The Confessionals - 684: The Bunny Man

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

In episode 684: The Bunny Man, Jeremy and Derek join to share chilling experiences rooted in East Tennessee's mysterious folklore. As Jeremy unravels the eerie legends surrounding his own home, the story takes a dark turn when they discuss the infamous Bunny Man, that he had encountered as a child, and other supernatural encounters that have haunted the region for generations. Jeremy then goes through a deep dive into spine-tingling tales of faceless entities, cryptic messages, and the unsettling connection between ancient legends and modern-day sightings. MEET TONY AT:9/4 - 9/7 - PhenomeCon: https://linktr.ee/merkelmediaSasquatch and The Missing Man: merkelfilms.comMerkel Media Apparel: merkmerch.comThe Confessionals Members App:Apple Store: https://apple.co/3UxhPrhGoogle Play: https://bit.ly/43mk8kZBecome a member for AD FREE listening and EXTRA shows: theconfessionalspodcast.com/joinAFFILIATESGo Silent with SLNT Faraday Bags: https://alnk.to/clXuRY5EMP Shield: empshield.com Coupon Code: "tony" for $50 off every item you purchase!SPONSORSSIMPLISAFE TODAY: simplisafe.com/confessionalsCONNECT WITH USWebsite: www.theconfessionalspodcast.comEmail: [e-mail] to the Newsletter: https://www.theconfessionalspodcast.com/the-newsletterMAILING ADDRESS:Merkel Media257 N. Calderwood St., #301Alcoa, TN 37701SOCIAL MEDIASubscribe to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/2TlREaIReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/theconfessionals/Discord: https://discord.gg/KDn4D2uw7hShow Instagram: theconfessionalspodcastTony's Instagram: tonymerkelofficialFacebook: www.facebook.com/TheConfessionalsPodcasTwitter: @TConfessionalsTony's Twitter: @tony_merkelProduced by: @jack_theproducerOUTRO MUSICJoel Thomas - AdiósYouTube | Apple | Spotify

Hey guys, before we get to this week's show, I want to let you know, we are going to Phenomicon 2024 in Vernal, Utah. This will take place on September 4th through the 7th. They asked me to speak there and they're giving me 90 minutes to go crazy on stage with you guys. So I had to take advantage of it. I hope to see you guys there in Vernal, Utah on September 4th through the 7th. Get your tickets now. Link in the description below will take you right to their page where you can purchase the tickets and get your spot secured for Phenomicon 2024. Merkel. Media.

This was all circulating around the base that a giant had to kill, but no one was supposed to talk about it. Beach 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 up 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 decapitated. Closer, got closer, got spursing. When he got about 15 yards away from me, I raised that 12 days, and I blow this head off. I feel something pulling at my leg. And I look over, and there are two small, gray entities, cooling it. And they're literally, I'm getting pulled off the bed.

I reach my hand into this foot. 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, listening to The Confessionals Podcast. 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 contact at theconfessionalspodcast.com. That's contact 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 way works for me, just get a hold of me. You want more shows on a weekly basis or access to overtime shows like today's show. Just go to the confessionalspodcast.com, hit join, become a member, or on YouTube. Hit the link in the description. That will take you to where you need to go to become a member on YouTube. It's the same content on both locations.

Just for your convenience, we opened up memberships on YouTube for people who like just consuming all their content right there on YouTube. Also, friends, go ahead and check out Merkelfilms.com. I'm not sure at the time of this release, if Sasquatch and The Missing Man will be on there yet. I think it will be, but Merkelfilms.com has all our documentaries that we've done and all the future documentaries we're going to do in the future right there, merfilms.com. And last but not least, Mercmurch, murkmerch. Merch.com.

That's where you can get this awesome shirt, decide for yourself and other shirts we've designed. Excuse me. Choked up in my own spit. What was it talking about? Mercklech. Keep all that in. Merckmerch.com. We worked out a deal with a company in Texas.

We have all these shirts already printed and ready to ship. The labels have Merkel Media. It's all original apparel, all warehoused in Texas, ready to ship. So you order it. It gets pulled off the shelf and shipped out to you right away at Merkmerch.com. Go ahead and check it out because we're trying to sponsor ourselves these days. All right. Today we got a great conversation coming, I'm sure, because we've been talking for about an hour and a half.

and it's time to finally talk for the show. We actually recorded an overtime that we did on the pre. So it's like a pre-time, not over-term. Yeah, I've done that a couple times where the conversation is rolling and Jack is just recording. And it's like, okay, so this is going to be the overtime. And then we're going to record the actual show. And in the overtime, we talked a lot about CERN and a lot of that rabbit hole. So we can get into that today on this part if we so choose.

we're going to see where the conversation goes. But today we have Jeremy in studio and we have Derek in studio. Two local guys to Marival. And that's where the studio is located. And, you know, it's funny. You come here. You move down to Tennessee. You set up shop right here, Marival.

Right down here. The studio sits and you meet people. And people, funny enough, listen to the show in this area. And Derek was texting me this morning. morning. I'm like a, I'm a local dealer around here. I don't know if you know. I deal eggs. And I had about five. Well, I'm sure you got your own eggs. Don't you? You don't have any chickens on your 80 acres? I'm terrified. I'm terrified of chickens. My wife keeps bugging me and we're because of the bird flu crap. We're so close to get in the chickens. Listen, he can have some of my eggs today.

Listen. You don't got to work about that. We'll get in there later. But I was texting Derek and I said, hey man, I got five dozen eggs for you and stuff. I said, come on to the studio. And I was like, why don't you just sit in? It's a whole local session that we're doing anyways. But Derek, tell people about you and your pizza shop or pizza business. I have a woodfire pizza trailer and we're just getting that role in the last couple months. So we did Woodfire pizza.

I went a pizza shop in New York. Sold that to get politically free down here in Tennessee. You kind of dragged me down here a little bit. I did. We've been loving it. It's been everything we thought of. would be. So it's been really awesome. Got chickens going waiting for my own eggs so I can stop stealing your eggs. And, you know, but we're just getting ourselves started up. I did wood fire pizza,

all really homemade stuff. So I'll be in the Marrival area popping up and maybe you'll see me and stop in. So yeah, absolutely. Do you have any areas you're popping up right now? We're going to be local. I'll be posting that today on Instagram. So cool. Yeah, follow on Instagram, right? Yep. What's the handle? We are Tons of Fire Pizza. Tongs of Fire Pizza. Tongs of Fire pizza on Instagram. Which is from Acts 2, 3 as well. So I'm hoping to do like ministry stuff with that eventually. Oh, I had no idea.

Yeah. I'm kidding. You got me. But Jeremy, man, you, you're somebody who I've been trying to get in studio for a while now. I mean, I think we start connecting shortly after I moved down here two years ago. And it's just been up and down and stuff. You have your own business that you're working. And we finally are nailing you down.

And I think originally you contacted the show about your bunny man experience. And then through communicating with you, finding out that you're locals in me, and you have this Bunnyman experience, I'm like, why don't you come on in? And then you're talking about all this East Tennessee lore that you've uncovered. And your property has a lot going on on it, a lot going on in the history of it. So I just like, dude, come on in studio. Let's lay it out and have some good conversation. So what we'll do is I want to start off with the Bunnyman, which happened in Virginia.

And then from there, we can just go wherever. Is that a good deal? Let's do it. All right. Let's think it's slow and easy. So your life, and we don't need to rehash everything, but you've kind of been all over the country where you live. Oh, yeah.

At some point, you lived in Virginia where this happened, right? Was this a childhood thing? This was a childhood thing. And it was really spur of the moment. We moved there quickly and we moved away really quickly. And so we moved to Virginia. We moved to Fairfax. Fairfax almost immediately upon moving there,

We joined the local swim team. I was always a big swimmer and stuff. And everyone, and we got to know the neighbors and everyone around the neighborhood and go to all the swimming events at the local pool and stuff. And everyone always mentioned the bunny man constantly. If you go to Fairfax, you go to these neighborhoods, it is a heavy hitter. And they like to talk about the bunny man.

everyone has their own ideas, everyone has their own thoughts. And this was before anything really like came out. This was in the 90s, right? And into the point where I went to different schools in my short time there. And I went to like Oakview and St. Ambrose and I forgot what the name of the other one. I went to three different schools, all in different parts of the town. And everyone in all three of these schools, all the friends and stuff like that, even in different neighborhoods, where I'd have to drive really far to go to these schools,

had heard of the Bunny Man. So there was clearly, you know, something to it that it was in the thoughts and minds of everyone living in the area. And I didn't know much about it until later in life. It was so creepy what had happened that I just, I want to just forget about it. And I assume that maybe the reason we left was maybe had to do something with,

some of these incidents. Anyways, the first time something happened to me, we lived in a cul-de-sac, and then each person had pretty big property, a couple acres, and people next to me had this really big house, and you'd have to take this really long drive

down to the end of their property, and I'd use their long driveway to ride my bike down and stuff like that, and there's this really nice old couple named the Greens. and Mr. and Mrs. Green, for whatever reason, took a liking to me. And they had these two little, we call it miniature border collies, I think. Like little tiny, I don't know, I don't know. I think they're border collies. And they would like me to come over and play with their dogs.

And they had, it was really weird because we lived in the woods and pretty much in like the thick of the forest. And with all the trees and everything around, they had managed to build this maze in their backyard. I think they probably used like metal trellises and had vines growing up of it because you couldn't see through the maze or anything. So when I came down there one day, I talked to Mrs. Green. She said, oh, you know, we're on this big, huge deck porch there is overlooking the backyard and the maze and everything.

and it's so weird that I even want to have a maze in their yard you know because mazes are whole like hide stuff you know like if you go back to like Crete and stuff like it was supposed to hide the entrance to the underworld and the portal basically anyways so when I was in the maze one time they they would I would run off into the maze and then Mrs. Green would open a little gate

let the border collies run down the state and then chase me and I would, you know, I don't know why we developed this game, but it happened at least a number of times where I'd go over there and they'd free the dogs and I'd run in the maze and the dogs to chase after me and then we'd run back in the house. And then I would get to go after I playing with the dogs. They'd let me go hang out with Mr. Green, who was like a rare car collector and had this huge underground garage where he kept all of his prized cars and he would let me, you know, he would talk about them with me and let me like polish,

and stuff like that. One time, so they sent me into the maze and the dogs came after me, but unlike the other times they didn't get to me, they must have stopped. And I was near the other side of the maze and there's one entrance in, one entrance out on the other side away from their house. And I was sitting there and I heard, I was near the end of the maze where I'd always be. And then they got me and run back into the house. And on the other side of the maze wall, I heard like brushing up against the vines of the maze. And then I heard this weird like whisper muttering.

And almost like a song kind of. Like a chant? Yeah, like a chant. And it was coming towards like right on the other side of where I was from the maze. and I swear I saw these horns like antlers come up and I'm like you know if there was a deer wouldn't get so close to me and I heard and there's this just

just eerie creepy muttering and stuff so I I didn't see what it was I could see these horns and this thing clearly like where were the horns coming from there you could see just above the maze so I can see like maybe like horns like like antlers I thought were like deer antlers you know Okay. And so freaked me out. And I ran back in the house and it was so weird the dogs never came after me.

And I came back and they're like, oh, you know, the dogs didn't chase after you. Like, you know, and I'm like, oh, okay. Well, you know, I think there's deer or something out there. Like, yeah, so I just ran in and didn't think anything of it. And then this is the house right next to ours. And then a couple, within like the next year over that summer, my bedroom is in the second floor. And I'd look out the window and I would see this thing in the cul-de-sac at night. Just kind of walking around under street lamp, going back and forth, like pacing almost, you know.

Just look black. I couldn't tell what the heck it was. But it scared the crap out of me. I ended up getting a bunk bed just so I wouldn't have to sleep near the window and look at it anymore. So from then on, I slept in a bunk bed nice and high up and away from it. And then after that, we would have family coming over to our house. And we built out this big, our basement, we built it out right? It's a huge basement and the guests would come and they stay in the bottom of the basement with windows facing out.

towards our backyard that opened up into the woods. And we had family friends, lifelong family friends, come over, and they expressed, you know, a lot of disease that we were put in, that they were right next to the windows, and they'd hear this tapping on the windows at night. And their family friends would. The family friends. And they're, like, they're very, like, you know, they're pretty serious people. And it seemed really weird that both of them,

because, you know, it would have been, it's like, oh, then the other one could explain it away if one person said it, but they both said it. And they were both really freaked out by it. And then my grandma comes and stays with us from Chicago. And she also expresses very, a lot of disinterest in staying in the basement for the same reasons. She said, she said something kept tapping on the windows and waking her up. And she was really freaked out. And so it was a huge house. So we're like, okay, just put, we start putting stuff out people out of the big basement.

Anyways, what I was one, when we went to Salzburg and I had that instant I was telling you guys about my sister started sleepwalking. Just out of the blue. And I don't think people just, I don't know how sleepwalking works, but I don't think you just start doing it out of the blue. But the sleepwalking became worse. We, we came. she would get out of her bed and wind up all the way downstairs from upstairs in this big house, lots of stairs. It was weird. Maybe sleepwalkers can do all that.

I don't know. I'd never run another sleepwalk or I haven't looked much into it. But it just always struck me as very odd. And then one day it became really serious because it set off our house alarm. And she was outside in the backyard. She had walked all the way from her bedroom, went all the way downstairs, and it opened the back sliding door that went outside into the backyard. So that became freaky. We put locks on both sides of the door.

And so it always seemed like something weird was going on. The Bunny Man, it goes back about 100. You know, like to early 1900s. And there was a farm when it was undeveloped in the area. There was a big farm out there that they put all the housing developments. So the same one that we lived on was pretty close to this original farm. And this farmer there, apparently they say that he was upset about the development. Or he, I forgot exactly the story with the original farmer.

but he was caught by a local pastor who they hadn't seen him in a while and this local pastor goes out to the farm and sees the farmer with a cow muttering incantations and the pastor sees him alerts the town and they find that it was a stolen cow, and I think they locked up the guy, and then he breaks out of prison and starts terrorizing the area. And this is where the bunny man story starts from. They say that when he broke out,

there's this bridge near our house, the Bunnyman Bridge, is a very big site for anyone who lives in the area. it's really spooky place. And he apparently lived there and would catch lots of rabbits and hang them for like food or something like that while he was like a fugitive. And so that's where the bunny man like image comes from is this guy would be wearing bunny peltz and killing bunnies for food and such. And then the Bunnyman story keeps popping up. It pops up again like 50 years later with people who lived near the original farm having something with an axe.

The Bunny Man's always seen with an axe and her clothes kind of. He'd be like shopping at people's houses. there wouldn't frames of their houses and such. And then in the 70s there's a whole rash of incidents. They're starting to involve kids where the kids, I know there's one instance where two people were out by our house and when it was still a little bit more rural. And they were sitting in their car.

and this bunny creature tries to pull out the guy from his car and starts attacking him. They get away and they eventually come in, they report it, and the actual police reports start happening. So the thing with the bunny man, unlike other lore, is it's been documented by police, by newspapers, in the area for almost a century. and the events really picked up in the 70s when they like kids, I think, started vanishing. And it culminated into this incident where three boys had vanished. And I think they're hanging from the Bunnyman Bridge. And in it, and that documented, like it's not even an urban legend.

That actually happened. Yeah, like that actually happened. Okay. So it was very real. People didn't know what was going on and they still don't know what's going on. They think that it might be some relative from the farmer who is just carrying on the mission from his father and dressing up as a bunny man. Everyone, what happens when people see him, they see this thing hopping around dressed in bunny furs with an axe and he'll taunt them. It will attack buildings and new developments especially.

And then in the early 90s happened again where three kids started becoming a tradition where people would go to the Bunnyman Bridge on Halloween. And they apparently thought they saw someone dressed as like a, like it was a costume party. But then the guy starts taking swings at them while they're under the bridge, trying to kill the kids that were there for this Halloween party. And so, you know, I don't know much about that because what happened to me, I didn't really, I didn't see a bunny necessarily or like a bunny man.

We were, we left us swim function and walked down to my house. with two friends I knew from the swim team. And they, I didn't really know them all that well, but we just, we just left and we were like, their house, my house is on the way to their house. And you could walk through the woods to get to their house. And so we walked through my backyard and we went down the woods. And there's a little canyon that would take you out to the street,

Claire Barton Road, where they lived on. and then they could get to their house really easily from there. And there was this weird structure on this little wooded trail that when you got down to the bottom of the canyon at the bottom of my house, it would kind of follow a stream to a pond. And there was this weird structure there that no one, we had lots of friends in the area, and no one ever knew why this structure was there. Everyone called the curse fort because it was just, It was just like this abandoned shed half built that had scribbles all over it of curse.

You know, like curse words and stuff. So just everyone just called it the curse for it. And we, I remember walking by it and everything was normal and stuff like that. But then we got down to Pickett Pond where we eventually, we're sitting there. And there's this big, we're looking for this big snap. turtle in this pond, right? And we're just, we're just focusing on the water and stuff. And then one of my friends goes, um, dude, what the hell is that? And, and it just seemed like this, this bunny was sticking out of the bushes nearby. And it, and it just, like, it seemed like it

called out to me. It's like, come here, come here. You heard that? I heard that in my head. As if I was being like, beckoned to it. Um, you know, like, oh, look, a little bunny. like come over and pet the bunny and it didn't look like a normal rabbit like you'd see like little hair it looked like a like a like a big um domesticated bunny it was black or i mean black it was white with a little black spot on the back and while i sat in there and i was looking at this this bunny um all of a sudden this thing pops out from the bushes behind the pond on the other side of the water from us. It looked, it looked like a, look like a man with long arms, like, really, like, and he was

hunched over like that. And he was wearing this weird, I think what they were saying, like the bunny man's peltz, but it didn't look like a bunny and it didn't look like a man. And we were, and my friend just, like, screamed. We started running back the way we came up the trail. And instead of going home, we just started running. in the direction we had just come came from and this this thing um i saw clear his day started walking around the pond very slowly arms hanging on the ground like that and um

it kind of like hopping you know um and started like hopping towards us going a little quicker so we booked it to the trail and when we're coming up the trail my friend we just stopped around the curse for it because it was at that point we were pretty close to home and and my friend was like you know she was just like what was that you know what the hell and um and so we were standing there and all the sun on the other side of the curse fort it just we just i saw it in like big black writing it said it said come come here um on not a curse just like come here and never seen that writing before looked like someone had just freshly spray painted it onto this little outbuilding.

And then all of a sudden this thing, the hands go above the wood on the fort. And it starts going up like that. And I thought I saw horns again. And that muttering, the same muttering that I'd heard in the maze, the, you know, just whatever it was. And so basically I saw this thing. all these weird. They looked like human hands,

maybe a little, like, looked really, really pale. And, you know, you could see these, like, really gross, big, black fingertips, really dirty, gross fingertips. And that's all I saw.

And I started seeing the thing approach. I turned around and we, my friends had already started running. I ran to my, um, we got to the hill that takes you up into their backyard. and my friend goes, you know, starts screaming and he's, he's saying, it's got me, it's got me.

And he's, and he had slipped going up the steep part of the trail back into the, like up the canyon side. And he, you know, he slipped and fell. And he's screaming at the top of his lungs. It's got me. It's got me. And I swear, I saw him start going backwards. We grabbed him.

We pulled him up. We didn't see anything at that point. It's not like. the creature was there. It's not like we saw like a big hand grabbing him, which we would have been able to see. But it seemed like he started slipping back down the hill. It was really weird.

And it's especially strange because if you, there's a lot written about the Bunny Man. And there's nothing like that in there, except that it seems to go after groupings of three and especially like the hang of the three children seems to be some sort of theme in this whole bunny man story. But I was always, we moved out of there so quickly after that.

And I never really got to talk to anybody about it. I figured maybe we moved because it was really heartbreaking when we left. We had great friends there. We had just settled in. We're all a terrible time in our lives to be moving as kids. you know, and in the middle of school. And it's like, why are we packing up and going back to Chicago just to make any sense? This is the most beautiful house.

Like, we hated Chicago, just, you know, and we moved to almost the exact same place we had come from in Chicago. It was so weird, like a street away. And our parents never explained to us. They knew about the Bunny Man. All the adults knew about it. They would talk about it just the same as the kids would talk about it. I always figured, you know, it must have to be something to do with this because it wasn't, it was the adults. It was my family's friends.

It was my grandma. It was my sister being sleepwalking outside. I don't know. Anyways, that's that I was young. And no one wanted to talk about it because everyone had, you know, everyone talked about the Bunny Man enough. Everyone seemed like they knew it was fairly real. So, you know, I'd ask my parents about it. And they were like, you know, I was like, hey, you know, we think something grabbed a friend out there and told them what happened to stuff.

And they seem like they heard me and took it seriously and stuff like that. But we were already gone. So it's like, what's the point? We're not living there anymore. And I never had any sort of incident. I'd always go back and visit, but a lot of my actual friends lived on the other side of town because I went to, that was where the public school was. So I never really went back to Fairfax Station, which is the area where it happened. I'd occasionally go back and look at the house because it was just such a cool house.

I wish I still live there. But I guess in a way, I don't because of what happened. But yeah, it was pretty wild. And like I was saying, ever since we had been to, I had taken a trip to Germany and Austria, I felt like I had been, you know, maybe touched by something in this. We went to visit a dungeon in Salzburg. you know, where like the sound of music is. There's a big fortress up there called the Salt Fortress.

And in the bottom of the fortress is the dungeons and stuff. And the same incident that when I, when what made me feel like something had had maybe gotten me in the dungeon was that it was the same kind of electrical feeling that I got kind of recently. It was only like, I think it was about a year ago when that had happened. but moving away from the bunny man stuff. Not yet. I got to talk to you about that.

Oh, yeah, yeah. How dare you. That's my bunny man story. We're all done, folks. No, so what do you think? Do you think that there is a... Because, all right, what you saw, the way you described it,

sounds like there's a supernatural element to it, like the extra long arms, things like that. But it also seems like it's playing to the character of the bunny man lore. When you talk about the bunny man lore, it sounds like it has a very real origin that possibly just sickos throughout the years have played with that imagery

for their own nefarious means. Do you think that there is a connection between your experience and a historical bunny man? Or do you think that what you experienced is completely different, to what people have been describing the bunny man to be? Because what you're talking about is like how the guy is dressing in pelts and, you know, then you have the killing of kids and stuff.

Do you think it's all connected to one thing? Or do you think that what you saw may not be the historical bunny man that because what you're, what you were describing sounded like a true crime podcast episode? That's what it sounded like to me. And then what you personally experienced has. aspects of that, but what you physically saw, that was more supernatural than than true crime serial killer. That freaking thing hopping like it did towards us.

It was so terrifying, man. I mean, people always describe the bunny man as hopping. And the recounts and stuff and police reports or newspaper clippings. They always say, you know, here's this guy in the bunny man costume with the axe. This is always there, which wasn't in mine. But they always say he's hopping. And I always figured like, you know, like a bunny hop. Whatever I've seen through my window in the cul-de-sac down below in the middle of the nights would do this weird erratic movement too.

It would like go under the light and then do this weird turnaround and throw its whole body and go the other way. and then come back the other way. And I remember at least, and it took like a week of watching it out my window before I told my parents like, hey, either I'm moving in to the room next to you guys or we're doing so. They got me the bunk bed. But yeah, it was that weird movement. And I couldn't see what the face was of the Bunny Man. it seemed almost faceless,

which is weird, especially because something I didn't want to necessarily bring up dreams because this isn't a show about dreams. Oh, it is, though. I don't want to become one. But I hear people's accounts of dreams from stuff I've heard on the show and stuff. And I've heard other people in my family.

You know, everyone likes to tell if they have some wanky, you dream tell it to you. But I had this, I had this period of dreams that were just, that were just insane in, and just out of this world. And it was, and it happened for, it happened like before, before I moved here and into, after I moved here. And I would, um, I would just be dreaming. I would be in this neighborhood.

And in my dreams unlike other people's, like, everything is. Nothing I've ever seen before, but it's very vivid. So it'll be in like a neighborhood, like of subdivision houses, but it's not anywhere I've ever lived or anywhere I've ever seen. But it all looks so natural in my dreams. And what kept happening is I would, I would just go wandering. And I don't know if it was me because I don't know if it's me and my dreams. How am I supposed to know?

I'm not looking in a mirror. And I'm not like I'm looking at my hands or anything. I'm just doing it. I'm just in my dream. doing what I'm doing, which usually just consists of walking around. No one ever talks. And there's usually, okay, so what kept happening was I would be in this neighborhood. I'd walk out to this beach.

Like sometimes it would be like an endless ocean. Sometimes it would be you could see the other end. It would look like a big lake. But it's always around water and there's always around sand, which I'm really, even in San Diego, I never went down to the beach. We moved up to the mountains because we were like, well, who cares about living with the beach?

I want to live up in the mountains. And so some are completely unfamiliar. And I saw this decaying city always when I get down to the beach on, there'd be the water on one side and then this decaying city on the other side. And I actually just saw something recently in a commercial that really, really conceptualized what I was seeing in my dreams. almost so close. There's this, it's a Marines commercial.

And in the Marines commercial, they show, I think, like some drones coming out of the woods or something like that. And then all of a sudden they're on this, it's like a commercial playing right now. So anyone could see it. You could just type in like Marines commercial, but it looked exactly what I had been seeing in my dream. So when I saw this commercial, I was like, oh my God,

like, what the heck is going on here? And in the dreams, I would, you know, there's just this big decaying city all around that was very detailed and intimate. And one time you would see all these like figures. They look like homeless people, just kind of tatters and rags and stuff like that, just wandering around. And for a while, the theme of these dreams is always in the same place was about the water. And that there were alligators or crocodiles in the water that I was supposed to be, you can see the shapes of, them like down below and I don't know why or what the hell I've never seen an alligator

crocodile face to face I don't know why I'd be so worried about them my dreams but I remember one time I did enter this decaying city and I started walking up this decayed staircase and then sitting there was one of these people the dream people and I walk up to him and they she's sitting on the ground, like hunched over, like, like some sort of homeless guy. And he looks up with me. His face is completely not there. It's just a, well, just no eyes, no nose, no mouth, just a blank face. And, and after I saw that, these dreams kind of just disappeared.

So the only reason I say that is it just seemed so weird that this creature I saw down in the woods by the curse fort. Faceless. faceless, maybe had horns, like the thing I saw muttering on the other side of the maze, but, you know, I don't know what the goal or the game was. And I don't even know what the dream is just so weird because I hear people talk about dreams a lot. And I'm like, I've never had a dream like that. My life, I've never seen another person my dream ever. I don't see family. I don't see friends.

I don't see me. I just come in these weird environments and just start wandering around looking at stuff. And there's always this theme, no matter where the environment is, could be like a weird. I remember one time of this weird canyon with these big stones. And I'm walking, trying to balance on the stones, trying not to fall into this lake below where I knew these water things are. Anyways. It sounds like water is a predominant theme in these dreams. Yeah, and I was a swimmer, and I spent way too much time with my head buried under the water.

So on your swimmer, you get lots of time to just think to yourself about stuff. So maybe I just was stuck in my own thoughts. Let me ask you about, so the local people, you said even the adults talked about the Bunny Man. It, what you're talking, and maybe it's just my perception of what I'm hearing. But it almost sounds like the groundwork for an M. Night Shyamlan movie where it's like all the, all the locals know about this. And there's this like secret thing that they sacrifice three children to this thing once a year or whatever. And it's usually people who just moved into town don't know much about it. And I say this because when you were talking about the maze aspect of your story, I was like,

I felt like those old people knew what they were doing. It was so weird because it's not like they ever invited my sisters down there or anything like that. My parents didn't even know the Greens. They would just know about what I would tell them when I came back home about, you know, is, you know, hey, Mr. Green won the Deerwood Award for his car. He drove to Canada, you know, like they never went to talk to. It was kind of faraway house because you'd have to walk really far down the steep hill and stuff. So I could see why, you know, my ladies' appearance wouldn't be walking down there.

but it was it was certainly weird and it was it was certainly weird how well the woods that are by our house they kind of drift off into Clifton, Virginia, which turns into the Prince William Forest. And on the other side of that, you have Quantico, which they do lots of. I've heard of stuff, other stuff, maybe like shape shifters and stuff. Skywalker's there's a guy on my show. I think it might have been a member episode. but he was stationed at Quantico and he would, I think he was in charge of a certain area, like basically monitoring the area, and he was a big hunter. And I think he was allowed to hunt back there.

And so he had game trail cams up. And one night on his shift, he went back there to collect the footage. And he climbed up in a tree stand with his SD card and his laptop to retrieve the data on there. And while he was up in the tree stand, a bi-stop. Piedal deer came walking through. And I think he said either it had a like mutated looking face or it became mutated there, but it walked by the tree standing. He's just observing this whole thing, breathless.

And as he got by, it almost like stopped. And almost like I feel like it, he said it didn't turn completely around, but almost like turned like it like it was like something. things behind it. And he heard it just say, I know you're there. No way. Yeah. Yeah. And it was an antlers.

He said deer? Mm-hmm. Upright deer? Mm-hmm. Oh my God. And so it like, it kind of goes in line with what you were saying. I was going to save that for a punchline later, but I figured I'd just drop it now since you brought out Quantico.

Well, yeah, because there was one other incidents that we'd go to this campground nearby our house called Hemlock Overlook. It was where we would do our summer camp there. And I remember there was an incident where these kids had come. We were playing some big capture the flag game or something like that out in the woods away from camp. All the camp council, you know, big, they set it up, organized for the kids and stuff. And these kids just came screaming out of the woods. The bunny man, the bunny man.

We just saw the bunny man. And it's like, and everyone at the camp lived in the area. they'd all knew about Bunnyman Bridge. So when these kids came, and that's even closer to where you start entering the National Forest there, which is connected to Quantico on the other side of the National Forest there. I think it's a state park. I think it's called Prince William Forest,

but there's something going on there. And there's probably a reason why they keep building all these three-letter agency bases all around that area, right? I mean, yeah. I mean, we lived really close to the Pentagon. It really shook me the bunny man thing, and it set of groundwork for other stuff. Real quick, how close was everything?

Because I was on Google Maps, and I was just looking in the road, and you can see like a giant pond, and then it connects almost directly to the tunnel. Oh, yeah, yeah, no. And where was the Green's labyrinth thing? Was that near the tunnel, too? No, the, if you look at the tunnel, there's like a little waterway that leads to Pickett's Pond, which would then lead.

So like the water, the rainwater that would flow from my backyard, collect in the canyon where the course fort was down and then run down the trail that we'd take out to the picket pond. And then that would keep going towards like the train tracks that where the Bunnyman, all the real incidences were always supposed to be centered around the train. train tracks. So, you know, people would always, like, you know, joke about going to the train tracks and, you know, and you don't even need to say why. It's because they're looking for the bunny man. But, yeah, if you ever, if you're ever driving back up to Philly and you happen to detour off that, I don't know, the route you would take, but. I might have to. It's, it's, it's creep. The, the bunnyman bridge itself, which I never had any incident happen at the bunnyman bridge or on Guinea Road where I've been there.

I had a friend who lived on Guinea Road where one of the big incidents happened. And I never saw anything there, but I could see why that might be some. It's a small little bridge. Maybe itself is a portal. The bridge. Yeah. It's just a simple looking bridge. But when you get there, it is something about it is.

There's something to do with bridges in general with the idea of portals and the water running underneath. Uh, the, there's a guy in Indiana, um, I'm going to be releasing his story, uh, soon-ish. Um, yeah. Yeah, that, okay, so there's no water, but I see what you're saying. Uh, but he, he, uh, when I was up there getting his stories, I had it, I went to him. Um, he's still having issues with these entities tormenting him. and he gets called to a bridge that this entity will appear at and give him instructions. He's dedicated his life to working for Ball and the ancient God.

And he's now tried getting away from it, but they come not just Ball, but these other like... Storm God, right? Thunder God? Ball? Ball holds many titles, but one is the storm. And they call them this right, the Samarian, right? Or one of those. You know, when I was talking about CERN, an interesting thing that they had found there at CERN was there's this part underground where they have all these big glass. slides. They look like

giant glass slides. In a room that kind of looks like this and they'd be hanging floor to ceiling

and about about the size of this wall here. And each of the slides is they're all spaced apart

from one and they're all written in different ancient texts. They have Sanskrit, they have

Sumerian, they have Mandarin and so they have like at least eight of these ancient texts. I don't know what is written on them because it's not something.

It's just something someone had stumbled upon who wasn't a part of CERN but was allowed in there for maybe like a school thing or something like that university study or something and they had snapped these pictures of these giant glass tablets as if whatever was to come like the Nazi race of dinosaur monsters or whatever that's all about maybe that they're trying to get them to read this crazy text

so they can communicate with them upon entering but I think what people with these microback holes that are appearing I don't know how far away from the source that they need to be to appear. But perhaps when the particles collide with each other, they create not a black hole,

but a micro black hole. And it might not be there at the source. Like we live by ORNL and perhaps, you know, like if they were to have a collision, the portal could appear here away from it. That's interesting. I've never thought about that. The idea of what they're doing at CERN being that directly connected to other particle accelerators all over the world. And maybe that's why they are spread out all over the place because they know mathematically where the effects would happen at. And that's, well, that doesn't make sense either because Oakridge has been around longer than. Yeah, but it didn't affiliate itself with CERN. until... The particle accelerator didn't happen

until after CERN was built. People don't realize CERN was built, I think, back in the 50s. And in Oak Ridge is a CERN facility. They are listed on CERN's website along with the other colliders. Some of them circular, some of them not. But the ones in the U.S. Argonne, Firmilab, they're all CERN facilities.

They're all the funding that is, given to CERN from all the different nations applies to the research that they do here. And I think that a lot of what people might be seeing might be when they turn on these accelerators, who says the portal has to be at the facility. Right, right. You know, it could be on a underground fault line. It could be that when, if you look into the local lore of the area, of this area of this area and the Alleghenies as a whole all the way up from New York all the way down here because it's all to these guys it's all one yeah they

called the they have a name for it's called like the endless or something like that because a lot of people don't know that the the Cherokee that we know here in the mountains the Anuia is what they the Cherokee is just a bastardized name they're not the Cherokee. The first incidence of them being called Cherokee was in the Spanish exploration. They were chili, chilequi. They just had heard, they'd heard about the mountain people from the inland people where they'd first arrived.

And they just kind of ever since bastardized the name. That's not what they actual Indians around here would call themselves. They call themselves the real people or the an uniu-wea or they have a nis. know their name if they're pure bloods for themselves. But they came from New York. They were part, they were like from the upper Alleghenies, Pennsylvania, New York. And they were driven out by the Iroquois and the Delaware down south. Really?

And in doing so, what they displaced the native population here. And that's something that they took. talk about kind of an extents this so the stuff around

here compiled a lot of information since I first started looking to it it comes from a number

of different sources what I'm the stuff we're going to get into here comes from

James Mooney the American ethnographist one of the most well reputed

works with Smithsonian wrote a number of different books he did one on the

Delaware he did one on the Shawano He did one on the ghost dances of the plains tribes after they had been displaced. He was a big deal. And he wrote a book called Myths of the Cherokees and their Sacred formulas where he worked side by side with some of their last remaining shaman.

They didn't call themselves shaman. They called themselves conjurers or magicians or wizards. or witches. They used the word witch interchangeably between, they didn't mean it to mean a woman necessarily. Sure. But what they, here's like a,

they, when they came down here, the race that they had displaced, they displaced two people. They displaced the Chickamauga's who now live just like towards teleco area. And they were described in these books as being, um, a race of Indian conjurers, all of them.

And if you look into, if, like, you go to their website and stuff and look at how they referred to themselves, their titles are so bizarre. Everyone, you know, you'd be like, most people would be like green corn or chief groundhog sausage or, you know, something like that, right? And then they're like, you know, conjurer of, you know, the dark side. Yeah, exactly. Every single name and every one of them is like the conjurer of this, the conjure of this. the conjure of that, the summoner of spirits, and I was like, these are such weird names.

So they certainly, the people who originally lived here before the Cherokee were huge into black magic incantations, all that kind of stuff. I don't know what they called it. And they were not necessarily trying to summon anything bad or anything like that to the Cherokees. They always, you know, were wary of them. But before that, they're supposed to. was a race of not white, maybe albino people that lived here. And I've heard about this to talk to before, but never in like an official capacity where they've stayed like the moon-eyed people. And the moon-eyed people, according to official historical documents, seemed to be quite real in this area.

And where when the Cherokees got moved south from Pennsylvania, Alleghenies down into the southern Alleghenies, They describe very often about seeing these, the moon-eyed people or unable to see during certain phases of the moon. They were unable to see. The moon-eyed people were. So the moon-eyed people were during certain phases of the moon. They went blind. They went.

Okay, got you. Okay. And that's how they say that they were wiped out. The chair, because they couldn't see. They couldn't see. So when the creeks attacked them from the south and Georgia, they wiped out the whole race. But they appear as people would remark at seeing them, especially at very specific places, they would see these women in white dresses and white hair.

That's a little of connection. Beautiful women sitting by the river singing and dipping water and stuff like that. and they just they just related them to maybe they were the immortals of the area. Who saw this again? Oh, the local, the tribes. The local tribes were reported seeing a woman dressed in white. Yeah, in North Carolina. And they contributed to her as what?

Oh, as the moon-eyed people, as the remnants of the ancient people that used to live in the area. Basically referring to that as somebody who's been, these beings have been here for a long time. Oh, yeah. Okay. So, very interesting. I like talking about the local stuff because, man, when I love it. When I moved out here, I didn't know. I, when we moved and we left abruptly, as I said, they let my family, two of them,

they let me choose wherever I wanted to go because I was. always big into geography. And I felt just utterly called here. I was sitting watching my favorite show, which is called Ariel America, on the Smithsonian Channel. And it's just a simple show where they just fly a helicopter over state and they talk about the history. And I ended up, it must have stuck with me because we moved right around the area where the Tennessee episode starts, which is Port Loudon. which was, you know, the heart of Cherokee country, but now I live there in the heart of Cherokee country.

And I mean the heart of Cherokee country. Because what I found was I go fishing on the Little Tennessee right by my house, just a couple minute drive towards the dragon. There's a good reference for people who don't know, you know, who kind of know the area. and on the other side of where I go fishing, there's the old remnants of the entire, the Cherokee had a huge landmass that they controlled.

When they got pushed out and their kind of their borders, their modern borders were settled, they went to the Cumberland Mountains and then all the way to near the coast of North Carolina and then south into the Georgia. Georgia mountains and stuff like that. And they're border on all sides by their enemies, the creeks to the south,

the Seneca to the, you know, South Carolina, the, um, the Chihuano north of them who were their old enemies from the Iroquois days. Sounds like this area was historically very, uh,

violent. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Um, and, and it's weird because they, the Cherokee aren't known for being one of these magical kinds of tribes,

but the, The Shawano in particular, the Shawano, Seneca, and the Chickamauga, all are pretty spiritual and stuff. There's actually, they cite in this book that when the Cherokee were driven out in the 1830s, the remnants that were that stayed and fought to stay and keep the area and stuff like that. one of them, they moved to deep in the Nantala forest, and they were pure bloods. A lot of the Cherokees by the 1800s were mixing with all sorts of different other Indians and, you know, slaves and whites. And they actually decided loving the French, the Indians. They really, they hate this, the Spanish really got them good. they like the French and then the English

were just like the Spanish and honestly everyone should go think of a Native American around here as soon as they can because without them fighting off the Spanish we'd all be speaking as Spanish right now because they detail

in great detail how Hernano de Soto a big mystery in history is DeSoto's route and DeSoto landed in Tampa in the mid-1500s and he pushed all the way up to Savannah, Georgia, where he ran into, as the story goes, he ran into, they didn't say the creeks, but this seemed to be where the creeks lived.

And he ran into this queen in the 1500s who they couldn't help but starting their mission there because they saw that the queen and all of her soldiers and people in the area. had these ornate bronze with golden inlay weapons. And obviously the Spanish who were looking for gold and hadn't found gold were like, holy moly. We want that. Yeah, we want that. So the story goes, they captured the queen. No, they kept the queen of the princess.

They capture one of the leaders of the tribe. And they take her and they, you know, are like, you know, show us where he found this and they're like it's up in the mountain the mountain people they're the ones with the mines to create all this stuff and that was here in Appalachia yeah mines in the 1500s so the one so her so de soto the queen tricks him and he was supposed to be going towards um from georgia they were supposed to be going more eastward but he she tells him she eventually escapes and then kind of keeps them they're like okay well we're already on this path heading towards the mountain They said the mountains, so let's go. And if you follow it very closely, you'll see that DeSoto actually ends up right around here from his descriptions. And everything's wrong because they had no, you know, nothing was named what it was at the time. And they were looking for something that didn't exist, an island city, maybe like Janice, the one in Mexico. But here they kept describing, like looking for this island city.

with the, some people say it's in Virginia where Stanton River flows and it forms this weird island thing. Anyways, Des Soto, they basically are able to track him through history through. He had a number of different writers that followed him and wrote stories back to Spain about his conquest, maybe to get funding and stuff like that. that for, you know, or just published stuff that was interesting. And they got up here and they, there's some weird stuff happens. They cite that the Indians were very welcome and receiving to the Spanish, maybe because they heard from lower Indians like, hey, you know, be nice to these guys, we'll just kill you.

So do what they ask, make them the corn and stuff like that. The Indians didn't have corn up here. So they're told them this book. And these, I don't know if these were the actual Cherokee, but they said that they read the small dog that didn't bark, small hairless dog by like the thousands. And that's what they were offering to the Spanish to eat. But they said they didn't eat them themselves. They're just, that's just, they're like, hey, they must love eating dogs or something. It was so weird.

I'm like, what a weird aspect in history that there would have been little dogs around here that no one's ever. hairless non-barking dogs that they fed the Indians. I wonder if there's any Mexican dogs. Yeah, there's hairless Mexican dogs. Yeah, like a chihuahua. That's what I picture. Like in my, but Chaw is the most barking, dang dog, you, you know, for the most part that I've ever known.

Anyways, sorry, that's, that's a side track. I find it fascinating because I'm, as, as a local cryptid hunter, I'm like, I wonder if there's any legends of hairless dogs that. don't bark in the in the bush still that are out there because of what they were breeding here hundreds of years ago just i find it interesting i'm pretty sure the mayan empire actually reached up into this area of georgia and stuff yes yes in fact there's an area there's a site uh and i think it's in georgia uh i want to say north georgia but i might be wrong that is government controlled and nobody can get on because of uh there are ancient mayan ruins there uh that

They are keeping quiet. You can't fly over it. Nothing. Really? Mm-hmm. Because the Cherokee site that they had no idea who were the people that they displaced, they just knew because when their early recitings of their history, they talk about in great detail in this, you know, it's a big book. And what he certainly likes to do is going to very specific detail.

And they'll go talking about the, um, the structures that they would find. They found one in North Carolina. I forgot exactly what county, maybe Swain County or something like that. But they say that they found these, they called their home's townhomes. That's what they mean by like an Indian hut where all the villagers would live. So they found a townhome that was under the river. and they made it sound like it was something you could like live in,

even though it was underwater. And it had these big timber beams held together by, that's where I'm looking for, smulted metal bands. And because the Cherokee, first, the Cherokee weren't supposed to be miners. And they certainly weren't supposed to, according to most people's just basic history, definitely didn't know how to smelt metal and be more modern. That's what, you know, doomed them, right?

But they, the Spanish and the Cherokee reciting their ancient history, they're like, yeah, you know, there was people here who could manipulate the metal that we'd get from the mines and make, you know, more concrete structures. but then by the time, you know, the 1800s were around, they had no idea how to do that anymore. But it is kind of cool because what they do talk about, when they're talking about DeSoto's conquest into this part of the mountains, is the ancient mines that both the Spanish found and that the Spanish would take over and work on themselves. And it's not something as a former mine owner.

I really like the history of mines. Yeah, you still own a mine. You own the rights to a mine in California. Let me touch on that for a second because this, so the guy that. If you need to go at any point, you can go, man. I don't want you feeling like you can't get up. So the guy we bought the house from, he was a very strange guy. He didn't, after his buddy died, the one who had the money to finance the home and stuff.

I already paid it off and everything. so he's fine living up there in the mountains by himself and had his little deal in operation and such. But he expressed, we had to hang out with him for a while before we finalized the deal. He had been scaring off people from buying that house. I'll have to show you pictures.

And if you, it's, it's, it is incredible. I mean, I probably could a, like the house now is an Airbnb, It costs like 500 something a night. And it's booked every night. And it's just a little 800 square foot shack. I mean, we lived in like it was very, very rustic, very minimum. I can't believe I ever sold that place,

let alone sold it for how much I did to get myself out of there and into safety of Tennessee. But the guy had told us about the mine. I don't think he was going to tell us about the mine because you would never know it was there. And that's someone I told you it was there. And we had one neighbor who was really, he had a cerebral palsy. And his family had left him up there to basically rot away in the mountains in a shed that was right next to our house.

And technically his family, like, owned the land. And it was like a, he was living in this really weird, they called him like post, like pre or pre or post-World War II. They were just like little kit homes that you could buy, but it was just living in the craziest, most rustic conditions you could ever imagine. And he knew about the mine. And he would, we would often, you know, we were warned like, hey, you know, watch out for Chris and, you know, watch out for him, like, down by the mines and stuff like that.

He just seemed like a really, he was, he seemed, my wife thought he was really nice. I was really creeped out by the guy. anyways, James, the guy we bought the house from, when he did tell us about the mine rather reluctantly, he... From the property that you were buying. Yeah. So he wasn't interested in telling you about a mine that you were buying.

It was a weird problem. So because it was, our house was at the very top of the mountain and it just, just dropped straight down back behind us. So it gave us the most beautiful view you could ever ask for in the entire world. Could see beautiful Vulcan Mountain. Could see all the way out to the Salton Sea. It was,

beautiful views in that area, but ours was ridiculous. And so we didn't know and never have interest in following the trail. There's this trail that would go down. It was the old mining path. So you could see the remnants of the concrete and stuff that had been cracked up over the years. When it was actually a mine in the 19. I looked it up. The official geological records is mine active.

It was actually one of the last mines in California to be shut down. But it was way back in like 1910 or something like that one that happened. And the mine itself, you'd have to go really far away from our property, technically off our property, because there was like a weird easement thing there. But you could own, you can buy the rights to a mine. So he had the rights and he'd sign them over and everything like that. What was weird about it was he was terrified of this mine. and I was trying to find when in the move we lost the keys

so I could never give him back to the homeowner and I never I figured I was like I could sell this guy the mine but what if I you know what if I want to go back and like dude you know it's just cool to like have a mine right yeah um and it's a real mine I mean a mine a gold mine if you look into it because you couldn't so so James was terrified as mine he was a lifelong felon he was he expressed interest in wanting to go back to the system

He did not feel comfortable back in regular society. Really? Yeah, he was a very, very strange guy. And he was terrified of this mine. He had expressed that he had thought that he had seen something in the mine when he had been in there. I think there was a fire. And he, because this is California, it's fires all the time. And for whatever reason, he ended up hiding with his dogs in the mine.

And he expressed that he was something like touched him or scared him or something in the mine. And there's actually an old video when I first moved there. I actually found a video of people who before it was all chained up that went into the mine, locals in the area. And they went into the mine. They took the shaft down. There's like an elevator crank shaft in a staircase. And they didn't take the shaft.

I took the stairs down, right? So you can see in the video, you can see them walking down the stairs and stuff. And they see at the bottom, a bone or like bones in a skull. And then the video and they comment on it. And it was really short. And they said, oh, my God. And they start freaking out. And then they, that's where the video ends.

I'll find out. I'll try to send it to you because it is really cool. It shows my mind in better detail. Now the mine. And it was seem to be like that back then. but sediment has fallen from where it sits. And so it's like, it's like you would have to really crouch down to like walk back in there. It gets really claustrophobic.

But it's a pretty rather large mind from like the short video that these guys had of it. And anyways, they, so they were marking these bones and stuff down there and they freak out and they get out of the mind. The video's over. And that's all that I had because I can never get down there because James was. so terrified of this dang mine or whatever happened there that he put so many bar

he the thing was so barred up and gated it had layers of um had one layer the second layer behind it the second layer behind it of metal of metal bars I don't know at the entrance must have been when he had financing to still do something like that the entrance of it and it was really

hard to find this mine anyways it's pretty secretive but he seemed he put this all there and then he had this set of keys that I was someone I really wanted to bring for the episode because you know it's like someone brings the skull and then that but I have these haunted set of keys that's like 15 keys deep of different locks and such to get into the mine into the mine so he never wanted anyone to go anywhere near that mine ever again I want to go to this mine so bad

I mean just wanted to San Diego it's beautiful I've never been. I hear it's beautiful. I want to go to this mine so bad. Why is he so scared of it? I don't know. It was cool because San Diego is very... So you're saying you have this video of people finding the bones,

yelling about getting scared, and that's where the video ends. The very same mind is this video is the mine that you own. Yep. And the guy who sold it to you is scared of the mine. Terrified of it. Put up all these. I didn't wait to get out of the house. Did not want to be in the house.

Want to get out of that house. And there's Bigfoot sightings in Southern California. Yes. Yes. You were saying that earlier. Yeah. And we had a huge mountain lion on our property there. So when I say that I saw a mountain lion in my property here, this is coming from someone

who's actually had a face-to-face encounter with a mountain lion. This was very rare. But you could one day we're sitting on on the back porch. We knew it was there. Scat was all around. There had been issued warnings about the mountain lion and stuff. It's very, it's unlike here, it's very common. it's very common in that area to have,

Mountain Lions. Yeah, exactly. So I saw it. They eat bikers. They have to admit it. Yeah. Seriously. That guy killed one with his bare hands. Oh, yeah. I heard of it. That was crazy. Yeah, I think it's towards L.A. So I was always creeped up, but not, like, you didn't have told me not to go down there. I'm like, dude, like my dog would always want to go down there,

which is so different than the dog I have now, which doesn't help me at all in these situations out in my woods here. which would be nice because when I needed him the most, he was gone. So we'll get off the whole California thing. What I got, I live life by the seed of my pants

and I just, we just picked up and moved. You know, like no one's ever done before, just got out. That's what I did. And I don't know what brought me here. Like I said,

there's, it could be a number of things. I felt just kind of called to Tennessee. you know, just thinking about coming out to Tennessee, it just makes me like tear up and just get really emotional because it really is like, it's such a blessing to have Tennessee. And I just, I can't believe, like,

I had suggested to my family, to my wife and father-in-law, I'm like, I had all these ideas. I want to move to Montana. And they're like, no, it's too cold. I'm like, well, like, let's move back to Arizona. No, too hot. We don't want to go back there. I was like, let's move Texas.

No, too hot. Let's move to, you know, I was just trying to pick red states, places where I'd feel safe. I'm like, because the idea was like, we lived in San Diego. You had all these things to do. But at the end of the day, we never left home anyways, especially when we moved up to the mountains, because why on earth would you ever leave? It was just a cool house. Like, you would just sit out and look at the view for, you could just sit there all day and night.

And I just settled on Tennessee. And then I didn't just settle on Tennessee. I settled on a very specific area. Almost as just as if I started darts into a big map. Like, hey, move here and stuff. And I had a, I loved playing around with Zillow and just like looking at stuff. I think I started off with Gantlenburg.

But my wife wanted big property. And I thought, I thought just by like not knowing the area, I never contacted Realtor. I'm my own realtor. You don't need to pay those people that use the low. And so anyways, our house that we ended up getting, it was like the hottest housing market ever out here.

Our house is on the market for like 200 days. And now still to this day, people come and offer us, I think because of the very wealthy family across, like, I mean very wealthy. They follow us from California about a year after we move there. And I think they're friends from their church denomination and stuff. They definitely have the means. They're always driving Bentley's and Ferraris.

And they're probably the wealthiest people in town right now. Oh, you must sell my cars. And they're always throwing offers. They're like, you know, I think when we bought the place, we bought it and like, you know. I didn't realize we were neighbors. For seven. And these guys, you know, it's like now we could sell it for like at least two, maybe more. It's worth a lot of money.

I mean, we bought ours or seven in the house across the street, went up shortly after. And we have a bigger property. We have a better house. We had less work to do. And these people bought their house for more than double what we bought our house for. So it's certainly worth a lot to some people. But it was weird that our house never made it off the market. And if you come out there, you'd be like, what the hell?

Why on earth? How on earth did you buy this place? And for this amount of money, we actually, and the only reason I think we did was because we were going to allow the sellers, realtor to work as our realtor so he can make commission on both ends. And he liked that, even though he's filthy, rich and our neighbor, and he lives in a close to our house in a huge property. He owns lots of land.

And it's like, so he didn't really need the money. And I'm sure if he had just waited for anyone else to come by, they would have paid a huge amount of money to it, to him for it. Maybe he was just trying to keep people. Like, maybe you just thought we were from Tennessee or something like that when we first met him. But anyways, I'm only saying that to say, it was really weird that as you guys probably know, shopping was, it was like really hot housing market here. I mean, by the time we got here, we're like, oh, man, like, we got to find a place quick and stuff. And I just remember there's always this little red dot far side of town all bites lonesome and stuff.

And we almost didn't even go see the house. But right before the airport, we toured a bunch of homes in the area. Had no idea where we wanted to live. Thank God we moved to where we, I could have been living like driving on the 40 every day. If I picked the wrong part of town, I had no idea. And we just happened to last minute, Megan was like, hey, you want to, you want to go see that house that you had marked on the saved on your thing? Like, you know, we can't buy. It's too expensive.

And we eventually, we got her dad to go in on it with us. So we're able to afford it between, you know, our down payment and his and stuff like that. But he, but it was just crazy that I remember there being a lot of people when we came to the house. There was a couple older couples. And they were because they were waiting for their turn to be shown around the property. And I guess a ton of people had seen the property because it was just kind of fun because the the realtor would take them in this ATV and tour them around the trails. So I guess people were just kind of wanting to.

Yeah, go for a ride. Yeah, just snoop, go for a ride. Like, I remember, it was so much fun. Like, I was like, oh, my God, this like a tour home. It's like a roller coaster. Let's pretend we're on this on the market for this beautiful property. And so anyways, it's just everyone knows our house in this area. Or certainly a lot of people do.

A lot of what I've talked to about the local lore were from my drivers, you know, like semi-drivers and FedEx and UPS and stuff like that, and they're all locals. The UPS driver knew our house very well. He's a bear hunter, and he knew that our, he said two things. He said, he said, oh, man, the bears up there get really big, which is true. I mean, we get, they're well over 500 pounds. They're just absolute monsters and their little cubs are bigger than the bears.

I'll see when I'm out in like certain parts of the other parts of the forest and stuff. And I'm like, these are the cubs. Like, you know, mama bears just, you know. Anyways, the, so that the house was so weird that we were able to buy this house and didn't have to fight anyone for it. And that it was left on the market for so long in this crazy housing market. When people were looking for exactly that big acreage, you know, everyone I've talked to has moved here as a transplant, was looking for just that. And it's like, well, why didn't you buy that? Why did, you know, why were we lucky enough to get this house?

You know, out of all the places we could have moved to in this entire country, we moved to Marival to East Tennessee to this little random place. That now happens to be just an absolute immersed in the lore that I've done. I've been reading around here. So where we go fishing is right down the way from there. And in the ancient Cherokee settlement, not ancient because it was ancient because it's been there forever. But it was where they had about 25,000 known like Cherokees before the relocation, trail, tears, all that kind of stuff. They thought there was about 25,000 of them.

and their main city was right across the river from us. It's called E-C-H-O-T-A. I've been there. That's cool. Yeah, at Chota or E-Chota, like the road that I drive on in the works called Chota Road and stuff like that. And they have a monument out there by Fort Loudon. And White Man buried it in a water dam shocking, like in Pennsylvania.

Yes. What happened in Pennsylvania? That's by the main river. that connects to the Chesapeake they put huge water dam in there and basically they like put underwater this ancient civilization

and that's where they think that Joseph Smith's map where they had the giant people lived and they put a water dam up and they covered the whole thing in water and the same like this this reminded me of the same thing

the whole village is underwater yeah and it is the river's widened a lot you can go further up the mountain see what the river would look like before they built the dam dam and stuff, which is a whole thing onto itself. Niarlo looking for a creepy place to go in the summer when they allow the families to go to, because the water will get low enough in Montana,

that it will open up the graveyards and the old churches that were put underwater there when they displaced everybody. And there's already so many, the tunnel to nowhere is up there. And then there's the, all the haunted, they were going to build this tunnel into the smoking. and then just stopped. And it was just, they called the tunnel to nowhere. And it's right in the heart where most of the hunt,

like if you were to look up like local lore and stuff into Google, there's going to pull up all the Fontana Dam campsite activity and stuff that happens around there. I think it's because they displaced all the people and probably caused some sort of, you know, disruption. But before, I want to get into some of these Cherokee. stories because they're so applicable to this area because they come from Machota and they're about they're about here.

There are local legends. There are local lore from our natives. Derek, I'm unlocking my truck right now. You can grab the eggs are in Gemma's seat and just make sure you lock it. Thanks. Hey, stop by your store, dude, so we can hook you up with sweet pizza stuff. Yeah, I mean, I probably carry a lot of stuff that you already use.

There you go. Yeah, he's, he's actually right across the street and the airport. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, some on text. Sorry.

I told it. I told me I sidetrack a lot. Yeah. I'm like, I'm like the worst. I'm like, I'll never be able to get either I won't be able to say anything or all just start rambling and talking too much.

Like when Jack came and visited me, I don't get to talk to a lot of people because I just, I work alone and I live out in the woods. Yeah. No, you're good. Let's get back to the legend, though, of your property. and this area, East Tennessee, because I know the Cherokee were very prevalent on your property. Yes.

And so let's just keep a- We could probably examine this in a later show. I have a lot. Yeah. If you don't mind, I know we spent two years trying to get you in here. I'd rather not wait another two years to have you come back. But if there's so much to cover, this can be just an introductory to more conversation in the future.

I'll be back with great new content. Let's talk about what I originally came here for, which is the demon of consumption, as some would call it, the devil of the mountains or spear finger or ointa. This like the bunny man story has, it's a deep one and it has more than just one instance of it showing up in. and it's not just a Native American story. There's instances of, because what they do is they cite a lot back into old journals and old writings from both the Spanish and the French and the fur trappers and stuff.

So the monster with, they call it the iron or all like finger, shows up since anyone can remember since like before the revolution back in the days when it was the fur traders he has to go into great detail

to make sure because all the French carried around Grimshousen the Grim's fairy tales what was like the most popular book at the time so they really make sure

to be like these are original stories these aren't from like the French fur traders and they're grim fairy tales This isn't from the British or the Irish. You know, these are theirs. They can trace them back through oral lineage between the shamans that he talks to.

There's about five shamans that they're referenced in his works. And then I'm also bringing up the works of the American Journal of folklore from like the 1880s through the 1890s. I've gone into a bunch of that to get counts from like the American, not the natives, but the like, the Americans, like the militiamen, cavalry groups, British, you know, what do they call them? Tories and stuff like that. And what shows up a lot is spearfinger.

And I have a lot of other, you know, we'll have to. They talk a lot about different themes that we could relate to today and this. But we'll tackle that next time I'm here because they talk a lot about. It could be dog man. They talk about what could be Bigfoot. In a real way. They talk about the giants. Who's they?

The Cherkees. Really? So the Cherokees talked about these things. Yeah, the conjurers who have the knowledge and stuff. I really wanted to talk about the great snake. But let's just talk about Spearfinger. We'll get to that later because that goes into all sorts of different stuff. and to like Delphi and to, you know, there's a lot in Cernosis or Cernosis, you know, the great horn god of Celtic lore and stuff like that.

Anyways, so Spearfinger, well, here. I know I might not be able to get to read this later. So this is something that comes out from their book. This was a local newspaper in the area. This doesn't have to know anything spearfinger, but just on the off chance, I forgot to do this later. I just want to do this now because I found this one just fascinating. Here is the actual... Okay.

The Cherokees were a tribe singularly rich in tradition, and of course a wild, gloomy, and remarkable spot was not without its legend. The descendants of the expatriated semi-barians believed to this day that an age is gone, a great serpent made its den in the gulch, and that every year, and that yearly he demanded of the red men, ten of their most beautiful maidens as a sacrificial offering. Fearful of extermination, the demand was always compiled with, compiled with by the tribe, or complied with by the tribe, amid weeping and wailing by the women. On the day before the tribute was due, the serpent announced its presence by demonical hiss and the next morning the fair ones who had been chosen to save the tribe were taken to the summit of a cliff and left to be swallowed by the scaly mollick so in this we'll get to that next and I'll be here shortly whenever you need me just say dude we need to show and I'll start talking about the the great serpents of old the horn snakes the uctana the amulets that come from them that need to be soaked in blood to be used.

used for conjuring purposes. All that to be said is that I think what they were trying to do by appealing to the great serpent was to keep stuff like the witch at bay, you know? And a lot of people in this area have heard of Spearfinger because it's one of the main legends of this area. what makes Spearfinger such a crazy story for me is when you read Spearfinger the water cannibals

Unten Helpers Ravenmacher Ooh the Ravenmocker You're going to like that one Where is my Spearfinger? Okay Just so I have good reference here

because there's a lot that goes into into this So the Spear Finger which they say in great detail where it haunted. In the book, the Spearfinger story comes right after the story of Tla Nuwa or the great,

what do they come? It was not the, it was a hot, like a giant hawk monster. Like a Thunderbird? Thunderbird, yes. It's like the main thunderbird. And so it comes right after the story of the thunderboard So they're telling you where the Thunderboards home is,

which is also really close to our house. I can show you exactly detailed. They'd probably take you there in my kayak or boat and like, hey, that's where they say they can't get to it because it's a cliff. That's where they say both. Does it like a cave? Yeah. It's a cave that they said that was. Is it on your property?

No, no, no, no. This is by the river where I go fishing. Gotcha. And what they say right after they're done talking about the Great Hawk, which is, well, that we'll save that. The spear finger is they talk about its haunt, where it haunts, where it likes to go. And they say that there's this story that this spear finger could move, like, move giant boulders with ease. And that she triad to create a giant land bridge from the Georgia southern side of the mountains. And they say very specifically, I think it's Whiteside Mountain to Blunt County, where we are.

And they didn't go in Wye. She made the bridge, only that their god, who's kind of like both the good and the bad god in their stories, Thunder, or the Thunders destroyed her bridge. But she was trying to create some passage through the sky to there, and they say that there is this rock that marks on the Blunt County side where the incident happened. And I've looked all over trying to find, I forgot what the exact, how they say the rocks call, like standing rock or something rock. but it's supposed to be in Blunt County, close to part of the area where I live. But they say, quote for quote, that Spearfinger lived opposite Citico Creek. The entrance or the, they said, where Citico Creek dumps into the Tennessee on the opposite side of the river,

because Tlanoa was on the Citico side of the river. And on the opposite side of the river, on the hills opposite side of it, where Unta was supposed to be. So it was the opposite side from its Shoda, their main capital. So meaning like they don't like to cross the river. And as the settlers came in, they kind of started taking up the foothills near that spot. So I could see why they wouldn't want people to go over there.

But that was before any of the Spearfinger stuff. The spearfinger was still going on when they had white settlers here in the hills and there's stories from them. about running into this entity. And the woman spearfinger was supposed to be an old witch with like stone skin, like scaly stone like skin and this big, they called it an owl, like a pickax, I guess, you know, like a long, one long finger.

And the story basically goes that in her haunts, which is on a map my house and the surrounding areas because they say where Chilli, the gap comes down to meet with the river. So they're talking basically from like my house to Abrams Creek because if you were to go up the mountains, the gaps right there that connects Short Mountain to the rest of the Chiluys. That's the gap. There's a big hunting hiking trail down at the end of my street where you can actually take the gap all the way else. all the way down to the other side. I don't know if I'd ever want to do that because it's, it's, when I moved here, people are like, oh, you moved to the rough part of town.

I'm like, what do you mean the rough part of town? I'm like, yeah, that's like the unsettled, uncivilized part of town where the Farrow people live. Farrow people. Specifically what our UPS driver, they say, they say about my, the UPS driver that he, on weekends, he likes to just wander over through the woods naked with the butt clench between his butt shakes. he's that wild. And I believe it. The guy's a bear hunter and he's just,

he's out there in the woods all the time. He said when I, he used to work our route way back in the day. He's always been working for them. And he said that, I was like, oh, you know, he live out there like, you know,

by the, by the short mountain. I was like, that's, that's over where the feral people live. And I'm like, I'm like, yeah, you know,

like, you know, like the wild people and stuff. And he's like, he's like, he's like, um, he's like, you'll know, you're there at their encampment is they have like a border fence

like a border not like a chain fence I don't think like maybe like a wood fence something to indicate like where they are and he said that the pharaoh people have these like clown like masks that hang from the posts of whatever part of the mountains nearby our house that they live

and that when you see the these creepy clown demon like faces that's where the feral people's main encampment is. It's around where I think it's near that Happy Valley. And I think that went to what happened to the guy. I don't know what his name is, but he despaired off his ATV. Michael's something.

I forget his last name. Yeah. Yeah. Very real, really could have been these feral people. How far are you away from Happy Mountain? It's just on the other side of the Chilli range from us. So it separates us from them, the Chilli Mountain. But there's nothing in between there.

It's just empty forest. From the studio here, how far over drive is it to your place? I drive fast, so 35 minutes, but probably for most people, 45. It's crazy. It's crazy that we live in like an area that, so this town where the studios at covers such geographical area. Oh, it's big. Yeah. It was a big town.

Because like I'm about 30 minutes away from the studio in the opposite direction of you. Oh, geez. Yeah. So you're by like the Little River. Yeah. So we're probably talking like an hour drive, same town. Oh, that's good to know. They have specific stories about, do you live by the Little River?

Have you seen that? I'm not. That flows into Townsend. I'm not referencing where I live. Okay. That's fine. That's fine. If you live in the Little River area side town that takes you up into towns and stuff, there's a lot of specific stories.

I don't know about Little River. I don't know anything about it. So I live on the Little Tennessee River. And then the other side of town. town is the Little River and those kind of mark the boundaries of the town. People, the name Tennessee comes from Tenasi where we live, like where I live, there was these settlements and each one of them happened to be called Tenasi. So that's where the name Tennessee comes from, was from like literally my backyard,

where the old settlements used to be. So with getting back to Spearfinger, was she rumored to, so she's rumored to be? on your property. In essence, yeah, her hunt. So she has a little territory. And they say she goes up and down the gap between the mountain from. So the way I looked into it, it seemed like between Abbey Valley and my little nook of town where I live on the opposite side of the river,

this is immediately where they say that she liked to hang out. And what's, so what Spearfinger would do, would She was a shapeshifter And they have stories Other stories about shapeshifter witches Which is crazy

Because if you read about the bell witch Yeah Which I've read about the bell witches The bell story of the witch And I think one of their neighbors cited that There was a wolf demon monster That would sit on a porch But that would also be the witch

And it could shape shift into this wolf monster One second. I want you to keep going. But while you were talking, I text Brian. My friend Brian has been on the show. He's a local legend hunter. And I said, have, I said, ever hear of spare finger. And he said, please don't use that name with me.

He said, is he wandering around the woods? That's probably why he knows. Yeah. He said, yes, it's dangerous as F. Well, that's why, if you do come out, I urge you. If. I have more guns and ammo than I could possibly know what to do with. I have thousands and thousands of rounds of 5, 5, 6s for my AR.

I have, I think about 50 ammo cases stocked to the, because of the Louisiana. So guns are very easy and cheap in Arizona. But I have an arsenal. And I don't go out into the woods without, I usually take just two guns. my little Ruger and my Springfield AR but it certainly is needed out there especially what I happen to me out there

on more than one occasion so we can talk about because there's it's a big story the spear finger and it goes into it goes into multiple books and multiple writings and across multiple thing um like once like i even gotten into the demon consumption it's getting late in the day all right so let's let's do this we're gonna we're gonna bring it in for landing because um i told you i have a

heart out yeah no i know my wife's like well i was like where are you like yeah no and i know you have to fulfill orders you have your own business and i'm already so slow i just i'll just i'll just keep rambling to stumbling into something something else man and that's one thing i i've i've have gathered from you is that because it's funny before we started recording you said uh you were you're you're driving over here, something you're like, I don't know if I have a half hour. I'm like, bro, you can go for hours. So I love this. I want to do this again with you.

And once these mics get turned off, I got to talk to you about some stuff. But, um, yes, bunny man, spear finger at everything. This was a fantastic conversation. And I'm, I'm going to be on you like white on rice to get you back in here as soon as possible. I have to drive by. I literally have to drive down. And don't say the name of the road. Bleep that out, Jack.

I'm sorry. So I'm always around. My landlord asked me if I wanted the name of my company on the front sign out the road. And I said, absolutely not. I'm incognito. I can't imagine the stuff you have to go through. It's just, it's just,

I got to be careful because I, there's the harmless people of just being fans and enjoying the content. And I have to deal with just guard, that in the sense that I'm here to work. And so when I'm here, I'm not doing tours of the studio kind of thing. But also, I got people who actually hate me and they have threatened me and they've threatened to come to my state to do something. And I'm, and the, the dude side of me is like, bro, be about it.

But the guy who has a wife and kids is like, let's just guard against that as much as possible. And I'm, I'm, I remember what I said when I came. I wanted to be anonymous. I took me a lot to come in here because I, I just, I was tossed into it all night. I'm like, dude, like, why am I doing this? Like, like, I just felt like more than compelled.

Like something was like whispering in my ear. Like, just wouldn't let me go. And then my wife got a hold of me and she started listening to the show. And after all the events that happened to us, she, she was like, she was like an atheist when I met her. And now she really, she's reading the Bible. And she really is like trying to get into. to get. And I could see why they had, they actually okayed me to say this. I feel like I shouldn't, but they, she, she really had a hard time when I first met her believing in it and anything because her mom passed away of a very rare cancer. She was a DOD worker, really, really high ranking DOD official in San Diego. So, and they think it's probably because like she had the

early cell phones and stuff, like the radiation or something, but Megan's dad, when their first homes in San Diego County, it was closer to the city. And there was, it was an old, really old Victoria-style home. And it had, they didn't know about this until, like, on their way out, but they had heard commotion and stuff coming from like their basement. And And I guess there was a tunnel that these, what are they, Haitians, this Haitian family, they had to get the police involved to get them out of there. But they were like legally living in this thing that they burrowed out in their home. And it really is a touchy subject for him. And he.

What's calling you now? I'll be right there. And that is where we ended. Anyways, there's writings and incantations. And like he describes it as black magic on the wall. And these people expressed like interest in wanting to kill the people who lived. And so he's even he's like definitely, he's very serious guy. He believes and knows the power of this paranormal stuff and what can do to people.

But let's save for let's wrap up. Yeah. I have so much to go into that we didn't even. even get into because I'm an idiot. No, you're not an idiot. You're a rambler and that's fine for podcasting. So we talk and that's what we're here to do. I really do appreciate you coming in. We're going to do it again. And next time I have you in here, maybe I'll have not Derek, but maybe my buddy Brian who is a local legend hunter. Oh, yeah. And I think the three of us could have a great conversation. But thanks for coming out, man. Yeah, I do. All right. That's a wrap.

Listen, I want to go to your freaking property. Okay. Here's like an excerpt from it. But some Bofans have speculated that black holes might alternately act as space wormhole portals into alternate universes or something. This would seem to chime with Burtolucci's remarks this week on hyperdimensional doors out of which might come unspecified some things. Anyone who has watched the TV, read any sci-fi or seen any movies, would be well aware that hyperdimensional space warp wormhole portals don't normally lead to anything boring like empty space, parallel civilizations where humanity lives in peace and harmony or anything like that. Rather, it seemed to be a little bit of.

a racing cert that we're looking here at an imminent visit from a race of carnivorous dinosaur men, the superhuman clone hive legions of some evil genetic empress queen, infinite polypantheons of dark nega deities, imprisoned for aeons, and hungering to feast upon human souls. This is on... This is in their official capacity on their website, but you got to do some research because you can't just type this in.

You have to know where to find it. Keep talking.