Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:125 Swamp Ape

Episode Date: July 13, 2015

Wikipedia says "The skunk ape, also known as the swamp ape, stink ape, Florida Bigfoot, myakka ape, swampsquatch, and myakka skunk ape, is a hominid cryptid said to inhabit the U.S. states of Florida, North Carolina, and Arkansas, although reports from Florida are more common. It is named for its appearance and for the unpleasant odor that is said to accompany it. According to the United States National Park Service, the skunk ape does not exist"  My guest tonight is Mark Zaskey who is a cryptozoologist, the creator, writer and host of "Crypto-Reality" radio show, investigative journalist, author of "Bigfoot: The Unavoidable Truth," and "Who Decides What is real." Mark has been studying the Bigfoot species for over 16 years in the state of Florida. He is an eyewitness and has had multiple encounters, as have members of his field research team including his son Christopher in Myakka State Park.

Five, five, four, four, three, three, two, one, one. When I had come down this hill, I had seen this creature cross the road. They would have ripped my locked door from my truck, extracted me from my vehicle, and no one damn thing I could have done about it. This thing I got to notice in its eyes. Its eyes was real, real evil, real sinister looking. The look it was given me.

What was here? It's about 60. Yes, I'm looking right at him. Sasquatch Chronicle. A place where people share their encounters. Let's start the show. To the show, everyone. Thanks for being here tonight. If you get a chance, please visit Sasquatch Chronicles.com. If you're out there and you've had an encounter and you'd like to be on the show,

please email me, Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. I'd love to talk with you. I'd love to have you on the air. Tonight, we're heading down south to Florida to talk about the swamp. which is what Sasquatch is known for down there in Florida. It's actually known as the swamp ape or the skunk ape. And I'll be speaking with Mark Zaski, and Mark spent many years researching this, and he had an encounter just a few years ago.

Mark, welcome to the show. Really appreciate coming on. When was it that you had your encounter? My actual siting was 2013, September of 2013. Can you tell us what you were doing at the time of your siting? and just kind of walk us into the encounter. Tell us what you saw and what you experienced. Sure.

I had been looking at an area on satellite in western Palm Beach County for an area, a potential area to go fishing. I grew up down here fishing, and a lot of the best fishing spots are only accessible by foot because they have a lot of the waterways down here because of the waterways because of the we're at zero feet sea level, we have a lot of flooding. So they have a canal system that basically cuts off boat access in, you know, a hundred different directions. So really, the best fishing, you can only access on foot. And, you know, for 35 years, my brother and I, we've been, you know, going out into these, you know, deeper wilderness areas that you can only hike to, you know, to enjoy

some fishing. And I know it was, at the time, I knew it was a hunting. area. I had a friend who was interested in going with me, and I also was, you know, I've been a researcher for a very long time, so I was curious to see, you know, what the terrain actually look like. I know there have been sightings in that area for as far back as, you know, the Indians occupied the area. They talked about these beings being in there. And so I was curious, but we were really just going to go there to fish. And we got up very early, I think it was three 30 and I went and I met my friend and then we arrived about probably 45 minutes before the sun came up and at first glance you know the area looked really good for fishing but you know from a

research standpoint it really just it didn't strike me as a place that you know they would be in there was a lot of very open prairie. The canopies in the forest just seemed, you know, a little thin. So I wasn't expecting any kind of, you know, craziness to go on, that's for sure. But we fished until the sun came up and then we started to skip down and go over canals. And my friend and I were not catching anything. And I was like, man, this is, you know, I was expecting, you know, a lot. more bites than we were getting. And about 815, we started to hear a swamp buggy, about maybe a half a mile off into the swamp west of our position. And they were firing off guns. And,

you know, I mean, that's very common. They love their buggies down here. I don't know if you've ever heard of a buggy, but they're very loud. They pull the pipes off of them. And these things can be in excess of 15 feet high. They'll have six and a half foot swamp buggy tires on them. And the whole situation is, you know, leading up to what happened, there is absolutely no way that I would have ever thought that something like, you know, what was about to happen was even possible in this area because of what was going on.

I mean, you know, this thing is like they're flooring it and they're shooting rooster tails out. You know what I mean? And we're starting to see them now coming out of this tree line way off to the west. And they're firing off guns, man, they got pistols. And I'm thinking, you know, this is kind of dangerous, man. I hope these guys aren't shooting in this direction. But that's basically, you know, these guys will get out there and they'll get a cooler full of beer. And they'll just drive around running everything over and shooting off their guns.

And so anyway, he said, well, you know, why don't we move down and get away from this? And we did. And I noticed a huge cabbage palm patch that was probably 15 feet high. about 200 yards long and about a thousand yards long going in the other direction heading west and and I thought you know I've never seen a cabbage palm patch that was actually that that big and and he was like well you know can we get out to it and maybe you can show me a little bit about this tracking thing that you know you've been telling me about and you know I've been tracking up to that point for quite a while really my whole life down here you just it's something

that you develop being outdoors down here. I mean, there's so many things that can actually kill you. I mean, most of the time, I'm tracking snake. You learn which ones are the venomous ones by their tracks, and you always watch for that because, you know, when you're in their areas, a lot of these venomous snakes will basically have a very small area of territory. And water moccasins in particular can be very testy at certain times of the month or certain times during their shedding cycle. So when they can't see as well during that shedding cycle, if you accidentally get within three or four feet of one and don't know it, you can get bit and never even see the snake. You know, the ground brush is so thick. And it's in this swampy area that, you know, I was like,

okay, well, if we're going to go out here, we need to be careful. This is what we're going to do. And we ended up starting to head out into the swamp. And we got out by the saw pomem or the cabbage palm meadow patch the uh the water started to shallow a little bit and as we got right up to the front of the cabbage palms i saw this tunnel it was about 50 inches wide and probably eight feet high and what it was was there were these all of the branches that were up high were pulled down and snapped off and in creating this tunnel that actually went into this gigantic uh cabbage palm patch and and and i looked in in an angle because it kind of went in on like a 45-degree angle directly in front of us. And you could see that there was another corner where somebody had gone in there and actually created this thing.

It wasn't natural. And it is something that you see on a regular basis. I know that now in this area after my encounter. So anyway, I started to get real creeped out about this because in another area, about a year prior to this day, I had had my first encounter, which I never saw the actual Bigfoot. It just screamed at me, but I had followed one of these tunnels and a few tracks into this, you know, same type of situation. So I got real uncomfortable right about that time that we were thinking about walking in into this tunnel. Buckshot started bouncing off cabbage palms all around us.

And these guys were getting real close, and they were. firing at something. So I was like, we need to get out of here. So we turned and we walked back out of there. And we went back to the car and I said, let's go to some dry ground and then we'll start looking for some kind of tracks. I was figuring we'd see a lot of raccoon and a couple of snake tracks and maybe a gator track. They're really interesting because you get a tail drag and you get all four feet.

And I was going to show them how to identify based on tracking. And so we went to look for higher ground and we went down about a half a mile probably. We got out and we started to gear up, there was swamp on both sides of us, and we were actually parked at the mouth of the old Indian town grade is what they call it. And basically what it is is it's the beach to lake trail. It goes all the way from the beach on the east side of the state of Florida, due west, all the way to Lake Old Tchobie. And it's cut off by neighborhoods and all this stuff.

But when you get out in the area where we're at, which is about 11 months, miles west of civilization, it runs consistently for miles through heavy swamp and heavy forest. And it's not really all that well maintained. They do have some activities that go on in this area, like a mountain bike race once a year and a run that they do. And during those periods, they'll come out and they'll actually maintain the trail because parts of the trail are used by the public. And again, this is a heavily used area by humans. I mean, right at that point, you could still hear these guys in this dragster heading towards us. It's also interesting.

What I found interesting about the area is that it's within about nine miles, maybe a little less than that, of Pratt Whitney. Pratt Whitney builds jet engines for the government. they have a lot of weird stuff going on at Cratt Whitney. It's very secretive that kind of thing. It's a huge facility, huge government facility. And you can hear the jet engines being tested off in the distance. Like, you know, they run tests on these huge engines.

So there's a lot of stuff going on out here. You know what I mean? You're in a remote area, but you're not really that remote. I mean, you're not that far away from civilization. Yeah, yeah. I mean, like I said, the last thing I was expecting was, you know, was what was about to happen. And, you know, I just, we got out and we started to, you know, get prepared.

And as we were doing that, the buggy had time to get almost down to where we were. And I could see them running over these trees coming out of this forest. Actually, what they did was they, on the small end, on the back end of that cabbage palm patch, the cabbage palms were a little smaller. And they'd just run right through them. And the idea with that buggy is basically to just run up in a bunch of real heavy cover. and spook all the hogs out, at which point they'll stop the buggy,

shut the engine off, and start firing. And they just blast away at these hogs. Now, we don't have a specific hog season down here because there are feral species, and there's no limit on them. I mean,

you can hunt hogs all year long with guns, archery, anything, you know? There are some, you know, limits to what you can use. Like,

they don't want you to use anything that's going to really harm the animal. If you're there to hunt it and kill it, that's one thing. But, you know, like trapping it with like,

you know, bear trap kind of stuff. You're not allowed to do that. But these guys had made their way almost to the trail we were on. They were probably about 1,500 yards off when we first entered the trail. Trail is approximately 20 feet wide. And there's about 15 foot of good solid bush on each side of it. And outside of that bush is swamp on both sides of the trail. And basically, the trail is built up about four to five feet above the actual swamp. So you're on a miniature levy is what it is. And it cuts through the swamp. And as we're walking, we started out on it. And it would dip down every once in a while as we're walking forward into like a ditch. And it would allow the swamp water from each side of the trail to flow freely so that it wouldn't overflood the trail. I think is basically the idea. Remember, it's all about drainage in these areas.

You know, they want to keep the water moving in the right directions and all that. So we're going down this trail and I'm talking to him and he's adjusting his equipment and the buggy's making its way towards us flooring it. And it's just, you know, it actually was kind of annoying. And all of a sudden, man, he was adjusting his equipment and I remember reaching over to help him with this equipment belt that he had. And he had a camera in his hand. And, you know, I just had my backpack on and I had my cell phone. And I was pulling at his belt and I heard the gunshots were a lot. were a lot closer. And I thought, man, this is like the same exact situation that we were just in

with these guys. And, you know, they're coming. Here they come again. And the shots started really reaching a fever pitch where there was at least four guys firing. It sounded like two shotguns and two pistols. And at that point, I glanced up. And he was adjusting his belt and pulling on some equipment. And as I glanced up, about 70 yards in front of me, were, you know, was a gigantic gray hair. It had long gray hair all over its body. Approximately six feet off the ground, six or seven feet probably off the ground on the left side of the trail, hurtling across the trail.

Its front leg was out in front of it, and it was, I mean, it was off the ground of good ways. it was moving approximately 35 miles an hour in the air. The hair was whispering as it crossed the trail in front of me, and it happened in an instant. And I, for, you know, I had so many things popping in my head at that second. But it, and the one thing that I do remember instantly thinking was that there is no way that this thing is not going to wreck as it lands. Like, it's going to wipe out, you know what I mean? because it was going so fast.

It had crossed the trail, which was 20 feet, and it looked to me because it was in the air as it entered my field of view on the far side of the trail, on the left side of the trail, that it had jumped from outside the bushes in the swamp. The arc that it actually was, it was actually coming down, not going up, like it had jumped just from the side of the trail, it was going up, and then it would land. The arc that it was on was like a jump from out in the swamp. I was in a complete state of shock. Well, it had crossed my field of view, and it was going so fast in the air that my eye had trouble almost keeping up with how fast it was going. I think if I had been closer, it would have been even more difficult to actually watch it happen. The way it happened, it was so strange, and I'd never seen anything. move like that that wasn't in like a Steve Spielberg movie.

It seemed real. It's interesting that you say that. You know, I had a similar encounter like that. And I tend not to talk about my encounter just because I wanted to be about the guest. But, you know, with my own encounter, in your mind, when you saw it going across that road, did it seem unnatural to you? Absolutely. That was, that was the, I was very uncomfortable. The funny thing is, in hindsight,

at the time, I was definitely shocked. I mean, there's no getting around it. But when I thought about it, and I thought about it a lot for, you know, a couple of months, I mean, it had a profound effect on me. Just that part of it, my mind instantly was like, there is no way that this is happening. Like, I mean, it just was nothing I had ever seen. It was completely unnatural.

But at the same time, in thinking about it, the musculature on this guy, it was, you know, I mean, it was obvious that this is what he was capable of. I mean, you know, when he landed, I thought for sure, I was just expecting it to like wipe out and it didn't. It actually landed so gingerly on the balls of its feet, like almost like you would try to sneak up on somebody. and when you would hop as like your buddies right there and you try to hop and sneak land where you don't make any sound right behind him that's the type of landing

that he did it was very it was very agile and it was intentional like you could tell that it had done this before it was very impressive and when it did that I was looking at it and thinking that

this can't be real and then it's turned around and leaned out and there was a giant palm fron about six to eight feet off the ground and its head was behind the palm fron and it's funny because in hindsight like I've laughed about this a lot

its entire lower half of its body was this visible like every muscle in its lower half from the waist down was sticking out but it pulled the palm fron down and peaked out at me now this the the strangest thing about this is

it had human hair. It looked like it had a mop on top of its head. But it was very, it didn't seem like it was, you know, nasty. That's the strange thing is it looked actually quite impressive, like his hair. His whole body was silver gray. And it was eight to ten inches long. And you could see through it. The only places that I couldn't see through it,

and what was very obvious as it was flying across the trail and as it leaned out, when I looked at the feet as it was crossing and the shoulders the shoulders had a lot thicker hair on it just underneath the the long gray silver hair that was on its head it had approximately uh you know the hair was almost to the to his to his to the bottom of his chest you know what I mean like it's very long and it was all in his face as he was flying across the trail and it was just you know really impressive the hair on his shins started to get thicker as it got by the ankles and then the hair on his feet covered his feet completely and it was actually what appeared to be longer than his feet because I was trying to see his feet and and the hair was like over you can see it whispering but um is the hair on his forearms started to get thicker because on the biceps you could see the veins in his muscles now he was an albino and you know I mean I wasn't thinking about any of this at the time but in hindsight he had a bluish gray pinkish-hue skin. It was strange. When he peaked out, the hair on his head, he had tilted his head on an

angle to peek out. And the hair on his face that was covering his face kind of shifted. And I got a very good look at his eye sockets that were very deep set and rectangular. It almost appeared as crazy as it sounds like he had glasses on that were like wraparound. They were, it was very dark and you couldn't see any eyeballs really. It's really, really interesting. you say that. I had a witness on that had an encounter in Washington State and he almost said the exact

same thing. He goes, I thought it was a guy in a fur coat and he goes, I swear it had glasses on. And the more I looked at it, the more I realized it was its eyes. Its eyes were that big. And it, from a distance, he goes, I kind of thought it was a guy in a fur coat with glasses on it. So that's a

really interesting point that you bring up. I've never heard anyone else say that. Well, it was really shocking. And this is all happening within three to four seconds. And I've, I had my hand on him still. He was next to me and we were walking. And when I looked up and he was flying across the trail and the guns were going off, like all of these things were popping through my head.

One of the first things that I thought was this can't be happening. But then like it flashed for a second like, they're trying to kill him was like kind of like what I was thinking for a second. You know what I mean? Like they're shooting at him. They're shooting at him. You know what I mean? and I had actually stopped in my tracks

and had a death grip on his I think it was his belt man and um he had this like belt like equipment stuff was on it like the side of his knapsack or something and when he when all this happened at the very last second as he was staring at me I was seeing what I was seeing and he was stopped

that was when it really hit me that this is really happening right now because like he landed and he's turned and he's looking at me. I'm looking at him. And I turned for a split second. And I yelled, turn the camera on. And I looked back up and the bush was moving and he was gone. Just that fast. And I took off running. But, you know, in hindsight of the towards him, actually. And, and, you know, he was like, what, what? You know, we were running towards him. It took us maybe, I don't know, 15 to 18 seconds to get to the spot. I was booking, man. And he was. And he was

behind me like running oh my god so we got there i assumed that he just continued in the direction that he was going which was to the right came from the left landed looked at me and then so when i got to the exact pomp on which was i mean it was obvious which one it was i never even took my eyes off it after i had looked back up we ran up to it and um and i looked out and there were some brush to the right and to the left but there was an obvious little cut and I looked for the water was crystal clear man and I looked for disturbance you know what I mean like you you enter this water that's very clear there's so much sediment anytime you enter the the undisturbed water that it leaves a big disturbance it milks up the water there's clouds everywhere in it you know what I mean and it takes another 20 minutes for it to settle back to the bottom the silt so immediately I started to look for disturbed water or ripples or anything that would say okay yeah Yeah, he went this way. And I didn't find any sign, man.

And it was disturbing. So I ran out into the swamp to try to see if he made it through the brush. And there was a huge prairie of swamp where it was wide open. And I'm like, oh, my God, he's out here. And we're going to catch him on, you know, get the cameras, blah, blah, blah. So we go running. And I fell down. And, you know, my cell phone got ruined.

And it was because it's mud. I mean, you know, when you go into the swamp, man, it's like, As soon as you get off any solid ground, you're done pretty much. You know what I mean? It's not like you're running. I got news for you. You're not running through the swamp. It's not going to happen.

And you get some areas where there's some harder sugar sand areas, but they're few and far between. This is muck two feet thick. You know what I mean? It's suck the boots right off your feet. You know what I mean? Did your friend see it? No. No, he didn't.

He didn't see it at all. In fact, at that point, he was like, really, man? you know what I mean like there's like nothing you know I'm going man I know what I saw so I'm so frustrated I'm going there's no way he would have disturbed the water he could have jumped another 20 feet or 25 feet whatever which is probably about what he covered I mean he covered the 20 foot trail and landed like it was nothing you know um it did none of it was making sense to me so I immediately ran back out of the water I was soaking wet because I'd fallen down and I was mad man I was mad and I got to the back to the trail. We were standing there and I said he might have, there was a turn in the trail about 40 feet further ahead on the trail. It banked to the right. And I thought, well, maybe he cut through the bush on the side and he's up ahead of us and he didn't just run out into the swamp because he saw us and he knows there's like this open prairie. And we were just trying to get, you know, I just at this point I was like, you know, this has happened. It's here. And this, you know, I want to somebody else to see this because then they're going to know I'm not crazy. You know what I mean?

So I ran down the trail. And we got around that corner and immediately there was another ditch, a cut through where the swamp could run through. Now, the water wasn't very deep at all. It was maybe an inch deep. And there were some thick grass, some thick grass that was growing in the center of this ditch. And right in the center of it was a 17 inch track, 16 to 17 inches. And he was like, oh, my God. And I was like, yeah.

He's like, you're telling the truth, man. And I'm like, I told you, dude. You know what I mean? So now we're like, oh, man, oh, man. You know, so we go running and we ran down another probably, I don't know, 200 yards. And there was a cut through with another where the trail actually took a 90. Or you could go straight. It was like an intersection of trails.

And actually now at this point, we've been out there so much, you know, documenting evidence that this is actually. what's going on out there that we call that spot the crossroads and it's a lot of activity there but right there in the center of the crossroads on the right hand side of the trail in the middle of the road that intersected the trail that intersected there was about a 36 inch round round ant pile and in the center of the ant pile was another 16 to 17 inch track and the ants were just coming out of the ant pile like it had just stepped there no more than five seconds before that And I thought we both looked at each other like, because we, you know, Floridians, we deal with ants, man. You know what I mean?

Like fire ants will tear you up, man. And if you stand in them, you'll be going to the hospital. You know what I mean? There's thousands of them. But it does take them a little bit of time to come out of the ant pile, like a few seconds, to respond to the occurrence. So when we saw that the ants were just coming out, we knew that he was right there somewhere. And we started to look everywhere. We looked for 45 minutes and, you know, we never saw him again.

but you know I was happy that first of all I got to see what I got to see but I was extremely happy that we found the tracks because the person that was with me didn't get to see it but he knows you know but we found the tracks

I mean he was like you know wow this is like that really happened you know what I mean so I kind of had a confirmation of somebody who was with me that you know that was indeed what happened which and I didn't talk about it for a while you know I told I told my friend

One of my good friends I told about it But I was, you know It was not your typical Bigfoot That I saw And I think that's what I was having trouble with What was going through your mind when he saw it? Well, I mean You know

First of all, this is the last place That I would expect to see Something like this I mean, it's not that it doesn't have a history But it's just You know I mean I've done so much looking into all this over the years.

And it just, the place itself, you know, I thought, well, that can't happen these days. I mean, I could get it maybe 50 years ago or something like that. But, you know, so when this thing was coming across the trail and I looked up and I saw this, I didn't, honestly, I didn't believe it was happening. You know, I was, you know, there's so many things that were going through my head. I don't know, you know, I mean, when you're, in a situation where instantly your adrenaline

is jacked up like that. I mean, I don't know. I'm ex-military, so I have a tendency to remain a little bit calmer in situations that I've watched most people begin to panic. And I've, you know, because of the, you know, my job

and a lot of the things that I've been involved in my life, you know, I've spent a lot of time in close proximity to a lot of very dangerous you know, fish, sharks and that kind of stuff in the ocean and animals as well being outdoors. So, but it absolutely freaked me out, Wes. I mean, the bottom line was I didn't believe it was happening. If you would have went across that trail and not stopped and looked at me, I would have never said a word. I would have never said a word to my friend who was standing there.

I would have never said anything because I did not believe that it was happening. And there was no way. I mean, I always hear, you know, people talk about, at that point in my life, I had interviewed probably 200 people in Florida alone. And I had never heard anyone describe anything like what I saw. And I'm not talking about what it was doing. I'm talking about the actual characteristics of what I saw, the physical characteristics. I've never heard anyone say that they'd saw.

anything with a human head of hair, uh, and, and the color, the, the long gray hair, um, you know,

I mean, it just didn't go. It didn't sit well with me, Wes. That's, that's the bottom line, you know. I could see how you'd go home and just think,

God, did that just happen to me? Did that, did that, you know, were we, uh, daydreaming or,

let me ask you this. When, when you're looking back, do you think the guys were actually shooting at this thing? Or do you think there were just a bunch of rednecks out there drinking and just blasting away, or do you think they're actually hunting this thing down? Well, I, you know, obviously I can't say for sure, but I can tell you that since that day, I've been out there a couple hundred times and spent a couple thousand hours at night and in

the daytime and had a lot of different things happen and found a lot of evidence that he's there, and others like him are there. And what I experienced, what I've experienced since that day, tells or, you know, gives me the idea that they were blissfully unaware that he was there. This guy, I think, was paralleling that buggy and watching them closely and trying to stay ahead of them. Now I know where they were coming from because I've watched. walked that exact trail that that buggy was on out into that swamp. And we found trackways out there with hundreds of their tracks coming down that exact

buggy trail. I think that based on what I've seen since that day, they're smart enough and they're powerful enough and agile enough. And their physical makeup, especially him, is just so evolved to the environment that you know, I've been in close proximity to him at least four times since then and did not even know it until he took off. And this guy can move, man. He can cover quite a bit of ground pretty quick. So I don't think they were aware that he was there. I think he was fully aware of what he was doing. And I think that, you know, the behavior that that I actually witnessed was him paying attention to what they were doing so that he could eventually, hopefully,

take advantage of what they were doing. Because what they do, the hunters, is they kill a lot of hogs out there, and they'll only take a few of them. But it's their actual right, and it's been designated and put upon the hunters to kill as many hogs as you can. And you're not required to take them all,

and there's no law against it. Because there's so many hogs, and they do so much damage, they want you to just kill as many as you can. And I think that it's very common for a hunting team on a buggy to kill five to seven hogs a day and only take certain parts of the hogs, the best parts, the backstraps, the hams, and so on, and leave a lot of it, the carcasses. And whether that's ethical or not, I have no opinion on.

I just know that that's common down here. And I think that he's wise to that. I think that they're very wise to what we do out there. I think you're right. You know, I've talked to some poachers that didn't want to come on the air here in Washington State. And basically what they'll say is they've been out in the bush a few times and they were out poaching. And these creatures will come out after gunshots go off and they'll take the kill. And it makes sense.

That's what it was doing. It was kind of waiting for them to, it was an easy meal. Yeah, I mean, I don't see. I don't see that based on what I saw what he's capable of. I'm quite sure they're all capable of that to the extent that they're, you know, whatever size they are. I mean, we have tracks that are four inches long, so I know there are actually small ones in this area all the way up to him. And he has the largest tracks that we found. The toes are, you know, the actual pad is at 17 inches.

And then the toes are on top of that. So it's, you know, it's considerable. When you see it, it's shocking. There's no two ways about it. It's a shocking thing to find. I think that, you know, obviously he has no trouble jumping or getting to game in the first place. But why waste all the energy if you can just follow the dumb humans around and take theirs? Yeah.

And you're absolutely right. What was the time frame from your next encounter? Well, I mean, there are varying degrees of encounters since that day. To be honest with you, I was scared to death to go back there. I didn't go back there for a while. I don't think I went back for 17 months, 18 months. And as much as I wanted to, I mean, for who I am, I mean, I studied this. You know what I mean?

I just, I didn't want to go back. And in the first time I went back, it was unnerving. I mean, my hands were shaking and we did a segment and recorded everything. you know, is my first time going back to recount my sighting for the film we're doing. And, you know, I was shaking up. I mean, I had trouble speaking. And people that have had real encounters when they go back after they've seen something, it shakes them up.

They want to be there, but they don't want to be there. And I've talked to a lot of witnesses. I've gone out with some who've had encounters. And they have that exact same thing happens. or handshake, they really don't want to be there. I've experienced it with my own encounter. So I'm really glad that you brought that up because I think most people listening who haven't had an encounter, maybe don't quite understand that.

A lot of people don't want to go back. A lot of people don't want to face what they've seen. So you go back, what happened when you went back? Well, you know, like I said, we agreed, my partner and I agreed that we were going to do this film. And so I knew I was going to have to go back there because, you know, it's a primary part of what we were, you know, covering. And, you know, so I eventually had to face it. And in doing so, I kind of took, you know, I took it very slow. Like, we didn't go to the actual spot that I had my encounter the first time we went in. I actually, my partner was a skeptic.

you know the other member of crypto reality is is Melanie and and she was like you know this is ridiculous and I'm like just let's just go out and we'll see what's going on and the first time we went back to the area we weren't anywhere near but we were probably two miles from from where I had my sighting in the same management area and she walked right up on a 16 and a half to 17 inch track and you know it was maybe you know a mile off of the main trail we were way back in some bushes and and uh she was in just like you gotta be kidding me you know what i mean like this is really happening like you know and uh and so once that happened we started to go back to the area it took a while for something to happen and really it

wasn't until i would say three months after we started to go back so there were 17 months in between my sighting and my return to the area at least 17 months and then a few months of going into the area and finding tracks and documenting that whoa they're still here you know i mean it was i felt really that made me feel good i mean it was i was you know very cautious when i went back in there um we didn't go there at night until until we started to essentially get a little more confidence The first time that I went at night, it was, and I had something happen, I actually had somebody contact me, and it was somebody, I'd never met anybody else from Palm Beach County that was into anything like this. And then I agreed to take him with me. We went out there about 10 o'clock at night. We actually walked up on him. And he, there was a snap. When we stopped, what I did was I kicked a dead pond. From, to try to, you know, because we snuck in.

I mean, we snuck into this area, and we had a suspicion, my partner and I, that he was in this area, because all the tracks kept leading into this one really thick, you know, section of brush. And it's strategically a place that you could stay without anyone getting to you. And I just had this feeling. It was about 10.30 at night, it was pitch black. And I was like, you know, we need to go down this trail. And the guy that was with me was like, yeah, yeah, I don't want to, I don't want to go down there. And I'm like, yeah, well, I don't want to go down there either.

But, you know, I mean, this is kind of like what we have to do. You know what I mean? Like, so we ended up going down there. And I kicked this dry pomp on when we got to the spot immediately a huge tree snap. And a bounding, a landing 20 feet away, another bounding sound, and another landing. sound and another landing and then another bounding sound in a landing and he was

60 feet away. You could hear him just each, I mean it just sounded like he was jumping 20 feet, 20 feet, 20 feet. And then, you know, of course, I was like, let's go and we were going to run in because we were filming and I had big lights with me and it

just, you know, it just didn't work out. There's no way we could catch up with them. I actually went in and it was looking but, you know, that's essentially the first thing that happened. We've had situations where we walked up, we pulled up in the morning at the actual parking lot on the north side of that area where I had my sighting. There's a little road with gravel.

And you pull in and there's a little parking area and there's a cow pasture about 100 yards away and you're not allowed to go in there. There's cows all in there. And we got out of the car and immediately both of us heard shuffling away. bipedal shuffling and uh and i was like this cannot be happening man and i got all the equipment real quick we started filming we walked down into the prairie because you're always elevated on these levies and then the floodplains is really what they are but you know they're not always flooded we walked down in there 60 feet from the car we approached a cabbage palm patch and um i was about 20

feet from Melanie and all hell broke loose in the bushes right in front of her about 15, 17 maybe feet away. And a young one ran off screaming bloody murder tearing through the sawpomel meadows. And it just was the most demented thing. I've heard a lot of stuff in my life. Even she said the same thing. We've never heard anything quite like this. It sounded like you, like a, a 12-year-old kid had just seen a ghost and was literally fleeing for his life. It was clear steps. There was no, you know, it didn't sound like an animal that ran off. It sounded like a boy in the bushes running, screaming at the top of his lungs.

We've had a lot of things happen in that area, you know, that are similar to that, where you'll hear something run away on foot. Very clear steps. And you just can't see it because it's come to our awareness that wherever they are, and there are several other research areas that we regularly go in and we witness the same type of behavior, the same type of ability, they are just naturally okay with being in bush that's so thick that you would not want to go into it. And they'll lay right in it.

And you can walk right past them and not know that they're there. The awareness that I have as a result of my sighting and subsequent trips into these areas to try to document evidence of what I saw has changed my perspective on what is possible in this life, on this planet. It has completely altered my state of consciousness. I feel compelled as an American, as a human being, as a man, to try to bring this to the awareness of other people. I mean, it's the responsible thing to do, I feel, you know, at this point. And I've taken a lot of slack over it. I mean, the bottom line is, is most people are just, you know, they're not, it doesn't fit in their reference, their frame of reference to what is going on. on on planet Earth. It just doesn't.

And you're right. You know, a lot of people, even when they have sightings, it doesn't fit in their frame of reference. So a lot of people don't know what box to put it into. And they tend to freak out because, you know, I have a guy I interviewed that it was a ghostly image he was seeing. And it was an eight-foot-tall black thing walking out of the barn. And he had no frame of reference to put it to because there's not anything that's eight-feet-tall, hairy and black that walks out of a barn. You're right. You know, most people, they don't know where to put this.

I wanted to ask you, when was your next visual encounter? Well, you know, I mean, we regularly catch them on film. It's glimpses, though. What we've found is that they are extremely physically adept. The physical morphology of what we're encountering, It's so superior to ours, the muscle density, the bone density, that these things, you know, you take, I always say it like this, you take the greatest running back, like Barry Sanders is my guy, right? You take Barry Sanders, you know, he's retired, whatever, Emmett Smith, same thing. And you multiply their physical build and their physical ability on the field by three to five times, and you're getting close.

You're getting close to what these things can do. So when I see them, Wes, when I see them, it's generous. A very brief, you know, it's a peak. And then it's, by the time I registers, by the time I turn my head back, I catch a blur shooting through the bushes. A little over three weeks ago, we were in an area that's very close to where we make,

where we've been shooting. And I had a funny feeling that something was going on over there. We thought we heard some footsteps, and there were some wind, some ambient. and so we weren't sure, but I confirmed things. And so I ran around, and it took me a while to get into the area, I thought, okay, well, this is definitely got, there's something going on over here. I mean, there was tree damage, crazy.

So I went, you know, went back, and then we went home. The next day we went back, and we were in the area. We had a brand new camera. We had some brand new equipment, really, really good equipment, you know. And we've been waiting for a while to get this equipment because it's going to give us the ability to do, you know, some better, you know, stuff for the films. It started pouring down rain, man.

And I was like, oh, my God, you know, it's a brand new camera. So we turned to leave the area. We start hearing this deer wailing out in pain, like all of a sudden. And it just went silent. And I'm thinking, my God, it sounded like it was like giving birth or something. You know what I mean? But now I know what was going on. We got up under some trees and I was up on top of this little levee hill that,

that's on the side of this canal where this area is where we go. And I was standing and I squatted down and I was covering the camera up. And I glanced up and through the bushes about 60 feet away was the exact same thing that we have in these films that were, you know, getting. It was about, I couldn't give you an accurate description of the height because it was a lot of brush. and they have a tendency to duck and squat and all that. But I'll tell you, the head, based on the distance, was probably twice the size of a bowling ball. I would say, you know, if you stacked them on top of each other,

that's about the size of the head. And it had a raccoon black stripe. Looked like it had glasses on. Again, with the glasses. It had jet black. Like that, you know, Raccoon has like a jet. black stripe across it's you know where the eyes are had that it had a very wide uh dark grayish tone to the skin on the nose um it had a huge lower jaw um the distance between the nose and the lips

was considerable i mean it it's like the face is stretched and it's staring right at me i look up and this thing staring right at me and then whoosh it just turns and it's gone and there's like a little bit of brush moving. Meanwhile, it's pouring down rain, and I've gotten this $3,000 camera, and I'm trying not to get it ruined. And worth, I'm thinking this is just, you know, so typical. You know what I mean? Like, I mean, here we are. I could have got this shot, and then, you know, what, ruin the camera. All this stuff's going on. But this is the type of stuff that, that, you know, goes on. But that was the last one that I saw was, you know, this area we've determined has, you know, probably 18 to 20 of a minute.

I mean, it's crazy. It's crazy. And you took your son out and your son had an encounter. Do you want to talk about that? Sure. I took him to Myaka State Park in 2012. It's the first time that he came with me. He was a non-believer.

You know what I mean? He thought this was ridiculous. City kid, city kid, you know? And I didn't know that. I thought, well, you know, I mean, I'm in this for so long. I mean, it must, you know, osmosis. He must, you know, be just like me. But that's not the case.

He had his own thoughts on this whole thing. And I didn't realize until we were on the way there. And he's like, you know, I don't really believe any of this. Right. I'm thinking, what, you know? So we get there. And, you know, we weren't into park two hours. We set up the tent and immediately went to the main trail,

which is where there was a recent sighting. Right. In my occa, there's this huge set of, towers, observation towers. And they're only about, I don't know, 150 to 200 yards from the parking lot right off the main road. But a nature photographer filed a report with the BFRO that she had seen one feeding at the base of some cypress trees very early in the morning. And I thought, well, let's see if there's any credibility to this, you know.

So we went in about halfway to the tower, 75, 80 yards from the car. We walk up on a 14 and a half inch track, man. to 14 and a half inches in some very rough substrate. I mean, it's just got sticks. I mean, the ground down here in these areas has so much litter on it. I mean, it's just tree litter.

It's almost impossible. It doesn't take a track unless you're around mud. You're under a canopy and there's nothing but dead leaf fall. You know what I mean? But this track was significant and we documented it. And then I just said,

all right, well, the track's going that way. Let's go. So we went off the trail. within 45 minutes, we had a game of cat and mouse going inside of a saw pomeadow hammock with something that was walking. At this point, I'm thinking this is way too, like, easy. It's happening. Like, this is not, you know, somebody's here and they're screwed around.

We made it out of the saw pomeadows and ran down to the end of the palm meadows to the area that the walking was coming from. And I was changing batteries in the camera. Christopher was standing 10 feet from me up just ahead of me to my left and he made a strange sound that's all I can tell you it just was like a guttural weird noise and I looked up at him and his mouth was hanging wide open and he was looking real weird and I thought what's going on here and then he went oh and he's like he was trying to say somebody wouldn't come out and then he said

there it is and it's right there and I was like oh my god and I'm trying to get the camera turn on. I go running over there. And here he got a good four to six second look at it. We had actually pushed it, I think, out of the palm meadows that we were in. And it unfortunately had nowhere else to go. There was a swamp and there were no trees. It would have been way out in the open and we would have heard it. So it didn't choose to go into water. And what it chose to do was backtrack right out in front of Christopher. And he got a real good look at it, man. He made a real good drawing promptly said we should report this we should report this and I'm thinking man you know I just wanted to kind of see what they were going to say and so we went in and he reported

it he asked for a piece of paper and a pencil to at the ranger's office right at the front ranger's office and the woman on duty there the ranger on duty was like oh man is that thing still in here like it was no big deal and uh you know he'd be He sat down to draw. She called the biologist and put her on speakerphone. And she said, hey, I got a couple guys over here that just saw something in the park. And I think he should get over here. And right in front of us, she's like the biologist says, oh, tell him it was a bear.

And I'm like, I look over at Christopher. He's looking at me and we're like shaking her head like, yeah. So she goes, well, you're on speakerphone and they're standing here listening to you. you better get over here. And that was when I first learned that, you know, biologists live in the park or their station there. They have on staff a biologist in these parks. They work for the U.S. Department of Interior, you know, or they're employees of the U.S. Forestry Service. There are several different branches. So these people are aware of this. She never even asked to see the drawing my son made. She came out of the bushes, as a matter of fact. I said, where she's coming

from. Oh, she's over there in the cabin. Just to go outside. You'll see her coming out of the, you know, across the parking lot. So we went out there and he had the drawing done. And all she asked right after bat was where did you see it? And I was like standing there in shock that she didn't say, you know, what did you see? None of that. And so I started harassing her saying, well, you're aware of this thing being here. You're studying this thing, right? And she got real defensive and turned it around on me and immediately started asking me who I was, how long I was going to be in the park. What was my address? What's my email address? All this stuff. And I'm like, listen, you know, I mean, what's going on in here, man? We just found these tracks. We just had this thing walk out in

front of my son. Very clearly got a good look at it. Here's the drawing. He didn't even ask to see it, you know? And she's like, that's all I have to say about this. And then, you know, it was the end of it. But what he saw was between eight and ten feet tall. We went back and confirmed the height of the bushes. Various heights, obviously, five to six feet was the bush. And, and, and and it was at least three to four feet above those bushes. So I'm, you know, estimating based on what we saw in that spot, it was between eight to ten feet tall. And what he drew on that picture was beastly huge. And it, again, had that huge lower jaw.

And his eyewitness sighting, he very clearly describes it had a huge lower jaw. But he also said that the face was so jet black that he couldn't make out features. In fact, in reviewing the footage from our expedition, I managed to pull a few different beings off of that footage. And I have some really interesting video, Wes, really interesting video. You know, on the East Coast, so I get different descriptions depending on what part of the United States that you're in. I would say on the east coast, kind of a northeast, I get it looked more human-like. It looked very human-like in the face. Down south, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, the description I get is people will say it looks more chimp-like.

It had a very chimp-like look to its face. Everyone describes a hooded nose, but the facial structure is different from what people describe. here in the Pacific Northwest, people will still describe the hooded nose, but they'll describe it more ape-like. The body's bigger. It's the King Kong-type version of the Saswatch. Down south, the few reports, especially in Florida,

and I think there's more going on in Florida than most people realize. But in Florida, I get a lot of, it looked like an orangutang on steroids. And again, there's just very few reports. that I get, people willing to come forward in Florida for whatever reason. What are you finding down there? Well, I mean, I've had all the descriptions you just gave I've had. I tend to dismiss the opinion of what they saw and what it was as long as they describe a hooded nose.

As, you know, we're all aware, I mean, if it has a hooded nose, then, you know, it's not that catalog. Lesser Primate. It's not a gorilla or a chimpanzee or an orangutan like that. The hooded nose thing Is is what I think I think in looking at the descriptions that I've taken. They all have one thing in common The distance between the bottom of the nose and the lower jaw the very bottom of the jaw is considerable considerably longer than us as humans. You know what I mean? I'm modern human But also, I also get report exactly what you described. I've taken several of those over the last couple of years. Like I said, I think we were talking the other day and you said something about, you know, the wild animal thing.

I am completely in agreement that these are wild animals. However, the one thing that, that, you know, keeps me coming back to this people issue is the hooded nose. you know, wild people who behave like wild animals is where I lean based on the descriptions that I'm taking. Because even the ones that were described as very orangutan-like, the people still say it had a human nose. So I look at this situation and I really think that there is something in between us and the apes. And this is what we're seeing. The problem with my encounter in my sighting, my first sighting, is that what I saw did not have the gigantic extended jaw. Yes, it had a big jaw, but it didn't resemble a lot of the descriptions I take. It

didn't resemble what I saw almost a month ago. It was like a completely different species. And I, you know, I mean, I think that's probably why I didn't talk about it with anyone for a while. I mean, I had been doing radio and people kept asking me about it and I just kind of would skirt the issue because I didn't want to talk about it. You know, I've become aware as a result of looking into this for an extended period now that there, as crazy as it sounds, that there may be, and probably are based on eyewitness reports, several different types in the state of Florida, not to mention across the United States. I mean, I don't see that to be an issue when you really look at how many different ethnicities there are of modern human beings. I think that it's very common in all of our species on planet Earth to see different types. You have different types of bears. You have, you know, 480 different types of sharks.

I mean, it's really not a phenomenon in and of itself. It's natural. And I think that we're the ones who have difficulty except in these things. You know what I mean? Like I've always heard, you know, I've heard a lot about supernatural behaviors and all this stuff. And, you know, I, based on what I saw and what I continue to find in looking into all this in the field,

not online at someone else's work, what I continue to find and what I continue to see is that these guys are terrestrial. They're very cautious and fearful. of us in most of the situations that I've seen down here. I would not want to have an encounter in a lot of the places that I hear people have their encounters in the U.S., way up in the mountains and all that kind of stuff. I think you're dealing, you're on their ground.

And that, to me, I mean, especially in the Pacific Northwest, where you encounter something that's 10 to 12 feet tall. And I've had, I've talked to many people who say that they've had close encounters with something that large. in an area that there's no way they could get help if something happened. So I'm inclined to believe that, yeah, there are several different things going on here, man. I mean, and it really isn't that hard to believe if you just begin to look at what's being reported. I tend to advocate on behalf of eyewitnesses because I'm an eyewitness myself, and I know what I saw.

No reason to tell me I didn't see what I saw. you know if anybody was going to prevent this from coming out it was going to be me because i was so uncomfortable with it at first you know what i mean yeah and i tend to agree with you i mean the different types having different types out there actually makes sense it makes more sense than there's just one type out there running around because you like you said with any species there's not one type of snake there's not one type of sharks there's not one type of primate you know one of the things with this coming out with the government, and you and I don't have to go into, I think you and I tend to agree with what's going on with the government.

But Andrew L, he's on my website, he brought up kind of a good point. Some of the things I disagree with him on, but he brings up a good point. You know, when we talk about the government and the government interference with this coming out, I've always thought it came down to money. I've always thought it came down to crushing. It would crush a lot of industries. And not because the government would want it to. There's a lot of third-party groups that would come out and prevent, like, logging,

prevent outdoor activity, prevent in the name of trying to save these creatures. But I want to read you what Andrew L wrote. And he just posted this up on Mitchell Townsend here in Washington State. He's an instructor at a college. and he came across to bone pile and he was basically describing the teeth structure, how big this creature was, the tracks he was finding, and talking about the size of the predator,

what the predator was doing, and it's all based on science. But one of the things Andrew L says, he says, Wes, I know for a while now you've been saying that you think this is an ape. When I hear people like Mitchell Townsend say it's a hybrid, I kind of cringe because a word has kind of a sci-fi ring to it. But after a couple of years of listening to all these people and the

reports, I think it pretty much is what it is. I think that this is a problem with any government body may want to suppress this information because how do we classify it? More importantly, how do we treat it? Are they human? Are they ape? Do they have rights? What do we do? And that's the root of the issue here. And, you know, while I disagree with whether they have rights or not. He brings up a good point, really. I mean, that might be part of the problem. I think the first problem is money, the issue with, you know, like I said, all the industries it touches. But he might be right. I mean, they might be looking at this and go, how do we classify this thing? Yeah. You know, I mean, I spent a lot of time thinking about this as well. And I think that there are a lot of fears

associated with this that are unfounded. And I think that, you know, our perspective on this is the American perspective. And it's always going to come down to that inevitable dollar sign. And the end of the day, that's our perspective. The reality of this situation is a lot different, I think. I think that they have coexisted with us for as long as we've been here. We've been seeing them, whoever it was, the archaic humans, you know, the American Indians, whatever country, whatever continent you're on. And they've been just fine. Granted, there are the odd violent encounters that people like you and I hear about from hunters who shot them or on the other side of the spectrum, people being kidnapped, that kind of thing. But in the end of the day, the fact that

we even believe that there's some level of control that we have over the situation is, I think, really the primary issue. And I think that it's overstated what will actually happen if the species is validated. I used to think that in no way, I say this. I used to say it, you know, in no way should just be taken as a joke because it's dead serious and it has the potential to change in the consciousness of planet Earth. And really, it does, but not to the level that I used to think. Never underestimate the mediocrity of American consciousness, period.

I look at the situation like, you know, we think that there's some type of management that we could actually have over this species. When the bottom line is, is it would take military operations to attain a specimen. We think that there's something that we can do to stop them. When the bottom line is, they can run circles around us everywhere we go in the field. I think that protecting the habitat, yes. And I do see that there will be an issue with that eventually when it does get validated. And the bottom line is with our population growth in this country, it's inevitable that this is going to have to happen because we're now getting to the point where here in a state of Florida, the governor's trying to sell off parcels of land trust that it was originally given to the people of the state of Florida so that it could return. to its natural state. The only reason we were trusted with that was that we agreed to allow it to do that and never change it. Right now, Habitat is, the legislation is being drawn to start taking away from the state parks so that state parks can become self-supportive through commercial agriculture on that public land trust. These are the types of things that are going to push the issue into public consciousness because more encounters are going to happen.

You know, if you think for a second that you're going to grow, you know, 70 acres of vegetables right next to a colony of these things and that they're not going to come out of the forest and start eating out of the field, you're sadly mistaken. They're opportunistic. That's just what they are. If I had to live outside, I would be opportunistic. I look at the situation like, you know, there's a lot of different opinions on it. But the bottom line, I think, Wes, is, you know, we don't have any control over what goes on. Validating the species, I think, you know, everybody already kind of expects it. And I think that really, if you don't, if you think that this many people are lying or can't tell the difference between apples and oranges, there's something wrong with you.

And, you know, I mean, that's just the way I see it. The validation is inevitable. It may take, you know, another decade. but the bottom line is, you know, guys like you and me, we can't continue with the, uh,

the interviews and the publicity and all the stuff without raising public awareness. You got all these shows that, uh, that have raised public awareness and, you know, quite frankly, in my opinion, a lot of it has hurt the subject and the seriousness of the subject,

but it still has, uh, you know, raised an eyebrow that, you know, I mean, these shows are popular. I see this as,

uh, as yeah, when it happened. it's going to it's going to be uh you know incredible but really uh what kim kardashians wearing today will again take precedence i i still believe in myself that i have an obligation because of what i've been exposed to to to try to bring a more serious dialogue on this to anybody that i encounter and i try to do that there's not a person that i've ever met uh you know that won't try to tell you or tell you that yeah man this guy you know i mean i it's like you said i take it very

seriously specifically because what i saw was life changing man i mean i mean it is it's life changing you know i've always said it's a blessing and a curse yeah but how do you feel about one being shot and brought in i feel terrible about it because i've seen what i've seen but at the same time i do understand the perspective i don't support it like openly or anything like that, I think that it's, I think that basically, and this is, I'll just say what really my belief is on this. I think that that's already been done. And that's definitely what I think. So I think that for the general public, for, for us to think that that will help is, you know, not entirely in reality. Like I consider this to be something that's already been verified. by departmentalized science, which clearly exists at this point. And I think that, you know, if people can start to change their perspective on that, then when we talk about validation of the species, what we're really talking about is, you know,

they use the term disclosure. I don't use that term. I use the term compario realis, specifically because the Latin for that is more accurate to what we believe the word disclosure actually. means. There's a lot going on with terminology behind all this that absolutely we're confused about. And it's only when we go into this that it will make any sense. I can talk to on blue in a face, but until you absorb it yourself, it's absolutely of no significance. The bottom line is, is, you know, I fear for that. I really do. And when you talk about the attacks and all that kind of stuff. You know, I've been afforded a point of reference on the things that I say because I've been

willing to sweat my ass off and go in places that I don't want to go and, you know, expose myself to hundreds of different insects and been covered, you know, with poison ivy from head to toe for months on end and thousands of mosquito bites and broken ribs and cuts. And the things that I have done have enabled me to be in close proximity on a few occasions recently. When you talk about the capabilities and how we put our perspective as humans on that, because this is basically our consciousness, and this is what we think about what is a human, and this is what we think about what an aide behaves like. I can tell you that the behaviors that I've witnessed have been very tolerant of my aggressive nature. When I go into the areas I go into, I'm there. I'm

there to disrupt to force a situation so that my cameras can record something. I'm not of the mind that we go hide in the bushes for 15 hours and get chewed up by alligators and mosquitoes and all this stuff. I have been afforded tolerance by these guys. I've been growled at and I've had things thrown at me. But only when I actually went in and was pushing the envelope, you know, what I've seen is a very, a very tolerant. a great deal of tolerance towards my intrusions into areas that I really don't belong. I mean, if you look at what really goes on, you know, we don't live in the woods, man. I mean, there may be some people in different states that have chose to go off grid and all that kind of stuff,

but human beings largely in this day and age, with everything that, you know, the way we've been raised and everything that's changed, we're completely different than we were, say, in the 19th century. You know what I mean? this is all strange to me. I'll agree with you to a point. There are areas what you're experiencing, and I know you can only go off of what you have experienced, but there are situations to where people really aren't doing anything,

and they get attacked. They really aren't stumbling into an area. I had a guy walking back to his truck, and he was flat, I mean, for lack of a better term, he's flat out attacked by this thing, and he ended up shooting it in the head with the 22, and he really wasn't doing anything. He wasn't popping shots off.

He wasn't, he was literally just walking back to his truck. And the saying came out of the brush. But I'll agree with you to the point. There is a lot of situations to where people don't get attacked. You know, they seem to be more tolerant in some areas where they really don't want the confrontation. Yeah. But in the same breath, you do get these odd ones that there's this confront,

confrontation really for and the person really wasn't doing anything well you know in regards to what you just said something that was really i don't know if i was clear when i'm saying about that point of perspective that i have because we're blissfully unaware most of us that these things are there they are in a state of shock that i know they're there but that doesn't mean and this kind of actually agrees with what you're saying about that hunter. One of the things that when you originally told me about that, I think it was two days ago, one of the first things that I thought was, well, how do we know that there wasn't, you know, two other guys in that area at some point who took shots at them or maybe even shot one of them?

And so now, I mean, I know that's a lot to kind of, it's thin, whatever, but I look at the situation and we know we don't know what's been going on. in those areas. You know what I mean? I have a terror, a deep, subconscious terror of these guys. I mean, I have nightmares because I've spent so much time in the field and the things that have happened and witnessing the ability. So I'm in complete agreement with you. Like the bottom line is, is when you, the other day, when you said something to me about wild animals, I completely agree with you. It doesn't matter to me what they are one way or the other. I push that it's human specifically or that it's of the human type of primate, specifically because of the hooded nose.

They are absolutely, regardless of whether they're human or some type of a lower class primate, they are absolutely wild animals either way. And I've seen that with my own two eyes. So I'm in an agreement with you, buddy. You know what? You bring up a good point. There was another encounter story that you bring up a really good point. There was one in Texas.

and what happened in that situation was this young man and his dad were on a farm. They kept seeing this creature. Well, the son went out there at the 22 and started blasting away at it. I mean, stupid, completely stupid, but he starts blasting away at it and he thinks he hit it. Three months later, they find a hunter. This kid was 23 years old. He's 6'5, and about 2.2.5. And he was faced down in about six inches of water.

Something had actually held him down and killed him in this water. They're calling him a murder, but a guy's six foot five, two 90. I'm a big man, but I couldn't hold someone down like that and kill him in six inches of water. And they found his gun broken, actually snapped in half, not far from his body. And so you're right. You know what? I got to give you that. You're right.

Maybe there was something else that happened prior to the. that hunter being out there that set this thing off in that situation. You know, when I talk about the dead body, see, and I'm with you to a point, I don't think anyone who's even pro-kill really wants to see one shot. Deep down, they can say it all they want, but when you're behind the rifle and you have your finger on the trigger, deep down, I don't think anyone really wants to pull the trigger to shoot one of these things. But for me, it's frustrating.

It's like, okay, you won't look at the footprints. Okay, well, listen to these vocals. Tell me what you think this is. And I'll have hunters listen to 20 minutes of vocals and just tell me what you think this is. Well, I don't know. Okay, you won't look at hair. Okay, well, you won't.

What about the thousands of people that have said they've seen these things? And it's very consistent across the board. Okay, you won't look at that. And at the end of the day, it's going to take a dead one laying there for the general public and for people high up in the science community to go, okay, this thing exists in my mind. And I could be wrong,

but that's the way I look at it, is at the end of the day, that's what it's going to take. I don't say that that's not the case. I just, you know, my thing is, is like I'm a firm believer based on what I've seen and what I've heard from people that it's like you said,

you know, something's, it only makes you sound like a conspiracy theorist. When in the end of the day, how is it, that we can have, you know, upwards. I mean, if the numbers are correct and we have 10,000 sightings in North America, and only one third of the eyewitnesses actually choose to come forward because of the stigma or whatever their reasons are,

we could be upwards of 30,000 people have seen this. And when we're looking at that, I, you know, I look at all these other things. You know, there's, you know, supposedly people have DNA. Supposedly this. I have tracks galore. I have images of tracks, I have track casts. I have film where you can see this thing's face showing like fear that I'm standing there. I may have a weapon.

He doesn't know. The bottom line is, is, you know, nothing's being done largely, I think, because we're doing nothing. And I don't mean that as not trying to prove it because there's a lot of people trying to do that. The way I see it is, is there are people that are tasked with explaining this. and there's been a very tight leash put on them. Now, mainstream science may disagree with me and say, well, he doesn't know what he's talking about. Well, then run a test, man. Start looking into this subject.

You can't look into it. You can't interview eyewitnesses without becoming aware that this is real. And then write a report on it and submit it to a journal and see what happens. You'll find that there is a dogman of bias associated with this. and whether they admitted or not, they're all aware of this. Grants are issued for what is predetermined. You don't, you have to, in order to get a grant in your field, you have to jump through hoops, and those hoops are monitored and set up in a specific order.

If you don't jump through the hoops correctly, you don't get the money. The guy who does gets it. In the end of the day, there's a control through all of this, and I really believe that the American people are the only ones who can change this. If you take the subject seriously, if you are an eyewitness, you know, I believe in unity in this. And I believe in unity of purpose and in unity of action. And I think that, you know, I've been told by many people that this, you know, that it's way ahead of its time and we need more time and this is never going to happen. And I don't see it that way.

The way I see it is is if the American people really want to know something and enough of them get on board with a project, then change starts to happen. I look at successful models of activism in various different biological species and their endangerment across the planet. I hate to use this as an example, but Greenpeace started out as a very small movement of a couple individuals. Within a decade, they had legislation on the books protecting several different species, specifically because they approach to general public with very simple information. I know we're not talking about whales or seals or clubbing seals. But the bottom line is,

there are more people interested in this right now because they've seen it than anybody who's ever seen a baby seal clubbed. The fact of the matter is, is eyewitnesses have been stripped of their power by this dogma that exists and this stigma that's been perpetuated through fear, the fear of judgment. scientists are suffering from the same thing.

And it's only through a change in perspective within ourselves and a lot of courage to take the next right step that anything will change. And that's my firm belief on this, you know. If you take a skeptic and someone who really is on the fence doesn't believe that they exist, but there's a possibility. And you start showing them evidence, it's kind of shocking. You know, like I was talking to John Benernegle, and he says, when he start really looking into this, it's shocking that science that the general public doesn't look at this as it being real. And for me, I think they don't have to set aside protection areas. They don't have to protect these things. I think they've done a great job protecting themselves.

You know, there should be a law where you can't shoot one. But at the end of the day, there's enough evidence here. to prove this thing is real. And for the government, just to come out and say, hey, you know what, it's a real animal, creature, whatever you want to call it, it exists out there. Let's move on. And don't worry about the logging.

Because the logging companies are well aware of these things exist. I've talked to many, many loggers. Oh, yeah. They are more than aware that these things exist. Yeah. I've talked to a lot of fish and game people. I've talked to a lot of people inside the government, and they're well aware that these things exist.

So why not just let the general public know, hey, these things exist. It could be, they could be dangerous. Approach it like you would a bear. You don't want to walk up and pet it on the head and give it an apple because it might rip your arm off and beat you with it. These things are out there and these things exist.

And I honestly think the general public, they'd be okay with it. I don't think anyone's going to freak out. I don't think, I think at this point in our culture, most people realize, if you haven't seen one, people who are interested in this topic realize there's probably something out there running around because is everyone lying?

I mean, do we have thousands of people who come forward and say that this thing exists? Are they all lying? And so I don't think there would be this huge freakout. I think the government could come out and say that these things are real. Maybe I'm just romanticizing the whole subject, but I don't think there would be a huge thing.

huge outroar from the public if something like that came out. I just don't think, I just don't believe that. I completely agree with you on that. That, you know, one of the things that I was saying earlier about, you know, the, the, the mediocrity of American consciousness, like I said, man, hey, what's on next? You know what I mean? The bottom line is, is, uh, the saying is probably going to be, yeah, I knew it. You know what I mean?

I knew it. It's real. You know, those people were telling the truth. and then, oh, you know, I got to go, I got to go pick up the kids. The bottom line is, is what's going to change? Are you going to stop going into the woods? You've been there 700 times and nothing's happened yet. You're going to go hunting next weekend, you know, like you said.

And really, that's all we're after crypto reality really is trying to implement is on those wildlife management areas. They give you a pamphlet when you enter them. There's a little board on the left-hand side and a bucket. and it's got a pamphlet on the entire area with hunting regulations and rules for camping and all these things. Most of these places that we go are unmanned. There's no, you know, you may see a game warden in there once a month or something checking for poachers, but the most of the time you're out there by yourself. There's no one but you and the Bush people.

That's it. The bottom line is, is what we're trying to do is just get it listed in there. Listen, there's a chance you may see one of these guys. If you happen to be looking through your scope at a deer and one of these guys, jumps out on top of the deer and you shoot it, you're going to be in trouble. Don't shoot it. Otherwise, enjoy your stay. Happy hunting.

You know what I mean? Really not that big a deal. Like you said, I mean, I agree, 100%. Yeah, and I think there needs to be the awareness. You know, there is people that go missing, and I am a firm believer that these things in the right situation are opportunistic and will snag a person in different parts of the country. for various reasons, I'm sure.

Yeah, and it's one of those things to where I think there needs to be a public awareness because, you know, I had a guy that was on a dirt bike and he's going down a dirt bike trail. His bike broke down. This thing stepped out on the trail. He thought that was it. Life was over at that point. He didn't even know what he's looking at.

And he thought for sure this thing was going to kill him. And it was coming for him until another person showed up and then it took off. You know, I mean, they can be dangerous and just. Let people know that. Like any other wild animal, I've had cougars stalk me. I've had cougars come in and I know they were looking for an easy meal, but it was going to be a fight to the death when they came in. But why not just let people know there's this wild animal, creature, whatever title you want to,

let people know it's out there. Some may go and look the other way and walk off. Some may not. And you have to be aware of your surroundings, you know, if you're in a bad area. And like anything else, bad things can happen. But why not make the general public aware of this saying people know what they're getting into when they step out there? Yeah, I mean, when you look at the law of averages of bad things that can happen to you on planet Earth, I mean, there is not one single stretch of woods in the United States that's even half as dangerous as driving down a street in your car in rush hour traffic. I mean, the bottom line is, it's like, you know, we live in a dangerous environment.

There's murders and robberies and people are shot and stabbed and killed and all these car accidents and all this stuff. I mean, the bottom line is, you know, I look at the situation the same way you do. And I see it that way as well. I mean, it does count, though. It does count. It does count. It does matter that it's that we're told officially. To me, it does.

And, you know, I mean, I look at the situation. like, you know, at that point, real funding can begin to happen. And real study can begin to happen by real scientists who are afforded the opportunity with support to determine exactly what these guys are, you know? And, you know, there's a million theories on all that stuff. And I say, you know, don't put the cart before the horse. You know what I mean? Let's take it one step at a time.

And, you know, we get it to where, like you said, hey, they're out there. then we can officially start to move forward with this stuff and really take a look at what's going on. And, you know, it's my firm belief that what we're going to find is there, for as many species are in various, you know, have various subspecies within the species, it's going to be the same thing. This will be the same thing. Like if we look at modern humans, there are Chinese people, there are Africans, there are white, non-Hispanic, there are Hispanic, there are Hispanic. I mean, you go around the globe and you're going to find that. There are people with black hair. There are people with blonde hair.

And it's just, it's going to come down to, you know, the same thing as, say, a bear. You've got your kodiaks. You've got your black bears. Your brown bears, your black bears. You know what I mean? Your polar bears, you've got this new thing that they're trying to say is going on in the Himalayas with the new Yeti or whatever it was. The polar bear they discovered there or something, you know. I don't see where this is, I used to think it was, but I don't see where this is going to be some trauma.

I think we've been prepared enough for it by now, you know? Yeah, I tend to agree. What's the documentary that you have coming out? We're working on a film called Bigfoot, The Unavoidable Truth, the Bush Indian. And what we found here in Palm Beach County is evidence through archaeological studies of an archaic race, people. And it's not shared about very much. I was blissfully unaware of any of this stuff. And in these areas, the exact areas that these archaic peoples occupied in Palm Beach County is where we're filming the Bigfoot, the Bush Indians. So we're trying to to work on, you know, getting the evidence

on film so that we can approach a university about it. But the film should be out by the end of August. It's full feature. And it's the first one in a series documenting the Bigfoot species in the state of Florida. We have worked our tails off. You know, in this film series is significant. We already have quite a bit of footage showing, you know, faces. You know, I mean, this is like really happening. And we're really excited about it.

We have the website as well, Cryptoreality.us. It's under construction now where we're going to promote. actually learning how to see, how to find and actually go into the field and find evidence for yourself so that you can, you know, begin to educate yourself on this the right way. You know what I mean? Nothing, it's an old saying. Experience is the best teacher, and we follow that philosophy. Well, I appreciate coming on, man.

I really wish you luck on the show. And I didn't think I'd hit it off with you, Mark. You know, I know you and I can have different opinions on things, but at the end of the day, I think we agree on more than we disagree on. Absolutely, man. And, you know, the bottom line is, you know, I don't know what it is. I mean, I don't know. Yeah.

Wes, I don't know. I know what I think it is based on what I'm filming and what I'm seeing. But, you know, the bottom line is we're in this conundrum because science hasn't done it yet. And that's what we're all about trying to get science to do it. So I'm with you, man. All the way, buddy. I'm with you all the way. It's a damn dirty ape.

Go ahead and put it in print. Yeah, buddy. All right, man. All right, Mark. Thanks. Hey, thanks for having me, man. It was great. Actually, I thought I was going to come on

you guys show two years ago, but then I don't know what happened with that. I'm actually glad that I waited because now that we've done so much research, I was probably a little more articulate. No, I appreciate it. I appreciate it coming on. My pleasure, buddy.

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