Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:665 Eerie Florida

Episode Date: June 21, 2020

My guest tonight is Mark Muncy. Mark has written numerous books regarding everything strange in Florida. Most know Florida as the land of endless sunny beaches, but the state is home to numerous eerie legends and mysterious creatures. The Everglades is home to the elusive Skunk Ape, a strange bipedal creature recognized by its odor. An uncanny doll reputed to have a life of its own greets visitors in a Florida Keys museum. An ancient monster is reported to roam the rivers in the northeast corners of the state, and in South Florida, a man built "America's Stonehenge" via mysterious means.   http://www.eerieflorida.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 moved like that in my life. What's... What's...

They were screaming at each other in gibberish. It sounded like a language and they were chumtering away back and forwards, back and forwards, back and forwards. I know what a bear looks like and there is no way on this planet but what I saw were bears. What's... 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 a counselor? Yes, I'm looking right in. Uh-oh. This is Kim O'Pogger, and you're listening to The One, the Only, Sasquatch Chronicles. 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 Mark Muncie, and it's the author of Erie, Florida, Freaky Florida, and Creepy Florida.

And you can find all of Mark's books on eerieflora.com. Mark kind of investigates the local legends of the weird stories and including skunking. Or as most of us know, a Sasquatch. But it's kind of cool to have a guy like Mark come on talk about local legends, different things that he's looked into. And before we actually went on the air, I was talking to Mark and he was telling me about this weird entity he ran into on his property. Where it took place was actually on the Kentucky West Virginia border. That's where his family owned this piece. piece of property and everyone he had grown up hearing about this story about this weird entity

and he always thought it was BS until the night he ran into it. If you've had an encounter and you'd like to be on the show, shoot me an email. My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. And if you get a chance to check out Sasquatch Chronicles.com, you can become a member and get additional shows. Let's learn a little bit about Florida tonight. Mark, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for being here.

Oh, it was a big thrill. Thanks for inviting me. Yeah, I'm happy to have you on. I was really fascinated by, you know, that story you were telling me before we went on the air because I kind of wondered what got you into looking into all of these different local legends. Before we get into your books, Erie, Florida, Freaky Florida, and Creepy Florida, for the audience, would you take us back to that moment? Tell us about this property you grew up on and what did you encounter? What did you see? Well, I was a Florida transplant, but I lived most of my early life in the Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia area. My father was a vice president for Greyhound, regional manager for a while, and then went up to the vice president. And so we moved quite a bit up in that area. And we went around every weekend.

So I got to know that whole Ohio Valley area pretty well. and we had family land that has been in my family for generations on that Kentucky, West Virginia border near the town of Louisa, Kentucky, for those that know it, that's between Ashland and Pikeville, for those looking for bigger, you know, names, and right across from a town called Fort Gay, West Virginia. And this area is just, it's up in the hills, it's part of the Sires family, uh, lands. And, uh, this was the Muncie, uh, property up in this little holler up there. And it had

a legend, a, um, a local cryptid, if you will. And I just knew it as the, you know, the, the, the family monster. And I'd been told it by all my uncles and told it by everybody. And it was a strange story of a, uh, peddler that had been seen out in that area. And that he got robbed by some people. And he resisted with a big oak stick. And then they murdered him. And then to hide the murderer, they butchered a cow on top of his body. And then they buried them both in this pit so that would hide the murder.

Now, years later, he's seen as this misshapen thing that maybe looks like a big cat, a very big cat. you know, panther size with a misshapen head or maybe a small cow, you know, so that kind of ties back into the legend. But it has a humanish head, kind of misshapen, and a wooden leg. So, you know, for those of you South Park fans, you're thinking something like scuzzle butt or something like that. You know, for me, that was the craziest story I'd ever heard. And I didn't think anything of it. And some people said it glowed a little bit when it ran and you would just see it. And as I got older, it was just this weird story.

And it had a typical backwoods Kentucky name. Of course, they called it something unique. I love when people name things. This one was called the bench leg. Does that terrify you at all? No, it sounds stupid. It's the dumbest thing ever. And as I started getting older, I was like, man, this makes no folklorist sense.

This doesn't make any, you know, this is just a dumb story I've heard in my family. the land. And as we grew up, we had two areas that there was an old trailer from like the 70s, buried out in the woods that we had reclaimed us kids. And I would bring my big city friends out to, you know, because at this point we had moved to Charleston, West Virginia, and we were still driving to this land. It was only like an hour away for every weekend. It was our getaway place. and the big family stayed up, you know, up at the big trailer up on the hill. And I was like, okay, I'll just head down to this little trailer, see what I can see. And we would go down there.

And it was basically just to get away from the grownups. We'd have our own little campfires. We'd tell ghost stories all night. I had already had the bug by that time for telling spooky tales. But then one night I was out there on my own, didn't have anybody with me. and I heard what sounded like a horse galloping up. Now, this is wooded property. They did sometimes keep horses on it.

A neighboring farm would sometimes let a horse stay on it. We would let a horse stay on our land in exchange for them keeping other property because we didn't really live there. But we had a lot of family and a lot of friends in the area who would help us keep it, you know, so we could go to it on weekends. So I thought maybe somebody had let a horse into the land. and sure enough, this horse comes up. And I'm like, oh, thank goodness, it's just a horse. And then I hear a second one. And I'm like, okay, two horses.

That's still not unusual, you know, but that's usually about the limit. And then they get spooked and run off. And that kind of spooked me. I'm like, okay, is there one of the bears loose in this area? Because we knew there were bears near the property. is there something else spooked them maybe one of my parents is out for a walk it's awfully late and that's when I saw the glow in the woods and I hear thudded steps and it gets and it walks right across the field that I was in right at the edge of the woods it looked at me with that

misshapen head and then darted back into the woods and I didn't get to see a wooden leg but it definitely had strangeness, and it haunts me to this day. It's like, what is that? And so then you start researching it. And when I got older,

we'd been in Florida for a while, and I started hearing the Florida monsters. I'd tell my story. And suddenly, you know, I found out, oh, there's so many more stories here in Florida

that I can research and get into. So that's what kind of started that path. was all those years ago. And now we're working on Erie Appalachia, and we're heading back to that area, finally. So that's going to be the next project. The publishers finally letting us loose from Florida. Yeah, let me ask you, Mark, regarding your encounter, what now, did the whole thing glow? Or when he say glow, was it like a glowing eyes?

Just like almost what you would expect from like a haunted mansion type effect, kind of a greenish glow around the head of the creature. and then the rest was blackish fur, you know, on all fours. And now I'm familiar with Foxfire and other things and other things, you know, Moss effects and, you know, they could do that. But no, this was legit. This was something I didn't understand. And sure enough, after I started writing these books and I reached out to family again saying, hey, I want your bench. leg stories because this is a little side project I'm working on. I got stories from

aunts and uncles who had never told stories before of events where, you know, they'd seen it on the property or they'd seen it around the property or they'd, you know, they had a, they thought they had an extra cow, you know, an extra calf, you know, in the property and they would chase it and it would go around one side of a bench and go around side and other, a bush and go around the other side of another bush, and it would disappear. And then they had a bench leg story. So some of those were starting to add up and up and up. And I'm like, okay, we've got something out there that we need to research. And so that's been a little side project.

How did this affect you seeing this? I mean, you'd heard these stories and now you're face-to-face with this saying that you kind of thought was BS. How did it affect you? Well, it cemented it. It was like, okay, then I start looking back further on things that people had told me or things that had happened that didn't make sense before. and you start piecing things together and you start going,

okay, well, this shadowy shape I remember as a kid, was that a dream? Did I see something unusual then? You know, this man who told me that he was abducted by aliens. Do I dismiss him completely out of hand like I would have normally? It opens the door. A lot of people, I hate to say that cliche, but it's true. It made it so that I could implement.

sympathize with the people that we interview and the witnesses that we talk to. And, you know, they, some of them are just happy to have a friendly ear, you know, that doesn't think, you know, they're going to say, and every one of them always is the classic, I know you're going to think this is crazy. But. And then I'm like, no, I'm not going to think you're crazy. I want to hear your story. I might later go, okay, this doesn't make sense. But that's why we started looking into the history behind these things. And why are they there?

And what sort of folklore do they fit? Or how long has it been spotted in this area? Is there a history behind it? That really works when we talk with the paranormal teams or we go to some unique locations for research that we get some stories that no one I think would have ever put two and two together. And yes, that gives us a unique perspective. I would agree. I mean, having some historical background definitely helps. What do you think that the same was?

Do you think it's just some weird entity running around? I think there's some truth to the folklore. I think that we found evidence of a robbery there in the 1800s and a man being murdered. So is it spiritual? Is it, you know, residual? I think it might be some sort of entity on the property. I think it's, I don't think it's natural. I don't think it's, you know, accrupted in the truest sense.

But I think as we're researching these fields, we're starting to realize there's some, definitely some bins and wines in the stories of, you know, Bigfoot where the tracks just stop. You know, you follow them for a while and then they just disappear. I think this is something similar where you just follow it so far and then it's just gone. And then when you start reaching out up in that area, you find there's tails every little valley, every little place you can go. You find more and more. And that's the same thing we found in Florida as every little small town had a story. And every big town had dozens. Yeah.

Before we get into some of your book, I'm kind of curious. Have you ever seen, you know, on the show, a lot of times I'll interview an eyewitness, even off there. And especially on people's property, they'll talk about weird activity or their Sasquatch on their property. And a lot of times I'll ask them, you know, have you seen the lights? and what I mean by that is these weird balls of light flying around. And you'd be surprised a lot more people have probably seen those than they've seen Bigfoot. But did you ever see the balls of light? I have a story I bring out on April Fool's a lot because I did have some encounters with unusual lights.

I've had some encounters with some strange things that I can't explain. And I do find that when we talk to Bigfoot hunters, paranormal hunters, A lot of the same things, the green flash. I don't know if you hear that a lot. Or there's a green flash before they saw the big foot or a green flash after they saw the big foot. We get that a lot. But with strange balls of light, yeah, we've chased them all over Florida, the Okoey

lights and some other things like that. But one of the ones with me was up there in the woods one night. I was out walking and this would have been way after my encounter. was quite a bit older, I'd say it was like 16 or 17, and we'd revisit it. We'd move back up. We were still moved to Florida, but we were up for a summer break. And I went out for a walk in the woods to see the stars again, because the one thing I'd definitely miss down here is you have to go quite a bit away from the cities to find, you know, a nice, quiet place to watch the stars here in Florida, unless you get out on a boat.

And then you've got to worry about the boat lights. But here, up in that farm in Kentucky, we're miles from. anything. So it was always a great place to go that. And I would go up. And so we were up there out in the woods. And I went back down to that old trailer down in the field, which is a good half mile from the other house. And it was now the woods had grown up. Everything was a little darker. And I was honestly, I was looking for the bench leg just to see if I could spot it again. Or yeah, I had to see the stars. And I'm down there. And I see this strange light. above my head. And I'm hearing my father in my head say, don't run in the woods. Whatever you do, don't run in the woods at night because whatever you do, you're going to trip, you're going to

fall, you're going to hurt yourself, or whatever you think is after you is you're going to insist is behind you and you're not going to stop to your heart stops. So I'm hearing that in my head and I'm like, okay, what is this light? So I take a couple steps and it moved and it's kept above me like the uh and and immediately my brain this old dated for you went right to the predator was watching me or something strange was right above me i take two more steps in the light just keeps following me and i'm like all right so it's a car from a hill nearby i'm trying to rationalize it and the thing just keeps moving and following me and i finally just i broke and run i just couldn't help it and then of course as i'm running i'm stirring up everything in the woods around me rabbits and

stuff are jumping off everywhere so i'm hearing more noises and I'm more panic. I keep looking up. The lights still right above me. It's jumping from tree to tree. I'm like, what the heck? I'm going to die. I'm going to be abducted.

This isn't the bench. Like, what the heck is this? And I finally make it to my, you know, the big house up on the hill, the big trailer. And it's a clearing out in front of it. And there's nothing. No trees. I'm like, ha, ha, I got away from this thing. And I'm dying.

And I get to the front of the trailer. And I look up again. And that's when I remembered the flag. flashlight in my back pocket. So I'd literally run two miles from my own butt. Oh, it wasn't a light. It was your flashlight. I'm sitting here thinking, Jesus, man. This guy's really getting chased by this light. That's hilarious. Exactly. Exactly. So that's why I'm saying, every true encounter, you know, you got to, you get those too. And it's like, so, okay. Yeah. So, yeah. But when a witness tells me a story, I'm like, yeah, I want to hear that story. and the lights, stories, you are right.

It's amazing how many people don't talk about them. For me, there was a reason I don't talk about mine much. Yeah, no, I get it. I'm glad you shared it, though. I laughed at the end. I was sitting there thinking, what is you talking about? Finally, it's flashlight. So you kind of get into this.

You get into writing and interviewing eyewitnesses. Out of all of the eyewitnesses you've ever interviewed, is there a couple that kind of stand out to you? Yeah, there was a guy. If you ever get a chance to interview any fishing boat captains, they have the best stories. There's a reason they're called Fisherman's Tales. These guys are the best. And there was one captain up near Pensacola.

We were interviewing about the Gulf Breeze UFOs and the big UFO flap in the 1980s. and there was a captain there who had recently had an encounter with a U.S.o, a submerged object. Now, we tend, as we're writing about it, we tend to realize that one, U.S.Os and UFOs are one and the same. One becomes the other, generally. And they're thought maybe they're not as much extraterrestrial anymore as maybe, you know, some military project that we don't understand, like a joint project between the Navy and the Air Force because they're giant black triangles and they float under they come up from under the water and then they hover in the air and then they just take off at an insane speed and they make almost no sound maybe a light hum and this captain

had messaged us after the first book had come out um i'm sorry just before the first book i'd come out because we put it in the first book it was a late edition um we actually had to extend the deadline because we got this um he's like i I have a story about Gulf Breeze. And I was like, oh, yes, thank you. And so we got to talk to him. And the look in his eye and the hands shaking as he told the story, the more he got into it, the more you know, this guy saw something. This guy experienced something.

I mean, I still can't explain what he saw. Again, his depth finder, the way he told it, his depth, he was out fishing in the Gulf. and his depth finder goes from 400 feet to 200 feet to 20 feet, like in a minute. And he thought maybe a whale was coming up under him. It's unusual that far up in the Gulf. Or maybe it was an unmarked sandbar. He was off course. Whatever, he had to run from where he was to get back up onto the deck.

And he looks, and there's this black shape coming up under him. And then it breaks the water, and then it just starts hovering above him. And he's on a big boat and this thing's, you know, way dwarfing his boat. And he said, just lights on the corner. And I'm like, well, did you take pictures? And he's like, of course I took pictures. And he shows me his phone. And it's just a bunch of black pictures.

He's like, you know, it was night. It was black. This is what I got. Like, okay. Yeah. Makes sense to me. I mean, tried to take a picture of your nightstand some night without the flash on, you know, and you're not going to get much.

You know, so this guy, you know, a few hundred feet in the air above him is not getting any. And then he said it didn't it took off and it shook him and he was not going to go sailing for a while until he got his nerve back. And of course I had to ask him and like you always ask every fisherman's story, hey, were you drinking? He's like, of course I was drinking. I've been fishing. And so when you hear that, you're like, okay, look, this guy, you know, he just wants his story told. He doesn't care, you know, that it's not anything. Yeah.

And most guys who, you know, I get that a lot, especially in the whole big foot. world with, you know, eyewitnesses. That's the first thing when they tell someone how much we were drinking. And it's like, you know, when you really think about that, it's kind of a dumb comment because that fisherman, he probably drinks every night out there. And how many nights has he seen a something come up out of the ocean one time? You know what I mean? Did that have any to do with the alcohol?

No. Strange. So it made no sound and then it just took off, huh? This takes off at like an insane speed. And that matches stories going back to the six. 60s on these things. So are they, they're definitely not something we know that we have the capabilities of,

but there were times, again, when I was driving home from work one day in the late 80s in Florida, and I see F-16s escorting this giant, what I thought was a flying saucer to McDill Air Force Base. And I see it, and I'm racing home to watch the news thinking, oh my God,

the aliens are being announced. You know, this is it. And it was the debut. of the stealth bomber. And it was the first time we'd shown it to the public. And seeing that for the first time in the air, yeah, that looked like a flying saucer to me. And so, you know, so is this some government program we don't know about it, possibly?

Is it, you know, something else entirely? Yeah, that would make more sense because it, you know, this is definitely stuff we don't normally show off our technology of. And if we had something that could do some of these maneuvers, we would love to show that off to the Russians and Chinese to say, look, what we got. But I don't know. So, then the other one that really stands out to me was we talked to one of the survivors of the Kerr Bigfoot sighting or the skunk ape siding in down here in the ghost town of Kerr.

It's right in the heart of the Ocala National Forest. It's in the middle of nowhere. And there's an old town there. It was a boom town at the time. but then the stagecoach line moved, and then the trains came in, and then that town disappeared within 30 years. It's on private property now,

and it's been on private property. This one family bought all the land, and you used to be able to rent it and go stay in it, in the middle of the woods. And it was a great place for Boy Scouts and other things to go out there and stay in. And this one family rented it one night, and they were staying in the house

on one of the houses in the property, not the big hotel that had been. was mostly burned down. And they were staying in the house and they woke up. Their car alarm was going off. And they panicked. You know, they're in the middle of the Ocala National Forests.

Dark woods are on supposedly private property. They're not too far from a couple nearby towns, but far enough. So they get out and they see a giant, hairy creature, you know, the classic pigfoot, you know, just mashing their car, trying to get it to shut up and smashing it with a big stick. And they panic. They don't know what to do. And they call the sheriff, but he's miles away. They call the guy who runs the property. He's come and running. Finally, they, the dad finally thinks to turn off the alarm by hitting some buttons on his keychain. And when he does, the thing runs off into the night.

now this is a police report this is investigated and so we had the police report so we have you know but the only witnesses were the family but when you talked to that dad he was so worried about his kids and that's to you can tell it was still you know been years but he was still shaken by it it's amazing account especially showing that behavior of it kind of going off with the stick trying to beat the car to shut it up you know yep yep And that's the, we've learned that there's a couple different, from the experts we talk to, there's different branches of, you know, we call them skunkapes down here because, hey, they're big, they're smelly.

And so we call them skunkapes. Again, people like to name things. Florida is not very creative with names. We have a town on the Gulf. It's a port. We call it Gulfport. You know, so we have a big pink sea monster because he's a color of boiled shrimp. Do we call him the beast of St. John's River?

Do we call him, you know, some lake monster? No, he's pinky, you know, because that's what we call our things. But anyway, this thing is a skunk ape, and we've learned that there's different types. Down in the Everglades, they tend to be a bit more fearful, hiding, more classic like that. And they look almost more orangutan-like, where they tend to have a brighter orange in their hue because they're hiding amongst the browns, more than the dark greens that you expect. And then when you get up to the Ocala National Forest ones, which is huge, for those that don't know, everybody thinks Florida is all beaches and stuff like that. Look at Florida at night from space and you'll see all the lights.

And you'll see the beaches. Yeah, they're lit up. And then the cities just inside the beaches, the Tampa's, the Jacksonville, the Miami. So, yeah, those are lit up really well, too. But then you go just a little further inland and it starts getting darker and darker. And then finally, it's just big pitch black spots. one to the south, that's the Everglades, and then two, like in the heart of the state, that's the Ocala National Forest on the eastern side, and the green swamp on the western side.

And those are both just miles and miles and miles of nothing and headwaters of our aquifers. So they keep them safe. But Ocala is scary. Yeah. No, and I want to talk about some of these other cryptids that you've looked into, but was there any more Sasquatch-type encounters down there that you've kind of I know you've looked into many, but is there any other ones that kind of stand out to you? There's a great one in the town of Barden. Now, Barden has this wonderful, small, you're talking like a one stoplight town literally.

And they have a kind of a catch-all convenience store there called Bud's Groceries. And that's kind of the only landmark in the town. and they had a story of a skunk ape that goes back to the 1800s where he's about eight to ten feet tall and he comes out and he's very lackadaisical. He just kind of likes to lounge around. And the big thing with him is, is he's always seen carrying a lantern. And sometimes you see the light of his lantern before you see him. And then sometimes after he disappears into the woods, you still see his lantern. for a few feet after he kind of blends into things,

and then the lantern light goes out. So it's an interesting story. Like I said, there's stories of him chasing people off of horses and stuff all the way back to the 1800s. Well, in the 1960s, right, late 60s, early 70s, right around the height of the Insearch of area, of course, that era. There's a sighting of them, a recent sighting. And now the town, do they call them the Beast of Barden? No, do they call him, you know, the Barden Bigfoot? No, it's Florida.

He becomes the Barden Bougar. And, you know, dumb name. He always seems to be like panting like he's hot, but that's Florida. Yeah, heck yeah. You know, I'd be panting if I was in a fur suit and, you know, and all this. But now what happens with that is Buds becomes kind of Bigfoot Hunter Central for a while. And he becomes the Barden Bougar headquarters. And he starts collecting all the newspaper articles and all that.

And when we went to visit there, we went in and to see his files and all that. And he was still there, I believe. I don't know. This was like seven years ago with the first book. So I haven't been back to check on. But he pulled out the files and he was telling us the stories. And he told us about one in the 60s where he got one of the boys to dress up in a monkey costume and run around. because the interest was waning.

And then the sheriff got flooded with calls. And the sheriff called Bud and said, but I don't know what you and your boys are doing, but stop. And so he did. Now he admitted that he had faked a couple of the sightings, but that did not explain all the sightings from the 1800s on. You know,

but that's, you get that occasionally and it just, it's heartbreaking when you get one of those. Because then you're like, oh gosh, that throws everything else into question. Yeah, it definitely does when someone does that.

You know, in your book, Erie Florida, when people read that, it's a lot of, there's a lot of encounters in there regarding Sasquatch. Oh, yeah. It's, we're, it's amazing how many, you know, are hit down here. And that's why we have them in all three books. And people were wondering, because we did Erie, Florida. It was the first for our publisher, History Press. They'd never really done, they've done a lot of ghost books. You know, you always see them when you go to your local shops, you know, the ghosts.

of St. Augustine, the ghosts of this, the ghost of that. We were there first, hey, let's just hit the folklore. You know, let's, let's, let's, you know, and then we'll talk with paranormal, you know, investigators and Bigfoot hunters and we'll kind of spread you out a little bit. So they took a chance with us. And we told them we had this big, you know, we had 100,000 word, you know, tons of, tons of monsters and tons and tons of ghosts. And they were like, uh, just scale it back a bit because that's not what we do and all this.

And we were like, okay, yeah, no problem. We'll just get it out there. And then we hit coast to coast a.m. We hit a lot of, you know, big things. And suddenly I'm on a history channel show talking to somebody. And then suddenly they're like, hey, remember you said you had all those other stories? Could you put some more back in? Could you do a sequel real quick?

And Freaky, we got to do some deep dives on some places that we, so we had more time with Freaky, which was nice. So we hit the row. We've done 14,000 miles, and we still hadn't left the state by the time Freaky rolled around. And we got more skunk ape stuff. And we got to talk about more of the Everglades ones in that one. And in the first book, we were talking more about the Ocala National Forest ones. And then we were like, well, and we did the green swamp, too, in the second book as well. So we got a bunch of stories of different skunk apes in that one.

And then the third book, they, asked us, we just want ghosts. So we're like, okay, we can do ghosts, but that's not really our forte. We love ghost stories, but that's not the only thing we like to do because how many times can you write? And there's this shadowy figure scene or a ghostly hand reaches out or you hear children laughing. I was always like, oh, this is good. We got to make this completely different from these other ghost books. And then I was like, and then, you know, we, you know, carry my lovely wife and illustrator.

she always draws these amazing things for our books. And so, yeah, she loves drawing skunk apes and she loves drawing the monsters. And so we were like, well, this is just going to be all ghosts. This is going to be kind of not really illustrative well, but she had fun with it. But then we found a story of a place called O'Cheazy Pond, which is up near the panhandle. It's almost the Georgia border. And they had a historical wild man. This is one of the first encounters where a group, a town is attacked by a wild man or Bigfoot, which is the older term before the term Bigfoot is coined or even Skunkape.

And they caught it. They went and captured it and did not know what to do with. They sent a posse out into the woods and shot this thing and caught it. And there's a great illustration of it from the day of some newspaper drew of two guys standing with muddust. with this giant thing in a cage. They didn't know what to do with it. So they sent it to the governor in Tallahassee a few hours away via coach. They had it tied to the end of a stage coach in a cage.

Now, there's a site, right? And there's records of it getting to the governor's office. And then a governor doesn't know what to do with it. He's like, what am I supposed to do that? I'm the governor. And so he sends it to the mental institution, not too. far away. And we have records of it arriving there. We have records of them shaving the unknown patient. And then there's no more records. It disappears. Did it die? What happened? No one knows.

I think I know this story. And actually, it was kind of compelling if it's the one I'm thinking of, because there was a lot of eyewitnesses that came forward. Yeah. So they go out, they shoot it. First of all, it's a backup. So it's attacking the town. It's attacking people. around the town. It's like stealing stuff. It's not really attacking. It's like it's attacking livestock. But it's not, you know, that's where the, you know, attacking the town is that's the

journalist today. Yeah. And then they, they shoot it. And didn't they take care of it for like two or three days before they sent it off and a bunch of people? I remember reading eyewitness accounts of, you know, the farmer came forward, the preacher came forward. All these people had seen this thing.

They're all kind of describing it. Is that the same? account we're talking about? Yep, that's very, that is the one. Yeah, because there are newspaper accounts and everything on that all over the place. And the problem is, is it just kind of disappears because right about that time is when we start having political unrest in the north and the south. So, uh, it's not, it's not the sub war, but it's kind of the precursors start coming around. So it kind of slipped to the back page story. But honestly, I think they just didn't know what to do with it when they you know when the story dies when it goes to the insane

asylum i think it died in custody and they didn't know what to do with it i think they killed it and just wanted it done so florida's a booming town you know is a booming state and they washed it away like they did so many things yeah and if i remember right the creature wasn't that big it wasn't i mean it was big but it wasn't like a saskatch in washington state i think they tackled it after they shot it if i remember right yeah it's been so so many others and it was yeah it's supposed to be in the six foot range just a little bigger six to eight foot range bigger than them but not much bigger than them but you know it's it's it's a lot of weird stories about it so what's the strangest cryptid you've looked into so you look into skunk ape

have you ever come across i know you saw kind of a weird yeah the entity of some sort um did you ever while you're investigating skunk ape and some of these others down there did someone ever go hey, I saw this. I got one for you. I know exactly what you're looking for. Okay. I got something that'll, this was one of the first things that put us kind of on where we could find factual evidence

behind these things, or at least corroboration. When we had run a haunted house for 20 years, it's kind of a little bit more backstory on me that we did charity out of our backyard. And we used to try to base it on local lore and legends. That's how I started collecting this stuff. And so we had a little button on our website. Now, this will give you some time and date.

This was a GeoCities website. And I think it was an AOL address at the time, that you could email and send us your stories. And I got this letter from a nice old lady. And this would have been early 90s. I got this letter from her. And she was talking about she lived near Bok Tower, which is in the center of the state. and it's a giant tower built on what's called Iron Mountain, one of the highest places in Florida.

It's a whole 223 feet above sea level. So, you know, I know that's a hill for everybody else, but for Florida, that's a mountain. But it's this beautiful tower, and around it was nothing but farms and orange groves for a long time. It's in the middle of nowhere. And she wrote me this story. She's like, I know you're not going to believe this,

But in the 40s, I lived on a farm with my uncle, and we were missing fruit one day. A lot of the oranges were disappearing from this orange grove. And so we set up traps thinking it was fruit rats or something was coming. And they set up some other traps thinking maybe it was somebody trying to sabotage them. And what they caught was a six inch tall naked man covered in hair. And they didn't know what to do with it. So they called the police and it's yelling at him in a strange language. They know it's not a baby, you know, because he's standing and he's yelling at him.

He's got hair all over him like a beard. And the police come, they don't know what to do with it. And they're like, well, obviously this guy is an escape circus performer because circuses were big down here at the time. And Tom Thumb was not unknown to them and all that. And Ringling had his winter headquarters down here. So there were freak show people. The whole town of Gibsonton is not completely far from there. So they thought maybe this was just some wandering guy like that.

So they actually let it go. He's like, obviously, this guy isn't stealing your fruit. and then the next night they catch him again and this time they catch him with the orange and so the cop's like all right we'll take him in and we'll get somebody to translate this guy and they couldn't put him in handcuffs because he's so small

so they got him in an orange crate and took him to town that's the big part of the story that stuck out with me was this guy's so small you have to put him in an orange crate and they get him into the police station And while he's there, the house gets attacked by sticks and stones and tree branches and oranges. And they come running out and there's dozens of these little guys and are all screaming at the house and throwing stuff. So they call the police back.

The police come back with the guy in the orange crate. And they're like, they're begging them to let him go because they want to, they don't want this to keep happening. So they do. They let him go. And then the police just leave. You know, and I'm like, that's, that's an amazing story. And I reached out to the lady, talked to her a couple times, got directions to the old farm. And that was back when we were to run the haunted house. And then I forgot about it. I just had it in a pile of stuff. And then years later, the haunted house closes down. We start writing the books. And I find that story. And I'm like, oh, I need to call this lady immediately. And of course, she'd passed on.

I'm like, I'll never be able to tell this story. This is such a great story. But thanks to the advent of social media and the internets, I couldn't have written this book without them. I went to, you know you grew up when in the town of Lake Wales. Now, Lake Wales loves weird stuff. They're right near Bok Tower. They have a famous gravity hill there called Spook Hill, where you park at the base of it and then you roll backwards up. You know, it's an optical illusion, but it looks great.

And they have an Indian legend about that. So I'm like, I know this town embraces this. The school is called Spook Hill Elementary. Casper the Friendly Ghost is their mascot. This town would love to have gnomes. So let me call them. And so I just started reaching out on Facebook. And sure enough, I got a civilian worker from the police force from that late 1940s,

who remembered that incident because he remembered them bringing the guy in in the orange crate. So now suddenly I had a second witness that had nothing to do with the primary. And I'm like, I'm pushing my luck for three witnesses. I'll take two. So we ran with the story. And sure enough, that witness we were able to find out, remember them trying to find translators.

They tried Portuguese. They tried Spanish. And they were reaching out for Indonesian, but never found them. So they never found one in time, but they did just let the guy go. And then I found another person from the farm who finally said, yes, what we did was after the incident, they realized it was red caps from Ireland that had upset them. They'd upset the red caps. So they sent to Ireland for a blessed rock. Now, this is in 1940s, late 40s.

They sent to Ireland for a blessed rock to put on their property. and he told me where they put it on their property. So I had her original directions. I had his directions. We decided to drive out there to find this rock. And we got to the farm. We followed the directions. There's a clearing there.

And sadly, we couldn't get out and take pictures of the rock because that's where the current farm owners, who are now a big conglomeration, that's where they keep their bees. So we couldn't get a picture. I got you. What's the red caps? Red caps are gnomes. They're the Irish name for gnomes. They're part of the fay.

They're legends of, you know, they're the mischievous ones. So, you know, are these a relative, a florid relative of those? That's what it seemed like from the stories. Because once they put that rock out, they never had problems with them again. And that rock is there, but it's, like I said, there's lots of bees. So we couldn't get out of the car. So we took pictures, but they're just through the window of the car. All these beat boxes.

Very sad. So wild, right? Yeah, I've heard weird stories like that, Mark, especially from the Native Americans. I remember I had a Lakota tribal member on the show. And kind of the short version of the story is they have a name for these little people. Every tribe has a different name for them. And the short version is this lady's driving on the reservation. And she goes off the road.

and down this embankment, her car rolls several times. No one's able to find her. They went looking for her. No one could figure out where she went. She was at the bottom of this ravine. And she's kind of in and out of consciousness. And what she says is these little people came up, got her out of the car, nursed her back to health.

And they're very similar to the way you just described it. Half a foot tall, very small people. They nurse her back to hell. they tell her not to tell anyone about them or this area where they're at, where they're staying at, or she'll be cursed. While she ends up leaving, she goes back up the hill, back up onto the main road, and walks into the reservation. And one of the tribal leaders, she tells him the story, and he tells her, don't repeat the story to anyone, or they will curse you. So she leaves a reservation. What's the first thing she does? obviously she's going to talk about this weird encounter she had there.

And a week later, I think she was going to drive up to find the exact location because the newspaper wanted to interview her. So she went driving to find it again. And she got in a car accident, died. And so it makes you wonder, I often wonder a lot of times, are these things physical? I've asked many Native Americans, and it really depends on who you talk to. Sometimes they'll tell you that they are. Sometimes they'll tell you that they're not.

But it's weird. It's through our whole culture. And the Native Americans do talk a lot about these little people. We reach out. We've got a school down in Miami, a private school that actually uses our book as a part of their Florida history for middle schoolers. Because we talk about things like some Native American legends and we should we even mention the Seminole Wars and things like the Rosewood Massacre and things that. the history books down here don't talk about. They don't want to mention these dark stains on Florida's history. And they don't talk about the conquistadors that came in and wiped out the native tribes, why there are no original native tribes left. And these are stories we talk about in the books that even the Florida history books barely cover.

So that was one of our pride and joys that made our heart grow three sizes when we found out that our publisher had to make special hardcover editions of our books for schools. But yeah, I'm like, really? They want to learn about a lady who melted in 1967? They're like, oh, yeah, that's their favorite part. Okay, that's cool. What do you mean a lady that melted? Oh, yeah, the cinder lady from St. Petersburg in the 1960s, infamous Mary Riser.

She's a lady. She's in an apartment building. She's an old lady. and she sees her son, he has dinner with her, and then he leaves. And the next morning, this guy's coming to deliver mail to her, and her door is hot.

So he calls the landlord. The landlord comes running in, and they break open the door, and there's no fire in there anymore. Where she was, all that's left is her foot, a very small shrunken skull, some little bits that they realized were her teeth.

Yeah, her foot's perfect. And where her chair was is gone. And the small corner of her room is burnt to a crisp. But the chair next to it, the couch next to it, all that show no signs of any damage. You know, the whole building should have burned down for the intense heat that this should have been. So the FBI gets called in and they research it. And they go, oh, it's candling. candling. She'd fallen asleep with her cigarette and lit a robe on fire and she, you know, burned like a candle wax.

But that's the official case. But when you talk to the guy who, the first examiner, he was using terms like, if we weren't in the times we were in, I would say black magic and strange things like that. and the story is one of those wild ones. And in the St. Pete Museum of History downtown had the actual FBI files on it. So we got to see the original photos. And the signed documents by J. Edgar Hoover are always interesting to read. And it's a scary case. I remember that case. Yeah.

Yeah, they thought ball lightning. There's lots of other theories. Now that same guy who said canaling went back. back on it and said, okay, it's, it's not candling. I don't know what it is, but it's not candling. He said something like some guy robbed her, took her body. It robbed her killed her, took her body to an incinerator, incinerated her, chopped off her foot, incinerator, and then brought her back.

And then used some sort of energy weapon to melt the stuff around her. That made more sense, she said, he said, than candling. Yeah, it's strange. That's actually, I think, where the term spontaneous human combustion came is actually came from that case. That was the initial discussion from the local police and then the FBI came in and said, well, it can't be that. And that's when they came up with candling. But this is the one, you know, and also, this is also the famous thing about this one is her clock. Her little plastic alarm clock next to her stopped at 4.20 a.m.

And so that's the real reason for blazing up at 420 comes from her. not a police code that doesn't exist. Yeah, it is bizarre. I remember that. I remember seeing pictures of her. And for the audience out there, well, I don't know if I want to post them.

They're kind of gruesome, but it does look like she kind of blew up from the inside out. It's the most strangest thing I've ever seen. Yeah, we've got the photos in the book, too. We've got the tamest photos in the book. There's a big puddle of goo. If you want to know what you look like when you melt,

it's there. So that's probably the tamest one to look. there are some of the foot and the skull that you can find too. So that, but that file has even more that aren't public. The Smithsonian since claimed that file now, so. Oh, have they? I was going to say,

what's so bizarre about that account, Mark, is nothing else burned up around her. I mean, even the alarm clock, like he said, the alarm clock had been melted a little bit, but it hadn't,

it was still there. Feet from her. They estimated it would, to shrink the skull as much as it did, they estimated the temperature had to be over 4,000 degrees for a period of two hours. Jesus. What do you think happened to her?

What's your own personal opinion, Mark? Because I've looked into it, and I'm fascinated by it. I'm fascinated by it, too. And I think this is another one of those that something happened beyond our ken, what we like to call instead of paranormal or supernatural, we like to call it preternatural, something we don't understand yet. It's probably got a natural explanation, but it's just, just not something that we know 100%. It probably is a mix of candling and something else,

but that something else is what we need to find out. Is it, you know, years ago, we didn't understand magnetism. So we just pretend it didn't exist. You know, it was just, I was devil stuff. You know, even just a few years ago, quantum theory and string theory and dark matter, what are these things? Now we're starting to understand them. We're researching it. We're just starting to understand this stuff. So I think as science goes on, we're going to start ghosts and Bigfoot

and UFOs and things like spontaneous human combustion. All the things that were the supernatural of our past are going to start making more sense to us. We're going to learn more and we're going to be able to figure out, okay, this is what happened to Mary Reeser. This is what happened.

These are what these little people are out in Bach Tower. This is what you know, this is why we can never find Sasquatch remains because they disappear. They're extra dimensional, something like that. We, you know, we're learning what there's a parallel universe out there, we think, and we're going to try to open it. You know, that's, you know, imagine if on that other side, they're 100 years past us.

You know, maybe that's why they can come into us and see, and that's what the ghosts we see. We don't really like using the ghost word much because we just, it's just something we don't understand. Yeah. Have you ever looked into the Bermuda Triangle, people disappearing out there? I know it kind of touches the tip of Florida. Part of the triangle, there's a famous case. What was the guy's name?

Bruce Gernan, I think his name was. And it's a recent encounter. He was flying. I don't know where he was flying from. It's been a while since I've looked into it. But he was flying from a pretty far distance away, and he was coming to Florida. And on his way, there was this electronic fog.

And it started spinning around and around and around, almost like a tunnel. and I think if you look up Vortex Tunnel with Bruce Gernan or Bruce Gernett, just like a Bruce Gernan, I believe is his name. Anyway, he flies through this tunnel and as he's flying through the tunnel, you know, he describes lightning and a bunch of bizarre things. And the whole story sounds like BS, but, you know, they keep track of the flight logs. And he got to Florida in a matter of minutes.

What should have taken him, I think, like an hour or two. He was there in Florida. From the time he took off, I'll send Bammies in Florida. It's a really bizarre case. Have you ever looked into that particular case? We've looked into that one. A lot of Bermuda Triangle stuff hits us because we get emails from all over the world. And if you got any more stories, always email us at eerieflorda.com.

We love to investigate this stuff. There was his tied in. We looked into his because there was a tie-in. And somebody had sent us that they thought there were pyramids in the corkscrew marsh, and it was near where he had landed. So we were like, oh, my gosh, we can kill two birds of one stone. This guy's landing and pyramids. And all we did was get lost in the corkscrew marsh and stumble upon a panther, which is interesting enough, finding a Florida panther is almost as hard as finding a Sasquatch. So that was exciting times for us because we were in the middle of nowhere, and my wife and I totally unequipped stumble on a Florida panther.

Yeah, no kidding. That is rare. It's been a while. I just remember he wasn't, he was the inspiration for wrong way Feldman on Gilligan's Island. I remember that. And then it was also the inspiration for time tunnel where the plane could fly through time. This guy, he's flying from somewhere to Florida.

I do not remember. I think it was one of the Bahama Islands. And he gets, it's like a super tail one. He gets a tunnel. And the next thing you know, he's. in you know, they have the records of his launch and then they have where he landed. And it's there's no way. Even if you went supersonic, it would have been tough to make that trip.

And this is like a 19, I want to say 60s flight or 50s. I think you're right. Yeah. Yeah. And it's crazy. I remember we were researching the ghosts of flight 401. and that story came back up because it was nearby there. It's amazing how many stories pinpoint right in that area down just north of Miami,

but out towards the Everglades. So, yeah, there's some Bermuda Triangle stuff is crazy. The flight 19, the disappearing planes, we've pretty much figured that out, that they just went off course and thought they were one place and weren't. it's still a creepy story to look into. But the Ghost of Flight 401, that's amazing because that's the first time the FAA, a federal agency, uses the term ghost in an actual report. And they banned, they changed a lot of federal aviation rules because of the reporting on this.

We're pilots and stewardesses are seeing the ghost of this captain and this navigator from a crashed plane. and they keep popping when they are using the parts from that plane on other planes. And when they would do that, these ghosts would show up and they would talk to the crew and warn them about things and say, there's never going to be another crash of this type of plane if I can help it. And so the company, American Airlines, is like, we can't let people know we're haunted. So anytime a pilot speaks up about it or a stewardess speaks up about it, they alter the books. They give them a new logbook. And then they, you know, if you start talking about it, you're going to be put into psychiatric evaluation and you're going to lose your job.

And so everybody hushes up about it. I'm not familiar with flight 401. Was that one that went down over the last 100 years or so? Yes. That was early 70s. And it's coming into Miami. It's been flying back from New York. And the, they can't tell the front landing.

gear is down. They don't know. So they have to circle and they're circling through the Everglades. And they're at 10,000 feet and the navigator has to go down into what is called under the cockpit, which is called the hellhole, which is this, you know, just full of wires and you've got to cramp yourself in and you got to do all that. So this guy climbs down in there and there's a little light, there's a little hole like a peephole. So he can look out and visually see that the landing gear is down. Now, while he's down there doing that, they've accidentally turned off their autopilot, and they're losing altitude fast, and they don't realize it. And the next thing you know, they're at 2,000 feet. And then he gets out there, and he sees that the landing gear's down,

but then he sees trees. And he's like, pull up, pull up, pull up, we're too low. And they crash. Now, this is one of those rare ones where there are survivors. But the co-pilot and the navigator died and some of the stewardesses died and a bunch of people died. At this point it was the worst air disaster in American history at that point, one of the big, you know, first big plane to go down.

But people come out to rescue survivors on swamp buggies. This is in the deep into the Everglades. And they, like I said, they scavenged the parts of this plane and they start using it on, they use them to repair other. air buses. And that's when these crew members are scattered amongst other

planes as well. They start seeing the navigator, Don, and Don O'Donelepo, and they start seeing in the co-pilot. And they are talking to them, going, wait, wait. And then they realize, oh, my God, you're dead. You know, you can't be who we talk to. And, you know, but then, you know, they're like,

hey, be careful. And what's famous one is the pilot comes in and sits down and talks to the president of American Airlines. And the president's thinking, or the vice president, the vice president's talking to this guy thinking, oh, okay, this is, you know, this must be the pilot coming to talk to me. And he's telling him, you know, be careful.

There might be a flame out on this one. There's a bad engine three. And the vice president's like, well, shouldn't we have that fixed? And he's like, we've, yes, you should. And then the pilot comes on, the real pilot comes on. And he's like, hey, this pilot. it's telling us we should check, you know, engine three, and then that guy's gone in just an instant. So, yeah.

And this is on numerous flights. I mean, this is huge. It goes on for a while. So what happens is, some stewardesses and some pilots who've been sidelined because they've reported it and gotten in trouble. They report to the federal aviation agency saying, hey, we've lost our jobs. We're not crazy. We saw stuff, you know. and so they actually go in and realize that there's been this big cover-up by American Airlines

to hide this. And then slowly but surely what American Airlines does is they start taking the parts off the other planes. And then it never happens again. Seems like bad mojo to grab parts from a plane that went down and put them on a new plane. You know what I mean? Yeah. And then just 500 feet from that crash, another flight a number of years later crashes in that same. area, Flight 550, and it has a marker.

Flight 401 still does not have a memorial marker. Yeah, sad, man. Do you, uh, are, do you have any plans to go outside of Florida and just looking to some more of the weird stuff around the country? That's what we're working on now is we finally, the publisher is letting us take, give Florida a break. Uh, and we are doing Erie Appalachia, which is my home. Uh, we're hitting the Ohio Valley.

It was going to be Erie, Ohio Valley, but they thought Erie Appalach astounded better, so, you know, I'll take it. But so we get to hit the big ones. We get to hit Mothman. We get to hit the Grafton monster, the Flatwoods monster. We get to hit the Hopkinsville Goblins, the Loveland Frogmen. We are all over everything. We've got a fun theory that we're going to be introducing in this book about serpent mound and alligator mound and how they tie into another crypted in the area. So, yeah, I'm really looking forward to that. It was supposed to come out this year, but with viruses and everything else, we didn't get to finish all of our trips.

So it has been pushed to next year. It was supposed to premiere at the Mothman Festival this fall, but that got canceled anyway. In Point Pleasant, West Virginia. I was going to go. We were supposed to be guest speakers. It was going to be our announcement of our book. And, you know, the premiere of our book, advanced copies were going to be available there. But now it's all been pushed to next year.

So it's going to come out next fall. But that's fine. That gives us more time to add to it. We're adding some more stories. We're doing some more research. And we've got a big trip this fall to hit a couple more places and a lot of wonderful ghost tours that are ghost hunts were going to be on that we weren't going to be able to fit in before. Do you have anything in the new book about the Poplick monster?

We talk about the Populik monster. Yes. Yes. That one's a strange one, man. I mean, people actually die up there. I mean, what the hell are they changing? You know. Well, and that's,

we're talking about him. We got Bunny Man Bridge. Are you familiar with that one? No, I've never heard of that one. Okay, that's an urban legend that was created, but now we find out there might be more truth to it than urban legend.

So one to talk about later, when the book gets closer, I'll be happy to come back on and tell you all about it. But, but it's one you can look up in the meantime and get the basic story, but I'll get you the behind the scene stuff. But yeah, There's, we're doing that, but we're also working on a TV show with a local network down here called Erie Travels for a streaming service to be named later.

We filmed the pilot, and they've given us to go ahead for eight episodes. We're filming, we're on the third episode now and now that things are opening back up. That all started back in January, and now it had to stop, but now it's starting back up again. So we just were in the infamous May Stringer house down here, which is one of the most haunted house. in Florida and we got some fun stuff on tape there. Now, again, we are not ghost hunters. We are not monster hunters. We are a lot of people call us parajournalists because we're more, I consider myself as a storyteller,

a folklorist slash journalist and historian. I like to look up the history behind these things. Why is this house haunted? Why is this haunted? And one of the things we were working on with this May Stringer house is how many bodies are actually buried in the property because we only know of two most were buried in nearby cemetery but there's like a dozen tombstones beside the house well give me the back quick back story on it was it someone that was killing someone that lived there or that was a doctor had bought

the house and he had patients so some of the patients didn't make it and they didn't have any of where else to bury them but also the house owned slaves and so we think some of the slaves were buried on the property as well so they're trying to do the Hernando County Historical Society now owns the property and are now looking into doing some ground radar to see if they can find the actual burial sites because the tombstones they found in a thrift shop and have no idea why they were there and why they weren't on the property. So, yeah, they've restored them, made a little memorial garden, but they do not know where the actual graves are. I got you. And the place is pretty haunted now. Yeah, quite a bit.

And what happens is just a museum. So they bring in stuff. And some of the ghosts there aren't tied to the history of the place but are tied to the items that have been brought in. So they don't fit the narrative. And that's one of the fun things we found. They were doing a, they were in this one room that's all military. And they kept getting on the obulus, the word Murphy, Murphy, Murphy. And they were trying to figure out who was named Murphy.

They're looking at all the objects to find a name Murphy. And I'm like, guys, guys, historical perspective. Camp Murphy. Camp Murphy was Florida's basic training camp and also where we worked on a strange project called radar and we're training people on how to use that secretly in World War II. So that's where you were getting the word Murphy from, why I was so often in the military room. So that totally floored the paranormal trip. There was all this because they didn't have any historical knowledge of that. They were trying to figure out it was a new ghost named Murphy. Yeah, so many weird things down there, man, with history, especially when you get,

You know, one thing I find is out on the East Coast, you'll hear a lot more. I know you're not really into, Ghost isn't your favorite topic, but, you know, ghosts, a lot of haunting. You get up to like Boston, New York, you know, some of these different places, Florida, that have been around for since the beginning of us, America. It seems like there's more that goes on out there than I would say on the West Coast. Don't get me wrong. We have that kind of stuff on the West Coast, too, as well. but it seems like it's more prevalent on the East Coast. It definitely feels that way to us.

I mean, we've got St. Augustine, which predates Plymouth Rock by 100 years, you know, out here, the oldest continuously inhabited city in the U.S. And it's been around since the 1500s. And then we've got lots of other places that have just so many ghost stories. Key West has some of the greatest ghost stories ever. And, of course, Robert the Haunted Doll, for those who, I wonder where the inspiration for Chucky came from. He lives in Key West. He's got a ghost story tied to him as well.

But every town in Florida has ghost tours. And there's a reason because there are so many. And even where we live in Tampa Bay Area, St. Pete has a ghost tour, Tampa as a ghost tour. And they will tell you so many stories. And we've seen some crazy places. The scariest thing happened to us was at a place in Tampa called the Cuban Club. and we were there for Halloween night. We were filming with a local news team

because I get called everywhere around Halloween time. Hey, Mark, come talk to us. Sure, he's that creepy guy. He'll talk to you. Okay, I'm the go-to guy for the local news down here. So they're putting me in the Cuban club at three in the morning and we're filming live in this most haunted building in Tampa and one of the top ten most haunted buildings in the world,

according to the travel channel. There's been murders in there. There's been an actor who committed suicide in front of his audience in there. There's been all this stuff. And that's the stuff we know. The thing about that area of Tampa was the police didn't go there. They police themselves.

It was an off-limits place. So a lot of murders never went reported. A lot of disappearances never went reported. So we really don't know how many people died there. One of the owners of the club got in a gunfight with one of the other owners of the club and killed one of them

in there. And so when the police came to arrest them, all the members of the club said, We did it. So they couldn't arrest anybody. And again, they just kind of let it go. So creepy place. We're there for Halloween. And we're getting ready with this young little reporter and her cameraman.

And so there's only four of us in the whole building. It's a four-story marble building. And I was talking about there's footsteps heard on the stairs where this bride tripped and fell. Classic story. Bride tripped and fell on her wedding day and died. So of course that's going to lead to a haunting story, right? well, we're getting ready to set up for the shot.

She's got her camera on, got the light on, and the guys miced up, and he's got me miked up, and we're getting ready. And just before we go live, we hear footsteps on that stairwell. And then we went live, like five,

four, three, two, one, live. And the poor reporter was like, I don't know what we just heard, but it totally changed. And again, she went in not believing any of this,

she went out, you know, and was like, when can we come back? When can I bring a team here? I want to do a ghost adventures bit. I want to spend the night in here and see what she can see. And it's amazing how you see that door open for people sometimes. It's that moment that you're like, okay, yeah, they're telling the truth. They've seen something. They've experienced something.

It's not just, you know, a gimmick for them. Are you ever worried that something's going to come back home with you? when you go out to these different places that are really haunted? We had that feeling with Robert the doll because we bought a couple many Robert the dolls. For those who don't know that story, I'd be surprised if nobody knows Robert the doll. Yeah, I'm not aware of it. Okay. It's surprising me when some people don't.

That's why when I wrote these books, at first I was like, I figured everybody knew these stories. But, you know, this is why you tell them. They are regional. Robert the doll is the doll of Robert Eugene O'Neill. He lived down in Key West. He was a young boy and very rich, affluent, you know, family. And they bought him this doll. Some legends say this bohemian made it for him.

It's a voodoo doll. No, it was basically the cabbage patch kid of his day. It's about the same size as a little boy. He would have worn the same clothes. And this one's in a little sailor suit. He's got his own little plush lion that he carries with. and you can find the catalogs that he was available in. And what happened is,

is bad stuff started happening around the house. Toys were breaking, things were going crazy. The servants were quitting like crazy. And so the father comes to his son, Robert, says, Robert, you've got to stop this.

Whatever you're doing, stop. And he's like, I didn't do it. Robert did it. And he points to the doll. And the dad's like, no, you're Robert.

He's like, no, I'm going to go by my middle name. Eugene and because the doll wants to go by Robert and we're tired of people getting us mixed up. Now, nowadays, we'd have given that kid some riddling and we wouldn't have a story. But, you know, they went with it. And the problem is, is the doll got crazier and started doing more crazy things and the story and more and more servants leaving. So now QS is kind of like a small town.

So now everybody's hearing about this doll. Finally, they lock it into the attic of this place called the artist's house. At that point, it was just their house. And they can hear it up in the attic. They can hear it still moving around. So they finally move away, much to poor Eugene's sadness. He had to leave his doll. They left it up in the attic.

And the house sits abandoned for a number of years. But people keep seeing the doll looking out of various windows in the house. It's supposed to be locked up, but they see it all over the place. Finally, another lady buys the house. She comes in. she finds the doll, she's like, ah, I've got the talking piece of the town. So I'm going to bring him back out. I'm going to put him and show him off. And within weeks, she can't handle it because strange stuff's going on. Things are breaking all this. So she puts him back up in the attic.

She moves out. Another family moves in. They have similar problems. It goes off and on, off and on for 100 years. And then, not quite 100 years, about 60 years. And then Eugene moves back, gets his family house back. Finds Robert. He's so happy. He's got his doll back. And then they go everywhere together. He takes them to restaurants. He takes them to parties. They have to have a special place for Robert the doll.

And much to his wife's chagrin, he even gets to spend nights in the bed with him. But that's another story. But then finally, he passes away. He's the one who tries to turn the house into an artist's house. He passes away and the doll disappears and finally winds up in the Fort East March. Tullo Museum, which is an art museum made out of an old Civil War fort that they've converted into this art museum. And they don't know what to do with this doll.

They know it's something unique. They know it has a history. But they just kind of keep it in the archives. But then he starts tormenting people in the archives. They're working on the plumbing. And suddenly he's just standing there. And now they can't get a plumber to work because all the plumbers are afraid to come work.

So they finally build a place for him and put him out. And he seemed to like being on display. but they quickly learned he had rules. He's like a gremlin. There are rules when you go visit Robert. One, you have to be nice to Robert. You have to be respectful to Robert. Two, if you take his picture without permission,

bad things happen to you. And then, you know, as long as you follow those two rules, you'll be pretty okay. Now, you take that kind of, you know, with a grain of salt, but there are, there is literally a wall of letters. behind Robert. You can spend a day at this museum just looking at these letters. They're all digitized now, but they used to just be letters on the wall. And there's some from former presidents apologizing to Robert saying, we're sorry, we didn't believe you. Please remove your curse. Really? Yes. My favorite was, dear Sir Robert, I'm sorry we did, we, we, we, I called you ugly and said your leather face was stupid. Leather is actually nice for a face, and you are very handsome.

I've deleted the pictures we took of you without asking permission. We get the message. Remove your curse. Please fix my eye, my Xbox, and my marriage. And I love that he put him in that order. I thought that was fantastic. But, yeah, so we had taken some pictures of Robert. We'd been very polite.

We went to a night tour with him. We went to a day tour to see the museum. And then we went back at night. One of the local tours down there goes and gravestones, I believe, gets to go in there at night with Robert. So he gets some alone time with Robert. And the problem was, is we took some pictures. And then we went outside. And I realized we had so many people on that tour.

And I wanted to get a nice dark picture of them for our book. I asked the tour guide if we could just go back in for two seconds to take a picture. And he said, of course. And I forgot to ask permission for that second photo. And sure enough, that. That whole rest of that trip was a disaster, and our camera broke and some other things happened. So I had to send a special letter to Robert myself, apologizing for the problems. And ever since then, whenever we talk about Robert, like now, we like to say, thank you, Robert, for letting us talk about you.

And the photos in the book actually have special. We even went so far as to have our publisher ask Robert for permission to print the pictures. So they say printed with the permission of Robert the doll. Wow, that's crazy. And that's where Chucky comes from, he said. One of the writers of Child's Play was so inspired by this legend that he created Child's Play from it. That's completely insane. It is crazy.

He's an episode all on his own, just so you know. Yeah, it seems like objects can't get haunted, you know, different things can't get haunted. Exactly. And now that's what we've discovered in, we were. wrote about Robert was the last chapter in Erie, Florida. But as we were getting to our third book, Creepy Florida, we went back to the artist's house, the house that Robert was in and grew up in. And we realized how haunted that place was.

And so you start realizing, well, maybe the doll, because he was just bought out of a catalog, maybe that's where the stuff that happened to Robert came from. It's pretty amazing to go around and look into these different. legends and if people are interested definitely check out Mark's book Erie Florida freaky Florida and creepy Florida there's a ton of others in there the tales of the terror from Tampa Bay those are the ones that were done while we were still running the haunted house so those have kind of a spooky edge to them 31 Hellview Tales of Helvey Cemetery and Tales of Terror Tampa Bay are they were

ones that were written they're kind of done when we were trying to be Tales from a Crip style they were ones we wrote for our haunted house they're the real legends, but done legendary style, you know. I got you. So they're skeed up. Yeah. People go to Amazon. Search for Mark.

Last name, M-U-N-C-Y. And you got a lot of books in the mark. I kind of want to read the Florida ones. I'm always interested in the local legends. And like you said, Florida definitely has its own legends. Every state. They're done like a travel guide so that you can go from the panhandle down to the keys and zigzag down. So you can find one near where you're at.

You can just make day trips from there. That's the whole point of the book. And if you go to eerieflora.com, you can order them direct from my wonderful wife and illustrator and we'll sign them for you. And she tends to do little drawings in the front. And then if you pay for a little extra, she'll do something, you know,

a really nice illustration for you. Very cool. I might have to do that. I definitely got to get myself a copy of one. Erie Florida.com for everyone out there. Definitely check out Mark's books. Mark, you know, before you leave, I always ask everyone what do you think Sasquatch is. And you're down there in Skunkay Country.

What do you think that Sasquatch actually is? What's kind of your opinion? Like I said, the thing that threw me the most was we were in the middle of nowhere in the Myaka State Forest and we had walked way off path with this one group. and he knew that there was a that he thought there was a family of them in this certain area and we got out to a riverbed

and there were prints that didn't match the Florida Black Bear prints they didn't match anything they looked like classic big footprints and I was thrilled and there was even little ones but they would just go up to a spot and then just stop

so I like that theory where there may be some either extra dimensional or some other aspect to them that we don't understand where they can plane walk or something like that I've heard I like that theory because that's the only thing that explains that to me

the only thing that makes any sort of logical sense why the fact that these prints were out there in the middle of nowhere was exciting to begin with and then he had to run back to his car which was five miles away I sat there for hours just out there going what could this be and then he came back made plaster casts

and then we went to go back the next day to pick them up. There was no reason, you know, to, you know, for the, you know, we figured they'll be there fine. And we went back the next day to pick them up. And suddenly they'd done a controlled burn in that area that wasn't announced before. So then I started wondering, okay, why are they hiding it? So I think there's more to it than anything. I think they are definitely there. I think people are seeing things that they don't know what they are.

So I don't discredit any of it. but I don't know if they're just a tribe that lives out there. Could be. It's very strange. It's a mystery. That's for sure. And I hope people go out and check out your books. Erie, Florida, Freaky Florida and Creepy Florida.

Go to eerieflora.com to get yourself a copy. Mark, I really appreciate you coming on, man. I really enjoyed talking with you. No problem. It's a pleasure. Any time. It's been an honor. So see you on the other side.

Ah, the pleasure was mine. Thank you again, Mark. And that's it for tonight, everyone. Remember if you've had an encounter, shoot me an email. My email address is Wes at Sasquatchronicles.com. Until next time, everyone.