Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:667 Exploring the Unexplained

Episode Date: June 26, 2020

Jeff Belanger is one of the most visible and prolific researchers of folklore and legends today. A natural storyteller, he's the award-winning, Emmy-nominated host, writer, and producer of the New England Legends series on PBS and Amazon Prime, and is the author of over a dozen books (published in six languages). He also hosts the New England Legends weekly podcast, which has garnered over 2 million downloads since it was launched. Always one for chasing adventures, Jeff has climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa, he's explored the ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru, he's searched the catacombs of Paris, France (where he encountered his first ghost), he faced his life-long struggle with basophobia on his birthday by going skydiving, and he's been ghost hunting all over the world from a former TB asylum in Kentucky, to medieval castles in Europe, to an abandoned prison in Australia. Jeff got his start as a journalist in 1997, where he learned how to connect with people from all walks of life. For his work, he's interviewed thousands of people about their encounters with the profound.   https://jeffbelanger.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 here. Uh-oh. This is Joshua Gallagher from the University of the Sassbush Society, and you're listening to our favorite Sasswatch Conference. Welcome to the show, everyone. Thanks for being here tonight. Got a great show planned for you tonight.

Hope everyone's doing well. Hope your week is true to do well. Tonight, my guest is Jeff Belanger. And Jeff is an author. He's a podcaster. He's been in many TV and documentaries. And Jeff really investigates kind of the weird, the weird stuff, weird topics. And Jeff and I were talking the other day,

and he said, you know, there's a lot of Bigfoot stories or Sasquatch-like stories. We just call them something else, like the Cobble Creek Monster, or it's usually based on geographic location. They'll name it based on that. And so I said, Jeff, would you like to come on the show? And I'd love to share some of that stuff on the show, because I love local lore, local legends, and especially the names people come up with for these different creatures. If you get a chance, go to jeffbalander.com. You can check out some of his work. He's written so many books.

Who's Haunting the White House? He wrote a book, The Mystery of the Bermuda Triangle. And actually, one of my favorites, Weird Massachusetts. And it's kind of a travel guide of local legends and lores. And it's a really cool book. So if you get a chance, check it out. 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 jump into it tonight. I want to welcome Jeff to the show. Jeff, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me, Wes. Good to talk to you. Yeah, it's good to talk with you too as well, Jeff. And I know you have your own podcast called New England Legends.

I hope people go and check it out. I know you put a lot of time and effort in kind of retelling some of these different local legends. So it's called New England Legends. And for the audience, whatever podcast player are you listening to, check out Jeff's work. Jeff, real quick, I wanted to ask you, you know, you were in the documentary of the Bridgewater Triangle. And I know you've looked into that whole situation up there in Massachusetts regarding the Bridgewater Triangle. and I wanted to ask you, do you think, and I won't go too long into this because the audience is tired of hearing me talk about it, but do you think the whole, that area with all the bad stuff that goes on and all the weird stuff that goes on, do you think it's actually based on the curse of King Philip or Metacom from the Wampanoag people? Do you think it's based on how they were treated when they left? I know there's a legend that they cursed it. Do you think there's anything to that? Yeah, that's, you know, that's what sits right with me. And I really come at this subject as like a history fan, a folklore fan, and appreciating that a story sticks around for a reason, right? It's not up to me. It's a collective decision. And a lot of weirdness has happened in the Bridgewater Triangle. You know, there's, there has been, you know, like cryptid sightings and there's been UFO sightings and mass murder and cult murder. And

and all kinds of things, all kinds of strangeness. And when you... So I'm the kind of guy that always wants to know the backstory. So I always go back and back and back until you can find something, right? Some underlying cause. And when you get back into the 1600s, you find the King Phillips War, which is a war that was the bloodiest war in either American or British history per capita. We were England back then, of course.

And per capita, meaning the greatest percentage of population died in this battle. than this conflict than any other. And it's completely whitewashed. The worst part about it is that every Thanksgiving we teach our school kids, oh, in 1620, the pilgrims landed at Plymouth and the Wampanoag helped them get through those first couple winters and they celebrate with this feast. And isn't it wonderful and, you know, how we got along? It was just a couple decades later that, man, we wiped them out, you know? I mean, it was brutal. It was bloody. It was ugly. Every treaty was violated and then of course the final surrender of the King Phillips War was, you know, your men can go in peace, nothing will happen to you. And of course, everybody was just killed anyway. Because that's how they

rolled. And to me, that's like a stain. It's this underlying stain or scar that sits on the land. And, you know, every November we replay that first Thanksgiving trope. But then we don't, we just skip over everything that happened for like the next hundred years. We just jump past it. We talk about Thanksgiving, we skip over the part where we killed everyone. Right, yeah. We just, yeah, you do not want to come to dinner at our house because dessert is a bitch, right? It's really ugly. And so I think in some cases, like these legends, these ghosts, these monsters, they're history demanding to be remembered.

It sometimes forces you to take a good hard look. And as we're learning right now, my God, I don't know if you have access to the news or the internet. But we're sort of coming apart because I think in some ways, our country is reconciling with sins of centuries ago, you know, that have never properly been dealt with. And as everyone knows who has even taken a psychology course, right, you could bury thoughts and issues, you can ignore them, but they're going to bubble up until you actually deal with them. And I think in some ways folklore works the same way. We are still dealing with issues from the past. some cases the 1600s that are still hanging around. And a curse, like a formal curse, I don't know.

Curses are real when you believe in them, whether there's like a formal one there or more of an informal discomfort that we have, knowing that something really bad happened here and my ancestors might have had a hand in it. Maybe it's a little more along those lines. Yeah, I hear you. And I appreciate you answering that. I was just kind of curious on your take on it. because as I started kind of looking into the Bridgewater Triangle and researching some of the different encounters, there's a lot of bad stuff that went on there.

I mean, besides Sasquatch, lights, all the weird cryptids people are running into, there was a lot of bad human activity in that area. You guys had the cop on the former police officer, and some of the stuff he talked about in that documentary was hard to listen to. But it just makes you wonder, why is so many bad things happening in this one area? area. Is it cursed? Who knows? You know what I mean? The funny thing, too, is the skeptic in me also recognizes that if you took any 220 square mile, roughly, area in the United States, that's populated, by the way, you need people for curses and history, if you took that same look and go back three, four hundred years and look for all the bad things that have happened, you will find them. You know, you'll find murders and you'll

find strange activity and God knows what else. When the movie came out, it's funny how many people live in that area that had never really heard of the Bridgewater Triangle. But then now that they had seen the documentary and they said, you know what? My house was always weird. This explains it. You know, this became like this catch-all thing like, oh, now it makes sense why my cousin's so strange and lives out in that cabin and why, you know, my house is haunted and why I heard that strange thing in the woods and there's no way it could have been like a deer or a bear or a fisher cat or something like that it becomes a scapegoat as the paranormal will do right like that'll happen it in all it happens with saskatch it happens with uh ghosts aliens you name it it becomes the

scapegoat and um and that also keeps the story alive yeah and i definitely want to touch on some of these different topics and some of your different books tonight jeff and i know you have your on podcast called New England Legends. As you've looked into some of these different weird encounters, strange encounters, have you ever come across one that sounds like a Sasquatch, but the locals are calling it something else? Yeah, so our latest episode that just came out is called the Cobble Mountain Critter. And the Cobble Mountain Critter is a story that's been lingering at least since the 1980s, when there was a Bigfoot siting at a place called October Mountain and the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts.

And some campers, and that, which by the way is about 15 miles as the crow flies from Cobble Mountain Reservoir, which is where the Cobble Mountain Critter's been seen. So you had this siting by four campers who heard these rustling in the bushes for like two hours. And they said, look, an animal just doesn't do that. An animal either attacks because it's scared or it runs off because there's human activity. And they investigate, they see this creature over seven feet tall, broad shoulders, and they run for it. And then a few years later, another siting on October Mountain, more to the east, which is towards Cobble Mountain Reservoir. And then in 2000, there's a report that's filed with the BFRO, the Bigfoot Research Organization, about this Cobble Mountain Reservoir creature.

And again, by all accounts, a Bigfoot type creature. In some cases, he's got glowing red eyes, and there was a nickname of red-eyed dick that went around. And in other cases, he's got glowing white eyes, like dim flashlights. But the main part of the story that's consistent is over seven feet tall, broad shoulders, upright primate. And the people that live in the area, and we're talking like a small town. Blanford is northwest of Springfield. You may have heard of Springfield, Massachusetts. That's where basketball was invented.

the Basketball Hall of Fame is there, you know. Dr. Seuss is from Springfield. But this is well outside of the city in a really tiny, not populated area by this reservoir. And the reservoir has been closed to the public. And we're talking about like 8,000 acres around it, closed off to the public since 2001. So if there was something out there, I mean, there's supposed to be no people around it, right? The reservoirs protected land. and you can't camp there, hunt there.

And the stories we got are from people that have kind of snuck on to do some illegal fishing. But the people in Blanford, they all know it. They all know the story. And any time there's something weird, they just say, up, the Cobble Mountain Critter, right? Like, he's become kind of like this scapegoat for anything weird in Blanford. And so that's like a local version of it. And if you connect the dots, you've had three pretty well-documented sightings in a span. of 20 years in an area that's like only 15, 16 miles apart of the Berkshires of Western Mass,

which is, by the way, like, that's not very well populated out that way. And, you know, the further west you go in Massachusetts, the less and less population. So you've got the Berkshires all the way over to Blandford, which is a little more central and, you know, three pretty good sightings. And then a town where everybody knows this creature. Yeah, I love the local legends, Jeff. It's so cool to, especially when you're from a certain area. You know, when I first got into this, I would look into encounters in the south.

But the problem is a lot of times they don't call it Sasquatch or Bigfoot. They have a different name for it. A lot of it's based on geographic location, you know, like Devil's Creek, Devil's Mountain, Monkey Mountain, ape canyon. You know, they'll throw in some other local name for it. What other accounts have you looked into of local lore? My other favorite one, and let me just say, too, I put more stock in that, right? Because labels, I get it, we need labels, but at the same time, they're dangerous, right? Because one person sees something weird and says, that's an alien.

That's a gray alien from space, outer space, somewhere far away. And someone else goes, no, that's a demon. And someone else goes, that's a cryptid. And someone else goes, that's your imagination. And it's all very much left to the eye of the beholder. I love if you went to Blanford and you said, hey, look, I study Bigfoot. And they go, there's no such thing as Bigfoot, but I have seen the Cobble Mountain Critter. Right?

Yeah. So the Bigfoot name suddenly derailed that particular person into thinking like, oh, you're one of those kooky people. And that's all nuts. But I have seen this seven and a half foot tall, hairy upright primate called the Cobble Mountain Critter. And you go, oh, okay, you're right. No such thing as Bigfoot. please tell me more about the Cobble Mountain Critter. So this is where labels can sort of hurt us.

And as a guy that studies everything, like I get into ghosts and monsters and cryptids and aliens and alternate realities and weird history, I really have tried my best over the years to refrain from using those words and just asking, especially when I'm talking to a witness, right? Just say, like, you tell me what you saw. What do you think it is? How do you interpret it and let them talk? There's another one in a town called North Adams, which is, I mean, you can literally spit into New York State. And we do because we don't like New Yorkers. I'm just kidding. So it's right on the New York line.

I have a large New York audience. So go ahead. We're from Massachusetts. They know it's not personal, right? It's like a red socks and Yankees thing. Like, there's no venom there. But it's just a mutual hate-hate-respect relationship. So anyway, in North Adams, there's a place called Coca-Cola Ledge.

And it's called that because way back in like the 1920s and 30s, there was a giant Coca-Cola logo painted on this cliff face as like a billboard. And the cliff looks over pretty much the whole town. You can see it from almost anywhere in town. The cliff is tall. I mean, it's got to be, I don't know. It's got to be 150 feet. Enough.

If you fell off it, you're dead. You're not going to get injured. you're going to die. And the other thing about the cliff is it's very easy to get to the top because it's kind of like a gentle slope on either side. So, you know, you can just kind of walk up either side and you'll be at the top. Since the 40s and 50s, people started talking about the monster of Coca-Cola ledge. And again, easy to get to the top and dangerous to be up there because if you fall, it's not going to end well. And there's a college in town and fraternities have been painting their letters on that cliff face as well.

for many years. So this story has been sort of passed around. And again, a blondeish, hairy, seven foot tall plus upright primate creature that lurks up there. And again, that's the Berkshires. North Adams is a populated town out there. But from that cliff on to the east and south, it's just all forest. And this creature's been reported up there. It's also a story that parents, I think, have been all too happy to propagate because it's dangerous. And of course, your kids are going to want to go up there and play and investigate and check it out. And so if a monster story can keep you scared away, then maybe that'll help keep the children safe. And there's a long history and tradition of that.

That goes back to like gray ladies and green ladies that haunt the castle ruins in England, right? I mean, you would tell your children, if you go near the castle ruins, the gray lady will get you. She'll eat you. And you wanted to scare your kids with these stories because castle ruins are dangerous places. You could fall and you could break your arm or break your neck and die. So in some cases, we keep these stories around because they serve us. And in other cases, it's because someone really saw something and reported it. I also talked to someone who said, no, no, no, that was my brother.

That was the monster Coca-Cola ledge. He used to go up there and scare kids and it's him. And even that is interesting, right? because that's someone who wants to become part of the story, who says like, oh, no, I'll define it. I will be the last word on it. It's me. I was the guy up there. But while that may account for a couple of the sightings, definitely not all of them. Yeah, I guess every culture does that. There's always some truth behind a story like that. You know, down south, they'll say, don't go out after dark, or the boogers will get you, which is what we know is Sasquatch. And every culture has a boogeyman-type story.

I wanted to ask you, though, as you looked into these different reports, have you ever come across a violent report? I have not. And another one just came to mind. Big Harry of Cedar Swamp, which is more central Massachusetts. Never an attack, always just a witness or seeing it from somewhat of a safe distance. I have not personally heard of any attacks. Tell me about this third one you just mentioned. I'm kind of curious, close it up.

So big hairy of Cedar Swamp. Now this is interesting because this is a populated area. I don't know how a seven foot tall creature would hide or even get here without going through a lot of towns. I mean, you'd need like, you know, you'd be going through people's backyards. However, this story came to me years ago. My car died and I was getting towed. And at the time, I was writing the book Weird Massachusetts. This guy didn't know who I was.

It was just completely anonymous. I was just the car he was towing. And I said, oh, yeah, you know, he's like, Cedar Swamp is right where I-95 and 495 intersect. So it's sort of near like Worcester, Massachusetts, like halfway between Worcester and Boston in the more central part of the state. And it's, again, populated area. But this Cedar Swamp, this tow truck driver just started telling me the stories.

Like, oh, man, me and my brother. brothers. We used to camp out there, but there's this creature, man. It smelled awful. You could smell them long before you heard them or saw him. And we called him Big Harry of Cedar Swamp. And I went, big Harry of Cedar Swamp. I mean, like, this is amazing, right? Just from a tow truck driver. So that's another version. That's another local version. That one, I really struggle with that one, because I know exactly where it is. And when I'm driving someplace, I pass it. And I look around and I go, how the hell is a seven foot tall creature going to hide out here? But that's the story. I'm just passing it on. Yeah, I appreciate you sharing it, Jeff. You know, there's so many weird stories like that, local legends.

I remember had a guy on like a couple weeks ago, and he had an encounter in Northern California next to a place called Monkey Creek. And it makes you wonder why it's called Monkey Creek. I wanted to ask you, though, what do you think that Sasquatches, Jeff? Kind of what's your opinion? I mean, there's no wrong answer. I think he's a lot more weird than anyone is comfortable, right? Like the, you know, are you familiar with the term a tulpa, a thought form? No. Okay, so a tulpa is an, it's an ancient Tibetan idea that you can think something into existence. And these monks would literally meditate on an idea.

And they believe that you could create a tulpa. You could create a thought form into the world. where I literally create something and not only do I see it, but you see it. And it's there and it can leave footprints and everything. And we have like this understanding of it because it's become, it's been thought into reality. And while that may sound like some real crazy new age stuff, we think things into reality all the time. And for an example of just how abstract humans can think, I want you to picture a building in a city, any building in any city you've ever seen where you admired it in any way, shape, or form, where you're like,

wow, that's pretty interesting architecture. Someone thought of that, right? Like, before it existed, it was in someone's brain as a thought. They drew it and it was built to their imagination. And I know that sounds like, okay, oversimplifying. Now consider this. Consider the money in your wallet, right? that money, that paper, the only reason it's worth something is because we believe in it, because we believe it into existence. The only reason the $20 bill is worth more than the $1 bill is because we have a collective agreement that you can get like a pizza and a six pack with that. And the $1 bill won't even get you a cup of coffee. A dog does not understand that that $20 bill could buy him a steak, right? He doesn't grasp that that could have great value to him.

He can't grasp it at all. So on the one hand, we have the ability to think things into true reality as a species. And so I'm wondering if Bigfoot could be like some connection to distant, distant past that we call up. I mean, I kind of feel like the timeline is a little more wonky than anyone would be comfortable with. And if we're having like a time.

slip experience, that could explain not just Bigfoot, but anything paranormal. It could explain aliens, right? Maybe that's just us, half a million years in the future. It goes so easy. That was us 100 years ago. Bigfoot, maybe that was us, I don't know, half a million years ago, you know, or a million years ago. I don't know. But I struggle with the idea that we haven't found a dead one, you know, that we just get these footprints and it disappears and in this day and age where we've just got cameras everywhere and people everywhere. Yeah, that's definitely a different take. I've never heard that before.

You know, I do think that Sasquatch is very physical, but there is weird things that people tell you as far as what they saw. I mean, you gave a perfect example of it there in the beginning of the Cobble Creek Critter where sometimes people will report the eyes glowing red or glowing white. And I've asked people in the past, you know, was it eye shine? Do you think what you saw was eyeshine? And there's a good portion of people that will say no. The eyes were lighting up on their own.

I think everyone knows what eye shine is. I don't think you have to be a hunter to understand eyes shine. And a lot of people do talk about their eyes glowing red. I've heard many bizarre accounts. And it's not just a one-off type situation. I've heard it over and over and over again, especially off the air. So I do think it's physical, but there's something else going on that I can't put my finger on yet. It's so, I mean, there's this, the cryptosoologist I've talked to, right? There's,

there's two camps, right? There seems to be the, it's, there's nothing magical about this creature, just like there's nothing magical about a monkey. It lives on this earth with us. We just don't have good documentation. We've never trapped one yet. And then there's the other camp that's like, it's an interdimensional being. It's a space alien. And it flits in and out of our existence. And then that just is too woo-woo for some people. And then those two groups don't seem to get along. I, however, I always fall back on the eyewitness accounts. And when it comes to anything, because I think that's some of the most compelling evidence that we have of all this stuff. Because, you know, I mean, how many times have you heard the narrative?

I was out hunting in these woods. I've been hunting in these woods for 30 years. I know every creature that's out there. I've seen skunks and I've seen deer and I've seen elk and I've seen moose and I've seen bears. And I know, I know this, I know that. There is no seven foot tall, eight foot tall, hairy, upright. creature that I've ever seen or encountered in these woods. How would I miss that?

Right. And often, especially with a big foot encounter, as long as the person doesn't feel threatened, like maybe the hunter's in a tree stand, feels safe, doesn't feel threatened. The thing just walks by and off it goes. It's not like, like when you see a ghost, right, that shakes you to the foundation because you've got to reconcile with the possibility of life after death. That's a big ask. That's a big shakeup of your, your.

moral code, whereas seeing a creature you've never seen before wander by doesn't ask you to go to those places, right? It just asks you to go to the place of like, here's a thing I have never seen before that just walk by. And so it's a little more matter of fact and a little more, in some ways, credible, right? Because I'm not asking you to believe in life after death. I'm just telling you what I saw. So yeah, I think these eyewitness accounts are the reason that I don't throw it all away. Because it's... there's just too many of them. Yeah, and like he said, I mean, there is a lot of really weird things that you have to,

even with Sasquatch, and Chris Balzano and I were talking about this on the Bridgewater Triangle episode where, you know, you get very strange reports. Les Trout, Survivor Man. He told me about this mind-speaking incident he had when he was out there where this creature, I guess, was speaking to him, but it was in his mind. And it makes me wonder sometimes if it's all kind of related because you've looked into aliens, you've looked into a lot of different things. That mind speaking thing isn't something, a brand new idea the Big Fort World just came up with.

They've been saying that for years with, you know, most aliens don't talk with their mouth. They speak through their mind. And I've had even polter guys, people who've, you know, demonic entities where something's talking to them in their head, kind of the back of the head. So it's weird to see all of these little bits and pieces of like, oh, that's weird. I also see that over here in this subject. I also see that over here on this other subject. What's kind of the weirdest cryptic you've ever looked into beyond Bigfoot?

The Dover Demon. What's the Dover Demon? The Dover Demon is a creature that was experienced for literally 26, 27 hours in the late 1970s in Dover, Massachusetts. And it was experienced by four different people over the span of like a little more than a day. And it started because a guy named Bill Bartlett was driving home down this road in Dover. And Dover is kind of like a small community, like, you know, kind of a wealthy community. People will probably work in Boston and have a nice house out in Dover just to give you some perspective. And so he's driving home and there's a stone wall as we've got plenty of those.

around here, and he sees this creature, maybe three and a half feet tall, hairless, big glowing eyes, but glowing probably in reflection of his car headlights, and almost like the gray alien head, but crawling more like a primate with very long spindly fingers, no hair that he could see. And he saw this thing for probably about seven or eight seconds, which sounds like a brief period of time, but it's really not. If you're driving down a road at 35, 40 miles an hour and you see something way up ahead and you follow it with your eyes as you drive past it, right? I mean, that's about six or seven seconds.

And the other thing about Bill Bartlett is he's a fine arts painter today. And it still is if you want to look him up. His paintings look like photographs. They're unbelievable. And though he didn't have a camera with him, being a fine arts painter, he was an artistic kid and he went home and he drew what he saw right away my point is that he understands perspective and size right as an artist and when i when i interviewed about him and he's been interviewed about it a lot Lauren Coleman is the guy that made the Dover demon famous um because

he's the guy that really took the first interviews down when um when the first sightings happened in the late 1970s and um and so he drew what he saw later that night about less than one mile away from his sighting, a kid was leaving his girlfriend's house around midnight to walk home when he saw what he thought was one of the neighborhood kids hiding next to a tree. And he calls out to him and that he realized like this big, like bulbous head kind of leaned out by the tree. It's like three feet tall, spindly fingers. And then it just like darts into the woods. It just runs like scampering into the woods and he didn't see it again. The following night, there was a girl out with her boyfriend driving and they also see this thing.

They described it as like a naked kid that ran by. And this was all within the span of like one to two miles of this original siting. And then never seen again. And the crazy thing, Wes, is that there should at the very least be copycat sightings, right? Because it sort of blew up a little bit regionally. Like people talked about it. Even today, the Dover Historical Society sells T-shirts that has the drawing of this creature on it and says, do you believe the Dover

demon, right? And it's kind of become a thing. And we have four witnesses, 26 hours, well documented case thanks to Lauren Coleman, and no copycat since, and nothing else. And it's

just one of these really strange cases that it's still crazy to me. And I only live like 20 minutes from Dover, so I've driven by that road. What do you think it was? No idea. No idea. I couldn't even venture a guess. And by the way, I do want to say the word Dover demon was just Lauren Coleman will tell you this. It's a play on words. It's just if it was Bellingham, it would have been the Bellingham beast, right? It was just a, there was nothing about this creature that behaved in a way that made you think it was preternatural or supernatural or anything. It was just weird. I don't know. I can't venture a guess. I've told you all I know. And so for me to guess would just be like reaching in a my own belief system, right? Which isn't all that helpful. No, I hear you. I was just kind of curious

what, you know, what you thought it was. I mean, who knows what that thing was? That's bizarre. I know. And I've talked to Bill. I've talked to Bill about it, the original witness, the guy that drew it. And he goes, it's killing me. And you should see his paintings. Just Google them. Like, they're amazing. They're just like, like photographs, the depth and reality of them. And he's like, it just kills me that I'm, some of my, one of my most famous works is literally a sketch I drew on a piece of notebook paper in high school, as opposed to these masterpiece paintings, right, that he sells in shows in galleries all over the world. Yeah, it kind of reminds me of, like the Dogman, as an example, you know, this whirlroll for Dogman, what people are seeing.

And I believe people are seeing it. I have no idea what that thing is. It seems to be physical, but it also seems to be bulletproof. So, it's so, you know, there's so many weird, strange cryptids out there running around. So the other thing about it is like, and there's also like the rogueroo, right? I know Linda Godfrey who wrote the, you know, she and I are karaoke partners on occasion, which is, I've already said too much. So we were talking about Dogman and I was in New Orleans where they've got the rogueroo, which is like a werewolf, right? It's a, it's like this, this, this werewolf type creature. Yeah.

And what's always interesting to me is when you've got a creature that. that shows up in various parts of the world under different names, but the same description. And the idea of a cross between a human and an animal, I mean, that goes back thousands of years, right? Minotors, senators, and, you know, and Eubis. Right, yeah, Greek mythology is full of like goat body, manhead, you know, horse body. You know, there's tons of them, tons of those stories. Mermaids, right, half fish, half person. So it's nothing new the idea that

You know that these two things have crossed Oh my God, sorry, can we jump back to the Cobble Mountain Critter for a second? I forgot something Yeah, yeah So one of the origin stories my favorite origin story is that he dates back to the Civil War just after the Civil War When a lone soldier was out there camping getting his head together after the war He goes to the stream to wash some of his dishes and a bear comes up and attacks him and the two men are fighting, the man and the bear, and lightning strikes them and fuses them together into the Kabul Mountain Critter, right? It's great, right? It's great. I love that. Do I think that

happened? No, I don't think that happened at all. A little folklore, though. It's kind of nice. People trying to explain it. Right. It doesn't matter because what happens is that that is something where you could go, oh, well, well, that would explain a man like beast, right? Or is he a wild man? You know, there were wild men. Wild men aren't as common as they used to be, but there were wild men, especially back then. Yeah, absolutely. But you were mentioning the Luke de Roo out there in Louisiana. Rogueru. Rogueru. That's how I had to do. What's the loop delu? That's, that would be more the, is that more French? I think they pronounce it Lute de Roo, but we can say Rougaroo. That's cool with me. No, you, hey, potato, potato. It's all good. Labels, right? We said that

before, labels. You know, strange canine creature that can walk upright and seems humanish. So, yeah, the name comes, the description comes up. And then we have to scratch our heads and go, huh, what's he doing in Michigan and Wisconsin and Louisiana and France? You know, like. Yeah, it's bizarre. Yeah.

I want to ask you one of the other questions, too, because I know you look into everything, which I think is really cool. I know you mainly do ghosts and that sort of thing, but you actually look into a lot of different subjects. And I was kind of curious about any alien encounters out there or any UFO encounters out there in Massachusetts that you've kind of looked into. Yeah, so one of the most famous documented close encounters

in U.S. history took place in Exeter, New Hampshire, to Betty and Barney Hill. That was the Betty and Barney Hill case and what's really cool about it is this was oh god forgive me I forget the year but I want to say like early 1960s

I got to I think you're right I think yeah so it was and what's really awesome about it is that if you go on Route 3 where the event took place yeah it was

it was 1961 so if you go up Route 3 New Hampshire has these really beautiful, like cast iron signs that are painted and they've got these like, you know, embossed letters of different historic places all over the state. They're gorgeous. The state seals on there, color, they're really well maintained. There's a sign on Route 3 about the Betty and Barney Hill incident right there that says it was here that this alleged, you know, abduction took place. And I look at that and I went, taxpayers paid for that sign, right? Let that sink in. I'm going to say it again. Taxpayers paid for a sign to mark where an alleged alien abduction took place. Yeah, that's crazy. It's really cool.

I love that. I love that. Because it is a thing. The gas station just down the street's got this mural of like the gray alien painted on it. And like it's kitsch. It's like local thing. Yeah, come see where the aliens were. That's a case.

For the audience, would you kind of explain that case? I know the case very well, but some people listening may have no clue what you're talking about. Yep. Sorry. So Barney, Betty Hill, they're married, and they're an interracial couple, which is actually an important part of the story. They were vacationing in Canada and driving home to Port Smith, New Hampshire. So you're driving down pretty much the whole length of New Hampshire from north to south. And it was really late at night, and they saw some strange lights in the sky. So Barney, pulls the car over and starts looking with his binoculars and thinking, well, it doesn't quite look like a jet, but then the lights get closer and closer. And then they realize it's coming down on the road.

And next thing they know, they hear a buzzing sound. There's missing time. Hours go by, and they're suddenly in their car, and they're not where they should be. And they eventually get home and start to slowly piece together that night as it goes. part of the reason that them being an interracial couple is important is because this is 1961 there are many states where that is illegal new hampshire is not one of them however um but my point is they don't want to call attention to themselves because they're an interracial couple life is hard enough for them um and so they they told a uh military officer someone else

wrote it up and then the story just sort starts to explode right because this this case seems rather credible. They do some some hypnosis to try to get the you know, do some regressive hypnosis to try to get the story back. And it just becomes part of like the history of New Hampshire. You can go and you can see Betty's dress on display. You can see a piece of it. You can see all the case reports and things like that. You can see the the bust of the alien head that that Betty had made. And it just, it just grew and grew to the point where it's like, It's like our Roswell in New England. You know, it's our version of Roswell.

And that's just one case, but it's easily the most famous up in the northeastern United States. Yeah, it is. And I've watched interviews with them. I mean, that is one of the first cases, I think, of an abduction that I think ever reported really, or maybe one that became so popular. I interviewed Travis Walton, you know, the fire in the sky. Yeah, I know Travis.

That guy's not lying. I can tell you, that guy's not lying. And what's interesting is when he talked to Travis today, he probably won't like me saying this, but you can tell this guy's experience some trauma. Something happened to this guy. If I didn't know anything about his abduction or anything about him and I just met him, my first thought would be something happened to this guy. Do you want to hear my Travis story? Yeah. Okay.

So when I was growing up, my dad and I used to love watching like all the movies and about all this stuff. Like we watched it and we watched fire in the sky and we thought like this is crazy. When I started speaking at paranormal conferences, I've been at several now where Travis and I were both speakers. And so the first time I met him, I'm like, oh my God, dad, right, Travis Walton. So I was speaking at a conference in, oh, God, we flew into Fargo, North Dakota, but then drove into, oh, God, where were we? Anyway, it doesn't even matter. But we were like two hours from Fargo. And in the middle of nowhere, and it was at this casino, big event.

And I was like, wow, dad, Travis Walton, how cool. And I saw him speak for the first time and tell this story, very compelling. And on the last night, Travis and I both had to catch like the 6 a.m. flight out of Fargo. So we had to meet in the lobby at like 2.30 in the morning to get our ride to the airport. And so when faced with hard decisions, do I stay up until the bar closes and then stumble up to my room and just throw my suit? suitcase together and leave or do I try to sleep for a few hours? You know, I went big. I stayed at the bar until it closed. And then I wander down to the lobby and there's Travis and it's just the two of us and our ride's not there. And it gets later and later. And we're telling the manager like, dude, when you miss a flight out of a small airport, you may never get home. Right? Because like the next one could be two days from now and it's full. And you know, so finally the manager of the hotel is like, get in my car. I'll take you. And Wes, I've never seen such darkness, right? There's no lights.

You look forever on the horizon. There's not even a house out there. It's pitch black. We're doing 90 down the middle of the highway. He's like, I'm straddling the line on purpose in case there's any animals near the side of the road. We're less likely to hit them. So my life's in danger. I'm still drunk.

And Travis is in the back seat. And we're cruising along. And I'm looking up and I'm like, if the mothership came down right now, like, I get it. They're here for Travis. But I will be collateral damage. and I'm looking all around at the sky, right? And then pretty soon, on the horizon, there's these like twinkling lights and it's getting bigger and it's getting like wider and it's filling the horizon. And I'm like, Travis, dude, do you see that?

And he looks up and he's like, I do see that. And the driver goes, guys, relax. That's Fargo. We're getting close. It's the city. I was like, oh, I thought that was it. I thought I was going up with Travis. Travis, you know, just again, they weren't after me, but we didn't. Anyway, that was my almost close

encounter. Yeah. Travis really is cool guy on the planet. He's a lot of fun to hang out with. That is funny, though. You guys see the city coming up. Yeah, it was me. It's totally me. And I admit, I had had like 300 drinks that night, and it was totally my fault. But I was like, dude, do you see that? The other thing I want to ask you is regarding the ghost, you know, and I know you look into a lot of different paranormal encounters and what's like the most terrifying demonic or poltergeist I guess are one and the same. No, they're not. Oh, okay.

Just so quick, quick point of reference. So when we say poltergeist, we are referring to living people, not dead ones. Poltergeist seems to be a manifestation of P.K. or psychokinetic ability where like a dish could break and no one's touched it, right? where it seems to be tied to someone or multiple people in a home. And it's something that's not fully understood. However, I mean, Princeton had the Pear Lab, Duke University, had the Ryan Center. Like, this stuff has been studied.

And in some ways, reproduced to a certain extent in the lab. So when we say poltergeist, we are referring to, you know, mental abilities of living people. Ghost would be more like, you know, I tend to use the word ghost and spirit interchangeably, although some purists would tell you a ghost is like a residual haunting, like a movie that just plays over and over. And a spirit would be more like grandma came back, you know, two months after she died and said, I miss you, I love you, and I hid the gold and the couch. Don't throw it away, right? Yeah, more of an interaction.

Yeah. And again, labels, right? Dangerous because all that matters is that what you think. Right. If you're the person there and you see grandma, you might call her a ghost. You might call her anything or just call her grandma, right? And that's okay. That's the word you choose to use. But as people and those of us that document this stuff, we try so desperately to fit them into neat little boxes, even though their human experiences and human experiences tend to not fit well into neat little boxes. But we try. Yeah, I might argue with you on that one. I don't know enough about the subject to speak intelligently about it. But regarding, you know, a ghost or demon, whatever title you want to give it, is there a terrifying account that kind of stands out to you? Yeah, so I got to do one of the last big interviews with George Lutz who lived in the Amityville House in, you know, the Amityville Horror fame.

And this was before the third movie came. out. It was for my second book called Our Haunted Lives. It was we talked about everything. We talked for hours about everything from like the summer of 75 right up until present day, how this thing affected his life. I've also had the opportunity to interview his stepson Chris about it. And what I learned from everyone is that everyone's a liar. Everyone exaggerated the story. However, yes, that house was truly haunted. Consider this, if nothing else. For those who may not know the backstory, Ronald Bush Defeo Jr., who is still alive right now and sitting in jail, went into that house with a loaded Marlin rifle and killed his two parents, his brothers and

his sisters all in their beds, all in one night, executed his entire family in their beds. That happened. That's a fact. Yeah, like that went down. And that house sat empty for a while, as you might imagine. I'm into this stuff. I wouldn't want to live in a house like that, right? You buy it and invite me over.

Like, you know, like, I don't want to live there. So, anyway, so George was talking about some of the stuff that was happening in the house. And his story, I actually found a lot more frightening than the movie because, come on, you watch the movie. Eddie Murphy made the joke. It's still true, right? You walk into the house and it's trying to eat you and it's screaming, get out. You're like, too bad, we can't stay. We're out.

This movie would last 30 seconds. You'd walk out the door and you'd be like, and we're gone. I'm leaving all my stuff there. That's that. George tells a story of feeling singled out at first. Like, he's in bed and he hears what sounds like a marching band kind of like tuning up downstairs in the living room. And of course, he wakes up because he's startled by the loud noise, but his wife's still asleep. So he's like, well, I'm the man of the house.

I should go investigate. So he goes down the steps, and he sees his black lab at the bottom of the steps sound asleep. And now, so now you've got to be thinking like, okay, the black lab is not going to sleep through a marching band. Right? Like the lab would have been up and barking and whatever, but he's not. Is it me? Is it just in my head? What's going on? And so this is happening to him. Little things, right? Little things that seems to be just affecting him to the point where he's afraid to tell others. I don't want to scare the family. I don't want him to think I'm nuts and lock me up, whatever. But then pretty soon other family members start to say, hey, some weird things are happening to me in this house. Me too. And then they start talking. And I asked George, and he said, and he said, I didn't want to leave this house. I'm like, you know six people were murdered there just a couple of years before you were there. You know you're experiencing weird, uncomfortable things that's messing with your sleep and your sanity and you don't want to leave. And what he said just chilled me. He said, the house was charming.

And I went, oh my God, charming. Like the house itself, he said was like almost like cast a spell. Stay here. Don't go. This is a better place to be. And that I thought was really frightening. And I've only heard a couple people in all my years of interviewing folks about their haunted homes and experiences. I've only heard a couple people say that they felt their house actually had a charm to it, as frightening as it was.

And to me, that's real fear, right? It's one thing to just be scared and you know it's evil and you want to get away from it. It's another when it's frightening and evil and you want to be near it. Yeah, absolutely. Why did the guy kill his whole family? Did they ever explain that? Is he just nuts? Yeah, just nuts.

And in fact, once the whole ghost narrative came out, he tried to have his lawyer sort of push like, oh, yeah, it wasn't me. I was possessed by demons and spirits or whatever to do this. But that was well after the fact, right? It was just an insanity defense after he'd already been tried, convicted, jailed, you know, the whole thing. And he's still alive. Like, he was up for parole a couple years ago. It killed six people, his whole family. You should never be for parole.

Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. I want to ask you about the White House too as well. You know, we always hear rumors that it's haunted. Yeah. The Abraham Lincoln bedroom. Is there any truth to any of that? If you believe, okay, when someone is elected president, we do not drug test them. We do not psychologically evaluate them. We don't background check them in any way. You can be on crack and crazy. And you can be elected president of the United States. As long as you're over 35, right? So there's tons of ghost accounts that come from past presidents, but I fully understand if you don't want to take their word for it, if you think, nah, they're all liars and crooks and probably on drugs and crazy. That's fine. However, if you work for the White House, and I'm talking about people that have worked there for years and years, I met a fourth generation White House Butler. Think about that, right? His dad was a Butler at the White House. His dad's dad was a Butler of the White House.

I mean, crazy. These folks, I interviewed the chief usher. He was there since Nixon. Nixon to George W. Bush, right? He served every president. He spent more time in that building. If you consider 40 to 60 hours a week times all those years, that's more than a two-year term for a president. And they had ghost experiences.

Now, those butlers, the chief usher, the groundskeepers, the chefs, the people that are not, it doesn't matter which political parties in power, they work for the building. those folks are drug screened. They're psychologically evaluated. Their background checked eight ways to Sunday because they're around the president, the first family, foreign heads of state, and so on and so on. When they say they've seen something, that is as credible of a witness as you will ever find.

And so, well, yes, Harry S. Truman wrote in six different letters to his wife about the place being haunted, sure is shooting, to quote the president. And Reagan talked about his dog barking wildly by the Lincoln bedroom, and George W. Bush saying he saw something, when he was working on his dad's re-election campaign and the Obama's having stories and on and on and on

when the people that work there say they have their experiences like a foreman who had to go up on the second floor where the family lives and turn on all the lights in the morning as part of his duties and sees Lincoln sitting in a chair right outside of the Lincoln bedroom, which by the way was never his bedroom. It used to be the president's executive office. I don't know. That's as good a witness as you'll ever find. And so that I believe. And it seems like Lincoln is the one that's mainly seen there. Am I correct you saying that? Yep. He comes up again and again. And the reason for that is that Abraham Lincoln had the most difficult presidency hands down of all of them. There's not even a close second. Lincoln, his son died

while he's in the White House. And that was a tight family. And that really broke him up. His nations at war with itself. There's literally a civil war that's shredding the nation into, brother against brother, thousands and thousands dying on both sides. He ends slavery, and of course he pays the ultimate price. He gets assassinated for the office. And there's no president that will ever have it that bad, ever. And so I think in some ways a ghost is summoned. I saw an interview once with George H.W. Bush, the first Bush president. And he talked about his first days, his early years as president. And he said, he had to send some troops into harm's way. He said, I was really struggling with the decision. Oh, my gosh, American people could be killed

based on my decision. And he said, I was really struggling. And then I thought about Abraham Lincoln and what he went through. And I sort of calmed down. And I was like, yeah, you summoned him. You said, I need you here, man. I need your spirit here to show me how bad it can be. And that what I'm going through right now is not as bad as what you had. You are the benchmark. And I feel like any president that understands, has any understanding of history needs that spirit of Lincoln to continue to haunt the White House, again, as a reminder of how bad it can be. We think things are bad now. Nothing compared to the 1860s. It's just not. We just have Twitter now, which is arguably less helpful. Yeah. Yeah. Mary Lincoln was into some weird stuff.

I think she even told Lincoln he was going to die or she saw that he was She had premonitions that he was going to die But Mary Lincoln was into some weird I guess she can call it witchcraft or Spiritualism Spiritualism Yeah she was holding seances in the White House

To try to contact her dead son Willie And we know the president attended at least one of them Because he paid a political price for it The papers were like What's this president doing Consulting with you know Spiritualists and Media in the White House.

And, you know, he sort of had to put the kabash on that, but probably did it to make Mary Todd happy. And if you study her historically, like, tragic story, right? Like, there's nothing in place for the widow of a president that was assassinated while in office. Like, she didn't do well post-presidency, you know, troubled, troubled to say the least. Yeah, the whole Lincoln family is pretty tragic, really. I mean, everything that happened to Abraham and his wife.

It's kind of a tragic story, really, for one of our most beloved presidents. I wanted to ask you, though, Jeff, what kind of got you into looking into all these different topics? Because I know you look into everything from Sasquatch to Ghost to aliens, you name it, you've probably looked into it. What kind of made you start looking into some of the weird stuff going on in this world? So growing up in New England, I had friends that said their houses were haunted from a young age. And so, you know, they're talking about some of these houses. My buddy's house at the end of the street was literally older than the country, right? It was like built in 1760 or something. And the house was just so old. It was like stepping back in time. And it was like, yeah, it's haunted. Someone lives

here with us, you know. But it wasn't, the story wasn't like a Hollywood movie. It was just, yeah, this old guy walks down the hall and then disappears. Don't tell your parents. They'll think we're crazy. And I thought that was really interesting. I also grew up in the town next to Ed and Lorraine Warren so from the conjuring movies and all that like the oh yeah yeah so I knew them since I was you know like 12 years old and it's so I'm sure that had something to do with it I went to school to be a newspaper reporter that's what I wanted to be for your listeners who don't know a newspaper is this like it's paper

but it's big and it's got words in it and it talks about like news that's happening and anyway it's a myth it's a legend so I wanted to be a newspaper reporter features guy. And I got hooked around October looking for ghost stories and finding out that sometimes the history backs up the legends and talking to the eyewitnesses. And then I started a website in 1999 called ghost village.com where I started to put some of my stories and it got a lot of traffic. And I said, tell me your experience. And people from all over the world were sending in their own ghost encounters. And then I started writing books. And then I started working in television.

So it was not a career I planned. It's just I kind of woke up one day and went, oh, my God, this is my job. What's your favorite topic that you're looking into? I mean, what's kind of your, you know, like for me it would be Sasquatch, but for you, what's your favorite subject? I don't know, man. Like, I don't, I mean, ghosts, sure, if you look at my body of work, that's been the majority in the past. And I still love a great ghost and haunting story. at this point, I'm so open, because I said years ago, like, look, if you're going to go down

the rabbit hole, there's no point in going like halfway, right? Jump in, keep going. Plow all the way to the end. You know, don't limit yourself. I was at a conference once and Mufon, the mutual UFO network was there. And a guy was, great guy. I forget his name. Forgive me. But we were talking and he said, I was working on this case, really cool, like, close encounter of the second kind and we're at these people's house and they're telling us the story and everyone's really writing notes and we're all getting excited because this this seems like a real legit case and then the homeowner said uh by the way we think our house is haunted and he's like it's like someone farted in the car you know at that point and all the UFO people are like well we're done here that's that they think there's ghosts here too we're here for UFOs and and I went oh how sad right like these people are experiencers and they're experiencing things and they were judged because they used a label that upset someone, someone probably of the ilk that aliens are just simply life forms from another planet and we can document them, as opposed to maybe aliens are a lot weirder than anyone's comfortable with.

So I've sort of learned over the years that keep an open mind because one person's alien is another person's cryptid, is another person's demon, is another person's coincidence, and look at all of it. So I can't give you one right now. I'm fortunate. So our podcast has got like this great audience of people and we've got a Facebook group and folks are always sharing stories. And as you know, like when you do things for a while, you kind of become a magnet for the stories. Right. So someone has like a Sasquatch sighting.

They're like, Wes, dude, I got to tell you what happened to me this weekend. And you're like, cool, right? Like, let me hear it. So I'm fortunate that when weird stuff happens to people, sometimes I'll get an email about it or a text message or a message on social media. and all I can tell you is at this point, I've looked into enough stories that there's something that literally happens in my stomach where I'll start reading like Cobble Mountain Critter, like a bear and a man fused by lightning. Oh, man, I got to get into this, right? Like it starts in the guts and it goes, oh, you're doing this, man.

You're looking into this. Like, let's get on it. And so that's all I wait for is just that visceral reaction to hearing a story. that may not be true, but it's still sticking around. And maybe there's some truth in it. And that's sort of what drives me. Yeah, absolutely. I get it.

And I had to laugh when you were talking about the Mufon people not wanting to hear about ghosts. You should come hang out in my comment section sometime when I do a show. And it's not strictly Bigfoot. You know, Bigfoot only people freak out. And I don't get that. To this day, I don't get it. But tell me about your podcasts, the New England Legends. It was actually born on television.

I started doing a series for PBS called New England Legends back in 2013. And my main gig is I work on the show Ghost Adventures for the Travel Channel. Like that's my day job for the last 12 years. My partner is a producer at PBS and we sort of collaborate on this thing. It's just us. There's literally only four of us that work on it, for it. And it started airing on PBS. And it's been cool. Like we were nominated for two Emmys. And it's really neat. Like when you, you know, it's just you. Right. We get no help from anyone,

you know, like just a couple of us. And so we started as a television series. And then that's on Amazon Prime. There's eight episodes. If you're a prime member, they're all free. And then there's just so many stories that it turned into a weekly podcast about three years ago. And we haven't missed a week in the last almost three full years of a new story every single week from somewhere in New England something weird. We do cryptids. We do lake monsters. We do ghosts. We do just plain weird history. And it's been so cool because like a whole community of people are growing up around it now and contributing, right? They're like, oh, here, I'm going to take a photo of this weird thing near me. And so it's become like this group thing that's really growing. And then also too, people from

other parts of the country and other parts of the world. They're like, wow, this sounds like a story near me. Of course it does, right? Of course it does, because these aren't unique to hear. It's just I live in New England and it's easier for me to get to them. That's very cool. I didn't know you were on Amazon Prime with the New England Legends. If you have your whatever podcast player listening to, definitely go and check out Jeff's podcast, New England Legends. If you want to keep up with Jeff, go to jeffbelander.com. You can get us books and kind of keep up where he's going to be, and I'll include a link to as well. Jeff, I appreciate you coming on, ma'am.

Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks for having me. 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. If you get a chance to check out Sasquatch Chronicles.com, you can become a member and get additional shows. Until next time, everyone.

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