Somewhere in the Skies - Seth Breedlove: Invasion on Chestnut Ridge

Episode Date: October 2, 2017

On episode 25 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, Ryan first wishes listeners a Happy Halloween season, explaining that this month's episodes will focus on the more spooky and creepy aspects of the unknown. And he wants to hear from you! Share your personal ghost or monster stories with Ryan by contacting him at the contact tab at www.somewhereintheskies.com. It may just be featured on an upcoming episode leading up to Halloween. Ryan then speaks with Seth Breedlove, documentary filmmaker and creator of Small Town Monsters, an independent film series that explores lost and bizarre history around the United States. Focusing on small town folklore, the team tells stories through the words and experiences of those who were most affected by them - residents and witnesses. Seth brings us on the fascinating journey of researching and filming his latest installment, Invasion on Chesnut Ridge, which tells the true story of one of the more bizarre places in America, and the unusual activity that has taken place there for decades. Delving into one of the most intriguing and unusual areas this side of the Bermuda Triangle, the film will tell the tale of the Kecksburg UFO crash, the Uniontown Bigfoot/UFO sightings, encounters with a large, prehistoric bird in Keystone State Park and much more. Guest Bio: Seth Breedlove has written, edited, produced and directed shorts and features about a variety of topics but is best known for his production company and the films they’ve produced under the Small Town Monsters banner. These films include Minerva Monster, Beast of Whitehall, Beast of Boggy Creek, The Mothman of Point Pleasant, Invasion on Chesnut Ridge, and the upcoming films, The Flatwoods Monster: A Legacy of Fear and On the Trail of Champ. For more info, visit www.smalltownmonsters.com  This episode is brought to you by HelloFresh. To learn more and to receive 50% of your first box, visit www.HelloFresh.ca and use the promo code: SOMEWHERE50 To become a SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES patron, visit www.patreon.com/SomewhereSkies Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com Email: [e-mail] Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Order Ryan's Book by CLICKING HERE Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte Episode Edited by Jane Palomera Moore SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is produced by THIRD KIND PRODUCTIONS, in association with ANTICA PRODUCTIONS Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, Ryan Sprague here. Before we get to this week's episode, I want to wish everyone a happy Halloween season. It is October 2nd and the pumpkin spice lattes and horror movie marathons are in full effect. So get ready for a month of spooky guests and creepy tales. All of this month's episodes will include UFOs, but you'll be hearing from guests in the realm of monster hunting, ghost hunting, and they're just plain weird. It is a monster mesh shakeup of hauntingly scary proportions. But I also thought it would be cool to get all of you involved as well. So starting today, I want to hear your stories,

whether it was a ghost, a monster, or just something that terrified you beyond belief. Reach out to me on Facebook or contact me through the website at somewhere in the skies.com and tell me your story. It may just be featured on one of this month's episodes as we drag, our chilled bones ever closer to Halloween. I look forward to getting the living daylight scared out of me, and I hope you will too. And now, on with the show. This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprague. Welcome to Somewhere in the Skies. I'm your host, Ryan Sprague. I want to say thank you to the latest patron of the Patreon campaign, Bill S. Bill and 10 other patrons are receiving

bonus episodes and content at a constant rate, and there's more and more to come. To learn more and to become a patron, visit patreon.com backslash somewhere skies. Also, the official store is open for business. We've got T-shirts, tank tops, hoodies, posters, stickers, mugs, laptop and phone cases, and notebooks, all with an incredible design by Eduardo Lobo. To check out all the merch and to help represent the show in style, head on over to tpublic.com. That's T-E-E-E-public.com and search for somewhere in the skies.

So about a month ago, I gave a presentation in Nova Scotia, titled Beyond the Bermuda Triangle. The aim was to show how many places throughout the world hold just as much mystery, tragedy, and pure curiosity. There's the Dragons Triangle in Japan, which seems to swallow vessels into the Pacific Ocean in one violent gulp. Or there's the Berlée triangle in France, where the entire country's most plane crashes have occurred within a 10-mile radius of this mountainous, terrain. The Wold Newton Triangle, in England, is full of strange history and ghostly tales. Then there's the Great Lakes Triangle here in the U.S. where tragedy struck many boats in Lake Michigan. The last one I covered, there was a plethora of strange things happening in Massachusetts in what is known as the Bridgewater Triangle, where ancient Native American curses bring about

supernatural phenomena reported even up until today. Now, the actual triangle shape plays very little. into all this, in my opinion. It's a shape put onto a condensed area of strange happenings based solely on the Bermuda Triangle and the mysteries we shaped around it. Sometimes these areas run long, long distances, crossing towns, cities, and states. And one of those places is known as the Chestnut Ridge. And it is covered extensively in this week's interview with filmmaker, Seth Breedlove.

Breedlove is the head of small-town monsters, an independent film series that explores lost and bizarre history around the United States. Focusing on small-town folklore, his team tells stories through the words and experiences of those who were most affected by them, residents and witnesses. His previous films include Minerva Monster, Beast of Whitehall, Beast of Bogie Creek, and the Mothman of Point Pleasant. We'll be talking today extensively about his new film, Invasion on Chestnut Ridge, which delves into one of the most intriguing and unusual areas this side of the Bermuda Triangle.

It tells the tale of the Kexburg UFO crash, the Uniontown Bigfoot UFO sightings, encounters with a large prehistoric bird in Keystone State Park, and much, much more. So, without further ado, here's my conversation with Seth Breedlove. 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 for... following your work for 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. But, you know, 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, we did Maine the first weekend, and that was kind of like our first. It was as, 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, um, Steve Bissette, who was the, um, artist of Alan Moore's swamping run of comics, which I'm, I'm a giant's like comic nerd from way back. And, um, 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.

We're 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. also 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 cryptozoologist to 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 just had a good time.

And I was there with my wife and everything's. We had a lot of fun. And it was cool, too, because Mark Mattsky, who co-wrote Invasion on Chessnet, 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 CryptigCon, 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, the Mothman

festival where we actually finally did the first like large scale. screening of the Mothmane of Point Pleasant and that went so fantastic. It was ridiculous. 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 out after the fact was that when the Silver Bridge collapsed in 1967, and if anyone's seen our Mothman 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. Oh my God. 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 Tuendui Park at the far end of Point Pleasant the year before, 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 it 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 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 of the movie and everything. So that's huge for us always because we're, that's how we fund what we do. But I walked down to Harris Steakhouse, and the movie, the Mothmane 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 an 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, fun weekend on a really low kind of somber note. So like, but it was, 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, 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,

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 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 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 Begin 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

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 been i've only done this for three years and the way i've taught myself is through youtube channels and tutorials and reading a lot of books and listening to a lot of interviews with like my favorite directors as a kid i watched i absolutely loved to like behind-the-scenes documentaries and i think so 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 uh documentaries and and finding it you know the the coolest thing is that they found an audience i think um because you never know if what you're doing is ever going to actually be seen by 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, it's, 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, 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 legends. 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 that the stink line. Did you have 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 TNT area. I mean, we were just sitting there, we didn't know what, dude. We was afraid to move. And there, this, to me, it was the devil.

To me, it was the devil, a month 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. What a 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, like, my introduction to Lio 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, 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, I would consider him a crypto zoologist, author, television personality, musician. He's in independent rock band called Gool Town. And 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 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 Time 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 Lio 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 Lio'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, 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. And then with Mothman, he completely rewrote, not rewrote, but he went in and fixed my narration drastically because I wrote the narration for the Mothman and 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-writing 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 their sightings in the 60s and 70s that were dramatized in the movie, but sightings dated back to the earth. 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 projects I have ideas for. We're always thinking like 10 steps ahead. We're scheduled out right now through 2020 as far as like movies. And honestly, we're probably scheduled out beyond. that because I know I already 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 one-on-one 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, 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. sight 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, 1969. There was a breaking news story coming on the radio about this brilliant fireball, as far, 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. Kexburg, to me, seems like it was almost a 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. It's 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 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 multitude of bizarre 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 Keksburg.

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 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. But then as we started to get closer to 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 story about this place where really weird things happen. So more than anything, that's what I knew I wanted to do was talk about this place that is, you know, the home of UFOs and Bigfoot's 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 and cryptids and stuff like that. that. It's just that, you know, when we started putting together small-town 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 Kexburg, 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 scratch 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, 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 loved getting to do

a story that had 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, 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 sightings 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 Kexburgh 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 working on the movie, but I cannot remember the exact date, but I know it's 1965. There's a strange fireball scene in the sky over Ontario and down into Ohio and 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, 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, there's a little. 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

I think what's cool about Kexburgh 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 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 like 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, you know, 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, 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 Kexberg 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 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, if you're a Kexberg fan and you're annoyed that our movie doesn't spend too much time on Keksberg, we will rectify that. See, that's awesome, man. And I mean, you know, Eric Altman, the paranormal investigator in your film, he even mentions that Keksberg was only a catalyst, you know, for 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 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 centerpiece of the film. It's the story about this strange light over this farmer's field one night. 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. 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 Kornbushabye. Barry Clark. Barry told us this story about an incident that happened to him. And basically, he'd been investigating a series of sightings and encounters that were taking place at this place called the Bell Farm on the Chestnut Ridge. And Barry had been getting calls about various things, Bigfoot sightings, Strange Lights on 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 turn. 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 he 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 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 maybe it was like a mother ship and these were smaller ships or something like that.

So they're watching that happen and then they noticed that the light's getting brighter and they realized this thing's coming down toward them. So 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. having like really bizarre incidents happened 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 uh 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 a 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 us 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 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, ah, thanks, you know, thanks so much for taking the time and for being willing to tell us all this. And he turns around and he looks at me and he goes, do you know what happened to me? Like, asking me if I had any answers from him, you know? Wow. You know, I can only imagine. you know, 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 crying. 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, 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 2011. So this is fairly recent. This is in 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 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

He 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 the investigations again, because he's like, 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 that, at the heart of it, that's what the movie's about. And I don't know if people have picked 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 Kexberg witness, but everyone else is a researcher or an investigator. There's someone who actively goes out and tries to investigate the sightings and all that kind of stuff. They're not necessarily out there 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. 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 almost seems, you know, ludicrous to think that it would be one thing. It could be many things. 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 Aaron. in particular, those two guys, I think, because like, Stan's been there first since 1959. So take that in.

Like, 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, 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, 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 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 encounter. 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. house. 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. So that was probably the funniest thing that happened. Also, Brad is like the least frightening name for a ghost. I was just going to say, oh, Brad. 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, 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, you know. 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 of 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. was 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 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 someone who's making a fictional film. You'll need to actually make that fictional film and shoot it. 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 Hoyhall, 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, 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 establish 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. Like 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 got I have to fix that like I can never watch these movies and in a place where I watch them and I think all 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 my 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 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. This is a 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 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 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, ramping up a little bit, which is funny because I was, I kept saying 2017 was going to be our down year. There's, 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, 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 of Way Hall. I like playing around with the running time of our movies, and I love shorts. I actually, I probably prefer the runtime of Beastie Way 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 Flatwood's 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 Chessonet 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 Petacoff, 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 miniseries 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,

actually having him go out with researchers who were 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 champs 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 champ sightings 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 this 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. So, 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, you know, standard Small Town Monster series will be set in the Midwest. And I know what they are. I just can't, you know, 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 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 a large-scale publisher or 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 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 MinervaMon

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 to your Trail of Champ. Shop.smaltown Monsters.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 all those platforms. As of right now, Invasion will be available on Amazon on October 20th and DVD on October 20th. But as for 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 until the beginning of 2018. So it 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 do we release first? So 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 taking 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 some. somewhere in the skies. Yeah, thanks so much. All right, that is it for this week's episode. Be on the lookout for Invasion on Chestnut Rage and all of Seth Breedlove's films at smalltown monsters.com.

Do me a huge, solid, guys. And please take just a few moments to subscribe to the show on iTunes, if you haven't already. The only way to be featured on the iTunes hottest podcasts and noteworthy sections is by the number of subscribers to the podcast. So it would mean the world if you would consider doing that. And hey, while you're at it, throw a rating and review up there as well. Thank you so, so much for your support.

We're on Twitter at SomewhereSkies, Instagram, at SomewhereSkies pod, and all past episodes and articles can be found on the website, Somewhereinth skies.com. I will see you here next Monday as we continue our Halloween month. Get your EMF readers and spirit boxes out because we will be communicating with Carl Fyfer, talking all about his work on Ghost Hunters Academy and his investment. into the Stanley Hotel. And we even find some time to talk all about UFOs

and the amazing work by Shock Valley. Remember, keep your feet on the ground, but never stop searching somewhere in the skies. Somewhere in the skies is produced by third-kind productions in association with Antica Productions and the Antica Podcast Network. To learn more, visit anticaproductions.com.