Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:318 Moments in time that change your life

Episode Date: April 23, 2017

I will be welcoming Blane Hajicek to the show. Blane has appeared on MonsterQuest. Apart from being a part time editor and camera grip, his father Doug Hajicek producer of MonsterQuest, has invited him on several research expeditions involving Sasquatch in northern Ontario.   In 2007 During the filming of "Sasquatch Attack," the cabin, in which he was staying, was attacked by something unknown. A year later Blane and his father went back to do more research in the same location, this time without the camera crew. During the second trip to Ontario's Snelgrove Lake, the cabin was once again attacked. These experiences have opened his eyes to the existence of a large primate living in North America.   Blane will be sharing with us an encounter he had a couple of years ago when he came within 30 feet of two of these creatures. Blane said "I never really believed in these creatures existing up until the Snellgrove lake incident and since then I have had a curiosity that has pushed me to look for answers. During the Snellgrove lake incident I never saw what was throwing rocks but years later I got a really good look at two of these creatures. I am still searching for answers."   I will also be welcoming Preston to the show. Preston was hunting during his encounter. Preston says "I was hunting when I saw a deer. The deer passed by me and minutes later the deer came running back towards me. I thought for sure I would see an elk chasing it and when I looked up I saw this gorilla looking creature coming from the direction the deer had come from. This thing stopped and looked at me and than continued on the direction it was heading. I only saw it for a couple seconds but those couple seconds changed my life."

Black thing go from left to right, and I thought, I'm going to die out here and no one's ever going to know. I couldn't believe what my eyeballs were showing me. I'll never forget how evil the eyes were. It was horrible. I mean, I've never seen nothing that evil. It ran towards me at a rate that I can't even explain, turned and stared at me, and this look of, I just want to kill you. I want to say it was human, but it wasn't.

He was yelling at me to grab a gun, grab a gun. I was like, for what? He said, just grab a gun. And there's footprints all the way to the door of my house. It had went inside my garage all the way to the door. 911, what are you reporting? Get somebody out here. What's going on now, sir? That son of a bitch is about six foot nine, I don't know.

Do you see him now, sir? Yes, I'm looking right at him. Uh-oh. You're listening to Sasquatchew. Chronicles. Check us out online at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. If you've had an encounter, email me. My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. Welcome to the show, everyone. Thanks for being here tonight. I know the holiday season has passed. It doesn't mean you can't still give gifts and get yourself something nice. If you go to Sasquatch Chronicles.com, there's some new sweatshirts.

I just got mine here in the mail. Black sweatshirts, pull over hoodies, also zip up black sweatshirts. A lot of new cool items. If you get a chance, check it out on Sasquatch Chronicles.com. Click on the shop at the top. How's everyone doing tonight? Thanks so much for being here on a Sunday night. Got a great show plan for you tonight.

Going to be speaking to Blaine, who is Doug Highcheck's son. I think it was episode 312 where I brought Doug on, the guy from Monster Quest, and he talked about his encounter out there at Snellgrove Lake, and Blaine was with him during that the attack on the cabin. And after that incident, Blaine got really interested in looking for these creatures. And so out in Minnesota, he started actually going out and looking for them. And it's an interesting thing when he start looking for something. Generally, you find it.

And he found it. He has a very interesting encounter, so he'll be sharing with us tonight. I'll also be welcoming Preston to the show. Preston was out hunting in Arkansas and saw one of these creatures when he was up in his tree stand. Fascinating account. If you've had an encounter and you'd like to be on the show, shoot me an email. My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. And speaking of the website, you know, last on Friday night, I do additional shows throughout the week.

If you go to Sasquatch Chronicles.com, I had Petra on the show, who's from, had an encounter out in Manitoba, Canada, probably one of the best witnesses. I mean, it was one of those shows where I was just sitting there listening, and there was pauses where I was like, oh, that's right, I'm supposed to be asking questions. She is a, or was a vet tech, and did some work for the government. And after her encounter, she went home, wrote everything down what she saw. Uh, probably one of the best descriptions I've ever. Actually, you know what? Here, I'll play a little clip for you from, uh, Friday's show. Take a listen.

And I got, I think maybe about six or eight hundred feet away from the path that I had entered. And I was basically on my hands and my knees throwing up. And again, I don't know if that's adrenaline. I don't know if the roaring that had happened had infrasound. I have no clue. Or is it just sheer terror and fear? I don't know, but I was a mess. I, you know, and I got home and lived another day.

But, you know, back to what I saw, I was able to grab some notes that I had made, and they're not at all in any kind of cohesive words. So I'll try to explain what I saw. The one that I was looking at that I was stuck as a bear was the same black bear kind of a color, except I noticed it seemed to have a little bit of red tingees here and there on its coat, but it was black, except it had a little red in it. I don't know how to explain that, but that's how it appeared to me. Its overall body was huge.

It seemed, if its height was eight feet, its shoulder width was four feet. It seemed twice as tall as it was wide, but that's huge. To be that wide, it was huge wide. The other thing that I've written down here is massive barrel chest. When I was looking at it from the side, it's unlike anything, you could not mistake this as a human being. Like, it had this beryl chest that, like a greyhound almost, a massive, rib cage that stuck quite far out there. So that's the thing I had noted about that one.

And I also had put written down because I got a fairly good look at its face. Its lip, its upper lip is thin, but it's huge. And also the distance between the bottom of its nose and the top of its upper lip is double than what us humans have. It's a very big distance between those two spots. I had noted that down. The other thing I had put down, its mouth is huge like a garbage pail. And what I think I was trying to refer to is, you know, a trash can where you step on the pedal

and this massive lid opens up. That's how the mouth appeared to me. And the other thing I put, wrote down, was that the bottom jaw, it's like a Roman helmet. And I don't know exactly what I mean except when you see some of those old Roman helmets. There's this massive big leather piece or whatever that kind of protects their jaw line. But its whole jaw looked like that. It was just this huge, I don't know, this big gaping jaw that was incredible. And I want to thank again, Petra for coming on the show. That was a very small clip from the show, but I mean, it, I was still thinking about it. Still thinking about today. If you get a chance, check it out. Sasquatch Chronicles.com. Let's jump into it tonight. I want to welcome Preston to the show. Preston, thanks for coming on.

Hey, no problem with. Thank you for having me. No, I really appreciate you being on. And like I was, like I was telling you before one on air. It's nothing more than a conversation, nothing to be nervous about. You had an encounter while you were hunting. If you would, for the audience, maybe start from the beginning. Tell us what you were out doing and then kind of walk us into what happened. What did you see? Well, like I said, I think it was, it had to be at least the first or second week in November back in 2013. I,

it usually gets light about 7.30. Well, good enough to see, see around you. I was in a 15-foot tree ladder stand. Probably about,

I want to say about 300 yards back behind my house. And the way my tree stand was facing, I was facing north on a logging road. And, uh, I was down in a hauler. There was a hill to my left and kind of a culvert from the drainage from the road on our main road coming from my house.

And there was, and then there was just kind of a wooded area off to my right. I was sitting there and it was just, it had just got daylight. So I'd say it was around 7.30. The sun was coming up out of the east. and, well, I heard something coming down from behind me, and I heard some snorting. It was a doe. I don't really think she could smell me. I think she kind of saw my orange vest or something I might have moved,

and she was just snorting at me trying to figure out what it was. She had sat there for about a minute or two, just snorting, and then ran past my left, my back left. tied up that hill to the west. And about a minute or two goes by, and here she comes running back, man. I think goosebumps is even talking about it still, man. It scared the daylight's out of me, but she came running back. You know, I was like, sweet, there's probably a buck chasing or something.

And so I was getting ready and just kind of get my gun, kind of in a better position. and she came running back towards a stand and stood underneath it, which I was like, well, that's kind of odd. I was pretty odd for I've never seen that happen, so I didn't think much of it. I was still waiting to see if, you know, a buck or something would pop out. I saw something moving up on the hill, probably 50 yards away, 40 yards away, something like that. It was close enough that I could see something.

And this thing come walking out down off the hill. And the first thing I noticed was how it walked, and I didn't think it was a bear at all. Because I've seen bear on two feet, you know, nothing like I'd ever seen before. And it was quite strange. The way the sun hit it, it lit it up. pretty good from coming out of the east. When the sun hit it, it was more of a dark reddish color on it. I could tell that. I mean, I wasn't looking through my scope. I was paralyzed. I mean,

I couldn't move. I was in shock. And it took a couple more steps down the mountain, and I noticed how it walked, which was it kind of never really. extended its knees, it just kind of like, I don't know, kind of did it like a little hop every time it walked, just kind of pushed itself off whenever extending its knees and it was just walking and then it stopped. And I don't know if you saw my orange hunting vest or something, but I think it just stopped and stared at me for probably two seconds, three seconds. I don't know. And just kind of turned. and walk down the rest of the hill into that little ditch I was telling you about. And it was probably only three foot across. I mean, something could jump over it.

And he walked down to it. And it's like a five foot drop down into the ditch from being washed out for years and years and years. And so when he dropped down into there, what he did was he put his hand on the ground. when he jumped down in there, which was weird because the way his arm bent, it wasn't like a human's, you know? It bent it, it bent further up than a human, like its forearm was much longer,

which the same with the knees, they weren't in the same spot as a, humans would be, you know what I mean? And then probably took two more steps and it was down further down in the holler where I couldn't see, And I mean, I'll tell you, that only lasted probably 20, 30 seconds. And it felt like a lifetime, man.

It still kind of shakes me up. I think this is really my second time ever telling you about this. And I mean, I told you were the first person to tell. And what did you do next? I mean, after it left, I would imagine that shakes you out, especially being out there in the woods, you know, you hear and see everything and here's something out of the ordinary, but what did you do next after it exited?

Well, I stood there, and, you know, I'm not a bad shot. I mean, I can hit a running jackrabbit with a $3 pistol. I mean, I'm not afraid to shoot. I was, you know, I've never been afraid at hunting, you know, my mentality, usually everything out there's a little more scared of you than you, scared of it. I mean, except for big cats or something. But I was petrified, man. I don't know how any other way to put it out, I froze.

And I probably sat there for 30 seconds trying to get, you know, get myself together. And I just, the only thing I grabbed was my gun, I had all, I had some grunt calls and some no bleats and just some other stuff. You know, my rattles. And I had just grabbed my gun and I ran up to the house. and I was a senior in high school at the time, and I ran back up home. I never stopped. I mean, I got tore up with bars and everything because I was just going home. I wasn't going to take the way I usually come in.

I was done. I was not turning around. I was not, you know, taking time to walk some switchbacks up that, you know, holler. I was just getting to the house where I felt safer. And I busted in the door, man, and, my parents were sitting on the couch and I knew something was wrong with me, but, you know, I didn't want to be that, you know, some, I didn't want them to think, want them to think I was crazy, you know, so I never, I never told them, I just told them I, I saw a bear, you know, I saw a bear, that's all I did, I saw a bear, but, you know, I did not see a bear. Yeah, no, I understand. And a lot of hunters do that, you know, when they have an encounter like this, they'll pass it off as a bear or they'll tell their other hunting buddies it's a bear.

And then privately when you start talking to them, they'll tell you it wasn't a bear. I wanted to ask you, let's say the term Sasquatch and Bigfoot didn't exist for a moment. And no one knew what that meant. And you were explaining to someone what you saw. How would you explain to them what you saw? Like a dad-gum gorilla escaped from a zoo and was about, I don't even want to say how tall he was. I mean, he was broad, whatever it was,

but I'd say it was, you know, a gorilla walking around out there. I don't rightfully, you know, I'm not no expert on gorillas or anything. I'm from Arkansas. But I'd have to say it was some kind of gorilla or, you know, something along those lines. But I've never seen a gorilla like that. I mean, yeah, no, and I understand. And, you know, with the way you describe where its elbow was and where its knee was,

and that's the thing when you run into these things, sometimes hunters will go, well, that's a guy. And then they get a closer look at it, and they're like, okay, that's not proportion like a man. And then when they get a better look at it, they realize how big it is and how it's just not right. Something's not right. Were you able to get any facial expressions, or did you, were you able to see, its face? You know, it was weird. I mean, if you're sitting, you know, 50, 40 yards away from something and you look at it,

I don't know, I'd have to say it was really weird because I just kind of focused in on it, man. And the way the light hit it, I could kind of make out some details. It looked like it had, like it had a broken nose. Like, someone had, you know, if you had a broken nose to 100 times, that's what the nose kind of looked like. the eyes I really couldn't tell you. I was being honest, he never, I don't know, I didn't see any, I didn't see, he didn't growl or anything.

I did notice his head was more like a football helmet, I guess I could put that way. Yeah, that's the easiest way for me to describe it. I used to play football, so it was like a football helmet. It was really rounded, I guess. Yeah, and some people describe him that way. A lot of times people describe him that way. I had a hunter on one time, Preston, and he was talking about, it's kind of a similar encounter to yours.

And it all started out with the deer, and the deer running back to his tree stand, which is interesting because you and I both know, dears don't run to your tree stand. They will avoid you like the plague. And having it run back to your tree stand almost makes you wonder if the deer is like, okay, this is the lesser of two evils. I'll run back to this and hope for the best. But he described it like a football player,

wearing a football helmet, very round. Sometimes people describe them as having smaller heads, kind of pointed heads. And then I've talked to a lot of witnesses that say, no, it was very round. It was a very round head. Like a football player with shoulder pads on. You know, when you see a football player

with his shoulder pads on and the helmet on, you'll notice there's no neck. It's just the helmet sits right on top of the shoulder pads. It looks like gives that appearance of no neck. Did you ever go back to that area? I did. I got my true stand and my calls and everything about it was after deer season. I think, I guess it was probably a week before,

or two weeks before Christmas because I actually decided. I had to go hunt at my grandparents' place. I don't know. I just felt like I wouldn't see that kind of thing over at my grandparents' place. It was, I did go back, but I had never hunted there again. I would never go. I really, I never really went anywhere without something, carrying something. But after that, I don't go a lot of places without a pistol, at least a pistol.

Yeah, and after an encounter like this, you know, you always, there's always more questions than there's answers, isn't there? Oh, very much so. I kind of thought of it like a mental, you know, I had a big problem with it, and I get kind of emotional talking about it because I don't, I just, I don't know what it was. I mean, I grew up thinking these things were just some hocus, pocus, I guess. know, I, after you see something, I guess your mind tells you that's not what you saw, but, you know, I think my first reaction was like, it's a bear. But I know a bear, and that was no bear man. I mean, it's scared to live in daylight side of me. And I'm pretty sure I was using a 270 hunt with, and I'm pretty positive.

I even would have shot at the thing. I, you know, when I'd done nothing to such, you know, kick it off. Yeah, and you're probably right. And I appreciate you sharing the encounter. I know it's not easy for you, and I know it's not easy for you to even talk about it to this day. And it takes a lot of courage to come forward and talk about it. And hunters are a unique breed of people because I've found in the past with a lot of hunters, they don't want to give up hunting, and they don't really want to come to terms with what they saw.

And so it either goes one of two ways. They'll either give up hunting or they'll try and talk themselves out of what they've seen and continue hunting in other areas. The problem is you can run into these things in other areas. Just because you saw it in this one area doesn't mean you're not going to see it in another area. And I don't say, I don't say, I must say that to be a dick or, you know what I mean? Try and fright you, but they are in other, I mean, you can run into them. And I think a lot of it depends on, especially when you're hunting, a lot of it depends on how you react to it.

If you freak out, you're probably in for a world of hurt. If you're cool about it, I think with these things, and this is just my theory, I could be completely way off on this. I think they're unsure of how to react to you. And I kind of look at it like human psychology. You know, guys and bar, you know, I've dealt with a lot of guys in bars, you know, breaking up guys fighting and everything. like that. And the one guy that doesn't freak out and he's not really reacting to anything, that mentality used to make me more nervous than anything else because I wasn't sure how that guy was going to react. The guy barking and screaming and yelling and telling you how big and bad

he is, that was the least of my problems. You know, like I telling he's going to kill you, that was the least of my problems. I didn't even bat an eye at that. It was the guy that wasn't reacting that always made me nervous because I wasn't sure how he was going to react. And I think with these things, and maybe that's a bad analogy, so forgive me, my hillbilly ways, but I kind of think it's the same thing. I kind of think it's the same thing with these things. I think if you don't really react, and you see that sometimes with people's encounters, when they're terrified inside, they're absolutely breaking down inside.

But on the outside, we as humans do this strange thing to where we'll freeze. We don't run. We're not really reacting. but we're freaking out internally, but we're just standing our... It looks like we're standing our ground. And I think a lot of times when you do that, you know, he probably saw you

and you didn't pop off a shot, you weren't screaming and yelling, and he figured I'll just keep going this way, and it's a very dangerous situation, I think, with these things, when you run into them and they're hunting, and you get in between them and food, I think you can run into major, major problems.

And I think the way you reacted to it was probably the best way to react to it. A lot of people probably would have popped off a shot or screamed and yelled or jumped down out of the tree stand and went full blast while it's still in view, you know, took off running. And I think that's the last thing you want to do in these situations. And again, that's just my theory. I could be all wet at the end of the day, you know what I mean? Right.

And I think you have a very good theory there. You know, I grew up on hunting and, you know, I'm not going to shoot at anything. I don't know what it is, you know, because I don't want an accident to happen. But it was, it was so weird, man. I don't even, you know, that deer that had kind of stood probably five foot from underneath my tree stand to my right, I don't even know what happened. I was just so focused on it that I just toned everything out. I mean, it was just like, I don't even know how to explain it.

Everything around me just kind of faded. way when I was staring at it. I didn't even hear her run off. And when I came down the tree, she wasn't there. So I don't, it was, it was just a, it was a weird thing that happened, you know. You know, I used to, I used to make fun of people like, you're just crazy, man, you're just crazy. I can't say that no more because if, I'm just as crazy as then. Well, you're not as crazy as you think.

And that's the other thing, you know. and I can completely relate to that, you know, having that mentality of this guy's nuts. These things don't exist. This guy's unsure of what he saw. He saw a bear. And until you see one, you know, people aren't as crazy as. More hunters see these things than you realize. I probably talk to more hunters off the air.

I'd probably put police a second, but first is hunters off the air that don't want to come on the air. and they'll describe this, exactly the encounter you described is a lot of what they'll describe to me of what happened. And they're not really sure what they, and I'll ask them. I'll say, you know, if Bigfoot and Sasquatch weren't real, let's say

that term didn't exist. No one knew what that meant. What would you say you ran into? 99% of the time the hunters will say it was a gorilla. I would say it was some sort of odd gorilla I've never seen before. and that's what I saw.

Even though it wasn't a gorilla, that's the only thing I can compare it to because, you know, we have nothing else to compare it to. Right. And then, you know, it's just it's the little things after this has all happened that just, you know, makes me question stuff more like,

you know, I mean, this is kind of odd, you know, I can chalk this up to be something, but, you know, something else and what it could be. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's. It's hard to say. It's hard to say what they are. And you'll always have that doubt deep down. And I think that's our brain, that's our brain's way of protecting us, of always that self-doubt of maybe I didn't see that. Maybe, you know what? Maybe I was just freaking out. And you eventually get past that point to realize this is what I saw. This is what I experienced. But there's always that moment of doubt that you'll always replay in the back of your mind of like, God, did I really see that? Am I going? nuts. Did I not sleep enough the night before? And you always have that. But at the end of the day,

you'll realize that, yes, you did see it. Yes, they are real. And that's why I try and tell people on the show all the time. You can, and there's a lot of people who listen to this show that haven't seen one. They're just interested in the topic. And, you know, I'm sure there's a lot of people that laugh at me when I say this, but these things are real. You can run into them. they are out there, and you need to be careful because you aren't the biggest baddest thing out there. You can carry your 270 and carry whatever you want. You run into one of these things, and you realize really quick, that gun may not save your life. Prior to that, you feel like having that rifle, there's nothing you can't overcome in the forest.

But running into these things, you realize it's a huge obstacle, you know, running into them. I wanted to ask you, how far away from you was this creature when you were up in your tree stand? Like I said, I think it was probably about, and I'm probably pushing it here, probably 50, 40 yards. And I think that might be a little far than what it actually was. It might have been a little closer. I mean, it's kind of hard to say when he's walking down a hill. but I mean, I'd have to say from where I initially saw him was probably straight off to my left. If you drew a straight line, that's about what I first sawing.

And then where the last time I saw his shoulders in his head was probably a little off to my left, looking straight out in front of me. so he kind of made it he was walking straight down and then kind of when he stopped he took he stopped and then took um just took a kind of a slight left turn and just kept going um so i mean probably at one point maybe maybe 30 yards but when i initially saw him it was probably 40 or 50 but uh i don't care to never see one him or that thing, that close again. I've heard people say, you know, like I told you, I'm pretty new to your show. I'm trying to go in order of, you know, listen to all the podcasts, but I've heard some people say about the Patterson film, I guess,

that the breast and everything. And I've seen that video, and I can, you can, I guess you could see the breast on it, but I never saw anything like that. I didn't see any genitalia or anything, so I'm going to assume it was a man. I wasn't really looking for it, but, you know, he got probably 30 yards, at the most 35 yards, I guess, from me. How did it compare to the Patterson Gimlin film compared to what you saw? the movement was a little was about the same i guess um really i mean just the walking was probably the walking is what stuck out and i think that's the best thing i compared it to to the patterson film um but uh i've nothing really anything else um i haven't really studied that

film so i couldn't really tell you i've just seen it once or twice No, I understand. Yeah, and there's different types of these creatures, too. You know, a lot of times people have different descriptions, and they'll say, hey, what I saw wasn't like the Patterson Kimmeling film, and some people will say, that's exactly what I saw. So I truly believe there's different types of these sayings. But I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the show and share the encounter, because I know it's not the easiest thing in the world. Everyone thinks it's so easy to come on the air and tell their encounter,

and, you know, entertain me. But people who come on, who these are real experiences that they've had, it's not so easy to come on the air and talk about it. And I try and make it as comfortable as possible to come on the air and talk about it. But I know deep down it's not comfortable for people to come on the air and talk about it. And I really do appreciate you taking the time to come on the show and share it, man. Thank you very much. I appreciate you having me on, man.

And it felt really, it felt like a big weight lifted off my shoulders. Finally, the day before yesterday when I got to talk to you, I'm actually telling somebody really helped, man. And I really, I really appreciate it. I help me out a lot. And I'm most definitely sure that you have helped a lot of people by just letting them tell you their story without, you know, tell them they're crazy. And I really appreciate it, man.

Yeah, well, you're not crazy, and I'm honored that you'd come on. Thank you again. Thank you, Wes. I want to welcome Russell to the show. Russell, how are you? I'm doing great, Wes. Thanks. No, I appreciate you coming on, and I know you run the International Bigfoot Conference. I went to it last year, had a great time. But if you would for the audience, talk a little bit about the International Bigfoot Conference, and when is it coming up?

How can people buy tickets? Give us all the info on it. You bet. This year on September 1st through 3rd, which is Labor Day weekend, in Kennewick, Washington, we have an international Bigfoot conference. It's going to be a great stage full of some of the top speakers that are bringing evidence that is the latest and greatest, most current version of what we're research is bringing to the table. So that's going to be really nice to see.

we had last year was our first year and it was great to have you there it was it was a lot of fun learned a lot from last year this year is going to be a much smoother conference with a little bit more of a break between our speakers and such but if people wanted to get tickets or to have a view of what the speakers were look at over some pictures that we had from last year's conference that sort of thing it's all one word it's international Bigfootconference.com. And on that site, there is a tab that says ticket info, contact info, if you wanted to be a vendor and have a vendor table at the conference, that's available.

You can purchase vendor tickets online or vendor booths online. You can also get your tickets for kids and adults. And the one thing I, the only thing that I would really like to say is last year we had just a few kids, maybe 8, 10 kids. And this year we're really, we have some great things for the kids to do when they get there. So don't think that this is just an all-adult, grown-up facility with speakers and no activities for the children. Bring your kids. It's going to be a blast for them as well.

Yeah, and I had a lot of fun last year. If you go to the International Bigfootconference.com, I definitely recommend getting your tickets now. I know it was pretty packed last year. And I know you're looking to open it up and have more people there. And it was a great venue. I mean, it's a beautiful place. The hotel is beautiful. The conference center.

I mean, it's just a great venue. And I really had a great time last year. It was a lot of fun to listen to some of the presentations and actually watch some of the presentations. And I know I've been, Russell and I've been talking about getting some poker matches going and just making it fun. You can't take life too seriously, you know, in this life. And it's a lot of fun to talk to all the researchers. People have heard on the show. You get to meet him in person and talk with them.

And I had a blast last year. I really did. Woody and I both had a great time last year. And I highly recommend it. So if the audience out there, if they go to the International Bigfootconference.com, definitely order your tickets. We'll be out there. I'd love to meet some of the

listeners too as well. Anything else you want to tell us about it, Russell? Yeah, actually, I think it's you and I have talked a little bit going back and forth about maybe having on Friday evening, having a little bit of space designated to have some cards on the table and play with

poker chips and not really a cash poker game, but a couple door prizes to give away for some of the players that actually want to come and have a good time and enjoy a hand up poker with you. But this year actually is the 50-year anniversary of the Patterson Gimlin film that was filmed in 1967. So that's kind of our theme this year is 50 years of questions, three days of answers, the Patterson Gimlin film. So a lot of the speakers are discussing the coverage of their theories, their findings, their evidence on that film from,

50 years ago. So it'll be a lot of discussion going on. One of our special guests will be Bob Gimlin himself. He's not going to take the stage as a speaker, but he will be there to meet people. And you can present your questions to him, you know, face to face and talk to him. What a, what a really neat guy and a great opportunity to meet somebody, an icon that's been such a large part of the Bigfoot world since 1967. Yeah, and Bob's a very approachable guy. He's a very nice man. I've met him on numerous occasions, and he really is a very kind man and very approachable. And I'm looking forward to it. So it's September 1st or the 3rd.

And again, go to the International Bigfoot Conference and get your tickets. Russell, I appreciate it again. Wes, thanks for having me. You have a great day. The International Bigfoot Conference.com. Definitely check it out. Had a great time last year. And, you know, it would be mainly Bigfoot stuff.

but if you want to lose in a game of Texas Holden, come on out, and I'm willing to oblige you. Let's jump to our final guest. I want to welcome Blaine to the show. And you guys might remember Blaine from the Monster Quest episode. Again, I think it was episode 312, the Snowgrove Lake. If you guys go back and listen to that episode, I had his father on. And Blaine was there when it happened. Blaine, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for being here. Sure, sure. Glad to be here. And, Blaine, you know, I don't think we should go over the Snellgrove Lake incident. I think most people can go back and listen to episode 312. But you were, gosh, a kid at the time, and you had the rock thrown at your head out there at the Snell Grove Lake incident during that Monster Quest episode. I wanted to ask you, I know prior to that incident, you didn't really buy into this whole Bigfoot thing. I know you kind of kind enough to listen to your dad's stories, but I know from talking to you that you really didn't buy into the Bigfoot thing,

that night that you had the rock thrown at your head, and most people listening know what I'm talking about on that Monster Quest episode, where the cabin was attacked. How did that change your outlook on this whole subject that night? You know, I went from one extreme to the complete other, and it's kind of affected my life. If I didn't know it would affect it so much, it wasn't until years later where I kind of got a little older and it really started bothering me. Like it just, it really bothered me.

I know at some point Monster Quest got canceled and finding Bigfoot came out. And, you know, I occasionally would go on to the BFRO and look at reports. and yeah, it just really is stuck in the back of my mind. I told people, you know, friends that I had in high school and all throughout high school, you know, occasionally. And, you know, as I got out of school, I would tell people occasionally, of course, no one believes you. And that's kind of something that, you know, really bothered me, I think.

Yeah, definitely as I got older. So what kind of happens is you start to like want to find some sort of closure. You know, you want to find some answers. And that's the one thing you hear most from witnesses. And you and I both have experienced it where you have something like this happened and you tell people and, you know, it's, oh, come on. You know, were you guys out there drinking? We're guys out there. But it's a unique place.

That's Snolgrove place is a very unique place because, you know, there's not a neighbor. nearby that could come and huff a rock at you. You're literally in the middle of nowhere, and everyone in your group is there. And so what else could it be? You know, bears don't throw rocks and bears don't huff pieces of lumber towards a cabin. And my heart went out to you. I remember watching that, and I know you were just a kid when that happened. And you could see it in your eyes during that Monster Quest episode. I think I don't remember it was the first one or second one, but you could see it in your eyes. I mean, you were terrified when that rock came and hit the side of the cabin. Actually, everyone looked terrified. Dr. Meldrum, everyone in that group looked terrified when that happened.

And you started actually going out and looking for these creatures. Do you want to walk into your encounter when you saw them? Well, yeah, it's kind of a, I kind of want to tell kind of how I got into it. because Snowville is one thing, you know, being out in the middle of nowhere in Canada. But in Minnesota, you know, around the cities, there's a few really cool areas, forested areas. And I was kind of under the assumption at the given point in time that Bigfoot kind of only existed in, like, the farthest reaches of the north, you know, like in Canada, north eastern Minnesota. but you do find in the reports on the BFRO that they're not necessarily in the middle of nowhere. They're not, you know, in just the northern part of Minnesota. They're not just in the, you know, really, really heavily forested areas where there's no one around.

You'll find reports really scattered around all over the place, some near town, some near larger cities. In some cases, it's really strange, but it wasn't intentional, but it was me and my girlfriend at this time. We wanted to go out somewhere creepy, you know, just go for a drive. And we had wanted to just kind of stargaze and hang out. We found this kind of creepy park reserve. It was like, you know, 40, 15 minutes away from where we were living at the time. And we drove out there. We found this kind of creepy dirt road and drove down.

And I don't want to give the exact location. But I'll definitely tell the story. We drove down this road and ended up just kind of sitting there most of the night. We just basically were talking, just having fun, enjoying the night. And they just got progressively later and like, oh, you know, crap, it's like 2.30. We should like go. And on the way out, for whatever reason, I kind of wanted to see the area. It was the first time I'd been to that area.

And I said, well, go left instead of going right, let's just kind of drive around and see. Because we didn't know if we'd come back to that specific area. this is kind of the thing that started all. We were driving down this, not major road, but it's a well-traveled road, but it kind of cuts in between this massive, massive park reserve. And we were driving about 50 miles an hour, I would say. And something ran in front of the car.

It was on two legs. It was jet black, probably seven feet tall. I don't know. I mean, it happened so fast. And I'm so glad that, you know, I had a witness with me that saw it. You know, it was my girlfriend that saw it as well. And the first thing I said was, what the heck was that? And she kind of looked at me and it's like, I don't know.

This thing ran out in front of the car down the stitch and like through this guy's backyard into the other side of the park reserve. It was just absolutely nuts. It was the weirdest thing. And of course, you know, we couldn't make out details. So it was like this big, giant black mass that was running on two legs that just, you know, just land super fast in front of our headlights. We talked about it on the way home, but a week went by, we didn't talk about it. And then finally we brought it up again.

We're like, wait a minute. That was really strange, you know, it was like three in the morning. This thing was just running too fast to be a person. I just, I really don't think it was a person. And we had talked about it. for, you know, quite some time. Like, well, why don't we go back? Remember, you know, I had been to Snowgo.

My dad's the producer of Monster Quest. I mean, that's what he did for a number of years. He would go out and send people out on these expeditions to look for strange cryptids. So it wasn't like a foreign concept to me to, like, you know, go out and do, if you want to call it big for research. So I think it was more just like we just wanted to know what was going on. at this specific area. So we started going back there quite frequently. And what we would do is we would drive the car in.

I think it was like early spring. So actually it was more, it was by May-ish, May 20th, May 30th. You know, it was starting to get really pretty nice out. But they had all the roads closed off in this park reserve. And so we'd have to park the car. because the roads were just too messed up to actually drive on. And we've actually almost gotten stuck quite a few times trying to get back there. And so we'd park the car and we usually get there a little bit later like six, seven o'clock.

And what we would do is we would hike down these roads and then we'd find like a cool trail and just go explore. And it was one of these times that we were doing this. We were on the way out and it was starting to get dark. And she was walking, you know, 60 feet in front of me. And I was kind of walking behind her. And we were just kind of taking in everything and looking around. And we had heard, obviously I knew a lot about, you know, these stick structures that people were finding. And so did she.

And we had kind of discussed this before. And she kind of screams out to me and says, look, look, look, look. And she points off into the woods. And I'm much farther behind her at that point. And I instinctively just turn left. I don't know why. I didn't even like really look where she was pointing. I mean, I just looked into the woods.

And I saw this large, grayish white, upright animal. It was very, very quick, super, super quick. And it took, like, it was, you know, a couple feet in this kind of marshy. It was in, it was actually standing in some water. And it was maybe 40, 50 feet away from me. I mean, it was relatively close. And it was, there's a slight kind of drop. And then like the train kind of turns in this really marshy area.

And then there's some like really thick tree coverage. And this thing takes one step and goes into the trees. And at that point, she's running towards me because I started freaking out then at that point as well. And she ran towards me and she could see all the trees still kind of moving and shaking. I just kind of described to her what I had seen. And she's like, oh, I was actually pointing to like this stick structure thing that I had seen. And so the funny thing about it was I probably wouldn't have even seen what I had saw if she didn't like point to something totally unrelated,

which is just kind of a weird coincidence. And again, it was, it was like a really quick sighting. But whatever was standing in this marshy area had to have been at least seven feet tall. Because I, you know, I'm 5-11 and we were on kind of the high ground. We were on this dirt trailer road. And this thing was taller than me. and it was down kind of a little drop-off and actually standing in some marsh.

So I really wish that I would have, you know, got to see more features and, because it was really interesting. And then they just kind of added this, like, really strange. It just made the area just seemed that much more strange. Like, okay, at that point, we're going, what's going on? You know, it was in a relatively short period of time

that these two things had happened something and ran in front of our car. and then I had seen something take, you know, just a few steps into these trees and just disappear. But it wasn't, just think about something that big and grayish white. I cannot think of any animal that would fit that description. Even though it was really quick, I just, I can't think, I can't imagine it would be a moose. It couldn't be a deer. It couldn't be a bear.

I mean, it's just, the whole thing was just really, really strange. Was it outlined more like a person when you saw it? Well, the one thing I remember more than anything was kind of like the back and what looked like shoulders. It was kind of hunched over. It wasn't built. It was built really big. So, no, I didn't get the impression of a person at all. And it had fur.

It was definitely fur that I was looking at. So, no, I mean, there's just no way it could have been a person. I mean, the first thing I thought was definitely animal of some sort. And the only thing I can really think was it was something upright, possibly a big foot. And what we ended up doing after I saw it was we sat there. We just kind of sat there on this dirt road and it started getting darker and darker. And we just, we didn't really know, like, should we just keep watching this area? is they're going to be something that kind of comes out at some point and nothing did it just got

just quiet it was really really interesting and so we ended up leaving at that point and we walked out and got back to the car and again same thing we kind of discussed what it happened and we're like okay we should go back you know we should keep going back this is really really strange so that's that's basically what we did is but but things got a little bit bit more interesting because just me kind of knowing about Bigfoot for so many years, like I said, again, with my dad doing Monster Quest. And I kind of had this opinion that Bigfoot's were mostly nocturnal. I mean, when I say mostly, I mean, I know there's a lot of sightings during the day, but I think they really like to cover it darkness, or at least that's kind of what I assumed.

And again, both the sightings, one of them obviously was during the day, but it was getting late in the day. And the other one was at three in the morning. And we continued on with the hikes during the day, but we didn't really see anything more. So we decided to start going there at night. You know, we'd find a really kind of cool, creepy spot near where both these things had kind of happened. And we would sit there and we'd, sit in the car and we'd get out and we do a wood knock or two and we do some like weird sounds something that you know we thought sounded cool and then we'd get back in the car and wait and we were

consistently doing this and in the first few times that we had went out there there was absolutely nothing that happened it was completely quiet it was just kind of you know it's still fun sitting out there kind of not knowing what would happen but things started to slowly take a turn I remember, you know, we went out there one night and we did some wood knocks and we started getting responses back. Generally, they were far away at first, but then, you know, that just intrigued us even further. We're like, okay, that's strange. You know, we're getting wood knocks at, you know, 11, 12 at night. And remember, this isn't like, this isn't like Canada where you have a situation where people are really, really far away.

you can really rule that out. We're in a place where people can get to, people do go there at night, I'm sure at times, although it's a pretty nasty area, because it's all marshland, and it's just full of mosquitoes. Like, when we go hiking in there, we have to wear full mesh netting,

because it's just brutal. You literally get eaten alive if you don't have nets on your face, so you don't have, like, it can be 80, 90 degrees, and you need to have, like, gloves on your hands or some sort of protection because the mosquitoes and black flies are just like they're just relentless. But yeah, so we started going out more and we started kind of getting these slow hints that something was going on. We started getting wood knocks back. And I just kept thinking, I kept putting myself in the place of Snowgrove and I'm like, okay, well, you know, even at Snowgrove Lake when we would go up there,

It would usually be towards the end of the trip that they would start interacting with us in some way, shape, or form. So we kind of hung in there and just kept doing this, and we'd go out there and we do our wood knocks. And eventually we'd start hearing what sounded like bipedal footsteps coming closer to the car. You know, we hear all these branches snapping and just really a lot of noise. So that's when we started thinking, well, what if this is a sense? Sasquatch where if there's something just kind of hanging around their car. And I kind of suspected that that might be the case, but there's really, there's really no way to know unless you, you know, you have a visual confirmation. But I will say that it did sound,

you know, these sounds that we heard were distinctly bipedal, you know. So one of the things that we would do is we'd hear kind of some walking around and and we'd have flashlights obviously and we'd shine them into the woods hoping to see what was making all this commotion and what we'd find is the flashlight would just bounce off the leaves

and you wouldn't really see anything we knew there was something big back there I mean had to have been at least a large bear size at least I mean deer are relatively quiet it had to be something significant because you know big limbs are being snapped

But for whatever reason, every time we would shine our flashlights and the walking would stop, you know, we just couldn't make out anything. So we were kind of confused as to how to proceed. Like, okay, what do we do? We've been coming out here all the time. We haven't seen anything. That kind of continued for a while. We decided not to shine the flashlight so much in the woods every time we heard a stick break.

to hopefully, you know, get something to come closer. And we started doing things like bringing fruit out, things like that, and we would kind of set it out. And the funny thing is, is pretty much never was the food touched. So it's kind of a fail, at least in that specific location. But at one point, we started hearing this kind of walking and crashing. And whatever was that was kind of hanging around, our car started getting, you know, more confidence, started getting closer and closer.

And we would keep our windows down. And I remember my girlfriend at the time going, what does that smell? She, she had this, like, she kept getting this strange smell. And when she had mentioned it to me, and she said, is something burning, what is that? What's that? The smells really weird. And I had not smelled anything at that point. And eventually, the wind kind of changed and I smelled it. It was really, really bizarre. It was this really, it was, it was, you know, I had to kind of think back at all these big foot sightings,

especially in Florida. I know they have a nickname for the big footst down there. They call them the skunk cake, skunk apes, obviously. And the smell, smelt very similar to what other people had described. It was kind of like a musty, smoky, sulfury, kind of like feces a little bit mixed in.

It was super, super strong. It was a very, very strong smell. It was like almost overwhelming at times, but it was very unique. Yeah, so generally when we go, my girlfriend would drive or a lot of the time she would drive and we're having all this really strange activity we would hear wood knocks and we would hear sometimes whoops and different things and just kind of strange things to

kind of keep us going out there obviously the smell would always return when we kind of return to the same spot and it wasn't until many months later it was uh it was more towards the end of the year. I think, you know, this whole thing started in early spring and it wasn't until, you know, late August, I think it happened, that she was sitting in the driver's seat. And this time it wasn't me that it seemed something that was her, which, you know, it's, I'm just glad that she had a sighting. I know that we saw something run in front of the car initially, but she didn't see what I had seeing previously on the trail. And she was sitting in the driver's seat, and it was like a really moonlit night, so it was

super bright. And she looks in her mirror, her driver's side mirror, and she freaks out. She just kind of, like, you know, just kind of panics because she sees this, like, large face kind of hanging over this back of the car. staring at her through the mirror and it really freaks her out and the way she describes it

and I'm going to try to describe it for her she describes kind of like this orangutan-looking face she said it was more orangutang right I asked her more more so than like gorilla

and it had jet black eyes and I had this kind of like auburn hair and this Auburn hair was like super kind of and she said it kind of looked frazzled. It didn't look real clean or neat, but she did say the face was very humanish looking.

It had, she said it had like a curious look on its face. It freaks her out. It freaks her out so much that she looked away from the mirror. And she had told me what she had seen and she was kind of panicking and she looked back in the mirror. And the thing had somehow disappeared. It either ran off or was still behind the car. And, you know, that kind of freaked me out too because I was thinking, oh, man, what if we have to pee?

There's things like right behind, you know, the rear of the car. And as far as that sighting, you know, I think we just kind of hung around in the car for, you know, a few hours longer. and we ended up leaving at some point. It was interesting because this whole time, I mean, that was kind of our main goal, is to see what was making all this noise, what was causing this kind of strange smell. And, yeah, we were lucky enough to actually have some sort of sighting.

Let me ask you, Blaine, were you worried at all? I mean, you know, years prior, you're in Canada. One of these things almost takes your head off with a rock, And it doesn't seem like they were super friendly. I mean, I wasn't there at Snowgrove, but from your dad and Monster Quest and seeing everything, it didn't seem like a warm welcome that you guys got from these things. And they seemed to be very aggressive with you guys.

Did it worry at all going out there? I mean, how did you get past the point of, I know curiosity kills a cat, but did it worry at all? I mean, was there ever a point where you're like, I'm out of here, man, we're done? Yeah, definitely curiosity drove us to keep going back out there. I mean, we just had to know.

But what we would do, and we found that when we'd get really relaxed or stop paying attention, like we hear all these branches snap, and whatever was in the woods would seem to, like, want to get closer. So we'd kind of just lay there, or not later, but we'd kind of sit next to a year and close our eyes and rocks, because, remember, we would work a lot, you know, the next night. So we'd be really tired. So we'd have to get some sort of sleep. And mostly activity would happen extremely late at night.

So it would happen around, you know, two, three in the morning. It was kind of like the peak time we found where whatever this was would come around. I'm assuming it was obviously what she had seen in the mirror. But when we would sit back and kind of close our eyes and try to relax, that's exactly what I would think about. I would think about snow growth and that log being thrown up the cabin. I just kept thinking in my mind, I'm like, every day we would go out there. I'm like, is this a day where a giant rock is going to, you know, come hurtling through the window?

Are we going to get, like, grabbed? We would actually, we would put our seatbelts on because we were scared that something would grab us and, like, to rip us out of the window. I know it sounds weird, but it just gave us, like, that extra level of comfort. Not that a seatbelt would actually do anything. No, it doesn't sound weird at all. And so what happens next? Do you guys see this saying?

And then do you guys leave or do you guys stay there? Yeah, we did end up staying there for a significant amount of time afterwards. But, yeah, we were, I mean, we were extremely scared. I mean, I'd be lying if I said we wanted. But again, we were really curious and our hearts for racing. And we did end up leaving, you know, we kind of just left it at that. We didn't get outside the car. We didn't like go walking around the car.

We didn't shine lights in the woods. We kind of just, you know, decided, okay, let's just go. This is, you got to see something great. I think after that, my girlfriend, Maria, she didn't want to go out really so much anymore. So whatever she saw in the mirror was enough for her to go, okay, this is really freaking weird. I don't think I want to do this anymore. So, I mean, I don't blame her. Me personally, I wasn't ready to like just give up.

I really wanted to see, I wanted to see one up close, you know, in enough detail where I can make out some features. And that was kind of like the big thing that kind of haunted me, you know, the whole thing. snow growth things we heard all this uh obviously we had rocks thrown at us uh we had that blog thrown at the camera we never actually at least on that trip i never got to see anything i never got to see what was doing it and that always really really bothered me so i wanted to see one of these things of close but lucky enough i was able to do that um but it wasn't until many years after this this whole kind of thing started up. And what happened was I, me, me, both me and Maria, again, my girlfriend at the time,

we wanted to tell someone, so we had like an extra person to go out with. And so we ended up telling a guy that we worked with at the time. She actually worked in the same building as me at the time. And we told a co-worker of ours, and we kind of told him like, yeah, this strange stuff is happening. You should really come out with us. I think he'll be blown away. And I knew he had an open mind. And so that's exactly what happened.

He would go out with us occasionally, actually quite a bit. He would go out, and he would be one of the rare people that would actually go out and sit out with us until, like, you know, three, four in the morning. I don't think there's a lot of people that would want to sit in this next. nasty swamp full of mosquitoes. And it was because the first time we brought him out there, he had heard these wood knocks, you know, like from three different directions, and they got continuously closer.

And to the point where there was a wood knock not far from where we were standing. And so he was just, like, blown away. And so after Maria kind of was, she was kind of like done, like, you know, I don't want to do this anymore. And I want to do some other stuff. And that's fine, whatever. So me and my co-worker, Jim, and he's actually a very good friend of mine,

we kind of started going out by ourselves a lot. And we had found a new area, one that wasn't so bad as far as, I mean, it wasn't quite as marshy, so you just didn't get eaten alive by mosquitoes, and it was a really neat area, and we kind of wanted to see,

you know, is there the same kind of activity in other spots? And so we focused on this one area for quite some time, and we started getting results slowly again, just like the other area. And it turned into this big two-year deal. I mean, we ended up spending, we were on our third year of doing this stuff.

And this whole time we would hear stuff, you know, crashing through the brush. We would hear like strange whoops at times. We'd get stuff thrown at us. And we never actually would see what was doing it. Like it would always manage to be there at night And again, it sounds like we would just go out there and this stuff would happen. No, it was like we'd go out there and we'd have to wait for hours and hours and hours.

We'd be extremely patient. And eventually, yeah, something would kind of get some curiosity and would come check us out and interact with us for a short period of time. And we just never got fortunate enough to, you know, see it during the day, see what we see, have a really good, clear daytime. I'm citing. That wasn't until I finally, it's really strange because I think bringing a female with to do research, if you want to call it that. I think it makes a difference to a degree. I don't know if they feel more calm.

I don't know if there's a sexual aspect to it. If Bigfoot shares some DNA with humans, there may be some sort of sexual aspect to it. But it seems like whenever I would bring Maria with, to go out and kind of sit out at night and do these wood knocks and kind of see what would happen. We'd always seem to get a lot of really strange activity. And this is a really interesting night because this is, you know, this whole two years, nothing like this has happened. And we're on our third year and it's early on in the year.

And we are part in this little cul-de-sac. area. And we had just been kind of out hiking through this park reserve. And me and Jim had been going out there quite a bit. And we had, again, you know, the same kind of activity where we'd hear something crashing around through the bush. We'd get stuff thrown at us. We'd hear strange growls, things like that nature. So we kind of knew that there was something going on in the area. And Maria kind of joined me that specific night. And we did some high school. making around and she kind of seemed like she wasn't very comfortable with being away from the car. And so I said, okay, well, let's go sit in, at least sit by the car.

So there's some sort of safety. We're in this little turnaround area. And the front, the car is kind of facing downwards, like kind of down that slight incline. And we're surrounded by trees on the whole front half of the vehicle. And there's trees behind us, too, but it's kind of a more kind of a dirt clearing where you can kind of sit and relax. you're not too close towards. And we were out there until 2.30 in the morning. And not a lot has happened.

You know, we'd occasionally hear some branches snap, and we were kind of like, okay, you know, it's weird, but not a lot was really going on. And I had smelled a skunk, like an actual skunk, not a big boy it was just a regular old skunk and it was getting late and I'm like well

I don't know if there's a skunk kind of run around here but I don't want to get sprayed and getting late let's just sit in the car for a little bit and we got in the car and immediately after I mean it wasn't two

three minutes after we got in the car all of a sudden there's crashing on all three sides of the vehicle I mean, just in a sane amount of movement sticks breaking, like just snapping, what sounds like bipedal footsteps, but just like this huge commotion. And we're both kind of like, what the heck? We were freaked out.

And so I told her just to kind of relax and let's see what happens. You know, it's just sit here. When those were rolled down, not all the way. I think I ended up rolling them up a little bit just because it was really freaky. So we were kind of just sitting there, just waiting to see what was going to happen. And again, I know you brought up Snowgrove, and that's exactly what I was thinking, like, is this going to be like some big thing that happens? Or is something really crazy going to happen tonight?

And we're sitting there, and she started hearing a lot more commotion on her side. And my heart was pounding through my chest at this point. and she was really freaked out too. And so I kind of feel bad because this was like the first time that she had really came out and kind of stuck with it and really stayed out late, you know, since she had kind of stopped going out. And there's always commotion on her side and then it kind of stops. And you could hear something urinating at like the front corner of the vehicle.

So, like, off, more on her side. But it was, like, just long, extreme. It was just a loud, gerination. Wow. Yeah, it was, uh, she just, like, got totally freaked out by that. She's like, what the heck? And she was, like, squeezing my hand. And I remember getting super annoying because, like, I was scared, too.

Like, the heart was pounding into, like, throat. And every time she would squeeze my hand really hard, It would just make it that much more worse. You know, you're jumpy. And this thing stops peeing. And I kept telling them, I'm like, just chill out. It's just, you know, I really wanted to see one. That was like the big thing for me.

I wanted to see one up close. And so we did. We kind of just sat there and we were relaxing. And it kind of got like eerie, quiet. You know, there's. again this thing stopped seeing and it got kind of more quiet more tame and um we had both at our eyes closed the idea was to kind of just hang out until the sun came up because we were hoping that when the sun came up we would be able to actually make out what was like seeing around us we didn't like

the idea of actually i don't even know if we had flashlights at the time that specific night um i didn't want to turn my headlights on and and scare something away I really wanted whatever it was out there to just be there when the sun came up. That was kind of my goal. And some people might think that's stupid. I don't know. I thought it was a good idea. And I'm glad we did it this way because it did work out.

So I remember we were sitting there in the darkness. And it was, you know, getting closer to sunrise. I think it was like 3.30, 4 o'clock in the morning at this point in time. Maria just starts grabbing my hand, just squeezing it. like super hard. I'm just thinking to myself like, gosh, stop. Like, I get it. There's like lots of weird stuff going on.

And she just keeps squeezing. She's like, there's one right outside the window. And I'm like, what? So I open my eyes and I'm looking around and I'm looking outside the window. And I'm kind of moving my head back and forth. And I'm like, I don't see anything. What are you talking about? And again, remember, it's still pretty dark.

There is a lot of light pollution that night. So it was you could see somewhat, but it wasn't like super, super clear. And it is getting closer to sunrise at this point. And she's like, it's right there. Like it was, it was. And so all of a sudden my eyes focused. And there was something hunched over. So it wasn't standing on, on two legs.

It was on all fours. But you could see the silhouette of this thing. and it was rocking back and forth looking in my window and it was probably you know 20 feet away 25 feet away and I would like stare at it I'm just like what the heck what is it doing the other thing that's worth mentioning is at this time when all this stuff is going on and this thing standing out there the same smell that we would smell at this other location was very prominent. Like you could smell it. It was that weird sulfur, smoky, musty, kind of just really distinct

smell was like in the air. So basically I got her to calm down again. I'm like they're, you know, it's, it was, it was really weird. But we decided to just kind of pretend like we were, not pretend, but, but, uh, just kind of relax and close our eyes. And the idea was, again, because were getting so close to the sun coming up that the sun would come up when we'd be able to like observe this thing hopefully for a long period of time and the sun started coming up it was still very dark and you could hear some kind of sticks breaking and crashing and there's this hill on my side of the car and it was this not super steep hill it was kind of this rolling hill it goes like six seven feet up and there's lots of trees and foliage and coverage and

it started getting brighter. And I looked out my window to make sure that I could still see something and I could, you know, make out this shape. It looked like they were in just kind of the tree line, but it was still kind of too dark to really make anything out. But I'm like, I'm pretty sure they're still right there. And it ended up getting bright enough to the point where I could start making out facial features. And I could see their eyes. And what was interesting, that's the sun came on. their eyes started glowing this really strange,

not glowing, I shouldn't say glowing, they started reflecting like a, like a really strange, bright neon green, similar to how a cat's eyes would reflect if you were to shine a flashlight on them. And I kind of suspect it was because the sun was rising directly in front of where they were looking at us. So it was kind of this weird situation where you had the sun rising behind us and they were looking in our direction.

And I think that was causing their eyes to kind of reflect this really neon color. But I'm not 100% sure. It's just kind of like my working theory. So eventually it got bright enough to where I could start seeing their eyes, seeing their brow ridge, seeing, you know, their fur. It was like a dark black. and the first thing I was thinking was holy crap

this thing is massive like way bigger because you picture something in your mind's eye and for whatever reason it tends to be more human size like when you hear the branches snap you kind of think of something like more human size

I don't know why it is at least at least from me and so I just I just remember like thinking like that is like the shoulder width was like double the size of my shoulder width so it's considerably bigger and the arms were just super muscular and the other thing I thought was very interesting was the fur seemed very clean like it like the fur had this kind of shine through it and it wasn't I don't I guess I guess you kind of expect more of like a matted like just gnarly looking thing

and that's just kind of wasn't really the case it was more it's more clean looking. The other thing that's interesting is it wasn't standing up. It was on all fours. So you could see part of its like bodocks, I guess you could say, and then you can see kind of part of its back. It was not completely front-on angle, but it was a little bit off to the side.

And you could make out like the top part of their arms, their biceps and so on. But there's a lot of tall grass right there. So I couldn't see if they're, hands were like if they were sitting on their knuckles or how exactly their hands were. But I could make out a lot of their arms and I can make out, you know, obviously their facial features. And so I decided to get out of the car and just walk up as close as I could to get a better look. And I had to ask Maria, like, should I do this? I had to ask her like multiple

times and I think I was like waiting for her to say, no, and I don't do it. But she never did. She's, She's kind of like, yeah, yeah, go ahead. Go walk up there, you know. And they were obviously not as close as when it was dark, and they were kind of slain back and forth. And it wasn't just one, which is really interesting. There was two of them, and they were side by side. And I walked, I got out of the car and walked closer to them.

and I tried to get as much information as I could. I tried to look at the face mostly. I actually really couldn't stop looking at their eyes and their face. Their head and one of the main things that stuck out to me that I thought was really, really interesting. And I don't know why I remember this so much. But the back of their head, they had like a, I don't know if you want to call it like a tuft.

but I had pretty short hair, but if I was to take my hand and kind of push the hair up on the back of my head and create like this strange, like culloch almost, almost like a cullock, but they both had it, and it looked, it just looked weird. It just looked weird,

but that's, that's one thing I do remember a lot. And then the other thing that was interesting was their facial, like I remembered seeing the Patterson footage quite a bit. And it looks like the Patterson footage, there's lots of hair on, on Patty's face. And these two things that were kind of hunched over staring at me were they didn't have

a lot of hair on their face. Obviously they had like hair on the side of their face, but like around their eyes and like on their nose and where their mouth was. There was like really no hair. It was kind of a smooth charcoal gray skin. It didn't look. The skin didn't look very wrinkled. It looked more.

I guess it wasn't really how I pictured them to look. And it was creepy, but I think once I actually got out of the car and got the courage to walk up a little ways, and I didn't go too far, just because, I mean, the whole deal was super, I mean, the whole concept walking up to a big foot is not, I don't know, it was just freaky. So, yeah, I got a good look at him, and I immediately turned around and said, to this,

And when I was walking back, I didn't even hear it. I must have been so scared that I, like, everything just kind of blanked out. But Maria could hear from the car, from her perspective. It was much harder to see anything from her perspective because she was on the far side. Like, the tail was on my side of the car, and I drove a price with Farnert C, and they have, like, these really low profile windows. And so it's kind of hard for to see directly up this little embanky. bankment. But she could hear all this commotion as I was walking back to the car like six snapping. And when I got back in the car, they were, they basically had turned around and left as

soon as I had turned around. So yeah, that's, that's really it. I mean, that was kind of like the big moment where I'm like, oh, wow. Yeah, no kidding. I mean, it takes a lot of balls to walk up on these things. It takes a lot of balls. I know guys have been doing this forever and the moment there's any sort of commotion or anything, they turn around and run and I guess I can relate to that more than having the nuts to get out and walk towards them. Did they react at all when he got out and he started walking towards him? No, they had this really intense stare on their face

and like looking back, it's kind of a it kind of looked like a blank stare. It kind of just really flat-mouthed, really kind of like... But no, they didn't really relax. I think they were like... They kind of seemed like somewhat curious. They were kind of like... Didn't do a whole lot.

It wasn't until I turned around that they decided to bolt off in the other direction. And why they stuck around for so long is kind of beyond me. I don't know why that is. I don't know if it was the female aspect. They may have been, uh, maybe it was a, maybe it was like a Armand type thing. Maybe it was a sexual thing. Because it was interesting how the one peed on my girlfriend's side of the car. It does seem like some sort of sexual elements or maybe it's a territorial thing, but I don't know, you know.

Yeah, it's, it's odd. And, you know, the thing is, I think you change the game when you get up and you start walking towards them. I think you changed the game. it throws them off. They're not really sure how to react to that because they're probably not used to someone walking towards them. I'd imagine that was probably the first time

they'd ever seen something like that. And I think in situations like that with Sasquatch, I think you change the game. It's like I was just telling the previous guest, like in a bar, and forgive me for my hillbilly way of explaining this, but the guy in the bar, you know, I used to break up fights all the time and the guy barking at you the most and telling you how he's going to beat you up and kill you.

And those guys never made me nervous. The guys that sat there and just stared me down, those are the guys that made me nervous because you're not really sure how they're going to react. And I kind of think Sasquatch is the same way. You're not really freaking out. You're walking out to get a better look. And I think it throws them off. They're not really sure how to react to that because you're not, it's not really

aggressive and it's not really, you're not acting like you're terror. And so they're not really sure what you're going to do. And so I understand the blank stare of them not really. I would imagine if you would have gotten closer, it probably would have been a different story. But for the audience listening, can you describe the face, Blaine? You know, a lot of people haven't seen these things. And the face always fascinates me because you'll get a different, I think there's different types of these creatures. And you'll tend to get different descriptions a lot based on regions of,

especially in the United States, you'll get a different description like from Washington State than you will down in Texas or down in Florida. It's almost like they're talking about kind of the same creature, but the face is always different. But for the audience listening, would you mind describing the face what you saw? Imagine if Bigfoot and Sasquatch didn't exist. How would you describe it to someone what you saw? Well The face Imagine

It was I remember when I saw them I thought it was very Guerrilla-like In a lot of ways So I mean picture gorilla I don't want to say Grillo mixed with a human

Because it's too simple I'm going to try to explain a little bit better Imagine a Gorilla with not such a Pushed-up nose More of a flat nose, really big, brow-rich, more of a kind of a flat, human-like face, which really not, well, pretty big lips, pretty wide, big lips,

like a grayish kind of charcoal skin tone. As far as the, it's kind of a hard thing to describe. I mean, it's probably easier for me to draw than to try to. describe to someone. This was my first reaction is I thought, dang, these things look really guerrilla-like

in a lot of ways. And I don't know if it was the skin color or the maybe it was the fact that they were on all fours that made it so guerrilla-like to me. But I think the one thing

I don't remember seeing, and I'm not sure why, I don't know if their hair covered it, but I don't remember seeing, years. I don't know if that's a common thing. But I guess it just went past me. It was like one of those things that either I didn't see because I wasn't paying attention or, you know, they weren't very visible. It's always interesting when you talk to witnesses because sometimes they'll say it looked very human-like. And some of it might be our perspective when we, you know, I think as humans

we try to, I know there's a scientific term for it, but we try to humanize animals, whether it be gorillas or, you know, even a lot of people do it with their dogs. They try and humanize. And so a lot of times we try and relate what we're seeing to us. And that's interesting that you thought they were more guerrilla-like. Did the expressions change at all on the face, or was it more us just kind of a blank stare? Yeah, it was really flat-faced, really blank stare.

You know, they almost looked it was intense though at the same time. It was, but no, they didn't really change their expression much. But again, between the time, because we were trying to just kind of relax and not stare in the direction too much because the idea

was the sun would come up eventually to the point where we could get a better look at, them and you know it as far as when I got out of the car and walked up to them and kind of stirred at them and happened very quick but no they didn't they didn't growl they didn't bear any teeth they didn't act aggressive anyway they didn't really change their facial expression so yeah they were pretty flat face I would say but yeah they definitely reminded me of a like a silver back gorilla or than anything

I mean, the way they were built, just, like, just crazy muscle. And obviously, they look different to that. But, I mean, it's just, like, their overall impression, I was like, dang, right? They were really low. Like, I don't know why I got that impression that. I just didn't expect it, I guess. How far away from you was the creatures when you walked? What was the closest point you were to them when you were looking at them when you got out of the car?

I know. 30, 40 feet. Oh, wow. So you were really close. Yeah, but keep in mind, there's a lot of trees kind of in the way, and there's a lot of long grass kind of covering their hands. And so, like, it was mostly the front part of the body that I could see very clear, and then I could see part of their back a little bit, you know, I couldn't really see their back legs very well.

And so there was a lot of stuff kind of in pain my vision, and I was, my heart was racing and so, but yeah, I did get reasonably close. And the funny thing is, is, you know, I thought I'd be happy after I had a setting like that. And all it's really done is just kind of made me want to go out more. Yeah, no, and I understand that. And I think that happens to most people. It seems like the more you get involved in this, the more, and I get why you would go out, out. You know, I know a lot of people listening might hear the Snow Grove or remember that

episode and think this guy's nuts. But it happens to all of us. You want to go back out. And even though at the time you said, I don't want to see him again, I think deep down a lot of people want to see him again. They want answers. They want to know what is this thing? What happened next? Did you get in the car and you guys just leave? Yeah, after we made out a commotion and they kind of took off one direction. We sat there and kind of discussed what had happened, and we're just like, well, we never really had activity during the daytime like that.

So I assuming that they had taken off and just went to do whatever they did. And yeah, so, I mean, remember, I mean, it was like 5.30 in the morning at this point. We had been up all night. We were just exhausted. All I could think about was just going home and going to sleep. I was just d'eed.

After your adrenaline rushing for that long of a time, and it was like an hour and a half, two hours that my heart was just pounding through my chest. So it's a lot to, like, deal with. And then the adrenaline starts running off

and you just get really tired. You just like with our Jake. Yeah. Yeah, we left in winter three. Let me ask you, what is your own personal opinion? What do you think Sasquatch is? What do you think that these creatures

are. And there's no wrong answer. Obviously, no one has one in their garages are studying, but what is your own personal opinion? What do you think that these things are? I think there's some really special characteristics about them. For example, when I saw them, I thought it was really interesting to color their eyes in the way it deflected the summit. It just looks really unique. I think they may have some sort of special vision that allows them to see really good at night. I don't think They're supernatural in a sense. I know a lot of people have kind of went down that path.

And I think they're fresh and blood. I think they may have some sort of what people would call super abilities. Obviously, we know they have super strength. But I think they may have like a really great sense of smell. I think they probably have these things and that's what's kind of allowed them to stay hidden for so long. But one thing that bothers me, and I was telling you this, Wes, is it's 2017. And we haven't gotten better footage than the Paris and Gimlin film. And that, to me, that really bothers me because there's a lot of people out in the woods with really amazing,

according to really great telephoto lenses, and they have great blinds, and that's what they do. They sit out in the woods, and they film nature and they film animals and they film bears. The fact that we haven't gotten that piece of footage just really bothers me. And sometimes I have to ask myself, is there some other weird phenomena kind of going on? Obviously, this physical tracks and physical evidence and hair and all this great stuff, but the fact that we haven't gotten good video is just really weird to me. And so hopefully we will soon.

I tend to agree. and that's a part that bothers me. And not only that, but, you know, we talked about in the last show, the fact that they're reported everywhere. Not only in the United States, you know, we think of, I think as Americans, sometimes we get small-minded in thinking this is just going on here. But it's going on in Australia. It's going on in Asia. It's going on in Russia. It's going on in Canada.

It's going on. Even in Mexico, I've gotten reports. And there's really not, it's frustrating at times. Like you said, it's 2017, and why haven't we caught up with these things is beyond me? Did you guys ever go back to that area? Yeah, yeah, we go back to there actually still to this day. So far, I mean, that was our third year in, and so this is going to be our fifth year. So it's just starting to kind of warm up here in Minnesota.

So, yeah, we're going to continue going back. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of work, too, though. I mean, you have to be consistent. You have to keep going out every day or as much as you possibly can. And just like, I look back and I'm like, wow, I spent three years going out almost every night to get like this one night where we have all this crazy stuff happened. And I finally get a glimpse of them. And I'm just like, that is a lot of freaking work.

Like, do I want to keep doing it? You know what I mean? Yeah, no, I know what exactly mean. And I always tell people that, you know, a lot of people listen to the show. And I know there's skeptics that listen to the show. And I'm like, hey, go out there. Go look. Go look for yourself.

Don't take witnesses' testimony as, you know, the end all appeal. Go out and look for yourself. The chances of running into them, like you said, I mean, you find an area and you start going out there. And you can't interact with them. What worries me with these things? is you'll hear a lot of witness encounters where these sayings tend to have very short tempers or tend to snap on you. And it changes on a dime. And I've had a lot of witnesses on the show where situations to where they think they're the lovable creatures, all of a sudden one night

everything changes and all of a sudden they're not the lovable creatures. You know, they tend to be very aggressive with people. Not always. But, you know, in a lot of cases, that seems to be be what happens. I'm wondering if the area you're going into, they've probably have seen you come in there every night, probably realized you guys weren't firing off guns, you guys probably aren't. There was really no threat with you guys. And maybe that's why they were still checking you guys out when the sun came up. Have you looked around that area and tried to see where you might catch them bedding down during the day? Yeah, yeah, we found some interesting spots.

Well, you know what? It's hard to say if it was a, you know, Sasquatch or some other animal, we found some really cool stick structures that I could send pictures of. You know, the truth is, I really don't know whether sleeping or bedding down. We found suspicious areas, but, I mean, we know deer bet down and they kind of push grass down. It's really hard to say, like, I'm not going to be one of those people that says, oh, this is you know, a big foot bed. Like, I don't know.

It's hard for me to say, the truthfully, I don't even know where they go during the day. I wish I did. Because we go out during the day and, and me and Jim do, and we hike around all over. There's just no sign that, we'll find, like, cool stick structures

and tree breaks and that kind of thing. But we'll have no interactions of any sort. We will, it's only at night or we'll get some sort of interaction I always wanted that. Like, where the heck do they go during the day? Maybe you just go where no one else goes. Maybe they go in like a really remote part.

More remote than, you know, maybe it's a place surrounded by March when no one will ever get to. It's hard to say. It'd be nice to find answers on it, you know, and it's, that's a fascinating encounter, you know, and your descriptions are pretty close to what you hear other people say. The eye shine really fascinates me because I've had other witnesses. that have had these things on their property, as you and I were talking about prior to us going on the air, and we were talking about how different light sources will create different colors of their eyes. And it makes you wonder if that's the case, if that's really the case of the eyeshine,

why some people will report red eyes and some people will report green eyes. Some people will report more of amber eyes that they see. and it makes you wonder if it's the light source coming in and hitting it, which is unique. Like you said, it's very unique because you don't find that with too many different animals. Generally, you'll get one color, and it doesn't really matter what light you hit them with. If they have reflective eyes, you'll get that same color. And with these things, it gets reported different colors by different witnesses. So it really makes you wonder.

I think they do come out at night, and I think that's when they mainly move around. I think that's when they feed. Not always, though. You know, you hear encounters that are broad daylight, people who are hiking run into them. And so it really makes you think, because it's not consistent. You know, it's not only at night and it's not only during the day with different witnesses. So it really makes you think about what they're doing and why they're out doing it. I know at night it would be easier to move around. It'd be easier to hunt at night. in their, you know, if I were to put myself in their shoes, so to speak, it would make more sense to move around at night, especially being as large as they are, it'd make more sense to move around. It'd be safer to move around at night. Yeah, I do think that they are primarily nocturnal. I mean, I just think for something to stay hidden like this for so many years, I mean, this mystery is just dragged on and on and on. I do think that they're primarily nocturnal. I think they're, I mean, this is just my personal opinion, but I think that's one of the reasons they're, you know, that they've been so well hidden for so many years. And I just really hope that someone gets some good video. And I want to point out, too, that during the sighting, when I got out of the car, because some people are probably saying, why didn't you, like, what about your phone and take a video?

and that's one of the things I asked myself but there was two problems with that situation is we had been out there so long that my phone was dead like it just eventually died I have an iPhone and it was dead and the other thing is

you know it was like this rare moment for me to actually like get a sighting like I don't know I guess I was more focused on the visual aspect trying to finally see one, I just totally forgot, you know, about a camera. You know, I suppose I could have maybe plug my phone in on, like, a charger in the car,

and then turn it on and got the camera ready and, like, ran out there with the point at him. But who knows how that would have went, right? It wasn't terrible. Yeah, no, and I understand that. And, you know, that's really the last thing on your mind when you come across these things. It really is a lot. I mean, and until you're in that position, it's hard for people to understand that. but it's the last thing on your mind.

You know, you're wanting to get a good visual and you're hoping your girlfriend says, no, don't go. And, you know, she never says that. So I'm sure there was a lot of hesitation on your part to actually step out of the car. And I'm just glad that they were, the whole situation was cool. You know, there was no, they didn't charge you, they didn't come after you. They didn't look at it as you being a threat because that could have gone bad really quick. Yeah, there's a few times where me and Jim would be out late at night in our little area where we like to go.

And we'd be maybe being a little obnoxious or something and something would like just bowl through the woods towards us and snap branches and like literally just it was almost like a bluff charge of some sort. But it would always like stop before it came out of the woods. and there was one time that I remember we heard this like blood-curdling like grovering like cough kind of noise

while this thing was just bolting through the woods and it was it scared us enough to where we're like yeah we're done let's go like right now it was really really freaky but overall overall just doing this going out all the time which is pretty positive it.

Like, there hasn't been a ton of stuff where I look back and go that, that was really scary. Snellville was probably the most aggressive, just that big log being thrown, because that could be dangerous if it hit a window or something, or, you know, if it hit a person. But, yeah, nothing, nothing really too aggressive as happens, at least with our research down down here. Well, I appreciate you coming on and sharing your encounters and just taking the time to come on, Blaine. I really do appreciate you taking the time to come on the show, so thank you. Yeah, no problem. That was cool. It was fun. I'm glad you do Sasquatch Chronicles. It's really cool.

I mean, some of the stories you have on and some eyewitnesses, it's just fun. It's a really cool show, man. I appreciate it, ma'am. Thank you again. And that's it for tonight, everyone. Remember, if you've had an encounter, shoot me an email. My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. Until next time, everyone. Across the country, faster than the coronavirus and wagering week is your antidote. I'm Tom Barton, and I'm a veteran sports analyst

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