Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:142 Retired Border Patrol Agent Speaks Out

Episode Date: September 4, 2015

Rocky Elmore, a retired United States Border Patrol Agent, is our guest tonight, and he shared with me a scary Sasquatch encounter he was involved in. The agents were tracking illegal aliens coming ac...ross the border when the agents were told that a "large predator" was tracking them and the commander was watching this creature through the scope. A command was given that all agents were to return to their vehicles. Later he was told by his supervisor "I do not know what it was but it was bi-pedal,it walked like a man but was not a man and it was giant compared to the rest of the agents.....it was stalking you guys and matching you step for step." The Supervisor was afraid that this "thing" was going to harm the agents that's why he told everyone to return to their vehicles. Rocky also ran into some employees of The Bureau of Land Management in a very remote location. Rocky says "I came up on these employees who were with the The Bureau of Land Management. I asked if this was an area where Sasquatch can be found. I just had my encounter and I said it in a joking way so that they could not make fun of me. To my surprise one of them said......yes they are up here, we have been tracking a group from Otay Mountain down through the wilderness and we think they are traveling with younger ones because we found prints of a very small creature along with some very large prints." Rocky also talks about one of his supervisors along with 30-40 illegal aliens being chased up Otay Mountain by a "Monster." Rocky said the descriptions given match that of a Sasquatch. I also ask Rocky about some of the stranger things he has run into while out on patrol and he shared several stories.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, it's Jamie, Progressive No 1, number 2 employee. Leave a message at the... Hey, Jamie, it's me, Jamie. This is your daily pep talk? I know it's been rough going ever since people found out about your Acapella group, Matt Harmony, but you will bounce back. I mean, you're the guy always helping people find coverage options with the name-your-price tool. It should be you giving me the pep talk.
Starting point is 00:00:19 Now get out there, hit that high note, and take Mad Harmony all the way to Nationals this year! Sorry, it's pitchy. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates Price and Coverage Match Limited by State Law. 5-5-4-4-3-3-2-1. When I had come down this hill, I had seen this creature cross the road. It would have ripped my locked door from my truck, extracted me from my vehicle,
Starting point is 00:01:02 and no one of that damn thing I could have done about it. This thing I got to notice in its eyes. His eyes was real, real evil, real sinister with it. You know, look it was giving it. What are you reporting? See you. Hello. This son of a bitch is about 60 foot nine.
Starting point is 00:01:37 I don't know. Do you see him now, sir? Yes, I'm looking right at him. Uh-oh. Welcome to Sasquot Chronicles, a place where people share their encounters. Let's start the show. Welcome to the show, everyone. Thanks for being here tonight.
Starting point is 00:02:32 Got a great show planned for you. Shortly coming up, I'm going to be having Rocky Eighty, Elmore on and he is the author of Out on Foot, Nightly Patrols and Ghostly Tales of a U.S. Border Patrol agent. You know, the Border Patrol agents definitely run into Sasquatch and it'll be an interesting discussion tonight because Rocky shares with us some stories from within the Border Patrol dealing with Sasquatch along with his own encounter. And I'll also be asking Rocky about some of the weirder things that some of the agents have
Starting point is 00:03:05 run into while out on duty. So look for that here in a moment. If you've had an encounter you'd like to be on the show, email me. My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com, and if you get a chance, check out the website, Sasquatch Chronicles.com. There's additional shows throughout the week, and this is one that I've decided to open up to everyone out there, so I really hope you enjoy the show tonight. On Sunday, I'm going to be inviting Gary Wayne back to the show, and And I had some follow-up questions. You might remember Gary from episode 112, The Nephilim Conspiracy. And originally I brought Gary to the show because a lot of people feel like Sasquatch is
Starting point is 00:03:49 anephalm. Now, while I don't see it that way, I thought it was important to have that discussion. So I'll be bringing Gary back for a follow-up discussion on some of the things in his book. And his book is The Genesis 6 Conspiracy. So Sunday is going to be a little bit different. It's going to be like Episode 112 just with some additional information from Gary's book regarding the Nephlin.
Starting point is 00:04:14 So look for that on Sunday. Well, I want to welcome Rocky Elmore to the show. He's the author of Out on Foot, Nightly Patrols and Ghostly Tales of the U.S. Border Patrol agent. Rocky, I was really happy to have you on the show. I was really happy to hear some of your encounters. And I wanted to thank you for coming on the show. Thank you and I'm happy to share them with you. Now you've had a couple
Starting point is 00:04:40 interesting, well, you had one major interesting Sasquatch encounter. Do you want to tell us what you were doing? Tell us what was going on at the time and then just walk us right into the encounter and then tell us what you found out afterwards. Sure. At the time, we had just finished five months basic training at the Board of Trail Academy in Georgia. And then we were all sent back to our duty station, which was for me a brownfield station. It's in San Diego sector, San Diego, California. Once we got back to the station, we entered into a five-month training program. And that consisted of working all-night shifts and basically hiking around all night
Starting point is 00:05:26 or just laying in and trails and canyons waiting for illegal aliens to approach and trying to make your arrest. So we'd been on the training unit for about four and a half months. So we're actually getting pretty experienced at being out there in the dark and knowing what things sounded like and such. So this particular night, we were working a midnight shift. And we got out to the area was going to work, which was the Otai Lakes area. And it's on the north side of Otai Mountain. And the San Diego, no, the Otai River runs into the lake. So we got out to the area.
Starting point is 00:06:09 There was four of us, including the training officer, three trainees and the training officer. We got out there. It was probably around midnight or so, maybe 1230 when we got out there. We had to go through a locked gate to access the area because it's off limits to general population. So we went through this gate. We was going out there. We seen one of the supervisors was setting up a night vision scope.
Starting point is 00:06:39 Now this was in 1995. So back then, our scopes were a little crude, and most of them were handed over to us from the military. These were called tank scopes, and I believe it came off at N1 Abrams Army tank. They were a thermal-type scope, so it dialed in on heat signature. and they had magnification, I think, up to probably about 7 to 10 power.
Starting point is 00:07:06 And we were able to see people and work groups of people, you know, five miles out in total darkness. So we've seen this supervisor setting the scope up and he was going to help us through the night. So we continued on down this little dirt road to our patrol area. And a sensor had went off and was going to work that sensor. or our little group was. So we got to the site, we stashed the vehicle, and we got out, we started hiking on foot, headed toward this trail. The mountain in that area had burned recently, and so everything was covered in black soot.
Starting point is 00:07:45 Then a real heavy fog had rolled in, so it had a very eerie feeling and looked to it. So our training officer had about 10 years experience. So we set off hiking toward this trail we were going to work, and we got lost. A training officer lost his way, mainly because of the fog. So we wandered around, lost for a little while, and then we just decided to start paralleling the Otai River toward the lake. And as it was paralleling the river, we were a couple hundred feet off of it, I guess. we heard this one very loud single splash in the river. And it actually sounded like some exceptionally large object had fallen from the sky and landed in the water.
Starting point is 00:08:35 And it wasn't followed by any thrashing of water or any follow-up splashes. It was just the one splash. So when you're doing these night patrols, you know you just stay as quiet as you can all the time. There's virtually no talking within the group. even. So immediately we looked to the training officer and, you know, we, we headed for what we heard. And about 100 feet out before we got to the river, I noticed the training officer drew his weapon. That kind of set off a little bit of alarm bells because when there's, usually you work alone and you get used to working alone. And when there's four of you working, that's kind of an luxury.
Starting point is 00:09:17 So it's very rare that you're going to feel enough fear or concern about something to draw a weapon when you're with three other agents. But that's what the training officer did. And then I myself started getting this very strong sense of foreboding, hopelessness, and kind of doom feeling. And it almost felt like it was being projected onto me. And I didn't fill up for myself. I started to fill up for what I thought we were going to see going on in the water when we got up to the bank. So I too got pretty nervous about it and drew my weapon. And we all did.
Starting point is 00:10:03 So we got up to the water's edge. And immediately I noticed there were four or five coyotes there. and they were all focused into the center of the river as well. We call this a river. It really wasn't very big. It was the rainy season, so it was running pretty good, but it was still no more than 20 feet wide in this area and probably no deeper than two feet.
Starting point is 00:10:29 So we could quite easily see all the way across it to the other bank. And so we started looking at what these coyotes were looking at because we figured that was our source. And there was nothing there. And I noticed right off the bat that the coyotes were all dry. They had not been in the water and they had not caused that splash. And they were real antsy. They were just going back and forth along the creek bank.
Starting point is 00:10:57 And as we approached, they didn't really take note of us. They weren't concerned with us. And I also noticed that they weren't yelping and crying as they usually do when something intrudes into their area. So we got up along the bank and we started looking and we couldn't see anything. But I could hear something out in the middle of it and it sounded like somebody was walking very quietly without lifting their feet out of the water. They were just kind of shuffling their feet. And they were walking up upstream. There wasn't much of a current going, but they were going against the current, they're going back to the east.
Starting point is 00:11:36 It was heading back toward where I had seen the supervisor earlier setting up this thermal night vision scope. And I can't say if the other people at the scene heard this movement in the water or not, I've always had very good hearing, and quite a few times I heard groups coming up long before the other agents did. But I definitely heard something and it was walking through the water. So we couldn't see anything, though. So we started looking up and down the creek bank for footprints,
Starting point is 00:12:11 and we couldn't find any prints of any kind going into the water or coming out of the water. We did easily see our own footprints, and we seen the footprints for the coyotes that were present, but not for anything else. And so we all turned our flashlights on, but because of the fog, the light shined right back in our eyes, and we just turned them right back off. We tried to parallel what we thought we were hearing in the water,
Starting point is 00:12:40 but then the brush started stacking up along the creek bank, so we couldn't follow it very long, and we had to give it up. And then we noticed the coyotes all left the area, and they were kind of looking back over their shoulders. They were leaving with their tails tucked, and they actually walked right in between us. They still had no concern of our presence, at all. They seemed to be quite concerned about whatever it was in the river.
Starting point is 00:13:08 Yeah, and that's really weird for a coyote. Yeah, it was very unnatural behavior for them, and that really kind of set off extra alarm bells with this. So they left the scene. We looked around a while longer. We could never see anything. We could never see any kind of a body in the water. The river wasn't deep enough that there's no way anyone could have been hiding down in the water or any animal could have been in the water and, you know, staying hidden from our site that way. The river just wasn't deep enough for that. So after a while, we just gave up on it. We just chalked it up to some weird experience or anomaly that we just couldn't figure out. So we continued on with our patrol hiking west toward the lake. Now, where this thing was
Starting point is 00:13:59 headed in the river, it was going to eventually take it right into the view of the scope operator later that night. So we continued our patrol on toward the lake. And to get to the lake, we had to go down into this fairly deep canyon. And we started down into it, and our radio contact started breaking up. But I started hearing some bits and pieces, and it was the supervisor running the scope that we had passed up earlier. And he had seen this large group of aliens coming down off the north side of the mountain, and he had called in other agents to go work with them. So two other agents responded, and they had gotten out on foot, and they were hiking in to try to intercept this group. Then we heard bits and pieces of this supervisor all of a sudden
Starting point is 00:14:52 call them the two agents off of the group and telling them they need to. needed to leave the area. The agents working thought they heard, they actually thought they were close to the group because they could hear something, but they hadn't seen anything yet. And they wanted to stay and finish work in the group. And the supervisor once again told them, said, you don't hear the group, you need to leave the area, you need to get back in your vehicles and leave the area. And they did what they told, they were told.
Starting point is 00:15:23 The supervisor was very, very well respected, and he was an excellent scope operator. And when he said something, his orders were followed. So that's what he did. And then we heard nothing else about it that night. So we continued our patrol, and we made it over to the lake, and we got on the west side of the lake. We ran into a group of aliens, and we apprehended them. and then our little group of four busted up into two pairs. So me and the other trainee went off to do something else.
Starting point is 00:16:02 And while we were away from the other two, the other trainee asked me concerning our incident back at the river. And he said, hey, what the hell do you think that was in the water? I said, I don't know, but I was getting some really, really bad vibrations and feelings back there about it. He said, yeah, me too. He said, all the hair on the back of my neck was standing straight up. And that, so that told me that I was not the only one that was hearing something moving around out there that we couldn't see.
Starting point is 00:16:36 That was the last words and the only words we ever spoke of that incident. As a group, we never spoke with the other trainee or the training officer about it. We never talked to each other about it again. And this wasn't really something that we would want to bring up and tell anybody else because as trainees, the Border Patrol was very strict back then. And it was like a military rank of order. We couldn't even talk to our own supervisor without permission from our training officer. So we weren't going to go back to the station and start spreading this stuff around and talking. You know, we just kept it to ourselves.
Starting point is 00:17:16 But the next night, when we reported for duty, the next night, our field operation supervisor, which would be the equivalent of, say, a watch commander, he addressed the podium, he gave us our briefing, and he gave everyone a very stern warning about hiking around at night that we needed to be extra, extra careful. And he started telling about the scope operator, seeing this very, very large, large predator that had come up and started stalking the two agents on the Otai River just east of our position. And he said, he said, he just described it as a very large predator. And he said, it could have been a mountain lion or something. But if it was, it was the largest one we have ever seen.
Starting point is 00:18:11 So everyone just kind of took it that it was a mountain lion. And that was the talk for the next few days and then it faded away. Maybe a year went by and this supervisor that was running the scope that night, he took a job with another agency and he was moving back east. So I guess he started telling people about what really happened that night and the story kind of got out. And that's pretty common that when you have something you really want to tell, but it's, you know, very unusual, that you just hold it to yourself. And then when you're leaving the station, you'll go ahead and tell people.
Starting point is 00:18:54 Right. You don't have to face the ridicule if there's ridicule. You can leave it behind you. And that's kind of what happened. And so a couple of agents, I become aware of these stories later down the road. And the story was that the supervisor, what he had seen stalking these two agents was definitely not a mountain lion, that some kind of bipedal creature had come up out of the Otai River
Starting point is 00:19:27 and had made their way over toward those two, had made its way over to those two agents, and started following those agents around, stalking them, and that it towered over the two agents, and it dwarfed both of them. Its heat signature, it said, was massive, just a massive heat signature coming off of it like it had never seen before. It said it was way too large to have been any bear, which by the way, there had never ever been a bear sighting in our area. And to this day, I still don't think there's ever been a single bear siding on Otai Mountain that I'm aware of.
Starting point is 00:20:09 But nonetheless, he said there was no way it was a bear. There was no way it was a mountain lion. it was a bipedal creature and it walked like a man and it walked a pretty considerable distance from the Otai River to where these two agents were to start stocking them. Did he ever come out and say what he thought it was? No, as far as I know, he never used the word Bigfoot or Sasquatch. Other agents did. He just said it was bipedal, it was extremely large, it towered over the agent,
Starting point is 00:20:43 agents, its heat signature was massive, and it walked like a man. It didn't walk like a bear, you know, waddling around on its hind feet. It walked like a man would walk. What did some of the other agents say? I mean, as they hear this story and as they hear, wow, it wasn't a mountain lion, and you got the one guy with the scope. What is some of the talk from the other agents? Well, surprisingly enough, you know, when things like this happen,
Starting point is 00:21:13 it's almost never talked about in large groups, and it's never addressed officially during a muster briefing. It's usually talked about in small groups of three and four agents. Now, at this time, the Border Patrol had a very, very high turnover rate, and most agents only stayed about two years. So by the time this incident happened, and the time the truth come out of what he's seen, half of the station had already taken other jobs, other places.
Starting point is 00:21:45 So there wasn't a lot of the original people even left at the station anymore when this incident happened. So there wasn't as much talk as you would think, but it did make its way through the grapevine, where I would say 70 or 80 percent of the agents was aware of what he seen that night, and they were aware of the story, even if they didn't know who this supervisor actually was. You ran into scientists or members of the BLM. Do you mind telling that story, Rocky? Yeah, sure. I actually became aware of several other sightings up on the mountain,
Starting point is 00:22:21 but they were very, very brief sightings, and they were third-party sightings. So I don't have much I can say about them, but I did run into a group of Bureau of Land Management people, and they were the environmentalist type people, They were not law enforcement officers. And there was quite a large group of them up there. I would say, you know, there was seven to ten of them up there.
Starting point is 00:22:49 And they were at this place called Butwick Canyon, which was pretty much right on top of the mountain. And they claimed they were up there looking for bearscats. And this was right before dark. So I thought it was kind of unusual that they would wait until dark and then come up and start looking for bear poop. So I talked to them for quite a while, actually, and I assured them that there were no bears up on Otai Mountain or anywhere near that area. We had a 500 man station, so there was literally a good hundred guys on duty every day, and our main purpose was to hike that mountain in Otai Lakes and Morone Valley. So we scoured over that thing on foot continually day and night, 24-7, and nobody ever found. scat for a bear. They never found a footprint for a bear. They never seen a bear.
Starting point is 00:23:45 So, you know, I assured them that there were no bear up there. So the conversation started taking a different turn then to other things that might be up there. So I just asked them, and I kind of pretended like I was joking a little bit because I didn't want them to laugh at me. So I asked them, I said, what's the chances of a Sasquatch creature being up here? And they answered it up right off the bat. They said, yeah, we actually think there's three of them up here. We think there's two adults and a juvenile. That's interesting.
Starting point is 00:24:23 Yeah, especially when they said a juvenile, because it linked up to another story, other information I had heard about a Campo agent who supposedly had numerous different times followed Bigfoot. footprints. Now at different times Campo and El Cajon shared some of Brownfield's area. We kind of traded the area off. So they had worked some of our area in the past as well. And I had found some postings on the internet that was supposedly from a Campo Border Patrol agent. And I believe they're legit because he sounded like he really knew what he was talking about and he knew how to
Starting point is 00:25:05 track. And he was talking about tracking three bigfoots at the Lake Moreno area, and one of them he referred to as little foot because it was a juvenile. It was a smaller one. And he even went on to talk about how he could see the hair in between the toes on the tracks. And I kind of thought that was pretty significant because they haven't heard other people give such great detail on bigfoot tracks before. No, you're right. I've never heard that. I've never heard anyone say they can see their hair between the toes. Well, and I know that's possible because I myself have tracked carpet booties where these illegals will put pieces of carpet over their shoes so they don't leave footprints. It's still trackable.
Starting point is 00:25:52 It takes some talent and it's hard to do, but it can be done. So I know for a fact that if you were tracking a creature and it had hair between its toes, that you could. probably see that. And so he was finding these tracks. You talked to the BLM. Are you shocked by their response? I mean, they don't really, they're just kind of it's matter of fact is what it sounds like
Starting point is 00:26:17 when you're talking to them. Yeah, actually I was surprised because I really kind of expected for them to laugh at me a little bit. And that's why I presumed the question to them in a humorous manner. You know, I didn't want to be looked at like some kind of a nut
Starting point is 00:26:33 or a loon. And even after they told me that, oh, yeah, there's three of them up here. I really kind of expected on at some point to say, you know, we're really just kidding. There's not. But they never did. And they maintained a quite serious tone about the subject throughout our entire conversation. You know, it's interesting in that whole area up there. I started researching this story.
Starting point is 00:27:00 God, I want to say I was back in the 70s is when it happened. But it was something that I was recently. looking into with the Zubis. And the doctor in that area, basically the short version of the story is a couple cops pulled this doctor over. He's got a gun on his passenger seat. And he starts telling them about these Zubi creatures around his property. And I guess they were amused enough.
Starting point is 00:27:27 They went out, checked out his property. I think he even called 911 a couple times. And they had found footprints. They had found hair samples. they had found all kinds of stuff around this guy's property. And they were pretty convinced by the end of it after going out there that this guy was telling the truth, that these creatures were outrun around on this guy's property. And I think it's pretty close to where you had your original encounter,
Starting point is 00:27:52 kind of over where you were doing a lot of your border patrol. That sounds like you could possibly be talking about something they called the Proctor Valley Monster, which was only about a mile north of where our... original encounter was. Yeah, and that's the one I'm talking about. It's the, uh, that doctor that claims to have him on its property. And I went out there and took a look around and I, you know, a lot of the Native Americans in that area, I think I even had a Native American tell me to stay off Ote Mountain, uh, because it was, um, I don't remember the term he used. I want to say holy mountain, but that's not right. Well, I've, I've heard that very same, I've heard the very same thing and
Starting point is 00:28:33 They called it a sacred mountain and it was forbidden for human beings to go up there. Yeah, that was something to the effect of what he was saying. Had you heard any more Sasquatch encounters while you were, I mean, you spent so much time as a Border Patrol. I can't imagine the, you know, the lonely nights out there, even if you are with someone. You know, two guys doing Border Patrol really doesn't seem like that big of a force. But had you heard any more Sasquatch encounters when you were out during your time? serve in the country? Yes, I did. And I did put them in the book. Since their third party stories, for the most part, I don't have very much detail in them. So they're very short encounters. There's probably about five more that come to mine through. Well, let's see. There's probably about three more. And I can go over those briefly, if you like. They are kind of interesting. Yeah, if you don't mind.
Starting point is 00:29:31 the first time I heard of another story after my incident, and the agent who told me this was not aware of my incident because I hadn't told him. But we were up on top of the mountain one night, and it was just about to get dark, and we were out on foot on this one particular ridge line, and we were getting ready to work some traffic. And he said, you know, oh so-and-so, and I can't remember who he was talking about,
Starting point is 00:30:04 but he said, you know, oh, so-and-so here just recently had some kind of a creature chase him and a group had caught. And what had happened, he'd hiked down this rich line that we were about to work, and he had caught four or five illegal aliens, and he was hiking them back up to the top of the mountain to their, to his vehicle. and it was dusk. All of a sudden, he heard brush breaking down below them. And all the aliens started to get real antsy and started squeezing in real close behind him.
Starting point is 00:30:44 And they were saying, official mid-assel, which is to say, officer, look at that. Do you see that? And he focused in on where they were looking. and there was this beast coming right at them. And he was beating the brush down in front of them with his arms, like he was kind of swimming through it. And he thought the brush was about six to eight feet tall, and this creature's head and shoulders was up above it.
Starting point is 00:31:14 And now the brush that we had on that mountain was Manzanita brush, and this is the toughest stuff you've ever seen in your life. And it's impenetrable. If there's not a trail there, you can't get it. through it. I tried getting through some of it one time, and it actually punctured several layers of my ballistic vest. But that was the story that this thing was coming at him. It was beating the brush down with his arms, and the agent and all the aliens took off running up the mountain as fast as they could. They run until they give out. And when they stopped running and looked back,
Starting point is 00:31:49 then the creature was gone. They couldn't see it anymore. Did the agent say what he thought it was? You know, it was just implied to me that it was a beast that would fit the description of a saskatch. That it was a bipedal beast because it said it was running or walking through the brush and it was using its arms to beat the top of the brush down. So it was a bipedal creature. Yeah, I would imagine that would be terrifying. Especially, God, you're trying to keep track of the illegal aliens, make sure no one's going to stab you.
Starting point is 00:32:23 and then you got this creature coming at you. I can't even imagine being in that situation. You know what I mean? It's just a terrifying, terrifying situation to be in. You know, one thing I want to ask you, going back to the original encounter that you had, Rocky, does the agency, do they not talk about this at all? No. Officially, they do not at all.
Starting point is 00:32:47 And the reason why I ask, you know, if you think about the encounter, it makes you wonder the guy that was looking through the scope, why he didn't think it was a person. Obviously, with the size description he's giving, it couldn't have been a person. But you would think he'd have to write something up. You know what I mean? He'd have to write up. I guess it was just written up as a predator, huh?
Starting point is 00:33:08 Yeah. And, you know, one thing about, and he may well have done a memo on it, the thing about writing memos is other people are not allowed to see them. You pass them up through the chain of command, and you're not supposed to share those memos with other people. Obviously, some memos are much more sensitive than others. So if he did write some kind of a memo and put that he's seen something other than just a predator,
Starting point is 00:33:37 you know, if he was to say he's seen a Sasquatch in that memo, that's not something that the rest of us would probably ever get to see and it would just go up the chain of command and just evaporate somewhere. But I doubt that there was even... the memo written on it. And if there was, it was probably just referred to as a predator. Yeah, I would imagine that kind of stuff would ruin your career. Yeah, and it can.
Starting point is 00:34:02 Because your reputation is everything in law enforcement. And if your reputation is destroyed or someone begins to laugh at you because you've seen a monster, then every time you come up with something, then someone's going to say, oh, yeah, you're the guy who's seen the monster. So they're telling how many of these encounters actually happened and people just kept them to themselves. I know I kept this encounter to myself for probably 10 years before I told any other agent that I was involved in that incident that night. I want to get into some of the stranger encounters that you had that weren't necessarily Bigfoot. But was there any other Sasquatch encounters that you can share with us that are in the book?
Starting point is 00:34:50 Yes. Well, amongst the agents that stayed there for a while and did more than just two or three years, you know, agents that continued on like I did, I stayed there 13 years. We had another monster that we named it the windmill monster. Windmill is a canyon that runs through Otai Mountain. It's a very large canyon, heavily trafficked. and an agent told me that he had caught this group himself. He was part of this, although he didn't see the beast himself. But he was working some traffic on top of the mountain. And he was following their sign, and he tracked them down into Windmill Canyon, and it was night. And he heard them down below him two or three hundred feet, and they were screaming and hollering. So he went ahead and got down there, turned his flashlight.
Starting point is 00:35:46 on and got down there as quick as he could. At that point, he quit tracking them and he wasn't following their foot sign anymore because he could hear them. So he just turned his light on and took off running toward them. When he caught up with them, they were all huddled up together real tightly and hiding under some bushes. And they were screaming and hollering that some kind of a beast had chased them down the trail. And one of them said, I could feel its hot breath.
Starting point is 00:36:16 breathing down onto the back of my neck while we were running. Now, that, you know, mountain lions were up there, but everyone knew what a mountain lion looked like, and, you know, there's no way you were going to outrun a mountain lion. If a mountain lion wanted you, he was going to get you. So, and then the fact that the alien said that I could feel its hot breath breathing down onto the back of my neck, again, that implied to the agent at the scene, that this was some kind of a beast that stood up taller than they did,
Starting point is 00:36:50 some kind of a bipedal beast taller than themselves, that had chased them down the canyon. And then I do have another story aside from that one as well. Yeah, please go ahead. Now, this windmill is on the west side of Otai Mountain. Now, on the east side of Otai Mountain, There's a canyon called Mine Canyon. They used to have a bunch of silver mines in it years ago.
Starting point is 00:37:21 And there's been a lot of paranormal activity in that general area. Mine Canyon sets next to Butwick Canyon, which is where I encountered the BLM personnel. One graveyard shift, I was assigned to work Mine Canyon, and they had assigned one of the newer guys to ride with me. He wasn't a trainee, but he was a newer guy, and they didn't want him out on his own yet. So he wrote over there with me and we got out to work a sensor. He said, you know, I was here two weeks ago and we caught a group. And the group asked us if we would do a favor for them. And I said, yeah, what was that?
Starting point is 00:38:05 And he said, well, the aliens said that they were chased by a monster down in Mine Canyon. And could we go down there and kill it? that was the story on that one. Have you ever come across anyone out there that had died other than natural causes, other than obviously a mountain lion? I realize bears probably aren't in that area. I've been out there too. I don't, I'm with you on that. I don't think there's any bears in the area.
Starting point is 00:38:33 But have you ever come across someone that died that could possibly be related to these creatures? You know, I would probably say no. But we did have several that were killed by mountain lions. And mountain lions do kill in a unique way. And we're pretty sure that those deaths were caused by mountain lions. But there was one other incident when I very first got to the station where a woman was killed up on top of the mountain and her head was gone. And, of course, the board of patrols.
Starting point is 00:39:13 and the sheriff's department tried to say that, you know, she just died and somehow how animals eat the head off. But agents who had been to the scene said, no, they thought she had been beheaded by maybe a machete or something. So no one really came up with any conclusive manner on how she died. You know, is it possible that a Sasquatch killed this woman? You know, I don't know. I never really thought about that until you just asked me right now. But I don't know if there's any records of Sasquatch is ever killing anybody or how they would do it. They would certainly probably have the strength to pull somebody's head off.
Starting point is 00:39:58 That's what they wanted to do. But aside from that one incident, I'm not aware of any suspected deaths that could be attributed to a creature like this. And the book is called Out on Foot Nightly Patrol's Ghostly Tales of a U.S. Border Patrol agent by Rocky Elmore. A lot of fascinating stories, Rocky, a lot of interesting stories. Now, when you were out there, you ran into some weird stuff, not necessarily Sasquatch related, but you definitely ran into some of strange things out there in the woods. Can you talk a little bit about some of the stranger events or stranger stories that you want to share with the audience? Sure. Most of the paranormal activity in the book, which consists of about 35% of the book, is paranormal. And most of that is ghost encounters. And there are two in particular that really stand out and were the ultimate reason I wrote the book. And one is concerning a child ghost, a little girl in a white nightgown. Everyone thought she was a
Starting point is 00:41:09 about three years old. And she was seen multiple times, and she's still seen out there in the Mine Canyon area, the Maroon Valley area. And when agents see her, it terrifies them. They're emotionally distraught afterwards. Other agents do see ghost. It doesn't affect them the same way. I did have an encounter myself.
Starting point is 00:41:34 It didn't affect me emotionally like that. The other predominant ghost story in the book is my classmate, two days before we were to graduate off of our training unit, he was killed at Otai Lakes Down. He fell off a cliff, 120 feet, was killed instantly. Shortly after that, to begin rumors that he was actually pushed off the cliff and murdered. I had a couple of very weird incidents with my radio at his time at night. death. I was off duty that night. I was actually sick. And I had some weird beeping that started taking place on my radio at his time of death. I didn't know he had died at the time. I found out the next day he died. Then the night of his memorial service, we were off duty that night as well.
Starting point is 00:42:29 And my radio did the very same thing again. It was like a distress call coming from my radio. and it was at the exact time of his death. I carried that radio for several years after that, and those were the only two nights that ever happened. Then a few months later, his ghost or apparition began to appear on Otai Mountain, and it continued to appear for about seven months, and the apparition actually worked its way across the mountain
Starting point is 00:43:00 toward Otai Lakes down. I have about 10 different encounters that I documented. The dates they happen, the time they happen, and the places that they happen. I know there were several other encounters concerning this agent that was killed. The illegal aliens began to call him the phantom agent. They knew him by name. Once there's one account of him approaching them carrying his head in his hands, and he talked to them in every instance.
Starting point is 00:43:31 he would actually stop the group, make the group stay there until other agents arrived on scene and took them into custody. It was probably the most bizarre series of events in the history of the Border Patrol. It all led to a final encounter that took place on Otai Lakes Dam. It did result in the death of one or two aliens, and one of those was probably a smuggler. that was even theorized later by someone that smuggler that was killed on the dam that night may have been the one that pushed Agent Louis Santiago off of that clip that night. After that encounter, there were no more encounters of that apparition. I worked there another 11 years after that, and I never heard of a single encounter after that day.
Starting point is 00:44:23 That's pretty terrifying. It was. It got so much so that the, aliens and the smugglers themselves begin to avoid the areas that he was known to be haunting, and even some of the agents began to avoid working in those areas. I bet no one's writing that up in a report out there. I guess it's just all kind of around the coffee, around the coffee pot. The agents are talking about this, I would imagine, huh?
Starting point is 00:44:50 Yes. There could be some reports on this one, because this one was very common knowledge, and it was talked about in the open. This was the only time I ever heard of a paranormal event being talked about out in the open. Everyone virtually knew of it. Even mid-level management was even talking about it and talking about some of the experience that they had concerning this incident. The final encounter that did result in death and because of the death that resulted from it and several injuries, actually six aliens were chased over that cliff. And they claimed that they were chased over by, according to the FBI,
Starting point is 00:45:33 the FBI said they were chased over by a live agent. But they were never able to identify an agent. They had one picked out that they were trying to pin it on, and their investigation actually cleared him. They had run all kind of test on him for paraffin, see if he had fired a weapon that night, see if his weapon had been fired, everything cleared him. And he was the only person that was anywhere near that area.
Starting point is 00:45:57 that could have been involved. Supposedly, the FBI's investigation was ended when the surviving aliens were shown a picture of the deceased agent without being told that this agent was deceased. And the FBI also did not know the agent was deceased. And this picture was presented to them of this, of Louis Santiago. And the surviving aliens all identified him as the one that, chased him over the cliff causing the death. And then at that point, the FBI wanted to arrest him. And the agents assisting in the investigation said, well, we can't do that because this
Starting point is 00:46:42 agent died on that cliff last year. And that was the end of the investigation. Nobody was ever arrested, and it went nowhere after that. There was an incident with the Native American. Would you mind tell him that story? I found that story fascinating. Yes, that one happened in Otai Valley, and I believe it was also a graveyard shift, but it was dark. And a classmate of mine was sitting there blacked out in his vehicle and watching the area.
Starting point is 00:47:17 After, I don't know, after an hour or so of setting there, he was kind of slumped down in the seat, and he seen this figure through his windshield crouched down in an attack position. And he said it looked like a Native American warrior. So he quickly set up and got a better look through the windshield. And this figure started advancing on him. And he had this thing, he described, he said it was kind of like a tomahawk, but it didn't have a tomahawk blade on it. It had some chunk of wood on top of it or something.
Starting point is 00:47:53 And he had it drawn back like he was going to hit him with it. And he continued advancing on his vehicle. And at that point, the agent jumped out of his vehicle and drew his weapon and pointed it at him. And the figure, the individual, ran to the other side of the vehicle over towards a brush. And he chased him around to the other side of the vehicle, and he was gone. And he couldn't hear any movement. He looked all around for him. find anything.
Starting point is 00:48:25 Got his flashlight out, started looking for footprints, and there weren't any. But he described him in pretty good detail as being a Native American warrior. He said he had on this weird looking thing on his head that it was not like a headdress like you would find from the Cherokee or the Sioux tribe to the Blackfoot. He said it looked very different. It looked almost like a bird's nest. So I found that quite interesting. I know this guy very well.
Starting point is 00:48:56 I know him personally. This guy does not spook easy. He's in management now. And he's also, I believe, the commander of one of our elite teams, like that's similar to a SWAT team. So this guy doesn't get scared easy. There ain't much out there that's going to spook him.
Starting point is 00:49:14 He gave me a really good description of the apparition he saw. So I started doing some internet research on it. And it turned out that the Kumiyai Indian tribe did not use tomahawks, just like he said they didn't, that they used this thing called a war club. And it looked a little bit like a tomahawk, but it had this big chunk of wood on it instead of a blade. And the headdresses that they wore did kind of more resemble a bird's nest, I guess. they were more of a horizontal type headdress.
Starting point is 00:49:50 The feathers didn't stick up like they did on the other tribes. So I have no doubt that his account is true because everything he said panned out from what I could see. You know, one of the last things I wanted to ask you is probably about three months ago or so, maybe four months ago or so. I did a show, well, not necessarily a whole show. I actually talked about it for about a minute, 20 seconds. But I talked about Orbs. And the reason why I talked about orbs is I've been getting a lot of people out hiking, people out looking for Bigfoot, hunters, all, you know, just people being out in the middle of nowhere. And what they'll describe is seeing orbs.
Starting point is 00:50:31 And kind of what they'll describe, and I've seen lots of videos on it, I've seen lots of pictures on it, talked to a lot of eyewitnesses about seeing these orbs. And they all have the same story on what these things are. They'll say they're about the size of a baseball to a basketball, and they'll float around. They'll generate a light source, but it's kind of a weird, weird light source. And when they fly around in the forest, they almost seem like they're flying with purpose. I've personally, I don't think I've ever seen what these people are describing. Have you ever seen anything like that when you're out in the middle of nowhere at night or during the day? Have you come across anything like that?
Starting point is 00:51:16 I did one time. I was down in the south end of Maroon Valley on a night shift, and another fellow had been assigned to that area with me, and he was a new guy from a different station. So we wasn't familiar with the area. Once it got dark, we teamed up for safety because this was an area that we didn't assign a lot of people to, but it was known to have very heavy bandit activity in that area.
Starting point is 00:51:49 So we were down there, just the two of us. There was nothing else within probably 10 miles of where we were. There were no artificial light sources, no houses, no street lamps, nothing. We didn't even have any scopes operating in that area down there to help us that night. So it was just us down there. The south end of the valley had an old ranch house in it, a ranch foreman had lived earlier with his family, and Mexican smugglers had come over and killed them and shoving them down into the water well. And that had happened years earlier.
Starting point is 00:52:27 So we thought it might be interesting to go down there and check that old ranch house out. So we hiked into that area from probably half a mile or three quarters of a mile away. We hiked in dark. We didn't want to take a chance of running into bandits down there. So we hiked in dark. We got down to the ranch house. We looked all around it. And then we started hiking back out.
Starting point is 00:52:52 When we got maybe about 500 miles, I mean, I'm sorry. We got about 500 yards away from the house. We were hit from behind, and it seemed like it was coming from ground level. there was this very, very bright light hit us from behind. And I mean, it lit this area up like daylight. It was far brighter than vehicle headlights or any man-made source I could think of. And it wasn't lightning. There was no way it was lightning.
Starting point is 00:53:24 I never seen lightning in San Diego. So we were hit by this light source. It was just a flash, no more than a second. I didn't remember it casting a shadow in front of it. which was kind of weird. Immediately we both ran to the side of the trail and took up defensive positions and started trying to figure out what was going on.
Starting point is 00:53:47 We couldn't see anything. We didn't hear anything. I brought a set of binoculars along to help us see in the dark. So I started to look in the area over with the binoculars, couldn't come up with anybody around us, and we didn't hear anyone running away from us either.
Starting point is 00:54:03 So again, we started with, you know, looking for footprints for evidence. There wasn't any. So we started to look back toward the ranch house, thinking maybe someone was running back toward the ranch house. And we noticed these four or five lights down there. And with the naked eye, they looked like flashlights from the distance we were at. I'm watching these lights through the binoculars and we're trying to, we really thought that maybe Bandits had come back up to the ranch house and they were searching the area with flashlights, which was really quite unusual because I've never seen a bandit use a flashlight.
Starting point is 00:54:43 But that was the only thing we could think of. So I started watching them and I noticed that these lights were not illuminating anything. They weren't being shined on anything. And then I started to notice that they also were not being used in a sweeping motion like somebody was looking for something. They were just kind of prancing around. They seemed to be a few feet off the ground, maybe four or five feet. I couldn't tell off that distance.
Starting point is 00:55:09 But they were just kind of prancing around. And this kept up for several minutes. We watched it several minutes, and then they started to fade away. And that was the last of it. We continued to observe the area still trying to figure out what was going on. We never could come up with what was going on. And we had, we never come up with any ideal at all. as to what provided that initial flash of light.
Starting point is 00:55:38 Yeah, and that's weird. And by the ranch house, you saw these things floating around? Yeah, they were just down there right by their ranch house, about four or five of them, and they were just kind of dancing around out in what would have been the yard of the old ranch house. I can't even imagine half of the stuff that you guys saw out there. You know, that wasn't paranormal related, that wasn't Sasquatch related, just Border Patrol related. I would imagine you saw probably more than you ever wanted to see. And then you tack all this other stuff on it.
Starting point is 00:56:10 Amazing, amazing stories. The book, again, is called Out on Foot, Nightly Patrols and Ghostly Tales of a U.S. Border Patrol agent by Rocky Elmore. And it's on Amazon. Rocky, is there anything else that we should add to it, do you think? No, you know, there are so many stories in the book. that I don't even know her I would start. And different people like different aspects of it. Some people like the regular board patrol stories,
Starting point is 00:56:41 and some people prefer the paranormal soul. I would just say pick a copy up and decide for yourself, which part of it you like best. Yeah, you know, I like all of it because it's kind of like a journal from what, you know, stories that you had written down from the time that you were out there. and even some of the weird stuff, it's good to hear it. I mean, if it's stuff you experienced.
Starting point is 00:57:05 And it's interesting, too, you know, like with the Indian story, I had a researcher on that had a similar experience. He wasn't actually out looking for Bigfoot. But he had come across some old ruins, as you and I were talking about yesterday, and he had lit up his fire and he saw this old Indian sitting there and thought he was losing his mind all of a sudden he sees this thing sitting there. And about the time he goes to talk to it, it's gone. So, I mean, I can imagine half the stuff that you run into out there.
Starting point is 00:57:33 And I just can't think enough for coming on and sharing the stories. Well, I thank you for the opportunity. I really enjoyed this. And I think that the one thing that I have heard feedback on the book a lot is that, and this was my goal for writing the book, I tried to make the book not about me. But I wanted people to feel like they're part of it, you know, that they kind of feel like they're there.
Starting point is 00:57:58 and if they do, then I've been successful, and I hope that's what people feel as they read through the book. Yeah, absolutely. And if you're out there listening, if you get a chance, pick up a copy. Again, it's out on foot, nightly patrols, ghostly tales of a U.S. Border Patrol agent by Rocky Elmore. Rocky, thanks for coming on. Thank you very much. And that's it for tonight, everyone. Remember, if you've had an encounter, email me.
Starting point is 00:58:24 My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. And if you get a chance, check out the website, Sasquatch Chronicles.com. I will see you back on Sunday. Have a great night, everyone. The way of the month, two months in a row. Leave a message at the... Hi, Jamie, it's me, Jamie.
Starting point is 01:02:51 I just had a new idea for our song about the name your price tool. So when it's like, tell us what you want to pay, hey, hey, hey, hey, and the trombone goes, blah, blah, blah, and you say, we'll help you find carbon options to fit your budget. Then we just all do finger snaps. We'll acquire goes,
Starting point is 01:03:05 savings's coming at you, savings coming at you. Yes? No? Maybe? Anyway, see your practice tonight. I got new lyrics for the rap break. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates, price and coverage match limited by state law. This is firefighter Rafael Poriette, reminding you that every day a portion of every firehouse subs purchase
Starting point is 01:03:20 goes towards helping first responders. Try the new pastrami Rubin, loaded with hot pastrami, sweet and tangy slaw and melted Swiss. For limited time, get a medium pastrami Rubin for just 639. Firehouse subs. Enjoy more subs. Save more lives. Limited time offer at participating locations.
Starting point is 01:03:38 The Firehouse Subs will donate a minimum of $1 million in 2018 to the Firehouse Subs Public Safety Foundation by donating 0.13% of every purchase. Sports betting is sweeping across the country faster than the coronavirus and wagering week is your antidote. I'm Tom Martin and I'm a veteran sports analyst and respected sports handicapper who will help build ESPN's brand. I've been recognized and awarded by Pro Football Weekly and Gaming Today magazine as the honest handicapper. Let the other guys give you the same old boring sports talk with the same tired. Storylines, we'll give it to you straight here every Friday on Wagering Week. Don't gamble with other podcasts. Let SportsGarten Network's Wagering Week help your bottom line.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.