The Confessionals - 877: Dogman, Crawlers & Translucent Creatures Stalk North Carolina Woods | Carolina Case Files

Episode Date: July 7, 2026

What if one terrifying 911 call was only the beginning of a much larger mystery? Tony Merkel welcomes Rusty from Carolina Case Files to reveal the chilling investigation that thrust his team into the center of one of the internet's most unsettling paranormal stories. As their conversation unfolds, they uncover eerie witness accounts that point toward a hidden reality lurking in the forests of North Carolina, where credible eyewitnesses continue to report encounters that defy explanation. The discussion expands into Dogman sightings, translucent entities from military testimonies, and the biblical framework that may explain why these encounters are happening. Along the way, they wrestle with the dangers of chasing the supernatural and why discernment is essential for anyone seeking the truth. If these encounters are more than folklore, the greatest question may not be what these beings are, but what they reveal about the unseen spiritual battle unfolding around us.If you’re able, consider helping the Merkel family with medical expenses by donating to Lindsay’s GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/b8f76890📕 Pre-order Tony's Book: https://a.co/d/0bJS3SaVBecome a member for ad-free listening, extra shows, and exclusive access to our social media app: theconfessionalspodcast.com/joinThe Confessionals Social Network App:Apple Store: https://apple.co/3UxhPrhGoogle Play: https://bit.ly/43mk8kZThe Counter Series Available NOW:The Counter (YouTube): WATCH HEREThe Counter (Full Episode): WATCH HERETony's Recommended Reads: slingshotlibrary.comIf you want to learn about Jesus and what it means to be saved: Click HereMerkel Media Apparel: merkmerch.comRusty Martin Sr.Website | YouTube SPONSORSGHOSTBED: GhostBed.com/tonyQUINCE: quince.com/tonyIVERMECTIN: twc.health/tonyVENICE AI: https://venice.ai/theconfessionalsRUMBLE WALLET: https://rumblewallet.onelink.me/bJsX/ConfessionalsCONNECT WITH USWebsite: www.theconfessionalspodcast.comEmail: [e-mail] ADDRESS:Merkel Media6726 Morganton RdP.O. Box #08Greenback, TN 37742SOCIAL 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: @jyorkofficialOUTRO MUSICJoel Thomas - PulpYouTube | Apple Music | Spotify

Hey, did you hear? Watermelon is back at booster juice all summer long. Nice. I love the watermelon explosion. And the watermelon wave. Yep. They even got a new watermelon assaye bowl this year. The one in a melon bowl. And what does that sound like? Like that. Booster juice. Canadian born. Blending since 1999. done. Hey, everyone, before we get to this week's show, this is just your weekly reminder to please

continue to pray for my wife, Lindsay. She is battling breast cancer right now, and we're praying for complete healing in Jesus' name. Thank you. Merkel. Media. This was all circulating around the base that a giant had to kill, but no one was supposed to talk about it. I saw three long, boning fingers.

Reach up underneath the door. up to grab it and then disappeared. When he came over to me, dude, he slithered over to me. Frozen. And he starts running and firing at this giant. With a giant moves in one hand.

It spears, Dan, holds him up like this. Somebody else, shoot him in the face, shoot him in the face. They basically decapitated. Got prices. About 15 yards away from me. I raised that 12 days,

and I blow this hat. I feel something pulling at my leg. And I look over and there are two small getting pulled off the bed. I reached my hand into this bush and I touch air. Couldn't breathe and I couldn't move because I know I'm seeing a monster. Welcome to the show. Everybody, listening to The Confessionals podcast. I'm your host, Tony Merkel.

Thanks for being here. If you have an experience, a story or a conversation piece, you'd like to share with me on the show. Go ahead and shoot me an email. My email address is content. at the confessionalspodcast.com. That's contact at theconfessionalspodcast.com. Or go to the website, the confessionalspodcast.com.

Hit the contact section, and you can reach me that way as well. Either it works for me. Just get a hold of me. If you want more shows on a weekly basis, we got you covered, go to the confessionalspodcast.com slash join. Become a member.

You get access to all the past member episodes and all the future member episodes, and we drop them every Thursday. So there's hundreds available now. And God willing, there'll be hundreds more into the future. So if you're interested in getting the extra content on an exclusive, the Confessionals app, which is a social media platform where we house the member content on plus our website member

content, it's all there, either on the website or on the app, go to the Confessionalspodcast.com and sign up to become a member today. Thank you very much, friends. I'll see you on the other side. Now, I have a book coming out this October. October 6th is the release date for the book, The Confessionals, Exposing Warring Kingdoms. This is a book I started writing last year, and it documents my journey through the supernatural and how I've come to understand the supernatural and its operations the way I do today.

That stems from my childhood into this podcast, the stories I've uncovered on the show, all leading me to the conclusions that I've come to. I've documented it in the book, and it's coming out this October, October 6th. You can pre-order the book right now. The link is in the description below. Go on Amazon. Just look up the confessionals, Tony Merkel. It's there available for you to pre-order. And these pre-orders definitely help the book's success on launch week. anybody who's interested in the book, I encourage you to get your pre-order now because that will really greatly help the success of this book once we actually launch it in the beginning of

October. So if you're interested, go ahead and check it out, the Confessionals Exposing, Warring Kingdoms. Also, friends, I have not been telling you guys this because I keep forgetting, but apparently Jack felt ambitious and he took all the outro music that we make and he made it into a playlist. It's available right now on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube music. You can listen to the outro music that you hear on the show now on demand on Spotify. And we are going to be doing more and more uploads of that. So if you enjoy the music that we have playing at the end of the shows, it is now available on demand on Spotify. Go ahead and check it out. Link for that is below as well. Now, today we have Rusty joining us to unpack the chilling 911 call that put the YouTube

channel Carolina Case Files on the map. It's a call from a terrified driver who reported a pale humanoid creature that leapt into the back of his pickup truck before disappearing into the darkness. But that's only the beginning. We also explore a bizarre military training property where elite operators encountered a mysterious translucent figure. This is a conversation filled with Erie encounters, unanswered questions, and one of the strangest property stories we've ever covered. Let's get to Rusty right now. Rusty, how you doing, man? Welcome to the show. Thank you. It's good to be here. Carolina case files, man. Yeah. I discovered you probably the same way everybody else discovered you through the 9-1-1 call, which we're going to get into.

No, that wasn't our story. No, I was going to say, who is this guy? Why is he here? That's us. But I was just telling you about some of the local stuff here. So your channel, you do a lot of boots on the ground investigation and talking to people about their witnesses of whatever they experienced. Yeah. Documentaries, that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So locally here, I didn't know this when I moved here. So I'm originally from Philadelphia. I moved down here about four years ago. And shortly after I moved in, moved here, there was, I went, there's a local pizza shop here called Legends and Lord Pizzeria.

And I mean, the guy, Eddie does great on his business. And when you go in there, it's just every wall is decked out with like cryptids, really and stuff. And it's just, he really leans into that. And people love it. It's good pizza. So I go down there. And I'm talking with him and he tells me that there's a local guy named Scott Carpenter that lives here. And I said, Scott Carpenter lives here.

He said, oh, yeah, he lives right here. Yeah. And I was like, you got to be kidding me. So Scott Carpenter was a research. Are you familiar, Scott Carpenter? I've heard the name. Okay. So, like, he was a local researcher that he did tons of great work.

He developed, and it's not like rocket science, but as far as we know, he's the first one to do this. he got a GoPro and manufactured a gimbal where he would strap it to his shoulder and it would face backwards. So when he would hike through the woods after he passes through an area, he would capture on video whatever's going on behind him.

Oh, wow. And it was unstableized footage, and he got a lot of great stuff that way. Really? Yes. Like a portal bubble opening up in the mountain, in the smoking mountains on one of his hikes and it looked like something was manifesting through it.

I think David Politis talks a lot about that one. a white, like a white, a very massive white creature behind like this shrubbery that he caught on video. Wait, are those videos available? Are they out there? Yeah. I forget the name of his YouTube channel because I think they changed it since, because he's passed away now. And his son is running the channel.

Okay. But it, one of the videos, I think, I think is owned by somebody else now. But anyways. But it might be on that channel. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'll get Stephen. There's lots of stuff.

Stephen probably already knows that. I mean, I'm talking about when he passed away, he probably had about 10 to 14,000 hours of footage that he'd never even gone through yet. Because he would go out there hiking for hours, come home, dump the footage, and not you have to go through it yet. And so, one-man band. So, no, not after the first one. After the first one where he saw something,

he shouldn't have been a one-man man-man going back out there. No way. Well, when I brought him into the studio, and he at that time said that he was pretty much, coming to an end on going out there at all. It was like, because the reality of the situation was smacking me in the face. But there's a very specific area that he would investigate. He took David Polites there a couple of times. Les Stroud went there.

Les Stroud talks about experiencing mind speak in the woods. It happened at this location. Okay. And it's just an area that has so much weird stuff happening. We've been there. Dog, like dog man creatures caught on film to, like we went out there one night. And the day that we were going out there, a very large, probably about that large of a canine print was left in the mud, just one print. And we go out there that night.

And me and my friend Joel, we were charged by something in the woods. And I don't know how to describe it other than it was invisible. Like, we caught the audio on camera. The camera wasn't pointing that direction. It was pointing towards us. It was about 2, 3 o'clock in the morning. And this like invisible force, you hear it bipedalally running at us. Like, you see me draw my weapon.

He, like, we both acknowledge that there's something coming at us. You hear it. We had a shotgun microphone pointing towards us. You hear the footstep, boom, boom, boom, right up to the camera. We hit the lights. there's nothing standing there. And so, like, there's a lot of crazy stuff that happens out in the woods, right? Yeah, yeah.

And ever since I was a kid, I just absolutely loved being in the woods. Yeah, me too. And the mysteries out there. Yep. And that's what you guys are tapping into with your channel. Yeah, and I've got to say, you know, we haven't even been doing this for a year. It's a while. It's a wild.

It's crazy. And I'm really not afraid of anything, to be honest with them. But one thing has happened, and that is I think different. about going in the woods. Yes. A lot of people disappear in Appalachia, out in the Midwest, out in the, you know, that's What do you think about that? I don't know.

Do you think? I just don't know. I've read stories and I just don't know. It's a little spooky, a little scary. Yeah. But yeah, I grew up Deborah Drive in Scotland County, Laramberg, North Carolina. Our house literally sat just in the edge of this forest. And I don't know, a couple hundred acres, maybe bigger.

I don't remember. I was a kid. but I was out there every day. Every day with my little dog. I'd go hunting with my 22 or my 410 shotgun or something like that. Just stay out there for hours and hours and hours. Then I hear stories like this and I'm like, I don't know if I want to go up there by myself again.

Yeah, very interesting. So you're familiar with Polites and the missing 401 stuff. Do you think that when you look at that stuff, do you feel like there is a possible explanation outside of people being taken by creatures to abductions and more of a natural explanation on any of that. You know, if you're walking along and you've got somebody with you and you hear a noise and you turn around and they're gone and they're never found again. I don't know.

I mean, I read that. I'm like, what? How do you explain that? You can't. Yeah. I can't. I mean, either. I'm not going to attempt to because I try.

It would just be a lie. I don't know. I just don't know. I don't know how it is in North Carolina, but I know here in Tennessee, Tennessee has the most caves in any state. Kentucky is number two. So I imagine North Carolina has a lot of caves too. And one of the theories that I heard suggested, and it makes sense for some of the cases, but not all of them, is the idea that when you're walking through the woods and not on trail, but you're off trail and it seems like the person just disappeared, there could be a chance that they actually stepped on a piece of ground that was covered in a bunch of deadfall and they actually fell through a cave entrance that just never was discovered.

I'm just saying it could be, not for all the cases. Definitely not all the cases. Well, you would see that. You would see the hole. Right. Yeah. So there's a local guy here, not anymore. But back in 2014, he's from Marival, Tennessee.

He went up on up in the Happy Valley. It's about 20 minute drive from here. And he pulls down, he had a farm up there. And he pulls down this road. And he sees his neighbor. He waves to his neighbor. He parks his truck, gets on a side by side or a four-wheeler, and takes off down the road. And he sees the neighbor again.

He waves to the neighbor. And the neighbor's the last person who ever saw him. He left his gun, his wallet, his phone, his keys in the truck. He just got it. So he wasn't planning on being gone long. and nobody could find him, nobody knew where he was, and eventually they found his four-wheeler with the key in the on position out of gas.

Like something just took him off the four-wheeler. And it's like, well, what is that? You know, he's just gone. Didn't take the four-wheeler, just took him. Just took him. And then you think about the legends of these creatures out in the woods to feral people. Have you heard of the feral people in North Carolina?

No. In North Carolina? I assume in North Carolina because there's legends of feral people on this side of the mountain. I have not. Really? Yeah. I'm finding out there's a lot of legends that are in these mountains. And a local guy here, my friend Brian, he's been looking into that topic.

And the idea of the caves keeps coming up as a possible way that they keep from being found so easily. Yeah. It's crazy stuff, though. Lots of music. So how did you get involved in? in doing this YouTube channel, Carolina Case Files. What a story. By the way, I've brought you.

Thanks for having me here, by the way. Thank you. It's great to be here. You're doing great work here. An official's Carolina Case Files T-shirt. Thank you very much. Hopefully it'll fit or maybe you can show the people. Maybe your wife, Lindsay, can wear it, curled up in front of the fire on one of your cold Tennessee nights or something.

Well, I'm going to make sure I wear this. Okay. I noticed you like to wear the flannel over the T-shirt. So there you go. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How I got started. I met, I was, I've been self-employed since leaving the military in several different businesses.

And I owned a company in Wilmington years back. We were doing really, really well until COVID hit. But anyway, this fellow's mother came in to buy something or whatever and just kind of hit it off. She's super nice, a widow, older lady. And she kind of put together, I guess she recognized me from the, film and television industry. I have a passion for faith-based films, and I've done a lot of stuff in that area.

And so she went back and told her son, well, he comes in the next weekend. And as I discovered, Stephen was just amazing at video and shooting, and he's got tons of equipment, and it's a world that he loves. And he's also part of law enforcement and has been most of his life. he's a strong Christian, realized that I was,

realized my background and faith-based films being in front of the camera. So we just formed a great friendship. And we actually collaborated a little bit. We did a little, he's got a little channel up.

It may be unlisted, but it's called, if you go to YouTube, at Real Stories films, I had to write it down. You'll see four or five, little five, 10-minute videos that we,

faith-based feeders that we did just to kind of, you know, keep him proficient, keep me proficient. We just did that for fun. And then early last year, Stephen started talking about maybe doing something to assist law enforcement. And that is how and why our channel got started.

Yeah, it was none of this. It was unsolved cases, things like that where law enforcement would be very appreciative of what we were doing the families of these unsolved. things, crimes, missing persons would be happy with what we're doing, bringing, you know, interest and putting a spotlight on those stories. That was our original intent. Wow. And so in shopping around for stories to do, Stephen, who's such a likable guy. Guy, such a likable guy. He's a great guy. He's been in law enforcement. He's been with different agencies. He's currently with the, I won't say what county, but he's currently with the sheriff's currently with the sheriff. But he's got friendships all over and he's so likable. In fact, he's good friends. He used to be a patrol

officer along with the Pender County Sheriff that we interviewed on camera for the 911 call. They're good buddies from way back. So, you know, any of us can get information. We just fill out a FOIA request and two years later we'll get a document or something that we want to get from law enforcement or something like that. So all that's information out there that's available. Stephen walks into the dispatch office and says, hey, you guys got anything weird or strange or interesting that I might be interested in for this channel that we're thinking about doing? And one of the gals says, yeah, here you go. Here's one right here. And she gives him the 911 call. So he calls me over. He's about 45 minutes from where I live. And I go sit up in his home and his studio. He says, put these headphones on. And I put these headphones on.

And I put him on and he plays that whole 911 call. The hair, Tony, the hair stood up on the back of my neck and I went, dude, this has got to be our first story. That's how we got started. That's incredible. That's how we got started. So it wasn't an intentional going into this stuff. No, no, no.

That was just the start. Accidental. That's the start of the journey. It wasn't easy. Then we've got to track down this kid, this young man, everybody's a kid to me. but track down this young man and pursue him. Yeah. And it was like, no, I don't want to talk to you guys.

It had been five years. Wow. He didn't want to talk about it. Well, it would have been, yeah, it was 20, 21. So it would have been four years. This was last year. He had buried it. You know, some people, when they see or hear something that is, that changes their life,

it's, you know, transforming. What do they do? They rush out and tell friends, neighbors, and relatives, And that not necessarily ends well, right? And that's what happened to him. He kind of stubbed his toe. And people are like, yeah, you're crazy. And after the third person tells you, you're crazy and clearly don't believe you, you don't talk about it anymore.

So he buried this story, never told anybody about it, never wanted to talk about it. But we knew that was him. Okay. We were able to track him down. It took a couple of months to convince him. to go on camera with his face blurred out. Actually, we shot him from behind. And he told his story.

And it blew up. It just blew up. And we were dumb. We were brand new at YouTube. We didn't put a watermark on our thing. I think it's got 800,000 views, but now it's probably got 2 million views shared all over the country without crediting us. Yeah.

We were the ones that broke that story. I think my wife wrote an argument. article about it. Really? On the website. Yeah. And then somebody sent me a video or something. I don't think it was, speaking of people.

It wasn't our video. It was yours. And I, I remember, it's like, man, this is, this is wild. And it was wild. Well, it's a 911. It's an official. It's a big thing. Yeah.

And the fact that it all unfolded and played out while he was on the phone like that. Right. Two separate things. Yeah. So let's get into it. Yeah. Why don't you, for people that don't know what I'm talking about, what you're talking about, yeah.

Start us off with how this unfolded for this guy. Okay. Tell this story because people should, and maybe Jack can, you know, put clips in along the way and stuff. Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah. It'd be good for you to kind of share with the people what this story is and why is it's so wild. Okay. All right.

So it was actually our second episode on Carolina Case Falls. It's called the Real 911 one one called the Pender County Rake. and I need to come back to that word rake. Yes. Remind me of that if you don't mind. So this young man, his name's Tyler. I didn't share his name in the first video. I just called him T because he didn't want his name.

Shared, didn't want his face. I understand it. He was going to a trade school in Florida. He's from Texas, going to a trade school in Florida, but he had family living back up in North Carolina. And so he was wrapping up the trade school and was driving back. and at about 11.30 at night, he crossed the Black River, just before he crossed the Black River at about 11.30 p.m., he's in his truck. It's a loud, older, modified, big V8 thing.

You know, the air conditioner is not the greatest. So he's got the windows down, and he's got these big, you know, big muffler sound coming out. And he sees what he thinks is somebody standing on the side of the road. Now, this is a ribbon of a black top of an old country road. Okay. He sees somebody standing on the road and he describes it as a man that's bleeding on the side of the road. Like, from the head down,

bleeding. And I don't know if he mentioned that on the 911 call or later during the interview, but at some point he said it looked like he was in some sort of uniform. Now, we're just an eighth of a mile from the Moore's Creek Battlefield. Very famous battlefield. Okay. There wasn't any Civil War stuff done is more revolutionary, but there was a lot of Civil War troop move that's through there. So anyway,

so he picks up the phone. He's former military. He did a little stint in the military. Good guy. Picks up the phone. Calls 911, rolls up his window, you know, so he can talk on the phone. And he tells the lady, I just saw somebody standing on the side of the road. I just crossed the Black River. this guy's standing there. He just kind of stared at me. He looked like he was in some sort of trauma. He's bleeding. And he's talking to the 911 operator.

And all of a sudden, you hear on the call a thump. And he said it felt like, you know, he was pulling a trailer and then hit a bump or something. It just literally, he felt the movement in the vehicle. So here's the thump. And he flips on his bedlight in the pickup truck. and what he sees scares him 10th County 911 what's the address of your emergency I'm driving on 210 I just crossed the black river

and I thought I saw a guy standing on the side of the road bleeding okay where are you at sir I'm on 210 I just crossed the black river I'm heading towards 53E I just passed Patriots 1 Okay, so you're over near Morse Creek? Yes. Okay.

And did you, you saw a man standing on the side of the road? He describes it as hairless, pale, thin, with sunken eyes, and maybe not really a nose, like skins pulled really tight over a skull, something like that. he says the thing literally is scratching on the top of the truck and peers in through that back window at him. Jeez. Hello, right? He's by himself. Gosh, what do you do?

There's no streetlights on this road. It's curvy. It's dark out there. Man, the trees are so close. So he slams on bricks really, really hard. You can hear the thing tumbling over the top. of the vehicle, right? He said it tumbles over, and you can, if you listen really close,

because the 911 operator is stepping on this sound, but if you listen, you can hear him just floor the truck trying to get around this thing. Sir, are you okay, sir? Okay, what's in the road? No, it's not in the road. It's in my truck. There's something in the bed of your truck?

Yes, ma'am, I just turned on my bedlight for my truck and there's something in my bed. Okay, sir, when you say something, what do you mean? I just knocked it off to the bed of my truck and put over my roof. Okay, what was it? And he says as he's coming around it, he sees it stand up and run off into the woods. Wow. And so then there's this back and forth.

He's terrified. And he's flying. And he's trying to get to civilization. So he passes the Moores Creek battlefield. And the 911 operators saying, was it a two? Turkey, you know. He said, no, there was no feathers on this thing. It didn't look human, you know.

And so it's a fascinating 911 call. He drives a couple of miles, gets to a little, I'll call it a little country store, okay? And 911 operator tells him to stay there. He does. And then wildlife, okay, fishing wildlife show up, state patrols show up, the sheriff's department show up and emergency services show up. Emergency services to check him out. That sounds like an awful lot.

The sheriff, because we're in the county. Okay. The state patrol because it's considered a traffic incident. And who else? Fishing wildlife, because he described something that, you know, if you hit a deer, you ever hit a deer, you ever hit a deer? I've never hit a deer, thank you. Well, usually they're hit and run.

You know, you can be running 70 miles an hour hit a deer, and nine times out of ten is hit and run. They get up and run off. Wow. And that's what this thing did, but it didn't look like a deer. And I asked him several times during the year. Did he have short hair? You know, the short hair? Like, you know, some things have really short hair and it looked like they're hairless.

He said it was hairless. So anyway, so he gets wrapped up with all these law enforcement and agencies. And they go back out to the scene and the wildlife put up a drone and try to find something, I guess, with thermal or infrared or something like that. and the sheriff's deputies are just kind of long for the ride because it's a state patrol event. You know, Tony, the state patrol are just like, eh, eh, you know, we don't see anything here. They're right up a traffic airport. They go back home. You know, they just want to be done with it.

So, yeah, so that's the deal. That's what happened. He's never seen anything before that, never seen anything after that. we assemble and Stephen assembles and edits the film and we put it out as our second episode. And this is what's interesting. I want to come back to this. Now, this was last early, first two weeks of September 2025. We're just getting the channel started, right?

So he publishes this thing. I'll look at it. It looks good. He calls it the real 911 911 call the Pender County Rake. I pick up the phone and I call him, Tony. I go, Stephen, what is a rake? I didn't come up at all. I'd never heard that term before in my life.

Wow. Never. As of August, 2025, September, 2020. So you, you heard the call. Heard the call. You did the interview. Nobody calls it a rake. Wow.

Stephen assigned that name to it. And, you know, now that I've, you know, been in the arena for a little while, okay, well, that's what the guy was describing. But I'd never heard that term before. You know, I just, it's just nothing. So it blew up. It just blew up all over the internet. We were new. We were getting likes and views and subscribers and comments.

And the comments really kind of put me in a tailspin. I wasn't ready for that. Yeah. I really wasn't ready for that. And some of the stuff was, you know, valid. Well, why don't you do this? Why don't you do that? And some of it was just stupid.

I mean, they said, hey, that guy, he's AI. He's not a real guy. You wouldn't believe how many comments. said that. Let's fist bump on camera real quick. Yeah. Not AI. Not AI. And then even the background, we were standing there by the Black River shooting the introduction in the outro. I was kind of talking. And that's that's AI behind them. That's not real. You know, just crazy stuff. So anyway, but it bothered me so bad because I wanted to do this thing right. And I thought there were some valid things that were spoken on comments. And I wanted to address them. So we did a follow-up episode. I forget what it's called. We did a follow-up episode. And I just

just literally went through and kind of addressed some of those things. And then we got in my car and we played the 911 call as we traveled the route. Wow. Now, the sheriff had already said the timeline matches up. Now, I didn't drive 90 miles an hour like I think Tyler was doing at some points along the route, but it all matched up. It all matched up perfectly. So that was kind of cool. And then we did a third episode where I got contacted by the Raleigh News and Observer. I got a I got contacted by so many people that we want to interview and we want to interview T as well. Well, we'd already agreed not to share his information with anybody, you know. I got calls from, anyway, I finally got a call from the history channel or an email and they wanted me to do their thing.

And I said, no, I'm not going to do that. Anyway, that went on. And then about a week later, I just thought about it and just kind of hit me one night. I called Stephen the next day. I said, Stephen, everybody's trying to find this guy, everybody. I said, and he's just a normal solid-the-earth guy. I said, I'm not convinced that whoever finds him is going to do a proper interview and shed him in a favorable light.

You know what I mean? Because there's some folks out there, you know what I mean? Yeah, and they live to do those kinds of things. So I said, let's try to get him on. So it took about another week and a half, two weeks, and he talked with his wife, And he said, yeah, I'll go on camera. So we got him on camera. Yeah, I shot him face to face and just really didn't talk much about the 911 call.

Just talked about how he's doing and how his family's doing and where he's going, his new job, that kind of thing. And just kind of put it out there. So it was a lot of fun. Did anybody, at that point, do you think that, like, squashed the people trying to find him? Or did that? I don't know. We kind of put it out that if they wanted to talk to him that could go through us, we'd be happy to link him up to him. And then he could make a decision.

Yeah. He can make a decision on what he wants to do going for. We just, I don't know, I felt a little fatherly there and just wanted to kind of protect him through the whole process since we put him out there to start with. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of a big thing on the internet. Yeah. I had a not so fatherly situation where it was like I had a guest that probably like sometime last year. Yeah. He has a ministry where he fights human trafficking.

Oh, boy. And he was at the end of the episode, he said, I first. forget what he was talking about, but he said, and I want to give everybody my personal phone number so that you can contact me if, if whatever, whatever I said, ha ha, ha, I said, are you sure you want to do that? And he's like, oh, yeah, I was that, listen, there's a lot of people who are going to hear this. Do you really want it? And he said, yes, so we put it out there. Really? Yes. And he texted me, he said, I had no idea how many people would be contacted. I said, I told you. I literally told you. Right. You knew. Yeah, I knew. Yeah, I knew.

I mean, and now he has people contacting him to get him to contact me for them. And I'm just like, I told you, man, you know. So he's part of a group that rescues. He leads a ministry that fights human trafficking and rescues kids. And he's not the only one. I have a friend Troy Brewer who has saved, I'm trying to think over the last 30 years. Oh, yeah, Troy Brewer, yeah, yeah. Oh, you know, Troy?

Oh, yeah. Well, I don't know him, but yeah, I know his show. Yeah, he's saved over. I think it's over 12,000 kids over the last 30 years. And he's, his biggest problem is not enough funding to help these kids. He said the hardest, the thing is, it's not hard to find the kids. It's not hard to save the kids. It's like, what do you do after you save the kids?

There's no funding. Where do we put the kids? He said, for every kid that they save, it's a $2,000 a month bill just to be able to house them, feed them, take care of them. And nobody's doing it. It's his ministry. And so it's just, it's a lot. anyways. I'm glad you said that. If we get into another story later, I'm going to come back to those. Okay. Yeah, sounds good. And so anyways, it's good that you had that kind of

instinct to look out after him. Yeah, of course. Because we're not going for clicks. We're just, you know. Right. And there's, there's. There's real people involved. The fact that you had that, that wherewithal not coming from this world, you know, I mean, I've had this show for 10 years. I started out heavy on the topic of like Bigfoot and cryptids. And I know when something like that, that story pops up, there are people who are extremely serious about their research who will do anything to get in touch with that person. And it's not as much to gather.

It's not much about the person. It's about the story and the data that it's involved there. And it's like the person is just the vessel to get that data. They're not worried about the vessel. Right. And so it can really, it can scar somebody if they're chewed up and spit out like that. Look, I got contacted by, it was some newspaper talking about just being out there to destroy. This is crazy. We'd like to interview you and we'd like to interview T because we were contacted by a paranormal investigator investigator who says the whole thing is false. And I wrote back and I went.

There's a 911 call. I interviewed the sheriff. There were four or five law enforcement agencies out there on site. You can hear the whole thing on the 911 call, but you're going to believe somebody in a basement somewhere who sits around to investigate paranormal investigations. I almost wanted to say, do you realize how stupid you sound? I didn't, but anyway, I didn't do that interview either. Why did you say no to the history channel?

What was the reason for saying no to them? I don't know. I kind of heard through the grapevine that maybe some stories are not presented. I don't know how much to say here. No, I think it's typical for any. Once I lose creative license, once Stephen and I lose creative license over a story, just like you said, you know, you can be interviewed, but you don't know. You got interviewed recently by, what was it the? We're not going to talk about it. Okay. And you're sitting here wondering,

I don't know how they're going to portray this. You know, they're going to take pieces and this and that and make something that is not even what started out. So, yeah. You know, one of the problems with that is, and you come from TV and in that world, you could probably verify this. You know, you have a producer of, you know, whatever show it is on History Channel. Yeah. They don't believe in the Rake. They don't believe in Bigfoot or Dogman. They're just, this is a job and they're here.

And their goal is not to get the story accurate and true. Right. But how can we fit this story into three, 10-minute segments between commercials to get the story, but we're not worried about as much of the true story as much as how can we keep viewer attention for that 30 minutes? Yeah. You know? I totally get that. And that's the reason.

Yeah. That's true. You described it much more eloquent lily than I could, but that's exactly my point. Well, I learned that from, I don't know if you ever saw it because you don't come from this world, but there's a TV show called Finding Bigfoot that was really popular about 10, 15 years ago. Okay. And, I mean, really popular. Really? One of the guys on that show, they called him Bobo.

And really nice guy. And I interviewed him on this show years ago. And I asked him, one story he shared with me, I don't know if this was on the show or if it was off air, but he told me how they were in Pennsylvania. Now, the show's called Finding Bigfoot. So you're looking for Bigfoot. Yeah, I've heard of that, yeah.

They were, I think, on a boat in a lake in Pennsylvania. And he said, he and several other cast members saw what they could only call some kind of lake creature. Yeah. It was, he said, it was the most bizarre thing he's ever seen. Okay. And I said, why didn't that go on the show? And he says, because it's called Finding Bigfoot, not Finding Sea Monsters. And so it's that idea that, like, there's producers and they have a specific job.

Yeah. And their goals are not the people's goals that are even on that TV show. It's not to get the accurate story. Right. That's not their goal. So I understand why you said no. That's why. Now, and since then, it's my understanding that they have contacted Tyler.

But I've done my level best to protect that young man. So he's kind of on his own now. Yeah. I mean, he can easily say no. Whatever he decides to do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

He can simply say no. Yeah, yeah. Nobody can make him do anything. But I think for the rest of his life, there will be always somebody that wants to talk to him. Oh, yeah. He's going to be that guy. Yeah, 100%. That story's going to be out there for a long time.

And so at this point, the only way you, like the story's out there. So the only thing he can do at this point is say no to interviews. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And that's fine. That's right. That's exactly right.

Yeah. If he wants to live a normal life, you know, doing normal things, got a good job now, got a little baby, he's got a wife. Yeah. How old is he? I don't think he's 30. I don't think so. I don't think so.

So North Carolina, and you told me about coming back to the idea of the Rake, one, let me ask you this. Before I go into that, how did Stephen come across the idea of the Rake to call it up? I think Stephen's been tracking some of this stuff over the years. Now, he's a strong Christian, but, and I'm not sure, we really haven't discussed that, But, you know, I'll go to him and ask him, well, what is this? Who are these guys? You know, what? And he seems to know.

And maybe it's because he's had this vision of doing something on YouTube for a while. Yeah. And, you know, Tony, it's a good, you ask that question. I do remember early last year, early 2025, when we were toying about with stuff, he's got some connections. And he was being told that, um, to do a channel, to do some things that the unsolved mysteries and all that stuff was, I mean, if you're looking at a chart, that's huge. And so he's probably done some investigating and watching some stuff. And yeah, he seems, he knows a lot more than I do about it, you know,

which is nothing. Stephen probably is secretly is like investigating Bigfoot at night. You just don't even know it. It could be. With all his spare time, which he has none, I don't know how he goes without sleep. Yeah. The topic of Rake is something that I had no idea about when I first started the show, I believe. Yeah. The more I started hearing about it, the more it was, I looked at it as like the topic of dogman. Like when I first started the show, Bigfoot in my mind was a deaf.

And people are experiencing this out in the woods. I don't know what it is. At that time, I was in the beginning stages of going into more of a supernatural way of looking at it. Yeah. But the topic of Dog Man or Rake, I was like, get out of here. Right. Get out of here. Right. Right. And now I'm like, Bigfoot, who? Let's talk about dog man. You know, because it's, these are real things that are happening to people. And the idea of Rake, I mean, I've heard about it in many different places. One of the earliest ones I remember hearing is a guy in Texas. He was driving down the highway, I believe it was the highway. And he saw two of these things walking up a hillside on all four. And I think he, said it was daylight. Really?

Mm-hmm. But North Carolina, there's something about North Carolina and these things. Yeah. I've had several episodes that I've talked to people who have had experiences. Yeah. And I'm not familiar with locations in North Carolina as far as where everything is. Like, was it Pender County?

Yeah. Not sure where that's at. Yeah. But there's a... We're on the coast. You're on the coast? Yeah, we're on the coast. Okay, so like this stretches the entire way then because I believe one of the

most recent ones I had was an uncle and his niece were on with me. And I believe they're on the other side of the mountain here. And they described this thing on their property. And I think he remember seeing it as a kid growing up too, but they've had their run-ins with it. And it's like, what is it about this area? I mean, I imagine it's probably more than North Carolina. I don't know. I don't know. All right. Let's take a second to talk about our sponsor day, which is Quince. And listen, And one thing I love about summer is how easy everything feels. The days are a little more relaxed and I find myself reaching for the same comfortable, go anywhere pieces again and again.

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Go to quince.com slash Tony for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash Tony for free shipping and 365-day returns. Wynce.com slash Tony. We get emails every week from people interested in our channel and they've got a story to tell. And of course, it goes through this process of whether we decide to do it or not.

But there's a lot of people seeing a lot of stuff out there. We've done another story in eastern North Carolina. It's called, they told me to kill it. It's about some military guys. It's very, very interesting. They told me to kill it? Yeah. What's that about?

it's probably my next favorite episode. Really? Yes. Is it out yet? Yeah, it's out. Awesome. There's more to the story and maybe we can talk about it. Yeah.

I mean, there's a great big part that I can share here on this channel. Please. No one's heard before. Take me to. Are you sure? Yeah, 100%. Okay. So we get emails all the time, right?

Actually, go to Stephen. If he thinks it's worthy, he sends him to me, I'm busy. He's busy. He's full-time law enforcement. And I'm in real estate and due development, that kind of thing. That's why we're not cranking them out every week. You know, we're just two guys and we're having fun with this over here. And, okay, we're having success with it.

And so as long as we're having fun and things are working, that's what we're going to do. But I wish we could crank them out every week. But he gets this email sends it to me. And it's from a guy who works at Paraclete. Now, as soon as I saw the email, my antenna went straight. up because I used to be stationed in Fort Bragg. I was at J-Soc, North Carolina. It's no big secret that J-Soc provides command and control for our Tier 1 forces.

Tier 1 being, well, you know what Tier 1 is. Anyway. No, I don't actually. What is Tier 1? Oh, that's going to be your Seal Team 6, SFOD, which is Delta, Task Force 160, 75th Ranger Battalion. those are tier one assets, but a nuclear submarine sitting off the coast of Iran

is a tier one asset as well. So on the human side, these are the most well-trained, best and brightest that we have in this country. They are. Thank God for them, too. Yeah. But anyway, so I get this email,

and it's from a guy at Pericle. Well, I knew who Pericle was. I know what their mission is. They're right outside of Fayetteville because I used to deal with them all the time when I was there at Fort Pratt. And their mission, is, you know, to help to use government contracts and help move people around.

That's the official thing, basically. Me paraphrasing, but I know what they do. So I got this email from this guy, and he says, hey, I got a story you might be interested in. He says, I'm the lead pilot for Pericles. Well, there's credibility. That's the first thing I look for. Who are these people? Did they see it themselves?

How credible are they? Okay. What's their occupation? Because that'll tell me a little bit about their. credibility, you know, and if a lot of things start adding up, that's the story we want to go do. He says, my good friend is a, I called him on the phone, we're talking on the phone. He said, yeah, my good buddy is an X tier one operator.

I'm not talking about somebody with a tier one unit that's back here cooking for the guy. It's tier one operator. He says, and he owns some property in eastern North Carolina. I won't say where. And I was up there last week flying in because they're building a runway because this organization and this ranch, I'll call it a ranch. They are, their mission is to train professionals with a shooting house, with ranges, with an airstrip. airborne operations, parachuting, that kind of thing. To New, I flew in to certify their airstrip.

He said, I took my son with me. I got to meet his son, cute little guys. I took him with me. And, man, we had a great day. We flew in. We met the guys. We shot on the ranges. I let my son shoot.

It was a great day. He said, well, we were getting ready to leave out of there. And the guys told me a story that flipped me out. And he said, I had just seen the 911 one Pender County Rake episode and your channel. And so I'm emailing you because I think it's, it might be something you might want to dig into. So I'm like, okay, tier one guys, periclee.

Yeah, we got a follow up on this. So I said, can you take us there? He said, yes, off we go. We kind of had to go with who was there at the time. So the bigger story is this. Three people on this piece of land. they acquired it last June or July 2025 and they got out there and started clearing it and getting ready to get their program going, bring teams in, that kind of stuff. So we go in there and we interview, did I say his name?

I think I did. I think I did. So his name is what I call the land man. It was not an owner, but he runs the show out there. lives in Appalachia, comes in, stays two, three, four weeks at a time, goes home for a week, and then the other guys run it, all right?

This guy is, he doesn't waste words. He picks and chooses his words carefully. When he speaks, he's got something to say. He grew up in the mountains. He grew up hunting and fishing. And just, he knows every animal in the forest, every sound in the forest, right? is always pack it.

So here's what happened. They move into this place and they start getting it organized. And I'm going to come back to that because there's a whole other story we're not telling or that we didn't tell. They're getting a place organized. And they start noticing that some of the doors on some of the, there's a lot of buildings out there. Some of the doors are like,

and the next morning these doors are open that they're sure they closed the night before. Okay. That meant nothing to me when I heard that. It does now because I guess this kind of. common among stuff going on out there. And this one building out there, he said, I'd ask this guy, and he said, yeah, I closed the thing. And it was a door that, you know, you really had to, you had to turn it and open it.

The wind wouldn't blow it. I checked it myself, right? He said, yeah, I kept being open. And he said, so we went to dinner one night. There were four of us. We went to dinner and we came back. And as we were driving back, we said, you know what? Let's drive down to that building.

because we shut the door before we left. All right, it's dusk now. He said, let's just go down there and sit there and maybe finish their dessert or whatever as they're sitting in the truck. And we'll just see if that door opens. So they're sitting there with the headlights facing this building,

and all of a sudden they see something just beyond the building walking at dusk. And it describes as six to seven foot tall, uh, shape like that. maybe not hairy, maybe a little translucent. And he said it was just kind of pacing back and forth. He said, the guys are screaming at me. What is that?

What is that? And it just got louder and louder. They said, and I'm interviewing those guys, he said, Michael wouldn't answer us. And he told me, he said, I didn't know what to tell him. He said, I've been in the woods all my life. I'm not afraid of anything. I don't know what I was looking at.

And he said, I also knew that if I didn't know what I was, was looking at and it seemed to be kind of translucent. He said, I didn't know how to kill it. Now, they're all sitting there with weapons. The guy in the back, the armors in the back seat with an AK-47, right? And he said, the thing just kind of paced back and forth. And he said, all of a sudden, the thing just kind of stopped. And maybe he realized that we were there and turned and faced us. And he said, Rusty, he said, the eyes. He said, you know, I know what deer's eyes looked like at night when headlights hit them. I know what a raccoon.

All of them. It's called ice shine. I know what ice shine is. He said it wasn't eye shine. He said it was an amber light and it was coming from inside, whatever that thing was. He said, and then it started tortoise. He said, I threw that thing in reverse, flipped it around, and we drove all the way back to the main house just as fast as that little truck would go.

They got back there prior to that. The guys were sleeping over here. You know, they got them. They got a place, a canteen where they cook food. They got a place where you wash your clothes. I got a training facility over there. And the guys were sleeping all over the combine. He said that night, no, everybody moved in.

The armor said, yeah, I went from a nice queen-sized bed to a couch, and I'm still there. You know, this is months later we're interviewing. They put salt out in front of their thresholds. I don't know how they figured out to do that. Wording off bad spirits. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway, yeah, and they haven't had anything to happen since. But one of those comments that we got on that episode,

why didn't he just call it a dog man? What is describing? It sounds just like a dog man because the armorer said the thing might have had ears, you know. And I thought again, because I never heard the word dog man. He doesn't live in that world. This is the first thing that's ever happened to him in his life that he can't explain. He doesn't know what a dog man is. That's why he didn't call it a dog man.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Which in my mind lends more credibility to the whole story. Yeah. There's more to the story. Okay. So here's the good part that nobody's heard before. The day that we got there was pandemonium. It wasn't really planned. We just happened to hit your riot up there. We're there with our cameras. We're there to interview whoever's there. Thankfully, the landman was there that's running the whole place. Pandemonium. You could look outside the compound and out of the road. There was 25 or 30 pickup trucks with antennas, right? These were hunters. It wasn't deer season, but they were running their dogs. They got radios. There's hounds running everywhere with radios on, right?

Pandemonium, craziness. And I can see because I was just darting. There's another guy there who was a for sure tier one operator, big guy, which is not necessarily, they're not all big, but he was a big guy, wouldn't go on camera. He was running around, he had to put a deer down. One fell over just beyond our camera because they're running, and you can't do this.

They're running these dogs and running these deer to death. They killed three deer that day. These dogs did. The tier one guy that wouldn't go on camera, he called wildlife. They came out. Apparently they issued some type of thing to the head of the hunt club, I guess, some kind of charge. Some levied something there. Anyway, that all went away.

The whole point is that it was just crazy that day. It was just crazy. So we got the story and then we left. And we put the story out. So I was talking about maybe us coming back up there. And I kind of decided not to because I'd talk to him. He's the landman. But the owner, one of the three owners is actually a former tier one operator,

serious business who is well known and was part of a very well-known, very public military operation. So that's all I'm going to say about that. And I felt like if I could get that guy on camera, it was worth going back up there, right? But he just would not hear about it. We had to blur the faces, couldn't say the names. Maybe I didn't say on the video.

I can't remember. Couldn't disclose the location or the name of the place. But they allowed us to go. So several weeks after the video comes out, I'm calling, going to talking to him. I'm still trying to get the owner on camera, you know. It just never worked out. But he said, yeah, man, I apologize the day you came up here and said, they were running those dogs. It was crazy.

Dears were deer, were dying on our property. He said, it was crazy. He said, but I didn't get. to tell you everything. I said, what do you mean? He said, well, he said, we moved in here July of 2025. I said, yeah. He said, well, the previous owners, you know, it was kind of a ranch for them, too, and they had people come in and they did training as well, not to the extent we're going to do with the runway and parachute operations and all that stuff. He said, but the story they gave us was that COVID hit, it kind of cut down on the numbers of people coming into train, and that's how

they made their money, so they made a decision to shut it down. Well, COVID was 20, 21, 22, right? This is 2025. And we're talking to him. And when they, or when the new guys moved in, he said, the day we moved in, July of 2025, he said, the old owners, they didn't show up. They didn't bring us keys. There's buildings all over. There's an armory. We had to break into every building here. I said, you're kidding me. He said, yeah. He said, and the local sheriff came up one day, and I just chatted him up. And he said, no, there's been nothing going on out here for a decade. Right. He says, Rusty, we were cutting down bushes and cutting down trees and trying to get this place cleaned up. He said, we found buildings. We didn't even know we're here. We had to break into every

building out here. He said, Rusty, we found plates in the main house with food, just decayed food still in it. What? He said, we found clothes still hanging in the closets in the main house. What? He said over in the laundry area over there. He said, I found clothes in the washing machine and the dryer that had to be there a decade. Jeez. It gets better. Then he says, it took a while. We had to break into the armory. I said, what? He said, we had break into the armory. He said, there's a quarter million dollars with the weapons in there. I said, hold up. I said, hold, Oh, wait a minute. Wait a minute. I said, you're telling me, those people left eight, nine, ten years ago, left a quarter million dollars in weapons in an armory, federally regulated, has to be inventoried every year. Documents have to be done every year. You're telling me that's what you found in there? He said, oh, yeah, he said, we found a lot of rifles, a lot of pills. He said, one of the, one of the rifles is a $1,500,000 rifle. He said, I tried to get the owner to let me keep it, but he wouldn't let me keep it.

I said, those people left in a hurry. He said, apparently so. He said, that's not even talking about the equipment. I said, what equipment? He said, the armory equipment. He said, there's a quarter million dollars with the machinery and armory equipment in that armory. I said, you're telling me, they left with clothes in the washing machine and dryer, food on the table, clothes in the closets, and a half a million dollars of guns and equipment locked up in the armory. and they just left it there?

He said, apparently so. Now, that story's never been told before. Wow. That's wild. They clearly left in a hurry. Clearly. What was it that ran those people out of there that never came, that wouldn't even come back to turn over the keys?

Yeah. On this clearly. After 10 years of not being there. Yeah, yeah, clearly inexpensive sale. You know what I mean? They made some money when the new guys, my guys came in and bought the place. We're talking lots of money.

Didn't even show up with the keys. I mean, is that not crazy? Yeah, it's nuts. I mean, I kind of wish I bought a property that had a quarter million guns on it. Right. I mean, that's nice. Holy cow. But in that, how far away was, is this place from where I live?

A couple of hours. Well, not from where you live, but. this translucent thing? Yeah. It's the same property? Yeah. It's one of the buildings on the property. Wow.

Okay. So, yeah. Yeah, wow. I said, what did you? And in our episode, we've got pictures of, he went out and bought a couple hundred pounds of flour. Okay, because this building had a lean to kind of thing. And he's out the next day.

Here's where we got the title. So tells the owner, the former tier one guy. Hey man, this is what happened. And the tier one guy, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like, look, you know me. You know my background. You know, I don't lie.

He said, I don't know what it was. And the owner said, now the owner, former tier one guy, been all over the world, done lots of things for our country says, I'm not coming back there until you kill it. Wow. That's where the title of the episode came.

So Michael gets a couple hundred pounds of flour. He's putting it all over the ground around there. I said, well, did you find a track? He said, not in the flower. He said, but then the next morning, he said, you could see from where we saw this thing to the tree line, a couple hundred yards, maybe 300 yards away. He said, you could see a trail, not footprints, but like where the grass, where the dew on the grass have been disturbed all the way to the tree line. He said, I'll follow that. I got to the tree line.

And then he drew, he didn't take a picture of it, but he drew a picture of the footprint that he found. And it was like, it was almost like the two deer hooves, but supersized. and then a big ball at the end of it where the heel would be. I had him draw that on paper, and that's on the episode as well. So the track had resemblance of like deer hooves? Yeah, like pointed at the top and then come down like that with a big ball at the end where the hill would be. Wow. Yeah.

I don't know what that. I mean, because this whole time I'm thinking, you know, like it would be like a canine track, but you're saying that this is not canine. I don't know what it is. That's the track he found. Whoa. That's what he drew for us. Yeah.

North Carolina, man. Yeah. Wow. And the whole point is what led so much credibility was the pilot and the landman. And I know of the owner. So there's just so much credibility there. Yeah. It really is.

You know, I'm being taken back to, I have to be careful how I say this because I don't know if they'd want to be tied to this, but I had former guests on the show, and the husband, they said, I believe they're from North Carolina, if I remember correctly, and he said that they were getting, and I didn't know what to make of this at the time. It sounded weird, so I didn't, I don't know, I got enough drama in my life. But he said that he'd like to bring me out to a compound that they're building. And I, I asked for clarification, and I don't think it was like a family compound. It sounded like he was working. It was a group of people creating some kind of compound in North Carolina.

And he's like, I'd love to have you out here to show you, you know, you can come out, go shooting and things like that. And now you're telling a story. I'm thinking of myself, I wonder if this is like the same place. Well, let me put a bow on it for you. I do know that the ownership, let's just say, Troy Brewer Tim Tebow I'm sure they know the owners

Really? Yeah Is that Are you following Are you tracking me? I'm going to call Troy right now You're tracking me I'm not only tracking you

What you just said Makes me actually feel like It might be the same place Because All right The The wife Right before you came in

The door I saw I had a message from her Yeah And her She was working with She has some connection. I guess she spent time overseas and she's worked with machine gun preacher, Childress. Okay.

What was his first name? Sam Childress. And Sam is close with Troy because they're both pastors fighting human trafficking. Okay. Here's what I can say. Because it's all I know. Guy that I interviewed who did help pull this whole story together for us. It was not a tier one guy.

There was another guy who was tier one. But he would refuse to be on camera. And I recognize PTSD. I have a bit of it myself and this guy. And when I talk to him, I could see it. He didn't want to go on camera. And that's fine. But met the owner or one of the owners overseas.

It was over there as a contractor doing something else, right? The owner was over there, not active duty anymore, but working on a mission. Really? Right. Working on missions over there, got to know these guys. They really liked him. They liked him so much. They started carrying him on missions. He assimilated into that group and that mission that they do. And so when the time came for the owner to team up with these other two owners and decide to buy this place and put something to go, they reached out and hired him to run it. So, yeah. And if I remember correctly, he comes in for two to three weeks at a time, then goes back home for a while? Yeah, it goes back home to Appalachia. Like, is there a state involved with?

North Carolina. North Carolina? Absolutely. He's closer to me than. But he's never seen anything in those matters. Oh, there's stuff there. Yeah, there is. I promise of that.

If you're listening right now, just look out your window at three o'clock in the morning. You'll see something. Right, right. Those mountains are nuts. And I find that all of this so fast. You know, like I said, I grew up in the forest, basically in the forest. Hunted out every day by myself. My little dog would go out there all the time.

I never saw or heard a thing. I did a career in the military or at least the first 10 years in joint special operations. You know, I've been in the sky, jumping out of planes and all that stuff, slept in the desert, forests all over the world, Germany. Been on the ocean. I got my surface warfare officer designation, and I drove ships in the middle of the night. Mediterranean, North Arabian Sea, Gulf of Oman. Never saw anything. Really?

But Tony, if I'm sitting across from somebody and interviewing them, I know. And so far, I've not interviewed anyone that I thought was lying. What is this stuff? I don't know. I don't know. But what I do know is Tyler, 911 call. Tyler's convinced that he experienced and saw something that night. There's no doubt in my mind.

I saw it in his eyes. You can tell. So, yeah, it's interesting. It's really interesting. Your world travel is everything that you've done personally. It's interesting because my uncle spent 22, 23 years in the Navy. Yeah. And he came to my studio in Pennsylvania and we talked to me about, I think it was the Eisenhower,

one of these ships that were haunted. And we talked about it. And I asked him, I said, you ever see a UFO? Oh, and this was back before disclosure was popping off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And all that. And he said, no. And I looked at it and I was like,

you spent how many years at sea? And you're telling me you never saw anything. He said, I never saw anything. Yeah. And I had a hard time believing it, but now you're saying the same thing. No? I mean, the most fascinating thing to me was, you know,

a big ship and maybe there's a phosphorescence growth in the water, you know, and as your ship's plowing through it, it almost looks like it's glowing. That's kind of cool. And seeing dolphins and whales and all that stuff's kind of cool. but never saw anything fly by and go up under the water. Never saw anything like that. So I find that fascinating because the way all this disclosure stuff,

and maybe it's just the world that I live in now, it feels like if you spent any time in the military like that, you had to have seen something experience. Maybe it's not as often as thought. I had talked to a guy, his name is Ryan Pote. I think his last name is Pote. That's familiar. Yeah, he wrote it, I think it's a, I think it's a,

fictional book, but he came on my show to talk about a mission. They were in, I think he was somewhere in South America. Okay. And they were in a chopper and they were going, they were breaking up, like, I guess, drug deals that were happening on boats. And they came in and it's nighttime. So like this all is unfolding, I guess, on their device that they're looking at, you know, see everything. I'm not sure of his night vision or infrared or what it was. Yeah. But a boat takes off and they take off after this boat. And they realized that what they're looking at isn't a boat because it actually dipped down and went underwater. And that's when they realized whatever they're chasing wasn't a boat. But they came in specifically for these boats that were doing drug deals. And so like,

you know, he comes on and tells the story. And actually that that episode I thought was amazing. And it didn't get the traction that I thought it would. Really? And maybe when of that happens, I feel like I did something wrong. But maybe I titled to bat or something like that and people weren't interested in it. Yeah. Because the story was amazing. But I even, when I first started the show, I had a guy contact me. I can't remember, probably on Facebook.

And he's up in Canada. And there was a, he was, I guess, on vacation or something. And there was a storm coming in. There's lightning. Okay. And he was taking a video of the lightning. And when he was reviewing the video of the lightning, he saw, something flat on an angle like it just shot out of the water and in three different frames you have

this thing shooting up out out of the frame into through the sky I have those pictures of my phone and show after we're done it's like the you've been out in the seas I mean do you think that if like Burchett talks about underwater stuff going on right do you think there's there's a credibility to that idea is considering how massive it is out there just the physics of how could that happen? How can something go 600 miles an hour and splash into the ocean and go underwater without that, you know, friction, water dynamics, pressing? I just, I don't know. It's hard to fathom. I just don't know. Wow. I don't know. Part of me says, it's not my role to see it. I'm not supposed to see it. Stephen, my partner's never seen anything. We've never had a personal encounter. Maybe we're

not supposed to see it. Maybe we're just supposed to report on it. I don't know. I don't have the answers. Maybe you wouldn't be reporting on it if you saw what these other people see, you know? That's possible. I do think about that sometimes myself. Like I was telling you before we started how people say that I always say I've never had experience, but I've had, I've had experiences. But I think if I've had some of the experiences that I've heard, my curiosity would be squashed. Might change the whole dynamic of what you're doing. Yeah.

Yeah. For instance, we were talking about that guy in Kentucky earlier. That guy, for people listening, episode 330, is what I'm referring to. But like, if I experienced what he experienced, I don't think I'd be curious about a darn thing. I just, I would, I would, I would know what I saw. I would know what I experienced. And I, I, the jury has already made its decision on it. Yeah. You know? And so maybe there's a reason why there's a little bit of a threat of curiosity that's always left with me because I'm just not totally sure. I know I've had my own things happen to me, but not totally understanding what's

happening yet. You've mentioned about this place in North Carolina and this, whatever this is, you know, the footprint is throwing me way off. I'm just like, what the heck is that? Right. But it's translucent is what said, right? Yeah. He said you could see it, but you couldn't see it. Yeah. He couldn't define, he couldn't define what the head was shaped like. He said, because you could see it, but you could see through it. Now, here's a guy's trying to describe something that he's never heard of before. And why is it, why is it on that property? Is it because of what's on that property?

Or is it because the property, what's on the property moved in and that thing was already there? Well, there's some history of the property. You can do it. Do it. But I'll disclose where the property's at. Oh, yeah, I got to. Let's just say that we've had prisoners in the United States before from other countries following certain wars.

And those prisoners may have been sequestered to certain areas that if you dig, if you don't dig, you wouldn't know it. And they may have done some logging and some other things, maybe some Corb engineer stuff. That's all we'll say. That's fine. That's fine. A long time ago.

Jack and I spent a night in... the woods in Pennsylvania at an old, it used, it's now just ruins, but before it was ruins, it was a Christian kids camp in the middle woods. Before it was that, it was a prisoner of war camp during World War II. Okay. And it was one of the, from what I understand, we, almost every state had at least one. Okay. During World War II. But not all the, the POW camps were places where they actually interrogated Nazis. And this was one of them. Okay. So we went out there one night and we're like, let's, let's go out there and investigate see what happens.

All right. And, uh, is, you're young and bold. Yeah. It was just dumb, you know. I wasn't going to say that. Yeah, no. I mean, I'm not, I'll still go out in the woods and stuff, but I'm not as ignorant as I once was about some of the serious nature of it, you know, forget about the physical side of

falling or hurting yourself, but there's, there's spiritual implications that, like, traditionally we don't really connect to, oh, hiking the woods. at night. And there is when you're talking about the history. And one of my concerns that I grapple with still to this day, I started wondering, me going out there with the intention to try to pull the curtain back and discover something mysterious, is that in a sense? And I don't know, but is that in a sense similar to the idea of conjuring? Are you manifesting? investing, right? And if that is the case, not only one of the biggest things I have to deal with then is that's something I'm not supposed to do as a Christian. Right. And I don't want to cross

lines that God doesn't want me crossing. Yeah. And so that's something that I've been really grappling with. And so one of the things that I told my friends that I did this stuff with, you know, I think most of them are probably in the same boat as me as far as how we operate. But if we go back out to do any documentary, for me personally, I told them, this is not for everybody. Everybody else's life. But for me personally, going into it, I want to know that there is an outcome that's Christ-centric.

Like, my friend Ward came out of the docu-series called Dark Holler. And it started, it's a six-episode series, and it's him documenting this family's journey and this, I don't know if you ever heard of Lilith. It's like a demonic entity, a very ancient demonic entity that really has a stronghold in the Appalachas. And he's documenting this journey of this family and their history dealing with Lilith. Yeah. And on the surface, it's like, that sounds dark, but the way it started, Ward got a friend, has a pastor friend who, Josh Robinson's, And Robertson, I can't remember if it's Robertson or Robinson. Jack doesn't.

But anyways, proper shout-offs I'm trying to do it. But Josh called Ward and said, hey, man, like, we were doing a baptism. And I'm pretty sure that there was an exorcism that happened during the baptism. And that's what took Ward to West Virginia. And he was going to make, like, a 15-minute video just documenting what happened. Yeah. And it turned to this whole investigation. So, like, it starts off with this Christ-centric narrative.

that it all builds around. And that's kind of like where I want to go with things for a lot of it, you know. It's like we, like I said, I was telling you before, we've run around the woods all over the country. And we've been in some hairy situations. And I just want to make sure I'm not crossing certain lines. And I think this is the first time publicly I've expressed this philosophy. Yeah.

Because it's something I've been grappling. But I'm tracking. I'm tracking here really well. So the property, this thing has. there's some kind of translucent nature to it. You not coming from this world, most likely what I'm about to say you've never, you don't know what I'm talking about, but probably about nearly 10 years ago, not quite yet. There was a video that went viral on Facebook and probably other places too.

And it was this guy in Florida who he apparently saw some kind of, of upright standing canine creature outside his home and he was freaking out about it. He posted about it on Facebook and I never seen any pictures. So I don't know. I always say pictures,

but maybe there weren't pictures attached to this. Maybe he just made a post. Yeah. But people were mocking him. And they were like, you're crazy, whatever, whatever. So he goes live on Facebook

and is talking live. Live. He's live on Facebook now. And he's talking about what he's, he experienced. And he goes out his front door in this, like this is probably about 30 minute video that the action happens in the first two minutes. He goes outside and he opens the door and he's pointing at the woods across this like yard area where he saw this thing. And there's

his telephone pole in the middle with a light shining down. And as he's talking live on Facebook, you see something very large, translucent, run almost like so fast as to blur, run from left to right under the light. And when you freeze frame it, it looks like a upright standing canine that is translucent. Really? Yeah. And so like this is like like like, it's like you're saying this. Yeah. I have this recall of that story. Yeah. But this isn't even the first, and I know this because I saw this video on your. channel not too long ago, you had a guy from North Carolina who him and his buddy were working with, I guess, new gear, like night vision goggles and stuff. I was just about to bring

that up. Tell this story because it's similar in the sense of what he described. He saw. Yeah, it is. And I will tell the story. But I want to make a point. You talked about conjuring. You know, I think you're on to something there. If I'm driving down too late. country strip of a row with no lights, trees closing in, dark as it can be. I'm busy, man. I got Carolina case files. I got real estate deals going through.

I got a business partner. We've got a house that we develop. We're trying to sell that. I've got a wife who's dealing with illness like Lindsay's dealing with right now. There's all these things going on that I'm trying to solve or get ahead of. I am not afraid to drive. down that road because I'm scared that some skin walker is going to come running across the road. I'm not, I'm not thinking that.

So I don't know. I think maybe the deeper you get into this world without Christ in your life, maybe, or just letting all this stuff in, it could be manifesting people, could be manifesting stuff that may or may not actually be there. Yeah. But I don't know. Just a thought. Yeah.

I just don't have a thought that way. Now, if I ever have a personal incident, yeah, that may change. But, yeah, I'm just busy. I mean, I think, you know, people have experiences and they weren't trying to have experiences. Yeah. The more I look at the topic from a spiritual perspective, the more I'm cautious with motives of what, personally, me, what are my motives in a situation? What am I trying to accomplish? Am I trying to glorify God?

Or am I trying to cure a sweet tooth of something strange and unusual? Yeah. You know, there's a lot of things that need to be checked for me personally, I think, moving forward, in order for me to, to carry on the way I was, because I think I was pretty reckless at times because I just got carried away with the investigation and decide, like, I, like, I don't care where it is. We're going to go. I found myself in massive caves in the middle of the night. Like, we were going anywhere and everywhere. And it's fun, but what's the intention behind it? What am I trying to accomplish? At the end of day, am I trying to accomplish something that will at the end of the

day point back to the cross. Yeah. And that's a big thing for me. I have very, very much an evangelistic heart these days. So like I said before, before we started filming, which we talked for an hour before we started filming. You know, you guys doing a good thing here. You're bringing these stories to light, but also you're under the umbrella of bringing

salt and light to the earth. Yeah, trying to, yeah. Yeah, clearly you are. So you guys got to stay prayed up, man. Your whole team and your family and, you know, God bless what you're doing. But, yeah. When you do stuff like this, he's going to come after you. Exactly.

The enemy has eyes on you and you got a big old glowing target on your back. That's right. And every time you do a story, you create a bigger target. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Eliminating darkness is not welcomed in the darkness. No, it's not.

Yeah. He's going to fight it tooth and ill. So Larry, so we're doing the 911 call, which is going to be our first episode. And we're at Morris Creek Battlefield. And I'm actually shooting the introduction or something. I can't remember. But we were shooting. And we got a call from somebody that knew Larry.

And Larry was kind of a lineman working on Powerline, stuff like that. And he's out of town all week. But he happened to be in town that weekend. And he had a story. And somebody got a hold of my phone number and called me. We're at Morris Creek Battlefield shooting the 911. episode. Heard this guy was in town only for the day. So we stopped shooting that episode to go talk to Larry because he had this story. We go talk to Larry and Larry's never been in the military.

He's got a good buddy. They do a lot of stuff in the North Carolina Mountains. I think one of them has, I think his buddy has a place up there. And he's telling the story of a time when he and his buddy had bought some gear and they were going to go into the force kind of across the street. not deep into the forest or anything like that, just to try out their gear. And they got nods. They got, you know, night vision. They got some pretty snazzy weapons and some communications gear. And they're looking pretty sharp.

They're looking pretty sharp. They're just going to go step into the woods and see how it all works. So as they're about to cross the highway and step into the woods, they hear a gunshot go off down here. This is out in the country. So that's not unusual. But then they get into the woods. They're into the woods and they hear another shot. So they just take off running.

They don't know because it's not their land across the street. So is this a landowner shooting at us? What is happening here? Why? And the second shot sounded closer. So they take off running. And they run for a bit. And then they stop to rest and they get down on one knee.

And they're looking around, you know, just kind of talk and maybe getting a drink of water. He got their nods on. And his buddy has an illuminator on his and I are illuminator on his weapon. And Larry's got the nods on. And Larry's just kind of looking forward. And this guy's sweeping with that illuminator. When he comes across, Larry sees what we now describe as a dog man staying in there.

And he said it was huge. I mean, he describes a huge thing really close to them. They didn't know what it was. They didn't stick around to see what it was. They didn't pop off any rounds. They just took off. And that's pretty much the story. The interesting thing is this.

We're at Moores Creek Battlefield filming because Tyler comes driving down this road right where Morris Creek Battlefield is. And as he crosses the Black River, that's where he has his incident. Right? Really close to Bowers. Worst Creek Battlefield. Larry's event was less than a mile away. Wow.

Back this way is the Conjuring House used in the film. Really? Which we just did an episode on. You could almost throw a rock from the Conjuring House to these three places, all tied together with the Black River. So you talk about locations and what's going on in North Carolina. It's all over. But there's two stories.

concentrated right there in one area. So have you guys looked into the Black River itself as a possible connector to this stuff? Not really. And people, they're out there all the time on the Black River, but it is, I wouldn't be out there after dark. It's kind of spooky. Is there a history as to why it's called the Black River? I don't know. Okay.

I really don't know. So one thing that we've started making note of is, because it's not the rule, but it seems like when there's a cluster of bizarre things happening. Yeah. That seemed like unrelated almost. Yeah. Usually around large bodies of water. Okay.

And I wonder if there's something to that, whether it's, I don't know. If you want to talk about, I don't know if there's a spiritual implication to that, the idea of it or what. but because I I tend to go that route on a lot of the stuff now like like and I think obviously we've been talking for you know two hours or whatever but like you probably gather that I'm not the guy who thinks that Bigfoot's out there somewhere in the woods and if I just stumble across that I can pet it you know yeah yeah right I think there's there's a deep spiritual thing to this yeah and so because of that I wonder when you have these clusters and there's water nearby if that if the water itself is something to do with that I mentioned you earlier in beginning of this conference

Scott Carpenter, where a lot of his stuff, now he's been up in the mountains, everything, but where a lot of his pretty wild stuff, where the Minespeak happened to West Stroud, where he took David Polite's, he took David to several different locations. It's a peninsula with, I believe it's a Tennessee River rushing by. And it's this large peninsula piece of land

that has just the weirdest stuff happening on it. And I wonder if the Black River has something to do with that. I don't know. And I'd like to ask you, because you interview so many people, there was some physical stuff that was interesting when we did Larry. And maybe you've heard it before, I hope, because it's weird. I lived in the pines growing up as a young man and young teenager in the pines, specifically. Lots of pines.

Okay. I've been through snowstorms, you know, we had snow. Little pine trees will bend over when the boughs get full of snow. The big ones won't. But the little ones do. They'll bend over. Sun comes out the next couple of days, they stand up. No big deal.

The big pines, the mature pines, pretty much nothing harms them except for an ice storm. We get down to 12, 15 degrees in North Carolina, which we've done. It happened one time when I was growing. up. We were on our home with no power, and we could hear them pop it. They snap. They're still straight. They just, you know, they're so heavy with snow. They just shear. They literally sheer. And the whole half of the tree comes straight down and it falls over. That's what happens to a big pine during an ice storm. Where Larry's innocent occurred, immediately, I noticed it as soon as we stepped in the woods and we started getting close to where his event happened, all these pine trees are like this. They're all bent over. Even the big mature ones.

I've never seen that in my life. They either snap in a snowstorm or they bend over if they're real small. Snap in an ice storm. If it's a small pine and snow gets on it, it'll straight back out soon the sun comes back out. I've never seen that. Just when we filmed it, lots of big pines bent over like this. Pines were straight. I've never seen that.

Did you notice if they were bent over in specific directions, like all along the same direction? No, they were like this, you know, they'd be all through. Maybe 200 yards in one specific area. Very specific area. I didn't see him going in. I didn't see him coming out. It was just where he had that encounter. Never saying that before.

So I, there's this, there's, I don't, I got to be careful how I say this. Uh-oh. People are going to, people that are the researchers are going to get upset if I say it the wrong way. But there are a large, portion of researchers when it comes to cryptids cryptosiology, especially Bigfoot, that talk about tree structures and these things creating, that taking branches and creating forms and shapes in the

woods. And I think that sometimes the researchers get a little carried away with what a tree structure is. Okay. But one of the things is the tree bending. And I don't have an answer for it. Yeah, but maybe somebody will hear this and kind of point us down that road. So, like, I, and this is where the rift comes, I guess, for me, is that a lot of the people that will talk about the tree bending will say, how does this possible? And I've seen it. I've seen tree bends, but they don't want to say that what's going on is supernatural either. And so they're trying to take what is seemingly supernatural and putting some kind of natural explanation on it.

Like, how does Bigfoot doing this? Yeah. Well, maybe there's something more supernatural happening. Like, if these things, you're talking about translucent, which we kind of glossed over that with Larry, but Larry had this translucent aspect of his story. Absolutely. We can hit on a second.

He couldn't see it without the nods on. Right. Couldn't see it. And didn't he say that it, kind of like turned sideways and disappeared on him. He said, what did he say? Did it turn side? He said, I think he said it.

I can't remember if it was profiling or profiling and then turned towards him, recognized he was there or vice versa. I think that's what it was. Because I feel like I remember him saying, like it wasn't like a complete full body disappearing, but rather a progression of like going from top to bottom, bottom of the top he saw it disappearing. I feel like something like that. Yeah.

You remember better than me. I probably watched a video more recently than you did, you know. That one actually came out first, late August and then 9-1-1, first two weeks of September. But so like what he saw, what the guy in Florida saw, what the other guys in North Carolina saw, let's just say it's generally the same thing. Generally. We're talking about something that's supernatural. Yeah.

And we don't totally understand what is all involved around that supernatural being. And so could it be that where these things manifest, there's residual physical sign that they manifested like tree bends, you know? Because there have been plenty of people who have talked about this crypted stuff and the idea of tree bends. There's a guy, I think his name was on Facebook. He goes by Colorado Bigfoot, I think, this years ago. But he goes out in the mountains of Colorado documenting. And he has documented the weirdness of the trees in specific areas and large trees being bent. Okay.

And how is that possible and all that? And so it makes me wonder, like, is there a certain level of energy that when these things are manifesting into this realm that does it suck the life out of things around it? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I would love to know. Me too. Because I've never seen that before. Yeah.

I've got a few miles on me. I've never seen that before. And it stood out to you. Yeah. Immediately. Just immediately. Yeah. It's weird, man. But a lot of this stuff is weird. It is. And you, I just, I'm sitting here wondering, like, how, where are you at right now with all this stuff? I mean, like, 10, the last I checked, it was like 10 months ago on your YouTube channel was your first video. So you're less than a year into this. Yeah. Way less. And you're being introduced to all this bizarre stuff you never considered and thought about before. Yeah. Like, where are you?

you at? Like, like, it seems like for me, outside looking in, I'd imagine, okay, my paradigm's being shifted. What is reality? Do I actually believe this? These, these, I've done my investigation. These guys seem very credible. They, they seem credible to the point that I actually talked to them. Then after talking to them, more credible. So something's going on. Yeah. But how did, like, coming into this less than a year ago, how are you, how are you fitting this into your worldview paradigm. That's a great question. I mean, you know,

still developing, huh? And these videos are starting to come out, these very credible pilots, you know, top gun pilot, and then he's videoing this thing flying through the air. What do I think about that?

Yeah. Tony, I just, I don't know, I read my Bible. Yeah. Genesis 6, 4. Yeah. You know, in the time of Noah. Yeah.

And after. Yeah. I think there's clues in the Bible. I just don't know. I just don't know. But back to what I was trying to say well ago, and I may not have got those words out correctly, that maybe I'm not supposed to see it.

Maybe I'm supposed to do something else with this. Maybe I'm supposed to report on it. And I don't know. I wish I knew. The scariest story I've ever heard is that the giant of Kandahar. Oh, man. What do you think of that? That's where I went back to Genesis 6.

four. Yeah. That's a scary story. I wish I was there. Yeah. I wish I'd have been there. Yeah. A lot of it sounds credible.

Really? A lot of it sounds credible. Especially if there's this shadow government. Yeah. That had these guys put this thing on a plane and ship it off never to be seen before or after. I don't know. Scary. Yeah.

It's scary. One of the guys who broke that story was Elie Marzuli. He was here not too long ago. Oh, really? Yeah, he's a good friend. and his investigation into it. L.A. Marzuli, Tim Albarino, these guys have looked heavily into it.

And I believe their research, right? You do. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I've talked to people who have had their own experiences with giants today still. Really? Well, the Bible speaks to that. Yeah, 100%.

Yeah. I've heard legends of Giants stateside. one was after Katrina in New Orleans. When Katrina blew through, it opened up a lot of passages that were inaccessible before. Yeah. And guys on boats were going into the areas that they've never been their entire lives. And there's a story that came out of there that they came into an area that they weren't familiar with. And from their boat, they saw a humanoid figure behind trees, standing behind trees that was as tall as a trees looking at them.

they didn't get off the boat. Good plan. And in Mexico, Troy Brewer, he was on a, he was on a mountain or a hilltop with pastors and they were praying over him. You know the story? I know the story you saw it on another round time.

When he told the story for the first time publicly, it was to me. And the thing just went viral. And he's like, now everybody knows me as the pastor that's seen a giant. He's like, man, I don't want to come on your show again. But there's another guy, his name's Ray. And him and I actually are from the same area of Pennsylvania.

And we didn't know each other then. But him and I did a conversation because he's Afghani. But he was put up for adoption and was adopted by an American family and was born and raised here. As an adult, he tracked down his family and got connected with them. and he is he's visiting with his uncle who is telling him stories about growing up in Afghanistan and things like that and his uncle told him that when they were kids their mother so ray's grandmother would actually take every once in a while not i don't think it was consistently but uh she would actually take a goat out into the mountains and feed these giants

a goat and i don't know if it was a sacrifice if it was a peace offering but i think that's what he tended to lean towards. It was probably some kind of like peace offering and sacrifice. Live us alone. Yeah, like here's a goat. Leave us alone for another five weeks or whatever. But that was a story that was passed on in him by his uncle. And then you hear the giant of Kandahar.

And recently there was, and I don't know if it's AI or not, that's the biggest problem today is we don't know what's AI and what's not. But there's a video and there's pictures of a giant seemingly coming out of a cave. in like some kind of like animal skin covering around his midsection, but totally shirtless. And the way they described the giant of Kandahar is this massive muscular red hair, red hair,

like superhuman. Yeah. And this image of this giant, very lanky, but it looks extremely tall. I mean, just from the picture alone, it looks like that's got to be at least 15, 20 feet tall. I mean, huge, but very lanky and skinny. And so, you know, I've heard stories of other people, and I can't remember if it was Iraq or Afghanistan, but they were monitoring a village at night.

And it was a common thing that they would see something very large. I imagine being a silhouette more likely, but very large running out of the village at night up into the mountains. And the ground that it covered in the amount of time is inhumanly possible. Wow. And so, like, there's all this stuff coming out of the, Middle East. These legends of giants. You have the gin. There's a, there's a, and not to mention just the biblical tie to it, you know.

Well, if I'm going to believe anything, there's biblical reference for the giant story. In those locations. Yes. Yeah. So when you ask me, where am I? That, you know, this other stuff I don't know. Yeah. I just don't know.

You just do what I could believe that. I could believe that. You can, so. it's awesome that is the rest of this stuff just the disembodied spirits of the nephalum that have nowhere to go is that yeah but are they showing up as this over here and this over here and this thing flying over here I don't know have you ever probably not so I'm going to say something to you that you probably never heard it before but have you ever heard that throughout history there's been documentation of these dogmen throughout history like I've had that told story I'm not I'm not

I've not read about that, but I've been told that. So I'll send you a link to an episode I did with a guy. His name is Seth Bainerbrook. Okay. And he, I believe, did like cybersecurity or something. And his church was getting a lot of questions that were being sent in. So he, they hired him to just answer Bible questions. They knew he loved studying the Bible.

Right. So his job now is just to study the Bible and answer emails. Must be nice. Yeah, but he, through that, he started in his research, uncovered all these historical cases of upright standing dog-headed people. He's found ancient maps, like old maps that have like these drawings of these dog-headed people to, I think it's, I always, I always think it's either St. Christopher or St. Nicholas. I think it's St. Christopher. Yeah, St. Christopher. In some artistic renderings is depicted as having a doghead. But there's ancient

historians like Josephus who will talk about dog-headed civilizations. Marco, Napoleon, I think it was Napoleon talking about coming across these dog-headed civilizations. Really? And they talk about how they're, one of the legends is that there was a hundred thousand, I think, of these entities all living together, is their own civilization. And they worked out trade deals with people. And one of these kings actually would hire them as mercenaries because they were incredibly good

at killing. And it was like there, there's this history for thousands of years now of this dog-headed type of entity and being. We see it all in the Egyptian drawings. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And so it's like this is not a new thing. It might be new for the American culture to take in and understand, but this is very ancient and it's been around a very long time. It's just a matter of what is it. Yeah. And that's the big question. And I think that's the big question that until is absolutely solved, people should be very careful about how they proceed on tracking these things down. Yeah. It's one thing to have, like, I mean, like I said, it's so much fun. I love being in the woods. And I, and I don't think I'm, like, I would, I have no problem going to woods for a hike.

I don't have a problem going to the woods and camping. It's about my intent, though. That's, that's where the root of it comes to for me. It's like, I'm going out in the woods hunting a dog man. And by me, intentionally going out looking for this thing, is there a level of me conjuring it? Where it manifests. Yeah. And is that where I'm crossing a line? Yeah.

And so you'll probably catch me in the woods, camping and hiking, and just being aware that these things are out there, but I don't know, I just don't know how I'm going to proceed moving forward, but it's been a very strong dilemma in my mind over the last six months to a year. Yeah.

And so I just, and I honestly don't think I've ever talked about a public, have I, Jack? No, I don't think so. This is the first time I've actually spoken about because I just didn't listen to your spirit. I'm very slow to speak on this kind of stuff in general because I don't know. That's the thing. Yeah. We don't know. We just don't know. We don't know. So Carolina case files, are you guys in it for the long haul or are you just kind of seeing where it goes? Stories are, we're not asking for these stories. We're not even looking for. A lot of them are coming in, though.

They're just coming in. And we're doing a story Tuesday, this haunted old home, a plantation, actually. But I'm not interviewing, you know, Joe Doakes. I'm interviewing active duty law enforcement that are very credible people. So the stories are coming. We feel like we're being blessed with these stories because we're not trying to find. Yeah. I think Stephen and I are coming at this from a kind of a different perspective.

And I told you before the show that, you know, we recently had a, very recently have a vision where we might even take some of the, take some of what we've done here and start a new channel where we can start blessing people in a whole other way. Yeah. If we can somehow find the time. Yeah. So, and I don't think we would have come up with that. I just think we're being blessed at Carolina Case Foss. I really do. Yeah.

We're just trying to, we don't want to lie. We want to bring the truth. We want to do, you know, the man on the street investigations. And the stories just kind of keep coming right now. They really do. We're not ghost hunters. We're not going to go camp out in somebody's house overnight and bring, bring some kind of piece of equipment. That's not who we are.

So we just want to bring stories and see where God leads. If he leads us into something else from this or we just continue this on, it's a good question. Yeah. It's a really good question. I'd like to see the channel grow. We really need to get more episodes out quicker. And at this stage and at the size, two of us, I don't see us getting them out any quicker than we are. The bottleneck is real.

The bottleneck is real. Yeah. And we're trying to do it a certain way. it's not the quickest way it's not the most efficient way but we like it we like what we're doing do you have any like young

young kids in your lives that you can say hey I need you to start editing and you can get creative with some of this stuff like when I first started I didn't have any funds to seek help financially but I would trade what I call trading attention for currency

so for instance the one guy Scott Walker from he has a podcast called Freaky Diki Podcasts. He's up in Alaska. It's insanely talented at graphic design websites, all that stuff. And there's been so many cases over the years, working with him or some different artists and stuff, that I would have artists like make my show art for me. And they would turn it around real fast. They would sign it. And we would in the show description say, who made the show art? So it was like, I'm giving you the attention with my audience. in return, you make a piece of show art for me.

Yeah. And so maybe if you guys knew a kid or something that it can make videos, you guys can be like, okay, I need you to make this video. Yeah. And in the description, we're going to put your Instagram handle and all that stuff so people can see who made the edit it and stuff. Yeah. And it might be a way to start getting those gears turning to alleviate that pressure.

It's interesting. You bring that up. Stephen has just brought on a guy to bring another camera into the mix. His name's Eddie. He went with us on the Conjuring episode that we just did. And that's going to help because we're doing girl to style. You know, we're running and gunning and shooting. And what do you want me to say, Stephen?

Just say something, Russ. You'll be fine. That's kind of what we're doing right now. So Eddie can kind of come in and give us that second camera, the wide angle and the different shots there. I think if we're supposed to do this, like you said, I think as the need is there, someone will show up to fill that need. I would like to see Stephen have somebody and take over the editing.

Now, he's a master editor. He loves it. I couldn't do it. I couldn't sit there and do that. No way. But Stephen's so bright in so many areas. I mean, when he's out there shooting, he's got that rule of thirds and this and that, you know, all of it. He's just, he's brilliant.

You know, he really is. And I'd love to see him get a. away from the editing and be able to help me more on the creative aspects. Yeah. You know. So, but the needs there, they'll show up. If we're supposed to do this, they'll show up. Absolutely.

I agree with you 100%. And to Stevens case there, I can sympathize with it a little bit because when I first started doing this, one of my favorite things to do was when I first started doing this 10 years ago, it was just audio. I didn't do any video. Oh, really? I just would connect to somebody on Skype and we record a conversation, release it on podcast. But I really enjoyed editing audio.

Really? A lot. And it was something that you learn as things grow just because you enjoy something. There's other things you can enjoy as well that are more important for you to be touching. Okay. And so it was hard for me. Like when Jack first started working for me, I gave him all the easy stuff to edit. Really?

Because I didn't want him touching the stuff, one that I enjoyed. You didn't want to let go. I didn't want to let go. And so there would be times that Jack would be sitting around from him just doing nothing. Because like I didn't want to, I didn't want to touching that. Jack's like, give me the good stuff. Come on, man. Trust me.

And eventually, in order for things to grow and move in a certain direction, you have to be willing to let other people touch stuff and let it go. Yeah. And not that anybody can do editing, but it's like, okay, Jack can do the editing. and I need to focus on this over here. Yeah. And that's how things grow. Yeah.

And so at some point, I'm sure Stephen will be ready to let go of the editing. Yeah, yeah. And it might happen sooner than later the way you guys are getting these stories and stuff. I mean, to have the creative mind present and ready to go on set. it's nice to be able to I'll just use me as an example again right now as we're doing this I'm able to have this conversation with you

and be present in this conversation and while we're doing this editing is happening because we have a guy at our other office and he is sitting there editing episodes what so it's it's now I'm not I'm not thinking oh man I got

I got five o'clock I got to do this got to do this It's happening right now. As we're speaking, there's somebody else editing an episode that's going to come out one day. Good for you. And so it's like it's going to happen for you guys as well. As long as God will is it and this is where God wants you guys to go. Yeah. Like you're going to get to a point where there's going to be people doing things while you are able to then focus on other stuff.

Like right now, if I had to worry about that stuff, this conversation may not be as good because I'm thinking about what I have to do after this conversation. Your mind would not be here. Right. Yeah. And so because I have got good guys around me, that's awesome. Like, it allows me to excel and do what is best for this moment right now. Yeah. So anyways, we're supposed to be talking about Carolina Case 5th.

No. It's good advice, though, I think. Yeah. all do, you know. Yeah. Yeah. It's been good to get to know you. That's good to get to know you too. I could have left after the first hour before we started rolling the cameras, man. We just, we got along so well. And Jack's got something here. He's itching to say something. Real quick housekeeping. Scott Walker's podcast is no longer the freaky deep, freaky deaky podcast. Oh, he changed it. The Tall-Tale Social Club. Oh, okay. I didn't know that. Anyway. Tall-tail Social Club. Yeah.

That is that it. I appreciate you telling. I appreciate that. Tall-tail social content as we go along too. So that's another thing that you, as time goes on, there's new hurdles to jump over. So the very first person I ever hired was Jack and he was editing. And we were trying to figure this out as we go. Then I hired Derek because I needed somebody to help with the management side of things. And, you know, like I dumped a bunch of stuff on him and he is, you know, doing his thing now. And that's all stuff that I used to do on my own. Now he's doing it.

and we found ourselves where Jack is up here doing this during these conversations he's researching stuff that's being brought up fact checking all that stuff making sure the tech's working while he's here for the last you know he got here at 830 this morning yeah that's all time that he wasn't producing and editing and i started seeing i'm like jack is doing the studio stuff here sometimes three days a week four days a week when is he actually editing this stuff stuff to get it out. Well, he was at times sleeping at the office, working until early morning to get it done. And I'm thinking myself, well, I know he's my brother, but one day, my brother's probably going to quit because there's no healthy lifestyle here. And so you're like,

okay, we need to hire somebody where their job is specifically all day to edit, and that's their job. Yeah. So that Jack cannot have to worry about dealing with that anymore. You're burning them out. Yeah, yeah. I was like, my life's great. I don't know what your problem is, Jack. This is great. You're tired and everything. You're always tired. I get good sleep at night. I don't understand it, man.

But anyways, it's just, it's one of those things, whereas this is such a new industry, what we do, that we're, like, the pioneers are figuring it out. I think that the generation coming behind me, they're going to have my mistakes to die. They're like, oh, I know not to do that because the people who came before me, they tried that didn't work. And so, but we're just over here trying to figure it out. And I think sometimes the perception is we have this like massive, like, we all figured out. Man, I'm just, I'm just going every day by day. And that's a testament to you guys and your team. If you started with just audio now, I mean, to look at your stuff, it's pretty amazing.

I didn't want to do video. Jack was like, like, would not shut up about it. Really? Oh, he was like, God, do you guys. I'm like, I don't want to. I don't want to be on camera. You're kidding me. I'm not kidding you.

That's why he came to your team. That's why it's a part of your team. Yeah. To move you forward. Yeah. I did not want to do it. Yeah. It was just not, I don't want to be on camera.

And I was awkward. I didn't know how to react. I was like, do I look at the camera? Do I look at the person? Knowing the camera's there. Right. Not acknowledging it. It's just everything was weird.

It's different. Yeah. It's different. Now I'm used to it now. Yeah. But when I first started, I was like, I don't know, man. So, yeah, it's just, it's been a lot of, like, stages throughout the process. And I imagine, you go,

10 years, it'll be more stages in that process. I'm hearing stories of some of these YouTubers have 70 people staffs. I'm like, holy cow. What? Massive podcast. And they have, they have like 10 people that their only job is to handle the social media, creating social media off of the podcast. Like massive teams, massive teams. Wow. And so like there's a whole, there's a whole industry that has been created over the last 10, 15 years here that I truly believe this. I'm not kidding you when I say this. I think very soon in the near future, a child will be graduating from high school and they're going to say they're going into content creation and it's going to be looked at as the same as saying you're going to be a doctor or a lawyer.

It's going to be like, that's a very solid career choice, son. Wow. Because of what we're seeing develop here. Yeah. Like it is the sky's the limit and there are, you know, 8 billion people on this earth. And I have a channel of, I don't know, like 350,000 subscribers. right on YouTube. There's a lot of people in this world yet that don't know who I am. Yeah, exactly. And so when somebody says to me, I want to get into content creation, the pool is large enough for everybody.

That's crazy. You know, the idea of gatekeeping and, oh, you know, don't, don't do it because it might be less for me. That's not possible here. It's just not possible. And if your stuff isn't taking, it's not because the pool's too full. It's just you're not good enough. And you can get better.

Yeah. You can be honest with yourself and say, where can I get better at and work towards that? But the pool is plenty big for everybody. Yeah. And so that's my message to everybody out there. That is a great message. If you want to be a content creator, the sky's limit, just dark. You would know this.

And that's a great message. I guess I'm considered like a grandpa in this field now. You're definitely, and maybe we would call you a plank on her because you were there when the keel was made. Yeah, yeah, definitely a trailblazer. But listen, man, I appreciate you being here and sharing. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. I wish Steve would be here. Maybe next time we'll drive if you do this again.

But I mean, the longer you do it, the more stories you'll have that you'll come across. And I'm interested. If there's anything that I could do to assist you guys and just like, hey, have you ever heard of this before? Because, I mean, I've talked to hundreds of people, right? And so across so many different topics, UFOs, cryptids. And at times, I've connected dots where I'm just like, I think there's something here connecting these things. Yeah, yeah. Like I mentioned about the water.

Yeah, exactly. That's a pattern that I started recognizing every time. And the trees. Yeah, and the trees. I'm like, somebody explain this to me, you know? So if there's anything that I, if you feel like you just want to pick my brain, feel free to reach out. I appreciate that.

But I really do. I think you're doing great work here. I really do. I appreciate you having us, a little tiny channel. No, you guys are great. And to answer your question, you know, as long as, you know, as God wants me to do this, is what I'm going to do. If he tells me to do something else tomorrow, I will.

But right now we're having a good time. Yeah. I'm working with a brother in Christ who I love. He's amazing. And there was a reason that we, were put together. Absolutely. Just like you and your team, Jack.

Yep. Yep. So yeah. I appreciate you being here. Thank you. Thank you so much for having. Appreciate it. Subconscious knew me.

All my thoughts consume me. Playing with death like I'm spooning. Everything I'm chasing, eluding. This prison away. I can't find a scape because I want to taste a chain. The squeeze. Don't want to know what the definition of the sari is Everything I'm chasing out of reach like Shatariships

I feel when people say they feel me They just say they do tentacles of praise Turning into Calimari suit A little stretch every song I bleed Just a little recognition is all I need And God I'm feeling growth But every time I look inside I'm looking at the branches Of a bonsai tree

And I don't know why it's just become a pair of sheep shear But legacy's important too Scambling for more false sad down