Somewhere in the Skies - Invasion on Chesnut Ridge with Seth Breedlove (SITS CLASSIC)
Episode Date: August 5, 2026Somewhere in the Skies Classics returns with one of our favorite conversations, revisiting an interview that remains just as relevant today. Ryan is joined by Small Town Monsters founder and acclaimed... documentary filmmaker Seth Breedlove to discuss Invasion on Chesnut Ridge, an exploration of one of America's most enduring hotspots of high strangeness. From the infamous Kecksburg UFO crash and the Uniontown Bigfoot sightings to reports of giant thunderbirds, mysterious lights, and decades of unexplained encounters, Breedlove takes us behind the scenes of the documentary and explains why Pennsylvania's Chesnut Ridge continues to fascinate researchers and witnesses alike. Visit Small Town Monsters: https://www.smalltownmonsters.com/ Join us at ANOMACON on September 12th: http://www.anomacon.com Send us a voicemail: https://www.speakpipe.com/SomewhereSkiesPod Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/somewhereskies ByMeACoffee: http://www.buymeacoffee.com/UFxzyzHOaQ Substack: https://ryansprague.substack.com/ All socials and books: https://linktr.ee/somewhereskiespod Email: ryan.sprague51@gmail.com Opening theme song by Septembryo Closing song by Per Kiilstofte Copyright © 2026 Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved. #Pennsylvania #ChesnutRidge #Invasion #UFOs #UAP #Alien #Aliens #Bigfoot #Unexplained #Anomalous #SomewhereintheSkies Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Hello, gentle listener, the Nocturnal Transmissions Podcast, your friendly provider of delightfully dark short horror fiction, has a new episode available.
And it goes a little bit like...
This.
Stella would be in bed by the time he arrived, but he would lean over and kiss her sleeping cheek.
Then he would undress.
and climb into bed beside her.
In the morning when she woke,
Stella would have no idea that it was a stranger
who lay beside her in bed,
that it was in fact something
from off the moors.
The Nocturnal Transmissions Podcast
Get some.
Spectrevision Radio.
While our government's official position,
is not to speculate on this subject, we can choose to let our minds explore other possibilities,
to use our imaginations.
For if we consider that astro-scientists agree on one point that the possibility of life elsewhere
is not only quite probable, some feel is there without a doubt.
Let us suppose them that these objects are real space vehicles, extraterrestrial origin,
and not an illusion of the mind.
This is somewhere in the skies.
with Ryan Sprague.
Seth, thanks so much for joining us today, man.
Yeah, no problem.
Love talking to you.
It's cool to be on the show,
and I've been following your work for quite a while,
so it's always cool to actually talk to someone
who's into the creative side of things as well,
so we can connect on that level.
Oh, absolutely.
The feelings are more than mutual.
Well, I mean, in terms of work,
you have been a busy guy lately.
At the point that we're recording this,
you were recently in Maine,
and then West Virginia for the International Cryptozoology Conference and the Mothman Festival, respectively.
How was it, man? A whirlwind, I assume.
Yeah, we did Maine the first weekend, and that was kind of like our first.
It was, I think we stretched what was supposed to be like an 11-hour drive into like a two-day event because we took our four-month-old with us.
And so that was fun.
And as soon as we got there, basically, he decided not to sleep the entire time.
So we were just kind of struggling through the weekend.
But we had a blast at that event.
Like the craziest thing about that event was it's Lauren Coleman's event.
But like Steve Bissette, who was the artist of Alan Moore's swamping run of comics, which I'm a giant's comic nerd from way back.
And I've been following that.
That's like one of my all-time favorite comic runs.
And that artist was like there.
He was one of the speakers.
So I ended up hanging out with him.
talking about collaborating on some stuff.
So that was really cool, just as like a geek, just as like a comic geek.
That was amazing.
But then Linda Godfrey was there as well.
So I got to hang with her and talk a little bit about Bray Road, which is a subject where we're heading into with our seventh movie next year.
And then, yeah, they gave me that cryptidivologist of the year award.
And that was kind of cool, too.
So that event was insane and really fun.
And we, you know, we didn't sleep, but it didn't matter at the end of it because we,
We just had a good time, and I was there with my wife and everything, so we had a lot of fun.
And it was cool, too, because Mark Mattsky, who co-wrote Invasion on Chestnut Ridge and narrated it, was the MC of the event.
So it was almost like a mini small-town monsters event or something.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was cool.
It was a lot of fun.
And then we did that.
And then the next weekend, we were in Kentucky for CryptidCon, which was fun.
I got to be with Lyle, which, you know, we don't get to see each other a lot.
So it's always kind of cool when we can reconnect and talk about what we want to do next.
So we were with him the next weekend, and then this past weekend was the Mothmane Festival,
where we actually finally did the first, like, large scale screening of the Mothbana Point Pleasant,
and that went so fantastic.
It was ridiculous.
There was, we showed it at the state theater in downtown Point Pleasant, and it's not like a huge theater
or anything, but it's one of those really cool, like, old historic venues.
And we've shown our movies in so many of those places, and I love them.
The one downside is there's no air conditioning.
So by the time the two hours of preceding events had gone on, it was like 90 plus degrees in there.
But they packed out.
And we had two, there's 275 seats.
And they had taken up every single seat.
And people were standing around the back of the room and sitting on the floor.
And so that was pretty amazing.
And people came up afterward, like hugging me and all kinds of stuff.
So it was a really moving kind of place to show the film.
Also, like something I found after the fact was that when the Silver Bridge collapsed in 1967,
and if anyone's seen Armothman movie, that moment plays like a key role in the movie.
That's actually where they put the bodies for identification is inside the state theater, which I didn't even know.
Yeah. Yeah, they cranked. I guess they just cranked the air conditioner in there.
And then that's where they put all the bodies for identification, which I had no idea about that.
So talk about like learning something at the last second.
How morbidly perfect.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So the whole,
the whole weekend was like weirdly,
there was just a lot of like synchronicities.
I started noticing like because we had,
we were showing the movie.
The movie started at the exact moment.
I would have gotten down to Toendui Park at the far end of Point Pleasant
the year before to the day.
to the day to the minute where I would have gotten down to the park and shot the very first
piece of footage that would eventually make it into the film.
What about was was like the exact moment where we queued up the premiere to show the movie.
So I thought that was kind of cool.
And there were all just all these little like things like that throughout the weekend that I thought were really cool.
And then as I was kind of winding down on Sunday, we had already taken everything down and we had loaded the car.
We had like our biggest event that we've ever done financially as far as like selling copies.
the movie and everything. So that's huge for us always because that's how we fund what we do.
But I walked down to Harris Steakhouse and the movie, the Mothbrainer Point Pleasant movies
dedicated to Carolyn Harris who passed away this past December. And that's how I ended the trip.
I walked down to the steakhouse where the steakhouse used to be. There's like a old,
there's a for rent sign on it. They've taken down the sign. The inside's been gutted.
And apparently I just thought it'd be great to end a really happy.
be fun weekend on a really low kind of somber note.
But it was an amazing event, and it's one of the few events where when it's over,
I really wish it wasn't, you know, because usually you're so dead by the end of something
like this that you're just like, I want to go home.
And this is like one of the few where I do not want to go home.
Or I almost feel like that is my home and I'm leaving or something.
Right.
It's weird.
Yeah.
I mean, you find people in these communities, you know, whether it's UFOs or cryptids
or a paranormal investigation, and you become so close and intimate because of these strange things
you have in common that it does feel like a family.
And every time you have to leave, it's like being a foster child.
You get ripped apart the minute you start connecting.
Yeah, because now I don't have the people I can talk about all this weird crap with.
Right, and not get that side-eye glance or just the eyes glaze over.
I get it, man.
I have been there a million times.
Well, that's incredible.
I mean, all that you've done with Mothman, it's just, it's exploded.
And for those of my listeners who may not be too familiar with small town monsters, I want to kind of introduce them to your career, which is just booming lately.
So let's start with when did your filmmaking career truly begin?
We are going back to the origin story, man.
Okay, cool.
So I've always been into film.
And as a kid, I was, my mom, like, introduced me.
to Hammer Horror films and Ray Harryhausen and all that kind of stuff.
Like the stuff that's kind of formed me into who I am, that was all my mom.
But growing up, that was what I wanted to do, was be a filmmaker.
And at some point, I kind of gave up on that, which would have been right around when I was
about 21 years old.
I just thought it's unrealistic to think I'll ever do that.
And, you know, a decade or so past, and next thing I know, I'm making documentaries.
I've had no formal training, and we jumped into making.
making Minerva Monster, which was our first film, as a total one-off, let's try to put together
this documentary about this story that I was really into. I threw together with some friends
with any equipment we could scrape together. And that was just three years ago. So in that time,
we've put out, we're working on the sixth film now. So in three years, we put out, we'll have
put out six in about exactly three years. So, and the plan is kind of, the way small town monsters
itself began was as a book proposal and it was it's it's weird because there's another like full
circle thing happening with the book proposal thing right now where some someone who I had originally
given that book proposal to now wants to publish that book so we're probably going to do that but small
town monsters began its life as a book proposal and then it became what is essentially an independent
film series but we function just I think the way we function is much more like a almost like an independent
television studio rather than a film series.
But the movies, we do try to approach it very filmically and cinematically.
It's just that we're on this crazy timetable where we're releasing two movies a year.
And we're starting to add other things into the mix, like on the trail of champ and stuff like that.
So I've only done this for three years.
And the way I taught myself is through YouTube channels and tutorials and reading a lot of books and listening to a lot of interviews.
It's like my favorite directors.
As a kid, I watched, I absolutely loved to, like, behind the scenes documentaries.
And I think so a lot of, like, the things I do know about film direction are rooted in watching, like, the extras on singing in the rain and Casablanca and, you know, movies I loved as a kid.
So it's a weird, it's been a weird trajectory from, like, doing landscaping and tiling floors and stuff to, like, directing documentaries.
and finding it, you know, the coolest thing is that they found an audience, I think,
because you never know if what you're doing is ever going to actually be seen by anyone.
You hope it will be seen by a few people, and those people embrace it.
But because of things like Amazon and the distribution deal we're working on now,
the audience just keeps a widening, which is crazy to be a part of.
Absolutely.
And I think you're at the forefront of something that we're seeing a lot lately in the film and television realm,
is that Hollywood is no longer a thing per se.
I mean, anyone with a phone or, you know,
even the smallest of cameras can go out,
shoot something gorgeous, beautiful,
if they have a vision,
and it can really get out there.
You know, the glory of the Internet for all its faults
and disgusting cesspools,
there's also a new outlet for artists to really get their work out there.
And I think we're very fortunate to have
someone like you who has this cinematic eye, who can tell a story doing this for the
the cryptozoological world and for the overall just esoterica.
Those things that a lot of people are afraid to talk about.
They're afraid that the mainstream is never going to take it seriously.
But then boom, you've got Mothman of Point Pleasant going mainstream being the biggest,
you know, documentary on Amazon.
This might seem like just another folktale.
It begins like so many rural levels.
But unlike stories told the children to keep them inside after dark, this particular encounter was real.
It very slowly and precisely walked towards us.
We heard it walked, it walked right up and just stayed on the dark side of the stick line.
Did you notice any red eyes or anything at the time?
It got to the point where the National Guard had to step in and control the amount of people that were coming into the team.
that were coming into the T-N-T area.
I mean, we were just sitting there,
but I didn't know what, dude.
We was afraid to move.
And there, this, to me, it was the devil,
moth man, standing there by my bed.
There was an outbreak of UFO sightings
in that whole area from Point Pleasant,
up Route 35 all the way, almost all the way to Charleston.
A lot of prominent people went down on that bridge
from both towns,
and then a lot of people who were in the ultimate wrong place,
at the wrong time.
I knew it was nothing from this earth.
I knew that the creature, whatever it was, didn't live here.
It's incredible, the things you've done in the past three years.
And, you know, I could fawn over your work, but let's run through it, my man.
One of your more recent films, it featured the voiceover work of Lyle Blackburn,
who you mentioned earlier.
And for our listeners who may not be familiar with his work,
can you sort of run us through his not-so-brief resume?
I guess and how you got connected with him.
It's funny because my
introduction to Lyle was through
his Beast of Boggy Creek
book and I saw
I read that book with having no
knowledge really about the legend of
Boggy Creek. I was just fascinated by the cover art
and I'd heard some good things
on some other shows. So Lio
Blackburn is like this
they call him like the rock and roll monster
hunter which I bristle at things like that
but that's how he's typically labeled. He's like
this southern rockabilly dude
who is into crypto zoology, and I would consider him a cryptozoologist,
author, television personality, musician.
He's in an independent rock band called Gool Town.
He's done tons of stuff.
He's been involved in Monsters and Mysteries in America.
He's working on a Science Channel show right now, and he's been on at least two episodes
of Finding Bigfoot that I know of.
So he's been on TV and all that kind of stuff.
But I always, what I responded to with Lio wasn't the labels or necessarily the persona.
It was the way he approached the subject was actually really similar to the way I do.
And we've talked about this since the early days.
It's like it's weirdly similar the way he kind of writes about cryptids and the way we kind of make movies about cryptids are very similar.
Lyle has an approach that's very much just about preserving some semblance of the history of the stories and then putting out there for people to kind of consume and make up their own minds about things for themselves rather than trying to prove things to people one way or another.
And that's kind of how my entire approach to all of this is.
And I think a lot of it is rooted in the fact that Lyle as much wants to know the truth for himself as he does, you know, want to try to explain or prove anything to anyone else.
He's much more interested in figuring things out and kind of learning the stories along with us.
So Lyle and I got hooked up because I used to do this radio or not radio show, but a podcast called Sasswat, which was about Bigfoot.
And we interviewed Lyle very early on in the lead up to.
our first film Minerva Monster coming out.
And even back then, this is something
my wife and I talked about recently,
even back then, Lyle asked
me if I was interested
in doing a documentary
about the Falk Monster,
Boggy Creek Monster.
And this would have been in the
summer of 2014.
So it was before we were
even releasing Minerva Monster.
And that early on, he said
he saw something in me
where it was kind of like a combined.
He sensed that we were connecting on that same kind of level
that our approach to the subject
and that he thought what we were doing was going to be
something he wanted to be a part of.
So very early on, he was on the STM.
He was in the STM fan club, I guess,
like he wanted to be in.
And the cool thing about that is since Small Town Monsters
has kind of gotten a little bit of a following and things like that.
We've had tons of people come along wanting to be involved,
but Lylea was there from the beginning before we were anything.
And I don't consider myself anything.
But you know what I mean?
Like the brand, as the brand starts to get a little bit of a name, more people want to be involved.
And Lyle's always been a supporter of this, of what we're doing.
And that's one of the coolest things about being involved with him.
It's not just that he's a, you know, someone who wants to attach himself or something like that.
It's that he's genuinely supportive of what we were doing and always has been.
And I think because of that.
that he's been a little more involved than he is in stuff like major television shows.
Like, he will watch, he watched Invasion on Chestnut Ridge and offered, you know,
opinions on things.
And he had basically nothing to do with that professionally.
He's not an executive producer of it or anything like that.
But he wants to see it be the best movie it can be.
So he's offering his input on it.
So, and then with Mothman, he completely rewrote, not, not rewrote, but he went in and fixed my narration drastically.
Because I wrote the narration for the Mothman at Point Pleasant under a very tight time crunch.
That movie was edited in about two and a half months.
And he took all the narration and wrote it, wrote over it, you know, what I had already written and just made it much, much, much better.
So he got a co-riding credit on that one.
And then with Boggy Creek Monster, I mean, he was so intricately involved in that production from the very start.
As many of you may know, I'm an author and historian on a famous Southern Sasquatch.
case, the Falk Monster.
This is definitely one of the most
famous Southern Sasquatch cases, and
for years I've tried to get to the truth of this.
As I did my research,
I discovered that not only were there
sightings in the 60s and 70s
that were dramatized in the movie,
but sightings dated back to the early
1900s and also continued
all the way until today.
So he's been someone that we've enjoyed
working with, and we're going to continue working with.
He's narrating Bray Road Beast,
and then I'm hoping we'll be able to actually
get him involved on camera again here pretty soon with some some projects i have i have ideas for
we're always thinking like 10 steps ahead we're we're scheduled out right now through 20 20 as far as
like movies and and honestly we're probably we're probably scheduled out beyond that because i know
i already i even mentioned what one of the first stories in the southern monsters trilogy will be
and right now we just started we'll have just started on the monsters of the midwest when we get to bray road
beast. So I try to be working on things well in advance, and that's how we're able to do this
pretty consistent turnover. It's not that we're rushing to get movies done. It's that I'm
researching the movie that I'm going to be making in like two years already. So, right. I mean,
this is filmmaking 101 is always keeping that ball in the air. What comes next. So you have to have
something down the pipeline while you're in production for the other thing. It makes perfect sense,
man. And what I think is great is that you are, you know, you're kind of just following these
mysteries as they're still occurring as well. I mean, look at what's going on in Chicago right now,
where we have a possible mothman occurring. It's crazy. These things are still going on. So while there
is a very historical aspect to it all, and Lyle respects that and focuses on that, you're also
bringing it to current day and for a new audience who may not know about these things. So I think
that's very important. And, you know, in terms of that, I wouldn't have you on the show if we
weren't going to talk about UFOs. So after covering many stories of cryptids, you decided to
finally tackle the UFO question. And I was psyched when you first contacted me and told me,
hey, man, look at what I'm doing next. There are places in the world whose mysteries call us
to come and see for ourselves, whatever the human toll might be,
places like the Chestnut Ridge.
I remember that evening just like it was yesterday.
It was Thursday evening, December 9th, 1965.
There was a breaking news story coming on the radio
about this brilliant fireball, this fire object was seen
from the tip of Ontario, Canada, over Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
I can picture it, you know, in my head, you know,
the people coming in, people keeping...
quiet about things and I'll never forget that.
You know, it's something that sticks with you.
Kicksburg, to me, seems like it was almost the catalyst for people
becoming comfortable enough to share their experiences.
There's all kinds of weird phenomena from UFOs, strange lights in the sky,
cryptic creatures, haunted locations.
They're just a really concentrated area right here.
There's a lot of weird activity that goes on.
And there's certain areas where sometimes you get more activity than others,
but the one area, of course, that year after year, we seem to get more than normal
more or more activity is areas along the Chestnut Ridge.
And I think we're dealing with something that's very strange and unusual and right now beyond
our scientific understanding.
I was just like a giddy little kid.
So you got to tell me, how did the idea of invasion on Chestnut Ridge come about?
It's a story that I had always been aware of because I had heard so many interviews with Stan
Gordon.
And Stan had always been talking about the Chestnut Ridge and talking about the.
the multitude of bizarre, you know, phenomena that take a place across the ridge.
And it's also one of my buddy Mark's favorite stories. He loves Stan. He loves the Union Town
UFO Bigfoot siting story and Kexburg and all that kind of stuff. And so it was something
I was always aware of. And diving into this story was something I knew I wanted to do. It's just we had no
clue what we were doing when we were making the movie. And I say that realizing it's going to make
me sound absolutely unprepared and terrible. But that was, we honestly went into this. And pre-production
wise, up until maybe like two weeks before the movie was made, this was going to be a Kexburg
slash Uniontown UFO Bigfoot story. And that's it. Nothing else. It was going to be those two
things that they were going to connect somehow. I was a little fuzzy on how. If you were
watch like the Kickstarter video or listen to me talk on any early interviews, it's pretty
obvious. I had no idea, no idea what I was doing with this. And, um, but then as, you know, as we
started to get closer to the, the shoot date and I started to put together these interviews,
it started to become kind of a little more clear to me. This isn't a story about UFOs and it's not a
story about Bigfoot. It's a, it's a story about this place where really weird things happen. So,
so more than anything, that's, that's, that's what I knew.
I wanted to do was talk about this place that is, you know, the home of UFOs and bigfoots and
Thunderbirds and all that kind of stuff. And the cool thing is, like, I'm actually, I think I was
much more into UFOs along before I was into Bigfoot encrypted and stuff like that. It's just that,
you know, when we started putting together Smalltown Monsters, we jumped first into the Bigfoot
subject. And now we're getting to move out and branch out a little bit. And we're touching on UFOs. They were in, you know,
mothman and they're in this and they're going to be in flatwoods so it's something i've always wanted
to tackle and get into so this was kind of like a dream for me because we could get into kexburgh
which is one of my favorite stories it's funny because like little pieces of the chestnut ridge
story i'm actually very familiar with but then there's all these other little pieces to the side
that i had no idea about coming into it and it's it's one of those stories where if you really
look at like stan's work stan gordon's work we we don't even score
the surface of the really bizarre stuff that goes on along the Chestnut Ridge.
The Kexburgh story and the Uniontown, Bigfoot UFO flap and all that kind of stuff,
that's like where that's that's the mundane.
That's like that's the stuff that I know a general audience can consume.
Some of the weirder stuff that is in his books,
and we never would have dreamed about putting in this movie because it's so bizarre,
you're worried about like alienating people.
But I love getting to do a story that.
was that had so many, so many disparate kind of threads to it that I happen to love.
So you get UFOs and piglets and dogmen and all that stuff that we haven't been able to dive into in our other films.
Right. And what's really interesting is that we have sort of these condensed areas around the world where all of this strange stuff seems to be happening.
You know, I recently gave a talk in Nova Scotia about this very topic of the triangles throughout the world.
You know, we all know.
Yeah. And when I saw, when I saw, when I saw that you were doing that talk, I was like,
I cannot wait to hear what he thinks of the movie because I was like, I thought it was so
perfectly suited to you.
It was perfect.
And then, you know, after I gave the talk, I'm like, oh, I'm an idiot.
I didn't even cover Chestnut Ridge.
But, you know, that being said, I think you've got that cover in my man.
But yeah, just these areas where everything you can possibly think of is happening.
People go missing.
There's sightings of this.
There's settings of that.
Is it a layline?
Is it connected to, you know, megaliths?
It could be a plethora of things.
But what you've done with Chestnut Ridge is you have made it a character.
And that's very clear from the beginning of the film where you go through the history of the area.
And what's, you know, how the towns around Chestnut Ridge were founded.
You really get a sense of the people who live in these areas throughout all your films.
When you speak to witnesses, you get this idea of who these people.
are what they've experienced and what they think it could be, which I think is very important.
In terms of that, now, Kexberg, this is an extremely well-known case to those who know about
UFOs. But for some of our listeners who may not be familiar with this incident, could you
sort of give us a rundown of what the Kexberg UFO incident is?
Yeah, and you're going to have to forgive me because I can already tell I'm going to blank on
the date of the Kexberg crash because, oh, it's 65, isn't it? This is the one.
downside to making so many movies in such a short span of time is like my brain is actually
firmly in flatwoods right now because i'm i'm working on the movie but i cannot remember the
exact day but i know it's 1965 there's a strange fireball seen in the sky over um ontario and down
into ohio and uh pennsylvania and over michigan as well they see this fireball in the sky
and it apparently comes to rest and by comes to rest i mean crash it crashes
into a wooded glen right outside of this tiny village called Kexburg, Pennsylvania.
And what came down is up for debate because there's a lot of arguments over what people saw that night.
Some claim they saw this acorn-shaped object that actually seemed to fall in a controlled sort of pattern to the ground
rather than falling like an asteroid or meteor,
which is what a lot of people tend to think it was,
or even a satellite,
which is the other prevailing kind of theory.
But after it crashes to the ground,
some of the locals come and they gather on the hill
or on the road near the hill,
and they notice that there are military starting to descend on the area.
And supposedly the military come in,
they take the object out on a tarp and on a tarped flatbed truck and drive it through town.
And the story kind of ends there, which is interesting because it doesn't have quite the intensity of something like Roswell.
But I think what's cool about Kexberg is the longer we're aware of it and the longer guys like Stan Gordon have investigated it,
there's all these little threads that they're pulling that people, you know, and over time,
we're starting to find all these different witnesses. And I guess it's like Roswell in that way,
but you're hearing all these cool little side stories. There was a local radio announcer who,
who became mildly obsessed with the story and actually put together this documentary he was going to put out.
And supposedly he was like strong-armed by possible men in black into completely altering the documentary.
And years later, he was struck and killed by a car while visiting California.
And he supposedly had crossed this road, which made no sense.
But supposedly he'd attempt to cross this very busy road and had been struck and killed by a car, very mysterious.
And his ex-wife was convinced it was some sort of shady dealings that had killed him.
But there's a lot of little stories like that.
And what's really fascinating is over the years, the town actually kind of turned against each.
other over this whole thing. It almost came like, like there were all these little, I found this out
this past summer when I interviewed one of the original witnesses about the crash. And he told me that
there were people in the town who hated other people in the town because those people claimed
they had seen the object. And then other people in town claimed there was no object. It was none of
this had happened, period. So it almost became a real bone of contention in Kexburg that this had
even happened. Today they do like a little, you know, Kexberg UFO
festival and the Kexburg space acorn is like the centerpiece in town. So it's it's kind of embraced by
it today. But apparently in the especially in the like 70s and 80s, it was a real gray area
for a lot of people in that in that town. Now we're going to delve really deeply or not really
deeply, but we're going to delve a little more deeply into the crash than we did in Invasion
on Chestnut Ridge when I put out the case files episodes about it. Because we did the cool thing about
the Case Files web series that we're putting out in November is I'm actually starting to kind of
interview some witnesses and things like that who aren't included in the original film.
So I actually went back and interviewed Ron Struble, who was one of the original witnesses.
So even though he's not in invasion on Chestnut Ridge, I decided I did want to do a deeper dive
into Kexberg than we had managed in the film.
So we're going to have, you know, Stan kind of walking us through all the incidents.
and a lot more of John's interview and stuff like that.
So if you're a Kexburgh fan and you're annoyed that our movie doesn't spend too much time on Kexberg,
we will rectify that.
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See, that's awesome, man.
And I mean, Eric Altman, the paranormal investigator in your film,
he even mentions that Kexperg was only a catalyst for people to come forward with their own experiences.
whether it was a UFO sighting, crypticiting, or something completely paranormal.
And even in the film, he mentions that the media was now more open to covering these stories than ever before.
So my next question for you would be, what was one story you came across that really stood out that you cover in the documentary?
Yeah, the, I mean, the, the Uniontown Bigfoot story is a story I always talk about.
It's like one of the key pieces in the film, and it's actually the same.
centerpiece of the film. It's the story about this strange light over this farmer's
field one night, and this local man named George Kowalczyk, saw the light, went up to investigate
and ended up encountering basically these two Bigfoot-like creatures who stopped a bullet with
their hand, and it's a really bizarre story. And that should be the story that really captured my
attention, but it ended up being this guy named Barry Clark. Barry told us this story about
an incident that happened to him.
And basically, he'd been investigating this series of sightings and encounters that were taking
place at this place called the Bell Farm in Chestnut, on the Chestnut Ridge.
And Barry had been getting calls about various things, from Bigfoot sightings, Strange Lights
in the Sky.
He'd spent a lot of time at Bell Farm, which I don't think we really got into in our film.
and maybe I can do a whole case files episode about Bell Farm at some point because we had other stories from Bell Farm.
There were strange, like really bizarre things going on there, black cats and big foots and lights in the sky and all that stuff.
But one night he got a call that there was a really strange light in the sky.
And he'd been told for weeks that at 10 o'clock each night, if you looked up in this one spot in the sky, this light would just be.
turn on at 10 o'clock on the dot every night. So he gets a call one night and he goes out to Bell Farm
and he's sitting there and with the landowner and they're watching the sky right where this light's
going to go on. And the landowner's like, all right, it's 10 o'clock, light's going to go on.
Sure enough, as soon as they're sitting there and looking at the sky, the light goes on.
And it's a really bright silver light. And they sit there watching it for, in the movie it seems
the way we tell the story in the movie,
it seems like it passes really quickly,
but it didn't.
I think they watched the light for like an hour.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, and it's just sitting there,
and it's, you know,
it's getting brighter and then less bright and the brighter.
And then it starts turning this really weird shade of, like, blood red is how he said it.
He said it turned blood red.
And when it turned blood red,
all these little silver lights appear in the sky around the blood red light,
and they go to it,
the blood red light like bees going to a beehive almost like the way he thinks of it is is maybe
it was like a mother ship and these were smaller ships or something like that you know so they're
watching that happen and then they noticed that the light's getting brighter and they realized this
this thing's coming down toward them so they they panic and for whatever reason he told us that
basically just like an overriding sense of fear took over them and they took off and got out of there
but a few weeks pass and he starts having like really bizarre incidents happen to him he's driving one night and he basically drives this stretch of road that should have taken him about 10 minutes and hours ended up passing and things like that you know like there's just really really bizarre like lost time stuff starts happening to him but but things get real weird when his his grandson who at the time was only eight years old tells him that um there's there's men coming through
hole in his ceiling to visit him.
This in itself wouldn't have been, you know, it's unnerving, obviously.
There's something creepy about telling you things like that in general.
But like this was super weird because he was seeing things in his house and, you know, like,
he kept thinking he was seeing other people and stuff moving through his house.
And so he started getting really unnerved and ended up completely quitting research into this
stuff entirely, like walked away from it.
He had baskets full of audio taped interviews and witness sketches and sketches he had done and stuff.
Files he'd written.
He was extremely thorough.
And he either burn it all or gave it to stand.
I think he burned it all, honestly.
I think what he told us is he got completely got out of it because he was getting so unnerved.
And there's, unfortunately, the scariest thing he told us about, I can't repeat because he had his turn the cameras off.
but he actually had us turn the cameras off during the middle of the interview and told us the story.
And it's one of the scariest kind of, I can deal with a lot of this stuff.
You know, Bigfoot stuff doesn't scare me at all.
Like, Mothman stuff didn't really scare me.
But when you get into like alien abductions and stuff like that, I get super creeped out.
And he had this story about something physical that was done to him that really sent shivers down my spine.
I mean, it was extremely unnerving to hear him tell this.
he's really affected by this today to the point where when he tells the story it's almost like it's almost like he shifts into this like robotic kind of you know like he kind of just he doesn't put any emotion in what he's saying necessarily but when he was getting ready to leave I actually walked him out to his cars he was you know getting ready to leave and I'm like thanks you know thanks so much for taking the time and for being willing to tell us all this and he turns around he looks at me and he goes do you know what happened to me like asking me if I had any answers
Wow. Wow. You know, I can only imagine, you know, that the weight put on your shoulders at that point. And I'm sure this happens time and time again where when, you know, in terms of like me interviewing people for a book about that very topic, they do. You know, sometimes that machine like, you know, physiological thing happens where they kind of shut down. Maybe it's a coping mechanism just to get this story out to you. Or it's the complete opposite. They're like, gross.
Their limbs are flying all over the place.
It really depends on the person and what they believe happened to them.
But for something like that where he's asking you for answers,
that's, I can't even imagine what that feels like, man.
And I've dealt with that on a micro level at some point.
But, you know, the fact that the film is going to be out there for anyone to consume,
I doubt that's going to be the last time someone comes to you looking for answers.
Yeah, it's scary.
It was a whole new level for us.
And the weirdest thing about that is the movie.
I mean, you've seen the movie.
The movie's kind of a, it's a bit of a departure for us because I almost feel like it's a fun kind of roller coaster ride of like scary stories, right?
But then in the middle of it, there's this guy who's very deeply personally affected by it, whose life was turned upside down by it.
And still to this day, the incredibly unnerving story he told us happened in two.
2011. So this is fairly recent. This isn't the 1970s story. So things are still happening to this guy and he wants out of it. But what's really interesting as well is, is toward the end of the film, he starts talking about how he might, you know, he's considered having regression therapy and that kind of stuff and trying to figure out what did happen during the lost time incident and all that kind of stuff. But what's really intriguing to me is he's also battling with his own urges to get back into research.
He kind of wants to put his foot back in the water again.
And he's talked to Stan, and he said this on camera.
It's not in the film, but he did say this to us,
that he's talked to Stan about going back out and doing investigations again
because he's been away from it for so long.
And you can tell there's a part of him that just loves trying to figure out these mysteries.
And at the heart of it, that's what the movie's about.
And I don't know if people have picked up.
up on that, but there's, there really aren't any just eyewitnesses in this movie, which is, again,
a departure from our other movies. Other than the audio taped interview with George Kowalchik,
all the people in this movie, while the only other exception would be John, the Keksberg
witness, but everyone else is a researcher or an investigator. There's someone who still, who actively
goes out and tries to, you know, investigate the sightings and all that kind of stuff. They're not
necessarily out there, you know, trying to be abducted and stuff.
So I find it really fascinating that we went that route with this movie as well,
where these are all people who've had encounters of their own,
but they're also people who are actively investigating cases for themselves.
So I think at the end of it, it's almost a movie about people struggling,
trying to find the truth about what's going on on the ridge.
And which is also kind of funny, because at the end of the movie, we basically say,
no one knows.
You're not, more than likely, you're never going to know.
Or that there's one single source for everything that's going on.
I mean, that that almost seems, you know, ludicrous to think that it would be one thing.
It could be many things.
These, these phenomena stretch many different towns and states on the Chestnut Ridge.
So I can only imagine if anyone's looking for answers in films like yours, I would caution them that you bring forward the stories.
It's up for the audience to decide what they think might be going on.
And, you know, one of the first things I learned when I became a researcher from a mentor of mine, Peter Robbins, was he said, Ryan, be prepared to be let down time and time again.
You're not going to find answers.
You're only going to have more questions.
And that's what keeps me going, man.
So for all these people who had firsthand experiences that then became researchers, it's a natural reaction.
You see something.
It changes your entire perception of reality, and you want to know more.
And as depressing as it is, you may never get those.
answers, but you're going to keep searching. And I can't think of something more exciting,
terrifying, and I guess human to do, that curiosity. And that really comes through in the film,
I think, with the people you decided to interview. So that's amazing. In terms of this film,
in specific, Seth, what was the most interesting thing besides that incredible story from Barry?
What's the most interesting thing that happened during the filming of the documentary? Anything
really come to mind? During the actual filming of it, I think it was, it's,
probably just the process of actually working with Stan and Eric in particular, those two guys,
I think, because Stan's been there since 1959.
So take that in.
This guy's been doing this since 1959.
And his encyclopedic knowledge of encounter cases along the ridge is really verging on disturbing at times.
Like, you're like, when we shot his interview, his interview went three hours.
And during that time, he could have talked another five hours and not even broken a sweat.
Like, he was just, you could get him to recall, he would recall things in a moment's notice and dive off down some rabbit trail and just start talking about, you know, things that were tangentially connected to what we were previously talking about.
But it's really something to take that in because to us, it kind of opens your eyes to the fact that this isn't just like a hook.
Like the hook of the movie isn't the fact that, oh, hey, you know, like here's something.
this story we want to tell about the ridge, how are we going to tie it all together? Oh, let's just
say there's a whole bunch of weird crap. There is legitimately citing reports and strange
occurrences happening on the ridge on a daily basis and things are being cut out of our movie
that could have been the focus of an entire movie. I cut out this whole side plot where Dwayne
Pintoff had talked about, Dwayne is the guy who saw the orb in the woods, the weird light in the
woods that went into the portal and the, you know, like the window in the sky or whatever that opened up.
Dwayne told me this whole side story about people encountering what they claim to be Russian military
operatives working on the ridge, like the Russian militaries conducting secret side, side tests on
the ridge somewhere. Yeah, like this is like, and apparently this is something that a lot of people
have reported. Like I encountered Russian soldiers on the Chestnut Ridge. So I really think it's just
learning about the ridge and the amount of bizarre activity that does take place there.
And next to that, the most interesting thing that happened to us and probably the most hilarious to me
was two of my crew members, Zach and Jason, were convinced that the old farmhouse we rented
was haunted by this ghost to name Brad.
And Brad's supposed, so like the landowner told us on our very first night, as soon as we got there,
that a groundskeeper had died down the street of like a heart attack at the age of like 41.
And the guy was like, you know, he doesn't haunt this place or anything, but the basement
light does turn on occasionally, which is really weird.
And so Zach and Jason became convinced that Brad was terrorizing us the entire time we were there.
It's kind of, you can get it a little bit of a taste of it when you watch the behind the scenes
documentary.
But basically, anytime we were at this farmhouse, which is almost the entire time.
we were filming there because unless we were on location,
we filmed all the interviews and everything
right around that farmhouse.
So it was kind of funny because the entire time
we were there, that light in the basement would
come on and go off.
Any time we were outside after dark, it was coming
on and going off every five minutes.
So they were convinced that Brad was haunting
the entire production
of invasion on Chestnut Ridge.
That was probably the funniest thing that happened.
Also, why, Brad is
like the least frightening name for a ghost.
I was just going to say, oh, Brad,
Yeah.
It sounds like he should be skiing on the slopes in an 80s movie.
Yeah.
Oh, well, that's pretty interesting.
Well, I mean, in terms of invasion on Chestnut Ridge, Seth, you have a very specific style with this film, which was really cool to see.
And that's kind of this like 80s vibe.
You know, you got the neon lights and the title card.
And you even feature some amazing cover art by our very own into the phrase, Sam Sheeran.
I will post this cover out on the website and the show notes.
What made you want to go this route in terms of giving this film that VHS kind of feel?
I loved it.
I thought it was a great choice.
There's a couple things.
There's two things.
One, as a kid, when I used to go to the video store, they had a little section of, like, paranormal and ghosts, like supernatural documentaries that were on VHS.
And looking back on it now, I'm pretty sure it was probably stuff like sightings and, you know, things like old shows.
like that. But as a kid, I didn't know what they were. I just knew to avoid that section because it terrified me because it was real. And I can remember watching some of those shows as a kid and being horrified. My grandma's absolute favorite show when I was little was Unsolved Mysteries with Robert Stack. And so when I was doing, when we were working on this movie, I started watching every single episode of Unsolved Mysteries and actually worked my way back through every single episode that's on Amazon now.
So I've watched every episode in the show again.
And I was always aware that I wanted the movie to have that 80s vibe, which is funny, because there's only one story in the entire film that takes place in the 80s.
It's not set in the 80s or anything.
But it was informed by, as a kid, that, you know, that entire idea of like, there's something very unnerving about that, to me personally.
Maybe to everyone else, the idea of like those silly VHS episodes of like sightings where they combine like three episodes into one movie or whatever.
There's probably nothing scary about that to anyone else.
But I wanted to recapture that.
And then the other thing is that the story that Eric Altman told about the Mohawk Bigfoot.
Punk Bigfoot.
Yeah, yeah.
As soon as so for listeners, there's a story in the film that basically boils down to this guy,
fishing and ended up encountering this Bigfoot that chased him to his car and stuck his
hand in a window.
And the Bigfoot supposedly had a Mohawk.
And as Eric was telling the story to us, I got this like grin on my face because like I could
instantly visualize what Matt Harris would draw if he, if he was illustrating that scene.
So I wanted that in the film.
And the more I thought about it, the more I wanted that to kind of influence the entire
aesthetic of the movie. And so as soon as I talked to Sam about what I wanted the poster
look like, I was like, I want it to be 80s. I want it to be like something you would see on a
VHS, you know, on your local video store shelf back in like 1989 or 1990. So it influenced the
entire movie. What I, what I had to be very cautious of was that we weren't stepping into like
parody or, you know, like I never, I never wanted it to be like intrusive.
So I wanted you to get that kind of like sense, like an 80s kind of vibe, but I didn't want it to be like, hey, look how 80s we are.
You know, like I didn't want thriller playing throughout, you know, entire, entire sequences or anything like that.
But I wanted it to feel like that.
And it obviously is pushed along heavily by Brandon's score because Brandon really brought in, Brandon went and rented like the sexual synth and a lot of the music he created with the synthesizer for the film.
So the finished sound of the film is even very 80s, even though it's not.
Brandon really pulled back with this score, and it's kind of cool coming off of Mothman, which is very,
the Mothman score is very much in the forefront.
And it really like propels that kind of emotional mood that prevails through that film.
And in this, it's much, it's not toned back, but it's a little, it's a little less in your face.
And, but there's something very, very unnerving about it, too, especially the first song, the song that comes up
during the opening credits of the movie.
But the 80s were always going to be, for whatever reason, stylistically,
this movie was always going to be that kind of like 80s, Unsolved Mysteries project
that I had been terrified of as a kid.
You and me both, brother, for sure.
Whenever that Unsolved Mysteries music came on, I left the room.
But you're right, when Brandon's music comes in in those first shots,
which we will not give away, those first shots of the film mixed with that music,
It really is unnerving and really draws you in.
And as soon as I start, when I push play, I'm like, oh, okay, here we go.
So, again, we won't give away too much.
I think we've covered a lot in terms of the film itself.
Let's leave some for the viewers.
But what advice would you give to an aspiring filmmaker out there?
Like, you came from a very learn-as-you-go format.
Would you suggest this to other filmmakers out there, or should they, you know, go right into film school?
Yeah, I never went to film school, so I don't know anything about it, and I hate to shoot it down, because I know Zach went to, Zach, the guy that shoots our movies, Zach Palm Sano, has been my buddy since I was a kid, and like we kind of bonded over the fact that we both wanted to be filmmakers when we were about 18.
He went to film school.
He went to full sale.
And so I know nothing about film school, and I hate to shoot it down.
Having said that, if people want to make movies, what I tell them to do is just go make a movie.
and I have friends who are making movies or trying to make movies,
and the most consistent thing I see happen is that they talk a lot about making a movie without ever making a movie.
To the point where maybe they're even filming their movie without realizing they're not actively making the movie.
And what I mean by that is I think you can get so caught up in the act of filming on your project that you don't ever actually stop simply filming and move on to the act of,
putting the final thing together.
And that holds true, especially with, obviously, with documentarians more so than,
than like someone who's making a fictional film.
You'll need to actually make that fictional film and shoot it.
Yeah.
But as far as documentarians go, especially, you can fall into this rabbit, down this rabbit hole
of like, I'm just going to keep shooting interviews because maybe something amazing will happen,
and that's great.
But at some point, the biggest thing is to sit down and start putting your film together in
post.
and the advice I just keep giving people is like that cheesy, like Nike's logo,
Nike logo is just, you honestly just have to get to a point where you do it.
You go out and you make the movie.
And honestly, it is true.
Like, whatever you do first, if it's your first thing, more than likely, it's not going to be great.
And that's fine.
Like, our first two films, Minerva Monster and Beast of Whitehall have tons of issues.
I mean, Minerva, it holds up fairly well, actually, even though it was the first thing we'd ever done.
And, you know, the sound is atrocious at times.
And there's, you know, it's like there's just scenes that are strung together.
But at the heart, it still is a decent little amateur movie.
And Beast of Weihull, I'm really proud of because I shot the entire thing myself and we made the movie in about a day and a half.
And it's found a really big audience.
But they're both, you know, there's tons of errors in those movies and technical problems.
And the same thing holds true with Boggy Creek Monster.
In fact, with Boggy Creek Monster, I'm almost finding more errors than some of the other earlier ones.
And it's just because we filmed the movie on such a, like, tight schedule.
And we were dealing with all this professional equipment.
None of us knew how to use.
You know, but that movie still has a big following.
And I've had people tell me it's their absolute favorite Bigfoot movie.
And the Moth made a point pleasant.
was our first time to start working with like
CG effects and having creature shots in the movies
and having an animator do animated sequences
and invasions the first time we kind of stepped away
from the formula we'd established with the first four movies
and you're always going to be fixing little things
you know if if you're to a point where you're making a movie
and you look at it and you think or you say to yourself
man that was great like I killed it then you are egotistical
and delusional because there's no way you're going to watch your own project and say that if you're the type of creator who's going to grow.
You need to be the type of creator who looks at what you've just done and sees all those errors so you can start fixing them on the next project.
And that's why you're that's that way you're always like continuing to to improve from movie to movie.
And people say, well, it's been really great watching you improve.
And that's how we do it with with a lot of masochistic.
tendencies where we watch what we do and we think that's awful.
I have to fix that.
Like, I can never watch these movies and in a place where I watch them.
And I think, oh, that was great.
Now, this past weekend, I watched Mothman with that crowd.
And that was the first time I really went in.
And I, you know, maybe it was the fact that the crowd was so enthusiastic or something
like that.
But I was able to stand in the back of the room and watch the movie and see the crowd reacting
to it.
And that we lost a few people actually walked out of the movie.
because they got so creeped out.
And that was a big deal for me because I just thought it was cool that I emotionally impacted
those people so much that they had to leave the room.
Not just me, but, you know, like every, the music and all that stuff.
And that was one of the few times I've watched one of the movies where I was able to
disengage, you know, enough to enjoy it for a few minutes.
But for the most part, I like the fact that I see only what we could be doing better because
it means we'll hopefully always be continuing to improve.
Absolutely, and your audience will, you know, follow you and support you on that journey.
I think that's incredible, you know, hearing, because we do.
As artists, we make this for an audience, not necessarily for ourselves.
If that is the kind of artist you are, like you mentioned, that is extremely egotistical, selfish, and not really worth anyone's time.
You know, I can sort of relate in terms of people walking out.
I have a play premiering in New York in October called East and Red.
modern day take on the Jack the Ripper murders.
And I had my first ever production of it in New York, the first night, the opening night,
you know, the opening scene, this figure opens a window from outside, comes into a room,
you don't know who they are, goes into a closet and closes the door.
And then the lights come up and the play starts.
So this guy in the front row immediately gets up and says, nope, nope, I'm done and walked out.
So that, I know that feeling of like in audiences,
reaction and how that can really help you find, you know, what works in a film, what doesn't,
what works in a play, what doesn't. And again, like, they are your biggest, uh, influencers,
I would say, in terms of where you're growing, where you're heading next. But I think at the heart
of it are these mysteries that you decide to put a microscope on. So in terms of that, what can we
expect next from small town monsters? I know you've got a couple projects down the road.
Yeah, we're producing. So we're, we're ramping.
up a little bit, which is funny because I kept saying 2017 was going to be our down year.
There's some huge life-changing things actually in the works that just came up today as well.
But I can't talk about those yet, but maybe later.
So what we're working on in 2018 is Flatwoods Monster, which is our official sixth film,
and that will be a short film, more like Beast Boy Hall.
I like playing around with the running time of our movies, and I love shorts.
I actually, I probably prefer the runtime of Beasta Wai Hall to the longer, you know,
kind of like Boggy Creek Monster runtime.
But I wanted to do something a little bit more like that again.
So Flatwoods Monster is going to be about a 30, 35 minute long short film.
And that will round out the Appalachian Monsters trilogy, which started with Mothman and went to invasion on Chessnut Ridge.
And then it'll end with Flatwoods.
And then following that up will be on the trail of Champ, which is a Small Town Monsters production.
but directed by Alexander Petticoff, who is a super talented filmmaker from New England,
from the New England states.
He lives up in, I think, Maine, or maybe it's Massachusetts.
He's down by Boston.
Anyway, him and I met about maybe two years ago when I saw his documentary short called
Mystery at Loch Ness.
And I'd been wanting to work with him because his style is a lot different from mine.
He's much more of like a news shooter.
You know, like he's there to get the.
story told and he's usually on the ground with people, you know, like it's a little different from
what we do with small town monsters. And originally we had talked about him directing like a small
town monster short film like Flatwoods or something like that. And then I kind of hit upon the
idea of having him do this mini-series style format series about Champ, the Lake Monster of Lake
Champlain. And instead of it solely being about, you know, people in their sighting encounters,
is actually having him go out with researchers who are actively looking for champ.
So that's what he spends a lot of time on the boat and in the water, underwater, you know,
like looking for champ and that kind of stuff.
But as well, it's going to be probably the most, the deepest dive into the champ story
that you can find because it's a, it's at least a six episode mini series with 22 minute
episodes focusing on everything from the history of Lake Champlain and the champsiting is going back
to, you know, the first time the lake was found up until today.
So it's, it's going to be a really in-depth look at that story.
And it's really fascinating.
There's all these side stories that he's come across that, you know, like,
like P.D. Barnum was involved in a hunt for champ and all the stuff.
You're going to get all that kind of, yeah, like really cool backstory that people probably
don't know about.
And then we just announced that the seventh small town monsters film will be Bray Road.
Beast, which we are releasing probably next October, and that will come out, yeah, probably
next October.
I'm thinking probably a little bit earlier than Invasion did this year.
I like the idea of getting something out around Halloween.
Yeah.
And that should be like the perfect movie to put out.
We'll start shooting that one around April.
We've got witnesses lined up.
We're already lining up witnesses.
Actually, this past weekend, I met a Beast of Bray Road witness who's going to be in the film.
So that was pretty cool.
And then we had this really cool piece of luck where we met someone who owns a farmland out on Bray Road,
who's going to let us use their house, kind of like the headquarters.
We always need like a place to kind of like have all of our equipment that we don't need and stuff like that.
So we came across someone like that.
So Bray Road Beast is next.
Beyond that, that is the first film in the Monsters of the Midwest trilogy.
So the next two after Bray Road of the standard, uh,
Small Town Monsters series will be set in the Midwest.
And I know what they are.
I just can't say anything yet.
And then we are working on the Small Town Monsters Guidebook.
It's more than likely coming out through a fairly well-known publisher or it's
coming out independently.
It kind of depends on what I want to do with that.
Because apparently I have a hard time, you know, being told what to do and working with
distribution companies and stuff like that.
Like you said very early on in this talk that, that hot.
Hollywood is, you know, Hollywood is kind of prehistoric.
And I recently came to the realization that television is also a dinosaur.
So, like, I really think that the best way to do this stuff is independently.
And if you can get someone on board who sees your vision and is okay with that and sees the value in it and is willing to push your vision out to a larger audience through, whether that's television or Netflix or whatever, you know, whether it's through an.
a large-scale publisher, whatever it is, that's awesome, that's great. But don't sell out what you
see a value in and what you're convinced there's an interest in just because you think that is
the only way of gaining an audience, because the way things are going is just not the case. You can,
you can grow an audience organically, by yourself, completely independently. Because small town
monsters began life as minerva monster, and it's always been me running this. I run all our
social media and all that stuff. But our following just continues to grow because people do see
a value in what we're doing and they love the approach that we're taking. And we were told very
early on by production companies we talked with during the making of Minerva Monster who got
interested because of the animal planet story that they wanted to change small town monsters
into me and the two producers in a van with Megan Fox running around the country looking for
monsters. So like there's no, they don't know. They don't get it.
And they probably never will.
So unless they see the value in what you're doing and they're willing to push that thing out, whatever your thing is as is, then just keep doing it yourself.
And eventually it's going to find this audience.
Absolutely, man.
I mean, coming from someone who's lived in New York City and L.A. now for about three weeks, do you be yourself, make your own work?
And somebody will take notice.
Even if that's not a television or movie producer, it is an audience.
and that's what's most important.
So I couldn't agree more.
I think what you're doing is incredible.
Where can we find out more about what you're doing
and where to find invasion on Chestnut Ridge?
Smalltown Monsters.com is the hub for everything,
and it's been recently updated.
So there's a lot of info on there on everything
all the way up through on the Trail of Champ.
Shop.com.com.
Is where you can get DVDs, t-shirts,
and all of our merch because we operate like a band.
and the movies are available through Amazon and Vimeo on demand,
but we did sign with a distributor called Terror Films.
They are currently eyeing.
I don't know if I'm allowed to say this.
I'm going to say it anyway because I really need them to get the movie out.
It's supposed to be out on October 27th to a wide audience through iTunes, Google Play, all that kind of stuff.
So hopefully that all flies through and hopefully Mothman hits everything on October.
27th invasion i'm not sure about yet we're actually right before i got on here with you i was talking to
the sales agent trying to decide on a date when invasion will be available to you know on on all those
platforms as of right now invasion will be available on amazon on october 20th and DVD on
october 20th but as for like iTunes and google play and all that kind of stuff i'm not 100% sure yet
it could honestly not it's possible it might not be till the beginning of 2018 so it it just
just depends on when we
it's weird because when a distributor
brings you on and you already have six
movies out or five movies out
they're struggling with like well which one
which one do we release
first so they're they're trying to
figure out which comes out when without
overshadowing the next so I know Mothman
is slated for end of October
and hopefully following that
you know but just so your listeners don't get
confused the movies are available on Amazon
and DVD it's just getting them
into all these other platforms just take
a little bit of time. That's the business. I get it, man. Well, Seth, I can't thank you enough for
coming on today, man. I look forward to everything you got coming up, and we will keep following
you as you continue taking these journeys across the United States and hopefully abroad at some
point. I'm sure we will see. And yeah, man, thank you again for joining me on Somewhere in the
skies. Yeah, thanks so much.
