Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:807 The Little Monkey

Episode Date: November 7, 2021

Tonight I will be speaking to Mark. Over the last 30 years Mark has had two sightings of the creature. Mark is from Nebraska and moved to Colorado. He spent most of his life as a hunter. One of the encounters that Mark had was with a smaller creature.   https://sasquatchchronicles.com/sc-ep807-the-little-monkey/

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. 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 going on? What do you report? Get somebody out here. What's going on now, sir? That son of a bitch is about six foot nine, I don't know. Do you see him now? Yes, I'm looking right here. My name is Maximus Decimus Meridus.

Commander of the Armors of the North General of the Felix Legion's, and you are listening to Sasquatch Chronicles. Welcome to the show, everyone. Thanks for being here tonight. Got a great show, planned for you. We're going to be chatting with Mark, and Mark comes to us from Colorado. And over the last 30 years, Mark's had two really good sightings out there in Colorado, and I'll kind of let him go into it tonight.

If you've had an encounter and you'd like to be on the show, shoot me an email. My email address is Wes at Sasquotronicles.com. And if you get a chance to check out Sasquotronicles.com, you can become a member and get additional shows. And I was telling the members on Friday night, the Sasquot Chronicles app has been approved. It's all been submitted. And I'm just waiting for it to show up on iTunes for Apple. And I'm waiting for it to show up on Google Play for Android. So you can listen to all the member shows and all the public shows and really access the website from the app.

And again, I'm very happy with the app. But as soon as it's up on those two stores, I will, I'll post a blog. So kind of watch a blog or I'll throw it up on Twitter so everyone knows. Thank you again for being here tonight. Let's jump into it. I want to welcome Mark to the show. Mark, thanks for coming on. Thank you, Sarah.

It's pleasure to be here. Yeah, Mark, and I know we're going to go back almost 30 years ago with these two encounters. Prior to all of this happening to you, I know you grew up in Nebraska, what were your thoughts on the whole subject of Sasquatch? Well, when I was small, the movie came out with Patty on it, and that movie was traveling across the Midwest. and we lived on a farm in Nebraska. So we went to the local theater. My parents took me and I got to see the movie of Patty and all that. So that kind of perked my interest a little bit.

And mom would always clip out articles out of the newspaper when she saw people making Bigfoot casts and things like that and the creature and what is it. And most of this stuff was in Oregon. And I guess at that time, we always just kind of thought, yeah, yeah, maybe. Maybe there's one of those things walking around out there someplace in California, Oregon or something. There might be one out there. I had no idea how many there really are, that they're all over. Yeah, there seems to be. There definitely seems to be.

I know before we get into your two sightings, there was one encounter or incident that happened first. If you would tell us about it, when did this first one happen? Kind of a rough time frame. Yeah, a rough time frame would have been a move to Colorado in 87, and I became an archery hunter. And so I was archery hunting. This would have probably been around 88, give or take, right in there someplace, 1988. I got you. And I know before we get into your two main sightings, this first incident that happened to you,

looking back now, you think it was Sasquatch related. At the time, he didn't know from when you and I. we're talking. If you would kind of start from the beginning, walk us into that day. What ended up happening to you? Yeah, I was near Telluride, Colorado. There's a mountain behind telluride called Sunshine Mountain and Wilson Mountain. I was on one of those. I think it was sunshine. And I had hunted this area for a while and I'd bow hunt up in the high country. So I'd get there early in the morning, take my Jeep in, park it and hike up these trails and get up in there and then come back down after dark. And that's when I was coming back down after the high country, I was coming

down the trail. And on my way back down, I saw this kind of wet area to my left. And I thought, yeah, I've got these water purification tablets. I always wanted to try them. Maybe I'll fill up my canteen with this nasty water and put a couple tablets in and see if it works. And evidently it didn't, because I got Jardy out of the deal in the end. But anyway, I go walking in there and I came to this area and I bent over and it started to fill my canteen, laid my bow down. And I looked off behind me and there was this big, shaggy, like, looked like a tree or a rock or boulder or something, a moss hanging all over it.

But it had this strange, peculiar shape, almost like heads of animals or something on it. It was really dark. This was well after sundown. He could still see just a little bit of blue in the sky, but not much. So it was pretty darn dark. And I didn't carry a flashlight back then. And I was trying to figure out what it was. And I just kept filling.

It kept looking at it and couldn't figure it out. And I thought, well, maybe it's a couple elk laying together. There was only about 15 or 20 yards away. And I thought, man, maybe it's a bear. That's why I kept looking, you know. But it just the shapes didn't look right. And I finally gave up on it and figured, ah, I'll look at it in the morning. It must just be some weird bush with a bunch of stuff hanging off of it.

So I turned my back on it, did what I was doing, packed up all my stuff, put on my harness and grab my bow. And before I stepped out of there, I looked back and it was gone. And I'm going, whoa, there's something alive in here with me. I don't know what it is. In Colorado, you can bow hunt and you can still carry a sidearm for personal protection. So I always carry a 44 magnum, stainless steel. And I pulled that out, laid the bow down, and I started walking over there real slow, you know, to kind of investigate and trying to let my eyes adjust as best as I could. When I got to this little boggy area, I looked down and I could see these footprints down in the water.

And it was like muddy, boggy area. And it looked like some kid with a size 9 shoe had just been tromping around in circles around and around and around back and forth. And, of course, all the footprints had filled with water. So you couldn't see toe prints or anything like that. It was all filled with water. I could kind of see the glistening of the water from what light was left. And I looked to my left, about 10 yards to my left, and I could see a big boulder up there. And I thought, man, that boulder looks about the right size for some animals.

to hide behind. And then the smell hit me. And it was a heavy, heavy musk odor from an animal. A lot of people describe it as rotting flesh and all that. That's not it at all when I've smelled these things because I've smelled them before. I've smelled the smell in the woods before when I was bow hunting. I'd walk into it and I couldn't ever figure out what kind of animal it was because it had a strength of a skunk, but it wasn't skunk. And I used to trap in Nebraska, so I was well familiar with smells of skunks and chopped up bobcat meat and fox urine and mink oil and all that kind of stuff because we used it for trapping lures and things. And I just couldn't ever figure it out, but I walked into this wall of this smell. And I knew there was something there, but I didn't go investigate because I couldn't see well enough to see.

what it was, much less hardly shoot. So I just backed out of there. The next morning I went back and I looked at that area and I found it and I looked at the boulder and yep, sure enough, there was plenty of room back there for a couple of animals, creatures, whatever to be hiding. And the footprints, I looked in the water and it looked like bootprints. But at the time, I'm not thinking Sasquatch at all. I'm just thinking like, what would some hunter let his kid go tromp around in the mud there and ruined his boots. I couldn't figure it out, you know. Well, now looking back on it, what I think happened was that I surprised a family playing in the mud, and I think it was probably a mother there and two young ones. And I think the younger ones

were tromping around in the mud, just having fun and playing. And when I walked in, they had nowhere to run. So they just hunkered down like a rabbit or like a deer. And they just hunkered down like a rabbit. And they just froze, you know, and they huddled together. And when I look back and I think about the huddled mass, I'd look at that shadowy shape, it definitely would look like primates huddled together. Now I can understand what it was. But at the time, it didn't make sense because the head or two that I did see,

there was no snout, there was no nose, you know, but yet there was like a head type shape there, and I just couldn't figure it out. So that was the first time I'd actually seen them, but that's not a really great sighting. It was just so dark. Yeah, I know looking back here, pointing together the pieces of the puzzle, and we'll talk about the smell and other things later. But at the time, you know, this is over 30 years ago, you're looking at this weird huddled mass. What did you think it was?

My best bet would have been a bear of some sort at the time. That's the only rational thing. maybe a couple bears together. That's the only rational thing I could come up with because an elk would have got up and taken off. And this was way bigger than a deer. It's just I didn't know what it was. But the smell was what threw me too

because I still had not figured out yet what the smell was. So now years and years later, after having more experiences and then listening to your program, your show, I start putting these pieces of this puzzle together, you know? And then I realized, ah, that's probably definitely what that was. Well, now I know it's what it was in my mind anyway. Yeah, and I want to come back to the smell, because I know you kind of have a theory on it. And it's strange.

You know, it's not like any other smell out there. And I kind of want to talk about the odor a little bit because I know in your situation, it wasn't like rotting flesh. It wasn't like, you know, how most people describe it. And so I'm very curious on your thoughts on it. But, you know, the smell in general is weird. It's not, you know, when you smell a skunk, for example, you're going to smell it way before you get to it or a dead animal or anything else. You're going to smell it way before you actually get to it.

What's weird about this sort of smell is you just walk right into it. It's like a wall of smell, you know what I mean? And the strange thing is you can step into it and you can back up and step out of it. It's a lot like a skunk in that way and that it kind of has a zone to it, you know? Yeah, I want to go more into that here in a moment, kind of get your thoughts on it. About a year later, you had a siding. If you would, would you just kind of start from the beginning? Did it kind of happen in this same general area?

Probably 30 miles as a crow flies. The second encounter was when I saw a juvenile. And at that time, too, this was, got to understand, this was 89, 90 right in there. We didn't have cell phones. He didn't carry cameras with you unless it was a big old 35 millimeter or something like that, you know. So we didn't have this kind of photographic evidence you have today in some areas. But I was west of Montrose, Colorado, and it would have been up on a place called the Uncompagre Plateau. and there's gravel roads that cut through there that were put in by the Forest Service.

And this was on a gravel road. It wasn't one of the back trails. It was the main gravel road. And I'm driving from the north-south, just cruising down there in my Jeep and got my arm out the window. And, you know, oh, boy, driving down the road. And I caught something out of the side of my eye that I'd never seen before. And it looked like a trail, like a two-wheel trail that I hadn't noticed before going through. the woods. There's a really old one. So I hit the brakes, and I back up in the Jeep,

and I look over, and sure enough, you can just see the faint outline and the grass of what was left of what used to be a little trail going through the Aspen and Quakees. And the road had been graded up in front of it since then. No one had been back there a long time. So I put it in floor low and I burp over the edge of the embankment down in there and through the trees. And I'm following this little trail through the Aspen's, going back about 100, yards or so. And I'm kind of circling south and then pulling back to the east when my Jeep comes into an open area. And it's a big open bowl, basically, in the trees, a big open meadow, I guess I would call it. But the grass was not grown yet. This would have had to been early,

early, early in the spring, probably when the forest just opened, you know, their gates, because the grass was probably only an inch tall. There was nothing in this open meadow area. And the trees surrounding it formed sort of a bowl probably about 40 yards wide and about 100 yards deep, maybe 80 yards deep. And it formed this big bowl and it was all pine trees and aspen mixed in it. And it was noontime. Okay. The sun was straight overhead.

There were no shadows to the left or the right or anything like that. And the scene was so beautiful. It's just pretty, you know. So when I pull up there, instead of following the trail, I pulled into this little open metal place. at about a 45 degree angle. And I'm just looking at it. And I look out there and there's a log laying there and kind of in the middle of the meadow, but a little bit to the left, you know, about a third of the way over from the left side.

And I'm looking at this log. It's a pretty big log, something a logger had cut at one time. It was squared off at the chainsaw on both ends. One that was probably just too big to load, you know. And I'm just sitting there staring at it. And I'm thinking back in my memory and looking at the prettiness of the scene and thinking about my high school art instructor. He used to draw these paintings that always had this tree line and there would be a log laying there with a squirrel on it or a hawk sitting on a branch or something like that. And I'm just thinking about this and I'm staring straight at this log for probably a minute and a half.

You know, just sitting there staring straight at this log, sitting in my Jeep, looking out the window there to 45. And right then, up from behind this log, rises this creature. And this thing gets up from behind the log and it does a sit-up like a man. So it was hiding from me behind the log. What I think it happened is they were probably watching traffic go by on the road out there, And when I pulled off the road, I did something totally unexpected and out of the game plan. And I came around and I caught him by surprise in the middle of the open meadow and my Jeep came around the corner. And that log was the only place he had to duck.

So he ducked behind the log. He was laying on his back. I was looking north. And the log was laying east to west. His feet would have been facing east. His hands and head would have been on the west side of the log. And as it rose up, this hair-covered creature rose up from behind this log doing a sit-up, just like a man would do. His hands and his arms were over his head.

So he was laying flat on his back behind the log to hide himself. And when he got up, he did this sit-up. And as he was doing the sit-up, his arms stretched out over top. And there were really long arms with long fingers, big palms like a grip of basket. ball no problem easy like a mini basketball you know and it looked under its armpit at me in the motion as it was getting up and when that thing looked at me under its armpit it gave me a look of hatred and disgust i just felt like it was telling me you dirty filthy human i can't believe i got caught out here by you that's the feeling i got it was a it's like

it conveyed an emotion. And when it looked at me, it looked under its armpit. Now, a bear, for example, can't look under its armpit. Okay, it's physically impossible. A dog can't look under its armpit. But a man can, a primate can. And when this thing moved, it moved and looked like a primate. It had the body of a primate. It had the face of a chimpanzee. Okay, it had a very chimp-looking face. but it had human characteristics as well. The ears were very human-like, not our color, but more of like a, I guess, a really dark, dark, buckskin tan with a little bit of gray in it.

The face itself, the nose was cupped, not a snout, not like a bear or a dog or anything. It was not a snout. It was like a cupped face mouth. and the lips were very thin, very thin and tight and very broad and wide. It never opened it in its mouth. It never showed its teeth or anything at me, but the lips are really wide. The face was colored in a dark buckskin color.

The eyes were huge, not quite the size of a horse, but really, really big eyes, way larger than the humans, probably a little smaller than a horse, really big eyes, heavy eyebrows, not a monobrow. but heavy eyebrows, and you could tell the skin above the eyebrows were thick. I'm not saying the eyebrows were heavy. I'm saying the skin, the structure above the eyes had that thickness to it, like on a primate. And the nose was a lot, I don't know, the nose was human-like, but it had huge nostrils. And it was like pushed back sort of. And the nostrils were really big.

And later in thinking about it, when I saw it, the size of the chest on this thing, it makes sense because a creature that has that large of a chest and those kinds of lungs with that kind of lung capacity, you have to have an airway to supply the oxygen in the air. So it makes sense that these things have big, huge nostrils, just like a horse. Horse has got big nostrils to feed that lung capacity so it can breathe while it's running and all that. I think these things are the same way. So it had this huge nostrils on its nose. And the eyes were a really, really dark amber, maybe black. I'm not quite sure.

This was at 40 yards. So when I first parked the Jeep as an archer, you know, a bowhunter, you're always playing games with yourself judging and guessing distances. You know, you might be walking across a Walmart parking lot and you see a shopping cart sitting there and you look at it and you say, okay, 38 yards. And then you step it off just to see if you're right because that's where your arrow placement is so critical on your estimation of distance. So this log I estimated was about 40, 42 yards. And I was right.

I later stepped it off. It was at 41 yards. So I got a good look at it, but there was a little bit of distance to it too at a really dark big eyes. And when it got up, it looked at me under its armpit. And as it was rising up, the arms came down. and right then its whole facial expression changed and it looked straight up to the east out into the woods like there was something out there it was looking at

and it had sort of a surprise look on it almost but what I really noticed right away was that lower lip just popped out I mean the lower lip popped out like an expression of oh man I got caught or you know something like that and I could see a side profile then So that's when I saw the small ears in comparison to its head, human-type ears. And I could see that the mouth was cup-shaped, not a snout, but it was cupped like on a primate. And the forehead was also slanted back.

This was not a cone-headed type, like a patty type where the head goes to a cone-shaped. The top of the skull was actually very much like ours. It was very round, but the forehead was slanted back. right above the eyebrows, the forehead would slant back, and that's when I got a good look at the side profile. And I even glanced over to the east into the forest to see what's it looking at, but I only looked for a second because this was all happening very fast. And then I looked back at the creature, and as it did this sit-up, it just naturally rolled over onto its left hip, stayed on all fours, not four feet, but two legs and two arms. It stayed on all fours and went straight into a walk to walk away from me. And it was moving pretty fast, but it was only moving fast because it moves fast naturally.

I could tell that these things have tremendous speed because this thing wasn't trying to run away from me or anything like that. It was just naturally quick. So as it walked away, I started to watch the motions of the body. And the first thing I noticed were the feet coming up. And the feet were huge. They were probably, I'm going to guess, 16 inches long probably. Now, the creature itself, the Sasquatch itself, I'm guessing if it would have stood up and it never did, was probably about my height. I would say it would probably been about a six foot tall.

But the feet were very large. There was shoebox shape. And I would say, yeah, 14, 16 inches long someplace in there. And a good seven inches wide where the toes are. But it did not narrow down to the heel. It was very shoebox-like, pretty square. It did narrow down to a heel, but the heel was still a good six inches across. And the toes did not come down at a severe angle either.

They went pretty straight across. They did angle down from the big toe to the smaller, and they were a very fat, chubby-looking toes. They were not long and slender. The big toe is a really big, fat, chubby toe, and then the next ones to it on down the line. You know, all pretty much in a line there. So they did not make a severe angle. They were pretty straight across. And I watched the feet on the left pick up, and I could see the whole part.

bottom of the foot pad. And it was a dark buckskin color as well, kind of like the colors I saw on the face and the bottoms of the hands. So this was a younger one. You know, maybe when they grow older, they turn more gray. Maybe it's hereditary. I don't know. But this one had really dark buckskin, leathery soles on his feet. And of course, the top of the feet were covered with hair. The whole body was covered with hair except for the palms of the hands, the bottoms of the feet. you know, most of the portions of the face, the main features of the face, hair around everything else. And this one was black.

I mean, it was jet black. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, clean, groomed, shiny jet black hair. And I also was watching the buttocks on this thing and the shoulders. Because I mesmerized myself on the feet for three or four revolutions. And then I realized, oh, man, I got to look at the rest of this thing. So I started looking up its spine, and the way it was walking away from me, its elbows were out really wide, like you would imagine a gorilla or primate to walk on its front hands. You know, I assumed it was walking on its knuckles, although I couldn't see that, but that would have probably been logical. But the elbows were sticking out really wide.

The shoulders were wide. Those shoulders must have been three feet across. And this was only probably, like I say, a six or maybe six and a half foot tall creature. But I know his shoulders had to be three feet across. And the shoulders on it were taller than the butt end area than the rear end. So the shoulders were probably a good eight inches taller than his buttocks area. So I could look up the backbone, up the back of the shoulders, all the muscling, up over his outer renal. rib cage onto his shoulders. And then between his shoulders was his head, but his head was down.

So really all I saw from the backside of his head at this time was just the back of his head. And it looked round, okay, just a little round bump up there. And I was hoping he would stop and turn around to look at me again, but he never did. He just walked all the way into the wood line. And the amazing thing was the muscling. Oh, my God. This thing was so muscled. just zero body fat. It would make any NFL linebacker or wide receiver envious. I mean, it had huge legs with definition in the muscles and the buttocks where you can see the crack and the separation between the left cheek and the right cheek. I never saw any sexual organs. I just didn't see any, but I know it was a male. I didn't see it, but I know it was. And as I looked up its backbone,

and as it was moving its shoulders, I guess it's the triceps or what are those muscles that go across the top of the back of your shoulders? Yeah, the traps. Yeah, they were just rolling like a bodybuilder would be flexing them on purpose, but this thing was just moving natural, you know? And these muscles were just bulging and rolling. And as they rolled, the hair was so jet black and clean that it looked like shimmers the silver like waves of silver streaks going over the top of the hair as a sun hit off of it and

reflected off of it this animal was not some shaggy old thing laying around in swamps this thing was groomed and it was loved somebody loved this thing because you could just tell this this thing was it was groomed like it had been combed at a you know at a at a dog kennel or something. It just looked like it had been combed. It was beautiful. And the movement is what's really wild because these things are so fluid and so purposeful on their movements, there's no jerking, there's no hesitations, there's no stomp, stomp, stomp, everything just flows like, almost like liquid, like water. You know, you see some of the videos on YouTube and stuff,

a guys that are trying to fake Sasquatch. And you can tell pretty quick, if you've seen one of these things, that these guys running across the field in a suit, they're jerky, you know, they stomp, that the movement's not right. Everything's wrong about it. But these things,

they're extremely fast. They're huge, they're powerful, and I watched it walk off into the woods. So what do I do? I get out on my Jeep, I go, well, I'm going to follow it. So I walk about 10 yards.

I go, holy crap, I forgot my gun. So I go back to the Jeep. I grab my 44, grab a couple speed loaders, and I start walking across this meadow, you know, to go see where it went. Try to see more. I get about halfway across, maybe three quarters of the way across, and as I'm going north, if you want to call north, where it went into the woods at the 12 o'clock position,

at about the 2 o'clock position, I heard a like that, And I stopped. And I'm going, what's that? I listened and not much. And I walked a little further. And from the same location, I heard another. I'm going, what the heck is some guy out here chopping wood? But no, it can't be.

No one's back here. So I walked just a little bit further, really slow. And then from my four o'clock position behind me, I hear another. And I'm going, holy cow, I'm not old. This isn't just me and him. There's more of these things in here. There's something going on here. And then I started figuring out there's more than one or whatever this is.

I went ahead and walked to the tree line. And I looked in there real carefully where he went and it dumped off down into this little canyon. It was full of rocks and boulders and heavy brush and bushes down there. And I thought, nope. I'm not going down there. That thing could tear my limbs off my torso with no problem at all. I'm just going to back out of here. So I backed out and I went back across the meadow and slowly right down the center.

So in case something charged me, at least I'd have a chance of maybe getting one shot off. And walked back to the Jeep and got in and I couldn't figure out what it was until years later I started. I'd learn more about these things and figured out, yeah, I was definitely a Sasquatch. I remember what I saw. It's just, when you see something like that that's not supposed to exist, you just can't wrap your mind around what you're really looking at the first time. Yeah, without a doubt. And I know that we're going back, you know, over 30 years ago, I want to ask you the noise that you heard. Was it more of a mouth pop or was it more?

more like a wood knock, that sort of thing? I'm going to, here's my theory on that. I've looked at a few videos where there are apes and primates that pop their mouths, and they make a very pretty impressive popping sound. I think these Sasquatch can make this wood knock sound with their mouth. I don't think they necessarily, doesn't mean they don't use rocks and trees to clack and beat. think they probably do. But I think they have a popping ability that is so loud and so crisp and so

clear that it's a good chance some of these wood knocks we're hearing might be a mouth pop. You know, coming from a big animal with a big chest with a big mouth, very likely. And they probably use it to locate each other and communicate would be my guess. Yeah, that definitely could be the case. You know, after listening to so many, encounters. I've heard encounters like this. And when I hear it, it makes me think, maybe they're making that noise to draw your attention away to allow the other one to get away. What's your opinion on that? Possibly as a distraction, could sure be. Yeah. Could sure be.

Yeah. And I know that we're going back, you know, 30 years ago. And there's more information about these things today than there was 30 years ago. But, Why in the world would you get out of the truck? I mean, was it curiosity? Probably a mixture of curiosity, bravery and stupidity all wrapped up at the same time. I don't know. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I wanted to see more. I was curious. I'm going, what the heck is that thing? It ain't a guy in a, it's not a guy in a monkey suit. No, it wasn't. This was a real live living creature. okay, this was no guy in a stupid suit, you know, and it wasn't a bear, it wasn't a deer,

it wasn't an elk. I shot bear and deer and elk, you know, no, this was, this was a manlike primate. Yeah, I get it. I get it. And I'm not giving you a hard time about it, but I definitely, I don't know that I would have gotten out of the truck, or maybe I would have at that time. You know, it's hard to say, because it really wasn't going after you. It just looked upset. And I'm always fascinated by the face when people see the face of these things and you know one of the things that i really caught on with your encounter you know it looked kind of apish it looked kind of neanderthal but you know somewhat human like to as well enough in the face for the expression to give you the impression from its facial expressions that it was upset that you were there i think that's exactly what it was

i i get the feeling looking back like there were two things going on there I had the, in my immediate first impression from his glance at me, his stare was, you dirty, filthy human. That was the first, that was the thought that went through my mind. I'm not saying it was mind speak, you know, or anything, but I'm just saying that's what he conveyed to me. And the second thing that I think I felt out of that also was that just like you said, oh my God, I can't believe I got caught by a human. I'm going to catch so much crap from my tribe when I get home. It's going to be embarrassing. I think he was upset at himself for getting caught in the open.

On the three encounters that I've actually seen these things, I did something that was absolutely totally unexpected. And that's, I think, a big key into seeing this thing. People that hiked down trails and never look back, never jump, you know, jump off to the side to go check out some weird rock or something, 100 yards away, they'll probably just walk right past them. And I've always been kind of more like an explorer. You know, I'll look across the canyon and see one lone tree out there and go hike over to it just to see what was there. And when I did that one time years ago, I went down the canyon side just to look at a lone tree and I stumbled into an ancient Ute encampment where there were,

trees put up against the, or I should say like poles almost put up against trees where they could have put animal hides on. And I was looked at this big huge stone there and it turns out it was a dinosaur bone. And I'm talking a big one, Wes. This thing was a foot and a half tall and probably six or seven feet long until it went into the ground. And I told the rangers about it a day or two later and they said, yeah, we've been trying to keep that quiet because we're working on trying to excavate that site and get it out of there. Please don't tell anyone. I said, that's fine.

But that's the way I am. I'll see something weird like that, and I'll just take off and go do something out of the norm and unexpected. And I think that's when a lot of these things get seen and get caught is when you're unpredictable. Yeah, I know in the moment, you know, curiosity kicks in and it's not really being aggressive towards you, but you go after it. And I get all of that.

I know you've had over 30 years to kind of think about things, but, you know, after a day or two, did you have a moment of like, what did I just run into? Maybe I shouldn't be out there hunting alone. You know, I mean, did all of that kind of not necessarily fear? Well, I guess it is kind of fear of the unknown. Did that kind of come into your head later after the encounter? Well, after my third encounter, I have never entered the woods ever again. since then without a weapon, without a gun, period. I won't.

Even just to, and you'll hear from the third encounter, even just to stop to take a leak off the side of the highway, these things could be anywhere. You don't know. And National Forest Campgrounds had one walk through a National Forest Campground where we were camped one night. And I was camped with my wife and a couple of the kids, and we were all in tents, one of them in the car.

And in the middle of the night, I wake up. And I don't know why, but I wake up, you know. Well, that day before there, we were there about three nights. And the first two nights, there was this deer, a young doe that stayed by our camp. And I mean, she would stand four feet behind us while we were sitting there by the fire with the Coleman lantern on or whatever. She was right there behind us. You can reach out and touch her. And we always thought, man, that's a tame deer.

You know, two nights that went on like that. Well, on the third night, and every morning with deer was there, you know, on the third night, I wake up in the middle of the night for no reason at all, and I'm just holding my breath listening. And I just got this feeling like something's happening. And I'm holding my breath. And about that time, I hear this four heavy footsteps go right past my tent, right through the middle of the middle of, our National Forest Campground site. And it was bipedal. This was no guy.

This was no deer or elk or anything like that. This was something big and heavy. And the next morning, deer was gone. I only heard four footsteps. I think what he did was they've been trying to get that deer for two nights and the deer stayed so close to us that they didn't want to get that close to the light. Well, that night, I didn't have no lantern on. I left it off, turned it off at night, whatever, think nothing about it.

I think Jake Papa stomped through our campground with four heavy footsteps, pushed the deer back into the forest, and the rest of them ambushed him out there someplace. Pretty sure that's what happened. Yeah, and I want to talk about the last encounter that happened to you in 1995, 1996. This incident when you were camping, when did that happen? Probably 2009 or 10. And that was above Silverton, Colorado. There's a place up there called Mineral Springs Campground.

It's above Silverton, Colorado. It's up a canyon. And there was a camp host on the site and everything, you know, the motor home and a camp host and all that stuff. Well, I don't camp among other campers. I always find the tent site that's as far away from everybody as I can get. You know what I mean? And that's where we were.

So I hear you. Well, I know the last one, and there's a picture, a drawing I'll post underneath this episode. But if you would, take us back to the last sighting that you had. Now, this is 1995, 96, right in that time frame. If you would, tell us what happened. Yeah, I was taking a Harley ride on the way to Canada. And I just decided to take a couple, two, three weeks off. and head up to Canada on my bike.

So I'm heading up through, I don't know exactly which highway it was or where, but it would have been in either Montana or Idaho because I was heading up through Banff. I had my 44 Magnum along. My plan was check in the weapon at the guard shack at Banff, go up through Canada, and then come back and pick it up on the way out.

So I'm heading up through Idaho, I think, and I'm going down this highway. way. And this is a straight cut highway that just cut straight through deep dark timber. It's kind of like when they run these telephone big, big high line power lines and things through the mountains. They just cut a straight line right through the forest. Well, that's what this highway was like. And it was a deep dark timber. If a person could literally go 100 yards off to the side of the highway and probably get lost, literally, it was that heavy and deep timber. And I had to take a leak and I thought, okay, I won't find a good place to take a leak here,

look for a pull-off somewhere. Well, here was this big pull-off came up in a few miles. So I pulled over there and got off the bike and, you know, put off the jacket and this and that. And I looked at my gun laying there in the trunk and I thought, I'm just going to take a leak. I'm not going to take that big thing out into the woods here, you know. So I just locked the trunk, left it. And there was a little trail behind. behind this pull-off with probably about a 10-foot rise going on to some higher ground.

And you can see where it had been beaten down from other people going up and down it. And I said, well, it looks like where everybody's going. So I thought, I'll just go up there too. So I run up to the top of this trail, you know, kind of jog up a little bit and get to the top. And I stop and it stinks and it's gross. and sitting at the top of this little trail above this bull over is everything from urine to human waste to toilet paper and condoms and baby diapers and cigarette packs, everything you can imagine, everything disgustible coming out of a human, it was there. And I go, you know what, I'm on vacation. I am not going to pee in this filth. So I walk back into the woods a little ways, okay?

And I go back there probably, and the ground was level, easy walking. And there was a little bit of an animal trail there. And I go back in there not too, too far, probably 50, 60 yards, something like that. And as I'm walking back in, I walk into this wall of odor. And it's the same smell I'd smelled in Colorado. I still didn't really truly understand what a Sasquatch was yet. But I'd smelled this smell before. And I'm going, that's it.

And I stopped and I go, there's something in here with me. It's here. It's the same kind of an animal. And I can smell this heavy, heavy musk. So I'm in there sniffing the air, you know. I'm breathing it in, taking it in, sampling it through my nose, you know. Like my old trapping lures, I used to do that type of thing. So I just got my eyes open and I start taking a leak.

About halfway through, I noticed some moving. movement in my peripheral vision to my left, 90 degrees to my left, right toward the highway, by the way. It was between me and the highway. And I thought something's over there. Something just moved. And I thought, well, I can either try to turn real slow and sneaky, or I can jerk my head to the left really quick, which is what I did. So I jerked my head to the left really quick and I instantly locked eyes with this baby child Sasquatch. And this thing, kind of like the other one, was hiding behind a log, but it was a young one. I could tell it was a young one. I don't know how tall it was. I only saw it from the nose up because it was peeking over a log

watching me. And his eyes were big. It was really cute, actually. Looked a lot like a baby gorilla. and I've sent you a photo, or not a photo, but a sketch that a professional artist did for me. His name's Michael Montoya, and hopefully you'll post it on your website there, and people can look at that, and Michael did a sketch of this thing that I saw, just like a police sketch artist would do a sketch. He just asked me questions. Didn't show me nothing, just question after question after question. And when he got done with a couple minor adjustments after I saw it, holy cow, it's as good as my memory could possibly be.

And it looked a lot like a baby gorilla. I saw from the nose up. Its eyes were huge. The top of the head had hair that was sticking straight up. You know, it was short, but it stuck straight up, just kind of like an afro, but very, very short. and stuck straight up. Again, big nose, large nostrils, huge eyes, heavy brow line. The mouth I did not see. Pretty much just the top of the mouth of anything. I mostly saw from the nose up. And it was a round head, again, not conical at all, but round. And when I looked at it, it saw me and our eyes locked.

And it just went like that. His eyes got places big and it ducked down under the log. And I mean, this thing ducked down under that log with the speed of a chipmunk. Like when they jerk, like you've seen a chipmunk jerked from the left to the right, that type of thing. That's how fast this thing was. It was quick. So I looked at it. We locked eyes. It got this really scared like, oh, my God, look on his face.

And he popped down under the log. And I finished my deal, zipped up my zipper. I took two steps. And I verbally out of my mouth, without even thinking. I took two steps toward it to go see it, go look behind the log. I took two steps and I verbally said, what the hell's a monkey doing out here? And I stopped and froze.

And I realized at that point, oh my God, this is just a little one. So if there's a little one here, that means there's a mother really, really close. and that's when I backed out of there. I had no gun, no weapon. And I mean, I backed out of that trail, slow and easy. Hair was standing up in my neck, but not too bad, but backed out of that trail. I didn't turn and walk away. I backed out.

Went back to the bike, opened up the trunk, got my gloves out, saw that 44 mag lay in there, and I've never gone into the woods since without a weapon. I will guarantee you I never will. Yeah, and I'm looking at the drawing right now that Michael did, and it's very impressive. He's a very good artist. And for the audience, if you want to check it out, go to Sasquatch Chronicles.com. Look underneath this episode, it's actually a really good drawing. And the way he drew it, he knows, a lot like how you described.

It had this really, it looks like it has a very surprised look, like, oh, crap, look on its face. That was it. Yeah, it's very good drawing. So he's going to be doing a couple more drawings for me down the road here. We just haven't got him done yet. But he did one interview. We kind of got started on the juvenile. And we're going to try to capture like maybe three frames of this juvenile getting up from behind the log and it walking away with the muscles flexing and all that.

We're going to try to capture that. So I'll send them to you. You can add it to it later. But yeah, he's good artists. He did a fantastic job. He captured the moment. As good as I can remember it or describe it, he got it. He nailed it.

Yeah, and I'm looking at Michael's site. The Drawings of Bigfoot.com. I almost wonder if you'd let me use some of this for the blog. I'd actually like to buy some of the prints too. For the audience, go check it out. The drawings of bigfoot.com, Michael's website, very cool stuff. You know, Mark, a lot of times when people see the young ones, they always describe them as looking very monkey-like. I don't think I've ever talked to an eyewitness who saw a really, really small one and said, yeah, it looked like a human.

It reminded me of a human. Most eyewitnesses say it looked very monkey-like. And when I look at this picture or this drawing that Michael did for you of your sighting, it looks like a monkey. A little bit better than a monkey. I mean, there's more features. but a monkey. And it makes me wonder if they kind of grow into their face or if there really is different types of these creatures.

You know what I mean? What I saw, when I looked at, went back home later, and after I started doing research, I started looking up pictures of primates and orangutans and the, what's that, the boa boas or whatever, and gorillas and that type of thing. And this one looked a lot like a baby gorilla. You know,

I had the human ears on the side, you know, that type of thing too. Not quite, but real similar. And I'm sure they change just like we do. You know, I'd look back at pictures of you or I from when we were seven years old till today. And, you know, the changes occur and that type of thing. And I don't think these things are all exactly the same across the globe from one continent to another at all. Yeah, I want to come back to that in a moment. I want to ask you about your theory on the smell, because I know before we were

recording, you and I were talking about the smell and how it kind of appears out of nowhere. And if you take one step to the left or right or back, you're out of the smell. What's your theory on the smell that people report during encounters? I think I'm 98% sure I'm right about what I'm about to tell you here. The first time I saw that group in the bog, it was a family, probably a mother, for sure, two young ones, maybe even the five. I'm not sure about that. But there was a female there. I walked into the smell.

When I saw that juvenile, that was a male, he was by himself. I followed him. Okay, I was right, you know, not too far, too many seconds behind him. Absolutely no smell at all whatsoever. The other encounter with the child, I saw the young one, and of course I know there is definitely a female there someplace. again, the smell. I think the answer, this is my opinion, I think the answer to that is that the female gives off an odor when it thinks its young is in danger so that it will mask the young

ones and itself from predators. So if a lion or a bear or something comes walking into its area, that little one might be hiding in a tree or hiding under a log or a rock. Well, the female puts out a strong, strong odor that will cover up any other smell in the area. So any predator that comes in can't track and find where that young one is or where she is. Because all it smells is this pungent odor coming from the female. That's my theory and my belief on what's going here, going on here. I think it's a defense mechanism, and I think it comes from the female. So you think that this odor is produced at will?

I think they produce it at will or maybe not at will, but naturally to, like I say, camouflage the smell of their young, or camouflage the area and put such a strong odor in there that a predator can't smell anything else but that can't locate it, you know. It's a good theory. It's definitely a good theory. The only part where it kind of falls apart is how people, how they smell that odor. You know, it's kind of like what you were saying earlier, Mark, you walked into a wall of smell. And if the females are producing it, you would almost think they would have to be very close to that smell. And most eyewitnesses never really see anything, and they just walk into this wall of smell. And I know that you're a member, Mark, of Sasquatch Chronicles.com. And we talked a little bit about this on the Halloween show.

It's just odd how this smell appears. Yeah. Yeah, it's like you walk into a wall of it and you can back out of it, which is really, really weird. It's, I mean, it hangs there. And the ones I saw at the bog, I walked into it, stepped out of it, and I stepped back into it. And I could literally step in and out of the old. odor, okay? And the next day when I came back, I looked all around trying to see, is there an animal around here? Is there something dead or anything? And no, there's nothing. You

smelled like clean pine forest the next morning. Nothing. Yeah, it's bizarre. It's really weird. And I know you've been listening to the show for a long time, Mark. And, you know, I ask everyone, what do you think Sasquatch is? And obviously, there's no wrong answer. I'm curious. What do you think that these creatures are? Well, first I'm going to tell you what I know they are, and then I'll tell you what I think they are. I know they are real. I know they are alive. I know they are flesh and blood. I know that they are at least part primate. I know they have human characteristics. I know they're fast. They're strong. They're cunning. They have intelligence. I've seen all these things. These things are so powerful.

If you think you're going to run away from one of these, forget it. You're not going to outrun a Sasquatch, okay? Even the worst of them, even the oldest one with a bear trap hanging on his toe, you're not going to outrun them. These things are so powerful, they could rip the limbs off your torso and pop your head off your shoulders like a wine cork, but no problem. that's what I know. Okay. So I know they're alive. I know they're real.

I know they exist. I know there's more of them out than we probably even realize. Now, what do I think they are? Personally, I'm a Christian. So I come from a biblical background when I look at everything and analyze things. I think they have something to do with fallen angels, Nephilim, that type of thing. I do not believe these are pure Nephilim, because when David, Slew Goliath. Yeah, he knocked him out with his stone from the sling, but he took Goliath's sword, and he cut Goliath's head off with Goliath's sword. So the true Nephilim of the biblical days, and there may be some of those around. We heard about the Candaard giant. When I got to Candaher, or when I got to Afghanistan, they asked me about it, well, if you heard about the Candaher giant, well, no, I had, now I do. But I think the true

nephalum of the Bible were more like men big huge giants carried swords spears that type of thing these things don't I'm sure they use rocks I'm sure they use sticks as clubs to fight a bear or beat one to the death that type of thing I don't think they're pure nephalim but I think they've got something to do with fallen angels and I do think there's something to do with human DNA mixed in there whether they're taking women and breeding with them and then rebreating with those young and and getting some sort of an offshoot. I don't know what Satan's up to here exactly. I suspect he may be building an army, okay, for the coming apocalypse whenever that happens.

I mean, if you had an army of these things all over the world, you could do an awful lot of damage. Boy, would it freak people out. So I would guess from the work base by, you know, Melba Ketchum and that type of thing. DNA analysis and all that. I would not be surprised to find out that they are part, at least they have some human DNA in them. And I would bet some of their DNA is primate and maybe some of it's demonic.

And there's a big government cover up going on with these things. And I don't think it's because the government's afraid people are going to think, oh, it's Sasquatch is a missing link between man and monkey or man and the primordial ooze or whatever. I don't think that's it at all. I think if we really knew what the government knows, and I'll bet you they know, because I know they've got, you bet they've got these things. I bet that if we really knew what the government knows that these things have originated from fallen angels or demons in some way, shape, or form, and they want to keep that secret because if they can keep that secret,

then they're keeping our eyes and our mind away from Jesus Christ. But if we find out their demons and there's demonic DNA, then that means demons are real. Well, if demons are real, then angels are real. If angels are real, well, then Jesus Christ is real. So is God. So is the Bible, the Holy Spirit, and all of it. They don't want to open that can of worms to the world. Yeah, and you could be right, Mark.

You definitely could be right. I don't think that the nephalum either, what you think of a traditional nephalum. I don't think they match the description. But that doesn't mean that they can't be, they aren't some form of abomination. And there's a lot of really bizarre things that go on in people's encounters. And, you know, long-time researchers, investigators, a lot of times they'll pass that off or they'll filter out any sort of weird thing that happened during someone's encounter. whether it be, hey, I saw a ball of light or the eyes, it was an eye shine, it was eyes glowing.

You know, how do you explain that? And I think that in a lot of situations, especially in the quote unquote big foot world, they'll use infrasound as kind of an answer for everything. And when you look at people's encounters and what was going on and what they experienced, most of the time infrasound doesn't fit into what actually happened. And, you know, we don't even know if these things have the ability to even produce Sipersound. Yeah, we don't know what for sure. I guess tigers do and that type of thing.

But, you know, from the biblical standpoint, so much of this makes simple sense to me. Aliens and UFOs, for example. I've never seen a UFO, okay? I did see two orange orb type things floating in the forest one night down below me at the bottom of a canyon. I thought maybe it's someone's lantern. but it wasn't. It was something else. But the UFOs, too. I've never seen one, but are they real? I believe they are. And I think they're demonic manifestations to keep our eyes away from God. Yeah, I hear you. And I appreciate your answer, Mark. I wanted to ask you, you know, on the show, we talk about lights all the time. You know, people will see these weird balls of light flying around. And you just mentioned it. Do you want to tell us about what happened to you with the lights? Yeah, early 90s, I would say, someplace in there.

I was camping when I was up on the top of a ridge. There was a canyon below me. And I walked over toward the edge of the ridge in the dark, no flashlight, just looking around, you know, and walked over there and looked over the edge. And I saw these two orange globes or lights moving between the trees down below me. But it was really weird because it definitely. definitely was not a flashlight. It was definitely not a Coleman lantern or two Coleman lanterns. And when I first glanced at, I had to try to rationalize this. And I'm thinking, well, it must be

two guys with kerosene lanterns, you know, but the glow was orange. And it didn't really illuminate much around it. It was just in its localized area. And they were just kind of moving and back and forth, but I didn't look too long because, you know, you go messing around somebody's camp at night, you might just get shot. So I backed off and then I thought about it a minute and I walked back and looked over and they were still down there, kind of moving through the trees. But when I think about it now, if it had been a lantern, I'm looking from a high elevation, down 60 yards below me, I would not have seen these as round. Okay, what I saw was like basketball round.

If you look down upon someone carrying a lantern from above, well, you're not going to see around orange globe. You're going to see some shadowing from the arm or the top of the lantern or something. It wasn't like that. So I don't know what it was. I saw it once, never again. But that was before I really realized what these things were. I wasn't looking for that kind of stuff.

I think people walk past these Sasquatch and these creatures all the time. And I have, I'm sure, a lot. And you don't even know they're there. And when I walk through the woods, I walk different than most people. Most people, they'll just take off down a hiking trail, put on their pack and stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp. I don't. You know, I go 30, 40 yards. stop, I look behind me, you know, there may be nothing there, but if there is a predator

there, he's going to think I know he's there, you know what I mean? And that's just kind of how I walk, how I always have. Yeah, I gotcha. It's really cool that you came forward, Mark, you know, to share what happened to you. And over 30 years, these few experiences that happened to you. I really do appreciate you coming on. And I enjoyed chatting with you. I absolutely enjoyed chatting with you off the air and on the air. So thank you so much for taking the time to come on. Oh, it was a blast. I hope we can do it again someday.

And yeah, just be safe out there and keep your wits about you. Absolutely. Thanks again, Mark. And that's it for tonight, everyone. Remember, if you've had an encounter, shoot me an email. My email address is West at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. If you get a chance to check out Sasquatch Chronicles.com, you can become a member. and get additional shows.

Until next time, everyone.