Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:644 Cliff Barackman

Episode Date: April 10, 2020

Cliff was born and raised in Long Beach, California. Throughout his youth, his interests were drawn towards both the physical and biological sciences, as well as to music. These interests later brought him to dabble in a wide variety of sciences in college before later deciding to pursue his degree in Jazz Guitar. Cliff can be heard performing guitar around the Portland area, when he's not busy in the field. Cliff's interest in the sciences drove him to a teaching career where he could share his love and appreciation of the natural world with young people, and particpate in the occasional sing along. While Cliff was navigating his life, his growing interest in the bigfoot phenomena drove him to travel to other parts of the country to look into the mystery. By extensively travelling the West Coast, he found himself unsatisfied with living in Southern California and wanting to live closer to bigfoot habitat. After living in various parts of California and Washington State, he eventually settled in Portland, OR where he lives today.   https://northamericanbigfootcenter.com/

It looked like somebody was bent over and had their head in the window of the deer blind. It either heard me or smelt me, and he pulled his head out of the tent and stood straight up. That shocked me. They don't make people that big. The way it moved, almost as if it was gliding across the beach. I've never seen anything move like that in my life. They were screaming at each other in gibberish. It sounded like a language and they were chuntering away back and forwards, back and forwards, back and forwards, back and forwards.

I know what a bear looks like and there is no way on this planet of what I saw were bears. Magid 1, what are you reporting? Jesus, quite get somebody out here. What's going on now, sir? That son of a bitch is about 6'9, I don't know. Do you see him now, sir? Yes, I'm looking right in. I'm Leona Pliska and you're listening to Sasquatch Chronicles.

Welcome to the show, everyone. Thanks for being here tonight. Got a great show planned for you tonight. If you're like me, you're tired of being locked up, you know, quarantined away. It's getting old really fast. I actually got old about a month ago. But while being quarantined away, I've been listening to a lot of different podcasts. And one of the podcasts I really like is Apes Among Us with Matt Pruitt.

a very cool podcast. If you get a chance, check it out. Apes Among Us, I've really been enjoying his podcast a lot. The other one that I found is Blue Falcon Radio. And it's three cops sitting around, Ben, Ty, and Zach, you know, and they joke and they tell different stories from being a police officer. I love the podcast. I'm really enjoying it. Blue Falcon Radio, definitely check that out. And then I know Tony Merkel has, who does the confessionals, he has a lot. He has a a second podcast called Hammer Lane Legends. He does with his dad. They talk to truck drivers who've had weird experiences. Hammer Lane Legends, definitely check that out. Tonight we're going to be talking to Cliff Berkman from Finding Bigfoot. And Cliff and Bobo, I'm sure most

the audience knows after I interviewed Bobo, they have a great podcast, Bigfoot and Beyond. So definitely check it out. If it's iTunes, whatever podcast player you're listening to, definitely go subscribe to those guys, Bigfoot and Beyond. Great guys too as well. So we'll be talking to Cliff tonight. 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 Sasquatronicles.com. And if you get a chance, check out Sasquotronicles.com.

You can become a member and get additional shows. And if you're into blogs and that sort of thing, I've been dumping those out like there's no tomorrow. So get your mind off things. if you want to go check out Sasquodronicles.com, read the blog, sign up for a membership. I really appreciate you guys doing that. And I hope you're well throughout this whole quarantine thing, the whole coronavirus. I think everyone's starting to get a little antsy being at home and people are getting a little more angry. And I'm hoping it passes soon.

But I hope you're doing well. Thank you again for being here. Let's jump into it tonight. I want to welcome Cliff to the show. Cliff, thanks for coming on. Oh, my pleasure. I love doing other people's podcasts all the time and just kind of talking about Squatch, man. It seems like that's what I get to do nowadays.

Yeah, it was so funny having Bobo on, I was telling you before we started recording, I didn't really go into it. You know, Bobo is always portrayed, and I love Bobo. Don't get me wrong. I actually really, really like the guy. But what really surprised me is he's portrayed as, you know, like I'm finding Bigfoot. They're like, hey, Bobo, get up there, you big gorilla. see how you compare it to the Bigfoot. But when he talked to Bobo, when we did the whole quarantine trivia game, I'll tell you a little secret about that. I actually asked a bunch of very difficult

questions prior to us starting recording. And I'm like, there's no way either one of these guys is going to know this stuff. It wasn't the questions you heard on the game. Those were easy questions. And Bobo was just sitting there rambling off answers like there's no tomorrow. And it's funny, too, because when we got done, I was telling Tony, I was like, man, is this guy like a genius? what? I've never, I had to tell him to slow down during the game on his answers because the audience is playing along. But he knew all these answers. And I was so shocked by how much information this guy has in his head. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah, Bobo is probably one of the most underestimated big footers, I think, out there. And by the way, I don't know if it's a coincidence or whatever

else or, you know, read into it what you want, but literally Bobo just called me. Oh, as you were talking, my phone lit up and it was Bobo. So whatever that's worth. Yeah, he's tapped into all sorts of different realms. But anyway, yeah, Bobo is one of the most underestimated bigfooters out there. By far, he is one of the best red bigfooters, not only in the Bigfoot literature, but other weird stuff. And actually just current events and science in general, whenever we're flying anywhere, you know, for a gig or on finding Bigfoot, for that matter, when I saw Bobo getting on the plane, he inevitably. had some sort of like science magazine under his arm that he was going to devour on the plane ride.

He reads all the time. And, you know, just because, you know, finding Bigfoot edited him that way, or, you know, South Park edited him that way, doesn't make him so. He's extremely intelligent. He has a tremendous amount of experience in a wide variety of fields. Yeah, like I said, I was impressed. I was impressed. And he just, he, I mean, his ability to ramble off information. and like he said, even science information. I mean, it just blew me away. And he's so likable, too. That's the other thing. You know, just like yourself, Cliff.

And, you know, one of the things I wanted to talk about before we get into Bigfoot, I guess it's kind of about Bigfoot, is your North American Bigfoot Center. And for the audience listening, it's this museum out there in Boring Oregon. If you get a chance when this whole coronavirus thing goes away, go check it out. the North American Bigfoot Center. And Cliff, you did a thing on Facebook where you kind of did a real quick brief walk around. And I was really impressed with it. I mean, some of the stuff you have in there, can you talk a little bit about this museum and

how it got started and what people can expect when they come down to check it out? Well, yeah, yeah, sure. And, you know, that Facebook Live is still up there. Anybody can go check it out on our Facebook page if you want to look at it. It's basically my wife and I taking a mini tour of the museum. for the people who tuned in. Because we're closed right now, unfortunately, because of the whole plague thing.

We had to shut our doors. And so we've been kind of shaken our tin cup to people because, you know, if your doors are shut, you can't make money for rent. So we've been shaking our tin cup and selling things online for a while, you know, the last couple weeks. And, you know, we're not pulling a salary, but we're cutting our losses, which is really nice. So we wanted to do a Facebook Live to thank our audience who can't come to the museum

and support us in that way, but they've been supporting us elsehow. So we did a Facebook Live or whatever. And what you're looking at on Facebook Live is really the museum 1.1.1. Maybe 1.1. Because we became fully open this past October. So October 2019 is when we had everything finally up and running. And the genesis of that was basically, you know, finding Bigfoot went off the air in May of 2018. And I spent the next year, you know, scrapping a living by traveling all throughout the country doing speaking engagements, which is a lot of fun.

But at the end of the day, it's not a really great way to make a living. because you're out of town from, you know, Thursday to Sunday or Monday, and you don't, you don't make that good of money for the weekend, basically. It's enough to barely scrape by, but, you know, so I was thinking, well, what else could I do? Because I could go back to teaching. I was a credentialed teacher, professional educator for 14 years. But at the same time, maybe, you know, this Bigfoot thing has been such a blessing in my life. Maybe there's a way I can continue doing that and scrape in a living because it's not like you make a ton of money teaching either. Well, I can not make a ton of money doing Bigfoot stuff, too.

Let's try that for a while. And so my wife and I, with the help of some friends, like Minty Menton, for example, who's a great graphic artists and a retail specialist, we started putting together a plan for a museum. Because I looked at Dave Baccarra, at Dave and Melinda Bekara out in Blue Ridge, Georgia. They have a successful Bigfoot museum called Expedition Bigfoot. I looked at Lauren Coleman. He has his International Cryptosology Museum. Mike Rugg down in Felton, California, another small, cool little museum.

And I think, well, gosh, that might be a cool thing to do. I mean, after all, I do have a lot of Bigfoot stuff lying around the house. I have a very large track and impression collection from a number of unknown homoids species throughout the world. I've got some neat, interesting artifacts from history, et cetera. So we started piecing this thing together and finally got the doors open. And it's really kind of my effort to continue my, career as an educator, I think. Because when I was on Finding Bigfoot, I just saw that as a different sort of classroom.

You know, kind of the classroom we see now during the plague when all the teachers have to do it online. Just my classroom went from 30, 10-year-olds a week to, you know, 1.2 million a week. And my job was to convey enthusiasm and spread knowledge about Sasquatches while I was on Finding Bigfoot. And so this is just my, you know, my version of that in the post-Finding Bigfoot days. where people can come and, you know, if they have a story, they can share it. And if they, if they have some evidence and they want to analyze, they can share it with me and I can tell them what I think about it. And most importantly, what I find is that the more skeptical a person is, the more unaware of the evidence they are. And so this is my way to kind of put the evidence in

their face and say, well, yeah, but if Bigfoot's aren't real, why are all these things internally consistent as a data set, and why does the history go back to pre-written history times, prehistoric times, essentially, you know, the Native American community and the indigenous community in North America, just kind of expose them to the evidence. It's like what René de Hindon said. I'm paraphrasing, because I don't remember the exact language, knowing Renée de Hindon, there's probably some sort of F-bomb in there anyway. But basically, he said, you know, without the facts, your opinion is worthless. So here's the chance to give me some. some, they give some facts out to the community. Like, hey, here's the evidence. Look at these footprints.

Look how internally consistent they are. Look how they aligned well with other extinct hominin footprints. And then come back and talk to me about how these footprints aren't real. You know, so that's kind of my way of educating a public who's desperately in need of education about Sasquatches. Yeah, I can't wait till it opens. I can't wait to come check it out. You know, we should do a podcast from there, man. That would be kind of cool. Yeah, absolutely. Maybe a visual one or something, some video thing, for if you can use that. for your members area or something. Yeah, we'll just do a live podcast and invite everyone to come down to the museum and check it out.

It'll be a lot of fun. Oh, that'd be great. It'd probably be a good way to drum some interest up after we're allowed to open again, too. So we're going to have some making up of finances to do at that point. Yeah. Yeah. No, I hear you. I can't wait.

I can't wait to check it out. And I was going to ask you about skeptics and everything. You know, before we get into that, and I know, I think most people have heard your, you know, how you got into, I always hate asking people how they get into Bigfoot because it's such a basic rhetorical quote, you know what I mean? Yeah. And I think in your situation, you know, you were growing up, you were a musician, you got into teaching. One thing I liked about how you actually got into it is, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, I'm jumping ahead so we can get to encounters. But, you know, you started seeing evidence of this. You started really looking into it

and educating yourself. And did you actually believe that it could be real? Or were you just looking at the evidence to kind of see is this BS or before finding Bigfoot? I grew up in the 70s, right? During, you know, in search of and, you know, all that sort of stuff, you know, all the schlocky documentaries that were on TV at the time. And I've always been a weird person, just kind of a weirdo in general. And so I've always been drawn to weird interests and weird topics and stuff and

And monsters too. God, I just loved monsters growing up. Godzilla, you know, the Frankenstein, all that stuff. And so the Bigfoot thing was just another monster for a long time. And I sure wanted them to be real. That's, it's kind of where I was at for most of my youth. Until I was in college when I actually started reading about the evidence that had been collected on Sasquatches. And luckily for me, you know, the first book I really ran across was the help and Ames book, Man Like Monsters on Trial, which was, I guess a synopsis. maybe that's not the right word. It was basically all the papers that were presented at that 1978 British Columbia conference. You know, so Barbara Watson stuff is in there. John Green stuff is in there. You know,

Krantz had something in there for member, right? And a lot of anthropologists in general talking about the evidence. And when I started reading through that, it was very conservative and sober. And it was just very in tone, that is. You know, scientific, basically, in tone. And it's like, oh, my God, this stuff, like, yeah, How is it that every native tribe has a word for these things in North America? How could that possibly be true unless these things were a biological thing, you know?

And the more I read about it, the more I said, oh, my God, these things just might be real. And then I got a hold of Krantz's book because Krantz published his book, I think, in 91 or 92. And the time period I'm talking about right now is right around 93 and 94. Really, I think 93 in that area. because 94 is when I first started doing field work specifically for Sasquatches. So it was the previous school year. I started devouring everything I could. And when I started reading about Krantz's work, it just became, okay, like on one hand,

it's either a real animal. On the other hand, it's either, you know, a hoax of some sort or misinterpretation or, you know, some, you know, soup made of those ingredients. And it just became so ridiculous to even consider that this might all be a hoax with absolutely nothing behind it. It just logically just makes zero sense. So it was the evidence that turned me. But until that point, it was just something that I thought was funny and cool and I wanted to be real. But again, it was the evidence.

Even before I started actually going out and doing field work, it was the evidence. It was reading books, which unfortunately is very few people seem to do nowadays. They all seem to get their big of information off of YouTube from questionable sources and things. It's like, no, go straight to the source of the scientists who worked on this stuff and read what they wrote. I think that's probably the most important thing any Bigfooter could do. But anyway, that's kind of the genesis of what I was doing at the time. I've always been left-brained in a lot of ways to try to balance out my right brain, you know. and looking at the evidence, which is the most important thing.

Trying to balance out the musician, the rock and roll, the rock and roll cliff. Yeah, yeah, something like that, something like that, you know, because we all have gut feelings, et cetera, which is fine. But some decisions should not be made on your gut feelings. They should be made on data. And I think the existence of Sasquatch is probably one of those things. Because without the data, you're basically doing what I did for most of my youth, which is like hope and they're real. Yeah. You know, there's also subjective experiences, et cetera, that convince you.

But the data, I think, is even more powerful than subjective experiences. Tell me about the first time you encountered one of these things. Kind of what were you doing and what happened? Yeah, the first time I knew that I was around one. And I may have been around one once or twice before that. Like, I remember I started going to Bluff Creek in 1994 with this naive idea of finding the Patterson-Gimlin film site, you know. And I didn't know where the heck it was. And I later found it, I've later found it, I think, in 97, I believe it was the first time that I actually knew I was there.

But in 94, I just kind of looked at the map and like, oh, well, look, there's a place where something called Bigfoot Creek flows into Bluff Creek. You know, and maybe that's why they named it there, you know, just kind of naive and going for it. And I started going out to the field, et cetera. And during that time, I was a teacher. So I had the summers off, et cetera, so I could go out and poke around and have fun and stuff. And so I'd go to Bluff Creek for like two weeks. And one time, my first wife, I'm on my second wife now, and this one will stick. But my first wife, who's a lovely person, we just didn't belong together and, you know, took a little while to figure it out.

And we're still good friends to this day, actually. Her name's Monica. So Monica and I were camping at Bluff Creek. And we were at Laos Camp. We were going for a little walk. It was in the late afternoon, not dusk, but, you know, towards dusk. And we were up at Notice Creek Landing. If you're familiar with the area, it's just, you know, five, six hundred yards, probably from Laos Camp.

maybe a thousand yards. And you have to cross the bridge. The bridge is really cool, too. I mean, I don't want to nerd out on you too hard, but the bridge has the date, 1958, like, built into it because, like, oh, my God, Jerry Crew built this one. Jerry Crew built this probably a month before he got those footprints.

Because now I know where the footprint casts were taken. And then in October of 58, that gave us the word Bigfoot, and I was a little bit further down the road. So he built that probably in July or August or something of 58. So it's pretty cool. And then right on the other side of that bridge, the bridge goes over and notice, by the way, is Notice Creek Landing.

And a tremendous number of encounters happened there. So many that I think that Sasquatches actually use Notice Creek to go up and down to the top of Onion Mountain and stuff. But anyway, that's a side note. So Monica and I were there at Notice Creek Landing and kind of walking around this little island thing in the middle there. And we're over by the creek. We couldn't see the creek.

It was too thick down in the area. But I heard, I could have sworn that. I heard something walking. Like downstream from up above, Notice Creek. And it was like, well, I could hear footsteps in the duff, basically, moving very slowly, like, step, step, step, like that slowly. And then I told Monica, like, hey, hey, stop. And she heard it. And we're listening.

And, like, we start whispering to each other. Like, what is? I don't know. And, like, whatever it is is coming down. And it was coming down. Like, it, like, didn't realize we were there because we're standing. still for several minutes, you know, and then it got below us, basically, and it had to be 50, 60, 70 yards away or something on the other slope. See, because we're on this landing,

and then the hill went down to Notice Creek, and then the hill goes up on the other side, you know, and so, and there were these smaller trees, so much, much larger now, but smaller trees, like maybe 10, 12 feet tall or something like that, replant, basically, from logging between us and the creek, so we couldn't see down there. And, but I, I could see the trees on the opposite slope above these shorter trees that were closer to me. And then whatever it was was basically right below us. And like, and Monica and I are looking back and forth like, what is it? It's right there.

It's right there. Then all of a sudden, one of these trees on the other side of the slope, it just shook like a twig, like this 80 foot tall tree. At the same time, there's this huge crack that just echoed up and down, Notice Creek, like canyon there. And this whole tree just shook like a twig. And like she and I just look at each other like, holy bleep, right? And that scared the hell out of both of us, even though we were there looking for it. Like it scared the hell out of both of us. And then, and so I go, well, Monica, let's go to the bridge.

Maybe we can see it, you know, like looking down from the bridge or whatever. So we go back to the bridge and we don't see anything. It's too overgrown. We rush back to the spot where we first initially heard the thing. And then we can hear the same footsteps going. back up creek, you know, much faster than it was coming down. And then so she and I make our way down to the creek and try to, and like, I remember standing in the creek and a dusk is falling and we're, you know, we only had to go like 20 yards, but it took three or four minutes.

It's pretty thick right there. Or maybe two or three minutes more accurately. And we're standing in the creek. I mean, the water's lapping around her. And I'm thinking, I looked at Monica. Hey, whatever it is, it's right there. We should go. And she looks at me and I can, and we're both scared, mind you. But she looks at me and she goes, if you're going, you're going alone. And I went, oh, crap. And that's like, oh, God damn. You know, and I had a camera and everything. And I'm thinking, well, I'm honestly too scared to go alone because that was a tremendous show of force, right? And so we start looking around for the tree and it's in the middle of this rock. We find the tree and it's, it's a, the whole thing was just staggering and humble.

humbling, I should say. And yeah, that was a crazy trip. So that's the first time I absolutely positively knew that I was around a Sasquatch, even though there's always that element of doubt, I guess, because I didn't see the thing. But I would judge that to be a Sasquatch. That was the first time that I was aware of being around one. What do you make of that behavior of it swinging the tree or shaking the tree to... It just broke something off the tree. Like, I'm assuming it was like a four to six inch branch or something because there's so much jumble and you know in forest you know debris and it was in the middle of the landslide, et cetera, underneath a tree where there's no hope of finding what actually

broke, but I'm assuming it broke a tree. What I interpret out of that is a very typical, you know, primate behavior. I mean, humans show that behavior too, getting all pissed off. And I think that I'm guessing, this is all speculation, of course, I'm guessing that it walked into a situation that it didn't realize we were there. And when it did realize we were there, it was like probably a little bent out of shape like oh crap you know and then wanted to show like hey up yours and then broke that branch at us and then when it had the chance and we weren't there it left as soon as it could was there a time where you you saw the creature i mean you knew for sure that that's it that's it no i've had one siding and it was through a thermal imager so it wasn't a great siding um and i and

but i think it was a saskwatch the context sure points to it in my opinion And it was actually on our first full-fledged night investigation for the first season of Finding Bigfoot. Like when Matt goes, there's something on the hill. You know, he's talking about the Sasquatch that we all saw. Matt thinks it was like a drunk hillbilly. He said, spying on us, whatever that means. At 2 o'clock in the morning, two miles off trail. And maybe he's right.

But we were at a place with repeated encounters over a long period of time where nobody knew we were going to be. And we were about two miles off trail at about 2. in the morning. So it seems unlikely that that was a drunk hillbilly spying on us. Although, again, maybe Matt's right. Matt's not a dumb guy at all. But it sure acted like a Sasquatch. When Matt yelled at it, it started walking away and then he yelled at it again, and it froze for 10, 20 seconds on one foot. And not a week later, we're filming a Georgia episode. And that Sasquatch in Georgia had exhibited the same behavior when the gig was up, so to speak, when it knew it had been sighted.

It stopped and froze, which is a very typical behavior for all animals, really. And then Matt took off after it. He was going to drag the person spying on us down the hill by its ears, his ears or something. I don't know. And then he took off after it, and he had a thermal imageer on one eye and a night vision on the other. And he never saw it again. It totally outdistanced him, even though it was navigating a wooded hillside in the dark without a light. and then 45 minutes, and I never saw it again either, by the way.

I tried to get in front of where I thought it was going, but I was incorrect. And then about 40 minutes later, we got a vocalization off that hillside, a big, off that hill, just one yell, like a frustrated yell or something at us. So I'm inclined to think that was probably a Sasquatch. I can't say 100%, but it sure seems like it was. Yeah, I do remember that. I remember laughing because Bobo and I almost, he said it on the show and I said it about the same time, I go, what's he going to do once he catches it? You know what's he going to tackle it?

You know what I mean? I've often thought whether it was a Sasquatch or a drunk hillbilly spying on us, I sure wish you would have caught it. It would have been quite the show. Yeah, yeah, drunk hillbilly doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. You know what I mean? Someone's going to call back, hey, I'm up here or, you know what I mean? They're generally not going to freeze like a tree. And you're right.

You do hear that behavior a lot. from a lot of witnesses, you know, one of the things I want to ask you, and I thought you had a great argument for it, because there's a lot of skeptical questions I get asked, and a lot of them, I don't really, there's not a great answer for, in my opinion, and I can give you examples, but, you know, what do you say to someone who says, they're not a hardcore skeptic to where they're not even going to look into it, but they look into it, and they're like, well, where is the evidence? And you can even go back to your museum that you opened, What kind of evidence would you present to someone as an argument for them being real to a skeptic that's willing to listen?

Well, I think the evidence comes in several different forms. And a lot of it is soft evidence, which doesn't carry a lot of weight. Yeah, in the legal system, it probably does, but not in science. In fact, I do a presentation on the best evidence for Sasquatch. And I always start with the native stuff because you want to know what's in the woods, man. You talk to an indigenous person. They know because they've been living here. pretty much forever, just like Sasquatches have been.

And so let me back up by saying science isn't, science has a bad rap, I think, especially nowadays with this distrust of experts that seems to be going on in the culture. And they think that scientists have these ivory towers where they protect information and they don't want the populace. It's like this whole conspiratorial paranoid world that we live in has really given a bad name to science, which is ridiculous, you know, in my opinion. in my not so humble opinion. But really, at the end of the day, and I taught this to my 10-year-olds when I taught school, science is a process. It should be a verb, as far as I'm concerned. Science is a process to find out what is real, real for everybody in a shared reality,

I should say, because subjectivism is something different. It's just true for you, but you're not the universe. We should be looking at what's true for a shared culture or a shared reality. And that's what science does. It is a process to ask a question and see if your answer could be true or not. So you start with facts. And some of the facts here are that Native people all throughout North America have stories about things that match that description in the woods.

People continue to see things that match that description to this day. And big old footprints are found in the woods sometimes in very, very remote places. These are all facts. There's no disputing that as a fact. Okay. So we start with those facts and we ask a question, what the hell's going on? And you can, then from there, you speculate. You say, well, this might be going on or that might be going on.

And that's a hypothesis, right? And then what you do is you go out and gather evidence, you gather information. And to see if your information supports your hypothesis or points to another explanation. You know, and if it supports your hypothesis, great. You go find more. And this is a weird thing that people have a hard time wrapping their heads around. You're always trying to prove yourself wrong. You're always looking for that thing that shows that you're on the wrong track and something else is true. And if you can't find it, well, then maybe you're right, but you never stop looking to prove yourself wrong. That's what I love science. You know, science is one of those, because I'm wrong all the time. And thankfully, science is one of those disciplines that actually celebrates it. you're wrong. You know what I mean? Because you're getting closer to the truth. As far as the evidence, what I would point to is like, okay, let's start with Native American, like indigenous people. If bigfoots are in fact a real animal, which is my hypothesis, they're just a primate

like us, a lot like us, actually. If these things are real, a normal part of our landscape, there should be stories of them in the native oral traditions. And sure enough, there are. And a lot of these stories have the same behaviors that we, that the contemporary witnesses report, the sounds they make, banging on stuff, stealing salmon, throwing rocks, that's the smells associated with them, the size, the descriptions. If these are real animals, there should be a record of them in the native literature, or native oral tradition, rather, and there is. Okay, that is actually a form of evidence. If these things have always been here, as I hypothesize, or pretty much always been here, then there should be a record of them in historic newspapers as well.

As the white settlers got here and started pushing into the interior from both coasts, they should have been running across these things. And sure enough, that also exists. There's a really strong tradition of these things being reported in the historic newspapers. And if they're real, they should still be seen today. Okay, there's another check off our list, right? And then we can start getting into the physical evidence, right? Because all those things are rather soft evidence, a little squishy. You know what I mean?

Because, you know, anthropologists point out that like, yeah, but they have, Native Americans have these other things that we, they're spirit animals and all this other stuff. And Sasquatches or Zoniqua or Bukwast or whatever you want to call them, almost. They're probably just those. Okay. So that's a little squishy, shall we say, it's soft evidence. Well, then we could start looking at the hard evidence. Okay. And right now, the best hard evidence that's available, in my opinion, are the impressions, the casts, in other words.

Whether it's footprint casts or handprint casts or a precious few other body parts. So when the footprint casts are there, okay, we can take that. Let's do a little scientific thing on there. We have a 300 or so footprint cast on record between Dr. Meljerman and myself. That's about the number we've settled on, 300, 350, somewhere in there. If they're real, they should show the same features no matter where or when they were cast. and those features, since Sasquatches are not humans, period, they're not Homo sapiens, they're built differently, they have different mass, they walk differently, they have different body proportions,

etc. They should show differences in the structure of the foot that would support that kind of weight walking in a similar way as humans. And sure ended up, that's true. And we all know about the flexibility of the mid part of the foot, you know, mid-tarsal break and all that jazz. By the way, the mid-tarsal break, I want to point that out, that's a really. strong piece of evidence right there.

Because that was only explained by Dr. Meldrum in 2000 or 2001. That's when that feature of the Sasquatch Foot became common knowledge because he published a paper on it. And that paper was based off his own observations of the footprints in five points in 1996, as well as the slew of footprint casts that he had copied at that point from Dr. Grover Krantz, who he was speaking to at the time. And Krantz also noticed the same flexibility, although he didn't have.

have the same expertise as Dr. Meldrum did. Krantz was more bone guy, you know, osteology. Where Dr. Meldrum specifically is an anatomist with a specialty in foot structure and what led to bipedalism. So it took his observations through his specific filters to see what we'd all been looking at. And if you take the photograph by Lyle Laverty of that one particular Sasquatch footprint for the Patterson-Gimland film site, with the huge mid-tarsal pressure ridge in the middle of it. And luckily, Bob Titmus cast that one when he was there nine days later. We've been looking at that since 67.

But it took Dr. Meldrum to see what we were all looking at for so long, because Dr. Meldrum literally cut his teeth on studying the foot structure of Australopithecines, which is a homin, an extinct homin, the most famous of which is the Lucy fossil that most people seem to be familiar with. She was an Australopithecus aphrensis. And if I remember right, he worked on his master's degree with a specialist in that. So he literally cut his teeth on the foot structure of non-human ancestors of our own, you know. And so when he saw that, and then he saw those prints in 1996 at five points outside of Walla Walla, Washington, he saw the same sort of thing about the flexibility in the mid part of the foot.

Again, Krantz noted this in his book, but he didn't really have the expertise in this one special. thing that Dr. Melgram did that enabled Jeff to see this. So if you put that in context, we, the Bigfoot community, got to learn about this when Jeff published the paper in 2000 or 2001. But yet, if you go back, well, heck, that photograph that Lyle Abertie took at the PG site, that was from 67. And in fact, if you go back to the very first Sasquatch footprint cast that is still in existence, it's the Jerry Crewprint. And I had an office. And I had an opportunity to examine the original a number of years ago and take a lot of photographs of it and share those with Jeff and he's now seen it as well. There is that same feature in the original

1958 footprint. And it is consistent. It is consistently placed. It is right behind where the metatarsals should be. And even though the metatarsals and Sasquatches seem to have been shortened over time, so the ankle bone is further forward on the foot, which is one of those necessary bio-mechanical redesigns of the foot to carry a mass of that size. Krantz writes about that in his book. Yeah, so that marker, that marker in the footprint itself of the pressure ridge is in the same place again and again and again and again no matter where that footprint is found and cast or no matter by whom.

But yet there's right there, right there's 42, 43 years of seeing the same feature without having an explanation. And when the explanation comes around, we have a perfectly normal explanation that could be found. There's precedents of it in other species, Australopithecines, for example, and another ape species as well, orangutans, chimpanzees, gorillas. They all have the same feature in their foot, which is what it should be, right? Because we're talking about science here. I'm hypothesizing these are just primates of some sort, just like we are. and if that is true, then they should have this structure because they're not long-distance

hunters like human beings evolved into. And sure enough, that is there. And it is in the same place as it should be for a creature of their size, blah, blah, blah. You just go down the list, man. That is really solid scientific evidence that is really difficult to explain away. And that's not even talking about the handprints and the butt prints and all these other things that we have too. Yeah. And then the hair morphology.

I can go on. There's a tremendous amount of evidence that squarely put Sasquatch in the realm of real animals. Yeah, and I know there's audio too as well, and I know that may fall lower on the evidence scale because, you know, you're not seeing what's making it. But there's some bizarre sounds that come out that don't line up with any other animal. And yeah, it is fascinating. Let me ask you, what do you make, going away from the skeptic and just talking to Cliff, what do you make of, like the Native Americans, there is a lot of stories. with the Native Americans, but there's a lot of bizarre stories with the Native Americans, too, as well. They'll talk about them vanishing. They'll talk about them just doing bizarre things that seem to be very paranormal. Not all Native Americans, but there is a good portion of them that believe he's in

some spirit world and enters our world. And what do you do with that information? I know it's hard to prove scientifically, but do you just toss that out? Or what do you make of that? No, and I don't toss it out. But I also, they also do, a lot of native stories have perfectly normal animals doing extraordinary slash paranormal slash religious sort of things in their oral tradition. And what I think one needs to do is examine stories, cultural traditions in the context of the context of the. culture itself. And I think, you know, the native cultures have a rich oral tradition. And the oral stories remain accurate on the studies of a nun that show that oral stories remain surprisingly accurate

for up to 200 years or so. Then after that, they start going a little off. And, you know, it's like the game of telephone where you whisper into somebody's ear. And by the time it comes back, you know, it's a slightly different story. They've done studies on oral traditions. And they're surprisingly accurate for a long time, but after a certain point that goes a little off the rails, not necessarily wrong because we're talking about cultural beliefs, which is different than objective reality. And another good example of that are like the diehard Christian folks, right, the fundamentalist Christians that still believe the world is only 6,000 years old or something like that,

even though the evidence is clearly not, that's not the case, right? But yet, that's the world they live in, right? So when they approach the Sasquatch thing, they look towards their one source of information, which is the Bible, and try to make sense out of it in the context of their own culture. So that's where all this Nephilim stuff comes up, you know, these giants and Mormons, for example. And I've had long conversations with Dr. Meldrum, who is a Mormon, by the way, about this too. Mormons take a different perspective on the whole thing because they're approaching the subject through the filter of their own culture. they think, or many of them think, that Sasquatches are actually Kane, who is doomed to roam the earth after murdering his brother Abel and had hair covering and like outcasts and stuff. So I approach the native beliefs with respect, of course, but as the same sort of thing that's happening nowadays.

People have their own culture and they see the world through that culture. I think one of the most challenging things one can do is try to remove the filters off of our own eyes and to not observe things based on your own culture, which is next to impossible, by the way, but it's a fun exercise. I like exercises. It's like jogging. I hate jogging. I fail at it, but I still like to do it sometimes. You know what I mean? Just because I'm going to fail doesn't mean I'm not going to try something.

But I think it's a useful exercise to try to remove cultural context. because at the end of the day, culture is not our friend. You know, like, I know that that probably rubs people who have real strong traditions in their cultures and stuff the wrong way. But I don't think culture's our friend. Culture tells you what's okay and what's not okay, how it's okay to behave and act and with things to do. And who the hell are they to tell me what I can and can't do or what other people

are going to approve of? Up theirs, man. So I've kind of this, I'm kind of rebellious against the idea of culture, cultural norms. So I think it's maybe I'm the kind of person that likes to try to look at things outside of the cultural filters and whatnot, you know? And I think you're right. I think you have to do that.

I think, you know, like my culture preference, you know, I grew up religious. And so when I hear weird things, I immediately think demon. And because it's the only box I can put it in. You know what other box do you put this in? And there's no other way to explain weird things that. go on. What do you make of, and I'm sure you've got, I know you've gotten these same reports. And, you know, when it comes from the bigfoot world, people who, you know, we both know in the bigfoot world, and they'll say things, and they're very eccentric. And I think most people take

what they say with a grain of salt. But what do you make of like when a hunter tells you something very bizarre? I'll give you an example. I had a hunter one time. He absolutely refused to come on the show. and didn't want his name out there, but he ran into this creature. And he said it was so bizarre, he was hearing this voice telling him that to get out of here, you know, you need to leave. And he said he'd never experienced anything like that before. And I used to think, well, maybe it's our subconscious telling us, run, get out of here, go. And it still could be. But, you know, and I asked him that. And he said, no. He goes, it wasn't my voice. voice. And he goes, I don't know what to make of that. And he, again, didn't want to come on the show.

He's probably 50 feet away from this thing. And he's not the only one to say that. Now, does that happen in every encounter? No. I would say your average encounter, people are running into an animal. Or they'll describe a Neanderthal or they'll describe, you know, a monster or they're, you know, but there is those weird reports to where, I mean, what do you do with stuff like that? where people are talking about these things vanishing before their eyes or watching the thing disappear. And they're very sincere. What do you do with that sort of information from an eyewitness?

Well, I still gather it. I definitely still gather the information. And I've got a small but a fair number of reports that indicate such weird things. And I've spoken directly to quite a few people that have observed things that don't fit the pattern very well. Like one guy I remember saw one, he said it was right behind him, two or three feet, five feet behind him. And it disappeared. It faded away before his eyes.

I said, well, maybe, maybe you're right. But I'm not going to dispute what he is observing. I'm going to assume, give him the benefit of the doubt that he's not lying to me and that he's not totally nuts and hallucinating or whatever. So, okay, well, I'm going to put that in a pile where I don't know what to do with it. people who have the mind speak thing going on. Like, I've spoken to quite a few of those people, quite a few,

you know, a handful, less than a half dozen probably, but still, not a, not a, not a large percentage of the, um,

witnesses I speak to have anything like that at all, really, um, totally the minority. But I don't think they're lying necessarily. Yeah, I think maybe a couple of them are lying or trying, you know,

trying to jump on board of a fun train to be on. But, um, I don't think they're all lying. And so what could be the truth behind that? And I think that's a fun exercise as well. And I've taken that challenge on and started exploring other possibilities. In fact, I think I've gathered enough stuff to kind of start doodling around with a book or something on that if I ever get around to write my other books first.

But yeah, there might be some truth in that. Now, is it Sasquatch related? I don't think so. I really don't. And I'll kind of briefly go into it. I noticed that these people, these contactees or whatever of Sasquatches with a mind speak and all that jazz, they all kind of seem to walk away from the experience with this, with kind of the same overarching message. You know what I mean? Like kind of a pseudo-hipy sort of message of like, hey, you're screwing up the planet, maybe get your act together.

You know, you need to treat each other with more respect, et cetera, you know, like that kind of thing. But I noticed somewhere along the line that those were the same general takeaways from people who, you know, who claimed to have been abducted by aliens many times. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, and those are the same general takeaways of the people who think that they've spoken to angels or God or whatever, or, you know, that kind of thing. It's also the same general, and this is the clincher here, this is the same general message that people who experience near-death experiences take away.

And so, oh, that's interesting. So I started doing a little bit of reading about that. and actually through years of kind of meandering, light reading, et cetera, I found that there might be a common source for that deal. And in fact, I actually spoke to a person once who thought that they were abducted by aliens. And something interesting this person told me is this person asked them, ask the voices, are you aliens? And the answer was a laugh.

They said, well, if that doesn't scare you so much, then yeah. we're aliens. And I said, oh, it's that interesting. And so I'm kind of wondering if all the messages are the same, maybe the messenger is the same. And it's willing to adopt to adopt its form or pretend to be or convince you it is something that doesn't scare you so bad. You know, that is.

And you're right. I've looked into alien encounters and you're right. There is always that, you know, you need to be good to your fellow man. and save the planet. And that's what I mean. Sometimes in the Bigfoot world, you get those eccentric people that are saying that. But when you talk to an eyewitness away from the big, you know, there's never even given Bigfoot a second thought. And most of what they're telling them is get out here or I'm going to kill you or run. Usually it's not a happy message. But, you know, there's a different story if you start talking to people in the Bigfoot world as far as their message.

Do you think, I'll give you another example, like the smell. Now, no one really knows where that smell comes from with these creatures, and it's very random. It's not always, I would say, less people report the smell than you might think. And you know that, Cliff. I'm saying that to the audience. Yeah, statistically it's 10 to 15%. But it's bizarre. The people that do report it because they walk into a wall of smell.

And it's almost like you can take one foot. and walk out of the smell. You could take one foot back and you're in the smell again. And it seems to show up as quickly as it disappears. And that's always bothered me because, you know, if some great apes running around and he's excluding these, you know, underneath his armpits, you think he'd smell the thing for a long period of time. And that's not how most people describe it.

It's very quick and they'll smell it and it's burning. And, you know, I look into, I'm sure like yourself, Cliff, If I look into ghosts, I look into aliens, I'm fascinated by all of it, but I'll look into it. And one thing that you'll find, and I want your thoughts on this, but one thing that you'll find, like in a lot of demonic encounters, that same smell, like a wet dog, serpheric, almost burn your eyes and burn your nose, they'll report that smell in a lot of demonic encounters. And I'm not saying Bigfoot's demonic. what I'm saying is you start to look across different genres, and it makes you wonder if it's all intertwined somehow. Because no one can catch a big foot. It's like we're chasing a ghost.

After all these years, why can't we catch one of these things? There's people out there actively trying to shoot these things, and they can't even catch up with them. So it makes me wonder if there's something else going on. I mean, have you ever thought maybe there's something else going on here? Maybe it's not a primate. Maybe it's not just an ape out there running around. maybe there's something else going on here? You know, I have entertained the possibility, but I'm an evidence guy.

And all of the evidence is squarely in the corner of non-human primate. Now, I'm not saying they're apes. Apes are different. And I think that that's, you know, I'm accused of being an aper. But apes are not, yeah, we're apes. You know, like in the broad sense of the term, homo sapiens sapiens, which is what we are, are apes. We're hominids. And oddly enough, orangutans aren't hominids. They are

pungids. But they're also apes. Apes is a really big family, man. And so, yeah, are they apes? Yeah. But what I find is that the people who toss that term around vastly underestimate apes, okay? Vastly underestimate them and think that they're special in some way, which we're special in some ways. We write, we read, et cetera. We use fire. But we're not that special. Our behavior kind of points at the same thing. So, but again,

And if there was evidence that these things were interdimensional, whatever that means, I don't even think that people throw that term around. Don't understand that either, my dad. We're always willing to blab about something we don't understand to try to explain something else we don't understand. And it's one of the frustrating things about humans. But the evidence is there that these things fall in line with all the other eight behaviors. Their appearance is that of a hominid, okay?

and maybe they're pongad. I don't know. If these things are giganticithicous, then they're pongas of some sort. But right now, I don't think they are. I think they're hominins. I think that they're probably some sort of robust australopithecine. And so I'm going to call them just hominid for now. So those people out there who aren't familiar, hominid is a word that scientists use to describe our family. since I actually know African apes and humans are the only hominids. Homanin, with an N at the end, is specifically for everything that has been on our branch of the tree since we split off from chimpanzees somewhere between six and eight million years ago. Okay. So Neanderthals are hominins. Australopithecines are hominins. Homo habilis is hominin. We're a homininin, I guess, too, in a way.

And I think that's what these things are. But the description is that of a hominid of some sort. The foot structure is that of a hominid of some sort. The hand structure is that of the hominid of some port. The behaviors are all that of a hominid or an ape of some sort. When it, you know, what is it? When it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. You know?

And that's one of the things that people like to challenge me when they come into the shop sometimes. And I don't know why. I don't know why people care what I think. I don't care what they think, right? We have our own realities that we deal with. But they say, oh, these things are UFO right and interdimensional shape shifts and whatever's. And my thing back is like if they can do all these amazing, miraculous, interdimensional, paranormal things, why are they eating roadkill, man? You know?

Can't they do better? Yeah, that's a good point. And again, you could be right. I could be right. We both could be wrong. And I told Bubba the same thing. No one really knows. It's fun to talk about it, though, and listen to other people's theories. And I used to think that, too, I'll tell you a really weird story. So I, this goat man, and before he laughed, just hear me out on this goat man.

So a couple of years ago, probably five years ago, I was getting not a whole lot. Honestly, I probably had maybe eight reports of this thing in five years. And but it's very bizarre. It's very bizarre. And it's from, I'll give you another example, the guy that, just sent me an email. He's a forest ranger, or he used to be a forest ranger. Now he's a police officer. He didn't want his name out there. He wanted to stay anonymous. And he was telling, and he wrote this encounter he had with this saying. And it was in the Daniel Boone National Forest. And they were sent up there that were part of the fire crew. And there was a fire up on the hill. So he goes up there to, uh, to check it out. And it looks like a small fire. So he's, you know, just, surveying the area. And so they decide they're going to hike up the hill because the roads,

they can't get in via the roads. They hike up this hill and they come into this clearing. Now, the rest of the guys are behind them and the fire is going. It's not a big fire, but it's going. And he goes, I don't know what to tell you what this thing was, man. He goes, it was so weird. And he said it was a half man, half goat dancing in the fire. And he goes, I've never seen anything like that. He goes, I stood there and watched it probably for 15 seconds. And it was very physical. And he said it turned and looked at him and kind of had this look of like, oh, I've been caught, you know, kind of shock. And so it takes off to the woodline. And he said, as it was walking off to the wood line, it just like dissolved. And he goes, I'm not on drugs. I wasn't drinking. He's like,

I've been in law enforcement for a long time. And as it was going away into the tree line, He said it like dissolved. And one of the fire guys come up behind him, and he asked one of the fire guys, did you see that? And the guy goes, that goat? He goes, where to go? And he goes, I just got a quick glimpse of it. And he was sitting there thinking, that was no goat.

But you get those weird reports. And then the other, and I'm going somewhere with this, but you get, I've gotten reports from it's mainly loggers, forest rangers, and law enforcement that've seen this. I've had one fisherman that's seen them. But mainly it's guys in law. law enforcement. And you get reports from everything from them eating. I've had guys walk up towards them and they're eating and they think it's a goat bent over until it stands up. And then it takes off and you get and it leaves tracks, physical tracks. And I think it's some weird

demonic entity. Again, that's me putting it in a box. But I mean, what else? Half man, half goat doesn't exist. We both can agree on that, right? Like, biologically, it doesn't make sense. Well, yeah, yeah, I would agree with that. And I would also agree with dogmen, same thing. I don't see the ecological niche for them, but that doesn't mean they're not real. And I don't want to interrupt your story, but there are several things about that. I love all weird stuff. And it turns out that the Sasquatch one, that's the one that sticks because you throw a lot of stuff at the walls and you try to see what sticks, right?

It turns out that the evidence is clearly there for Sasquatch as being a perfectly normal animal. right but that is made i don't love all this other weird stuff too and there might be some sort of reality behind them as well now is it an ecological uh is there an ecological niche for these things like are these a biological reality i don't think so um that that doesn't make a lot of sense to me there's not the tradition of these sort of things but yet at the same time you look back in like i'm i was perusing this book the other day from my library uh the history of wild men in europe right and they start with the like obviously long ways back but they were talking about

saters and fauns which is basically what you're describing you know half man half goat sort of thing and there's a tradition of those sort of deals although they did point out that the sater sort of thing that was a much later development it was kind of interesting to see the history of how when and where these

these I'll just call them archetypes surfaced and when they became not popular but prevalent, you know, in the art and stories and things like that. So I'd have to wonder, like, if the Seder that this person saw, if that is some sort of bubbling up to the surface of the archetype somehow, like the Jungian archetype. And those people who are interested in this sort of thing, I think I would recommend they read Jung, which is J-U-N-G. He's a very prominent psychologist

from the early part of the 20th century. He actually wrote a whole book on UFOs, for example. And a lot of people that aren't aware of that, like, this scientific psychologist guy, like, wrote a UFO book. And the premise of his UFO book is that, like, your consciousness itself can manifest physical objects and sometimes does so just to make you question the reality, really, I guess, for lack of a better term. That's my shaky understanding of what his hypothesis was. But he wrote a whole book on UFOs, and I believe that's, if I understand it correctly, that's the conclusion he came to, is that your consciousness is actually a little bit more powerful than most people give a credit towards, which brings about the positive visualization and all that sort of stuff that people are into. It can actually manifest things and sometimes does so just to mess with you, just to make you question certain things. Yeah. No, it's bizarre.

If you ever get a chance, even like the, I think it's called the Pope Lick-Mars. monster. I've heard of that. Yeah, in Kentucky. And, you know, people die on that bridge and they're chasing this thing up on the bridge. It's just bizarre to me. It's just really, really bizarre that people are running into these weird things out in the woods. Have you ever seen the lights, the balls of light people talk about?

Have you ever been out there and seen those for yourself? No, never. Never. I've been around when other people have. And I've seen a video or two that I find interesting. but I've never seen them for myself. And, you know, that's kind of the thing, too, is like people say, no, they turn into or no, they're sprites or no, those are ghost bigfoots or whatever they're trying

to sell me, right? But I say, well, you know, you're basing that off of your own experience. I have never once experienced that. Don't I get the right to do that as well? Don't I have the right to base my own beliefs off my own experience or do I got to take your word for it, even though I don't know you? Yeah, no, I agree with you on that. I mean, I've seen them, and I didn't think it was Bigfoot related when I saw it.

I still don't necessarily believe it's Bigfoot related. It was just a weird ball of light. Man, there was no explanation for it hovering, you know, four feet above a creek in the middle of the night in the middle of the woods. And it was the most bizarre thing I've ever seen. It didn't turn into anything. It just was this weird looking light. And I still have no explanation for it. I've toyed around at the idea.

Maybe that's some sort of like residue from infrasound or something. something, like some sort of thing like that, because it has happened in areas where I think there were bigfoot's around. Like, Bobo and I once were at a place up at Bluff Creek, and he claimed to have seen a basketball-sized blue light, and he said that I was too short to see it, but to me, that sounds like Bobo slamming me. I'm not sure. And then, because Bobo does take some pride in his height, I guess, because, you know,

funny, going off on Bobo for a second, and I love the man, don't get me wrong, but when the South Park thing came out, and Bobo was depicted as being very, very, very, very dumb, which is unfair to him, of course. The two things he complained about, about the South Park depiction is like, they treated me like I was a freaking idiot, dude, and they made me just as tall as Cliff is. That's hilarious. Yeah. Well, anyway, yeah, but he claimed to have seen one of these things.

And another time, I found it very interesting, because this is another multiple witness sort of thing. Bobo happened to be one of the witnesses again, though. I was big footing, I don't even, must have been maybe 2008 or something like that, up on Vancouver Island. And I was up there with a bunch of the BFRO people. Moneymaker was there. He pulled out a bunch of the BFRO people at the time. And Bobo was there. Another woman named Cindy was there. And it was a good time. But Cindy and Bobo wandered off on these abandoned railroad tracks that were maybe eight or 10 feet above the forest floor, you know, this big rise sort of thing. And they were abandoned, you know. And we were back at camp. And they wandered away. And 20, 30 minutes later, I get a call on the radio is bobs and he says hey man my my uh my light's dying or my therm is dying that's what it was my thermal imager's dying i need more batteries and i said yeah man no problem and uh so i was getting some batteries together and i doddle a little bit i've got a pretty elastic sense of time and so i was

taken longer than i intended but at some point i was just about ready to go then bobo radioed in and says okay cliff i see you but you need to go more to the right i'm up and here you're going too far of the left. And I'm back at camp. And like, I go, hey, what? And then everybody stops, you know, Moneymaker and Wally was there as well. And they go, and I radio back to Boa. What you say says, yeah, I see you. I see your headlamp. But you're going, you're, you're walking too far the left. You need to turn to the right and come out about 100 yards from you. I go, what are you seeing? That's not me, man. He goes, what? And, and then he and Cindy watched this little dot, an LED sort of thing of light going through the woods. Like, it's a headlamp or

something at a distance and then at some point they lose track of it and that was it you know so i was nearby but i didn't see the thing you know but obviously it happened we have two witnesses there who are you know who are not going to lie and all that sort of stuff so it's bizarre man there's so many weird things to run into even out in the woods you know outside of bigfoot i've heard a lot of bizarre things that people run into that that has nothing to do with big foot uh like that goat thing that and again those are very rare i haven't gotten too many of those reports but You know, like Dogman, I tend to agree with you on Dogman. I really think Dogman is some weird entity that presents itself that way.

Because I've talked to people who've shot at it and this thing doesn't react when it's being shot at. It's strange, though, because that's the other thing I don't understand is there is reports of them eating like chickens and leaving footprints. And it's like, I can't explain any of that. Like how does it if it's a, and maybe in my mind, I think if something is spiritual or it's more demonic, it's not going to leave footprints. It's not going to eat, you know, what's the point in eating something? But you always hear those weird reports of that. But I still agree with you, Cliff. I think it's something, some weird entity.

It's not a biological animal that people are seeing. People are seeing, though. The universe is a really amazing, wonderfully weird place. I mean, I often like to say, I forget who said this originally. But the universe isn't not only is it weirder than you think. It's actually weirder than you can think. You can't comprehend how weird this place is. But it just turns out that Bigfoot isn't really one of those weird things.

Bigfoot's are kind of boring at the end of the day. They're perfectly normal animal. And I think that's really what makes them so cool. But these other things, like the dog man thing, that one perplexes me because I would like to write it off as misidentified saskwatches. but I can't because I know two excellent witnesses. And I know them well. They don't know what they saw either, though. But they clearly thought, you know, it looked like a wolf on two legs.

Or, you know, there's another story. I got a report a couple years ago from Vader to Washington. This couple was driving down these farm roads, you know, off the grid there. And they drove by what they thought was a stump, like a seven-foot stump. But as they drove by, it spread its wings and flew. front of their car. And so they were looking at a seven-foot-tall owl. Well, God, I've never heard that one before. And, of course, since then, I've heard secondhand or third-hand, you know, a handful of other stories of similar things. I think Ken Gerhardt actually has one or two of those

things written up in his book, but the flying homoids or whatever that book is called. I forget. But, yeah, that's another weird thing. I kind of don't think that there are seven-foot-tall owls in general. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's kind of where I've come down. It's like, what the hell was that about? I don't know. But I love it. It's cool. Yeah, there was one on the I-Five bridge. A couple years back, a guy took a picture of it. Do you remember that? No. I'll have to dig it up. Yeah, it was this weird looking, just how you described is basically what, if you can imagine, that's what it looked like. And it was on the top of the I-Fi bridge. and a guy took the picture from, you know, on the other side of the Columbia River, the Hussong and Larry's.

And he snapped a picture of it. And he was trying to figure out what it was. He was like, it was the biggest bird. I think it was in the newspaper or it was actually on the news and that no one knows what it was. And it was that one quick picture he took of it sitting on the I-5 bridge, man. It was bizarre. I'll have to dig that up. I've talked about that before and I've looked for the article.

It was years ago. But he snapped that picture. It's fascinating. There's so many weird things. That's why I like to listen to people, you know, and I know you do it, but Bobo does the same thing. And after a while, you might hear something you think is crazy, and then a year down the road, it may not seem so crazy anymore.

Yeah. People give you information. I totally agree with that. And I love all the weird stuff, but don't ask me to believe it. I just like to listen to it. And I'll decide for myself what I believe later, you know? Yeah. And that's what has kind of come down to with the Bigfoot thing.

It's like I'm interested now. in Sasquatches because I've always been interested in weird off the beaten track sort of topics. It just so happens that Sasquatch actually has the evidence behind it. And not everything, but most other things, you have to rely on somebody else's subjective experience and their observational skills. And I just, I don't care how experienced a woodsman you consider yourself, you're still seeing the world through a bunch of filters. And I may not have the same filters as you do.

So your observation is by far the most meaningful to you. And you got to expect that, you know, my observations should be less meaningful to other people than they are to myself. You know, like when I hear that thing that walked down Notice Creek at Monica and I, well, you know, that's my experience. Do I know it was a Sasquatch? No, I think it was. But I'm not going to convince you and I don't think you should be convinced by it. We all need to be more skeptical. and I'm really skeptical of a lot of stuff.

And we all should be. See if it passed the muster because if there's one thing I know is that you can look as hard as you want at the truth. It can withstand the scrutiny. Yeah, it's a good point. It's a good point. And I think, too, you know, not only be skeptical, but also be open-minded enough to hear people. Because there's been a lot of people I flat out disagree with. But I'll walk away and go.

that guy might be right. You know what I mean? And so I'll change my opinion as I go on or my hypothesis. I'll change after talking to people and stuff. A lot of it's changed over the years and things that I would refuse to listen to in the past. Now I'll listen to him, you know, and I'll go, well, maybe they're right. You know, it's like Ron Moorhead used to, I used to argue with him. You know, he does his quantum Bigfoot thing. And Ron's brilliant, by the way. I love the man. Love the man. Good friend. Great man. And But I used to argue with him, and he'll tell you this. I used to sit there and argue with him about when we were talking about the subject. And I love Ron because he put up with my arrogant, you know, he'd put up with me. And but he used to always say, you could be right, Wes. You could be right. And then I'd walk away and go, God, he got me again. Like, how do you argue back with someone saying, you could be right?

Yeah. No, I can't. I can't. Well, you know, that brings up something is that, And the, God, the Bigfoot community, and I think all niche communities are probably guilty of this to various degrees, people get pretty offended when you don't agree with them. And I think that's ridiculous. I think that we should make it a point to hang out with people who we disagree with. Because if you, again, the truth can handle the scrutiny.

If you can't handle your paradigm, your model of the world or Bigfoot or anything, being questioned, that to me seems like it's, pretty flimsy ground to begin with if you don't even like to being questioned on what you believe to be true. I think we owe it to ourselves to hang out with people and go get a beer with somebody who totally, like a good friend of mine, Tom Powell, for example, I couldn't disagree more with him about Sasquatches, but I love the man. And he always shoots things at me, and I keep a very open mind. Tom did a special event at our museum before we had to close down. I goes in January or maybe February. And part of his thing is that he does a lot of stuff up the McKenzie River, for example,

in Oregon. And he's been doing these experiments. He actually puts out tick-tac-toe boards because he thinks that the bigfoots are like, moving things around on the tick-tac-toe boards. And maybe he's right. You know, I don't think he is, but maybe he's right. And he goes, Cliff, what do you have to lose? Try it.

So I did, you know, in my yard. And I've got a number of acres up. up by Marmont outside of Portland. And of course, like most people, I chose my property location based on sighting reports. I'm assuming you did the same. But so there's occasionally, we have indications that a Sasquatch might be around. It's not, you know, it's not one of these things. It's not banging on my door asking for garlic or something every day. But like two or three times a year, something weird happens on the property. That'd be a lot easier to explain if Sasquatches were cruising around. So I did. I put a Tic-Tacto board up on top of my property.

I've been out there for a week or two now, but nothing's happened, of course. But Tom's right. Like, Cliff, keep an open mind. Maybe something will happen. And what do you have to lose? It's free. Oh, yeah, you're right. So let's try this.

Let's try a little science here. Let's see if this is going on. So far it hasn't. But so, that's still fun. Yeah, I don't think anything's going to happen. And I bet you anything I'll win if it does happen. Yeah, I hear you. Or it'll be a draw.

I saw, you know, war games. It'll be a draw. I know better. Yeah. I hear you, man. And I like that about, and I wasn't expecting that from either you or Bobo to be, it's like I was telling Bobo. I like how you guys approach the subject. You guys aren't, you know, you get these people that will, you know, everything's a fact. They'll break down all the facts for you. You know, Bigfoot does this, big foot does that. It's like, well, how do you know that? How do you know what you're saying is true? You know, just because you claim to observe it doesn't make it so. But, you know, but, you you'll hear these guys and they got an answer for everything, you know, regarding behavior and this and that. And I think some of that, it's hard to do that in the Big Fort world. It's hard to get along with people. Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm the jerk. But some of these guys, you know, they're cut from this narcissistic DNA cloth, a lot of them.

And it's hard to have the conversations like you and I are having right now because it's like, nope, you're wrong. You're 100% wrong. And it's like, I wish people would sit and listen to each other. I told Bubba. the same thing. The Big Four World would actually talk instead of fight and quit being number one. They'd probably accomplish a lot. Yeah, you know, that's another takeaway from Tom Powell. And again, I couldn't disagree with more of them about Sasquatches. But why not give it a try? Like this tic-tac-toe thing I'm doing right now. It's kind of fun. I don't expect anything, but maybe something will happen. Surprise me. But Tom says, you know, because Cliff, I love what you're doing. I'm glad you're trying to film one. I'm glad you're trying to learn about about these. I'm glad you're doing the footprint stuff because that means I don't have to.

And that's a great attitude. I'm glad Tom's doing what he's doing because I don't want to. And that means I don't have to. You know, because if he does come up some, and he's come up with some very intriguing, funny things. Like the whole Chehalis project thing. You know, I don't know if you read the locals. Yeah. I haven't, no. Oh, you haven't. You should check it out. It was actually a pioneering book in a lot of ways. And I'm saying that as a totally physical, sort of biological kind of thing. It was very pioneering in a tremendous number of ways. But his Chehalis project stuff, unbeknownst to other researchers at the time, he actually enlisted a psychic to try to talk to the Sasquatches that were frequenting these people's

properties. And he got weird results. And a lot of these results are written up in another one of his books, his second nonfiction book, which is called Edges of Science. And like, for example, he knew that they needed, you know, a body or bones or something to prove the animal. So he had the psychic communicate to them or try to communicate to them, hey, can you give us a bone or something like that? You know? And then he didn't tell the property owners he was doing this either.

And like within a couple days, I don't remember the exact number of days. You can read his book and find out. They found a bone at the base of a tree where they had hidden a camera. And they actually got a Sasquatch photograph, by the way. A lot of people don't know that either. It's not very good. But they actually, I believe they got a Sasquatch photograph from that camera. And this was after that.

They got a bone placed at the bottom of the tree. And it was a weird bone. And so, and like the property owners called Tom and said, yeah, we got this bone laid out by this tree. And Tom didn't tell him about this psychic experiment he was doing. And then it turns out they figured out that the bone was a breast bone from an emu. And the closest emu farm was about five miles away. and coincidentally owned by the father of the property owner. Interesting.

That is interesting. What the hell is that about? But I think that stuff's hilarious, totally fun, totally funny. And legitimate science in a way, because he was doing a double blind or single blind, I forget which one, experiment, where nobody knew he was doing this except for Tom and the so-called psychic. And they got a weird result after. I think that's hilarious. I'm glad Tom does stuff like that, because that's that. Not only is it fun and a great story, but it's true.

And, you know, I'm busy trying to track individuals through the footprint data set. You know, I've got other things to worry about. Yeah, I hear you. And like you said, I mean, that is kind of fun. And, you know, science really is curiosity. John used to tell me that all the time. He's like, you know, don't, science is curiosity at the end of the day. It's wanting to figure something out.

And I think that's what we're all trying to do. I mean, we're not scientists. Don't get me wrong. But in the spirit of John, I think he's right. I think, you know, science really is curiosity and you got to try different things. Kind of like what Tom's trying. Why not try it? You got nothing to lose, you know.

Right, right. And John is a, I miss him, Bendernoggle, of course. It's like, what a beacon of hope for all of us. He was willing to listen to anybody. He would listen to the most outrageous claims and try to make sense of them. And he was such a humble, simple, kind man. I sincerely miss John. I was, it's an honor to have called him a friend.

One of the greatest compliments anybody in the Bigfoot field has ever given me was from John. And he simply told Dan Perez once something to the effect of I'm a big fan of Cliff. It's like, oh, it almost makes me cry, man. I just love John so much. And I think people out there who knew John, you know, would take that as a huge compliment. And John's probably one of the greatest human beings I've ever met. I mean, just being a good human being outside of Bigfoot and outside of being a science guy and outside of it, John was just a great human being. and I've learned so much from them and may rest in peace.

But, you know, with your kind of a weird way to change topics, but I don't want to keep you too much longer, Cliff. I know you have your podcast, Bigfoot and Beyond, and it comes out every Saturday around 10 o'clock. You'll get a new podcast. What do you have coming up with the podcast? I know you guys kind of record ahead of time, but what do you have coming up for people who are listening? We interviewed Russ Jones, who's an author and a Bigfoot investigator. I think that's going to be a two-parter, but though I could be wrong about that. But I know in the next couple weeks, we have Paul Graves coming up.

We have Adam Davies. We speak to him, and I love Adam. Adam's a good, good friend of mine. We had a kind of a crucible relationship at the beginning because I had heard about him and read about him for years, like I'm sure most people have, you know, because he's so prolific in what he does. And then my first chance to meet him, I was going to know camping in a tiger preserve with Adam Davy. in Sumatra for a week. It's like, oh, well, God, that's a good way to get to know somebody, isn't it?

So he and I both share that bond and great stories. So we kind of reminisce about that, looking for the ring, Pandek, and Samatra together, as well as his other research. Oh, we talked to Mark Mersell, who, of course,

rediscovered the ape canyon cabin site. Those are the things coming up in the next few weeks. And we have a couple other possible guests lined up. We're trying to get ahead of the curve, you know, plague and all. It's, as you know, probably better than anybody, it's stressful to try to pump

one of these shows out every single week. So we're trying to get ahead of the curve a little bit. I guess we're trying to flatten our own curve in a way, aren't we? Yeah, well, I'm looking forward to the next episode. It's Bigfoot and Beyond, and whatever podcast you're listening to Sasquatch Chronicles on, definitely check the guys out. Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo. Cliff, thank you again for coming on. Oh, anytime, anything. You just let me know. what I can do to help you and I'm here. 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. Stage a human wonder. Face them, the phobia. Speeding is sweeping across the country faster than the coronavirus and wagering week is your antidote. I'm Tom Martin, and I'm a very. veteran sports analysts and respected sports handicapper who will help build ESPN's brand.

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