The Confessionals - 502: Lost Treasure and Secret Petroglyphs of Virginia

Episode Date: December 13, 2022

In Episode 502: Lost Treasure and Secret Petroglyphs of Virginia we are joined by Justin, Lance, and Ryan from the Appalachian Intelligence podcast, who reached out months ago regarding some unusual pictures they had taken in Virginia. Buried in the hills of Virginia, there is a huge rock that Justin, Lance, and Ryan stumbled across, with petroglyphs etched into its face. As they sought out answers to their discovery, the mystery became much deeper. With the information they’ve since been given, they are now joining in on a hunt for the lost treasure of the Swift Silver Mine, which might have a direct connection to their secret petroglyph boulder.Become a member for AD FREE listening and EXTRA shows: theconfessionalspodcast.com/joinCrypto-Color (Coloring Book For Kids)Purchase Non-Signed Copy Here: https://amzn.to/3Yn23RlPurchase Signed Copy Here: https://www.merkel.media/store/p/cryptocolorWATCH Expedition Dogman: https://amzn.to/3OVyUs6Tony's Studio Equipment: linktr.ee/mystudiogearSPONSORSGET Gerber Life: www.gerberlifefamily.comGET Cerebral: getcerebral.com/tonyGET SIMPLISAFE TODAY: simplisafe.com/confessionalsGET Hello Fresh: hellofresh.com/confessionals16 Promo Code: "confessionals16" for 16 FREE MEALS!!!GET Beard Oil: bit.ly/2FbOhN5GET ExpressVPN: www.expressvpn.com/confessGET Uncommon Goods: www.uncommongoods.com/tony for 15% off your purchaseCONNECT WITH USWebsite: www.theconfessionalspodcast.comEmail: [e-mail] to the Newsletter: https://www.theconfessionalspodcast.com/the-newsletterSOCIAL MEDIASubscribe to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/2TlREaITikTok: @theconfessionalsDiscord: https://discord.gg/KDn4D2uw7hShow Instagram: theconfessionalspodcastTony's Instagram: tonymerkelofficialFacebook: www.facebook.com/TheConfessionalsPodcasTwitter: @TConfessionalsTony's Twitter: @tony_merkelOUTRO MUSICVanTesla - Agartha (feat. Nergui)YouTube | Apple Music | SpotifyAre you a military veteran struggling with thoughts of suicide?Contact Watchman Readiness Corps for REAL help. A veteran-run organization that is designed to help through hands-on survival training.Website: wrc.vetEmail: [e-mail]: [phone]Instagram: wrc_survivalFacebook: colbywrcvetAPPALACHIAN INTELLIGENCEPodcast: https://bit.ly/3hgwckzInstagram: https://bit.ly/3YhWzXHFacebook: https://bit.ly/3uKksK8Twitter: https://bit.ly/3FjhWiV

Merkel Media This was all circulating around the base That a giant had to kill But no one was supposed to talk about it Each up underneath the door Curl up to grab it And then disappear

When he came over to me Dude he slithered over to me The giant comes out of the cave And they're all frozen And he starts running and firing at this giant With a giant moves He's got a spear In one hand

And he's running really fast and spears Dan holds them up like this somebody else shoot him in the face shoot him in the face they basically decapitated and I look over and there are two push and because I know I'm seeing a monster I guess it should start the show

welcome to the show everybody you're listening to the Confessionals I'm your host Tony Merkel thanks for being here if you've a crazy wild experience you want to share with me on the show go ahead and shoot me an email my email address is the Confessionals at the Confessionalspodcast.com that's The Confessionals at the confessionalspodcast.com or go to the website, the confessionalspodcast.com, hit the contact section, and you can reach me that way as well. Either works for me, just get a hold of me.

If you wanted more shows on a weekly basis, go to the confessionalspodcast.com, hit the join button and become a member. You'll get access to all the bonus shows every Thursday, Tuesday shows at free, and the overtime segments, when available right there on the website and the castos app that interests you, the confessionalspodcast.com slash join. And speaking of Join, I have people joining me in the studio today. fellas, how are you? Good.

Doing great, Tony. You're doing great. I got the fantastic trio here. We got Justin Ryan and Lance. I got that right. It just came out of me. There you go. I couldn't remember these guys' names all morning long.

And here it is. It's go time. And I come in on the clutch. That's it. That's it. So you guys host the podcast, Appalachia, Appalachia, Appalachian, Intelligence. one of the three, we've been trying to discuss it. You all have differing opinions on what the actual name of your podcast is.

Well, it's for sure 100% Appalachian. Absolutely. Appalachia. That's the way it's spelled. I love this. You guys have a podcast. And how long has it been out? A year today.

A year today, actually. Yep. And you still can't figure out what it's called. Well, we figured it out. Ryan, he won't come on board with this. Apparently, I'm the only one who doesn't know what it's called. And Ryan, where are you from? in front of the same area as them.

I've just pronounced it differently. He spent a lot of time around Pittsburgh, okay? So, you know, there's enough of that north of the Mason, Dix. But, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so when I was... Like, if I want to, I can get rid of my Southern accent. Just because as I was up there, you know,

and I'm living just south of Pittsburgh, and you're getting made fun of all the time for asking for Marlboro Lott, not light. You know, you learn how to disguise. Yeah. So, all right. So if you can get rid of your accent, then I should be allowed to have an accent if I want one. Absolutely. Absolutely. Welcome to the show. That's a whole second, God. I can't do it on demand. It was close, though. It was close. Yeah. Yeah. I usually got to start out with something like, how y'all doing? And then we just kind of drag it out from there.

I'm becoming infamous of leaving people with voicemails with just a southern accent. Like Scott over at Freaky Deaky Podcast. He lives in Alaska. And so sometimes when I'm pulling a late night here and I'm driving home at like midnight, it's 6 o'clock his time in the evening. Yeah. So I'll call him and he'll answer the phone and I'll just start talking to him. And I'll have like a whole conversation just a southern accent. And he's like, you're crazy.

I'm like, I know. I know. It's just you got to draw all the syllables out a little longer and just it's just a little twang. A little twang. Just imagine that twang. rolling off of your tongue and that's it. Don't pronounce half the consonants. That's true.

Like you just did. Yeah. That was perfect. That's it. That was perfect. That's the perfect example. Like we start out and you can just try this. We call our audience the Hill Folk.

We start out, hey there, hill folk. Just try it. Hey there, Hill Folk. That's it. That was it. That was it. That was it. All right.

You are labeled Appalachian. Appalachian. That's it. That was it again. Welcome to you. Tennessee. I'm Tennessee, Tony, and we're here to talk about Appalachia Bullcrap. Yeah, that's pretty good. Here we go. So, speaking of Appalachia Bullcrap, you guys got some bullcraft to bring to the table today. Absolutely. We do. We do. So, like, let's just

kind of, like, I guess, lay the groundwork for people. Now, I'm just going to let you guys know of front here. When you guys start talking, I might need to leave the room and turn off this AC unit, because it is driving me nuts already. And I just don't want to deal with the post-production of it. So, which means it might get warm in here, and I might take off my shirt instead of putting on the hoodie. It's totally fine. Hey, Ryan one time took his shirt off during the podcast.

Yeah? We've actually had a couple of your guests. The guest started it. The guest started it. It was a Bert Krecher? No, it wasn't. We did make that joke, though. We did make that joke.

We actually had a guest that at the end of the... Arthur Unk from the Grey Rress. He's the head writer of the Grey Rums. One of my favorite creepy pasta broadcast. And that guy, he's a genius. Yeah. But he's a lot of fun. Yeah.

He's just a fun guy. So you guys, you guys reached out to me a while back. And I just kind of want to lay the groundwork as far as I can remember. You know what's funny is that Justin, I remember recently, I think it was, I hit you up on Instagram. And I'm like, are you the guy that talked to me a while ago about something? And like, I was like, I can't remember any of this crap. And it's like, so many people, like, they're like, yeah, I told you.

I'm like, yeah, I don't remember. Yeah. You know, and like, you can probably attest to that. Because, like, I remember I was reaching out to him, like, are you the guy with the rocks? And then like, you're like, yeah. And then I'm like, I just, it was, it was a process getting here. But you're here. And you guys have a pretty interesting story that kind of leads into discovering some

kind of lost information maybe. Is that, is that a good way to say? Yeah, that'd be a good way to put it. It's a treasure in a sense. Yeah.

So if you want, just kind of, how did this all work for you? Because it's now like a pursuit of yours, from what I understand, this petroglyph stuff that you guys are finding in West Virginia. Yeah. Well,

it's far southwestern Virginia. We're right on the border with West Virginia. So you can slide with that one. We did. We started, you know, we've started this podcast a year ago. It was me and Ryan initially. We brought Lance on a few months later just because he came on as a guest one time. It just worked. You know, the whole trio thing worked so good. And then you know, as well as anybody, once you start talking to people all the time and scheduling these interviews and coming across so many people, you start getting all this information. Well, the good thing about, like, where we're from, we start to. getting a local following a little bit, you know, like some local people, you know, people that I've known my entire life are coming up to me, you know, when we see them on the street and they're like, hey, I love the show. I love the show. I love what you guys are doing. And that's what we start talking. We start talking, you know, Appalachian folklore. We start

talking their sightings and experiences. So that part's been amazing. But that's how we stumbled to cross these petroglyus, these cliffrock carvings that are actually located in our hometown. I was camping one weekend. We have a local campground that's actually owned by mine and Ryan's boss. And I was staying there one weekend. And this guy by the name of Chris, Viers, him and his wife, Melanie, who were great friends of mine and are fans of the show, they were just walking by, we got some firewood,

and we're heading back to their campsite, and we started talking about the show. Well, at the time, me and these boys, we were talking about trying to do like a little mini documentary or just something,

you know, something YouTubey about the river that runs, you know, through our hometown. It runs right beside of Halear, Kentucky, through the brakes, interstate park,

into Pikeville. And yes, it's Pikeville. like Marival Marival yeah that's it but we started talking some of this stuff

and I was talking to him about some of the native folklore there and some of these skirmishes between the natives and the settlers and just some of the terrible events that had happened

along the river there and also some of the strange encounters that people had had and I'd been reading and hearing about so he comes out and he says have you seen those carvings

in the cliff Rock right up above town. I was like, no. What are you talking about? Never heard of it before in my entire life. I've lived there my whole life. So he's like, yeah, I was hunting up there a couple years ago. And, you know, a couple of people I'd heard talking about this, this property that I hunt on. So I got these pictures. Well, he pulls up these pictures and starts showing them to me. And I was immediately intrigued. I was like, dude, we've, we've got to go. We've got to go check this out. You know, it's one thing to hear about this and not know it was there your entire life. But obviously, as a lover of the weird, of ancient history, of all this different stuff, you see petroglyphs in your hometown, it's going to spark an interest.

Yeah. So we, you know, a couple weeks went by, we kept, you know, we're super busy guys. You know, we all work full time. We all have big families. So it's hard to get together and do anything, really. It's amazing we even have a podcast. But we got together one Sunday. It was poor in the rain.

And we just said, screw it, we're going. We've put it off long enough. We got to go. So me and Lance and Rhine and mine's sons, we all decided to go check this rock out, to see if it looked as good in person as it did in pictures. And we had no idea where we were going. We were just following step-by-step directions

that this guy, Chris, had messaged me. So we get up there, we find the area that he said to stop and start hiking from. Again, it's still poor in the rain. We get down through there, and we come up upon it. And it was one of those things like we knew it before we ever even actually seen it. Like, you get there to this point, you look down and you see this cliffrock facing, you know, like a drop off in front of you, and you're like, that's it. You just, you know that's it.

The angels are singing, the lights are beaming down on and, oh, you know. You've reached the promise land. Yeah, that's it. But we get there and we start checking this thing out, man, and pictures don't even do it justice. Like, I haven't been able to capture a picture or see a picture that does this justice. You have, you have like these ten cavernous circular spaces that's outlining. and surrounding, bordering this, what looks to be some sort of path or a ladder or a staircase, something that cuts right through the middle.

But the way that it's there, it's almost like a, I don't know how to explain it. So if you think about the Golden Gate Bridge and how if you're looking at the pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge from the side of it, the profile of it, you can kind of see all the different beams and the different foundations and all the different columns and stuff that make up the Golden Gate Bridge, right? It kind of visualize what I'm talking about. If you look down at the middle of this, when I first looked at it, I was like, that's a bridge. It looks just like a bridge, just the way it's kind of laid out. Well, then you get closer to it at the bottom of one side of it, there is a person that has been carved there.

And then you look back up to the top of it, and this thing's probably three, feet long maybe right around there and look at the other side of it on the opposite side of that bridge is another person that's been carved as well um and as where they're looking at it and trying to just talk about it and figure out what it was and put your hands on it kind of run your fingers around the crevices and the the smoothness of the rock we all three agreed like this is not by no means a natural thing somebody has taken some serious time to carve out this in this rock there is a specific purpose why this thing is here. And the more you look at it, the more detail you see, like you can tell it wasn't done by machine. Somebody has, or people have taken some serious time

with hand tools to carve this thing out of this rock for a specific purpose. And that's kind of what led to the unveiling of quite an interesting story from that. Well, yeah. But, you know, staying on this rock for just a little while longer. It doesn't belong. You know, it's one of those things like I've never seen anything like this. You know, and I've spent a lot of time, as a central Appalachian kid, I spend a lot of time in the woods. You know, a lot of time mushroom hunting and squirrel hunting and deer hunting and fishing and, you know, just going and exploring. You know, that's all we have is woods.

So you spend a lot of time. I've never seen anything remotely close to what this looks like. You know, I've seen natural rock formations. I've seen, you know, some of the lines and the sedimentary things that can happen with these formations. And this isn't,

this is nothing close. And not only that, I started sending in pictures of this stuff out to every contact that I knew of. Nobody knows. Nobody knows for sure. Well, I knew. Tell me that.

So, okay, we first got the pictures of this, I sent them out to every contact that we had made through the podcast world. I'd send them out to, like, different geology forums. Well, shout out Steve and Kyle here from the Holskine podcast. Love those boys. I messaged Steve right off the bat, sent him the pictures, and, you know, was asking him, hey, do you know what these are?

He put them on these geology forums. So there was a lot of eyes looking at these rocks, right? you know, pretty quickly. Well, I know that Tony is really, really, really into the weird and talks to a whole lot of people. So I sent him to Tony. Before I'd ever even really talked to him about anything, this was like initial interaction. I sent him these pictures and Tony says, bro, do you know what you have here? Or do you realize what you have here?

I said, I have no idea. That's why I sent them out to you. I was hoping to get that you might know something. And he's like, no, I have no idea. It's funny because you said that story today and stuff. And I don't remember that. Of course, I don't remember anything. And I was like, wait, I knew it.

And then you're like, you know, you didn't know. It sounds like me. It sounds like me. I would do something like that. But you got me really super excited for a minute. Let me guess. I said that and waited for you to respond. I didn't even say I didn't know.

No, yeah, yeah. That's exactly what you said. Bro, do you know what you have here? And then I would totally do. I would totally do that. Because if people say stuff to me, and I'm like, I'm not some super genius guy here that does all this crazy wild research. I don't have an entire library filled with my research over the years. I'm just a dude that drove a truck and started a podcast.

And so people like ask me questions. And I'm like, I don't know. Yeah. Well, I was like, maybe Tony's talked to somebody that has a story somewhere closed that he possibly may remember. Yeah, let me call my friend Graham Hancock. Let me just pull him right up. You never know. You never know, though.

Joe Rogan has a thing. You would know. If Graham was my friend, I would tell everybody. Just like if Rogan called me and said, hey, I want you to know the show, you guys would know I'm going on Rogan before I've appeared on Rogan. Like, I would just be like, guys, guess what? Special announcement. It's about to get real. Which, by the way, is never going to happen.

People say that to me. They're like, oh, you got to get on Rogan. I'm like, it's impossible. It won't happen. Yeah. Like, I am not the caliber they're looking for. You never know. You never know.

Keep grinding. Anyways, you were sending these pictures out to everybody and trying to get information on it. Yeah, and nobody could really, of course, you know, people have opinions and people have, you know, all these different theories, but nobody could specifically say, okay, it's from this time and this people group and this, you know, whatever. So we start diving into it and looking at. And again, it just, it doesn't belong. You know, this is, it's in an area, it's in a place. It just doesn't belong at all. And that's what, you know, was the weirdest thing for us.

I mean, you stand here in this space and you're like, it feels like this almost shamanic experience for me, you know, like I was there and I was, it was one of those exciting moments. And for a minute, it was like, man, I could feel like, every raindrop in my body. You know, like, this is amazing. I had goosebumps. And I don't know how these guys felt,

but I'm sure it was probably close at least the same kind of. Oh, it was amazing. Yeah. Yeah, it was one of those things like, again, I was probably the one that didn't want to go look just simply because I just didn't want to. You didn't want to?

Initially, no, just because they didn't want to. It's just kind of how, guys, I don't want to do that. On Sundays, I drive over. to where they live at and with my parents. We have church and we have dinner with mom on Sundays and my nephews are there. Sunday is usually kind of the day where the family gets together and kind of hangs out. But the Sundays are the only day we could get together.

So they are messaging, yeah, let's go look, let's go look. I was all in. Then it was raining. I was like, I should go another day. Well, Justin, as he always has, since we've been 13 years old, talk to me into Gatlin. And then once we finally got up there and we walked down to it and found it, I was like, yeah, boys, this is far greater than anything I kind of had envisioned what it would be. I didn't necessarily say I had a shamanic experience, but it was definitely one of

those things where I looked at it and I was like, there's got to be more to the story. Why is this thing here? Who put it here? Why is this not something that's talked about? Because I grew up in the same town they did. Why have we never heard about this before? Why has nobody said anything about this? Why are we not taking kids up on a field trip to see it? Like, this would be something that should be talked about. So once I got there and saw it, it was a whole different, like, It's ramped me up, piqued my interest into a whole different level. And then the other, I guess, information that we have since uncovered that comes with it, just even adds even more to just the awesome story and mystery that it is.

Yeah. Well, before we go, I keep saying before we go on, I keep bringing it right back. That's fine. We got an hour to fill at least. It's probably going to be. Show business. Probably going to be more. Again, message and Steve, you know, he had it on these geology forums.

And he sent me a comment that one of these people had left on the pictures. And when I got this comment, it was just like, holy crap. So Steve sends this to me, I sent it to these guys right after. It was just a few simple words that said, this is where the old gods meet. What? It's all it said. So that reaction, Tony, that you just had, when he sent that to us in our group chat, I was actually up.

The girls, my family was in bed. I'm a bit of a night out, so I was up anyways, watching TV or gaming or doing something. I don't know what I was doing. But when he sent that to me and I picked up my phone, like I stood up and had just total chills over my whole body. Like, this was not at all what I expected for that reaction to that interpretation of this to come out, but that's what we got. This is where the old gods made.

And that was a comment on one of the pictures? That was a comment from. No, this was on a geology forum that. Steve from Holliskeye put out there. Yeah, but by the way, I know you gave them a shout-out. I just want to give another shout-out. Shout out to the Holliskyy guys. Love those guys.

Everybody should go follow them and leave a five-star rating review. Anyways. Yeah. So Steve posts the picture on a geology and one of these brains over there, comment on that. This is where the old gods meet. Oh, my God. I'm excited. Yeah.

Keep going. And, you know, if you think about it, it's in a place that it doesn't belong or doesn't seem like it belongs. It's on top of a mountain. You know, ancient peoples, that's where they would go to communicate with the gods. They would go to these high places. So if you go to these high places, you have this rock and all these petroglyphs on it, all these carvings. You know, it makes sense. And if you walk down not even 50 yards from where this carving is at,

you get to what I would call a peak rock. So you can stand at the very peak of this cliff. And you can see if the leaves are off at the time, we could have seen for miles. You can oversee the town. You can oversee the river. You would have been able to see if I'm a Native American at that time or an old settlement that's setting up shop there. You can literally see everything from all the way around you. There's no way anybody can get up to you without you seeing them first.

Which, again, leads more to interesting things of why this thing is even here to start with. Yeah. So we have a producer in studio. We have Cody here. And Cody distracted me. So the last five minutes, I have no idea what you just said. I'm not. And seriously, I don't.

But, all right. So this post that was posted and the comment that was made, were you able to track down that person at all? No. Is it impossible or you just got lazy? Well, we got lazy on it. I don't know. I didn't follow up with that. Did he send you a link to it so you were able to see it or what? No, all I got was a screenshot of the comic. So Steve sent it to you like that? Yeah. Steve, see, Steve? See, he's sneaky like that.

He's trying to stay part of the story. He's like, I'm not going to give you the link. I'm just going to send you a screenshot. If you want more, you got to ask me for it because you can't just go. Because you don't know where. Freaking Steve and that sneakiness. I'm sure that he would have, but it was one of those things. We just got lazy. There was so much information coming in all at one time about this rock and then we'll be getting into that it was just. I think it came from Reddit. Right. No, I think it was a geology forum.

It was an actual geological forum that Steve put it on. I'm pretty sure. So let me just let's take a few steps back here. And so I can personally picture this better and also maybe for the audience as well. this rock, like what you were talking about with the carvings of the humans and stuff, is it on this rock? Yes. Okay. So we're talking about one rock that has all this stuff on it.

Correct. Okay. How big is this rock? Three or four feet probably. Yeah, probably in length. In length, yeah. And then probably another foot and a half to two feet wide. Yeah.

All right. So three or four feet and it's one rock. How much time have you spent up there? Oh, just the one trip, just the one visit. Now, what we did find, what we did find, there was parts of some rock that had fallen off and it was connected to. And I think I may already know where you're going with this. Yeah. Yeah.

But the way that it's located, the way that it's located, it's literally right on the edge of a cliff. It's straight down cliff after this. You think that's the only rock up there with this on it? while we were up there, Ryan took a pretty big circle. He walked down all the way underneath the cliff, walked around the bottom part of the cliff. Ryan, telling all the things. Yeah, I found like, what are I sure?

Fossils, but I didn't find any carvings on the underneath side of it. So it actually looks like two rocks from the top, but it's one big rock. So it's the rock face, but I guess over time, what's that erosion? or whatever. Because one of the carvings of the little men would be on this rock

that's between that gap. But, yeah, when I went below, I didn't see any signs of any more carving because that's what I, that's, we thought the same thing while we were there. Like, wonder how far these go over. So let me ask you a question. What are the chances that this rock

is just the surface rock of much bigger structure that's underground? It's totally possible. Totally possible. See, the reason, for our limited time spent there is it is personal property. Did you sneak up there? It's least.

Well, absolutely. Well, next time you're sneaking, let me know. I got to return the favor. You drove down here. I got to drive up. Yeah, absolutely. You sold me. But it's least hunting property.

So, you know, this time of year you have hunters up there all year. You know, bow season comes in really early. And again, it's one of those things like you try to go up there and not catch anybody. else there or to not disturb, you know, hunters or all that stuff. So again, you know, it's hard for us all three to get together. This needs to be priority, guys. I'm telling you right now, don't worry about your families. Don't worry about the wives. Don't worry about holidays. This needs to be priority number one. Get your butts back up there and do some digging. Okay, for our first spots today, we have uncommon goods. I love uncommon goods. And what's not

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And when you get there, all you got to do is pick a category. Women, men, kids, fun, kitchen and bar, home, gifts, holiday. When you click on that, it shows you a bunch of stuff in that category. Then you can narrow it down by price. Under 50, 100, 200. It really is customizable. searching for the perfect gift for somebody in your life. And right now it is a great time to get in on Uncommon Goods, not just for the deal, but also

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We're all out of the ordinary. I'll say this because I found a rock structure in Pennsylvania before I left last year. What year is this, 2020? Yeah, last year. It was actually the very beginning of these films. I went to this one location and I didn't know what I was doing. I was with another guy that was doing camera work. And we came across this.

So I was told that there is an underground world that reptilians exist in in Pennsylvania. And that I need to look for a rock structure that looks like a head of a dragon. And that around that structure is where the opening is to the underworld, essentially. Wow. And I was like, cool, let's go. I'm in. And so I took me and my friend Edward, who was an awesome guy, by the way, great cameraman. And we went on this journey for an entire day.

And we found the structure out in the middle of the woods. And before I got up there, I called locals. And I was calling that, like I called a taxidermist that wasn't far from this area. And I'm just asking them questions. Like, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm like, yeah, I'm a little stupid. So, you know, you're probably right. And I just, they kept the real low key.

And I get up there and I find this. And sure enough, there's this rock, gigantic rock wall, gigantic rock wall. And the end of it, the first thing I see, it looks like a serpent head. Wow. And I'm talking like there are parts of this wall that are over 100 feet high. And it's out in the middle of the woods. And I got the footage on a hard drive somewhere around here. I never made it a video.

mainly because I hate doing video editing. So I'm just like, well, I had the experience and sucks to be you the rest of the world. You're just going to have to hear me tell the story because I don't feel like making it a video. Maybe one day I will or I'll hire somebody to do it. That's actually a good idea. I should do that. Anyways, so we spent an entire day up there. And I mean, I caught EVPs on.

So I was going over some of the footage with my dad where it was dark out. Me and Ed were hiking this rock wall back at night. And at one point I stopped because we were buzzed by. by military helicopters while we were up there. It was really interesting. And so while we were, we stopped and we were looking, and there was this light that came off the hill and it was going down into the valley. And after that incident ended, I looked at him, I said, you ready to go?

And he's like, yeah. And he has a strong southern Costa Rican accent. Like, he's from South America. So, like, it's not, like, it's not hard to know who's talking. Yeah. And he said, yeah. And as I start walking, you hear somebody, something whispered in the mind. like, okay. And it sounded like a female voice. And then later that night, and we didn't know that

the time, I found that out later when I was reviewing the footage. But later that night, we got to that serpent head again, and we're just sitting there, and it was like late. I mean, it was dark. We're in the middle of the woods. It's completely dark. And I thought I heard a little girl talking off in the distance. And like, mind you, we were out there for 12, 14 hours. I was exhausted. And when you're out there that long, especially when we were already winding down, like, we were ready to pack up and get out and just go home. So like, I was like, investigative mindset was done. So I hear this. And the little girl was like, I couldn't understand what she was saying. It was just like a little, I was just like, what the freak was that? And he heard

it or no, he didn't hear it. And I didn't go investigate it. And I, and it's one of my, My biggest regrets is that I didn't tell him to turn on his camera again and go investigate that. Because it sounded like 50 feet away from us. Wow. And I didn't know that I had that EVP of the little girl or some female voice. Anyways, long story short, let me bring this back around. This rock wall, it went for at least a half mile. And it was very broken.

And there are people who say that it's natural. and some parts of it, I'm like, I don't know how this is natural because there were like broken parts of it that were like completely rectangle and squared off like they were like bricks like long like six, seven, eight foot long blocks of rock and it looked like it was a wall that fell over at one time but it was constructed, right? And then you had that serpent head that looks intentionally made

and all this stuff, right? But it goes like a half, a mile, but as you keep going, it's very clear that it fades into the ground. And I always wonder, I'm like, how big is this thing really? Yeah. You know? And am I just seeing like, like, imagine if I'm standing at this, this serpent head looking thing, this, this 100 foot wall and all this stuff, and this is just like the top of the giant temple that I'm standing on, like, that's like, you know. Yeah, like it's a tip of the ass. Right. And so I, to bring it all back to what you got and stuff, I mean, this rock, I mean, you guys were there, you know what the area looked like.

Is it possible that you think that could this be just like the very tip of the roof of something that's even bigger? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, the way that it could go back into the mountainside, it could go forever. For people to understand, Appalachian, Appalachian, whatever it is. By the way, again, you guys are from the Appalachia Appalachian Appalachian Intelligence Podcast. Figure it out from there. Links are in the description. And that's a total oxymoron just so you know.

But so people have to understand that these mountain ranges, like the Smokies here and stuff, these are some of the oldest mountains in the world. Yeah. There's a reason why they don't look like the mountains on the West Coast is because the mountains on the West Coast haven't been around as long as these. And so the ancient aspect of these mountains and the stories that are left untold are very best. And I think that what you guys are stumbling on here, what you're telling us about,

and what Ward and Sword and Staff guys are doing, like, and me, obviously, by proxy, you know, we're exploring the ancient aspect of our backyard. Yeah, absolutely. It's really interesting. It is really interesting because, I mean, you have no idea. Like, you know, what you're talking about right there, to me and all my weirdness, that's a moon-eyed people civilization.

You know, this giant rock wall, this giant rock wall that they've built and they come. But, you know, we have no idea. You know, we think that the native, there's a reason the natives are called the natives. You know, they're supposed to be the first. But you have so many of these Native American tribes that'll say, you know, when we got here, there were these six-fingered red-headed giants that had already built this place up and all these different things. So, I mean, we have no idea.

other tribes say there were these really tall, pale, big-headed, big-eyed people, you know, that they call the moon-eyed people. It's just, it's interesting to explore who was there. And we definitely intend to go back. I've actually told Ryan a couple times. And yeah, you're coming along, Tony, you're coming along. I'm there. I'll save the gas money. And I've got a date scheduled to meet and talk with the guy that's actually the property owner.

So maybe that'll open up more things. Because he, because he, does he know it's there? Yeah. I've learned that he's spent decades asking questions and asking. But it was an age before the internet. So this is right up his alley.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He loves it. He actually loves it so much that he contacted, I guess, the closest Cherokee native tribe. And Ryan, Ryan loves this one. But he got a tribal elder to come up and asked if he knew what it was.

So this tribal elder hikes up there to this rock. with him, walks out to it, asks him if he can be alone with it for a few moments. The guy says, yeah, you know, take your time, do what you need to do. Well, the elder sits down on the rock, traces out some of the carvings, goes into this meditative, trance-like state, stands back up, turns around, walks out of there, doesn't say a word, leaves, doesn't say a word to anybody about anything. Oh, well, that's interesting. Yeah, that's what I think.

Or the greatest prank camera. He got us talking about it. Sitting around and somebody's like, hey, I need you to come look at this. This looks like something your people would do. You know what? All right. I'm just going to do a little few hand motions here, some jazz hands. And then walk away and not saying a word.

It would be the greatest prank here. It's what I would do. It's something I would do. Like, oh, you want to stereotype? You're okay, that's cool. I'm going to give you a story to tell me the rest of your life. Except on the way by, just give like a little bit. Oh, man, that got me rolling.

I got to go. I'm actually hoping that's. what happens. That's my favorite person. That's fantastic. See, now I know why they got you on the podcast. Comic release. That's what I do. Oh, man, that's funny. I'll say this where I forget. Looking at the picture right now, I'm sure you guys probably thought about this, but it looks like, like imagine if this was, and I'm not saying this is or isn't what it is, I don't really have an opinion. But imagine if this was some kind of sacrifice joint and those channels were for the blood to run through. That's exactly.

We poured water on it. Just kind of see what would happen. We carried. We had a couple of bottles with us. Let's just see where the water goes. If we pour it on here, maybe it will lead to something and, hey, maybe it unlock some huge chamber we get into it. Oh, we got Indiana Jones over here. That's what it feels like.

Let's try this and see. And we did pour it and it did run down, but exactly like you think it would. Nothing that was anything that was peculiar. It didn't start glowing. No, nothing like that. Well, it's because you need blood. Yeah, that's what it was. And we actually said that.

We actually mentioned which one of us three is going to be the sacrifice here just to cut the hand. No, I found another one. I found another. Okay. I've been telling this guy at work that we're going to have to use him as a sacrifice because he's a ginger like me. And I told him that the ancient gods need ginger blood. It ain't going to be me. He's willing to put it down.

Well, not really, but. He's not willing. I'm talking about bigger than him. So Ryan, Ryan, Ryan, uh, Ryan, up on mushrooms for the show, right? Not all the time. I've only done that twice. Okay, well, I mean, it's enough to make it a habit now.

And so next time, just slip him some mushrooms, and he'll just be like, okay, sure, you know. That's the plan. Have a contract that he signs and make it all legal, you know? Apparently, it's really a popular thing now where it's like you're allowed to medically commit suicide in some of these countries. So, you know, just say he's committing suicide for the cause and fine. Maybe we just need a little bit of blood. We might not have to kill him.

We're willing to do what we need to do, though. Yeah. For science. For science, scientific purposes. Absolutely. So where are we at in this story? Because I know you guys are uncovering information and stuff. Well, this moves on, and this is kind of why we didn't spend as much time initially with the rock. Because this hit, and it kind of, obviously, as you will hear, kind of, that's what we focused on.

It went nuts. So, Lance, you just. You took away with how J.W. came into the weeks. Yeah, so we had been corresponding. Well, J.W. That was pretty good. Pretty good, though. I hadn't thought about that one yet.

He came to us to ask if we had a few moments to talk about the kingdom of him. He was like, no, but I got this rock. So we were back in school now, and I teach with him and had known him for a long time. And we were just talking back and forth about our summers and about different things going on. And just in not a week beforehand, had sent me a PowerPoint presentation, a guy had done on something called the John Swift Silver Mine. And one of those things I had never heard of.

And within the pictures that this guy had on his PowerPoint were some carvings that looked similar to what this rock was. Well, it's not identical, but you could see some similarities in it. JW comes down and we're just having a conversation about it. And I'm telling him about the podcast and he's asking questions. And we eventually conversation leads to, well, last week we went and saw this rock. here are some pictures. He's a historical guy. Camps a lot, ghosts, a lot of places,

and seen a lot of things, asking questions, right? What do you think about this picture? And he looked at it, and so that's really peculiar. And then I then led into, well, we've got some things that are similar to this in this PowerPoint presentation that this guy had made on the John Swift Silver Mine. And I could see, like, a twinkle in his aisle. I get something, I flipped a switch. Now, real quick, the John Swift Silver Mine is a,

It's local legend, local lore in our area, eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia, even eastern Tennessee, that people have been searching for this silver mine for as long as probably two, 300 years. Absolutely. Yeah. So he asks me, well, as I'm bringing this up, I say John Swift's silver mine, and I can see, again, this twinkle in his eye. So he lets me proceed to kind of just give him all the information that I had on this rock and on the John Swift Silver Mine. And when I get done, he says, well, actually, funny that you mentioned that, I actually know some things about the John Swift Silver Mine and actually have done some searching for it myself. I said, what? I've known this guy a long time.

We'd never had this conversation before. So he then leads into this story that his dad was looking to buy some property in Florida as a vacationary to move down. them and the guy they were going to buy the property of, this Mr. Anderson, was going to back and forth in communications. And JW had kind of taken over the negotiation with him because his dad was getting a little bit older. And J.W. said that Mr. Anderson was a centric and had a mine that just went everywhere all the time and would give, just talk about everything, high energy guy, but he was an older guy. And in the process of them buying this land, it was a couple months process, obviously. they called down to kind of finalize the deal, and Mr. Anderson reached back out and said, I know what?

I sold it to somebody else. So they didn't get this land. Now, this land was on the Treasure Coast there in Florida. Okay. And the guy, J.W. says that Mr. Anderson felt very, very bad about it. So in response to that, so let me tell you this, I have some information that you may like to know and gave him what he thought were the coordinates of this John. Swift Silver Mine. Now, that sounds crazy, right? Why would somebody do that and why would we even

think about going and looking for it? J.W. had the same questions. So he began to kind of quiz this guy on a variety of things. He found out through talking to him that Mr. Anderson made his fortune because he found some of Blackbeard's treasure on the Treasure Coast in Florida. And then you can actually, J.W., there's an article that talks about Mr. Anderson, him and then a couple of his guys went in and dug this up and the government was involved, and it's a legitimate thing that happened, right? And part of Christopher Columbus's ship.

And found, yeah, found some of Christopher Columbus's ship as well. Okay, so there's some legitimacy to what he is saying, okay? He then sends JW on another treasure hunt. I guess they're trying to prove that he knew what he was talking about. So he sends him these coordinates to an area that's just a little bit south of Cincinnati, Ohio, and tells him that I don't know the exact, like, landowners can't get all the legal deeds and things that I need, but sends him a map, X marks the spot, there's gold here. Will you go investigate it for me?

What's anybody say? Absolutely, right? Cincinnati's not that far from us, two and a half, three hours. He said, I'm going to go. He and his brother went. Let's please go check it out. Now, this guy had done all of this treasure hunting by dowsing, right? And we know what dowsing is, the two rods, and he would dows on the maps.

And where they pointed on the maps, he would X marks a spot. And that's how he found the gold. That's interesting. Yes, it is, right? It's a completely interesting thing. But that's what JW, now we've never met the guy. The guy has since passed from pancreatic cancer. It was older anyways.

But these are the stories and the information that J.W. is given us. Okay. So they go to Cincinnati, roll up on the courthouse of this kind of this small town outside of Cincinnati. and try to find the deeds to this land, the landowners, and get all the legal stuff they need to at least go and investigate and kind of see where this is at. They get the information, get the landowners, and they drive to this house kind of out where this farm is at.

And he and his brother got through medical detectors, walk up and knock on the door. Nobody's home. So they wait around and think, or maybe they're gone to town to get something, whatever. Wait around for 15, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, nobody shows up. What JW says, I didn't drive all this way to at least not go look at where this X marks the spot is.

So they hop the fence and head out to where on the map X marks the spot. Brings down the metal detector and gets a precious metal ping on this mound on this land. Okay. Calls Dawn, tells Don, hey, this is what happened, right? We've got this ping. We can't find these people, can't follow up, whatever. Leave. They never come back.

further investigates it more, right? Goes again and calls around and finds out that this precious metal ping is actually on an old Native American burial ground. So they can't go in and bring it up because of the legal laws or whatever it is. Okay. So that gives JW two instances now in which he's had this guy tell him information, one where he found the treasure in Florida. He's got a second instance now where there was definitely something

precious there. So that's two for two. He's hit. And he then proceeds to tell him other places throughout the East Coast where there's Silver War caches of gold, where they used to take and throw the Civil War gold down these outhouses and cover them up so that people wouldn't find them. Okay. So we have all this information that's hit. J.W. then proceeds to tell me, this guy doused X marks the spot on this Swift's Silver Mine. And Mr. Anderson told J.W. the numerous conversations that they had. If you can find this place, we're talking billions of dollars in silver.

Okay? So we hear that. Obviously, life's going on, right? And I'm taking down the information, right? And as many notes as I can, as J.W. is telling me this story. And I was like, well, have you ever been up and looked where this is at? Like, oh, yeah. Spend about 10 years, me and my brother are looking for it.

Different times in the winter. Now, where we're at in Appalachian Mountains, you can't go in the spring and summer. Copperheads, rattlesnakes, galore. So you go like this time of the year where all that stuff's gone, the leaves are off. It's just easier to to search for stuff. And he then gives me all the pings of places along this mountain that they've been to, but not found anything. Okay. So he gave it to you? Yeah. We have all, yeah, I've got it. Well, JW right now. He's, he's in the middle of with us. He's,

yeah, he's right with it. He's the guy in the chair. All right. So let me, this, before you go any further, I just got to wrap my mind around this. J.W. has been brought into the fold, right? Yes. And he's sharing this information with you because he's invested in his treasure hunt that he thinks might, I'm assuming, might be related to this.

Yes. Okay. I love treasure hunting stories, guys. And JW's getting older. So he needs young legs. He needs a mountain. He needs a mountain on the ground. You're going to have to go up on a mountain

He should have brought him today. Should have brought him today. He brought him with us. Yeah. We should have it. Next time. Yeah. There'll be more.

He is like, he'll come down once a week, sometimes twice a week. Because, and talk about getting ready to go and planning the trip together and just kind of thinking about all the different things. More stuff he remembers and more information he finds because he said he's not looked for it in probably five or six years, because he's got too old and kind of just fell by the wayside, but it was always there in the back of his mind. We bring all this stuff up and it all comes rushing back. kind of re-energizes him and gets us all fired up to go find this treasure.

Okay. He then just proceeds to tell me more and more information that he has found and that Mr. Anderson gave him as well about this Swift Silver Mine. Now, this Swift Silver Mine, as Justin alluded to, is a bit of a local legend, right? And people think that Pine Mountain, which is one of the mountain faces there where, close to where we live, it's borderlines, Virginia, Kentucky. There's been people that have been looking up there for years. trying to find it. And you can YouTube people who've found carvings and found stuff.

There's tons and tons and tons of treasure hunting forums, tons and tons of information about people looking on Pine Mountain because that's just kind of the central thought for most people of where this is at. And there have been, there have been coins found. There's been a silver bar found. There's been like these singular items that have been found that in this area? Yes. Yes. Now, where we think it's at, that is not in that same area.

Mr. Anderson told us he dows the X-Marxed a spot, not the same place. As is this rock? No, it's not the same place as the rock. No. No. I'm trying to tie the rock into this. See, that's the thing that we've been doing too. Okay.

The rock, I don't know if it ties in at all. Okay, got you, got you. I just know that it led to this flow of, this rock started a conversation that led to this flow of information from this amateur treasure hunter who's talking to a professional treasure hunter who has all of this info and these maps and these pings and these, all this stuff that's just opened up this gigantic door to us searching for this long lost John Swift silver mine. But there are carvings that are similar to that, that have been. been found on pine mountain. Really? Yes. Is this on Pine Mountain?

No, that is not. That would be in, no, it's not. What mountain faces would that be? I have no idea. The mountain range in Haysaw, Virginia. You do have a coal mine under it right there. Yeah, you do. That one actually blew up there, didn't it?

Oh, I was saying, there's a coal mine underneath this? Yeah. Yes. Pretty close. Pretty close. Pretty close. I don't know it runs that direction or not, but. And there's another thing that we're looking at too because unpurified silver just in the mountain.

Looks just like coal, baby. Looks like coal. It's black. I didn't know that. So you would actually have to have the things that we didn't either at first. You need to have an acid test to kind of put onto the rock to see if it tests test positives. We've spent months and months researching, looking out logistically, you know, like situations. It's if this happens, what do we do?

I mean, like months, just waiting for the weather to turn cold and the leaves to fall off. We've been in John Swift's journals or what's left of them, you know, seeing what Swift wrote, you know, where he was, where he spent his time, how he came into the continental U.S., like all of these different things. We've poured in to eventually lead to getting boots on the ground, which were still waiting. waiting to do. But we've got so much information going into it that I feel like we've been prepping for this huge game for weeks and weeks like several by weeks leading up to this great big event that we can really pour into based on the information that we had. And it's been unusually warm in our area. And like it wasn't that long ago that I still saw some snakes out, right? And JW, like he tells the story.

He was up there in early March, which you would think. think still cold enough in our area that there wouldn't be snakes. He was around a cliff face and stuck his hand into a rock and there a set of copperhead is looking at him. Because moving slow, looking at him. He jerked his hand away real quick and then left, obviously, because you don't want to be in this remote area and get bit by a rattlesnake or a copperhead. And the way that JW talks about this location, you know, it's super rugged terrain, number one. Like, you're scaling cliff faces. It's not just, you know, you're walking, taking a nice little hike through the fore.

No, it's like legit rock climbing. You're moving around cliff faces. You're doing all these different things. But he talks about these unusual boulders. You know, we don't have boulders really in our area. You know, you have some large rocks and stuff, but just these singular boulders sitting around, you don't really see that.

It's not like out west. But he talks about this place, there being boulders in certain areas that just don't look like they belong. and hearing J.W. talk about it. And we've made this comment several times on the show. It feels like an Indiana Jones movie. I mean, I feel like I'm listening to one. Yeah.

That's how it feels. Like going into this, I feel like there's going to be some booby trap that I hit and darts are going to be coming from the trees. For sure. A boulder is going to be rolling down the mountainside at me just looking at it. Yeah, it probably will happen. I want to be there for it. Yeah.

This is so cool. Sorry, to add to the mystery this as well. Well, Mr. Anderson was in our area in the 70s. And he... Mr. Anderson? He's the guy that has... He's the treasure hunter. Gotcha.

So he was in Florida, but he was in our area in the 70s, and tells J.W. That up on that mound where we think this is at, there used to be a natural stair step of rocks. Okay. In this stair step of rocks, at the bottom of it was where they had, according to legend, was where they would smelt the silver down and make the coins. had the press there, had everything. And that at that staircase of rocks was a entrance to the mine that there was somewhere else, according to legend, another entrance as well elsewhere. Which brings us back to this rock where you have two people on both sides of this bridge that they could use this as a tunnel.

Right. So that's a bit of a stretch, but in this story, it kind of makes a little bit of sense. Now, before you go on, when he was here in the 70s, Mr. Anderson, saw the stairs steps, went up to them, and was going to try to get the legal rights to go in and do some excavating and to do some digging. It's all national forest. And it was a lot of loopholes in the 70s for him to get to that. And that's why his time he's on here for a couple of weeks, whatever.

And that's why he never went further with what he claims he found it and saw the silver. He says he saw the silver? Yes. He saw the silver, and that's why he kept them billions of dollars in silver. He just couldn't get the legal means necessary to go in and excavate it. Yeah, I know it's a lot. This is so exciting. So you can see why we didn't spend so much time on the rock.

Yeah. I'm looking at the rock right now, and I'm starting to lose my voice again. I'm getting over a cold, and if anybody's listening and they hear me, smacking around a throat lodge and I'm so sorry I got hauls in my mouth. So I'm looking so you can see my my picture here Lance. So this is the the bridge, right? That's what you're talking about. That's correct.

Yep. Yeah, yeah. This is really interesting. Have you been able to, all right, let me, this staircase. Is this a natural staircase or was it man-made, you think? Natural. Okay. He said natural.

It was natural. Okay. And when he was telling that you were trying to signal something to me, what were you trying to say? I was saying, look at the middle of that rock carving. That bridge, path, whatever tunnel could also be a staircase. And you have, in the carving, you have a little guy on top and a little guy on the bottom. And you have what could be, you know, if there's an upper and lower mine, which is what is in all in John Swift's journals. You know, Mr. Anderson believed and J.W. believes.

Now, a lot of legend says that one of these mines is local to us and one of them is around the Red River Gorge area. To me, that doesn't make any sense. Why in the 1780s would you have two mines that you're trying to transport things back and forth hundreds of miles apart? That doesn't make any sense to me, especially when you have natives, which Atlanta may get into, trying to swap this silver, trying to get the jump on these transports,

grab all the silver, and that's how they're making their living. So if you had a situation where you had like a upper mine where the actual mining is going on in a lower smelting area to smelt all this down and turn it into currency,

it would make sense for there to be something natural on something close in proximity to be able to work this app. This is so much to take in. Yeah. This is so much to take in. My theory on the rock,

if it has nothing to do with the treasure, is that there's spots in the mammoth cave system throughout where you can come in and out and possibly these were maps to guide you to that. Well, you say that. And I know, like, you're just throwing it out there as a theory, but in one of Swift's journal or in his journal, or in his journals, an entry in his journal,

he talked about writing and working with this guy, and this guy was describing a local mountain in our area called Pound Gap and said that the natives used, said that this mountain was like a honeycomb, said there was nothing but tunnels that went, that there was entrances everywhere, exits everywhere, and that walking into the mountain, you could hear the horse beats, the hooves of horses overhead going around on roads.

So, you know, there's a lot of legend and different things that have happened, you know, and local legend that it's like, okay, we've had natives get from here to here really, really fast, and we don't know how. Well, that's one of the theories is that there were tunnels in all of these mountains, and that's what they utilized to get from place to place. And that's, I don't think that's inconceivable. I think that's a very logical possibility. Man.

So do you guys, what's your sense on this rock as far as age goes? I have no idea. None. Really, really old. So like this treasure story, how old of a legend is this story, a couple hundred years? This legend, Swift was operating in the 1780s. 18, 1770s and 178. Okay.

He came into what was originally the Carolinas and mingled with the Cherokee people there. Now, I have a theory. He came into these and started minglingling with the Cherokee and he started getting these glimpses of silver. Now, this isn't technically in all the journals, but this is my theory. He starts coming into these people and sees this silver. sees him using it and recognizes this as this a silver. Where did you guys get this? Well, through information, just like we're doing,

through information and talking to him and maybe going and discovering this rock because there's also in his journals him talking about leaving a cache of silver around a peculiar looking rock southwest from the headwaters of this river that I think I know where he's talking about and there was this old beach tree or an old tree he don't say beach he says an old

tree that him a guy named monday and another man put their initials and a compass rose into the tree i've since talked to a guy that built the well site that's 500 yards from this rock and he told me that when he built the well side and was pushing using an excavator to push over the trees and this is before I told him anything about the rock anything about what we had found nothing. I don't even know if I'd came across it. He tells me that he pushed over this big old old beach tree

and it had some really weird carvings in it. You know, some guys initials and what looked to be something like a compass rose. Oh, man. Now, in the journals, in the journals, this cash of silver that was left near this peculiar looking rock. Oh, man. Beside of this beach tree and this Indian grave was $25,000 to $30,000 worth of silver in 1780 something. 25 to $30,000 worth of silver back then is what he left next to this rock?

Yes. and y'all haven't gone back up there well it's not as easy as it sounds that's why we have to be yeah no you're absolutely right i mean listen um i'm not a treasure hunter uh i i i just pretend to be one uh no but uh there there is a treasure that i'm looking at possibly pursuing and uh by pursuing this treasure i have to get permission by the property owner to excavate his property. And that's the biggest challenge, which my challenge is going to be more than what you guys have for you because there's not much excavation in the sense that you already have a specific location, you know, like I'm, I'm looking to go dig where a river used to flow for a ship that

sunk and now is farm fields. And so like, I like, like mine is a lot more. I, the eny, mean right here, I think. You know? But this, you got a very specific location, and it's very, it's very, you can just grab them. It's all right. Justin's grabbing the halls, making a bunch of noise. But this is a very specific location. And so it shouldn't be too hard as far as that goes, the excavation side of things.

but it's getting the permission. Now, you've talked to the landowner. We're getting ready. We haven't talked to the landowner. I have a date set to talk to the landowner. He's a lot older guy, and I've tried to approach this as lightly as possible. You know, to make sure that he will talk to us

and let us kind of look into what we need to look into. So you have a time, like, you've already, like, scheduled a time to talk to him? Yes. And he doesn't, does he know, that you've been on his property yet? Probably because the way I was scheduled and talking to him was through a family member, and the family member knows, listens to the show, and was excited about coming to us and saying,

you need to talk to this guy. So your family member hooked you up with the owner. Yeah. That's cool. Wow. It's a lot. It's a lot. And it goes like kind of leading on to my theory.

I feel like we're following in the footsteps of John Swift. He had to find this silver somehow. Right. He had to find the location of this mine to operate out of. If he came in, mingled with the native peoples, came across this rock, and they could explain to him, hey, this is what this means. This is where it's located. This is what you need to do, you know, maybe. And I know that's a stretch trying to bring this rock into it.

But for me, it just, it's, it's too close. everything just worked way too smoothly for this rock not to have something to do with this treasure. That's just my opinion. I feel like maybe the same. In all honesty, I kind of hope that it's two separate things because then you got two legends and treasures. I would be totally cool with that. Yeah.

Yeah. Because it sounds like the silver that you're on the trail of something. And like ultimately, like it would be really cool if this rock was. its own story and you have even touched the surface of it. Yeah. And you know, it could be. You know, just like we talked earlier. Ancient peoples, they went to these high places.

That's where they communicated with their gods. Sometimes Lance's brother messages him one day. He's like, you know, every time you see carvings like this on ancient aliens, they're talking about the natives, done these circular patterns to represent portals. What if you do go up there? I knew you do it. You know I got to bring portals. You know I got to break.

Hey, you have me at portals, baby. Keep going. I knew you were going to say portals. That's it. Why you keep looking at me? That's a given, Ron. You know I'm going to say portals. Carry on.

Carry on. So if there is a chance, well, now just something hit me. We find this treasure. We're like getting super rich. And then we find this portal with this rock and fall into it. And then there goes all my wealth. And I'm just like upside down.

As long as you go in first, I'll wait. I was way richer on the other side. But no, I hope it is too. Like, I hope it's two totally separate adventures. Because that's what this is. I mean, it really feels like. It feels like I'm Indiana Jones. If you're listening to this Gerber Life Guaranteed life insurance sponsorship ad,

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Lance has even been driving by and seeing fog just creeping out of certain areas of the mountain that says, huh, that's probably an opening. Yeah, with JW, when the weather started to turn cold,

he came down and was like, driven by the spot where things is at. So if you notice the fog is like in the middle of the mountain, and it looks like it's coming up out of the mountain. It's like, I've never really paid any attention before. He said, the next morning where it's cool,

just drive by and look. So I did. And about halfway up the mountain, you can see fog just flying out of the middle of the mountain. He thinks it's because that's where the mine is and that's where the cavern's at. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Yeah.

Wow. Wow. So that's where we're at with this story, huh? That's where we're at. I mean, unless Lance was talk about Chief B&G, There's a whole, another historical part of this where Chief Benji was a local Native American Indian chief, obviously, that was in our area. And there was actually a mile marker, you know, those historical markers you have on the side of the road. There was one that mentions him just being in the area.

And he was known to be a settler looter. What he would do is he would come in and find the white man and take their stuff. And that's how they kind of built his purse. he was trying to get this silver from John Swift, according to the legend, and some of the historical marker. And the thing that John Swift would do is they would get the silver out and send it down what is in our area known as Lost Creek, which is kind of a hidden creek, not river, not really creek kind of in between. That kind of went under the rocks. And he would send that down one way and send fake ones on wagons the other way.

and Chief Benji would attack these fake ones and take whatever John Swift had, and they would come back. John Swift and then would come back to where the actual other place was at where the silver was at, and that's how they got it out of there. And I thought that was the interesting story. And J.W. says, have you ever seen the mile marker on the side of the road? I said, no, next time you're about away, stop and look. Well, I did, and it's there. Chief Benji, Cherokee, Chief, and kind of goes through some history of them. Another guy that I work with was overhearing the conversation.

And he comes in and listening there kind of quietly. And after we get all done, he looks at me and said, I'm Chief Benjie's seventh great-grandson. Oh, man. This is like Destiny. And I said, what? He was like, yeah, he's one of those guys that does a lot of his ancestry, likes, dislikes doing those things. And he brings over his printout from Ancestry.com and something he's traced. And by marriage on his mother's side, he is the seventh great grandson of Chief Benj.

and tells me that his grandpa, that he can, when he was younger, distinctly remembers him having a purse of silver coins that he kept on him. But he hasn't, he hasn't able to find him. Oh, my gosh. Wow. Wow. Well, sounds like you guys are just scratching the surface of this, this, this amazing story. when I was talking about earlier

with my journey in Pennsylvania I want to clarify that that where I was was part of the Appalachian Mountain Appalachia Appalachian, whatever you call it mountains though and this is as well and I just wonder what kind of ancient history and

lore is hidden there like this is something that So what was his name? Scott Walter, the guy on the history channel or something like that that had that, what was it called, America on Earth or something? Yeah, that was it. This is something that I think he would be like jumping all over for an episode, right? I don't know if he still does that show.

And quite frankly, I don't think you should give it to him. This is, I'm serious. This is yours. And if you're going to publish it on any kind of form like that, Merkel Media is here. So, hey, selfishly, screw history channel. There's a reason we're here. But like, this is something that is really interesting. If somebody came to you guys and they're like, hey, I'm an archaeologist or I'm somebody in the know, I know this stuff.

And they said, and they looked at the rock and they're like, that's natural. What would you say? I would say that I appreciate your opinion. It's not my opinion. I'm telling you I know. Well, I appreciate your what you think you know. But piss off. No.

If somebody did come and say that it was natural and it was legitimate, they could show me why and explain why and relate it to other things. Okay. So it's natural. Yeah. It's a really cool find regardless. And it's a really cool find that however it wanted to use itself, it led us to a much bigger adventure into looking for this John Swift silver treasure. Imagine. Just imagine if you found the treasure and then you're writing a biography and this rock is just a footnote in the story.

Yeah. And that's all it could be. That would be. That's all it could be. And, you know, it was something that we thought was so huge. Yeah. You know, and that could, that's a possibility. You know, if somebody comes up and says, oh, this is totally natural. I don't know how you naturally put, like, humanoid looking carvings into two of them, actually. So in any of these pictures, are there humanoid figures in it? Do you have any of those pictures? I don't see what you're talking about when it comes to a humanoid.

And I'll post these, if it's O'Hare with you guys, can I post these pictures? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, cool. So I'll post these pictures on the website. But so this rock wall that I found in Pennsylvania, they say as a natural formation, they're saying that, you know, 300 million years ago when the continents collided and all that stuff, it pushed the bedrock up of the ocean and created this wall. And it looks like it could be some kind of composite rock with pebbles and stuff.

And so I could see the theory behind it and stuff. But then there's the aspect of there are things about it that look like they're designed. And maybe both can be true where it is a natural formation that then ancient people came along and designed on top of. And it's a thought and a theory that I have been recently exposed to when it comes to the ancient people with Egypt. So, like, Graham talks about, I think it's Graham, talks about how the Egyptians came into the area and the pyramids already existed. Right. The sphinx already existed. And they built on top of it.

So the pharaoh head for the sphinx is an addition and on top of something that was already existing beforehand. And so with that rock wall, maybe it was a natural formation that they then used and they created the snake head, the serpent head and all that stuff. and we so when I went up there I told you that like I was told this legend of this underground world and there's an entrance near the serpent head well it turns out while I was up there this father and daughter came hiking by

and I was talking about just I don't know if I told them what I was doing I don't I'm pretty sure I didn't because I didn't want to scare him away I'm like yeah I'm that crazy guy I looked for big foot and ancient aliens and we're looking for reptilians around here you got any leaves were I got my six shooter you know

but so he offered this information I remember because I remember looking at Ed I'm like oh my gosh he said that the ground was hollow here and he said he said that there's old minds riddled in this area and that we should be careful because we could fall

through and I looked at Adam like like we might be on like at the location of this legend, whatever this legend is, whether it's true or not, however it formed, like we actually might have found the location of where this legend is speaking of. And then it was dark out. And mind you, we are out in the middle of the woods, old mountain, right?

And it's dark out. And we just made a decision to turn around and come back because we're at the point now where we're hiking over these giant rocks and everything in the complete black, pitch dark and I'm like, I'm pretty sure I'm going to kill myself, you know? And so I was like, I think we need to just call it quits. And I turn around and I come across a big pipe running through the ground that's exposed. And I was like, I stopped and I looked at it and it looks at it. I'm like, is that what I think it is? And he's like, yeah. And I was like, where's it coming from? Where's it going? And he's like, in his southern accent, I don't know. And if it's old minds,

though. It would make sense. There's ventilation. But what I'm thinking is, is it possible that these old mines that were there, did they, again, utilize something that already existed? Was the ground hollow? And they used this natural opening

to jumpstart the excavation of mining, probably coal in that area, what they were doing, you know? And so there's, there can be truths and little truths and all of it. That together, And that's so much fun to think about, right?

And so with this, it's really interesting because you were mentioned about the boulders and how in that area you don't really have a whole lot of big boulders. I think there's a lot more in these areas than you can even realize. I think that from what I'm hearing around locally, there are parts of these mountains down here that people still haven't gone. Well, that's the thing. You know, the Appalachians, they're so vast. There's so much wilderness that has hardly been explored or some parts have probably never been explored.

So you have all of this wilderness that, you know, anything could be lurking. You know, you said this discovery or rediscovery that you made of this wall and this urban head. That was last year, right? Yeah. So that was last year. July, we come across this, you know, these cliffrock carvings. A month ago, Josh and Richie and all the, you know, the sword and staff guys and all that, rediscover this lost serpent mound in Logan County, West Virginia.

Yep. I don't think that it's a coincidence. How far are you guys from Logan? How far is this from Logan? An hour and a half, two? Really? Yeah. An hour and a half, two hours is it?

Yeah. I freaking love this. Listen, these mountains held so many secrets. The natives call on ground. Exactly. the natives called it dark and bloody ground. Why? Why did they not settle here?

Why did they just come in and hunt and farm and, you know, just come in seasonally? They never really settled, settled. They called it dark and bloody ground. Central Applied. Why? What was here? What scared them that they would call it dark and bloody ground? Have you ventured into any, has anything come across your path that led you venturing into the idea of giants and stuff?

I'm not asking Ryan because you don't believe it either. Ryan's like, you might as well just say portals if you're going to talk about giants. They came through them. Well, there are some. I actually heard former guest yours and Derek Olson.

Oh, he's coming up on Tuesday. He's going to be on again. Well, awesome. I love Derek Olson. Love what he does. I love listening to him speak. He was talking about the love Love Lock Cave Giants and Pyramid Lake in, I think Nevada or Utah, close to there, and the Pyramid Lake Petroglyt's.

The closest thing that I can find to these petroglyphs that we've come across are the Pyramid Lake petroglyphs and the Judicola Rock petroglyphs in one of the Carolinians, I think. both of those places have folklore of giants. Both places. And they look similar to these? That's the most similar thing that I can find out there. As far as like the concentric circles, the lines, whatever you want to call them, that are just kind of weaving around the thing.

The closest thing that I can find. And they're still not really close. It's just closer than anything else that I can find. Yeah. And with the exception, of the Woodbigger, which is our version of Bigfoot. We don't really have any giant lore in our history that I have ever read or seen or heard talk about. Well, you do in the Carolinas.

Right. As far as we're at, eastern Tennessee, the area. And you've got some mounds. Yeah. Mounds in Ohio and Adams County. But what we're focusing on where we're at with this, there's not really anything locally that says there may be not yet. That's true. And that's a great restaurant.

bugger, my way. Not a sponsor. When you come down, not a sponsor. Not yet. Probably never. First of all, I think that it would be really cool to do a mega show

where I have sort and staff guys in here as well, even Ward with you guys, and we all really chop it up. I'm not to buy some more microphones. We have even different mixer boards, but I think that would be something pretty cool. But so, like, nothing about this rock.

to me screams giants, but I just know that it seems like the more I've done this stuff, the more you look into things, giant. Somebody winds of saying something about giants. You're like, oh, here we freaking go again. Let's jump down to the giant portal hole and see where it goes. Like, you know, it's just the giants keep. And here's the thing. I mean, these are such, this is such ancient area.

Like, I didn't realize how ancient these mountains were until I moved here and started talking to people. It's so ancient. What did you say the natives called this area before? Dark and blooded ground. Dark and bloody ground? No. I mean, like, how would you describe this area?

There's giants roaming it, and every time you came across one, they knocked you out and ate you. Yeah, absolutely. Well, even if it wasn't just giants, even if it was another type of ancient people that were here before them, what has always been throughout human civilization? Conquest and murder and pillage. and rape and that's what you do. Like when you come into a place as it's happened all through history, this is mine,

I'm going to take it, and I'm going to murder anybody else who tries to stop me. So, I mean, this could have been an area that has been populated for who knows how long. And it's just been a constant in our folklore. There's probably places in Europe that they call dark and bloody ground from World War II. I mean, it's just, it's something that is carried on through generations. We don't know what it's really based on, but like we say all the time, where there's smoke, there's fire.

I believe with every myth, with every legend, there's a seed of truth somewhere. No matter how big or how small, there's a seed of truth. And when you start grasping those straws and pulling the threads and bringing everything together and actually taking the time to look into and research and, you know,

look at these, like the Swiss journals. You know, you're reading what this guy had to write at the time that he was operating this. What clues are there? What's he saying? What's he mentioning? What's some markers that he's talking about? You know, find the things.

And that's the thing. People have been doing this for hundreds of years. But I feel like we have as much or more information on this treasure than anybody that's come before us. And ain't nobody looking at what we're looking at. And you guys never set out to be treasure hunters. No, never. We barely said how to be podcasters. That's what it goes.

Very rarely do you enter into podcasting. I don't like, I'm like, from day one, I'm like, I'm going to treat this like a business. I'm going to work it like a job and one day it's going to pay my car loan. Yeah. And then it's like, oh, crap, it's my job. We said, man, we're having all these really cool conversations. Let's just sit down and record them. See what it does.

Yeah, that wasn't me. And now we're treasure hunters. Yeah, that's amazing. And then that's just the thing. there's, you know, talking about the sword and staff guys and ward, you know, all throughout the things that they've been doing. It's ran so parallel with some of the things that we're coming across. You know, we actually talked with Josh and Ritchie a couple weeks ago, and it was amazing. You know, when we sat down, really after the recording was over, we sat down and it was like,

same things just kept popping up, like same stories, same things that we were like, okay, look, we've got to sit down and hash some of these things out. that had zero to do with what we're working on here and 100% to do with what they're working on. Yeah, there's a boatload of stories and information to uncover with this stuff. It would be a very foolish move to try to stay, quote unquote, stay course on one topic. Yeah. Let it be fluent and just let it flow whichever direction is going to go, always keeping the trail in grasp, you know, where it's just like, okay, we start with the rock. Right now, we went from the rock to the silver.

Now we're doing Lilith hunting and Logan and all this stuff. But one day it's going to come back to the rock. I swear, guys, it's going to come back to the rock, you know, but just do whatever path it takes you. Just go and run with it and see where it takes you. That's the organic nature that it got you to this point is the organic nature that's going to get you to where you need to go. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaking of Leeleth hunting. Freaking Lilith, man. I drove hard into some research. And the research was, in my belief in, you know, going back, you know, from the beginning, but that all of the ancient gods have been the same entities with different names. So I was going into all this research and doing this, and, you know, Lilith and Pan especially kept popping up. That was the two that I was trying to identify because it's the two that's most commonly associated with our area. So I'm identifying these.

I'm going hard in research for two or three weeks. And I was calling these guys and message them like, this is what I'm finding, you know, all this different stuff. They've got to reel me back in a little bit. And some weird stuff starts happening. So I got to take a break. Well, I start back up. What do you mean weird stuff start happening? Like weird synchronicities.

Like I'm doing research talking to Lance while I'm talking to Lance. A tree branch actually falls in Dollywood and hits my youngest kid in the head while I'm talking to him. could be totally nothing, probably totally nothing. Maybe it was. So these weird little synchronicity start happening. I take a little break, come back to it, you know, two or three months later. I'm in the hot tub one night. And I told these guys at first.

I think I might have dosed off, but I don't think I, I don't know. Anyway, I'm in the hot tub one night. And I'm looking toward my outbuilding that is directly from me. and this lady in white, this rugged, ratty-looking white dress, steps out from behind my outbuilding, makes eye contact with me.

And then I'm like, I got to get inside. Like, I'm out here half-necked in the hot tub, in the dark. She's about to rush you. Yeah, she's getting ready to bull rush me. I don't know what she is, who she is. Bangs growing. Yeah.

So I jump up. I'm putting the cover back on. And I was like, screw this, forget the cover. Like, I'm just getting in. So I throw my crocs on. I'm getting into the house. I look back over, you know, everything in my head screaming, do not look back.

I look back over. Nothing there. Except there's another building right beside of it. And there was an owl perched on top of it. Really? Looking at. Wow. Yeah.

And the owl stuff, it's just been, it's been nuts. So, like, we were talking to Josh and Richie about some of it. I'm Burton Moran. Burton Moran from local legend. And we were talking to him. And this is where I'll fall to the other side of the line where, this is crazy. Like,

there's no way. Like, I don't even like the word synchronicities. I don't. I don't. I've talked about it on the podcast. And it's not because I'm just completely skeptic about it. I just think you can,

if you start looking for stuff, you're going to start seeing stuff. And you can start correlating anything to anything. Um, so he was bringing this stuff to me and Ryan as well. And I was listening and I guess I don't know. Maybe we're reaching a little too far. Maybe you're trying to draw too many connections with stuff.

Well, we'd have had a conversation a couple weeks ago and had a podcast. We recorded an episode on Tuesday night. And my wife and my kids are coming back over from church on Wednesday. And I go to church over where these boys live at. So it's about a 45-minute drive. And as we're coming back towards my house in an area in which I've never seen, I've seen deer there, seen turkey there, occasional policies. some scone clock kind of stuff, but I've never seen it out ever in 10 years of driving this road.

We're coming back up towards the, on this road, which is probably by the way the crow flies, 500 feet to my house, but I've got to go down and around and get back to it. And I'm just driving, and I think Pitt, my daughter is wanting something. So I'm kind of looking back, and my wife says, what is that? And we're driving, so I turn my head back around and over on the guardrail, stands an out. and as we drive by it, it's not looking at us. And then she's kind of, look, there isn't, ow, that's crazy.

Look. And then she turns that head all the way around, looks right at us. And I kind of just, there it is. And it just take off. And then the next time we record, I like, all right, boys, I know what I've said, but I think there might be something to this. This is what happened to me. Well, it's even so much.

Go ahead, Tony. I'll see you go over there for something. Yeah, so I use AI art for, the show art now and stuff. I have the other guys to do artwork and stuff, but recently I've been so busy, it seems you're just to plug it in, get the art, and go.

And I've been noticing that when I plug in something, a lot of times birds are popping up. And I mentioned it to Ward, and he's like, that's interesting. I'm like, Ward, there you go again with all your weird stuff. I say, shut up, bro. Well, this past week,

Cody over here, Cody, the producer, he was on the show. and we call it the mothman curse. And so I'm like, okay, let me just plug it in. I put mothman. I put my little codes in and stuff of what I used to make it look the way I wanted to look. And this was what popped up. Wow.

And these, these, uh, wow. Like these birds and owls keep popping up whenever I, but not always. And it's so random. And then, you know, I should probably do a show one day. Yeah, go ahead. I should probably do a show one day.

But Ryan's going potty. But I'll be right behind you, Ryan. But the Houskeye podcast guys, I believe they recently, and I don't listen to their show, but I believe they recently did an episode on this, what was, what was that? The owl man. No, not the owl man. The AI. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. I just listen to it. What was your name? she had some yeah but it's like this AI demon that's been popping up an AI art and I and to be fair I was the first one on it but I won't I won't want to claim it at all and stuff

like like like I've been I've been talking about this for months privately and stuff I just don't I don't do episodes on everything I talk about and low or low web yeah it's L OBE right L OAB L-A-B that's right but they did an episode I think on it and stuff people should check it out but there's this this phenomenon that we're starting to realize

with AI art that is AI art doing something more than what we thought it would do? Is it doing more than originally intended? And is it projecting or summoning different things and DETs and entities? And I mean, I should probably post this picture along with the show stuff just so people can see what I'm talking about. Yeah.

Like that looks like some kind of crazy out. Yes. And that just happened on Monday. last week. Yeah, that's crazy. It's even being little stuff like, you know, where me and Rion work, we do woodwork, you know, we won't get into all of that stuff. Tell me more about that boring life stuff. I'm kidding. It's not boring. I think it's a lot of trees in the woods. What you guys do with the wood, like it's amazing. Like the guys who, Blake, and I think that his friend's name is Josh, I forget, but the guys who, that desk out there was made by guys in

Arkansas that brought it up and stuff. I mean, it's amazing what you guys do with the woods. Yeah, it's awesome. We enjoy it. We actually enjoy. it. But what we do is we work up boards and logs and when we, they come in from a log yard, we have to date them, like give them their location and a number and the date that they were bought and all these different things. Well, even stuff just as simple as, you know, when me and Ryan worked together, I mean, we literally work together. We look at each other like this all day long on each side of a planer. Yeah, I know. So every crazy idea I have, guess who gets it first. The other day, I actually told him, I ain't telling you anything else.

You just keep pissing on everything that I got to say. That's why I said to my wife all the time. She never thinks any of my ideas are good. But just something as simple as, okay, we're working these boards. I make a cut. I throw my scrap away. I turn back around. And this board is coming through the planar.

Oh, wow. That's what I thought. That's actually a DW1 board. But that goes along with what Lance is saying. You start finding everywhere. But here's the weird thing. Here's the weird thing. When I looked and saw that, the moment that I did that,

our boy Cody over here said, Al. Oh, really? I was listening to your show, listening to Cody's interview, and the very moment that I saw that and read Al, Cody said, out in my ear holes. That had to freak out. Yeah. was, I'm like, and I'm going there next week.

And Ryan said, Ryan said, it's DW1. It's DWU. I already see anybody where he's got. I was like, you listen right now. That's DW. Don't come at me with this. You listen right now. Listen, son.

I got three, I got four or five years on you. Let's tell you right now what this is. This is DW1. There ain't no OWL. That does not say yet. But no, I mean, it's just been weird stuff, man. And it seems like that's the thing. Like the further you dive into this stuff, the more it just starts, you know, it's like we've said it a few times.

You gaze into the abyss long enough. Eventually the abyss starts gazing back. Or it's always been gazing. I touch. It's always been looking. I think right now it's wrapping its tentacles around us and pulling us in. Yeah. It's interesting.

I also have a theory on that. On what? Tenticles? Kind of. Cathaloo. Kind of. You know, there's a lot of. there's a lot of us operating in this weird realm.

Okay? You say it on here a whole lot how you are the only Christian paranormal podcaster or one of the few. I wouldn't say the only. One of the few. Like, let's just put this way. We were talking about it earlier and stuff. When I first started and you said about how you guys were reaching out to people and the response was great,

when I first started podcasting, I would reach out to other podcasts and it was like crickets, you know? So whether they were Christians out there or not, I didn't know because nobody wanted to talk to me. Yeah. But you have a lot of these different, you know, Christian or not, we've all been diving into all these weird stories and these weird correlations and all the stuff that's happening and, you know, Bigfoot and UFOs and ghosts and hauntings and demons and portals and all this different stuff. And what I've heard from almost everybody that I listen to anyway and people that we've talked

to is there's this central intelligence that's possibly, you know, coordinating all. these different things. It's all a theory, you know, something that we've all been looking at, trying to put our finger on and bringing light to, you know, if this is some form of old gods that are behind all of these things. And by old gods, I mean, you know, the ancient gods, the fallen angels, the, all this different stuff. If that's what's driving and operating this, and we as Christian, a lot of us, Christian podcasters, are not like in ancient times worshipping these things, but we're shining a lot on them and saying,

we're coming for you. We're going to shine a lot. We're going to make you known. We're going to show people what is behind the veil and how it's operating. Wouldn't that start pushing back a little? Oh, yeah. That's my thoughts. Yeah.

No, I absolutely agree with you. I have noticed that with the interactions I've had with people and stuff. what they're saying is happening to them. I feel like there's definitely a pushback. Even with me, I mean, like, I've said it before in the show, but that whole incident I had in my old house, I mean, I always to start off with, I had dog man in my house

and I'm like, no, I kind of did. And people are, they're like, how's that even possible, bro? And like, well, it's because you think dog man is physical, bro. I'm talking interdimensional portal babies, bro. You know? Like, but in all,

I don't know how I was described it other than it was heavy. We felt the vibrations. It was walking bipedal and you hear the nails clacking on the floor. And it's like when you look in the abyss and it stares back at you and that's what we're doing. I'm not scared of it though. I'm not worried about it. And that's the question I've always had for years and stuff. People are like, you know, doing this stuff that you do, aren't you worried, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, no, I'm not worried about it. Like, like, I believe that God has me here for a reason. God's going to place me here. If God's going to place me here, then like, I don't got to worry about a whole lot.

You know what I mean? Like, when things get crazy and like unbearable, then I'll just say, I guess is God saying, it's time to roll, bro. Like, your purpose is done and go back to driving truck and have a good life. You've done your job. Good job. You know, get out now. But I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon, especially with you guys

finding weird rocks. It's, I can't stop looking at this pictures. These are, they're fascinating. I definitely, I want to get up there with you guys. Like, seriously, if you guys let me know when you're going up there, because I imagine you're going to talk to this owner, I'm telling you what's going to happen right now. You're going to talk to him, and he's going to say,

yeah, you can come and look at it. You can do what you need to do. And just let me know, keep me informed. Yeah. And yeah, when that happens, let me know the date. I'll be there. I'll be there. I'll just fuel up the truck and I'm coming.

It's not a bad drive. Not a bad drive. It could be a bad drive. I don't care. I'll be there. I'll be there because this is so interesting. I'm going up that way a lot anyways for the Shadow Appalachia docu series. I'm going to be helping with that and participating in that.

So when we're filming in West Virginia and stuff, I'll be roughly up in that area. You said what? You're an hour, hour and a half from there? Yeah, you're going right by. Yeah. Oh, so you're closer? Yeah. Oh, perfect.

Like, save some gas. If you're going to Logan, you're not far at all from us. I don't know if it would it be closer? It doesn't matter. We don't need to talk about logistics and bore the hell out of people. Yeah, that's true. That's true. We don't need.

We'll save that for a. Yeah, yeah. All right, listen, we're going to start winding things down here. But before we wind things down, I want you to tell me how your daughter saw you, but not you. Because you told me about that before we started recording. And I just want to hear this because now I'm going to like, I just want to hear it. What just happened? It just happened recently?

Yes, it did. But after all of this, or in the midst of all this research and, you know, me having my little hot tub incident, me and Lilith just kicking it in the hot tub. Yeah. I was walking out to my truck one night. I forgot something in my truck. So I'd stepped out and everybody else had already laid down, you know, was asleep for the night. I was going out to my truck and I heard my wife, plain as day. Like, hey, Justin, from my front porch, plain as day.

I turn around, she's not there. Nobody's there. So I'm like, well, she's had the, I mean, she's just, she's playing. Like she don't play, but she's playing. So I grab my stuff, go back inside, go to the bedroom, she's sound asleep. But I know without a shadow of a doubt that I heard her. So a couple weeks later, I was in the recliner, I think watching a ball game in my living room. Just kick back watching TV.

And my youngest daughter, she has, without going into all the specifics, she has these episodes. She has a mitochondrial disorder. And she has these episodes that causes dystonia, causes her to look and act sort of like a stroke victim. Well, the only thing that helps these things is rest. Like, you know, we give her screen time, put her in bed, say, chill out for a while, and let your brain reset. So she's in the bed one evening and I just hear, I don't know her, I said, what, daddy? I said, what? And she said, what, what, daddy?

So I get up, I walk in through there, you know, through my four, you're looking in my bedroom. I said, Riley, who are you talking to? She said, you, you were hollering at me. What were you saying? I said, baby, I didn't holler. I didn't say anything. And that was that. You know, I'll call her down and let it look.

I didn't need you. I don't know what you heard. Probably a week later, same scenario. I'm sitting in the recliner, either watch TV, working on something, you know, reading something. The recliner is kind of my spot. But I heard her again. Same scenario. She was having another episode.

She has them almost daily. She was resting. I hear her again. what daddy daddy what do you want so i'm like this this can't happen twice this close to given something not be going on so i kind of get up i'm sneaking in through there just listening before i turn into the foyer so i'm like on this side of the wall the foyer's over here i have my head close to the wall just listening well she says it again daddy what do you want what nothing and she follows up with daddy you know i can't walk what do you want

So I peeked my head around and I said, Riley, who are you talking to? She said, I was talking to you. I said, what do you mean? Baby, I've been in the living room this whole time. You weren't talking to me. Yes, I was. You were standing right there and pointed behind me.

I just got goosebumps saying that. You were standing right there talking to me or motioned me like this. And like, I mean, For me, it's like, so I took another break from my research there. Yeah. You mess with me all you want to. When you start messing with my kids, it's a little different story. I started getting pretty defensive.

So I mean, so I was in prayer and going into the Word and, you know, just walking around the house, you know, talking to Jesus while I was walking around the house. I mean, it's just, it's weird. It's weird. And, you know, it's one of those things like I was talking to Ryan about the other day. you know, this disorder that she has, this scarring that she has on her brain, does it allow something that, that, you know, it's one of those things that you can look at it scientifically or from the paranormal side. Yeah.

But she has scarring on her brain. Would that cause her to see or hear some of these things? Or I know I heard something. Is this just something that's, that's saying, hey. How often does she go to a doctor? We go to Charlottesville, or UVA, her neurology. genetics team, all that there,

once every few months. Next time you go in, can you ask them about it? I can. You should ask them. I have asked about, like, personality traits and

character traits and behavior things. This disorder is super rare. It's like there's only 50-some documented cases in the world. Ever? Yeah. Wow.

That actually have case files. But, you know, I've asked them about the scarring on the brain and the area that it's in. And they can't really say, I mean, they can tell you what this area of the brain does,

but they can't really 100% say, well, it can cause this and this and this and this and this. I mean, you can use a generic term like hallucinations. Can it cause hallucinations? Yeah. You know?

Yeah, that's something I should definitely ask. Because, I mean, if it can, great, you might have an answer. If they're like,

no, that's not even remotely close to what it could cost. And you're like, okay. Well, we're dealing with something else. Lillet! Get on out here, Lilith. You don't know.

I need to have a conversation right now. You need to leave my daughter alone. If I told you once, I've told you a dozen times. Get off the bridge. But no, it is. It's been weird. It's been strange. There's been a whole lot of weird going on.

It's exciting, though. It's an exciting life to live. It is. I mean, this stuff is, it's very exciting. And I'm really excited to see what comes of this. And I like listen, listen, I told the other guy's the same thing. Like, I'm not trying to hoard in on anything. I just want to be part of this.

Like, I want to see this. Like I want to, you know what I mean? Like, listen, I got my own thing going on here. Like, I'm not like, like, I'm not trying to steal your silver ring like that. I just, I want to see cool crap, man. Like, that's what I'm all about. Like, I want to see, I want to hear cool stories. I want to see cool crap, man.

And just see what happens. if you guys let me come up, I would love to come and be on that next excursion to the spot. Because I mean, in all honesty, and I don't know how I do this, but a lot of times, it's something like thoughts hit me. And I don't know if it's from practicing trying to think outside the box as much as possible or what, but a lot of times I wind up offering perspectives that it just, it doesn't really come into play. And it helps having a third party doing that stuff.

and I would love to see what I could drum up when I'm there. Oh, shit. Awesome. We may need to use a little of your blood. Hey, listen, the little Puerto Rican blood, whatever works, you know what I mean? Just like, you know, we got half a Rican, we get the ginger blood going on mixed together, and all of a sudden start glowing green, you know? We might create a superhero.

Perfect. We could use that. We could use that. So, all right, let's tell the people, tell them where they could find your show. We mentioned a couple of times throughout the recording. Tell them your version of what your show is called and where they can find it and all that good stuff. You can check out AI Appalachian Intelligence Podcast. Anywhere you listen to podcasts, or Spotify, Apple, all that stuff, you can subscribe to our YouTube.

It's just type in Appalachian Intelligence. Pretty much you just type Appalachian Intelligence into Google and you can find whatever you want to find on us. and go to YouTube to look at our ugly mugs. It's interesting you chose that name and the path that things have gone. It is. Because you chose that name before the rock was even discovered. Yeah, and I'll tell you another little quick synchronicity with that one, Lance, your favorite word. When we started the podcast, we talked to Ward, I think in March, and Ward mentioned,

You guys should really check out the podcast, Penny Royal, because it has to do with, you know, it talks about the brakes, the interstate park, and that's literally in our hometown. So I started checking them out. And within the first couple episodes, the, I think the guy's name's Nate, something, the host of that show, he says, you know, there's just something about these mountains. There's some form of intelligence that's operating here in Appalachia. I was like, wait, what? Is he talking about me? I am pretty smart. Yeah, this podcast is going to be awesome.

I mean, you're just a suit saying right now. But no, I mean, just weird little things like that. And the day that I went up to round, I was like, dude, I got a great idea for the name of this podcast. Appalachian Intelligence. Number one, it's oxymoron. No, nothing about us intelligent. Number two, people might think that we're like, you know, some kind of alphabet agency. Yeah, you got trick him into hit and play.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, just, I mean, whatever. But the name just kind of was there. Yeah. And then I start hearing all of this stuff talking about Appalachia and, you know, hearing this guy talking about there being some form of intelligence operating, you know, from the mountains of Appalachian. I don't know.

It's been a whole lot. We talk a lot of times. It's like we have no idea where we're going. And all of a sudden, this door just opens up in front of us. And we're like, well, okay. And we just step right through. Yeah. And it just keeps building and keeps.

and keeps leading and it's like there's something there before we ever even know that it's there. And we've been at this a year. Wow. I can't imagine what another year is going to look like or five years or whatever.

I mean, it's... I don't know, dude. It's a lot. Long for the ride. Yeah. That's how it feels sometimes. Like, we ain't in control of this thing. We're just saddling up

and seeing where it goes. Wow. I mean, I'm excited for you guys. I'm excited to see how things develop. Anybody listening right now, I'll make it easy for you. I'll put the links to their podcast in the show description. Do you guys got a website or no?

We don't. We're working on a website right now. We're working on a lot of things. We'll be too boring to go into. I'll put links to Apple, Spotify. That way it covers Android and Apple. And I'll put a link to your Instagram. That's the only social media platform I like.

We'll put the Instagram on there And people should definitely check out your stuff And give it a follow And like I always say with podcasters on the show and stuff You guys got to go hit subscribe Leave a five star rating review And then you hit play and then you listen Because that's what decent people do

You know what I mean? Like seriously Like like stop Stop wasting your time hating on people and stuff Like well they got to earn my five stars They already did They put out free crap for you to listen to Like, like, just, just give them a five-star rating review. Show some love, whether it's good or not.

Like, who cares? They show some love to people. Show some of that Appalachian hospitality. Right. Like, and that's honestly how I feel about the stuff. I mean, like, we were talking for a while before we started recording of stuff. And, like, you know, I've been doing this a long time now. Like, you know, and it's like, stop with that nonsense of, you know, like, we don't, listen, we put out free stuff for people all the time.

Like, that means you put it. your time in away from your family, your kids, your job to do something for complete strangers. At least the complete strangers could do is before the hit play, leave that five-star rating review, you know, show some love, you know? Like, you know, and if you don't like it, just mose you on and know that you did the world some good by leaving a five-star rating review. Yeah. In all honesty, I've never listened to your podcast, so I don't know if it's good or not. We can assure you it's not.

You heard it right here. The show sucks. But before you hit listen to the crappy sucky show, leave a five-star rating review. And you only do that for personality. That's what you're getting. It's so, listen, I just, I like supporting other podcasters when I can. And, you know, that's my way of doing it. I try to encourage my audience to go listen.

And before you listen, leave your mark on the show with that five-star rating review. especially on Apple because, I mean, they'll pull the curtain back for people and I'm sure it's the same thing for you guys. About 70% of my listening audience comes from Apple Podcasts. I can see what they're listening, whether it's Android and stuff.

Apple is by far the biggest podcast playing platform for me. And so when I say leave a five-star review, thank you if you do it on Spotify, but I'm talking to the Apple people. You got to go do it on. Because that's where it really counts. I mean, like Apple runs the world when it comes to podcasting.

And so, yeah, do them a solid, do that, go listen to their show, show them some love, hit them up on social media, give them a follow, and enjoy the journey that they're going to be going on. Because hopefully, if you guys aren't, you should do it, like, keep documenting it, not just through your show, but maybe on social media, you know, especially next time you go out and stuff, take some selfies with me, you know, take a picture of me falling over a rock, post it online, get. some likes to follow that and tag me on it. Definitely. That'll be a whole real. Yeah, exactly. On Instagram, make it a collaborative effort with me and I'll put it on my feed and, you know, the works. But yeah, guys, I appreciate you coming down from Virginia.

How long ago was it for you? About three and a half hours. Three and a half hours. I appreciate you being here in studio and stuff. I know we were going back and forth with how we were going to do this, but I always think that in studio is better and it's more fun. For sure. And I think that this was a good call. I think this was a great conversation, and I think the people are going to like it.

So on the way out, guys, I appreciate you listening to the show. And this was Appalachia Intelligent. Is that good enough? That's good. Appalachian Intelligence podcast, collaboration effort where we were talking about weird rocks and lost silver. That's perfect. I could have said it better. All right.

If you enjoyed this show, share the show. That's the best thing you could do to help the show grow, share the show around. you have cell phones. You're probably listening to me right now on. Go through your contacts. Copy the link to this episode and just share it to everybody in your context, especially people you don't like. If you have people on your phone that you really don't like,

and doesn't matter what their opinion is of you, send them, annoy the heck out of them with the link to this episode. And just send it to them repeatedly until they respond saying, what the hell are you doing? I don't like you. They'd be like, oh, okay, thanks. And then you can stop sending the link. That's what we do.

That's how we get listeners. We keep posting stickers on people's t-shirts walking out. People got it all wrong. They spam social medias and stuff like on Facebook and stuff. And they're like spam your text messages. Like you all have text messaging on your phone. Spam that. Just send that link to everybody.

That's the best thing you do to help the show grow, share the show. And until next week, friends, stay safe, take care, and remember, the truth was such a free. But first, it'll piss you off. Bye.