The Confessionals - 40: The Beasts of Britain | Andy McGrath

Episode Date: October 21, 2017

In Episode 40, Tony and his brother Jack discuss their adventures at the Chautauqua Lake Bigfoot Expo, including a journey through the woods in search of a cave and a Bigfoot footprint, and s...ome haunted moments in their sleeping quarters! Following their stories, guest Andy McGrath shares his research surrounding sea monsters and cryptids in the United Kingdom! Beasts of Britain book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1549938983/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_x_vMf6zb4J4JZFQ? You Caring Donation Page for Kymberley Suchomel: https://www.youcaring.com/michaelscarlettsuchomel-975430 Website: www.theconfessionalspodcast.com Email: theconfessionalspodcast@gmail.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheConfessionalsPodcast Twitter: @TConfessionals Tony's Twitter: @tony_merkel

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 We work hard at being healthier. One, three. And what we really need is better quality sleep. The new Sleep Number 360 smart bed intelligently senses your movements and automatically adjust your comfort and support on both sides. This is not a bed. It's proven quality sleep. It's the biggest sale of the year where all beds are on sale. Say 50% on the new Sleep Number 360 limited edition smart bed, plus special financing only for a limited time.
Starting point is 00:00:23 To find your local sleep number store, go to sleep number.com. Special financing subject to credit approval. Minimum monthly payments required. See store for details. This podcast is part of the Bomb Pod Media Network. You feel like sound until it's bright. Just another long. Are you willing to sacrifice your life?
Starting point is 00:01:07 It's called for what? For the rest of the rest of the rest of them. You guys hear that? I'm sure, everybody. I am your host, Tony Merkel, and I am really glad that you're here, and I'm really glad to be here. If you've had an encounter or a story you'd like to share with me on the show, go ahead and shoot me an email. My email address is The Confessionals Podcast at gmail.com. That's the confessionals podcast at gmail.com.
Starting point is 00:02:12 Or go to the website, theconfessionalspodcast.com. Hit the connection section and you can reach me that way as well. Speaking of the website, we are going to be coming out with a store on the website late this year, early next year. And if you're a member to the website, you're going to have access to this store with a discount. So if you've been thinking about becoming a member, I highly recommend you do so. It's only $3 a month. And with that $3 a month, you'll have access to one extra episode a month at least. plus extra content and a discount to the store when the store is up and running.
Starting point is 00:02:40 Moving right along, we have the iTunes shoutouts where we give shoutouts to anybody who gives a rating and review on iTunes every week. And our favorite review of every month is going to get a free gift in the mail from the confessions. This week's shoutouts is Wydglor, Aetown Dave, Nikkiville, Jeremiah Torres, Blue Red Bull, John Johnson, CMSXT. and rounding it off, we have Joel H. Thank you very much for giving us a rating a review on iTunes.
Starting point is 00:03:08 It means a lot to me and it helps us show out a ton. So thank you very much. Before we get into this week's interview, I want to bring on my younger brother, Jack, who came with me to the Chautauqua Lake Bigfoot Expo last weekend, and we had a lot of fun just driving up there, and we actually went on a hike into the woods in the Allegheny National Forest.
Starting point is 00:03:25 On a previous episode, I told you guys that I was giving coordinates to a cave that had a fossilized footprint in it. And so me and Jack actually went up there in search of the lost cave and the fossilized footprint. Jack, how you doing, man? I'm doing well, Tom. Thanks for having me on. Absolutely, dude. I think we had a lot of fun just driving up there and doing our thing. But why don't you tell people a little bit about your experience with this hike that we went on in the Allegheny National Forest?
Starting point is 00:03:55 Yeah, the hike was a blast. I mean, first of all, it was really good to get out and stretch our legs after the drive. but we getting there was fun you know trying to figure out where to park but the hike was incredible i mean um you know steep hill so i mean getting up was tough but the scenery was gorgeous and we just had i mean we had a really good time trying to find the area that we were supposed to get to uh not much detail in the cordon in it so we just kind of had to roll with uh with the picture on a map and that was a lot of fun so i mean we had a good time i think yeah absolutely and if anybody wants to see the excursion that we went on, head on over to YouTube, the Pennsylvania Sasquatch Research Channel,
Starting point is 00:04:35 and you'll see the video there. It's titled The Lost Cave and the Footprint in Stone. And you'll see the whole time that we had, you know, going up there and just hiking up the mountain and then finding the cave and all the stuff that happened after that. It was just a lot of fun. So if you're interested in seeing our day in the woods, go over to the Pennsylvania Sasquatch Research YouTube channel and check out that video. So, Jack, We left there and we had a lot of fun in the woods. I mean, it was, what, a three-hour hike up and down? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:05:06 It was great. But we left there. We head to the Chautauqua Lake Bigfoot Expo and we check in. We go over to movie night. We do our thing over there and we come back to our room. And this is what I want to talk about a little bit tonight because, you know, it's October. Halloween is two weeks away. And I started thinking about this today.
Starting point is 00:05:23 I'm actually going to share this story with everybody this week, this ghost story that you and I experienced in the cottage. And next week, everybody, I'm going to share another haunting story that I have experienced in my past that I have not shared with anybody on air. And you guys will hear it next week right here on the confessions. It is a bone chiller. At least it was for me. But that's a little preview for next week. But getting back to this week's little ghost story we have, Jack, we went into the cabin after the movie night. And we're getting ready, kind of just wrapping things up trying to get into bed so we could get up.
Starting point is 00:05:59 early the next day because I had to speak and all that stuff. And I walk out into the living room and I opened the front door for whatever reason. And what do I find on the door? A nice, fresh, steamy handprint, right on the glass pane. Yeah. And I didn't think anything of it. You know, I opened the door. I'm like, oh, there's a handprint on the door. And it was fresh. I mean, what it was was the door that had the glass on it. It was all dewy. It had all the moisture on it. And anything that I would touch that door would have, you know, leave a print. And this was a fresh handprint at the level of my face. And I'm six feet tall.
Starting point is 00:06:42 And the handprint was at my level. And I didn't think anything up. And when I saw this, I was like, oh, there's a handprint on the door. Didn't bother me at all. But you, on the other hand, got pretty freaked out. And I want to ask you, what was it about this handprinting? that freaked you out so much. Yeah, I mean, that's a good question.
Starting point is 00:07:05 I honestly have no clue. So I'm not typically one to overreact about things like that, especially when it comes to something, you know, I'm trying to act tough because I'm in front of my big brother, so that's kind of freaking out in my bedroom. I can't believe there's a thing. You know, freaking out is not something that shows your toughness. So, yeah, I mean, the way that,
Starting point is 00:07:29 that I would describe it was it just felt weird, you know, because I knew it wasn't mine. The where it was placed on the, on the door, you know, it wasn't a full print. So, I mean, when we're describing it, it wasn't like a full print on the center of the glass. So like, you know, when you open the door, you put your hand on the middle of the door to open it. It wasn't anything like that. It was more of like a side print. So it was really weird. It was like the hand came in from the side and like put half of the hand on the door. So it was really, you know, it was eerie just the way it looked like something somebody had grasped the door and tried to pull it open um mostly it was just you know the fact that like yeah oh there's a handprint on the door
Starting point is 00:08:10 you're coming away from the door you're telling me this and i'm you know like not well you didn't believe me at first you thought i was kidding oh man because yeah i mean you'd always do that kind of stuff so i wasn't really thinking you know oh he's you know he's being serious with me and we're at a bigfoot uh bigfoot expo so i was like oh he's trying to mess with me It's, you know, trying to make it something out of nothing. But yeah, then I started to get real freaked out walking over to the door, and I couldn't, I couldn't even open the door. Like, I couldn't even get the guts to open the door. Like, you're like, just open it.
Starting point is 00:08:44 I'm just standing there freaking out. And mentally, you know, I have no idea what was going on in my head, but mentally, like, I'm just, I just, I had to just peek out the glass to see, you know, pull back the curtain and look just to see the little hamprint thinking. something was going to stare at me. And I think partially it was in my own head. But I mean, hey, you never know. There could have been something that was freaking me out. But yeah, so I was just freaking out from that. Yeah. I mean, when I saw it, I turn around and I just nonchalantly tell you, oh, there's a handprint on the door. And you start, like, you're like, no, there isn't. No way. Yeah. What's the big deal? You know? And you had a hard time just walking over to the door and looking out the window. And you finally did. And you're like,
Starting point is 00:09:26 freaked out. And, you know, we're spending a lot of time talking about this handprint, but it really sets up what happened the rest of the night. Now, after that, we started hearing this, like, tapping sound in the kitchen. And it wasn't, like, on a wall or from a refrigerator or anything like that. It actually, we actually got the sound narrowed down to the upper left-hand corner of the kitchen. And it sounded like it was inside our cottage. Now, the cottage was attached to another cottage. And so you could say somebody was on the other side tapping. Why? I don't know. But it was going on for a while. And it was very randoms and sporadic. And so I'm not freaked out about this. It didn't bother me at all. I was just like, okay, that's weird. It's funny because
Starting point is 00:10:18 I do this show. Yet when I'm in a situation where there could be. something paranormal going on, that's the last thing I think about. Like, I just didn't, I just didn't think that it could be paranormal. It's just, you know, some tapping on the wall and a handprint on the door, nothing to see here. Keep it moving, you know? Like, I just didn't think that anything paranormal was happening. And you were, I've just, I find it so interesting because maybe you're a little more sensitive to me than me. I don't know. But you seem to think that there was something going on early on. And I'm thinking myself, what is this kid? Like, what is wrong with him. Like, you know, like you were freaking out. Like you could sense something. I wasn't sensing
Starting point is 00:10:55 anything. And I just found that interesting that we were totally different on the opposite, opposite end of the perspective there. And so we get ready for bed and we wound up sleeping in the same room. I was on one bed. You were on the other. And there was to set this up for the people listening, when you walk into this room, the door is on the left side of the room. And I was on the left side of the room and you walk in and on your right hand side is the beds. There's one bed on one wall, one bed on the other wall, and in between the beds, there's a nightstand with a lamp on it. Now, you took one bed, I took the other, and on your side, you put your glasses and your cell phone with the charger. And on my side, I had my laptop, my phone, and my glasses sitting there.
Starting point is 00:11:46 And we go to bed, you know, like that nothing unusual. you know, other than the handprint on the door and the tapping, nothing unusual. We go to sleep and we pretty much knocked out pretty quickly. We were pretty exhausted from that hike. And I remember it was probably around two, three o'clock in the morning and I hear your glasses. It sounded like they fell off the table. And so I wake up and I get my phone and I shine the flashlight and there's your glasses laying in the middle of the floor, probably about six feet away from your table,
Starting point is 00:12:22 from our table, the table in the middle of the beds. And I pick them up and I hand them to you because at this point you wake up too. And it was actually really hot in the cabin. And so we decided to, you know, turn down the heat and, you know, go back to bed. And so we go back to bed. And I don't know. How long do you think it was in between the two incidents? Probably not very long.
Starting point is 00:12:46 I don't think it was very long at all. But we go back to bed. You put your glasses back on the table. And let's just say a half an hour later, my glasses go flying off the table and lay on the floor right at the same spot about six feet away from the table. And now I'm thinking, okay, there's something going on here. Because when I woke up the first time and your glasses were laying on the floor, I thought you did it.
Starting point is 00:13:13 And you thought I did it, but we didn't talk about it because we both thought each other did it. And then when my glasses flew off the table and landed on the floor six feet away from the table, I knew I didn't do that. And you knew you didn't do that. And there's some just general things that make it impossible for one of us to be doing it. Because if you were doing it, you would have, in order to knock my glasses off the table, you would have had to knock the lamp off the table as well. And vice versa, if I was doing it, When I knocked your glass, if I would have knocked your glasses off, I would have had to take off the lamp off the table too when I'm swinging my arm. And I find it funny that both our glasses at two different times flew off the table, but nothing else did.
Starting point is 00:14:00 Not my cell phone, not your cell phone, not my laptop, nothing, just the glasses. So what do you think about that? Do you think there was something going on there that night or what? Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I want to say there was. because I think I'll creep myself out even more. But, yeah, when, you know, something to just, you know, note, too, is that when we had our phones on the table, you know, your laptop was underneath your phone and your glasses. But on my side, it was just my phone in the glasses.
Starting point is 00:14:33 But my phone was plugged into the charger and, you know, the charging cord was over my glasses. So, you know, if I were, so it was basically tangled up. If I were to knock my glasses off, my phone would have fallen on the floor, too. and vice versa for you. So it was, you know, my, my thoughts on it were at the time I wasn't thinking coherently because of how tired I was. But, you know, after waking up and you explaining to me what happened, I was not necessarily thrilled to hear that, especially after everything that happened. So, I mean, needless to say, I actually packed up all of my stuff that morning, and I didn't even tell you this, but it was mostly because of that. Like, you know, I wanted to get that crap out of there.
Starting point is 00:15:15 I didn't want anything still in the cabin. So I packed up all of my stuff as soon as I woke up and put it in the car. Yeah, I remember you did that too because you said to me, hey, are you going to pack you up your stuff? I'm like, no, I'll just let my stuff here until after I'm done speaking. I'll come back and pack up later. And you're like, okay, like you were kind of, you're like, if that's what you want to do. You know, but it's just, it's so funny because in all reality, there should have been more
Starting point is 00:15:44 going off the table if one of us was just flying our arms around in the middle of our sleep. Just for the fact that you had your glasses underneath the charger cord, and I'm pretty sure my glasses were behind my phone in the direction that the glasses flew. There was just so many different things that should have happened. You know, we both weren't flying our arms around, knocking our glasses off. Like, I don't do that. I have a table next to my bed every night. I don't do that. So what makes me do that that night? And then how would I knock your glasses off without taking off the lamp? You know? So when you add some things up, you start thinking, okay, maybe there's something going on there because we first see the handprint on the door that we both know,
Starting point is 00:16:27 you didn't do, and I didn't do. And there's no explanation for it. You know, maybe somebody was messing with us or somebody opened our door thinking that they were going to their cabin. I don't know. But on top of that, you have the tapping noise in the kitchen. That's unexplainable. It was in the kitchen. I'm out in the kitchen, standing in the corner, looking at the corner of the kitchen. Like, I can hear it. It's right here, but I can't see it.
Starting point is 00:16:53 What is going on? You know, like, but I wasn't freaked out. I was just like, that's weird. Old cabin, I guess, whatever. And then we go to sleep and we have, I guess you could call poltergeist activity where things are flying off the table. I don't know if whatever it was didn't like glasses. I don't know, but it was definitely interesting. Well, like you mentioned, I mean, they both flew to the same spot.
Starting point is 00:17:18 And the thing I always think about, you know, every time you see a movie where something's going to the same spot all the time, like there's something that's typically there that they're trying to either point to or, you know, that has some sort of significance that plays a role in what the glasses are there for. and, you know, if we're like just talking and thinking it through by talking, it kind of like makes you think, was there something there? Was there activity? Or were they like pulling the glasses off and standing there and pretending to be looking at some glasses? I don't know. I mean, I'm just, you know, putting it together in my head and I'm freaking out all at the same time because, oh my gosh, that's creepy. Maybe we had a cloaking bigfoot that followed us into the cabin that night. who knows right but no i just found it very interesting and my entire life you experience small things here and there but i really do believe that that was one of the few times that i could
Starting point is 00:18:18 almost instantly walk away from that situation saying that was paranormal like usually i have some doubt in my mind i'm always trying to explain something away i always find some kind of other excuse or reason for why something happened but what happened last Saturday night was I just can't explain it. I just can't explain it. And so I chalk it up as
Starting point is 00:18:45 some kind of paranormal experience that I am really glad that somebody else was there to experience it with me so I wasn't crazy, you know? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, definitely it was interesting. I mean, especially that heater too.
Starting point is 00:18:58 I mean, we didn't turn that thing up hot at all. That's one thing I didn't get. You know, I didn't think about that until just now. Yeah. I didn't touch the heater. I don't know. I don't know what you said at.
Starting point is 00:19:10 Yeah. Like I should. Well, I think you asked me in the morning how hot it was because we were sweating when we woke up. It was bad. Now, let's draw that picture out because now that you're bringing that up, I didn't think about that.
Starting point is 00:19:23 After we heard your glasses fall on the ground for the first time, we both woke up and we both acknowledged it was extremely hot in the cabin. It almost felt like the cabin was on fire. I was having a hard time breathing. That's how stuffy and hot it was. We had to open the windows and we had to turn off the heater. How hot was it when you went to bed? How high did you have it turned up?
Starting point is 00:19:44 Yeah, so the way the heater knob was set up, it was like off, and then it had a gap and it was like low, and then it had those, you know, little arrows, you know, getting bigger and bigger. So I had it pretty much just above low, and I made sure to turn the ceiling fan on because, you know, we need to circulate the air. And that heater was in the, it was like you walk into the cabin, there was a living room, and then the heater was right in the middle there. And it was supposed to kind of heat the whole cabin up and then two rooms.
Starting point is 00:20:16 So we were in that one room right next to it. And yeah, the heater wasn't on very high. I only had it on maybe a notch above low. And, you know, I didn't notice, I don't know, I think you may have turned it down when you got up out of bed. But, you know, when I checked in the morning, it was at the same spot. So based on how hot it was that how much heat it was putting out when we went to bed at low, it shouldn't have been that hot. And that's kind of the thing that I was like, you know, thinking about more in the morning.
Starting point is 00:20:45 And I didn't want to say anything because I don't want to freak myself out anymore. Yeah, that's interesting. I don't know what was going on in that cabin or cottage, however you want to call it. But there's definitely something going on there. And I think I'm going to ask Peter about it next time I talk to him because I want to know if he's ever heard of anybody else experiencing stuff in there because it definitely, I just can't imagine that was the first time something happening because I don't know, things like that don't happen to me, you know, so I just can't imagine that's the first time
Starting point is 00:21:19 that that's happened in that cabin. But definitely interesting experience and I'm glad you were there to experience it with me. Next week, we're going to be having another story told by me. And this is probably the most paranormal encounter I've ever had my entire life. And it involves what I believe to be a warlock. An experience that I had with a warlock, a three-hour experience I had with a warlock one Saturday morning. And that's all I'm going to give you right now. Tune in for next week because I will definitely be sharing that story as Halloween quickly approaches. and hopefully that story will give you some chills and get you in the mood for Halloween. Jack, I appreciate you coming on and just talking with me about the Chautau Lake Bigfoot Expo
Starting point is 00:22:10 experience in the cabin. I thought that was interesting and I'm glad you joined me. Oh yeah, anytime. Thanks for having me on, Tony. You got it, man. So this week's show we have Andy coming on and Andy is in England and he actually runs a blog and he's done a lot of different documentaries and he just came out of the book called The Beast of Britain. And he comes on to talk about see me. monsters this week that he has researched over in the United Kingdom. So without any further delay, let's bring on Andy and hear what he has to say. Okay, I have Andy on tonight, and Andy is actually in the UK, and he wants to talk to us tonight about some of the things that he has uncovered about
Starting point is 00:22:47 different cryptids in England and the area. Andy, how are you? Very good, very good. Very happy to be here, Tony. Thank you for having me on. Oh, it's my pleasure, man. I'm just glad you reached out and contacted with me because I really was excited to hear from you, especially when you start talking about how you know a lot about water monsters, sea monsters, because for me, my entire life, Nessie has been a fascination. I just, ever since I was a kid, I always enjoyed hearing about Nessie. And so whenever somebody says to me that they know a little bit about that, you know, my ears perk up. So I really appreciate you communicating with me. And Andy, before we get into tonight's show talking about these different cryptids, I want to let the audience know.
Starting point is 00:23:30 You did write a book called Beast of Britain, and you also work on different documentaries, right? That's right, yeah. So I've written a book called Beast of Britain. The idea for this came about watching some of these famous shows on television, like finding Bigfoot in a monster quest and things like that. And I'm wondering to myself, well, you know, I've always been aware of lots of different cryptids. it's here in this country. And yet we're always looking abroad to the US or to the Himlays and other places like this, you know, far away and more plausible, it seems to us that something unusual might exist there.
Starting point is 00:24:08 And what might we have in our own country? So I decided to look into it. And starting with things like water monsters, lake monsters, river and sea monsters, something that I found a lot of information on in the UK. It seems to be something we have for a long hair. history with and also right into modern times you have many many modern sightings. Lochness would be one of the major cases of this, but there are other sightings around the country as well in different lakes and coastal areas.
Starting point is 00:24:42 So I started writing a book and discovered other cryptids along the way like the British Bigfoot and Raptors, Mystery Raptors and Big Cats and Dogman and things like that too, which were very exciting. to me. Now, the documentaries I've become involved with accidentally really, being interested in this area. One of the major ones that's happening
Starting point is 00:25:05 right now featuring some of the biggest names in Cryptozologies called Cryptozoologists, which is a very different documentary that's looking at the people themselves that dedicate their lives to this kind of study, this fruitless, penniless
Starting point is 00:25:21 study that all of us have become obsessed with, and it features people like Lauren Coleman, Lyle Blackburn, Adam Davis, Linda Godfrey. And there's a UK segment that's actually travelling around the world. I'll be part of the UK segment in people like Richard Freeman, who's investigated the Mongolian deathworm and various Russian like monsters, John Downs, of the Crypto, as the Centre for Fortune Zoology, which is the biggest cryptozoology group in the world. and they publish a lot of books as well. And many, many others like Deborah Hatzwell of the British Bigfoot Research Group.
Starting point is 00:26:00 So I got involved in this documentary just as a contact to begin with, and we started working together much closer, and I became a producer of sorts for this segment here in the UK. And these guys are doing a great job. It is a Kickstarter documentary. So there is a site
Starting point is 00:26:18 you can go into Cryptozoologist.org and find information there. And along the way, have also encountered others, like Christopher Turner's British Bigfoot documentary, elusive. And I've got my own one, which is being filmed at the moment. We're getting the pitch together, so to speak, called Beasts of Britain under the same name. That's fantastic, man. I'm really fascinated by the fact that you're so involved in these documentaries and, you know, writing books and stuff. It's just people suggest to me that I should, you know, try doing something. And I'm just like, I don't know where to even begin with that stuff,
Starting point is 00:26:50 you know? So it's really cool. Well, for me, I think it was accidental, really. I didn't think that anybody would even be interested in the book. And I took a 25-year obsessive private research and suddenly decided, you know, at age 40, that, okay, well, you know, maybe I'll just write a book about it. Nobody will probably want to hear about it. And I started releasing parts, chapters of the book, the blog, and posting them on a few pages. and got a good response. I thought, well, let's keep going.
Starting point is 00:27:25 Why don't we contact a few publishers and see if they like this or contact a few directors and see if they want to produce a documentary with you? Something different. I know we have the Finding Bigfoot Show, which I was a fan of. I know they never found anything, but it was an enjoyable show and other things like that, a Survivor Man. And I wanted something different. So for me, my personal documentary will be,
Starting point is 00:27:51 something more akin to maybe river monsters, you know that show? Absolutely. With Jeremy Wade meets Coast, which is a very popular show here. The people who travel around the coastline of Britain investigating just the history. It's just full of beautiful scenery and little stories. And then there's a third show here. It's actually a fictional show called The Detectorists. I don't know if you know what metal detectors are.
Starting point is 00:28:16 Sure. Yeah, so a lot of people here have this habit. It's a bit of a square, sort of geeky habit. They go along the coast in the muddy estuaries and they, or even in fields, and they put these middle detectors out and they look for things. Well, two very big actors, one who was in the Pirates of the Caribbean and the Office series. I forget his name now, unfortunately. They're creative this show, the detectors about these two lovely guys, you know, slightly geeky that go around the country looking for things hidden. Myself and the director I'm working with, wouldn't that be a nice ankle?
Starting point is 00:28:49 you know again it's more of an observational point to come from to look at cryptisology instead of here we are in the dark you know making funny calls and hoping to get something on my vision why don't we actually follow the guy who's interviewing people and looking at this in his life and as well as the expeditions and the research and see what we come up with more of a personal view
Starting point is 00:29:15 that's really cool it's a different angle for sure kind of almost behind the scenes of some of these researchers' lives and how they go about interviewing these people and all that stuff. That's really cool. Yeah. Yeah. And see if we really are as sad as everybody pleased us to be. Let's see what kind of impoverished lifestyle we have. I mean, obviously, people like me and we work. Most cryptosologists work as a job for a living. you know, this, it's a hobby interest for most people, not everybody, but I believe those, I know, who are full-time writers are successful, they work very hard to make their money. And although I wouldn't mind seeing some success from it, I don't have any allusions to making money from it. And I think that helps me keep the research genuine because I'm not essentially trying to tailor things to create finance, you know, financial return.
Starting point is 00:30:14 I'm just interested in the subject and what I can find out. Do you think that there's a chance of it being picked up by a network? It's possible. The person I won't mention the director I'm working with, but he's worked for some of the major channels. And I said it had a lot of successful documentaries of this nature, of the observational, sort of human story nature that have done quite well. So it's possible.
Starting point is 00:30:42 But even in conversations between us, We realize that knowing the people you should speak to you and have them as contacts doesn't guarantee you anything. I would like to say yes. I think it's a different concept to look at our country and not others to find things. And then if they were thinking budgeting for it, of course it would be quite cheap because we're right here already. So yes, possibly. But I wouldn't like to say, I can't predict the future, I suppose. Well, that's good. I mean, it's kind of like if you have a producer that has a history of being successful with these types of things, he's walking into the situation with the resume that people respect. So hopefully luck is on your side and you can get on a network or two. That'd be really cool. That would be awesome. That would be really awesome. Even from my perspective, selfishly wanting to see the beautiful areas of my own country. I probably haven't seen before. I have been to Lockness once or twice in the past.
Starting point is 00:31:43 But there are actually over 31,000 loch and lochens in Scotland. So there's so many undiscovered places. And a part of the research I'm looking at in the book, Bees of Britain, is to look at sightings and try to correlate them with other factors, not only in Lochness, but in other locks, but there have been one or two sightings as well. And I wrote a chapter in the book called Following the Shoals, in this case meaning the fish shells
Starting point is 00:32:14 and there was a sighting here in London 2016 you see of a large three-hummed creature very very large and was filmed from the cable car and across the Thames River in London and there were three separate filmed sightings of this creature over a two-week period which for all intensive purposes
Starting point is 00:32:34 seemed to represent some sort of Loch Ness monster kind of creature now right in the middle of the Thames in March to April, this is a busy waterway. This isn't exactly some absurdly rural place where you never see anything, and whatever it was, clearly it was a visitor. So I had this idea, and I thought,
Starting point is 00:32:56 okay, let's see what kind of fish migrations we're having at the moment in this area. What I discovered was, as the eel migration starts, at that point they start returning through the Thames, up into the river there. and I looked a bit further and so there were sightings of
Starting point is 00:33:13 the Loch Ness monster and another sea monster called Morgau in Cornwall. They've been cited eating eels. So I thought, okay, so maybe this creature was chasing a shell. Why don't we try to figure out
Starting point is 00:33:30 with places like Loch Ness that have more frequent regular sightings what kind of fish movement we have? What kind of stocks we have? and when they come and go, what I discovered was, I said there was a correlation over 15 years
Starting point is 00:33:45 between how much rainfall there was which affected the salmon catch, the numbers of the salmon catch because there were less insects and of course, they're insectivirce these fish and when there were less salmon
Starting point is 00:34:00 there were less sightings. And suddenly there it was. There's one link that you can look at. And if you you know, managed to correlate this kind of information regularly, perhaps there would be a way to predict
Starting point is 00:34:17 future sightings, or at least a lightly sighting in an area at a certain time based upon environmental factors and other things like fish dogs. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's kind of like, I mean, I come from, I got started with the cryptid stuff with the Bigfoot thing, and, you know, it's kind of like what we say with Bigfoot, follow the food.
Starting point is 00:34:35 You know, that's kind of... Yeah, exactly. The basics of life, you know. People say, to me, do you think Bigfoot migrates? And I say, well, I think Bigfoot follows the food. So if that means they migrate, they migrate. Because if Bigfoot's out there, they need to follow where the food sources are. And that's a seasonal thing.
Starting point is 00:34:55 So that's really interesting, though, that you made that correlation. Now, you said that there's 31,000 locks in the UK? No, there's 31,400. think it's the number lochs and lochends lochends are like small locks now loch is just a Scottish name for a lake right so that's what we call them there and that's just in Scotland and the is surrounded Scotland that's that's incredible I mean this incredible land and many of them are connected to each other or connected to the sea in some way so lochness is connected to loch lochie loch oich amich others and eventually
Starting point is 00:35:36 patterns out of the sea through the river nests on one side. On the other side it has a more awkward route. It goes through there's a few locks L-O-C-K-S locks, as through the Caladonian canal and other places that it has to navigate to get
Starting point is 00:35:52 out to the sea which would be I hope it would simply put it down that one just tell exactly the route it should take here. Sorry, yes, okay. So if it was coming in from the sea on the west side it would be
Starting point is 00:36:09 via loch linea lochio the river lochhi loch loch loch kinn loch oich and the river oich to for augustus and then into loch-ness now that's route it does have a few locks along the way canals
Starting point is 00:36:23 but if the creature is amphibious and this area rurally at night there's no lighting it's just blackness I've been there a few times why can it perhaps you know travel across land for short periods just to get to the other you know the other body of
Starting point is 00:36:40 water it needs to reach or why couldn't they move between the rivers to the other lochs that the uh that lochness is connected to searching for food or you know uh habitation i personally think this is a creature that is sometimes based at sea or our sea sightings around the coast of Scotland and sometimes based in Lochness and other locks in the in Scotland in the Scottish Highlands and that's why we only see them occasionally we see them when they're moving through when they're in the lock so you think that this could possibly cross land at times yes I mean there have been land sightings over the years and they only actually account for six percent of all the sightings as a Loch Ness most land if you
Starting point is 00:37:28 think that there's allegedly 11,000 of those sightings and it last 84 years, and it's very infrequent. I'm not really thinking if it's a migratory animal, but more than it has a transient presence in this loch and others, and occasionally it's in the sea as well, and that's probably following food sources or perhaps a roaming behavior of some kind. It's just a theory, but in my mind most people ignore the fact of the connected locks to lock next thing
Starting point is 00:38:00 ignore the fact that you can't reach the scene you know if you wade through shallows at some point or cross certain locks or small pieces of land where we're only really talking about for instance with the Caledonia canal is exiting the lock before the canal and
Starting point is 00:38:16 entering it again just afterwards you know for an easier route through which isn't out of the realm of possibility for an amphibious animal. That's fascinating. That's absolutely fascinating because I remember when I was a kid, first off, I would like to say you're absolutely right because over here, I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of people that I heard of what you just said, but I don't remember hearing people talk about these things going on land, but I do remember now that you mentioned it that when I was a kid,
Starting point is 00:38:48 I used to take a book out of the library at school about Loch Ness Monster. And I remember in the book, there was a sighting of somebody saying they saw it on land. And I remember thinking as a kid that that's impossible because it's a fish. But hearing you say that, you know, it just kind of brought all that back to me. And I'm thinking, hmm, that's really interesting. I think it is very interesting. That could be a possibility. there aren't a lot of land sightings
Starting point is 00:39:19 and most of them are disputed now what you normally find with Lochness research is that there are so many people dedicated to this kind of research who actually are really, really against the possibility of it being a real creature. You have people that have been dug in if you will
Starting point is 00:39:38 at the lock for the last five decades I won't mention any names, they're very good researchers, but they're opinion is that there is no lock in a monster. These alleged 11,000 sightings and it's been seven this year, there was seven last year, are just
Starting point is 00:39:54 mistaken identities. They're all based upon persons wanting to see the monster. Which, you know, it's a reasonable point of view, actually, you know, since it's so famous, if you look around the world, you know, almost every other monster around the world
Starting point is 00:40:11 is named an emulation of it in some way. You know, if you've got Neski, in Russia and Icy in Japan and things like this. So yes, people might have monsters on the brain when they come in to Loch Ness to holiday and I had my honeymoon there. I've got a very understanding wife. And sure enough, I was transfixed on this lock the whole time and it's very hard to see anything on the surface of the water.
Starting point is 00:40:37 It's very deep body water and the water moves in a very strange way because of the different currents and the winds that hit this, you know, long, thin loch in the Scottish Highlands there. So I personally thought it would be very hard to make something out clearly that wasn't very distinct on the water. I could see how people might think power waves and wakes with a monster, but it didn't really have much explanation for things like the head and neck or the big two or three humps, you know, 40 to 50 feet long, moving at speed and displacing water.
Starting point is 00:41:15 That doesn't seem to be easy to mistake for anything else, not a giant eel, not a sturgeon, which, incidentally, you've never ever been spotted in the Larcourt there. I think Greenland Shark is what Jeremy Wade said from River Onces when he investigated it. But again, you know, even something like that would only account for a sighting, you know, where you see a long flat body in the water. It wouldn't account for anything you see on land or erased, odd neck or anything like that. And even the biggest
Starting point is 00:41:48 water puts there couldn't account for that. And it's a strange position. I write in the book about the mystery, the only true mystery of Lochness is why we have so many researchers there still who don't believe in it. And yet
Starting point is 00:42:04 even they've concluded there's no monster. They're still there researching. And it seems like the most sad and almost failed scientific experiment in history, you've concluded your experiment was a failure. You didn't find what you were looking for, yet you're still there. That could be financial.
Starting point is 00:42:23 There's a lot of money made at the lock, and it's a beautiful area. They might just like living there, and that's a way to make money in the highlands which doesn't have really much industry at all. But for me, it's a strange thing. This area of cryptotology research actually has the most critics within it rather than without. see i didn't know that and i i find that peculiar as well that uh the researchers themselves are so critical of the existence of this creature i find that interesting and you know it again kind of like the bigfoot community i've been part of you know there's a lot of people in there
Starting point is 00:43:03 that they they're research like they they will research the topic avidly but they're not but they really don't believe it exists and i guess it it in a certain sense, I mean, it lends to... It's skepticism. It's fine. Right. And, you know, if you do find anything, then it's more credible, I guess. I don't know. But if I didn't believe that something existed, I don't know if I could continue researching it for that long. I mean, that's the thing. I personally think, I've talked to some of really great researchers about this. and everybody's got their theory
Starting point is 00:43:44 and some of them are really far out some of them are a bit more plausible now I am a proponent at the Pleasured's Theory and I get a lot of criticism for that because you get criticised for believing that reports could resemble something that's supposed to have died out
Starting point is 00:44:01 a long time ago allegedly but all of the well most of the reports not only in Loch Ness so I don't only look here but look around the world to see corresponding reports like Champlain and Ogabu and things like that and even in this country around the coast and the other lakes so all of the reports most often correspond to a place you
Starting point is 00:44:26 saw description and yet nobody even the researchers who love the subject are nobody's allowed to say that nobody will say it i got criticized quite fiercely by by one person recently for saying that it is a place you saw based on the descriptions because no serious or cryptologist or cryptologist worth his weight would believe such a thing these days. So the question I put to this person was, well, if all of the reports describe, or many of the reports would describe pleasure sort of like features all around the world, and yet I'm supposed to say it's not because no decent researcher would believe that, then that seems quite odd to. It doesn't seem scientific. People propose things like a giant long-necked seal, right?
Starting point is 00:45:16 Or giant eel, giant catfish, many of the things, an otter, many otters being mistaken for something. Seals often, you know, used as an excuse, but they don't often get into the lock. And when you see seals, they're very discernible. It's a very typical animal. And yet, you look at these reports right, the country, and she or are. oh, here's that description time and time again, and in the US and in Russia and other places, variations of this plesithosaur type animal,
Starting point is 00:45:53 maybe different types of species of them, but variations nonetheless and have a corroboration. I'm not to labor it too much, but I think if we were hunting some non-criminal and a hundred different witnesses gave the same description, we said, well, that can't be him, because he doesn't exist. surely we'd have to say well actually you know these these guys they don't know each other and they keep describing the same person
Starting point is 00:46:17 maybe it's that person right absolutely have you have you heard of lake monsters or sea monsters in the united states i know there's rumors of certain i guess sea monster in the great lakes have you heard about that yeah i've heard of a few actually so um there's uh the altamaha right uh is that in mississippi somewhere, Lake Champlin, Champ, obviously. Ogopogo, Iggy Pogo, I'm aware of, and I think that's in the corresponding lake.
Starting point is 00:46:51 There was, I wish there was sort of, there's the Cassie, Chessie, I think, which is a big caddy, obviously, the caprosaurus, that's a very well-known one. And
Starting point is 00:47:06 I believe was there one in Lake Erie, is I think there are many, many reports. You used to have a list of them for the American ones. And they've kind of slipped out of my mind recently. I've been so focused on this British thing. It seemed to have ignored all other cryptosologists. Huge things have probably happened, and I've just completely blanked it. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:47:29 I mean, I know that it's kind of like if somebody's going to say that it's impossible for there to be a C-monauts. there anywhere else in the world. I mean, for me, it doesn't make sense because if there is any kind of crypted, unless it's a supernatural cryptid, it would need to reproduce, which means that there would be a population of them somewhere. And the fact that we're talking about sea monsters, I mean, the ocean is very much undiscovered, you know? So, I mean, who's to say what's down there? Because we can't get down there to see it. We can't. And even in the a place like if you want to talk about Loch Ness in that regard. I mean, it's some people say it's
Starting point is 00:48:17 700 feet deep in places. Some people say 900 feet. I'm not really sure. It's disputed, but it's very, very deep. And the water is brown. All of the peat from the local hills runs down and they have a lot of rain there into the loch. And you can't see, you know, more than 10, 20 feet below the surface. Now, there's plenty of room. And therefore, a family, you know, of large animals to live. And people say, there isn't really plenty of food, but there is. It comes in and out, but there's plenty going on there. And yet, you know, people say, well, it couldn't possibly be in the larkness.
Starting point is 00:48:54 And yet we haven't completely charted all of it. We haven't discovered all of the little caves going off to the side. You know, it's incomplete blackness. So who knows what's there? We don't know. And the most important thing, well, I discovered when I was there, is once it gets dark, This is a feature of rural Britain. There's no extra lighting.
Starting point is 00:49:15 It's just black. You couldn't see. I stood right next to the lock and you could not see anything. I thought, well, something could actually be right next to me right now. And I wouldn't have a clue. Wow, that's kind of creepy to think about. I did get a bit creeped out, actually, at that point. I went back to the hotel.
Starting point is 00:49:33 Yeah. Well, I mean, you brought up a good point earlier about how these things might be able to commute back. and forth from bigger bodies of water into the lock and things like that. And I think that idea presents such a dichotomy that it really, I mean, when you look at that, you're like, well, maybe they could exist
Starting point is 00:49:51 then, especially if they're not living in one centralized location. Go ahead. I was going to say, that's what I think. It could be seen as an excuse. A lot of people would dispute the travel over land for reasons of what they would be seen.
Starting point is 00:50:09 Well, they have been seen. So yes, they would be seen. But not all the time. And again, we say at nighttime, if they're an octurnal animal and they travel over land at night, for short distances only. And it's heavily wooded, you know, and there's hills surrounding it everywhere. The loch, you know, quite easily. The population is tiny.
Starting point is 00:50:28 It could quite easily, I think, move across land. I think the most difficult route for them from the loch to the sea would be via the river nest because parts of it. actually directly pass through the town of Inverness. And if you walk along, it's incredibly shallow at points. So that, to me, seems less likely than the other route were the locks and the canals and everything else. And this route out to the sea.
Starting point is 00:50:54 But then we have to think about the first reported sighting of Nessie by St. Columba was, I think it's at 565, I'll probably get the day wrong now, was in the river Ness and not in the lock at all. So, yeah, clearly the animal has been, yeah, seen there, although I'm guessing that it wasn't as developed in 565 as it is now. But, yes. So, you know, they do move about that's not, that's not the only thing with like monsters and see monsters and bring up. They're all around the country, all around the country. And there's a few sightings.
Starting point is 00:51:33 Just quickly tell you about these, if that's okay. So there was a citing in 2010 in the River Mercy, which is at the top of North Wales near Liverpool. And that river then goes around to the other side, and there's a
Starting point is 00:51:49 sighting there near the River D, which goes all the way to Lake Balor in North Wales, where we have Tejee, the Lake Balor monster, which resembles a plesiosaur, believe in or not. And then in 2016,
Starting point is 00:52:05 We had the sighting in the Abererran River, which is not so far from a famous monster hub called the Barmouth Estuary Monster. And this is part of the coast. You can almost see this habit of this creature moving down, moving into these little waterways and estuaries, coming out again, you know, perhaps going in further to a lake here or there. and a lot of the route is very rural, very isolated. People say, well, it couldn't happen. We'd know. But if you travel to the countryside here, it's not like the US. We have lots of off the path hikers.
Starting point is 00:52:47 People go on about. Most of us stick to the route to the path. We're on the path kind of people. We go to lovely beauty spots and things, but we generally don't go. searching in the middle of the night for things in the rolling hills and fields and forests. Nobody's out there looking. And I think that's the key to this.
Starting point is 00:53:09 This is how things have been hidden because they're taking a nocturnal route to their movements. Yeah, that's really fascinating. I didn't realize that there was that kind of number of recent sightings. Lots. Yeah, that's really cool. when you talk about, and this is kind of backtracking a little bit here, but it might also lend to some thoughts as to how some of these people who are having these sightings nowadays can go about looking for this stuff. When you were talking about these things possibly crossing some land, have you ever heard of any accounts of people finding maybe big drag marks across land that's undescrib like nobody can really describe or understand what caused it? Because I'm assuming that these things don't have legs, right? They would have to drag themselves across land. I'm assuming it's flippers or fins of some kind in Lochness I've not heard of drag marks
Starting point is 00:54:02 I did hear one story where I was never able to substantiate it but the way I explained it to myself as well actually there's a lot of rain in that region you know it could be across a grassy plain but also I think a lot of the rain would wash a lot of what's left out and they have that kind of rainfall but in the site I was talking to you about in the Barber's estuary
Starting point is 00:54:25 where that creature was sort of, it had a pleasiest sort of look to it. It was witnessed walking across land a couple of times in the estuary with a crocodile-like appearance but with a long neck and more of a rounded head and round, hip-wish kind of feet
Starting point is 00:54:43 marks out of both of footprints with extended claws in them. So this animal was witnessed on land several times in that area. over a course of many years and has also left footprints many times as well,
Starting point is 00:54:58 as well as drag marks and footprints people have seen coming out of the sea onto a beach. I think it was witnessed in the I haven't really, I think it was in the 80s by a group of schoolgirls
Starting point is 00:55:10 who said that the animal saw them coming along the beach at dusk and quickly dragged itself back into the water appeared in a sort of typical lake monster
Starting point is 00:55:23 of fashion sort of a bumpy, humpy kind of back, long neck with a sort of a rounded turtle-like head and large green eyes made its way into the water and was there staring at them. I guess I think it was around about 20 feet long.
Starting point is 00:55:39 So there's hundreds of stories like that around the UK. A really good source probably the best Leg and Sea Monster book about the UK's. It's called Sea Monsters, so as a servants and late monsters of the British Isles
Starting point is 00:55:55 by Paul Harrison and he's just painstakingly gone through very old to very modern reports, you know, one by one and listed the report chronologically. Even though he is determined that it's some sort of
Starting point is 00:56:10 giant eel, you know, he kind of indicates in the book that his theory isn't foolproof. It's just his preferred view of what it would be. You mentioned earlier about the caves. Is that a common thing in the locks over there that there's caves underneath the water? There are some no caves as far as I'm aware. But again, this is in dispute. Nobody's really
Starting point is 00:56:38 got down there to investigate properly what's happening down there and what they have. Either, I think it's because the finance and the interest is no longer there to investigate these these supposed caves and maybe airlocks that could be under the lock or the conditions are too difficult I don't know what they would need but even with an SUV you're not going to see anything in front of you now they have I think they have sonar mapped at the bottom of the lock and it's all wrinkled up you know on allegedly several areas appear to be caves
Starting point is 00:57:18 but I don't think anything further has been done about that Well, that's really fascinating. And I know you were talking about earlier how there's other cryptids in the UK that you're currently looking into and things like that. And obviously, one of those is Bigfoot. And I know of a guy, and you probably do know who he is. He has a YouTube channel. His name is Bigfoot Tony. And I'm friends with him on Facebook and we've talked a few times. He's a really good guy. And he's actually uncovered some pretty interesting stuff. He has. He really has. Now, Jason or Bigfoot Tony, his name is, I only know him through the British Bigfoot Research Group. The head of that group is Deborah Hatzwell. And what she's done over, she had a sighting in the 80s in Wheel Hill, which is a big country estate. And another person were we called bunking off school. So they took the day off school and they went hid and smoked in some country estate there.
Starting point is 00:58:17 And she saw this Bigfoot creature before anybody in the UK knew what Bigford was and, you know, it really affected her deeply. So the next four decades, she compiled all these sightings and has this Facebook group of which Bigford Tony is a part. And what he does amazingly well is the breakdown of the sightings. I know he covers international sightings, actually, not just UK ones. And it does some really insightful and matter of fact. breakdown. And you can see he's an interest in the subject, but he's not looking to prove something that's not true. And I've seen him debunk a few things as well, but generally speaking, he's really, you know, one of the main guys for it. Did you ever see his footage on
Starting point is 00:59:04 Cuffilly Mountain, that's a mountain in South Wales, of the Bigfoot pushing a tree, and he accidentally captured? Yes, the one where he was actually pointing at a branch in front of him and he caught the tree in the background. Yeah, and this big figure at the bottom. pushing it. I thought that was quite amazing, you know. There were others he would be with the primary characters here, Deborah Hatzwell, I think she'd be the main person for
Starting point is 00:59:27 everybody. And then you have Christopher Turner. He's producing the documentary elusive we talked about. Many, many other people as well. There were Neil Young, who's sent it in the Howard Forest. You might have seen his section on the
Starting point is 00:59:45 Finding Bigfoot British edition. I think I have, yeah Do you ever see that? Yeah, so he actually featured on that and he had some photos and he's actually played to me a very interesting clip of possible infrasound below 20HC then he and another researcher
Starting point is 01:00:02 recorded at his research site right after they felt very uneasy and for reasons and known to them left the site overnight when it came somewhere else and came back and got the record of the next day and what was really interesting about this if infrasound is real, you know, for these creatures, I mean, and it's used to create an uneasy feeling, which lots of people describe before or after a Bigford sighting. A very sort of a weird
Starting point is 01:00:30 sense of doom or dread. A lot of people have talked about that. Yeah, and, you know, with the infrasound idea of things, I know when I first heard about that, I thought that was crazy. It was, you know, weird and stuff. But then I looked into that a little bit, and I just saw that other animals do have this ability. Tigers, drafts, whales. I know elephants. Tigers actually use infrasound as a weapon to disable their prey. Exactly.
Starting point is 01:00:57 They stun their prey. I thought that was amazing. You know, you could possibly, there are so many accounts that I even picked up accounts on Yawihunters.com, the Australian radio show to interview Yawi witnesses, which is like the Bigfoot over there. And although they don't talk about this, I picked up on a sighting where three hunters
Starting point is 01:01:22 had felt something very, very uneasy. It's a feeling of dread coming from them. They weren't fearful people, and then they witnessed these Bigfoot, or Yawis. And I thought, that's it. This keeps coming up now and again, like the stale smell, like these weird characteristics they have,
Starting point is 01:01:42 maybe the infrastructure, and this is a get out of my area, a weapon, get away from me. And what Neil described to me is that they wouldn't have left the area ordinarily because it was a viable research area. Yeah, they just felt a bit unnerved, and they left, unconsciously left. They didn't question why are we leaving. When they came back the next day, they found they'd recorded this sound, which sounds very impressive.
Starting point is 01:02:09 Yeah, that's fascinating because, I mean, if you're out there looking for this stuff and you're actually out there researching the possibility of these creatures, you know, you wouldn't voluntarily leave an area that you think is possible to host something. But if it's, you know, infrasound where inside for some reason it just, I don't know, I guess it's like some kind of subliminal messaging that happens within your inner body that you just, for whatever reason, doesn't make sense, but you just wind up believing. That's really interesting.
Starting point is 01:02:39 It is. Yeah. It definitely made an impression on me. So Tony is doing his stuff over there with the videos and he's, you know, found different different evidences with his videos on YouTube. Yeah. Outside of him, because he's the, he's the one I really know over there. Has there been anybody recently that has uncovered any evidence of Bigfoot in the UK?
Starting point is 01:03:07 There have been some footprints. Actually, one of them features in. in my book and that was also passed to me by a friend of Neil Young's and I think it was
Starting point is 01:03:19 around 18 inches long with footprint which could be within the size of a person but a very big person if that was the
Starting point is 01:03:26 case walking around barefoot in the mud so there are few footprints but they're not really as distinguishable
Starting point is 01:03:34 from what I can see I think there was also some alleged baby big footprints as well in drink water Park, which is a research area of a great researcher called Robert Lee Harper.
Starting point is 01:03:48 But again, we've got a very wet country. There's a lot of rain and muddy, groundland, which is very grassy as well. And they don't seem to really stick. I think Brickfetone has the best evidence so far. The tree pusher, that's the first real video evidence, if anything. there was also a lady in in Kent
Starting point is 01:04:13 who witnessed something if you used to go running out of the I think it was in Arndel Forest running out of the bushes her dog chased it out which appeared like a large hairy man stooped down and running in
Starting point is 01:04:27 sort of a forward motion and she did have a very blurry picture of that made the papers it's hardly to know if that was genuine or not and now there There are lots of sightings, modern sightings. I was actually up investigating a Bigfoot sighting.
Starting point is 01:04:44 Now, this isn't the most recent one, but it's one of my favorites in this called the Box Hill Ape, and that was witnessed in the summer of 2012. And Box Hill is an area in the north down, so it's an A-O-N-B, so we call it an area of natural, outstanding natural beauty. And that's in Surrey. That's the area I'm in. and there was a there's a man that's 300 feet elevation this hill and on one side of it it's steeply forested all around on one side of this is
Starting point is 01:05:13 really steep steps they call them steps and really what they are is a two and a half long pieces of earth hedged in with some wood to form these steps that it winds down and it's heavily forested on the other side and at the bottom is a stream with these round pretty stepping stones that go across it so a jogger at that time had heard some wood knocks whilst running in this area but didn't really think anything they didn't know what a wood knock was and it's so maybe some work was going on somewhere and after their job they rested on these steps which i walked down recently myself and they're very steep and very winding and hidden and they heard somebody coming down the steps behind them
Starting point is 01:05:56 and thinking it was a dog walk they just sat to the side to let them pass and nobody passed so looking back, having an unnerved feeling and then looking back, they saw a large muscular ape, something like an ape, standing on two legs, over six feet tall, was covering in brownfield with great patches in it. And what the describe was that the face was very human looking with a flat nose, but the jaw seemed big and out of proportion to the head, and the head itself was domed at the top, like a gorilla almost, and they'd looked at them for about 30 seconds, and then left, whilst all the time looking back over its shoulder to check where the person was.
Starting point is 01:06:42 And one of the significant things that comes up time and time again that this person mentioned was a stale farm animal kind of smell that lingered afterwards, not cheering, but once it left, I wonder, again, we hear over these bad smells from Bigfords and things like that. that to me was um you know it hit a chord because here's the registered this person doesn't know anything about these creatures and yet one of the things that stands out to them is there's a bad smell afterwards and that to me that's a tick in the box you know bigfoot leads a bad smell yeah and um i thought that was you know it's a really really great sighting and it's lots of other things like like that here um i give you another one if you want actually go for it um
Starting point is 01:07:28 Now, this one I really, really like because it happened in Bristol. That's in the southwest of England, Bristol. And this was in August of 2013. And there's a woods or a forest they're called Lee Woods Nature Reserve. And Walker was walking through the woods. She was taking a Lishly walk. and they witnessed something that they described as a wild man, so a hairy large man that was digging in the earth with a twig
Starting point is 01:08:05 and then picked something up, that it dug up and began eating in, then used another twig to pick its teeth. Then the witness saw the creature weave some twigs together, stand up, snap a large tree branch, and lean it against another tree and walk off. Now the description was really amazing description
Starting point is 01:08:29 was there was over six feet tall old looking with grey skin and throughout the sighting it seemed to be chattering to something off to its left side
Starting point is 01:08:46 so he felt that there was something else or another one somewhere in this area but all of the elements of this is it's a very ape-like, you know, it's using a tool to feed, and then you've got the bigfoot things, you know, it picks its teeth, it snaps of the tree branch, it's another bigfoot habit, and leans it against another tree. So these sticklings, they come up time and time again, as well as weaving the twigs together, where they call them glyphs, these little glyphs,
Starting point is 01:09:15 like the egg glyph and these different types of shapes are left in areas time and time again. that's an ape-like characteristic you know apes leaf signs they they communicate and I just thought it was an amazing sighting to yeah absolutely I mean that's
Starting point is 01:09:34 I've heard of people saying that you know Bigfoot will do stick leans and I personally was out in the woods once where I came across an area where everywhere I looked there was these stick liens where it and it wasn't that a stick or a branch broke off a tree and fell and leaned against the tree because the part that was
Starting point is 01:09:56 broken off the tree was actually in the ground. So it was like leaning on the ground. So like something, it wasn't like it just broke and fell down that way. And every single lean was like that. And there was tons of them all over the place. It was a very interesting investigation. I've never, I've never seen a big foot myself. But that day, we have, we have, we have, we have. We have, we found so much stuff that day. Anywhere from the stick liens to an actual TP structure that was absolutely huge. And we also found a footprint that day. So all those different things coming together, it was like, okay, well, this might be an area that's a hot zone.
Starting point is 01:10:39 I find it interesting when people describe characteristics of a Bigfoot when they have no clue about Bigfoot at all. They're not interested in the topic. They just tell you what they saw, and they say that they saw it lean a stick against a tree, or it smelled really bad, and they described the smell. And it kind of gives validity to all the other people who say these things. You know, when you have somebody who, they have no history with Bigfoot, but they will describe something that is a very common thing throughout all the encounters. That's right, actually.
Starting point is 01:11:14 And that's one of the most important thing about the British Bigfoot. sightings. Unlike the US, this is not a known phenomenon here. So even when you mention it to other cryptosologists, they're quite surprised and mostly see out right. Well, there's not the habitat. There's no British Bigfoot here. It's just because of the American phenomenon. But that's not actually very popular here. Nobody thinks that we have Bigfoot. And to have sightings come in, they generally come in. And many of these been reported by Deborah Hatswell, of the the British Bigfoot Research Group. She has this amazing interactive map on Google,
Starting point is 01:11:52 and you can find it on this site, where you can actually click on the part of the map where the site has taken place, and it will bring up the witness sighting. You can read it whilst looking at the map. It's really amazing, and she's really painstakingly put these together, you know, over a big period of years.
Starting point is 01:12:10 And generally these days, she tells me she's getting two to three sightings a week, oftentimes coming through to her because people have suddenly started to realize actually there's somebody I can tell about this there's something going on somebody knows about these things
Starting point is 01:12:26 I think it's not a British characteristic to make up stories about things obviously some people do but it's not a general thing that we do because you don't normally get positive attention but you won't make any money
Starting point is 01:12:43 from it for stars You want to go on some sort of tour giving lectures and talks. And, you know, you probably just get a bit of negative attention in the workplace and to the people that you know. And I made a joke to another interview about it saying, well, you know, you won't lose your job. But you can imagine the meeting, you know, should we promote Andy to the position of? Well, yes, sure. But let's promote Dave because Andy thinks there's a big foot. and it's a bit weird
Starting point is 01:13:15 so you've seen his little blog right oh yeah yeah that's a bit strange that's not from that guy I'm not saying it would happen but that's you know it's a bit weird it's like saying it's the equivalent of saying UFOs you know I was abducted by aliens you might as well say
Starting point is 01:13:30 I was abducted by aliens then say you saw a Bigfoot or a late monster or something and I think that's where we differ slightly we've got a small Island is well, it's very overpopulated in the urban centres, but they actually only, urban sprawl only accounts for 16% of the whole landmass. Everywhere else is farmland and hills and countryside and woods and uninhabited areas or very underpopulated areas, a rural countryside. And even the people that live here in this country, they don't realize that because they live in their big,
Starting point is 01:14:07 like me in Ireland, you're in a big busy city. So how have you. could they be habitat? Look, look at all these people. And yet, you know, there is. And I think that's a really significant turning point that we're trying to get to with the book as well. And the show, if it comes about saying, well, actually, look on Google Earth, look at your country. It's just all green. It's just green and countryside and fields and hills. And, you know, there's nobody walking around there in the middle of the night.
Starting point is 01:14:37 Why would they be? it's something out in the middle of nowhere we've got it's not going to be spotted we've got so many such high numbers of farm animals like sheep we've got 20 million sheep in the country
Starting point is 01:14:54 almost 10 million of those in Wales which is where I come from and I think for Tony 2 by the way so that's we're only 3 million population in Wales so you can imagine that's a big number there's 4 million deer in England alone this great fish stocks and cows and small mammals and just there's no natural predators that we know of.
Starting point is 01:15:16 It would be easy to survive out there in this country unseen because who's looking for you. Right. And that's a common thing that I hear from a lot of people, even around here, is that there's so many people that where would they live and people just don't get it. They just don't get it. I mean, I live in a very urbanized area myself. I mean, I'm 45 minutes west of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and that's the fifth biggest city in the country. And so, I mean, just because I'm 45 minutes west of Philly, Philly kind of dumps into my area because it's such a big city. But people don't get it that between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania alone, there's just all woods. I mean, there's little cities here and there,
Starting point is 01:16:02 but it's mostly just mountains and woods. And people just don't really get that. They don't really comprehend how much land is out there. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, especially in the U.S. I mean, sure. It's just the highways. It's just just you and a bunch of trees, right? Yeah. Driving for hours and hours. You brought up a really good point earlier. People stick to the paths. They don't really go off path. Like I do when I go out there, but most people, they stick to paths. And even when they go hiking, they take the designated path that has signs telling you which way to go. And, you know, if there's a semi-intelligent, I don't even say semi-intelligent, if there's an intelligence, if there's an intelligent creature out there that does not want to be seen by human beings and their
Starting point is 01:16:41 natural instinct is to be seclusive, they're not going to be crossing the path in front of you unless they want to. Yeah. No, that's right. And I mean, I think we also have a significant amount of, a significant amount of road crossings here. So a significant amount of our sightings are road crossings. They're just the same. It happens in the U.S. and Canada and other places because you're driving on the road, they have to cross at some point, and that's the most likely place that you're actually going to bump into them. Because when you're in their environment, unless they want to show themselves, or they're really caught off guard, it's very unlikely that you're going to see one.
Starting point is 01:17:23 And people have said, well, where's the history for the British Creekfoot? Now, they actually used to be called Woodwells, which is oddly where the name Woodhouse comes from in this country. The Woodrow's was the hairy man of the forest. You know, the forest guardian, similar to the green man that lived in the forest. And all of our old statues and depictions of the woodwork is covered in hair. You know, often carries a club as well or a stick. You know, so another tool user.
Starting point is 01:17:56 And I think that's amazing. You know, we're always varying habits. It's the same with all dragon legends. You know, when you talk about possible surviving dinosaurs or, you know, prehistoric lizards. reptiles, I mean, everybody else with the evidence is human name dragons, many of which, you know,
Starting point is 01:18:14 almost clearly directly look like pterosaurs or other extinct creatures. They said, well, no, no, that's that's mythology. But when you look at these myths, they're normally just stories told
Starting point is 01:18:31 in the same matter-of-fact way as these modern sightings are. Right. And I, you know, I really think, well, okay, yes, some of them are composite animals. So in Wales we have the Welsh dragon. You probably notice that on the flag if you've ever seen it. It's a big red dragon on a green and white flag. It has four legs and a pair of wings.
Starting point is 01:18:51 And this sort of dragon-like Facebook with a horn on its upper and lower jaw, wings with bat-like fingers in them. And then this long tail with it significantly significant. significantly a sail tail, the end, this diamond-shaped hell, which is in terrosaurus, that's a cartilaginous formation. That's not something when this Welsh dragon was created that would have been known about. So somebody complained to me when I mentioned it, well, about the Welsh dragon with the sail tail. They said, yeah, but it has the bat wings instead of the terrestrial wings. Say, okay, sure, it's a composite animal put together by people who've heard about something, and they, always related to something they know.
Starting point is 01:19:39 But I always thought that the two horns on the upper and lower jaw actually a way of trying to express the beak of the terrestrial. And you have to look it up at some point. And just look at the Welsh, just look at the little Welsh flag. And you'll see it. It's very interesting. So a composite animal. And all of our old pictures here are the Wyvern, for example.
Starting point is 01:20:03 It's almost a classic terroar. It's two-legged. It's got the leather wings, it's got the sail tail, it's got the beak. And that's been in existence in our country for over a thousand years, is this mythical animal. And yet we're like, no, no, no, no. Now these people saw fossils or they saw bones, they saw, bones, they saw, or whatever. And they made up the rest and just got lucky.
Starting point is 01:20:30 It just sounds like a bit of a stretch to me. Yeah, absolutely. Has there been a history of any kind of other off-the-wall cryptids in the UK, especially like, I know we were talking earlier, and you mentioned about flying cryptids. What kind of reports are going on out there with flying cryptids? One of the most recent ones, and I'm taking this from the site LiveTerrorSort.com, and this blog has just come out. Now, I've got a list of some in my book, but this one is, as a reason as September of this year so I think it's significant so basically there's somebody
Starting point is 01:21:11 in Shropshire in England which borders Wales and the Midlands of England and it only has a population of about 10,000 people so it's on the border between Wales and basically a lady was out
Starting point is 01:21:27 there in the countryside and she heard a very unusual screech something she'd never heard before and she was familiar with the local animals like ducks and geese and other
Starting point is 01:21:43 things, swans. And it was very loud. It was getting closer and closer from behind the trees. So she got curious. And then she saw two pterodactals flying side by side past the tree. And she said she had to check
Starting point is 01:21:59 herself, you know, but they were very, very big if they were birds. And that they had had giant beaks on them, and the wings had no feathers. Now, I think that's a teradactyl-like sighting. There are no birds with featherless wings, and they don't exist. She said they were gray in color, and they flew very, very fast. And because they were so big, she could even see them clearly, you know,
Starting point is 01:22:33 when they went between the clearing between the trees and the houses. It was very, very obvious what they were. If she looked at all day and I did foreign birds, all kinds of creatures that could have perhaps escaped or, you know, got out from a zoo somewhere and couldn't match it anything. Only a teradactal match what she saw. And, yeah, I think that's really amazing. This has just happened literally in this area.
Starting point is 01:23:01 And that's about as a. mediate as you can get for a sighting. It's really amazing. And for me, I think they're, I don't think these terrors are, you know, I don't think they're resident in this country. I believe that perhaps they stop here traveling through to somewhere else. Maybe it's a migration route because the sightings are very, very rare. But there are some. That's really fascinating. The area that she was in, what's the landscape look like? Was it very rural or mountain? this? No, it's very rural. Shropshire, it's not really mention this, but it is on the border of Wales. There must be a little
Starting point is 01:23:42 there. Let me just have a look, actually. Okay, so it's a county, it's in the West Midlands of England, border and palace, that's a region in Wales, and Regism and Wales to the north. Let's just have a look at what it says about it. Yes, now look at that. No, it's very, very countrysideish here. and hilly, very hilly, arid landscape, I think, but hills and fields and rocky outcrops.
Starting point is 01:24:15 That seems to be the scale of 10,000 people over that kind of space is why I think is quite significant. Yeah, I know, I believe in West Virginia, which isn't far from where I live, they talk about having a teradactal type creature seen, I guess often enough that, you know, they're talking about it on some of these TV shows and stuff. But I find that interesting because it's something that, you know, you look at it and you're like, how in the world could a teradactal be out there in existing in a population? Like I said earlier, if you have one, you have more than one. And so, you know, how in the world could that be out there? But again, I don't think people totally grasp how vast this world is.
Starting point is 01:25:03 I mean, there's so much rurality. Is that a word, morality? I don't know. Let's make it a word. There's so many rural places in this world that people just don't tend to go. I think that's right. And so your country is a very big country. What I started to grasp in researching sightings in this country is that, you know, the world
Starting point is 01:25:28 is the wild, essentially, wherever you are. If you've got to walk it, it's pretty big. You know, everywhere is big when you've got to walk in. So, you know, we're not the biggest country in the world, but we've got plenty of rural space, and walking it is no mean feat. And a lot of people theorize that creatures like terrosals are nocturnal. I said there's been lots of nighttime sightings over the years,
Starting point is 01:25:53 but there's also, I guess that's an easy out for any creature to say it's nocturnal. that's why we don't see it. But it does explain why if there is a population or a population within this case, why they aren't always seen because maybe they fly at night and they hunt at night. Owls do.
Starting point is 01:26:14 You know, you had a tail reliever. I can't remember who this was now. But somebody describing having an owl living at the bottom of their garden. I can't remember which interview it was. And said they'd been there for 10 years and they'd never seen it. But they can hear it. they know it's in the tree.
Starting point is 01:26:30 And I think, well, how can you not see something for 10 years that you know is there? Because wild creatures generally don't want to be seen by us. They're not looking for contact with us. They're looking to avoid contact with us. That's how they survive because we're the main predator, aren't we? You know, we're the ones to do all of the hunting and the killing. Hunting is actually not very big here, but I know in the US it is. so if people don't see very often
Starting point is 01:26:59 but maybe the sound of the guns etc. They come with people is a bit off-putting. Yeah and you brought up a good point that I don't really think I've ever heard before and it's just the idea that the world's gotten a lot smaller
Starting point is 01:27:14 since the invention of cars and if you had to walk places all the time the world all of a sudden seems so much bigger when you have to walk everywhere. Yeah, no definitely. Really, really is. and yeah I've done some of that I've spent a lot of time up in
Starting point is 01:27:28 West Wales into Broselli Mountains where there were some big cat sightings oddly enough we talking about the big cats we have thousands of big cat sightings and this this is something we think has happened
Starting point is 01:27:44 because of the Dangerous Wild Animals Act that we introduced in 1977 and basically people here were keeping lions and tigers and all kinds of things in their country properties and you didn't have to have a license and it must have been a few incidents
Starting point is 01:28:00 but whatever happened they decided okay now this is strict registration and expensive licensing and you have to follow this if you have these animals and some of them will let go at least that's what's assumed and since the 70s until now
Starting point is 01:28:17 for thousands and thousands of big cat sightings normally something that looks like a melanistic leopard or a jaguar and that kind of thing, panther, a panther. That's the most common sighting, but also lots of puma sightings
Starting point is 01:28:33 and occasionally leopards and even lions and things like that. So the most common one, being the Black Panthers, this is something I actually know of four personal reports that have been given to me by people I know. I've seen them over the years. And our papers generally run a story
Starting point is 01:28:52 every couple of weeks or so. somebody's seeing one somewhere or photograph something. There's so many bits of footage of them. It's become, you know, becoming a real point. But the cats are, big cats are very conspicuous, aren't they? So how is it they're hiding out, perhaps in their hundreds, if not thousands,
Starting point is 01:29:11 in the British countryside without being found because they're an octional animal. And if you're an octional animal, that's clever hunting and stalking and hiding. People don't find you. It's that happens. You get a glimpse and the creature's gone. And I think this, this remains the best explanation, this, this nocturnal habit. Yeah, absolutely. I agree that most of these cryptids, a lot of them are nocturnal. And I know it sounds like it could be an easy escape to, oh, well,
Starting point is 01:29:46 it's just nocturnal. But if it wasn't nocturnal, it may not be a cryptid because we might already know it exists. exactly exactly you know when people talk about extinct animals like the pleasure so are no longer
Starting point is 01:30:01 being around and they reference the fossil record or whatever you want to reference in geology and then you know you bring up
Starting point is 01:30:09 obviously then you bring up the horses you crab and the seal accounts and they say oh well yeah we know
Starting point is 01:30:13 about that you've been banging on about the seal accounts for ages now doesn't make it any less true
Starting point is 01:30:18 right doesn't make it any less relevant than in these 50 million years they talk about this fish has never been seen in the fossil record again and yet here it is in abundant numbers
Starting point is 01:30:34 living in our world and yet we don't think that possibly out there there could be a population of plesios that seems to be all people are describing and I think it's because it's the pervading paradigm you know scientifically speaking if you question that lineage of extinction
Starting point is 01:30:57 it might bode well for you similarly with things like Bigfoot 100,000 years ago somewhere along those lines you've got gigantipithecus they never found the hip and leg bones so it could have been bipedal
Starting point is 01:31:12 so who's to say that it doesn't still exist there's only a handful of fossils that let us know it existed at all and yet here we have an 8 to 10 foot tall ape in some cases, that seems to fit the bill really neatly. Absolutely. And, well, I mean, when you're bringing up the large cats and everything, I mean, it doesn't
Starting point is 01:31:36 seem, like, it's not your typical cryptid as in, you know, it's unimaginable. Like, we know there's large cats out there, large cats out there. And the thing is, I don't understand why it's so hard for not us to believe, but people, people with authority to believe. And I just use that an example because here in Pennsylvania, the official stance in Pennsylvania is there are no mountain line in Pennsylvania. Yet I repeatedly have people come to me saying, yeah, I saw a mountain line just casually, like, because people don't even realize that that's not supposed to be mountain lines in Pennsylvania because there are mountain line in Pennsylvania, but Pennsylvania will not acknowledge their existence. And I don't
Starting point is 01:32:18 know why. In Upper State New York, they do talk about seeing this large panther like cat. And again, people are like, well, I've seen it. But the government will say, nope, not there. We're just supposed to believe it. What's weird about that, though, is you have mountain lines in your country, just not in that state. Right. So who's to say they can't get to that state? Is there like a mountain lion border? I know. Mountain lines don't know street signs. They don't, oh, that's Pennsylvania. We're not supposed to be in there. They don't know the way to Pennsylvania, clearly. I mean, this is what's funny about it. Do you have bears there as well? I mean, not in America, but in Pennsylvania? We have black bears in Pennsylvania. They can be quite dangerous.
Starting point is 01:33:04 Is that right? Black bears? I mean, if you corner them or to mess with their cubs, but generally black bear, they don't really mess with you too much. They avoid you. I understand. That's the only bear you have. You don't have brown bears or grizzlies or anything like that. No, not in Pennsylvania. No, no. So, I mean, that's a significant point actually about the bears. So, you know, if they stand up on their back legs and you're seeing in a bad light and in an intimidating circumstance, a bear could easily be a big foot, right? You know, if you don't, if not expecting to see one. But here in the UK, that can't be the case because we don't have bears. We haven't had them for a thousand years. So anything bipedal and hairy standing up is, it's not a lot of the case. It's not. unlikely to be a bear. Surely it could be one or two escaped zoo animals perhaps out there. They all one of two
Starting point is 01:33:53 rare bear reports but with the 400 plus reports we have now the British Bigfoot, it's unlikely. They can account for all of them. And that's an interesting thing for me. I think it really was one of the extra things that validate the
Starting point is 01:34:09 possibility of Bigfoot here in this country is that what are people mistaking it for if something else? and since it's not a phenomenon a known phenomenon why are people reporting haven't seen one
Starting point is 01:34:23 since there's no you're not going to get any special attention because of it it really really ever makes it news not like a late monster sighting does
Starting point is 01:34:31 I wrote about a Loch Ness sighting actually that was reported to me just two days ago and it paper picked it up
Starting point is 01:34:40 and so printed it mentioned the blog which is really nice which I only think it's because they stole about four chapters of what I wrote you mentioned the blog, which is fine
Starting point is 01:34:49 because it's publicity, that's great. But it was kind of funny. But, you know, those kinds of things make the papers. But the big foot thing, you know, it's not really popular. People haven't heard of it. It's unlikely to sell any papers. A bit of a weird one. You know, that kind of thing.
Starting point is 01:35:05 Yeah. I want to just quick interject and let you know that I did come across your blog just a couple days ago. Somebody else was sharing it on Facebook. So it's making its rounds. Oh, wonderful. Oh, that's nice. That's really nice.
Starting point is 01:35:18 I haven't actually written in there since the summer because I've been writing this book, it seemed to come on forever because the more I wrote and the more I found and the more I had to write. And it kind of went on and on and on and on forever. And I just wish I'd been less thorough. Doesn't make sense. Sure. So I'd be out by now. It would be printed.
Starting point is 01:35:41 Yeah. But that's great. I'm going to do a lot more now. actually got a few more ideas for subjects that aren't actually in the book. You know, books finished. I'm going to get those out and start printing stuff that's not going to be a chapter
Starting point is 01:35:54 or a lead in there, different things altogether. So, hopefully it'll be some nice interesting subjects in the next few months. That's awesome. So let's, I know we talked about this in the pre-interview here. Let's talk about Dogman.
Starting point is 01:36:10 What have you heard about Dogman in that area? So this is more of a lesser known phenomenon definitely not as common as the Bigfoot which I think also complies with the American situation a less common animal if it is an animal troll so one of the there's been many sightings here
Starting point is 01:36:32 but they are rare in comparison to Bigfoot there was a recent one in 2016 several in 2016 actually of something called the whole a hole is an area in England in the north of England and it's in East Yorkshire actually in England there was a sighting in 2016 and made by a local woman described the animals running on two legs and then all fours and somehow resembling a human and a wolf together which I'm thinking could be something to do with the bipedal aspect of it you know all the things
Starting point is 01:37:13 figure of it and having a dog-like face. The same a couple then later saw something tall and hairy eating a dog, an Alization dog next to a drainage channel which runs to the countryside. They say it was eight feet tall. And when it saw
Starting point is 01:37:31 them, it leapt over the drainage channel and over a large fence with the dog in its mouth. It's quite amazing. Another dog walker there, spotted the same creature half dog and half human and her dog was very and nervous and didn't want to go near it and further on somebody came face to
Starting point is 01:37:54 face with this creature and this person significantly was an animal rescue worker so very familiar with different types of animals and she was driving to the east riding village of halshan and she saw a creature in all forms which then suddenly walked towards her car on two legs. And she said it looked like a big dog, probably bigger than her car, covered in cream and grey coloured fur for the human face.
Starting point is 01:38:21 So, you know, I think that's quite significant. There was a big rash of these sightings, a big investigation by some paranormal agency up there, into it too. It was called the Hull Whale. And I think historically this was known this creature as
Starting point is 01:38:39 Old Stinker, or the Beast of of Armstom Drain in this area. That's the most, I think, explicit weirwolf tell we have. There's a second one, I'll tell you very briefly. There are many more, but this one really stands out because of the close quarters at which this man saw this creature. That was in 1996 in October.
Starting point is 01:39:04 And a man was on route to see a friend. And he decided to take a shortcut through Camberwell Old Cemetery to save time. Now, Campbellwell, you know, it's around London. This is this urban, basically. Anyway, so I took this shortcut to the cemetery, and suddenly they grabbed him very strongly by the arm, smashed him into the ground,
Starting point is 01:39:30 looking up he saw a large creature with dog fur, and a head like a German shepherd dog, that's the way he described it, looking at him really intently, and slobbing and growling, sniffing his body, up and down like a dog would. He said, just as quick as the attack started, it was over, and the beast sprinted off on its hind legs.
Starting point is 01:39:50 Now, something very odd about this, and the way that the animal sniffed him, is the witness believed that he was spared because he suffers from a disease that dogs could smell, and that probably because of this, the creature left him alone. Wow. Now, that's very odd, isn't that? He shouldn't mention that,
Starting point is 01:40:08 and mention the sniffing up and down. And then it left him. If he was to be prey, or if he was attacked for trespassing on his territory or whatever was happening, he was left alone because the creatures smelled that he was not good food, I guess. That's incredible, yeah. Yeah. I mean, kind of just does give validity the fact that this guy, he suffers from a disease that dogs can smell and then this is what happened to him. Yeah. I mean, when it comes to these things, I often say to people that, you know, the more sightings there are of these things, the more of a chance that they are real.
Starting point is 01:40:47 And, you know, if you want to be a skeptic, that's fine. But basically, all it is is, all it takes is for one person to be telling the truth for whatever they're talking about to exist. And so when you started getting these reports, like, for instance, we talking about Nessie earlier. And I think you said there was, what, 11,000 sightings? Yeah, I mean, allegedly. it's disputed all the time. But yeah, conservatively, at least 1200. Say 1200.
Starting point is 01:41:16 Say 1200. And of that 1,200, let's just say 75% are explainable. Yeah. And of that 25%, say 15% of that is, you know, could go both ways. You still are left with a decent percent of things that you just can't explain. And all it takes for one of those situations to be true and authentic. for that creature to exist. That's right.
Starting point is 01:41:40 And for me, that's why I side on so many of these different things where I want to look into this stuff because I don't think the mystery is over about our world. I think there's a lot of mystery out there left to be unveiled. I think you're right. And I think that's a reason that's a sudden resurgence in interest in things like Cryptozoology or the paranormal, because people suddenly perceive that, you know, the days of adventure, if you will, and discovery are not over. and we've been sold a story that doesn't really ring true.
Starting point is 01:42:11 It's not true that everything is explored and mapped. It can be mapped. We've got satellites. People aren't there. They haven't explored it. And I know people bring things up like the gorilla and the Komodo dragon. A recent discovery is relatively recent. Or the Ocapi.
Starting point is 01:42:28 I mean, that's a great one, right? These are significant animals. And they've only recently being discovered. I think it was it in 1900s for the gorilla, and maybe the 1930s, the 40s, the commode dragon. But here's these stories coming out of Indonesia, but this voracious dragon, this reptile, 10 feet long, that's eating people if it bites you,
Starting point is 01:42:53 it's like you're on fire, you die. Yeah, of course, these are narrown his tales. He's imaginative natives, you know, that one, that comes up a lot. or things like the McKellian Bimbe or some of the other dinosaurs that are described in the Congo. And one of the things, I think Roe McElh went there and what he said, and he's an evolutionist and a skeptic, as well as a cryptosologist, he was always very skeptical. He asked them what it was and what it looked like.
Starting point is 01:43:28 They drew nine times out of the ten. They drew a patasaurus or something similar to that in the sand or, paper. That's what they drew for him. And when he showed him pictures, other natives pictures of this creature, this apatosaurus in a book, they immediately identified it as the Macalien Bembe. So,
Starting point is 01:43:48 you know, who's been in the Congo? This is a huge area of swampland, which is treacherous to human life, for the most part. Who's to say what's not in there? When people turn around and just say, there is no this, or there is no that. So somebody there that is said, there is no British Bigfoot.
Starting point is 01:44:06 A well-known researcher. And some of his other well-known researching friends joined him to say, yes, it's a very worrying trend that people are starting to think there's a British Bigfoot. I said, why is it worrying? And how is there no British Bigfoot? If that's the evidence you're presenting, that's not very convincing. There is no.
Starting point is 01:44:25 That's not an answer. That's just a statement. I don't think it's true. That's fine. You don't have to. But that doesn't make something untrue. that doesn't really present an alternative answer to people. So I think what I'm trying to do,
Starting point is 01:44:41 and some of the others, like the people like Bigfoot Tony or the British Bigfoot Research Group, other researchers are phenomenal like Roland Watson, who's probably the best Loch Ness wants to research. You should definitely check out his blog, which I think is a lockness mystery.com. And he covers the whole subject very, very in depth.
Starting point is 01:45:04 You can find all information you want there. These people, you know, they're bravely standing up against a lot of doubt, even in their own camp, and saying, I believe there's something there. And these are the reasons why, not just I believe it because I want there to be plesysos. I want there to be bigfuts or wherever else there is. I believe it because the evidence convinces me that there is something to these reports. And that's really all we need to do is, as researchers, honestly, look, without prejudice. this if we can, as much as we can, and say, well, what are they then? What is being described, regardless of what I wanted to be or not wanted to be, what is actually being described? And then
Starting point is 01:45:47 go from there. Right. You know, before we get out of here, Andy, I would like to ask you one question. Of all the different cryptids we talked about today, which one do you think has the best chance to be proven to exist within the next 10 to 15 years? I think that of the British cryptids that we've talked about, I think that the highest probability would be for one of the late monsters, like Nessie. But I don't think Nessie particularly, I think maybe that type of creature in some other body of water in the UK,
Starting point is 01:46:24 I think that surveillance will just reach a point where we're going to get a really good clip, a really good bit of footage at some point of this animal. Personally, myself, with some others, I'm working on trying to map exactly where these creatures might visit certain points. I'm not totally convinced that they have a definitive pattern right now. I think it might be more roaming or transient. But there is a slight glimmer of hope that there is a way of predicting, you know, preferable sites for research. and that's if I forget the series
Starting point is 01:47:06 that's what I'm going to hope to to put into action regardless of so if we do discover something I'm sure we'll be discredited and swift under the carpet really quickly because as much as it would be a great boon to me personally I think it would lead to utter
Starting point is 01:47:23 and complete ridicule which I'm just trying to I'm hopefully preparing for at the moment I hope to one day be utterly and completely ridiculous because I've discovered something nobody wants to believe if that makes any sense and um you know then those of us like me and you and some others will say well actually yes you know i believe this is true and others will say well he faked the evidence and we found out really he was some costume maker in the film
Starting point is 01:47:49 industry or whether or which i'm not incidentally and um yeah we'll just see what happens with that hopefully i'll get the chance to to face that opposition yeah well outside of your blog which is beast of the Britain. Blogspot.com.com. Where else could people get a hold of you if they have any sightings in the UK or have information that might be valuable to you and your research?
Starting point is 01:48:15 The best place would be my Facebook page, which is, it's actually facebook.com forward slash beasts of. And that's, it's Bees of because obviously we will look at different areas of the world after this comes out. intended to take it internationally, but at the moment, it's just Beas of Britain. So Facebook.com for slash Beesov, or you can also go to Twitter as well, which is at Beesoff Britain.
Starting point is 01:48:47 Okay. Andy McGrath, I really appreciate you coming on and talking with us tonight. If you have any other information you'd ever want to share with me in the audience, feel free to come back on. I'd love to end. Thank you very much for having me on Tony. It's been a real pleasure. All right, man. Take care. Take care, but wait. Well, that's the show, everybody. I really hope you enjoyed it. And remember to go to iTunes and leave a rating and reviews so you can have a shout
Starting point is 01:49:15 out on next week's show. Also, if you've had an encounter of any kind, go ahead and shoot me that email. My email address is The Confessionals Podcast at gmail.com or go to the website, The Confessionalspodcast.com. Hit the connection section, and you can reach me that way as well. I hope everybody has a great week, and I'll see you right here next Saturday on the Confessionals.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.