a flood definitely. And then
there was a big war and blah blah blah. So anyways just reading
those two books and see if there's any similarities between like Marco Polo rubbing elbows with the
Chinese going like oh here's their stories and then Christopher Columbus rubbing elbows with
the Americas and going here's their stories. I don't know that that's probably a topic worth
discussing but. Oh yeah god I God, I like I said, I
shiver on the stories that have
been like lost the time. Mike,
then that's a big reason behind
like doing this book, right? You
know.
Yeah, for the for the listeners
out there, do not stop at this conversation go read his book follow his page he has easily one of my favorite pages on the platform itself because it's just so entertaining of the stories that get thrown out there.
I mean, even the other day you posted that one about the Irish soldier on what duty.
He was like yes ghost.
Just. Oh, yeah. Like, oh, man. That's like,
like I said, like, it's even still, I'm still shocked. Like, I'm not, you know, I'm not
used to any of these stories I read. And I'm like, holy shit, you know, and like, for the
the listeners that may have may or may not have like, you know, messaged me like, sorry,
I'll get back to you. I'm super busy.
I try to make sure I sit down and devote like,
this whole thing is like a hobby to me.
But it is important that I record these stories
and I put them on paper, you know,
because in the digital age and the age of TikTok
there's all this stuff and then, you know,
there's misinformation and there's maybe like
half-truthisms and, you know, quarter truthisms or full truthisms
that are not told correctly.
And I want to make sure that I capture, you know,
people's words as they tell them to me
and document them for like, you know, permanently.
Cause like, I look at it like this, if, like I said,
if everything was erased,
if Tales from the Good Square was banned on, you know,
Instagram or whatever
Invanished I do have a backup but you know if it was gone, I have at least 240 stories
documented on paper
In my bookshelf like they will persist right there
They they it's not like something that can be lost to legend like here they are. They're right here, you know
unless you're in like a time machine situation where you go all the way to the future and all these the what were they called the citizens? Well, did you ever see that
movie Time Machine? Ron Starling? The original timeline? The time machine. Oh, the original
time machine. Yeah. Oh oh yeah, love that movie.
Because he goes all the way to the future
and he's walking around, he's like,
do you guys have books?
And this guy's like, yeah, we have books.
And he opens it, it just crumbles.
And he was like, what?
He was like, what the hell?
What were those creatures called again?
Like the bad guys, the cannibals?
Oh man, I know the people were called the Eloi.
More locks, they were called more locks.
Yeah, more locks. Yeah. Fuck the more locks. All my homies
hate the more locks. I will go forward in time with all my
homies so we can jump the more locks.
Whatever their name. Yeah, fuck.
That's funny, man.
I'm gonna take a hundred people with M4s, baseball bats, and hammers, and I saw this meme of Tony Soprano sitting
in his therapist chair, and he was like, me and my friends would have beat ET to death
with hammers.
I promise you that.
I laughed so hard.
I fell out of my chair in the barge, and I was like, you just got here.
Are you hammered?
I was like, no, dude.
This is the funniest thing I've ever seen in my entire life oh man it's a like you're it I am I laugh at that
like that statement because people like you know all these bleeding hearts are
like oh humans can't get along. Like we'll be destroyed
by aliens if they ever show up. They're like, and like, bro, if you not look at us real on our
planet, we'll beat it to death. Yeah. If it was like that one guy who's going like, we need to
study it. And then there's nine others going, I have this idea and it's a gun. Why from Saturday night? A gun, you know?
Like, yeah, like if like aliens suddenly landed and like the grays came out and they're like resistance is futile.
Every single Muslim, Christian, and Jew in the world, plus all the other religions will just band together and be like, we're going to kill you.
And that's how we get the plot lines of Warhammer 40k.
We're gonna kill you. And that's how we get the plot lines of Warhammer 40K.
Man, this is dipping into a territory.
I'm very interested.
Warhammer 40K, holy shit, that's very funny.
It's a-
You think humans are racist now?
Wait till a non-human lounge.
We are experiencing,
what you're seeing here is Advanced Warfare. There's this
page that I used to watch a lot on YouTube called Dark 5. Did you ever watch that?
Yes, I remember Dark 5 for sure. Yeah, he was always cool. I kind of got my
ideas moving in certain directions. Like, well, I'm going to pull threads at 4am and scare the hell out of myself and I should be going to school in two hours. But you know, one of those. But there was always this one where it's not so much paranormal. But this guy, I want to say was like in Iowa or not Iowa, Nevada.
He was like, he lived next to an air force base. And so what he did is he thought he was seeing extraterrestrials, but it was back in the 50s and 60s.
So the locals went, oh, or the local military went, oh, this guy's not supposed to see, you know, the new fighter aircraft.
So they started feeding him false info that he thought the world was
ending and aliens were coming and he was supposed to be a prophet and drove them insane. And
then the CIA showed up. They were like, actually, man, we could really use you. Here's information
we have and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And drove this man insane because no one
would believe them because it was all fake. And then they sent them to like a loony bin
and the CIA was like, well, now that no one can touch him, let's study his brain to see if we keep going further. And it was like,
just one of those insane, like criminal overreach of the CIA going,
but what if I took it one step further?
Ruin some guy's entire life. He caught the glimpse of like,
you know, the SR 71.
He caught the glimpse of like, you know, the SR-71.
Honestly, if somebody accused me of being a Psyop or whatever, I just would have denied it and be like, yes, I am a Psyop.
I mean, it's like, we run completely different platforms, but the overlap is so common when you're, could just go yes like I'm like news intel you're paranormal mill stories but also male background overlap which means truth question mark and you're like yes yeah truth parentheses question mark parentheses I'm just a massive Psyop so no one
will ever invade us because they think the the North American states are just cursed as fuck. The face of modern Sia. The army Sia girl. Or what is it the army e-girl?
Yeah I mean if if Lujan and I join forces I don't know if we I'm pretty sure she's a skinwalker
right because theoretically let's let's look at it if skinwalkers are just shape-shifting humanoids
you know we could have safely assumed at some point in the history
a skinwalker served in the United States. I mean, you just watched the the Dahmer show and
you're like, I can see that. Yeah, they let anybody in. This guy ate people the government said, I mean, we're kind of down for numbers.
Governments perpetually down bad.
Dude, that's shit.
I just had something to on that.
Oh my gosh.
That's so funny.
It's what a fun conversation, man.
This has been really enjoyable.
Holy shit.
Man, there was one more I was going to tell you.
But yeah, that CIA story of them feeding this guy false info and driving him insane and then using him as a test subject has just stuck with me forever. When anyone goes, well, the government can't be bad.
I was like, okay, but what about this?
I don't think they really care.
I like to think like, you know, like how everybody's like,
anytime something happens in the world,
they're like, oh, it's the CIA, it's the CIA.
I like to think it's like, the CIA is like,
oh, we didn't really do that, but okay, yeah, we'll just go ahead and say we did that.
Like, is there actually, you know, quantum and in communist, they're like, yeah, we did.
Yeah, that was totally us guys.
Take our date off of this one.
Throw it over that that ballistic missile that had an e-girls
spray painted on the side of it. Yeah, that was us.
And so like it's like that South Park episode. We need to create a conspiracy
so people don't believe there's a conspiracy. Pretty much, dude, the most perfect show of all time.
Yes. Oh God.
One of the funnier ones is just going on Twitter in the last two weeks and just reading because
everyone just shouts anything now and
Number one Donald Trump came back to Twitter this morning and oh god it was
so funny
I'm one of the like Twitter exploded and they were like, it's a CIA Psy op and blah blah blah blah
but then there's also like
I was like the trend if there's a CIA PAO that's just like, fuck guys, God stop. It wasn't us, please Lord.
Well, yeah, then you meet people in the CIA.
You're like, oh, you look like Jeffrey Donner.
You are so unsuspecting.
I'm an underpaid 50 year old man who's been divorced three times.
Wow. He's literally divorced three times. Wow.
I gave my life to this country.
You know what I got for it?
These birth control glasses that I've been wearing for 30 years.
But oh man, it's so funny.
But yeah, I think we're getting to about that time.
It's getting a little late here.
But yeah, man, for listeners out there, go ahead,
follow Tales from the Grid Square by his book.
What'd you say it was 240 stories?
Yep, so for the listeners, if you wanna follow me,
you can find my page on Instagram,
that's where I primarily operate out of.
Tales from the Grid Square on Instagram,
it's T-A-L-E-S underscore F-R-O-M underscore the T-H-E,
I just wanna make sure I spell that correctly,
underscore grid square G-R-I-D-S-Q-U-A-E-R, all one word.
Tales from the Good Square on Instagram.
If you have a story you wanna share with me
or you just wanna chat, just go ahead and hit my DMs. If you don't have email, you just want to chat or share
a story too, you can also hit me up on my Gmail account. It's talesfromthegridsquare.gmail.com.
Shoot me an email. I always love to talk. If you want to buy my book, it's available through
Amazon. It's called Tales from the Grid Square Volume 1 by Nick Orton, which is my name right
now. You can go ahead and jump on there. Check it out on Amazon. It's available Tales from the Gridsquare Volume 1 by Nick Orton, which is my name right now.
You can go ahead and jump on there.
Check it out on Amazon. It's available on the Kindle, so you can read on your phone.
Or on the paperback. I highly recommend the paperback.
I also have a little store if you want to buy patches and whatever, whatnot like that.
Oh yeah, dude. I like how you said, which is my name right now? Like it wasn't 15 minutes ago.
Well, yeah, I guess I keep Nick Orton is not my real name. It is my ghost writer's name. I have appeared if you're interested. I was going to plug it right now. I am also an amateur writer.
I have written plenty of articles. I've written articles for the Lethal Minds Journal.
I've written articles for Popsilic Media.
I've written articles for American Grit.
I've written articles for Dirtbag Magazine,
which they released their first edition magazine
pretty recently and I have two stories featured in there.
So please, yeah, if you see Nick working around,
you know it's me.
I'm putting out a lot of work.
I have run a poetry side project as well.
Kind of like got into the amateur writing sector,
but Tales from the Grid Square is my main project.
Hell yeah, dude.
Hell yeah, dude.
That's, very excited to have you on, man.
It's been very fun.
Oh yeah, man, this was a great,
this was a great conversation. I love it, man. Had a great time. I forgot we were recording for a second. Oh yeah of course I'm
like oh yeah it's just having a conversation with the guy I just met. I love it. But so I'm gonna
I'm gonna cut this out and then if you want to hold on for a second we'll uh chat at the back end.
You want to hold on for a second, we'll chat at the back end. I'm gonna go ahead and get started. Thanks for watching!