Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:616 I Chased This Creature Across A Walnut Orchard

Episode Date: January 12, 2020

Tonight we speak with Norm who is a retired California Highway Patrolman. Norm goes into great detail about what he saw back in 1958 on his father's property. He said "We were doing work for my father on the property when this thing showed up. Keep in mind this is the late 50's and no one talked about Bigfoot or Sasquatch like they do today. I got a great look at it, we tried to keep up with it in this 1941 pickup. I would be happy to come on and share what I saw many years ago. I eventually became a police officer and never spoke about what I saw. There was other strange things going on that property but it was always blamed on something else."   Visit our website HERE for additional weekly shows and exclusive content.

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 was showing me. I'll never forget how evil the eyes were. It was a 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 out, he'd be 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. Got a great show planned for you tonight. We're going to be talking to Norm. And Norm is a retired California Highway Patrolman. And he had an encounter back in, I believe it was 1958 on his father's

property out there in California. And this is before the Patterson Gimlin film. This is before a lot of people were talking about Sasquatch outside of the Native Americans. And the encounter always bothered Norm. He was never really sure what he saw that day. And it's kind of fascinating to talk to someone in that time period. And then 10 years later ask him, what did you think when he saw the Patterson Gimlin film? If you've had an encounter and he'd like to be on the show, shoot me an email. My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. And if you get a chance to check out Sasquatch Chronicles.com, you can become a member and get additional shows. Let's jump into it tonight.

I want to welcome Norm to the show. Norm, thanks for coming on. Hey, thanks a lot, Wes. Appreciate it. Yeah, I really appreciate being here. And I know you had quite the encounter. And this happened many, many years ago out there in California. I believe it was what, the 50s, wasn't it, Norm?

58. July of 58. I was, I'm 75 now. I was about 14 or 15 at the time. Okay. And a long time ago. All right. Well, perfect.

If you would take us back to that moment. I know we talked a little bit about it last night, but I'm excited to hear the full encounter. If you would take us back to that moment, kind of tell us what you were doing. feel free to share any information you want about the area and walk us into what happened. The walnut ranch where this occurred is in Lake County in northern California. It's about 120 miles north of San Francisco, about 130 miles west of Sacramento. And it's up in a mountainous area, lots of brush land, a lot of forest, pine forest.

And so this walnut orchard project that my dad was a general manager of was created out of all this very high, thick brushland. And the area is very volcanic, volcanic soil, volcanic rocks, that kind of thing. So they carved this orchard out of a pretty rough area. but the ranch is surrounded on all sides by, you know, some very, very dense brush that, you know, I don't know what lives out there. You know, deer, we had a lot of deer and stuff like that. But anyway, the, I grew up on this ranch and I lived there from the time I was four and a half years old until I went off to college at age 18. and my my dad engineered this whole ranch and it it the irrigation system was was really a difficult thing for him to to put together and so he had this plan eventually that he was going to irrigate the orchard 24 hours a day seven days a week starting in May and shutting it off shutting off the irrigation system in September. So he started hiring people from the local town of Kelseyville and Lower Lake and places like that.

And these people didn't work out very well. They were not very reliable. They were out there, you know, and they didn't do a very good job. They were drinking on the job. They never showed up for work. And so my dad had really a lot of problems with these guys. So he fired them all and really thought he probably was going to give up on his 24-hour irrigation. project when my brother and I thought that every summer we worked on the ranch and we thought if we could talk him into

letting us just manage the irrigation system and he just would not have anything to worry about. He just let us do it. Then we'd make more money and we could set our own schedule and do whatever we wanted to do

in our off time. And so we approached them and eventually after about a day or so. He said, yeah, yeah, you guys can go try it, see how it worked out. He saw that we could do it. So we're out there in the middle of the night, two, three o'clock in the morning. Sometimes we get up, we go out, and we just move this irrigation pipe all through the orchard. And so on this particular evening, it was probably around 7.30 in the evening. And the sun had just kind of gone down behind the hills. and we were all done moving the irrigation pipe. And what we were doing, and we had a friend with us that also worked with us,

a guy by the name of Jack. He was about our age. And so we were in this old Chevy pickup, 041 Chevy pickup that my dad had. And we were just driving around the ranch, and we were just looking at the irrigation system to make sure the sprinklers were not plugged up, that the lines are not blowing apart and all that kind of stuff. And I came down to this one corner of, it was kind of an intersection. Our orchard was laid out, the 500 acres was laid out in 40 and 55 acre kind of plots.

And so each 40 acre parcel of walnut orchard was a quarter of a mile square, 320 feet on all four. sides. And if you went diagonally across the 40-acre field is about 1870 feet. And this part of the orchard was pretty flat at the bottom where we spotted this creature. But at the top where it eventually went, it got very steep. It got up to like 15% grade. And it was very steep. And because there was a lot of irrigation going on in there. It was muddy in there too. But anyway, to just back up a little bit, we were coming down this road, we made a right turn at this intersection. There was not supposed to be anybody in the orchard. There's not going to be anybody on the ranch. All the hired hands, they're about five of them. They went home at five o'clock. Mom and dad are home in the ranch house.

and we came around this intersection and we see something on two legs, a bipedal creature of some kind, didn't know what it was, man, didn't know what it was, was walking through the orchard. It was about maybe 75 feet, maybe 100 feet back in the orchard. So we couldn't see anything but just about the knees down or thereabouts. So I kind of pulled the truck around to try to get a better look at what was walking out there. And before we could identify this thing or even get a full look at it, it took off running. So I could see that the animal or the creature or whatever we thought it was at the time was taking off at a diagonal across this particular 40-acre field. and so I accelerated this old Chevy truck and I had to I couldn't drive through the orchard

just wet and plowed field and it just gets stuck so I had to use the farm roads so I went all the way down to have to drive a quarter of a mile down to where our barns are turn right and go up this very steep hill to try to see if I could intercept you know this this thing that we saw running through the orchard and so the whole time I was driving and trying to get to a place where we could get a better look at what this thing might be. My brother and this guy Jack, this kid Jack, were kind of keeping me informed about the location and the progress of this thing as it came across the orchard. So we got about halfway or maybe two-thirds of the way up the hill, and at the top of the

hill was another intersection where more 40-acre parcels came together, and we just stopped the truck and we got out and between us and the orchard was a really wide drainage ditch that was probably 10 or 12 feet wide and maybe 15, 20 feet wide at that point probably. And this thing came running up the hill and we stood there. What we thought was coming through the orchard was a man. and the reason we thought that in the beginning is because about a mile and a half or mile and three quarters or so to the kind of the east of us was a forestry fire camp and this fire camp was made up of inmates convicts from san quentin prison in the san francisco bay area they were nonviolent offenders and they were nonviolent offenders and They used them, they were kind of like trustees, and they used them to fight fire. And they were pretty, they were pretty successful at doing that.

They actually probably outworked the employees in the fire camp. But that's who we thought it was because there was, we had a history of these guys running off from the fire camp. And they would run across our property and they would try to get to the nearest town of Kelseyville, lower leg, or whatever, you know, and somehow, you know, hiding somebody's trump. Now, we're talking about the 50s now where, you know, we had a lot of old cars where you just turned a handle and you lifted the trunk lid and you just climb in. And there were a couple of cases of adjacent ranches where when the women went to town, they unknowingly transported a convict in the trunk of their car. Got to town, they jumped out and run around with their orange suit on, I guess. So that's kind of what we thought was going to be coming up the hill. But when we saw this thing, and it was about seven or eight feet tall, it looked to me like it had facial features like a, like an Indian.

Not the Indians of California in my area, but the Indians of the middle part of the United States. And so this thing, we could hear, we could hear this thing coming. because he was huffing and puffing because it's really a steep hill. And this creature, seven, eight feet tall, completely covered with hair, could see no ears. It looked like the shoulders just went up and met the top side of the head. But it had kind of a rounded head. It had kind of a broad, but long nose. was kind of hooded like a human, and it had thinner lips than other photographs that I've seen of

these things. And it did not have this big barrel chest that so many of the witnesses on your show West report. This thing was more lean. It probably weighed about 500 or maybe more pounds, But it was, it didn't have this great big, I mean, it was bigger than Hulk Hogan and guys like that. Don't get me wrong. This thing was huge. But it just didn't have this, this massive chest. And I, you know, some people have reported that, you know, they had like five foot wide shoulders. And this, this creature was, was not quite that wide.

I would say maybe four, four feet at the most. arms hung down to below the knees. And this thing, as it was running, its arms were really swinging in like a 180 degree arc. And as it came up the hill and it got into the top part of the orchard where the trees were a little smaller because the soil isn't quite as good as down at the bottom of the hill. why we could see it a lot better because it was running through smaller trees. And it looked directly at us. And when it did that, my brother and Jack, they wanted to get the heck out of there. Get in the truck.

Let's get the heck out of there. I wanted to see where this thing was going. Because it looked to me like it was on a mission to go from point A to point B without any interruption and without any real interaction with anybody else. And so when it was coming up the hill and we looked at this thing, it never showed its teeth. It never made any noise other than just what, just heavy breathing and just a little bit of the sound of its footfalls. But not much there because.

The orchard was, was coelvaded, and so it's not running on, it's not running on firm soil, on firm ground. It's running in plowed ground that's probably eight to ten inches deep plowed. So not easy going for anybody, including this creature. When we looked at this thing, we had no idea what we were looking at. We had no frame of reference of that. I never heard of a Sasquatch. I never heard of a big foot.

I never heard of anything that even closely resemble this thing. There was nothing ever mentioned in school. None of my friends, none of no adult that I'd ever listened to, ever mentioned anything about a creature like what we saw that evening. And it turned and looked at us. and the impression that I got is it kind of grinned at us, but it showed no teeth. And that's when everybody wanted to jump in the truck and just, you know, skedaddle out of there.

So when it went by, I jumped, we jumped back in the truck and we took up, keep in mind, we got this old 41 Chevy with a 60 horsepower six cylinder engine. We're not talking about a muscle car here. And so we took off and I tried, I tried to catch up to it, give it. a better look. My brother and Jack were telling, you know, they don't want to get too close to this thing because they were afraid. And frankly, I

didn't feel that way. It was creepy to see this thing. It was creepy when it kind of grinned or whatever it did. That kind of creeped us out. But I didn't feel like I was threatened. It didn't make any gesture. It didn't make any movement,

any furtive movement of any kind that really would indicate, hey, I'm going to come over and just rip you to pieces. Never had that feeling ever in that during this encounter. So we took off up the hill in the old Chevy grinding up this steep hill. And we closed on this thing to about, I want to say 100 to 150 feet. When it finally came out of the field and crossed a pretty large intersection where all these fields and branch roads come together. and when it came across that road and that intersection,

it turned and looked back at us. And when it did, it, it just had to, it had to kind of torque its whole body around so that it could, I mean, when I wrote, when I wrote to you, Wes,

I think I, I said, you know, it kind of looked over its left shoulder, sort of. And, but, but that wasn't,

I mean, it, it couldn't turn its head. I don't know why these things are built the way they are. I don't know what that design, you know, is made for. I really don't know. But it had to turn its entire body to look around. And so it's left shoulder and everything all turned and just twisted around.

And when it did that, it slowed down. And so we got a little bit closer. And so we were just looking at this thing. and it took off into another 40-acre parcel on our ranch. And so plowed ground, I can't drive out there with this little two-wheel drive pickup. It gets stuck. So I have to, I want to try.

I'm looking at this thing. It appears that it's going to run across this thing on a diagonal again for some reason. So I go down these ranch roads. I go all the way around. I've got to go a quarter mile this way, quarter mile that way, to get around so I can see this thing. And finally, when it came out of the orchard and crossed the farm road that we were on, we got another pretty good look at it and how it ran.

And it, I wouldn't say, I don't remember that it looked like it was gliding, because some people talk about how these things look like they're gliding. it wasn't really like that although it did not bend its it did not bend its knees it's like it's like patty you know when she ran it that no the knees were were bent you know they're not straight like a human and so it ran across the road in front of us and at that point we were right at the base of a hill and it ran across the road and it ran into a property owned by the Wiper family and not anymore. It's all grapes by some other ventnor that bought up all the land up there. But at that point, it was owned by a private family.

And it ran through the area in front of their barns and their shop. And of course, there was nobody there. and it ran through between the barns and the shop and through about another couple of hundred feet of their orchard, which was wallets also. And then it just ran into the brushland, into this brush that's 10, 15, 20 feet high and, you know, very difficult for a man to even walk through it. And this thing just plowed through it like nothing could stop it. So we went, when we lost sight of it, we went back to where we originally saw this thing. And that part of the orchard right there where we saw it had just been irrigated within the last day or two, and so it was still pretty wet. And all this ground is volcanic, and it just gets real muddy when it, and just soggy.

and it's almost like clay, you know, almost pulls your boots off, you know, when you walk through it. This thing ran through there. And so, you know, we're just kids, you know, we're not thinking about trying to get a cast of some foot or try to figure out what kind of footprint this thing is leaving. We just never thought about that. It's not even in our minds. But we did look and see how wide the stride was and the stride at the bottom of the hill and it may have shortened a little bit at the top was about 25 feet each step was about 25 feet so that meant the orchard was laid out in a way that the rows of trees were 50 feet apart and so it cleared an entire row between two walnut two rows of walnut trees in about two steps.

And it continued that pace all the way up the hill. And I'm pretty sure that it wasn't taking a 25 foot stride maybe at the top of the hill, but pretty close to it. So a few weeks ago, I calculated that at 25 foot, at a stride of 25 foot, at a stride of 25 foot, that creature would have been able to navigate that 40-acre field in a diagonal direction, 1870 feet, in about 60 or 70, maybe 80 steps. That's all. And it did that in probably 70 seconds.

That's about the time it took for the. that thing to cross 1,800 and 70 feet of diagonal orchard. And that works out to 31 feet a second or about an average speed of about 21 miles an hour. But when it crossed, when it got to the top of the hill, then the orchard flattened out a little bit for probably a couple of hundred yards. and then it dropped off into about a 12 to 15 degree downhill grade. And the creature was actually, the speed of the creature actually increased a little bit as it went down this hill. It looked like it was on a mission. It looked like it knew where it was going.

I have no idea where it was going. All there was in the direction that it was right. running was the fire camp and a small cattle ranch that was about another mile and a half away. And then beyond that, it was just a pine forest and just brush land that hadn't burned in probably a hundred years. And some of that brush land, some of the brush was in some of those areas were like 30, 40 feet high. So it just plowed through that stuff. It was amazing. So we had a little powwow my brother and Jack and I,

and we were going to go tell my dad what we saw because we were pretty upset and pretty confused about what we saw because we just couldn't put it in a category because it just didn't fit anything. And then we continued to kind of right around the ranch, check more of the sprinkler system. We're talking about it. We decided, no, we're not going to tell my dad. And the reason we decided to do that is because my dad paid us pretty well to do this job of moving irrigation pipe 24 hours a day all summer long, seven days a week. And we didn't want to lose that job. and we're just young teenagers.

And we thought that if he felt that it was too dangerous for us to be out there, two, three o'clock in the morning with a headlamp on our head like a minor, move an irrigation pipe around through the orchard, we thought we were going to lose our job. So we never told anybody ever. And my brother died in 1978, and I have no idea where, Jack is, but my brother was an engineer for Halliburton was killed in a gas well explosion. So to my knowledge, he never told a story to anybody. We just kept it to ourselves. About a year later, we kind of forgot about this. We kind of put it in the back of our mind,

but I'll tell you this, every time for quite a long while, every time we went out in the middle of the night to try to move to irrigation pipe, I always, I always had this feeling. I think I must be, I might have been imagining it because overactive imagination, but I always felt that I was like, I wasn't alone, you know, and so I was always flashing my headlight around

to see what was around me, to make sure there was nothing sneaking up behind me. And there never was. And so after we had that job in the summer for years and years until we went off to college, we never had another encounter like that, never saw anything again like that and didn't want to see really anything like that. About a year and a half after this encounter, my dad who subscribed to True Magazine read an article. about Jerry Crewe and his infamous encounters up in the Three Rivers National Forest up at Trinity Alps up there over there by Wyrika and Eureka and over that way.

And they, True Magazine wrote an article about his encounters. And my dad read that and kind of was talking about it, I guess. And so, you know, when he put the magazine down, I'm a year older. I picked it up and I start reading about this thing. And then later I see pictures that had been published in newspapers in the local area around Willow Creek and places like that. And when I saw some of this stuff and I read this article about Jerry Cruz encounters, then I knew what I saw. I knew that I'd seen a big foot and I knew exactly what it was that that I saw that night. When I went to college, I had a couple of buddies who were criminal justice students.

One later became a deputy sheriff up in Humboldt County, I think, and the other became a California Highway Patrolman in Mendocino County. And I later became a California Highway Patrolman myself later on in life after I got out of the military. but in college we're sitting around these two guys and I were sitting around and we're just we're just having a few beers you know 19 years old having a few beers and they I asked him I said where you guys live have you ever seen one of these bigfoot creatures and I don't think they ever did but they talked about a couple of encounters where they were deer hunting up in that area around Willow Creek and they had their hunting dogs and and they ended up and there was all this they smell these things these creatures were throwing rocks at them throwing

tree limbs at them the dogs were frightened to death and you know and in both encounters i guess they they they said they packed up the following morning got the heck out of where they where they were so it was probably a year after the encounter that um it was around the same time i think that the maybe the article came out in True Magazine that my dad, my dad's younger brother was a general manager on a large sheep ranch in Sonoma County, and it was very remote. 4,000 acres. It was owned by a Hollywood producer,

and they raised sheep originally back around the 1900s. It was a race horses there, and is very mountainous and very rugged and very dampened. and very damp and foggy all the time because of its proximity to the Pacific Ocean. So my dad goes up there to hunt wild hogs with my uncle and a bunch of other people. My brother and I, we'd love to go, but we had to stay in work on the ranch. So he goes up there and they kill a bunch of hogs. And they're kind of a combination of feral hog and Russian razorback hogs.

really, really nasty, mean, honorary things with a head like a piece of concrete. And so they killed a bunch of these hogs. They were probably four or five hundred pounds, some of them. And so my dad came home with a couple of slabs of meat. There were about 100 pounds each. And so he went out on the backside of our house, and he put these two great big kind of a big lag screw, big hook, he screwed him into the end of the roof rafters,

and then he hung these pieces of meat on these two big hooks and just let them hang out there at night in the cool air and kind of cure that way. And then in the morning he'd go out, take them off the hooks, wrap them up in an old sheet or something he had,

and then put them in an old sleeping bag, and they would slide them under their bed, in their bedroom. then at night he would take them out of the sleeping bag and put them back up on the hooks and that process went on for a couple of nights until he finally went out there one morning to remove these pieces of wild hog meat off these hooks keep in mind now the roof rafters and these hooks are about ten and a half and eleven feet off the ground because that's the downside of of the property where the ranch house was built on.

So we had a lot of dogs. We had five, six dogs mostly all the time. So my dad goes out there and the meat is gone. I mean, it is just vanished. And he comes back in and he's, you know, my brother and I were getting ready to go to school, I guess, and having breakfast or something. And he said, the meat is gone.

So we all go out there. Yep, it's all gone. We looked at the hooks. There's no little shards of meat on there where something just reached up there, grabbed it, and just pulled it off the hook. The hooks weren't bent. There was no meat on the ground. We had coyotes in the area. They make a huge mess.

They tear everything to pieces. And there was no evidence that it was that. We don't have wolves in Lake County. It just never. And black bears, very, very rare in that area where we were in all my life. I never saw a black bear around where our ranch was. So my dad figured the dogs must have gotten it, must have jumped up there, grabbed on it. But there was no drag marks.

There was nothing. And when my dad called all our dogs over to the place below where this meat had been hanging, dogs didn't want to go there. And he couldn't coax him. He couldn't coax him into that area for some reason. And I just, when I remember back, I just found that to be so odd and fascinating that these dogs just, they never made a sound all night. Because if there was anything, if a coyote went through there or a deer went through

there, those dogs went crazy. They would chase it and they would bark and, you know, wake you up but the night that this meat came out missing not a sound but dogs did not make a peep so what happened to the meat maybe maybe that saskatch that we saw you know came back and had a little snack i i i don't really know i've had other friends that have had other counters and it's uh and i i'm a firm believer in these things i i know they exist uh i've i have believed believed in them, you know, in their existence, all my, all my adult life. And, and I have so many my friends that work in Northern California that have seen these things. Law enforcement guys that are

working up in the Weaverville area, you know, they had a big fire up there one time, and it was, fire was moving at about 35, 40 miles an hour. Every animal was running for their life. And this friend of mine, highway patrol, highway patrolman, he's retired now. He found tracks in the highway, state highway. And it's about an 80 foot to go across that highway. And these animals cleared it and, no, no, two, two and a half steps or something like that. So they're running, everybody's running for their life. So they're in Northern California. They're very elusive, I'm sure, and I don't care to really come across one. I feel very fortunate that the encounter that I had was very uneventful in terms of threat to my safety.

Yeah, I mean, what a life you've lived, and especially having the encounter that you had, I wanted to ask you, I got so many questions for you about that meat. I mean, 11 feet up in that meat is just gone. You and I both know that if dogs or wolves, I know he said there's no wolves, but even a cougar, it would have been a mess. I mean, you guys would have seen a mess. And from what you described, it sounds like something just kind of walked up, popped it off the hook and walked off. Something very, I mean, when my dad would take this stuff off the hook, he had a step ladder, you know, to get up there.

And because it was like 10 and a half, 11 feet off the ground. So, you know, you couldn't just, my dad was only like 5, 8, 1⁄2, 5.9. So you weren't a big guy. So, you know, he just, he couldn't reach up there and grab it. and so what what what other thing just comes to mind you know and it's this you know and that whole back part of our of our of our of our behind our house was all gravel my mom had a clothes line out there and so there was all gravel and it was concrete sidewalks right where below where this thing where this meat was hanging so there were no there were no there were no there was

no tracks or no footsteps it was just you know and even after my dad read this article in true magazine i don't i don't really know if you ever you know put two and two together because he never said anything you never said anything to any of us and of course we never said anything about what we saw you know yeah it's fascinating i remember you and i were talking yesterday i was telling you bob gimblin was telling me about true magazine and some of the things that they'd put in the magazine regarding pigfoot. I wanted to ask you, going back to your encounter, describing the creature, I know you had mentioned Indian, so would you say it looked more human-like when you were looking at this thing as opposed to, because you've heard the show,

Norm, and sometimes I say, well, it looks like an ape. It looked like a monkey. It looked like a chimpanzee. It looked. And then you get some people there say, no, it looked very human-like. When you're describing the face, would you put it more in a human category, or would you put it more in an animal no i put it in the i put it in the human category but the body the body of this thing uh is is is is is not human it's something else it's some other kind of hominid you know that that that that you know some relic hominid from some some part of our past you know we you know who knows you know the the the the the native indians the the First people, First Nation people, I mean, they've been talking about this stuff in their culture for thousands of years, you know.

And some of them, some of the tribes call them people. Other tribes don't want to be around them. This thing had a face. It was a very large face. I mean, this thing was a huge person, or a person, if you want to call it that. it was a huge creature and uh but it had a it had a very it when you sent me i had i found online a a drawing of one of these creatures and it was very much like what you sent me in in in uh in an email and but except the thing that i couldn't i never could i didn't seem to find the round

head like this thing had and the one i i i the that i saw But what you sent me was so close to what I saw. The only thing that I don't remember, in the picture you sent me, it looked like the creature that in that drawing, the hair was parted in the middle. And it looked like it fell or, you know, for lack of a better term, it combed or over, you know, each side of its head.

I don't remember the creature that I saw having that kind of hair. I remember it was much shorter and it was the hair line came down more closer to the brow line. But other than that, the lips were kind of are thin like that. I don't know about the teeth because it never showed me the teeth. but it looked it just looked like it was a cross between some great big hairy thing with long arms and huge feet and and this human type face you know yeah and for the audience listening I sent them the Mike Woolley I'll throw it underneath this episode but I remember first time I interviewed Mike Woolley you and I talked about this norm I was telling us.

he said it looked very human-like in the face. The rest of the body was not human, but it looked very human-like in the face. The other part that I find fascinating about your encounter is you got to see the expression change. And correct me if I'm wrong, but at first, it didn't seem like it was a big deal that you guys were that close. And then when it realized you guys were following it, did the expression change at all? It did. when we stopped the truck on the hillside, you know, and we were kind of separated from this thing

with this huge drainage ditch and about maybe 100 feet or 75 feet of orchard, when it came through there, it was huffing and puffing. And it, I don't, it was kind of looking down. I don't think it really saw us right away. I think it may have thought that it had alluded us or abated us somehow, and all of a sudden, there we were. You know, just standing there by the right front fender of the truck, looking at this thing, huffing and puffing like a freight train, coming up this hill, and when it saw us, it turned kind of slightly,

and it looked like a smile or something. Like, it was creepy. It scared my brother and it scared, it scared, it scared my buddy Jack. And they wanted to get, they didn't want any more part of that thing. That's it. We're over. Let's get the heck out of here. Listen, you know, I've had enough.

But I kept following this thing. And, you know, when it turned its body around in that intersection, to look back over, back left to see how close we were behind it, because it could hear us. Obviously, the truck was making a whole bunch of racket coming up that hill in second gear. So it knew we were pursuing it, and it kind of, it slowed down when it went through the intersection, when it started to look backwards, it kind of slowed down a little bit. But then once it entered the next 40-acre orchard piece, the pace picked up again. And then it kind of, it was level for a little while, a couple hundred yards, I guess.

And then it just dropped off into that 15-degree downhill. And it kind of took off there, maybe doing 30, 35 miles an hour. I don't really know. It was taking some very long strides and moving pretty quack. I had to really hustle in that old truck to get around. there to actually see it. It crossed in front. When we got down there by the Wiper Ranch,

their barns and stuff, our ranch roads kind of intersected their ranch roads. And it crossed the road in front of us. I want to say we were probably 75 or 100 feet away from that thing. And it was, it never looked back at us again. I'm sure that it was probably looking at us off and on as it was coming down through the orchard

because it could hear the truck, I'm sure. The truck had, you know, kind of an old straight pipe on it. But it didn't really give us, it didn't really give us any notice. I mean, it didn't really seem to be concerned about who we were and what we were doing. It just had this mission of getting to where it wanted to go, and that's what it was doing. It's kind of weird, you know. It didn't deviate. my brother and I were they they were Jack and and my brother they were they were younger than me by

you know a couple of years and they they they they were not they really they were not they were not very pleased with me uh going on when I when I continued pursuing it they were no they they they they they the language and the tone of voice and the cab of the truck was elevated because they weren't happy. They wanted to, they wanted to break it off. They'd had enough, you know. Can I ask you, so 10 years later, the Patterson Gimlin film comes out, how did you feel when that came out?

You know, I looked at that, I looked at, I read the whole thing about, you know, how Bob how about Patterson, Roger Patterson, you know, he was a good horseman. These guys, these guys rode in the rode in the rode. These guys are not some weekend horse people, and they're riding in some very rough country. And when I, when they, when Patterson got off his horse, actually got thrown off and but had the presence to grab his camera on the way off, his horse ran off and, you know, went down the canyon about a quarter of a mile, I guess. But he got really good film. And I, I, that was just, I just, that was fascinating. That, that was in 1968 and I, that's the year I went on the highway patrol.

And so I saw that and, um, I just never said anything to anybody. Uh, I wasn't going to say anything to anybody about this encounter ever while I was a police officer because that just, it's, it felt. to me like that was just a career buster and wasn't going to go there. But it was confirmation for me. I said, you know what? I saw something very

much like Patty. Different, different face. Patty had it didn't even look like a female face. You know, to me, when I look back at that film, it looked

it looked like it should be on a male saskatch and not a female. But obviously it's a female because you see the breasts of the thing. The one thing that I found fascinating about that, I think it was Jeff Meldrum pointed it out that on closer examination of Patty as she was, well, she wasn't exactly running, but she was stepping out pretty smartly there. that there was a ruptured tendon or maybe a muscle in her right thigh. And I guess on closer examination, when she would move it a certain way or take a step in a certain way, it would bulge and then it would retract. And that looked like it should be extremely painful because it was some kind of injury that she had, you know,

encountered. But I guess it turned out that there was a juvenile somewhere hiding nearby, and she was trying to possibly lure Patterson and Gimlin away from that area. But they had the good sense not to follow her, because that might not have ended well either, because I guess where she was going there was more of them. But as far as I remember. Yeah, it's interesting you bring that up, Norm. I laughed when he said that because I've always thought that. Patty has a face only a mother could love. I'm telling you, she was, she was, she was uglier than, she was ugly in a mud fence.

I'm telling you, she was really, really ugly. I mean, how would you like to have that for a girlfriend, you know? Yeah. Holy. I mean, that's, that, that, but, you know, the way she walked, the way she, I mean, the way the knees didn't bend, how is how they're kind of bent forward. a little bit. That's how they, that's how they, that's how they, that's how they travel. And I sent, I sent, I sent Dr. Meldrum, uh, an email. Um, he had, he answered my first email and then told me that his wife tried to join the California Highway Patrol and that didn't, I guess it

didn't work out for her. But I talked to him, I sent him an email and I wanted to know, what is, what is the advantage of a creature walking or running? the way they do. Why is that so efficient for them when we try to do the same thing, we have great difficulty. Our feet are flatter. We don't

have that mid-tarsal break on our foot that they have, I guess. And so we can't navigate steep, rocky, rough terrain like they do, and they do it with great ease. And so I just don't know

how that the way they're built, how that really, how that really, you know, how, how, how, how, how, how, how, how, how, how, how, how, how, how it's, it seems to be pretty efficient, you know. Yeah, I think, uh, I can tell you from my own encounter, their knees aren't in the same place as our knees. Their knees are about where our shins are at. And I think the only thing I can really tell you, if you needed to drop down all fours, that would be more benefit. official for you if your knees, you know, because human knees are really about 50% up the leg. And when we get down on all fours, we all get down on all fours the same way. It's slow, it's clumsy, it's, and I think their knees being more in the shin placement, they're able to drop

quicker. And one question I wanted to ask you, did you ever regret not telling your dad what you saw that day? Do you ever have any regret now in life, later in life, not talking to him? Because maybe he saw something maybe he maybe he did uh i wanted when when when when that when that when that hog meat that he had hung up there on that on those hooks when that came up missing i wanted i wanted to tell him and i and i and i and i just didn't and um and i and i never told i never told i never told anybody until about a month ago my my wife i'm i'm laying in bed with my headphones on and it's about, you know, 10, 30, 11 o'clock at night. I'm laying in bed, and my wife is, you know, out there reading or whatever she's doing.

And so I'm listening to your show, one of your shows. And so she comes to bed, and she's a Facebook person, you know. She's a, I got to get her into a 12-step program and get her off that thing, but I don't think it's going to work. You know, I don't think it's going to work. But anyway, she gets in bed, and I take my headset off because your episode is over. and I said, she said, what are you listening to? And I said, I'm listening to this podcast about Sasquatch. Oh, well, you know, eyes are rolling, you know, all kinds of strange facial, you know, expressions, you know.

She doesn't believe. She thinks I'm a kook when it comes to that. And I said, can I tell you a story? And she said, well, okay, sure, go ahead. So I tell her this story of my encounter. and she just looked at me like I was from Mars, you know. It just didn't, it didn't ring a bell with her. She doesn't believe.

She just, I don't know if she believes in the Nephilim. You know, I don't know if she believes in fallen angel. She's a Christian, just like me. I don't know if, I don't know what her belief system is. I've never really, really explored that with her. but I kind of regretted telling her the story because she just she just doesn't have a belief system that can handle that kind of stuff, you know? She just thinks that all people are imagining that stuff or making it up. I don't know what she thinks, you know, but.

Yeah, and I think some people feel that way until, and my only recommendation would be to listen to a couple shows because what you'll find over time is everyone, one from cops to firefighters to government officials to school teachers to hunters, hikers, house moms. They're all describing the same thing. They all run into the same thing. I mean, for the most part, there is small differences like we were talking about earlier. Some people will say, what I saw was an ape. It appeared to be an ape.

But the description is the same. Or I saw a very large, tall, chimpanzee looking thing. but the overall details are there and some people will say, well, I saw a very tall, it looked very human-like. The body didn't look human, but the rest of it did. And, you know, there can't be that many crazy people out there

imagining seeing this. You know what I mean? No, we're not crazy. You know, if you look, if I had to if I had to compare that face to anybody, it's like, you remember the kind of the, the oh the kind of weathered uh heavily wrinkled

sun tan face of like Geronimo or one of those one of those Indian chiefs from the mid you know Midwest yeah that's kind of that's kind of in the area that's the facial features are going in that direction

you know it's it's it's human it's a human looking face and very very very very dark brown skin um big eye big brown eyes sunken back a little bit you know kind of a heavy brow ridge stuff like that but um not no chimpanzee no great ape uh nothing like that in this creature that i saw never went on all fours never even began to do that. And I don't know why they do that. I don't know why they drop.

I know some people on your show have said, well, it dropped down on all fours to navigate through a dense brush and brambles and briars and stuff like that. But when it got in more open spaces, it ran upright. But this never did anything like that. I'm so glad that you shared it. I love older encounters. I absolutely love them because this was a time where there was no Patterson Gimlin film.

No one was talking about Bigfoot, you know, and unless you were talking to the Native Americans, you probably had no clue what this thing was. What do you think that they are, Norm? What's your opinion? After all these years of thinking about this experience, what do you think that Sasquatch is? Well, you know, if you're a Christian and you believe in the Bible, then, you know, all the creatures on the earth, earth put here by by you know the by god and for i i keep for the life of me i have no idea what the

purpose of this creature is you know um it it looks you know i i i read um some information about some dna testing that melba catcham did and you know part of the DNA that comes back is human, the other part on the male side, the father's side of the DNA, unknown. So some creature like this may very well have, I mean, the Indians talked about how these things would come into their camps and steal their women and children. And what they did with them, I can't imagine something that huge could mate with a human being, but maybe it's possible. And maybe that's where these facial features come in because there's some kind of crossbreeding with this creature that in cases where there may not be that kind of crossbreeding. they look they look completely different they have a completely different uh face just like patty she had a

really really um heavy um kind of kind of facial features real heavy you know and um and this this thing that i saw it it it had a it had a human type face you know the the nose the lips you know that uh and when it and when it smiled or whatever you want to call a grin or whatever that that creepy thing that it did as it went by us, it never curled its lips or anything like that. It didn't do that. You know how apes, I mean, they'll curl her lip. You know, they want to show you some teeth,

and that's kind of an intimidation thing. But I don't think this thing was ever, it wasn't really trying to intimidate us. It was just kind of trucking on by and just looked at these three little guys, these little teenagers, you know, 12, 13, 14 years old, and just thought, you know, there's no, there's no hazard here. You know, he just kind of smiled as it went by like, hey, what's going on?

It's just creepy. Just, just creepy. I don't know what they are, you know, but they are, you know, when you talk about man is supposed to be in charge or over all animals, earth, on the earth and the sky and the water. and clearly we are not in control of this thing. This thing rules its domain and we have no, we can't even come close to this thing unless we've got some high-powered rifles. And they have a real history of encountering us with rifles. And it really, it really upsets them, I guess.

And, you know, I guess it, I mean, I can imagine. But like any ape or any humanoid kind of a creature, they learn by observation. And so after centuries of encountering us, trying to shoot at them and killing them, they want to avoid us. And when they encounter us, they want to intimidate us, scare the hell out of us, so we'll go away. And some cases, you know, people get bluff charged and sometimes people just, like me, they don't. So, you know, I don't know. I believe in the Nephilim, you know, I don't know about the,

I'm not so sure about what happened over in Iran or Afghanistan or where it is where they're supposed to encounter that great, that great monster up there. But, you know, you read about these monsters, and I think you had a guy on your show of quite a few times, Duke, and he talked. about these critters up in Alaska and there, nothing like what's down here in Tennessee or Texas

or the northwest. They're completely, completely different kind of critter, much, much bigger and much more aggressive, I guess. More dangerous. Yeah, it's so hard to know what these things are. I tend to agree with you.

I don't think that they're the Nephilim. If you really research the Nephlem, the Nephlam were gods and kings. And very different from running around the woods. That's not to say there's not some weird connection there. And I don't know. I'm just, I'm not trying to take away from that because there could be a weird connection to that.

But your traditional Nephilim were gods and kings. You know, that's where we get most of, even in Greek mythology, most of their gods, they talk about the half human half gods. They were talking about Nephilim that supposedly lived at one time. But it is so hard to understand what. these things are because there is this weird human element to it. And I've tried hard to get Melba Catchman come on the show. And, you know, there's no trap for her to come on. And I just want to hear what she has to say, honestly. I'm a student of all of it. She doesn't want to come on. But I would

love to have her come on because Melba was a very respected scientist. And all of a sudden, she gets into Bigfoot. Now she's a big joke. Well, why is that? Why is it all of a sudden, she gets into Bigfoot. She's a big joke now. Makes no sense. Prior to her looking into Sasquatch, she was very well respected. I mean, she was an expert. They would call to court cases and everything else. And I think it's important to stop and listen to what she has to say because whether you agree with it or not, it's irrelevant. I think it's important to hear what she has to say. And my hopes on her coming on because, you know, I'm just short of a Neanderthal myself.

and I'm not on any level as far as what she's talking about. But I had hoped that she would come on and kind of dumb down the science for people listening to understand what she did and make up their own mind as far as what. I think she may very well regret the direction she took with her laboratory. But she sent blind samples to a number of well-respected university. labs and they came back with the same results as she had and when she told them what it was they completely disavowed their work they've never seen this before they never received anything whatever they completely retreated from that when they found out what she did you know but they come up with the same results as she did I guess and you know half human half half have something else

what's the other half? I have no idea. It has, you know, humanoid, you know, Homo sapien kind of features, sort of. But it's so much more powerful.

Isn't it uncomfortable hearing that? Because wouldn't you have been more happy having her come back and go, yeah, it's a great ape we haven't caught up with? Last summer, last summer, my, I took my wife up to a place in East Tennessee called McLeod Mountain Lodge.

It's got this gorgeous panoramic view of the valley below, and you can look off and see a river, and you can see part of Norris Lake and all this stuff. It's really gorgeous up there. There's nothing up there but the lodge and its restaurant. So we ate in the restaurant. It was excellent food. We spent a night in the lodge. gorgeous, great big rooms.

You know, it was all just a really great experience. And so the following morning, I had taken my pickup. I had just bought a new pickup, so I thought I'd just drive it. And so when we were leaving the compound, and it was like a compound, because it was surrounded by a stucco wall, it was about 10 feet high. And on top of that was some barbed wire. And I thought that was kind of interesting. But anyway, as we were going out the gate of the compound heading home, there was a sign,

a kind of a made-up sign, and it was stuck in the ground, and it said something about a skywalk overlook or something like that. And I thought, well, what is that? So maybe, so I turn right and I take, I go up this paved road about maybe half a mile. Then it goes to dirt, and I go about another half mile, three quarters of a mile. now I got to put the truck in four-wheel drive to get over these ruts and all this stuff. And so we end up going up to this beautiful overlook that looks out over all this panoramic scenic stuff. And there's somebody had gone up there and made these walkways that go out on this rocky bluff so that you can walk out there.

And you can just see in all directions. And beautiful, took a million pictures. So we get back in the truck and we're leaving and we're going kind of crawling along. this road, you know, because just before you get to where you go into the overlook, it was pretty rough road. The ruts are pretty deep. Two-wheel drive truck would have some trouble in there. So we're going real slow. And I saw something out of the corner of my left eye, and I just kept driving. And then I remembered a conversation that I had with Kathy Strain about Sasquatch. And so I stopped and I backed up.

And what I saw was a like a foot trail that was going through just to my left, the hillside, it was kind of flattened out. But then for about maybe 75 or 100 feet, and then it kind of started a very short climb for about maybe a couple of hundred feet. And that was the top of the mountain. and you could see this trail that went through the woods. There was a tree. I got out of my truck and I walked over there.

I took my cell phone out. I took a picture of this thing. And this tree was about maybe a six or seven, eight inch tree. It was completely pushed over. It was right beside the trail. It was pushed over and the root ball was sticking up. And then right beside it was a sapling of maybe. three or four inches and about 10, 12 feet off the ground, maybe just a little bit higher,

it was broken off at a 90 degree angle and then it was twisted. And I thought, okay, that's, that's, Mother Nature doesn't do that. And then the third thing that was right there was another sapling of about maybe two or three inches. It was bent over in an arc and the top of the tree was jammed in the, in the, in the, in the, in the soil and it it anchored that tree in an arc so we got these three trees that something has been playing around with and so i took a picture of it and i sent it to uh kathy strain who is a anthropologist in in central californian uh for the u s department of forestry and uh she's an anthropologist and she you know does work with the indian tribes when they discover remains up there and things

love that nature. So anyway, she's, I consider her kind of an expert on this subject, I guess, now. She's seen these things so many times that, so I sent her this, this picture and I say, what is this? And she, she wrote back, you know, pretty quickly that that's a Sasquatch trail marker. Ah, okay. So that's what I saw. So that was in a pretty remote part of, Tennessee, and we were not that far from the Kentucky state line where all this took place. So I thought that was pretty fascinating too. Yeah, it is. It's really fascinating, you know, and I don't think you have to go too far out to run into these things.

You know what I mean? Nope. They're around here. I mean, when Dave played these, you know, he writes, he writes these 411 books, and he writes, he's written a lot about the Smoky Mountains around. Cades Cove and in that area and how this little boy was just out there playing in the grass in this open field. And a few minutes later, he's gone. And a huge manhunt is amassed.

And they tried to find this little guy and there was not a sign of him. And that's just, so these critters, I call him critters, these Sasquatch things, they're very elusive. I think they can camouflage very well, and I think they can almost hide in plain sight. People don't really know what they're looking at. They look at these things and they think it's just a pile of brush or a rock or part of a tree or something.

They just blend in. And unless they move or do something, you know, like that, you know, and a human eye is trained to catch movement. Anything that moves, we're basically, we can see it. If it's stationary, not so much. You have a hard time maybe trying to see it. But if it moves, humans are going to see it. And we have this innate ability to know when somebody's looking at us and, you know, when we're in danger.

I guess it goes back to when we were, you know, first came to this, you know, first created or something. and we were given this ability which I guess most of us have but don't use very often. But some people do when you get that creepy feeling and the hair on the back of your neck stands up and you know that you don't want to go too much further in the direction you're going because you're probably going to get going to get in trouble. And a lot of people ignore that. They override that feeling, that sense that we have. I mean, I know we have it because I've been standing in a huge crowd of people,

hundreds of people, and all of a sudden I get the feeling that somebody is staring at me. And guess what? I have been able to turn and look straight at the person that's looking at me in all these people. It's just, it's a weird sense that we have if we, you know, kind of let ourselves go with it. No, you're right. I mean, when I had, it's weird. Yeah. Yeah, when I had Rocky Elmer on, who was a former retired Border Patrol agent, they were taught to hide off in the bushes.

And as the people pass by, don't look at them. Look at the ground. And the reason for that is because there's this weird sense you can get from someone looking at you, and it will give away the Border Patrol's position. So they were told to look at the ground as the people went by. Don't look at the people. Look at the ground. It's very bizarre, isn't it? I would love to see case studies on that.

It is. And that encounter that they had that night where that critter was out in the water, you know, stalking a couple of those Border Patrol agents, that, you know, those guys go out in the middle of nowhere. And where do these creatures hide in the,

in the, out there where the, where vegetation is, grow so low. You know, where do they hide? Where do they camouflage them? So are they maybe they just,

on the ground, you know? I don't know, I don't know how they, I don't know how they hide, you know, hide, they're hiding in plain sight. Generally, I was supposed, I mean, in some cases, you know, people almost stumble over these things. Yeah, your questions are my questions, Norm. I thought that too when I went out there. I thought, where in the world would you ever hide out here?

Yeah, where? They do run into them. Border Patrol absolutely runs into these things out there. And they, you know, they've got, they've got military grade night vision. And so they can see pretty well. And there's a lot of stuff moving around out there in the desert that the Border Patrol just doesn't want to talk about. You got to retire before you can really talk about it, I guess. Yeah, it's true.

Love will like anything else I would imagine. Well, it's like the California Highway Patrolman, you know, the area that they most often see Sasquatches around Truckee. just right on the border of Nevada and California and Interstate 80 where they see these things crossing the road. And they see these things in that area. You never hear anybody on the highway patrol ever openly talking about that stuff. It's a career buster, really. It just it won't get you, you know, if you're an officer looking to become a sergeant, start talking like that. You might not make it, you know.

Yeah, no doubt. Probably send you for a psychiatric evaluation, you know, stuff like that, you know. Well, it's like anything else. I think in the military, a lot of guys after they retire, I mean, I'll hear all sorts of stories after they retire. Same thing with pilots. Pilots are afraid their license are going to be taken away.

I've talked to so many pilots off the air that have seen these things when they're landing and taking off and they see these things, but you don't dare talk about it because they'll take your wings away. you know, you won't be able to fly anymore. I thought the encounter that you put on your, on your show with the, with the electrical, the,

the power line guys where they had a pilot and they had a, they had an elect, a guy that, they were expecting power lines and flying through a remote part of Utah. I mean, I guess it would take a day and a half or so to just hike into this place. And guess what? in this, the, the passenger, he saw this thing first. The pilot didn't see it because the console in the aircraft was blocking it. And when he rotated the aircraft around, hey, there it was.

You know, I think there was a female, as I remember in a juvenile and then this great big alpha male. And the alpha male just kind of stood his ground until, you know, and the other two just kind of wandered off. into the into the in to the forest or something they they they sometimes they they seem that they they want to scurry away and get the heck away from us and other times they seem like they they want to stand their ground and they have no fear unpredictable very yeah they're very unpredictable i mean it is so unpredictable you you can't uh i've listened to hundreds of your shows. And, and I, I, I, I just cannot come up with, with, a pattern for these things, because they're just, there's different types. I don't know. Everybody says there's like four

different types. There might be more. I don't know. But, you know, these police officers that, you know, went, went up there, they're going to do hunting or hiking on the, on the, on the, on the, in the Adirondacks. Yeah, they had, yeah, in the Adirondacks. and up there in the remote. And they ran into these things. And they were kind of warned, I guess, by, you know, forestry workers that were up there repairing the trail. And they encountered this thing.

And they never wanted to go back up there again because they had the crap scared out of it. I mean, these guys that are in hunting stands that where a Sasquatch comes over and reaches up, you're 20 feet in the air or more. And it reaches up and it touches your boot with a finger. I mean, you piss your pants. I mean, you crap yourself, you know? I mean, that's just crazy. Yeah, it is.

And it just goes to show. You've had some crazy encounters on your show. I mean, some really, really fascinating stuff. Well, I appreciate you coming on, Norm and sharing what happened to you all those years back. I really enjoyed talking with you and I enjoyed hearing the account very much. And it's all little pieces to a puzzle. And if everyone shares, we can kind of get a big picture on what's going on. But I really appreciate you taking the time to come on and share your encounter.

Not a problem. You want to come to Tennessee and go hog hunting. I think I might be able to set that up and you can just stay with us. I might take you up on that. I might take. Drinks are on me. Absolutely. Absolutely.

not a problem. Thanks again, it's good talking to you and enjoy your show and you do good work and you could be an investigator. You got a good way with people. I appreciate it.

I appreciate that very much, Norm. You take care now. You take care of yourself too as well. And that's it for tonight. Everyone, remember if you've had an encounter, shoot me an email. My email address is west at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. If you get a chance, check out Sasquatchpronicles.com.

You can become a member and get additional shows. Until next time, everyone. She is my finger. An epiphany bring the short... Being across the country faster than the coronavirus and wagering week is your antidote. I'm Tom Barton and I'm a veteran sports analyst and respected sports handicapper who helped build ESPN's brand. I've been recognized and awarded by Pro Football Weekly and Gaming Today magazine as the honest handicapper.

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