Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:1068 The Journey To Belief

Episode Date: June 29, 2024

Tonight my guest is Stacy Brown, he will be discussing his new film The Journey To Belief. From thejourneytobelief.com/ "Bigfoot: The Journey to Belief" is a four-part documentary series where Bigfoot researcher Stacy Brown Jr. attempts to prove the existence of Bigfoot to his skeptical filmmaker friend Joseph Badia. Joined by author Richard Laudenslager they hit the road as The journey begins with Stacy introducing Joey to thirteen credible witnesses who recount their harrowing encounters with the elusive creature. They then delve into the state of Florida's documents, searching for references to Bigfoot sightings in the journals of past governors, as well as requesting emails and reports from state agencies hoping to link modern-day encounters to historical legends. The series culminates in an expedition to a property with ongoing Bigfoot activity. "Bigfoot: The Journey to Belief" weaves firsthand accounts, document research, and fieldwork to explore whether these experiences and evidence can transform Joey from a skeptic into a believer. Link to the trailer  

If you look at the body of evidence, I understand why you don't believe. I'm telling you there is an eight-foot-tall, hairy creature in the woods. I can take you to a place right now where we'll get an ox. Maybe we'll find some tracks. And if we find those tracks, it's no more proof to you than anything else. And that's why I just want to know, like, what constitutes as proof to a skeptic. And we started hearing creaking up the footsteps. Everybody started panicking and freaking out.

And he was just like, this ain't happening, this ain't happening. I'm like, dude, this shit is happening. I looked at it, but I didn't want it to look me in the eyes. I was so scared. I've never been so scared in my life. I grabbed everything I had, and I turned and ran. Where the light starts to fade to the side of the beam, that's where I saw it. Where did it come from?

And somebody said, hey, maybe we should go get a grown-up. I was coming on the interstate, and across the hood of my car, came this creature. But I could see that it was breathing hard, like its shoulders were going up and down. And seeing a bipedal figure that was literally going left to right back and forth. Remember how everybody talked about some way,

somehow there was some sort of FWC involvement? So I thought, why not do a public records request? It's right there in the hunting regulation. You're taking a skunk ace is strictly prohibitive. There were 73,000 emails, but this is where it gets crazy. All communication stops. At the end of the day, from here on out, this is about protection for threatened species. It looked like somebody was bent over and had their head in the window of the deer blind,

and it either heard me or smelt me, and he pulled his head out of the tent and stood straight up, and that shocked me. they don't make people that that big. The way it moved, almost as if it was gliding across the beach. I've never seen anything moves like that in my life. They were screaming at each other in gibberish. It sounded like a language,

and they were chuntering away back and forwards, back and forwards, back and forward. I know what a bear looks like, and there is no way on this planet that what I saw were bears. 911, what are you reporting? Sure. Get somebody out here. What's going on now, sir? That's son of a bitch is about 6'9.

I don't know. Do you see him now, sir? Yes, I'm looking right in. Uh-uh. This is John from Ontario, Canada, and you're listening to Sasquatch Chronicles. Welcome to the show, everyone. Thanks for being here tonight. Got a great show planned for you.

we'll be chatting with Stacey Brown tonight. And I've had Stacey on the show a few times in the past. Always great to have him back. He's got a new documentary coming out, The Journey to Belief. And we'll get into the documentary tonight, kind of why he made it, and then some of the things that he ran into while developing this documentary. If you go to the Journey to Belief.com, you can watch the trailer. You get more information on the film.

You can actually get a copy of it. I know it's not set to come out until July 10th, but you can get a pre-order copy of it. And we'll go into some of the things tonight that he ran into while making this documentary, some roadblocks, some very strange roadblocks that he came across. If you've had an encounter and you'd like to be on the show, shoot me an email.

My email address is Wes at Sasquash Chronicles.com. And if you get a chance, check out Sasquatch Chronicles.com, you can become a member and get additional shows. Let's jump into it tonight. I want to welcome Stacey to the show. Stacey, thanks for coming on. Hey, bud. How you doing? I'm doing well, man.

I'm doing well. Thanks so much for asking. And you have a new documentary, kind of a series coming out, the Journey to Belief. and you know I watched the first couple episodes of it and I was pretty impressed with that I noticed you pay attention to the small details the little things as you're making these films and you've gotten better and better and better over the years

at making these and I was impressed watching it I wanted to ask you what made you kind of put the energy into making the journey to belief and if you would for the audience kind of explain what they're going to see when they watched this film? Yeah, so, okay, I was doing films with a group, and we had hired a cameraman, we became good friends.

You know, he's been to film school. He knows the ins and outs a little bit better than I do. And I had done drugged this dude all over the country. I drug him to Nebraska. We went to the conjuring house. I mean, we've been to all kinds of places, doing UFO, you know, paranormal, whatever. and he said to me one day he goes when are you going to prove to me that bigfoot is real and i asked him i said well you know outside of the dead body you you have there has to be like a middle ground here right

like outside of showing you one is there a way we can do this and it goes yeah you know if i could blah blah blah i hear enough here enough content maybe see some documentation talk to some people maybe We have an experience. And so that was it. It was kind of a challenge, you know, to prove to my filmmaker buddy that, you know, Bigfoot was real, you know. And it was cool that it happened because it's something we all need to focus on as researchers, I feel, because, okay, if we're just trying to prove Bigfoot exists to other people, you know, that already believe in Bigfoot. foot, we're never going to get nowhere. And I am convinced that if I can prove Bigfoot exist to Joey, that I can prove it to the world.

Because this dude, like, zero percent chance Bigfoot exists is what he thinks. And that's fine. That's perfectly fine, you know. So as you see in the series, I lined up 13 witnesses for him to go and interview himself. And then we dug into some other interesting things. And at the end of it all, you know, not to spoil it, but he doesn't sit at zero percent anymore. What were some of the things that changed his mind as far as belief in Bigfoot? So, and because of my dad's footage being so close to me, we omitted that from all the Bigfoot evidence that he would see.

Right. But it was the documentation that there was some weird coincidences. We went looking into the O'Cezy Pond Wildman case, and we thought, well, let's call the state and see if they will give us all of the governor's correspondence and his journal and stuff from that time when it happened. because surely if this was a real event, the governor had to erode about it. Right. So while doing that... Kind of explain that case, Stacey, for people who have no idea what you're talking about. Yeah, so the Occheezy Pond Wildman case was back in 1884. There was a rural community that was built around O'Cheazy Pond after the Civil War.

locals kind of wanted to get away with the northerners that were coming down, you know, for the reclamation and all that stuff. There was this community living out there, and their livestock started going missing. Now, these people lived off the land. There wasn't no Publix or Kroger or whatever down the street. The chickens started going missing. They were hearing, like, eerie calls in the middle of the night coming from the pond. And now this pond, it's actually a lake, but they call it a pond. It's a big pond. And one of the kids, the kids were out playing one day, and depending on what family you talk to,

some of them will say that the kids got attacked by this thing. The others, you know, they tell you that they just startled and they all both ran their separate ways, which is probably what happened anyways. But anyways, it scared the community. They did what people do back then. They formed a posse. And they went out and caught this. thing. Now, when they caught it, they chained it and they took it to Tallahassee to the governor because

they didn't know what to do. And that was about a three-day horse and buggy ride out there. So the governor called around to all these mental asylums in the area and couldn't find anyone that had a missing patient, you know, especially one that fit this description of being covered in hair. So he sent it to the Chattahoochee Hospital, which was like 12 miles from Oceezy Pond, and that's where the thing ended up dying. And it's buried there. And they've built a hospital because there were three John Does admitted in August of 1884. Two of them died pretty immediately and one lived two years. But all of them are buried under the state hospital under the new wings. They had so many people die at this hospital that they had to hire people to process

them all the time. So they just didn't have no more land when they were building the new wings. So they had to build them over the cemeteries. And that's been, you know, the legend around here, because it's actually only like eight miles from where my dad got his footage. And so there's a lot of Bigfoot lore, you know, and anyways, we, you know, that's why we pulled the governor's documents and spent time up there at the state archives going through it. And they were very gracious, you know, giving us everything we needed, even offering us drinks and stuff like that, which was cool. But when we're going through those documents, you can barely. understand what they're writing because the cursive is so

I don't know they gave us a list of people that could read most of it but when you get to August when you get to that month there's like three days where there's nothing and this man you figure writes 13

14 letters a day if he's not writing them I'm sure he's signing him but there's correspondence coming in and out all the time but there's three days missing. That's a little, you know, coincidental, right? I don't believe in coincidence. Joey does, but he did, you know, kind of settle on, yeah, that's kind of odd. You know,

why would these pages be out? Because the placeholder they put said that they may have been destroyed or damaged. Some of the pages, the leaves, as they call them, that are in that collection, they're just like literally almost a bar napkin size now. They're some. They're weathered away, you can't see what's road on them, and they kept those, and those were in absolute terrible condition. These three days were

gone, and so that kind of got us to like, well, you know, and then Joey came up with the idea of sending a public records request to the FWC, and the

reason he did that is because on our trip, when he's interviewing these 13 witnesses, a lot of them are talking about, I called the police, the cops came out, FWC was here, I hit one with my car, yada, yada, yada, the story's always different, but there was, and I believe six or seven of them, there was an underlying theme of hey, yeah, we contacted law enforcement, you know. So Joey's like, okay, out of our small sample size here, we've got, you know, 50%. that are saying they contact law enforcement.

So somebody has to call the FWC all the time, right? Even if it's drunk Billy from down the street, somebody's calling the FWC and report and seeing a Bigfoot. We submitted a record request, and we asked them for any emails or reports that pertain to the keywords, Sasquatch, Bigfoot, skunk ape, or swamp ape.

Okay? And it was a loaded question. I'll be honest. I already had three reports that I had the officers, the dates, times where they went, all that. So I knew there were three. But we were shocked when they come back and told us that there were no officer reports and that there was 73,3,313.13. emails, I believe is the exact number, that pertains those four key words.

Now, these are interagency emails. These are emails coming from the public. It's everything, right? And they wanted $12,000 for all of them. And we have talked to an attorney about all of this, but the $12,000, he believes, is excessive, and that's to get us discouraged, right? from even trying to do it because who has $12,000 sitting around these days for some Bigfoot emails.

And so we brought up one of the reports. We said, okay, hey, listen, I know you said there's no reports. But what about this report here with this officer, this date, this county? What can you give us about that report? and then, in my opinion, okay, and I'll state where I'm coming from, my best case scenario is that they would lie to us, right? The Sunshine Records Act here in Florida is, you know, it's really good. It's one of the best in the country. The public agencies here are supposed to be transparent. Anything you want from them, you get, you know, after all, we pay their salary. And so I was like, okay, let's just get them to lie to us.

So, you know, that's all I was wanting. Joey was wanting the actual reports. And I mean, yeah, sure the reports would be good, but the lie was so much more because at the end of the day, I've seen a big foot. Right. I've seen one twice. If Stacey Brown has seen a big foot, okay, because I'm nothing special, and I want thousands of people, if Stacey Brown has seen a big foot and knows they're real. You mean to tell me that the federal government or these state agencies don't know anything?

Do we really believe that they're in the dark? That's why when I hear some of my buddies, like, I won't drop names, but I'm sure you'll listen to their podcasts. When they talk about, oh, government cover up, probably not. Like, really? You know, like, do you all think that they just don't know? They spend more time in these woods than we do. The logging industry, they're making all the money from the law. police rights on that.

You know, so absolutely they would know. If I know, they would know. So when they lied and said there were no reports, and then we asked them about that certain report that we know exists. They know exists. They had it posted on their Facebook. And then they said there were no reports.

They also cut off communication with us. They closed our case, and they shut down our communication and would not talk to us and would not reply to our emails or anything. And there were many sent to follow up. I have proof of all this. That's when Joey looked at me and he goes, you know, if they wanted it to look like a cover-up,

this is what they would do. And that right there. That right there, you know, to both of us was our moment because, as you all know, you can go in the woods and try to find these things, but it ain't going to happen, right? Like, it's going to be a slim chance. However, if the government does know about it, we need to get declassified, you know, or a disclosure about the topic. They probably know a lot about it. And then to catch a state agency basically looking like a cover up, you know, acting like they're covering something up.

They're not wanting us to know. They give us the high dollar amount to get the emails. And they even tried to discourage us. They're like, oh, well, a lot of these are probably political ads. I'm sure Ron DeSantis ain't ran no political ad that's got Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Skunk, or Swamp ain't been anywhere, you know. And that right there was what has turned his mind. And I think that's what would work on the general public if they'd.

actually were to see, you know, what is in them emails and then get the reports. And it even got better for us during the process. That's all we had of making this film. And we were cranking it out. But it took us about a year. And lo and behold, maybe two months ago, there was an article in the Orlando Sentinel. It was an article about Dave Shealy. And they interviewed an FWC officer for that.

this FWC officer stated they get reports all the time and he talked about three or four of them. Name the county, name the day, Collier County, you know, Brower County. They were all southern counties. But it's still the same agency. And so we've got them in contradiction after contradiction. And so we're hoping this film does well.

We've started a GoFundMe because, no, we don't have $12,000 sitting around to get these emails. But what if there's something in them? And we can let the Bigfoot community, you know, help us out, get the emails, you know, so we can put them on the website. Everybody can just go through them. It's our information, guys. Like, they know about Bigfoot, and they're hiding it.

And that's what, to me, has been just the most mind-blowing part about this whole process. Yeah, 12K for records sounds pretty steep. Something about that doesn't sound right. But you know, it could be one of those things to where it's like, just go away. I had a buddy of mine, Tracy, he had made me a guitar, custom-made guitar. It's got, you know, Bigfoot stuff on it. It's a beautiful, beautiful guitar. And people have, you know, hey, let me buy this off you. And I'm like, yeah, you can buy it. It's $450,000. Knowing full well, no one's ever going to pay that. But my point is it's not for sale. And that's what kind of makes me think when I hear that 12 grand. This information really isn't for you. You're never going to get it. And I'm with you on the government

cover-up. I mean, you don't know how many people I've interviewed over the years on these military bases, you know, from Fort Lewis to all the way down south of people running into these things. And it's not just, I mean, it's been decades of guys running into these creatures. And it's well-known that they're on the base. That right there tells me the government knows about them. I want to come back and ask you about this cover-up, but going back to that very first encounter, you were talking about the O'Cezy Wildman. Did they ever describe what that creature looked like? Yeah, so you're looking with the Occheezy Pond, Wildman. They described him as emaciated. He was mumbling. It wasn't English. They couldn't understand what he was

saying. It was an older one, but it was completely covered in hair from head to toe. Stood about six foot tall. And, you know, from what I understand it was just a lanky, a lanky dude. And when we went into this process, we knew that story, right, but we interviewed a bunch of people for it. And so while digging into this, this wasn't the only, capture of the O'C cheesy pond wild man. There were two others. One in 1918.

Now this is after the wild man was captured at the pond. So in 1918 a boy actually got abducted. Once again, they got the community up and they went out after this thing and caught it

and got the boy back. The boy was all torn up and stuff. But from what they described, the creature wasn't trying to hurt him. The creature was just more or less, I guess, lonely, right? Wanting a friend, almost like the, kind of like the Albert Osman type thing. So when they captured this guy, turns out he was a, he had the lichen issue, right, where he was covered in hair. And he had went crazy and went out to the swamp.

and it was the same thing a few years later. So it turned out you had this one family living there. Now, they didn't show up until 1901, so it's not the O'Cheazy Pond Wildman. Whatever they caught them was separate from these other two. But the most interesting thing that we found doing all this document search was that in 1929, there was a flood, okay? And they say the Appalachicola River, when it came down, looked like a 40-foot-tall tidal wave just coming down, right?

And it killed about 400 people back then. But once again, it's a very rural community, not a whole lot of people up there. And anyways, two years later, these guys were out hunting in the swamp, and they found a giant skeleton in the top of a tree, in the top of the cypress tree. Now, they're talking an eight-foot-tall skeleton, and it was taken to Bluntstown, where it was buried in the old city cemetery there.

The problem with it is you had all those people die in that flood, and a lot of them were taken there. And it's just like mass graves. Right now, we're trying to pull into the records at the cemetery and see and if maybe there's anything there. You know, it'd be cool, like, LiDAR's spot and possibly dig it up, you know, if we could find out where they buried it. But if they've kept records that long or not, you know, that's anybody's guess. Yeah, it would be kind of fascinating to pull, you know, kind of dig that up and see if you could find it. I know it gets kind of in a sticky situation when it's an actual grave and there's other people buried there.

Going back to the cover-up, I want to ask you, I mean, you've been in this for a long time. You talked about your father's film earlier, and for anyone who's seen it, it's a thermal video. I would have shown your buddy that video because I think it's hard to duplicate that video. And anyone who's seen it, it's basically a creature going from tree to tree. but it's all on thermal. Why do you think that they would cover it up? What's your take on it, Stacey? You've been on the subject for a long time.

What's your take? Why the cover up? So my take on it, and some of it goes from the one that I've seen. Okay, so like the one I've seen almost looked like a mixture of all humans, right? You kind of had that Eastern European Brow Ridge, you know, a wide nose like an African American. you know, except for having a wide mouth. You know, the lips were kind of thin, you know. And what I think is that it possibly is a human, is some type of human.

If I had to guess, I know everybody talks about how to regensis and all these other things. But the only thing with the, what is it, taped them, lucidium, I don't know how you pronounce that. but was a Neanderthal. So what are the possibilities that are still that? But either way, let's say there's some type of human. These things are now afforded human rights. And you can't just go logging down certain areas to build that nice little subdivision if you've got a people living out there.

If you've got a human species out there in the woods, you can't just start doing all this. and I think it would kind of upset the apple cart when it comes to money. I don't think our government doesn't do anything without making money. There's always some underlying, I'm not trying to sound like I'm just downing on the government, but it's always about money with these people. And I think that at the end of the day is what it is. You probably have another human species out there, something that's very close to us.

and they're probably actively trying to kill them off. I've heard enough of those stories where, you know, the mercenaries show up and they're shooting in the woods and then the team leaves, you know, the soldiers show up and kill them and then they bounce. You know, that's repeated to me over and over and over again. The spot that we go to in the fourth episode of Journey to Belief, that guy has that same story.

he had some game officials out there when it first happened because he didn't know what it was, and that the game officials saw one, and then the next day there was some black vehicles pulled in on this road. He said he heard shooting for about 30 minutes, and then that was it. You know, and then he said the activity just died off for a couple years, and you hear that over and over again, and I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility, because I go back to it, you know, if I know they know, why they would be covering up, we can speculate all day. But that will be my belief is that it's some type of human.

You know, after interviewing so many people over the years, I will say more often than not, people will say what I saw looked very human like. Not quite human, but it had features that reminded them of a human. kind of playing devil's advocate. It's not that I disagree with you, but let's say they declared them as human. Wouldn't it kind of be the same as if like a bunch of homeless people were hanging out in an area, let's say on logging land? And if that happened, the logging company would be like, hey, you guys got to get the hell out of here. We're about to log this area.

What would prevent them from not forcing them to leave so that they could log an area if it's nothing more than a human? So I would hope that they would see it as they do a manatee here in the state. Okay, we see manatees in the river. You got your wake zones where you can't speed through. You can't get in the water and swim with them. You can at a certain couple of state parks. So if they catch you in a river doing it, they'll lock you up.

And I hope it will be something like that because the numbers are so small. And especially at the beginning because we don't know enough about them. they would have to respect that. They'd have to figure out all these things, how they're doing, how they're moving, where can they go, how is this going to affect them. So at first, I don't think you could just burn the woods down. They do that here all the time. If there's a bunch of people living in the woods, they'll have a controlled burn. And they'll all, you know, all this stuff gets burned up and they've got to hit the road.

That's how they do it in Florida. but I don't know with their size and their capabilities and there's the number of them. I'm not one of these people that think there's 10,000 of these things in the country. And that's fine, people that do. But I think the numbers are small. And I think you just had to study them so that you, you made sure you weren't tearing up their habitat or anything.

like that. I don't know if that answers your question. Yeah, that does answer my question. And I understand where you're coming from on it. I mean, you know, might be in our DNA very close to us, maybe not exactly like a modern day human being, but it does answer my question. I wanted to ask you, you know, Stacey, you and I've been friends for a long time. And I think about the time you and I both got into the subject, well, I'll just speak for myself. I, you know, I was convinced it was nothing more than an ape. And I get the impression you were that way as well. And you've changed a lot over the years, even to the point of saying, well, it could possibly be human. But, you know, you hear about all these weird experiences that go on in people's encounters. And I know sometimes

in the Bigfoot world, they'll call it the woo, you know, woo-woo, that sort of thing. I call it weird experiences people have when these creatures are actually around. But one thing you'll notice being in the quote-unquote BigFit community, which I don't think it's really a community, but is most of the time guys are still chasing this ape after like 40, 50 years. Oh, it's gigantic Pythagos. And, you know, there's nothing more, nothing less is going on here. We got to, we got to capture this great ape. And I think over time when you start to, listen to people's encounters, there's a lot of weird stuff that goes on in people's encounters. And I noticed, you know, over the years, you're not so hard on those people. You'll actually

stop and listen, whether you agree with it or not. At least you'll stop and listen. What can change your opinion over the years as far as what this thing could be? Just my experiences, you know, how many times can the camera go dead? Like that piece of footage my father got is, great. I had like nine other opportunities that we would be seeing these things and for whatever reason it didn't record. We've watched them. The camera would just straight go dead if it was recording. And so in my case, it took me a little bit longer to get to the point where something was going on because I guess I'm overly critical of myself and I'm real quick to blame stuff on me being an idiot, right?

And so I would just be like, Stacy, you're never prepared, you're never prepared, so hard on myself. It's like, you should have had extra batteries, you should have done this. But at the end of the day, you look back at it, you know, and it's like, dude, we've always been prepared. These things just happen. And then seeing the lights associated with the Bigfoot activity, I'll tell you right now, I have no idea what Bigfoot is.

And that may be a reason for a cover-up as well. Maybe these things could be... I mean, I personally on the set of Bigfoot Bounty with the whole cast of Bigfoot Bounty, we had a UFO. We all watched a UFO for like four minutes, and then it zipped off, and then not even 30 minutes later,

we're getting knocks around our lodge that we are staying at. So we've found, like, a trackway where something walked through outside of Mount Adams and you start adding up all the things but the weirdest thing to me and it's almost one of things like you have to be there right but I'm able to call these things up

at certain the lights at least so could it be a spirit you know what I mean I what do you mean by you're able to call them up So it was probably my second date that I had with my lady. And she, I told her, I said, listen, this is going to sound insane. But me and my buddy David have been sitting out in the woods under these archways and asking for the lights to show up.

We would talk to the woods. Please come and show us. We'd love to see you. You know, it sounds very awesome. God. And so I've got David Lauer, my partner from Bigfoot Bounty, got my girlfriend, and I've got my buddy's brother with me. And we explained this to the two that are not familiar, that, hey, this is going to sound absolutely nuts. You aren't going to think we're weird, but if it works, I promise it's worth it. Just don't sit here and giggle and try to keep your mind open.

So we sit there and we talk to the lights. We ask them, please come. We're all friends. You know, we put out good intentions. 26 minutes later, I'm sitting there with my phone in my hand to see how long it takes. 26 minutes later, we see a light in the distance. And it's floating through the woods, and it's floating like that feather off a forest gump. Okay?

And then so we start coaxing it to come to. us. This thing flies all way to us, and then it goes to fly like in between us in a way, and my girlfriend sticks her hand out. Well, the thing goes right to her hand, and she gets scared at the last second. He goes, huh, and jumps back. Well, it turns around. And then David puts his hand out and says, you can land on me, and it lands in David's hand and goes out. Okay? So now this has happened. So we sit there and we ask, and this was one of the big moments that sold me. Like we hadn't had a night like this. We had some, where we'd see them come up and then they'd go back in the ground or they'd go up into the sky.

And so we sit there and we ask if the lights can bring us the big foots. We get two knocks and we get growled. And just not from far. It's like 20, 25 feet away. It's just over the ridge. Like the thing is right there. But there's nothing there. There's literally nothing where that growl just came from.

I have a thermal on me. We get up the leaf. It's been about 30 minutes after the initial encounter. And Monroe says to David, he says, hey, buddy, are you going to take that orb home with you? Are you going to let him out your backpack? And I swear to you, as much as I'm sitting here right now, this light comes up off of his backpack.

flies about four feet above our head, circles us a number of times, flies back to where we were sitting at floats. I shouldn't say flies. It floats. This thing is slow. It's deliberate where it's going. And it just goes in the ground and goes out. It blew everybody's mind. So fast forward a couple of years.

I got Ed Brown out there on the property. You know, Ed. Yeah, for the audience, Ed Brownsie. He's a bigfoot researcher, but yeah, for people, don't know what we're talking about. But go ahead, Stacey. Yeah, so I'm telling Ed about this stuff. And now I've done shown these lights. Brother, I've done shown these lights like 20 people.

I'm taking everybody out there. There was a point where we would sit out there. The neighbors are there, the landowner, the neighbors are there. We've got camping chairs set up in the trail. So everybody can sit and view these lights. And we're like successfully calling them up all the time. All the time. And they're not fireflies.

This is seriously just one light at a time. So Ed's there. We've got the camping chairs out there. We're in that spot. We are always at. And I said, Ed, just, you know, talk to them. Talk to them. And so he talks.

He asks to see the lights. We see a light in the distance. won't come close. He goes, okay, can you do something else to prove you're here? Maybe a minute goes by. It wasn't long. We hear a whoop. So, of course, you know, Ed's on the fence about all this stuff.

He gets up, he goes over there, and we're looking around. We can't see, you know, we know where the whoop came from. We can't see nothing there. Go back, sit back on the stuff again. He goes, all right, thank you. Thank you. can you do something else for me? As soon as he says it.

As soon as he says it. And when you talk to him, when you see it again, you ask him about this story, he'll tell you the same exact thing. As soon as he says it, a tree falls over. Okay? So now we got three coincidences. He's going to ask for three things.

Three things have happened. He says, all right, one more time. Can you do something to show me that you're out here? And as soon as he said that, A limb breaks off over the top of the house and lands on the back porch and tears a bunch of crap on. It wasn't raining. It wasn't windy. It was a great night to be out in the woods. And, you know, there would always be, when we called the lights in, there would always be Bigfoot activity. So, fast forward, I'm making a film with Small Town.

monsters. They've got this trail to Bigfoot or something like that. They're in Florida. And I tell them, I'm like, all right, guys, listen to this spot, you usually can get knocks here. And that's another thing that throws me off and makes me think it's something

else because go out in the woods and try to pick up a limb and hit it against the tree and try to get that sound. Yeah, it doesn't happen. It doesn't happen. Like, how are they making? that maybe they're using their mouth. It doesn't mean that it's woo,

but I don't know what that sound is. I think that might be something we just can't comprehend this moment, because I can't replicate it, and I've tried. Now, we get out the car, I was like, listen, guys, we're not going to knock. We're not going to how. We're not going to do anything. If they are here, and this is the area we research now is 76,000 acres. So how we, Bigfoot, because it's so large is what we do,

we call it fishing. We roll up to a spot set for 30 minutes. We don't get a bite. We roll to the next spot. And so we get out of the truck. I told these guys it's like, hey, we don't have to do nothing. If they're here, they're going to knock to the other ones. Got out the car, getting all of our equipment ready.

We start walking. One team walks with their lights on. Ten minutes after they're gone. The next team comes in the dark. Ten minutes after they start, the last team starts. We start hearing knocks. right? And it was good knocks. And we heard probably, I don't know, six to eight of it. And so we get done, Tate, he was so itching to do a knockback. And after all those knocks, I was like, all right, whatever, go ahead. Because he keeps asking, can it knock back? Can it knock back?

I'm like, no, no. And then I finally just gave in. I was like, go ahead. They're going to stop, but go ahead. And he did it, and they stopped. So we head back to the truck. As we're heading back to the truck, this basketball-sized orb shoots through the trees and up into the sky. And those boys, Eli, Alex, and Tate spent the next two hours trying to talk themselves out of what just happened because they're so stuck in the ape camp. I don't think Eli is as much as Alex.

And I don't say that in a bad way. It's how you believe it's fine, brother. It takes whole types. But it was like it reminded me of when my dad filmed Bigfoot. And the next week, my dad's trying to accuse me of everything. You got somebody out there in the woods running naked. But I ain't got that kind of friends. You know?

And it's this kind of a mind melt, I guess, for these people because they're so ingrained in one way. And then their reality shattered and it takes them a little bit. And it's just been my experiences. I've been lucky enough to know some natives and know them well. And I've gotten to hear a lot of their stories, you know, and how they believe. I think about how arrogant we are to dismiss them because everybody knows how these scientists are and how all these people are

when they're educated and these guys, they still have that stigma about them. Back then they used to call them savages. That's why everything is mumbo-jumbo because they're savages. But nowadays it's still the same way. They're just superstitious. They're just superstitious. brother, they live closer to the land than we'll ever know about.

Somebody might want to listen to these guys. And they got a lot of stories about how the Bigfoot were traveling as of all light. Yeah, the lights are weird, man. I've seen them a few times and filmed them one time. And, you know, when I was filming it, I was doing it through night vision. And it was a blue light. It was a, I will say it was a pretty light, a very weird light. but it was just kind of hovering over the river. I've talked about it many times, but I wouldn't have been so open, like how you are going out there, like calling out to them and that sort of thing. Not that the light terrified me, but something of my soul was like, be very careful with this. And I, you know, whatever it is. And then I saw them, or I saw one at the Brown's property. You've been there many times, Stacey. We've been there together. And we were in that open barn.

area where we saw this, it was an amber light. It wasn't blue like the other one I saw. And it reminded me of a flashlight the way it was kind of bouncing around. We thought it was someone coming with a flashlight. And it wasn't. And where this light was going, no one's walking through there. It was all sticker bushes. But, you know, when Jonathan and I stepped away out, we stepped outside of that open barn. And right across from there, he has kind of this metal building. And, and him and I were talking about it. I'm like, what the hell was that? And about the time we were talking about this light we just saw,

because the light had vanished at that point. It actually dove down into the ground the way you're kind of describing it, oddly enough. But we're standing next to this metal building, and something hit that metal building right between us. And when I say hit that building, it sounded like a car hit that building. I mean, it startled me to where I actually jumped. I mean, it was that much of it. of an impact, but there was nothing there. And you do hear about these lights on people's property.

Tomorrow night, I'll be interviewing TJ, and she grew up on her grandmother's, or great-grandmother's property, and her great-grandmother would feed these sayings. I brought up the lights. She's like, oh, yeah, the spook lights. I've seen them many times. And they were around when these creatures were around. You know, you're out there calling to the forest, Ed's calling to the forest, and then you get a wood knock or a tree falls over. Do you feel like it's demonic or spiritual? There's something, a component of that to what you're experiencing with these creatures and while you're out there seeing these lights?

I do. At times, not necessarily demonic, but maybe. But I spent, because of this, I got into the paranormal, right? there's a lot of similarities. You know, you can talk to the spirits by wrapping, knocking on the table, you know. Just like we talk to the big foots out in the woods, the sulfuric smell, the very horrid smells. It's also a thing with the paranormal. There's a whole list.

But I think it's, I think the problem is, is we can only perceive like 2% of our reality. or two or three percent. There's like 97% of it that we can't, we don't even know what's going on. I think maybe in 100 years when physics is different, you know, as I used to call Dr. Matthew Johnson crazy. Okay?

Because I was an Aper. You know what I mean? I stayed in that camp, but the dude might be right. These things may be slipping in and out, you know, fading in and out. I don't know. I know enough to know that I don't,

don't know anything. I just know what I've experienced. But the thing that the people I don't hear about, the thing that terrifies me, because I've never gotten a scared feeling when the lights are around. I get a terrible feeling when the shadows are there. And that's what I don't hear enough people talking about. Granted, the area where I'm big footing, there's a place, there's a part of the river there called the slave canal, and I'm sure you can put together as to what was done there. You know, that's who dug the canal. So in Florida, heat in the summertime, you don't make it long, and when you don't make it, you stay in the bottom of the canal. But I'll see shadows, and then there's, I hope you haven't, but if you've ever gotten a phone call that somebody's died,

and there's that feeling that comes across your body when you hear that sound, when you hear those words. That's the feeling I get when these shadows show up. And these shadows are also there when the Bigfoot activity is there. And you'll hear people in their reports are like, I couldn't, I can see the outline, I can see the shadow. Even though it's dark, it's the darker spot that moves, right? and it will have a man type figure. You know, you'll see legs and stuff. And that's only happened like three times.

But those are the times when I feel it's demonic. I don't know whether that is the Bigfoot's or not. And I'm not trying to tell everybody these things are coming through a portal or anything, but everybody needs to realize that we don't know nothing about them. Like whether you think Patterson Gimlin film is real, and that proves this, that, or the other, you don't actually know any of that stuff. It's your belief.

You don't know it. And you can't go into an investigation looking for a certain person, right? Or looking for a certain outcome. Because then you're not doing a real investigation. Like, you know, you have to take all the witnesses into, you know, you have to take them all into account when you're basing your thing.

And if you have the old lady over here saying some dude in a Billy Ray Cyrus shirt stole my car, why are you not looking for the dude that's got the Billy Ray Cyrus shirt on? You know what I'm saying? Like all these people, there could be some truth to all of it, you know, and should open our minds. Yeah, I understand what you mean, Stacey. I mean, if you are looking for an ape, you'll find an ape. to fit your agenda because you'll pass everything else off as nonsense. It may not be nonsense.

It's good advice because, you know, if you don't take all the information in, and I'm not super comfortable talking about all the weird stuff that goes on in Sasquatch Encounters, but if you don't talk about it, it's kind of disingenuous. You're not really looking for answers. I'm afraid nowadays that we're not really looking for answers, I think. And this is somebody who documents and makes content. I don't make a ton of content, but I make these movies every now. And I enjoy it.

Hopefully, this is my last Bigfoot series. I'm transitioning into like thriller and horror films, like A-24 type stuff. That's what I want to do. But I just documented because I thought people would love it, you know. But that's where the Bigfoot community is at. If you look at the conferences, it's what's the newest, television show, what's the newest content that's being put out outside of Melbourne, you know, a lot of everybody else is a filmmaker or a TV star or an author,

you know, or, you know, a podcaster or anything like that. And how many of them are actually out in the woods? There's not a lot. I mean, maybe you're out there a little bit, but like outside of the wood ape, Conservancy. You got the Olympic project. I don't really know of another one that hits it like they should. Yeah, and even with some of those groups, they'll turn the other way or kind of sweep weird things that happened to them under the rug. Even some of those guys have agendas. And it's frustrating for sure. When does the Journey to Belief come out, this film that we're discussing tonight? Okay, so that's going to be July 10th.

You go to our website, The Journey to Believe. We're hosting it through Vimeo because all this, all we're trying to do right now is just gather the money to get these emails. And so Vimeo lets you keep 90% as opposed to Amazon's 50. But you go to the journey to belief.com and there you can rent the films if you'd like. DVD for sale as well. We'll ship that out to you. The Journey to Belief.com. I hope people go and check it out.

And like I said, I've watched about half of it, and I was impressed with it, especially the eyewitness testimony. But it's always a pleasure to have you on the show. Stacey, thank you so much for coming on. Hey, thank you so much. Brother, I really appreciate it. And that's it for tonight.

Everyone, remember, if you've had an encounter, shoot me an email. My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. And if you get a chance to check out Sasquatch Chronicles.com, you can become a member and get additional shows. Until next time, everyone.