The Confessionals - 63: The Bigfoot and Dogman of Pennsylvania

Episode Date: April 1, 2018

Pennsylvania is more mysterious than many realize. Out-of-staters think of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and then conclude that Pennsylvania is an industrialized state without much wilderness to explore. However, the reality is that between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh there are 300+ miles of deep, dense wild forests. Tonight, Kirk joins The Confessionals to share his first cryptid encounter with a bigfoot while on a hunting trip with his in-laws. Later, he details an unusual encounter that he can only conclude was a dogman! Yes, along with bigfoot sightings, dogman sightings are also on the rise in Pennsylvania. Kirk experienced both types of sightings, and comes forward to share what he has seen.  Patreon: www.patreon.com/TheConfessionals Website: www.theconfessionalspodcast.com Email: [e-mail] Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheConfessionalsPodcast Twitter: @TConfessionals Tony's Twitter: @tony_merkel

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To find your local sleep number store, go to sleep number.com. Special financing subject to credit approval. Minimum monthly payments required. See store for details. came over to me dude he slithered over to me and this giant comes out of the cave and they're all frozen and he starts running and firing at this giant with a giant move he's got a spear in one hand and he's running really fast and spears dan holds him up like this somebody else shoot him in the face shoot him in the face they basically decapitating got closer got closer got closer got closer when he got about 15

yards away to this head off. And there are two. And each up underneath the door, curl up to grab it, and then disappear. It's almost like they're unzippering our reality. They pick their heads through and they look around and if it looks like the coast is clear, they step through the rest of the direction. If you pick the head, you get the whole package. If you don't take the head off, then what happens is they disappear. This was all circulating around the base that a giant has been killed with no one was supposed to talk about it.

close to talk about him. Far side of the room, and there's Jack, and he's got blood on his face. He looks at me, and he just says one word. Oops. He's longer than most people have careers. There's bush, and I touch air. Couldn't breathe, and I couldn't move, because I know I'm seeing a monster. Welcome to the show, everybody.

You were listening to The Confessionals, a proud, featured show of blog talk radio.com. I am your host, Tony Merkel. Thanks for being here. Today we have a great show coming up for you, but before we get into it, if you had an encounter or a story you'd like to share with me, go ahead and shoot me an email. My email address is The Confessionalspodcast at gmail.com. That's the Confessionalspodcast at gmail.com. Or you can go to the website, the confessionalspodcast.com.

Hit the connection section, and you can reach me that way as well. Now for our weekly iTunes shoutouts, if you go to iTunes and leave a rating and review, you will get a shout out in the following week's show. And if you don't have iTunes and you still want to help to show out, just share this show's link around social media so it gets in front of other people. We greatly appreciate that as well. So this week's iTunes shoutouts is Jason 865, Silver Mines, Dr. Torchwood, KDG Kevlar, 1988, J. Murky, Dave from Ohio, and Fish Guts to Three. Thanks for going to iTunes and leaving a rating and review. I really appreciate it, as always.

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Sherry M. Nini T. Renee G. and Dana M. Thanks so much for going to Patreon.com and helping to support the show. It means a lot to me. Like I said before, it's patreon.com backslash the confessions. And there you'll be able to see all the different rewards if supporting the show is right for you. And to any of the patrons who have signed up but have not friend requested me on Facebook yet, I highly encourage you to do that if you have a Facebook account because then I can add you to the secret Facebook group. My Facebook account is Facebook.com backslash t. T. B. Merkel. That's Facebook.com backslash T.B. Merkel. Shoot me a friend request and then I can add you to the secret group. Now, tonight we have two different interviews coming on. We have Kirk coming on to share his big foot encounter and his dog man encounter here in the state of Pennsylvania. He lives on the western side of the state from me. And he had two different accounts happen at two different times. And he comes on to share these accounts with us. But first, we want to bring on Leslie. And Leslie actually runs the Frank Saris Library in Cannesburg. Pennsylvania. She's organizing this whole event that me and my brother and everybody else are going out to, and we bring her on tonight to talk about what she's going to be doing at the Frank Saris Library on April 14th, 2018 with this Bigfoot Town Hall meeting. So let's get to it right after this.

Okay, tonight I have Leslie Yoder coming on, and Leslie actually works at a library in Cannonsburg called Frank Seris Library, and she's holding a town hall for Bigfoot this year. And Leslie, how are you doing? I'm doing fine and I'm looking I'm looking forward to Bigfoot Fest 2018. This is one of my favorite events to host. Yeah. Now last year we came out. It was my wife, Lindsay and I. And she was pregnant at the time and now we actually have the baby.

And so things are a little different this year. I'm still going to go out, but I'm going to be bringing my younger brother with me. But if you would, just share with us what this event is about. and what's going to be happening this year? Well, this event, I wanted to give it a different twist this year. So I thought a town hall event would be great. We do have Dave Groves, who has had an actual encounter with a Sasquatch and the Allegheny National Forest who will be with us.

And my hope is that it draws others who've had encounters who will come and talk and feel free to talk. This is going to be an open time discussion, open forum. Also, our guest speaker will be Doug Waller, who is the founder of the Southeastern Ohio Society for Bigfoot Investigation. The event will start at one, and it's free. It's open to the public, and we are located in Washington County, PA in Cannonsburg. and so we are easily accessible from Interstate 70 and 79.

We're at a good place, a good location. And Doug and his partner in crime, Shawna Parks, have, as I understand it, a new presentation. So I'm excited to listen and see what they've come up with. Yeah, and I'm really excited about it too. now, Doug Waller is a great friend of mine, and obviously so is Dave Grove. So it's just really nice to kind of get the gang together and help host this event. And, you know, I know you were talking about having different people coming out and sharing their Bigfoot encounters and stuff, especially if they're, you know, you would love to have a lot of local people coming out and

sharing their experiences. And I know you and I had talked about it a little bit ago where the, the fellow that was on my show for episode one, Tom, he actually is from Cannonsburg. He is a a farmer in Canonsburg who has seen two different Sasquatch on two different occasions in Cannonsburg within the last two years. And he's really excited because I talked to him about it. He wants to come out and share his story and stuff and have me kind of just help guide him through the, you know, sharing his story again in front of a live audience. He's really excited about doing that. That's wonderful. And this, and I'm sure you know this, Western Pennsylvania with the Laurel Ridge that runs, the Chestnut Ridge that runs through this part of the state.

is and has been a hotbed of Sasquatch activity. The Animal Planet's Bigfoot program has been here. They have filmed in Fayette County. They held a town hall in Union Town, and they have also been to the northern part of Pennsylvania near the Allegheny National Forest to talk to folks up there who've had encounters. Yeah, absolutely. Finding Bigfoot has been out there a couple of times in that area.

I know Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, that whole area is filled with these stories of these creatures being out there. And it's absolutely fascinating. And, you know, I'm just very excited about, you know, helping you guys pull this event off. And it's just going to be a lot of fun. So you said that it starts at 1 o'clock and it's free, right? Yes, it is free. and we there will be Doug Waller will be there also and there will be

there will be items for sale, everything from I believe T-shirts and other and other things and I'm not certain about books but T-shirts and that sort of thing there will also be I'm going to be having a a drawing for

a prize probably once again with my favorite coffee vendor from the West Coast, Sasquatch coffee, so I'll be looking for that. That will also be taking place. And it's just a great time to get together with people who really believe that there is something out there. That it's not just that when people see these things, it's not just a figment of their imaginations, that there is something really to it. And my interest in it comes from a historical and anthropological interest.

And then I really became interested when my husband and I started attending an event in Wheeling at Cabela's and the Creature Weekend. And that's when my interest really peaked. And it was at that point that I met Doug Waller and Shawna Parks. and the rest as they say is history. Yeah, absolutely. And I was just talking to Dave Groves this week, and he wants to donate a piece of art for the raffle that I think people are going to be pretty excited about.

I don't want to give it away. You have to show up to find out what it is, but he's very excited about donating this. So definitely encourage people to come out. I've been telling people, you know, I'm driving six hours to get there. So if you're within a five-hour radius of Cannonsburg, Pennsylvania, I highly encourage you to come, pack out this library,

get a crowd there and just have a great time hanging out with me, Doug Waller, Dave Groves, and everybody else. It's going to be a lot of fun. So, Leslie, I really appreciate you kind of coming on and just sharing a little bit about the event. And I'm looking forward to seeing you on April 14th. And I as well. And for me, this is one of my favorite events that I host all year. And so welcome and welcome everyone to Cannonsburg and the Frank Serres Public Library. Fantastic. I'll see you there. Okay, Leslie. We'll see you. Yes. All right, that was Leslie. Thank you, Leslie, for coming on and just talking with us about the event. And everybody, I hope you guys can make it out. If you're four to five hours away from there, car drive-wise, I highly encourage you coming out for the day, checking it out, hanging out with me and other people. So next up, we have Kirk coming on. And Kirk's going to be sharing some of his Bigfoot and Dogman encounters, starting off with his bigfoot encounter with his in-laws. So it's a very interesting show we have coming up here tonight. So whip out the popcorn, get some soda, and tuck in for a great show. Let's get to it. Okay, tonight I have a great guest coming on. We have Kirk. And Kirk, you and I connected

a little bit back and stuff about some of your experiences here in Pennsylvania. Now, you're on the western side of the state. I'm on the eastern side of the state, and that's about six hours in between. So we're not very close to each other, but you do have some very interesting experiences. You've actually seen Bigfoot. You've actually seen Dogman. And so we're going to go into some of these experiences you've had in Pennsylvania throughout your life. So to start things off, I know you said you had a Bigfoot encounter in 1977. If you want, you can just kind of start us off right there and let us know what happened. Sure, no problem, Tony. In 1977, I was fresh out of high school. I actually at the time was living in Ohio. And my father-in-law and brother-in-law were planning a

hunting trip deer hunting to West Virginia. They asked me if I would go, you know, try to get to know the family better. I decided to go. So we were down hunting. I won't give the exact location, but it was central West Virginia, right outside of an orchard. They wouldn't let us hunt on an orchard, but we could hunt right outside it. Uh, first day there, we decided to scout around. I went to the west side of the property looking for a good place to hunt.

I wandered for several hours, decided it was starting to get late. I needed to turn around, go back before it got dark. Uh, it was about 4.30 in the afternoon. As I went, I. went out, I always pick good reference points so that I can remember my way back. Well, I picked the reference point that had the two biggest trees on the ridge. So as I'm coming back, I come to that point. And I've got across a little valley that's about 50 yards wide. I'm at the top of the one ridge, looking across the valley. I see my trees.

But I also see a big, dark thing about four foot high or so that looks like maybe a big rock. But I'm thinking to myself, there's no way I could have missed that rock. What the hell is this? Am I in the wrong spot? And about that time that rock stood up. It was no rock. It was a big foot. Its back was to me.

and I literally froze. I have nothing but a bone arrow. As I say, I'm 18 years old at the time. Don't have a clue what in the world this is I'm looking at. Just know that it's humongous. I stand there pretty much shaking. Finally, after a couple minutes, this thing just turns slightly to the left, takes a couple steps, and it's gone.

I went ahead and waited a few minutes, wanting to make sure it's completely gone because I need to go that way to get back to the camper. As I'm standing there, I realize if I wait too long, it might return and I might run into it face to face. So I go ahead and I cross, get back to the camp. camper tell my father-in-law and brother-in-law what I saw didn't know what it was the best way I could explain it was well maybe it was a bear I knew in my heart it was no bear but didn't know what else to say couldn't say it was a monster because I figured they'd make fun of me well the father-in-law

he just laughed about it the brother-in-law he was somewhat interested in it but you know, really didn't want to seem too interested in it because his dad would make fun of him. So we talk about it a little bit and I'm pretty shook up. They could tell I was shook up. We go to bed that evening. The next morning we decide we're going to scout a little bit more because nobody really found a decent place to hunt. Well, the brother-in-law, he says to me, let me go see where you saw this. Basically, we walked back over to this ridge line. And there again, both of us have our bow and arrows with us.

Willie says to me, he says, and how big was this? We were standing right beside the tree. It was beside. I reached up to the limb that it had to duck under to get, to keep from hitting its head. And I could just touch that limb with my bow with an outstretched arm. Willie made the exclamation, that's got to be eight foot. He said, it can't be anything.

There's nothing that big. Well, we went on, we went hunting, and I never did find any signs of any animals in the West End. so basically I hunted over on the east side we went to a little store convenience store and gas station to get coffee and cigarettes and such we're talking with two locals and they ask the father-in-law who was native to down there originally if we had any luck yet and he just said no we seen a few signs, but not even what we thought we should. Me being a young guy, I piped up while I saw a bear.

The one local looks me dead straight in eye and said, son, there's no bear here. And I said, gee, it was a bear. It was big. It was on its hind legs. The guy says, there's no bear in this area. Stay out of the West End. Well, the bad thing is I'd never told them where I was hunting, where I was looking down there. But they knew that I had to be in the west end of that property.

Incidentally, that property was about 7,000 acres or so. So we went back and we hunted the father-in-law, brother-in-law and myself, we all stayed kind of close together, not spread out as we were intending to be. And that afternoon, I heard the father-in-law yelling, I got one, I got one. And me and the brother-in-law went running over to where he was and he was already down out of his stand. We started to track this deer. We got to where you could tell the deer laid down.

There was a pool of blood. but no deer. It just vanished like something had carried it off. Well, as odd as that is, I said to the father-in-law that that monster slash bear took it. The father-in-law said, or a person, but there was no signs of a person. There was no signs of a bear, no signs of a monster or anything. The deer was just gone. And that evening, we were in the camper, which the night before we had slept outside in sleeping bags, because it was a nice night out.

It was first week in October. It was unusually warmed out there. But for some reason, we all decided to sleep in the camper. We were in the camper asleep, and we got awoken by the camper shaking violently. Got up, looked out, didn't see anything, we were all puzzled, but okay, you know, maybe it was the wind. Tried to go back to sleep and about half an hour later, the same thing happened. Well, this whole time we had been feeling like something was watching us. To make a long story short, after the second time of the camper shaking violently,

the father-in-law who had been a hunter all his life and was in his 50s at the time decided that something was going on the best way he could explain it was maybe a storm fronts moving in we're going to leave we cut our trip short about three days due to the fact that quote a storm was moving in we we knew it was no storm that shook that camper So we left that morning. Got back to Ohio. There were some marks that looked like maybe finger smudges, about eight to nine foot up on the camper.

No real evidence other than me actually seeing the creature and watching it for a couple minutes, but it was a very good feeling to get the hell out. there. Now, after we got home, the brother-in-law and myself talking about how big this thing was that I saw, how big it must have been, decided we would try something. So I held my bow out at arm's length as high as I could reach, just like I did to reach at branch. He took a tape measured and measured from the tip of the bow to the ground, and it was right at 10 foot. So that creature I saw had to be around 10 foot, 10 foot 2.

It was probably 4.5 foot wide at the shoulders, just massive, humongous, scared the living hell out of me, still scares me when I think about it today. I will never forget that encounter. and since then there have been many more. Right. And so when you were out there and you were hunting, if I remember correctly, you said you were there with your father-in-law, so I'm assuming you were just at a high school,

so you married the girl you were dating at the time? Correct. Just out of high school, married my high school sweetheart. Like I say, I was trying to bond with her family a little bit because they really weren't all for us being married. Quote, she was too young, I was too young. And I thought spending time with him, you know, would maybe win him over. Well, what can I say?

It didn't quite work, didn't quite work out. But it was, you know, it was a different experience. Let me put it to you like that. Yeah, I'd say. I mean, you're trying to win somebody over and get them to like you so you can marry their daughter and you're coming back to camp saying, I saw a monster. It's not going to win a whole lot of people over. When you saw that thing, now, do you think that this thing was stalking you when you first saw it and you thought it was a rock and it stood up? Do you think that it was kind of stalking you and that's why you had all the other interaction following your initial sighting?

No, it didn't know I was there. The wind was blowing toward me past it. So I was downwind of it. It couldn't smell me. And as I say, we were at an apple orchard. The other side of it was what they call a press house, where they press apples into apple cider. Once they pressed apples into the apple cider,

what they call the mash, which is crushed apples, they just kind of drew outside into this like pit, and they would literally take a bobcat front end loader and scoop it up and use it for a fertilizer in the field. Well, those apples, apple mash, setting there, would start to rot, and it stunk to beat holy hell. I could smell the apples, what I assumed was apples, when I saw that thing.

But I believe my smell was masked by being downwind and by the smell of the apples. I don't believe it ever knew I was there. But now the next day, something definitely knew we were there. Yeah, it definitely sounds like it. I wonder if it did catch a scent of you or something. I don't know. But like you said, I mean, definitely the next day, something knew you guys were there. So, I mean, just the fact that you saw one in the area, we know that, you know, there's probably more than one then, and they probably stumbled across you.

Yeah, that's exactly. I'm figuring that when I saw that one, probably on that trip, another one had seen me, and I'm sure they interact in some way. And that's why we started having the problems with them. I mean, that night as we were sitting out by the campfire cooking dinner, it was like you swore somebody was watching you. You could feel the eyes. We could hear noise in the brush at the tree line, but we couldn't see anything. Well, the father-in-law being the skeptic and, you know, the outdoorsman that he was, that's just deer running around in there foraging.

Yeah, it's just some deer. you're running around and foraging. Kirk, let's just take a break right now. When we come back, we'll jump right back into things. We'll be right back, everybody. Okay, the last few weeks I've been talking about astonishing legends, and I want to come at you one more time about astonishing legends, Scott and Forrest.

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Go to iTunes and look up astonishing legends, and you will love their show. So subscribe today. So he never really admitted to the idea of feeling like he was being watched? No, he never admitted to it. But as I say, we cut the trip short three days, got the hell out of there. We actually pulled out at 5 a.m. Didn't really. And once we were back, we figured out that we didn't even get all our stuff.

We had left some stuff there. But he wanted to leave so quick, that evidently didn't make a difference. We checked with a couple people the next week, you know, him saying that it was a stormfront moving in, and it was only the wind that shook the camper. Come find out they had beautiful weather for the next week, that it was still unseasonably high with the daytime highs in the middle 70s. That's interesting. So I'm assuming to this day, as far as you know,

he's never really admitted to feeling spooked or anything, even I'm assuming he saw the fingerprints on the handprints on the camper. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. How did he explain that away? He said, well, those were smudges from a tree branch we must have rubbed against. Well, they went up and down, not vertical, not horizontal. other. So that rules that out, but he would never admit to anything. But I can tell you this, he never went back down to that location to hunt again. It's that old hunter instinct, I guess,

where they won't tell you that they're scared, but they're scared. And, uh, exactly, exactly. Now, I think you said it was his son, your brother-in-law that was with you. Now, what did he have to say about it? I mean, was he more open to talking about the possibility of something crazy happening? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He would talk about it probably for the first year, but after that he never really wanted to discuss it anymore because, quote, Pops, which is what he called this dad. Pops always said that it can't be anything, so it had to just be the wind.

and we don't know what you saw, but, you know, you must have just imagined it. Wow. So you just imagine something. We did find a couple. Something stealing his deer, yeah. And something shaking the camper that woke all three of us up. Wow. Because that's the thing.

I mean, when it came to the whole deer going missing, Did it, how long did it take you to track down the deer? Once he yelled, I got one, and you guys tracked down the blood puddle. How long did that take, roughly? We tracked it. It was probably 45 minutes to get from where he shot it to where we found the blood pooling and the matted down grass, which was actually, it was right at the edge where. it turns into the woods.

Okay. So when you get there, there wasn't a body anywhere. It was the body was literally gone. Nothing. It was gone. Like something swooped down and carried it away. See, and that's the thing. I mean, as a veteran hunter that shot this, I'm assuming he shot a mature deer, a dough or a buck that was mature. Right. And I just don't see. It was an eight point buck. Okay. So it was a big, it was a sock. deer. And, you know, to carry something like that away, that's got to be pretty hard if you're a person. Right. Oh, yeah. Because you said there was no drag marks, right? No, no drag marks whatsoever. And as we were tracking this thing, uh, he, William was saying that, oh, this was probably 250 pound deer.

But it was a massive deer. It was a hell of a deer. Well, of course, you know, you've got adrenaline flowing. when you shoot it. Maybe it wasn't quite that big, but I'm sure it was still probably at least 200 pounds. Holy cow. I mean, would have definitely been very hard for a person to carry off. You would pretty much have to drag it. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's definitely possible to carry 200 pounds, but when you put the equation in 200 pounds, out in the woods, you know, having to probably do it by yourself and do it quickly enough that nobody sees you. There's not a whole lot of people that can do that, you know? And if they can, why don't they just hunt their own deer?

Right. And you'd also, you would have had to know the topography of the land there. It would have either had to been carried back past us, which it wasn't, or it would have had to go into the woods. Well, to go into the woods, you were about, you. two miles to the next road having to cross a fairly wide stream and pretty mountainous terrain. So it would have made no sense for a human to pick it up and take it into the woods. Yeah, I agree with you. I absolutely agree with you. And when you, this whole thing happened

and you guys go back home, did you tell your girlfriend what happened? Well, actually, she was my wife. We had just got married at July, and this happened in October, the first week of in October. Oh, yeah, I told her, and she laughed at me. She was daddy's little girl, and Daddy could do no wrong. Daddy would never lie. You know, he knew that. Okay, well, like I say, the marriage doesn't last real long, but.

So you kind of started off on the wrong foot there, huh? Exactly. Yeah. Well, I definitely think that you saw something, obviously, man. I mean, it's kind of hard to mistake. When you are picking a marker route, you see the two trees, and then you see something that wasn't there four feet high, and then it stands up to about 10 feet high. It's kind of hard to mistaken that for anything else.

What was your knowledge? Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So what was your knowledge at that time on Bigfoot? I know you said you didn't think it was Bigfoot at the moment, but did you know about Bigfoot? Well, okay, let me give you a little background. My grandmother was Cherokee. And growing up when we would go down to visit her, she lived in West Virginia, her and my grandfather, when we would go down to visit, sometimes she would tell stories about, quote, the hairy man. of the woods. And she also told the story about the hairy man of the woods fighting with the dog-headed man. But, you know, as kids, we always thought

that this was just some tail to keep us inside at night. They lived on a farm down in the mountainous region, and we like to go outside and play, you know. Well, we just figured that it was tails to keep us indoors so they could watch us better. But as far as ever knowing about Bigfoot, I had no clue about it. I actually, after that occurrence happened, like I say, that was in 77. And I really struggled wrapping my mind around what the hell it was I saw.

I knew it was not a bear, but I didn't know what it was. and I just happened to, I was in the library looking through some books. And I picked up one on cryptozoology that was out of place. What the hell is cryptozoology? So I opened the book up and there was a picture of the exact thing I saw. And then I knew what it was. but for those six years, I had no clue whatsoever what it was I saw. I just couldn't imagine, you know, I knew it wasn't a bear, but I also knew it wasn't a human.

And, you know, what could it have been? Well, at that point, when I saw it, then I knew what it was. Then I knew all the stories that Grandma had said were true. And at that moment, did that kind of change? like a life-changing moment for you? Did you start looking into the topic? That was 100. That was 100% life-changing.

I started, I truthfully at that point in time decided, well, even though I can't make a living at it, I'm going to be a part-time cryptid investigator. And I've been investigating these things every chance I get ever since.

And in my, shall we say, journey of investigation, at the time I only thought that there was Sasquatch slash Bigfoot slash the hairy man of the woods. Then I learned of other things such as dog man. And a few years ago had a dogman encounter. And during the times of my research, I found out about what the Indians call a shapeship. And actually recently this past summer had a, well, actually this past fall had an experience with a shape shifter. Yeah, you know, since you mentioned about the dog man encounter, you know, why don't you just kind of take us into that encounter that you had?

Because I found it very fascinating when you told me. Well, that was actually, I want to say, the one that sticks out most in mind, and I've had three. The one that sticks out most in mind, happened 2014. Of a driveway had been over to visit a friend here in western Pennsylvania in Washington County. And I just backed out of his driveway, turned the wheels to get straight to go down the road. and this thing that once more, this was a humongous thing, it jumped right across the hood,

cleared the hood of my 2008 Jeep Liberty, which is a fairly high sitting vehicle. It cleared the hood in one bound, ran up the embankment beside the road, and was literally gone. I saw it maybe 15 seconds, but as it leaped across the hood, it looked right in the windshield.

And there's nothing that I can say that it could be, including Sasquatch, other than a dog man. This thing was your classic canine-looking dog-man. man. It was a werewolf from hell, shall we say. And that scared the hell out of me. I mean, I literally, as I say, I was ready to go forward, had shifted to car from reverse to drive, and all I could do is sit there. I couldn't take my foot off the break. I couldn't do anything. I just sat there for probably three, four minutes wandering in total disbelief, total shock, and just couldn't wrap my head around that one either.

But, you know, seeing is believing. And this thing, looking in at me with teeth that had to be an inch and a half long, it's frightening. Let me put it to you like that. Yeah, absolutely frightening. So this thing jumps across the hood and it looks in at you, and you got a really good look at this thing then. I mean, what was the body like? Was the body more like a, I mean, I don't even know how to describe it. Is it like your classical werewolf type body or was it more like dog-like? Well, it had the canine features of behind legs. Shall we say the reversed facing legs like a dog. uh its arms slash legs and i'm not really sure what you would call them but we'll call them its arms it had more hand than paw shall we say uh and its claws uh and its claws i just just got a

glimpse of it, but they appeared to be probably three inches long. Wow. So it didn't have really pause. It had more of like hand like. More like hands, yeah. Wow. That's incredible. And you said the fangs were how long, like three inches? Probably. No, the fangs were an inch and a half sticking out. Okay. Its mouth was closed. but yet it's canine, I could see it's canine teeth and the front teeth. And with the closed jaw, the upper fangs were sticking below the lower jaw by about an inch and a half. Now, when you saw this thing and it jumps across your hood, it just kept going. It didn't stop.

It didn't, like, bother you at all. It just kept moving like it was just jumping over a tree. Right, exactly. Like, it was just a high hurdle for it to jump over. and I was nothing to it. Okay, gotcha. Yeah, that's incredible, man. And that was in Pennsylvania, right?

Yeah, yeah, that was just outside of 84 Pennsylvania. Okay. Well, wow, that's pretty nuts. So we're going to take a break right now, and when we come back, we'll dive right back into things with Kirk. We're right back, everybody. Now, you said recently you've had a shapeshifter in California, Was that in Pennsylvania as well?

Correct. That was very near the Pennsylvania, West Virginia border. So what happened there? Well, as I say, a lot of this stuff has happened. Some of this stuff has happened to a good friend also, including a big foot around his house and a dog man around his house. last February we found the dogman Prince. He's had a lot of livestock killed.

So we started doing more investigations, shall we say, trying to get to the bottom of this thing, trying to prove that it exists. So we were at this one location where it had been rumored to have been spotted before it actually is on the cloaked hedgehog's map of being spotted there. We were, during the investigation, both of us were on quads. It was early on a Sunday morning in October. There again, the first weekend in October, except it was, shall we say, on the chili side.

The high for the day was only going to be a little. about 50 degrees. We're out in the middle of nowhere, riding this trail that used to be an old logging road, bordering a coal company's property. We come to the top of this trailhead. There's maybe 100 yards before the intersection with another trail. Very muddy. It had rained the night before.

Like I say, the high for the day was only going to be 50. We encounter this little old man that I would say from the looks of him would be about late 70s. This man is dressed kind of odd. He has on nothing but a police pullover shirt. He has very baggy blue jeans. on. He's smoking a cigarette and he has house slippers

on. Now there's no house anywhere near there. The closest house is three and a half miles away. With the exception of one old abandoned house that was abandoned in 1988 that originally had been built in 1850s.

But anyways, you know, I'm getting ahead of myself. So this man, we'll call it, is just totally, totally out of the normal, of anything you would think to see out there. Well, we don't want to splash this guy with mud. So we're going by him very, very slow. When I say slow, when both in low gear have the brakes on, We're doing maybe three mile an hour at the most. As I say, the guy is smoking a cigarette,

so we go buy this individual at three mile an hour, literally three foot away from him. The first thing that was odd was we could not smell the smoke. The second thing was when we looked down and both noticed that the guy had house slippers on, but there was no mud on the house slippers. As soon as we got by the guy, we went maybe another 100 foot.

I stopped Hank, my partner, and I said, there's something strange about this guy. We got to go back and find him, see what's up. I said, this guy does not belong here. And the first thing came to mind was, you know, maybe this is some old man with dementia. And literally, as I'm standing there saying that, we hear a series of wood knocks.

We turn right around. As I say, we only want about 100 foot, so we're talking all this within a minute. We turned right back around. The man was gone. To the right of that trail, there's a 300-foot drop off into a river. to the left it goes up raises about a hundred foot

into very thick, dense woods okay but yet somebody that old somebody dressed like that is not going to be able to go into these woods and be out of sight the guy just basically vanished

other than us hearing those three tree knocks so we're very puzzled where this dude is we went ahead, we looked hour for it. Then near the same spot, about a 16-year-old kid appears. Once more, totally out of character, dressed in just a tank top and a pair of basketball shorts. As I say, the high for the day is going to be 50 degrees.

So any kid would be freezing his ass off standing out there in the damp. But lo and behold, there this kid is. And we get by him. Hank at that time was one that stopped because my mind was still, I want to find this old man. Hank at that time stopped and said, you know, there's something not right about this boy. I said, yeah, let's go talk to him.

Well, we were probably 50 foot or so only past him to the point where I should be able to turn my head, look back and see him. And I turned my head, got off the quad. There's nothing there. I look over into the valley and literally what appears to be a dog man is standing there by a tree and ducks behind the tree. Now, was it a dog man and this kid just disappeared? I don't know by what Indian legend tells me that this was probably the old man, the kid, the tree knocks, the dogman.

the dogman slash wherewolf, whatever the hell you want to call it, was probably all a shapeshifter. We tried to ride over to where we saw the dogman slash werewolf, being the fact that it's about a 300-foot drop-off and there's a big creek down there, couldn't go directly there. So we had to go probably a mile. down to where we could get across the creek and then right back up to where we saw it at.

By that time, there was nothing. There were odd prints beside the tree, though, that appeared to be dog or wolf, but shall we say dog or wolf on steroids, they were about eight by five and a half, eight by six inches. Wow, that's pretty incredible. I mean, you just, because basically what you're saying is the man and the boy, there was really nowhere for them to go, right? No, there was nowhere.

They could have not went anywhere without being seen. They just vanished, Tony. Wow. Now, when you said, I forget how you described it, but you said, oh, Oh, you said you saw what looked like a dog man. Now, when you... It was actually closer to what you would think of as, say, a werewolf out of the movies. Did it see you?

Oh, yeah, it stood there and looked at us. And what did you guys do at that point? Just kind of sat there in disbelief. The only redeeming aspect was we had the feeling because it was... It was down the embankment, a couple hundred feet and across the creek. And we were on quads that we could get the hell out of there before it could get to us. So, I mean, I would have been scared that I was going to chase after me. Is that something that crossed your mind?

Oh, hell yes. You know, both of us have rather large quads that will run about 65 mile an hour. We both thought we could have outran it. But, yeah, it definitely crossed both our minds about this thing coming after us. So what do you think? I mean, do you think that this was a dogman that and they have shape-shifting ability? Or do you think that this was like a shapeshifter, shape-shifting into a dog man for appearance? Well, let me say this.

In the years of research, you basically, what I found is you have Bigfoot. Bigfoot is a flesh and blood creature. You have dog man. Dog man is a flesh and blood creature. Then you have, as the Indians refer to a shapeshifter, that can take any form. My personal belief is this was a shapeshifter, and this took the form of a dog man, be it to scare us or be it the fact it was ready to attack. I don't know, but...

Yeah, that's fascinating. The whole shapeshifter idea and stuff, I don't know a ton about, but I know it's definitely rich in Native American history and culture. They talk about that a lot. Yes, they do. So you've had these encounters,

you know, the Bigfoot encounters, the Bit Dogman, the Shapeshifter, you know, you're out there in Western PA. What's some of your conclusions here? Are you thinking that, these are undiscovered animals, or do you think that there's a more supernatural

aspect to it? A lot of people seem to think that dogman isn't a natural creature. What are your thoughts on that? Well, let me give you some history from what the Native Americans say. Dogman and

Bigfoot had a war. In the late 1600s, early 1700s, that actually happened around Wheeling West Virginia. Even though Dog Man were outnumbered by Bigfoot almost four to one, Dogman almost defeated Bigfoot into war, but it decimated both their numbers to the point where they almost made each other extinct.

Now, I do believe both are flesh and blood creatures yet to be discovered, and I believe the reason that we're having these sightings now is it's simply it's taken this long for their numbers to get back up to where we are now seeing them. And I believe in the future we are going to see more of them, have more sightings, and I believe that science will at some point in time have to admit, hey, these things are real. Now, as far as the shape shifter goes, I don't have a damn clue what it is. I mean, seriously, the Indians say that it is a spirit. It's demonic. It's called up from the depths of hell. And it's basically called up for a curse.

But, you know, I can't say one way or another. I just know that I really don't want to run into it again. with the exception of maybe if I've got a tank, you know, or maybe a flamethrower. Yeah. No, I get it, man. I mean, I've never seen anything like that. But, I mean, I can imagine seeing that stuff can, I mean, I don't know. Like, I've heard of people's encounters and stuff and some pretty scary encounters.

And if I had a scary encounter like that, I don't know if I'd be able to step foot back into the woods. Tony, come on down for one of our investigations. this season. And there's a good possibility that you will see something. Well, you know what? If the invites on the table, I am planning on making my way out to Western PA sometime this year, so maybe we can link up. Not a problem, brother.

I got an extra quad. You can ride with us. We do several different types of investigation. Some include quads with them. Some include stealth investigations. We do one that's called the Curiosity investigation, where you actually tried to bait these creatures to come in to see what the hell is going on. And that actually seems to work pretty good.

One thing I probably shouldn't give away, but I will, is they seem to be attracted to very cheap, strong-smelling perfume. Really? So like dollar store perfume? Right. That's interesting. I've never heard that before. but I mean I mean you got to try other things sure

I'm sure you're familiar with land between the lakes Oh yeah absolutely Okay One of the theories of why that family Was killed there Was because of the perfume That the lady was wearing

Yeah I've never heard that But I mean It makes sense though If you're investigating And you hear something like that To implement it into your investigations To see how it works right right well kirk i really appreciate you coming on and talking and sharing some of your

encounters and stuff man that's really interesting stuff and uh before we get out of here i know you just created your facebook page for your group but if you uh give a shout out to you know what your group's called people can kind of come and check it out sure our group is northeast crypted investigation services you got a problem give us a call we'll come investigate We are 100% free. The Facebook page was just created. I haven't added anything yet, but by the end of the weekend, it will be a lot of our investigation evidence will be posted on it. Right now we have four members soon to add our fifth and sixth.

Four of the members are all-season investigators. One has six years investigating Bigfoot is a very good evidence gatherer. One of us has 30 years experience in the woods and then my experience. And another has five years experience investigating Dog Man in particular. Wow, that's awesome, man. Well, yeah, like I said, I know you just created the Facebook group yesterday. But by the time this show airs and everything, hopefully people start coming in and checking out your group there and, you know, if they have a need, hopefully they give you a call, man.

But I really appreciate you coming on and checking in with me and sharing some of your stories. No problem, Tony. All right, brother. Take care. Well, that's the show, everybody. I really hope you enjoyed it. And as always, whenever we do a show at Pennsylvania, we find out Pennsylvania is more mysterious than any of us can explain. So that will wrap up this week. Hopefully you guys have a great week ahead of you. Stay safe. Take care. And I'll see you right here next Saturday night. on the confessionals.