The Confessionals - RELOADED | 17: Touching A Bigfoot

Episode Date: April 10, 2023

On Episode 17: Touching a Bigfoot, guest Jason comes on to The Confessionals to share his bigfoot encounter as a child, when he was suddenly, unexpectedly close enough to touch one! He also shares how some unusual paranormal experiences, which happened before his bigfoot experience, helped to shape and mold his character for his amazing experience.Become a member for AD FREE listening and EXTRA shows: theconfessionalspodcast.com/joinCome Meet Tony:1. Smoky Mountain Bigfoot ConferenceTickets: https://bit.ly/3l1wZHR2. LIVE SHOW in Gatlinburg, TN!Tickets: https://bit.ly/3IC4IkxWatch Expedition Dogman: https://bit.ly/3CE6Kg0Tony's Studio Equipment: linktr.ee/mystudiogearSPONSORSGET EMP Shield: empshield.com Coupon Code: "tony" for $50 off every item you purchase! Listen to this episode for more information! Link: bit.ly/3YaMD1NGET SIMPLISAFE TODAY: simplisafe.com/confessionalsGET Hello Fresh: hellofresh.com/confessionals60 Promo Code: "confessionals60" for 60% off plus free shipping!!!Get Emergency Food Supplies: www.preparewiththeconfessionals.comCONNECT WITH USWebsite: www.theconfessionalspodcast.comEmail: [e-mail] to the Newsletter: https://www.theconfessionalspodcast.com/the-newsletterSOCIAL MEDIASubscribe to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/2TlREaIDiscord: https://discord.gg/KDn4D2uw7hShow Instagram: theconfessionalspodcastTony's Instagram: tonymerkelofficialFacebook: www.facebook.com/TheConfessionalsPodcasTwitter: @TConfessionalsTony's Twitter: @tony_merkelAre you a military veteran struggling with thoughts of suicide?Contact Watchman Readiness Corps for REAL help. A veteran-run organization that is designed to help through hands-on survival training.Website: wrc.vetEmail: [e-mail]: [phone]Instagram: wrc_survivalFacebook: colbywrcvet

Merkel? I guess it's time to go back in time. Are you telling me you built a time machine? Kind of a Dolion? Time is but a stubborn illusion. I have a lot of memories of the past. People are time traveling within themselves. Time travel is possible.

It's called Prolet. Do you guys hear that? Hey, I reload it! This is G.M. Danielson of the Simply Scary podcast, and you were listening to The Confessionals. Okay, tonight I have a special guest on, Jason, and he has had a Bigfoot experience when he was younger, and he also wants to share some experiences that he had in a farmhouse that kind of led into, his experience with Sasquatch. He also runs a group called Sequoia Sasquatch Society. Jason, how are you, man?

I'm doing great, Tony. Thanks. How are you? I'm doing good, man. I'm really excited to hear what you have to say tonight and stuff. We communicated through Facebook here and there. And this actually, this interview has been a long time coming because I remember a couple of times I

emailed you just saying, I haven't forgot about you. I'm just working through all the emails and I just letting you know, you know, this is still going to happen. And I'm really glad we're getting it done tonight. Yeah, me too. I've been looking forward to it. Yeah, absolutely. So why don't you just walk us into with the farmhouse situation and just, you know,

take us from there to your Bigfoot encounter? Okay. Yeah, I was born in 1969 and I was adopted as an infant by my parents. And I have an older brother and older sister that they were adopted to. And when I came to live with their family at the ripe old age of four weeks old. They were, they occupied a dairy farm, a small dairy farm in a little upstate New York town called Shamo. That's C-H-A-U-M-O-N-T, Shimo. But it was a small dairy, didn't have a lot of cows or, you know, and it was actually my grandparents' farm before that. And I don't know how long

they had it, but from the 50s anyways. But that was my mother's family, my mother's parents. And, you know, as a little boy in this old farmhouse, this house was built in the late to mid to late 1880s. I've seen pictures of it from, you know, when it was a thriving huge place. It had a crow's nest at the top. And, you know, it was a very old house, multiple rooms and a big winding staircase. And it's very, very old, very decorative, you know, crown molding, 14 foot high ceilings. It was a big deal. And as a little boy, it was a mansion to me.

you know, but I can remember that there was a stone silo on the property. And I'm not sure if the silo was still there or not, but a man had fallen off that silo when it was built back in the 20s or 30s and had died on the property. And there had been a couple of other strange things on that farm property that happened over the years. But as a little boy, when I was about three years old, I used to be visited by, A World War I soldier, he was dressed in his formal army uniform, if you know what I mean by formals. They were green. And I can remember him peeking in on me ever so often in my bedroom. And I would see him and I would get up and walk to the bedroom door to look down where I thought he'd walked.

And there would be nobody there. And at night he would come in and he would sit on my bed and pat my leg and tell me, it's okay. It's going to be okay. and I could feel him patting my leg. And it wasn't scary. It was the first time I saw him, but he wasn't a scary thing, you know. But I knew seeing that, and then I had another experience with something else that, you know, I wanted to throw this out to you because I'm hoping somebody that hears this or sees this might have experienced something like this because I have yet to see or hear anybody that's, that's ever experienced what I experienced at this house.

but I had this one experience one night where the house, the siding on the outside of the house was this old asbestos shingles. I don't know if you know what I'm talking about, but they used to lock together and they were on the side of the house. Yeah. And they were usually a gray or a green colored blue, you know, light blue. And I could hear something crawling up the side of the house. And the window was just maybe, I don't know, eight, nine feet away from my bed. and I could hear this scraping. And I saw this spindly hand come over the window sill.

The window was open. It was summertime, and we didn't have AC. You don't need it in northern New York. But I saw this hand come through the window, and it had long, long fingers. I mean, you know, the fingers were really long and spindly. And then I saw the other hand come over, the right hand come over, and then it lifted itself up. And it was dressed similar to the soldier.

but its face I thought it had a gas mask on like from World War I but it was more like dark round dark eyes sunken deep dark black eyes smooth face it almost looked like I'm across between

a silver surfer and Jason Borreys mask from that's what his face kind of looked like without the mouth holes just sleek and scary and I can

I can feel my heart race and talking about it. And I can remember seeing this thing when it steps over the sill and lands on my floor. I'm looking at it. And then it starts to pixelate and it starts to flicker like an old movie. You know, like the picture starts to pixelate. And then it would change. And it changed into a clown. And then it would pixelate again.

And it changed into Fred Flintstone, like the cartoon Fred Flintstone. And then it pixelate again. turn into Mickey Mouse and then pixelate again and turn it's turning into all these different things but the eyes stayed black and and I've shared this I shared this in another interview that I did with somebody that every time it changed the eye stayed black and let me tell you Fred Flintstone with black eyes solid black eyes is a creepy creepy thing and I can remember seeing this as a kid and when I saw it and saw what it was it was doing I almost felt like hypnotized by what it was doing, by the pixelating.

But I see the eyes and the eyes would kind of correct me back to my senses. And I would, and I yelled at it. I still see you. I still see you. And it went away. I never had it happen again. I don't, but it was one of the creepiest things because it didn't have anything to do with, I could wrap my mind around as a three or four year old kid.

I could wrap my mind around the soldier. I knew what he was. It was a ghost. I knew this. And I used to talk to my parents about the man that would visit me. And whatever. He's a, you know, I'm a kid. What's he know?

You know, he's talking. He has imagined, because I used to talk to myself. I still do. But I used to talk to myself as a kid and play, you know. But that thing there terrified me. It terrified me. And I learned at that point that the world is not all we see. It is not all we think it is.

There are many, many layers, some good, some bad. But this thing here was, like I said, the main visual memory I have is those Fred Flintstone eyes, dude. It makes me just, oh, it makes my stomach just, ugh, because it was so terrifying. Because there were things I liked. You know, I liked Mickey Mouse. I liked clowns. I liked, you know, and it was like, I don't know what it was doing. But I felt like it was trying to draw me in or trying to, I don't know.

man, it was just so weird. But like I said, that happened when I was four. And we ended up, my dad's health got bad. And we ended up selling the farm. And we moved from Shamo to a little town a ways away, a little way, about 30 minutes away. Let me ask you about that. Before we move on from the house, first of all, back to the World War II or World War whatever, you know, whatever the soldier was. World War I. Okay. Yeah. Well, how do you, first

all, how do you know that? Did it say something to you about it or, or did you just tell by the entire? I just knew. First of all, I've, since I was a little kid, I've always loved war movies. Okay. Love all the old, you know, All's Quiet on the Western Front and, you know, Kelly's heroes and I loved all, and I still do. I love war movies. Okay. I always have. And, but I knew my uniforms because my grandfather was a veteran and my uncles were veterans and you know i knew you know i had a pretty good grasp of stuff like that historic stuff but i know now i mean obviously as a grown up i knew by the way his collar buttoned up i could see the way his i don't know if he was in the army or he was in the marines because i couldn't i can't see the looking back and i can't see the buttons i wish i'd like to

do some kind of regressive hypnosis maybe where i could see clear you know what the buttons were but I knew I knew he was a he he had the know how they used to tuck their pants and their boots and they had the little flares he had those on his pants I could see those when he was sitting down on my bed pat my and he was never it was always like he was looking out for me you know it was never that experience with that thing and the experience I had with the whatever that crawled in through the window they were two totally different entities I know this. But like I said, I don't know why that, but that creature was dressed similar as far as when I first saw it, it looked like he was wearing a uniform, you know, dressed the same way. I know next.

You know, it was buttoned all the way up, just the face and that silvery, like I said, shiny, smooth face. But that, I'll never forget, you know, I remember every change. You know, I remember every pixelation what it changed to. It's just crazy. Crazy stuff. But, you know, What do you do? So the soldier, was the soldier transparent or was the soldier, you know, more of a solidified image? Both. When I see it in the daytime, like I can remember, like I said, it would peek in on my bedroom, you know, I can remember being a little kid and playing with either my matchbox cars or my Lincoln logs or, you know, blocks or something. but I'm playing with something little on the floor.

And do you remember those, they don't make them anymore because too many kids and too many parents got their fingers pinched in them. But do you remember those springy accordion gates that they used to put across doorways and stairs? And they had a specific type of childproof lock on it where you had to pull up. Well, I had that across my bedroom because we were on the second floor and across my bedroom door. And I remember playing with the toys on the floor and looking over and seeing boots and following up a pant leg and following up and seeing. waistline and then as soon as I'd get to the face, it leaned back. Like it was just peeking in, oh, okay, he's okay. And like I said, I stood up and went to the door and looked to my left because the walkway where

the stair railing was, you know, it was like a little walkway. And there's an, there's an attic there. Well, we found old combat boots in the attic when we moved. But that's kind of strange. Yeah. That we found combat boots up there. My brother did. He brought them.

He used them as his barn boots for years, but they were a pair of old combat boots. But, and, you know, another thing about that house is my Aunt Felicia, that was my grandfather's sister. She died in that house. I remember that too, clearly. I remember that something's wrong. We need to go outside. And then the ambulance, the old, look like the Ghostbusters car, is that kind of ambulance, pulling into the driveway and then taking Aunt Felicia out. She's an old old lady, you know, but taking Aunt Felicia out of the house and putting her in ambulance.

Well, I know she died in our house. Well, fast forward, the house went vacant. After we sold it to the people that bought it, they had it for two or three years, and they lost it due to taxes or something. And it laid vacant for 20 years or more, quite a long time. A couple of the horse barn caved in. You know, the dairy barn itself is gone now. But the house was there.

Well, this couple bought it and they remodeled it. Well, I became friends with them. I stopped by one day because I used to drive by the house. when I'd go up to visit. Because it was one of my favorite places to live. And I saw they were remodeling. So I pulled in there and said, hey, I used to live here as a little kid.

And they're like, you want to come in? So they showed me, you know, what they, the drywall they put in and all that stuff. And then they, we exchanged some pictures. I had some aerial photos of the whole farm that my parents had had done. You know, that was a big thing is the aerial farm, you know, photo. Right. And, uh, and, well, fast forward to face, face time or Facebook years.

I reconnected with Tanya and she's the girl that owns the house. Well, they actually just sold it just a few months ago. They've moved. But another family has it now. But I asked her, I said, did you ever have any weird things happening in the house? And she's like, oh, wow. She says, we used to hear old-timey country music and parties and glasses clinking and dancing and all sorts of stuff. And they said, especially when they were remodeling the house.

They kept it pretty much the floor plan the way it was. but they, you know, they put in drop ceilings and sheet rock and that kind of thing. And, uh, but she said that once they had the, all the remodeling done, they had, they're, she's Catholic. They had the priest come in and bless the house. And she says, we never had anything else happen. But that was a, like I said, it was my favorite place because I had a friend there, you know, I had that old man, an old guy that lived in the attic, you know, that soldier guy.

But, but, but yeah, we, uh, the house is beautiful now. I mean, it is a, I mean, it's a, it's a postcard perfect house now. it's beautiful. Awesome. But yeah. So, okay, I was curious about the, the soldier and his, you know, what, how he looked. But now this, before we move on, I have to ask you about this, this thing that crawled up into your room. Yes. Thank you. Like, all right, so I have a couple of thoughts here and hopefully it makes sense. I guess I'll start with the most basic thing I thought of when, I heard you say this.

And that is, how big was this thing? Was it like abnormally big or was it more just human size? And was it like looking like a, what did it look like it had a humanoid shape or was it something totally different? Great question. When it came over the windowsill, when I saw the fingers, I was terrified, okay? I mean, like frozen terrified when you're a kid, you know, that kind of thing. which, you know, I have a lot more experiences with that kind of frozen thing later on, you know, like I said, when something happened to me later on as a kid.

But I'd say, again, I'm three, four years old. It was probably the height of an average adult male. But it's armed. It's, I don't know, it's anatomy was different. Arms were weird, abnormally long fingers, like I said. But it didn't stay that for very long. Like I said, as soon as I don't, as soon as it come over the window sill, I know I must have gasped because, because like I said, I can remember going, you know, and then not being able to, you know, breathe. And then it started changing.

And finally, you know, like I said, I finally got the nerve to say, I still see you because the eyes. I mean, the eyes were just, like I said, hypnotic, buddy. I mean, like, just draw you right in. And the eyes would stay constant. No matter what shape it made, the eye stayed that black hollowed. I mean, you know, I mean, just, I mean, that Fred Flintstone thing, really, you know. And I can remember later on, you know, going to school and, you know, being, you know, four or five, six years old coloring books and seeing a kid in the, you know, first grade or whatever. color in the eyes of

Fred Flintstone in with a black coloring book or with a black crayon and me looking at that and immediately it took me right back to when I was a little boy, you know, or younger, you know, just a couple of years before but it was always there and like I said

I still have a, I think that Fred Flintstone movie that they made, you know, with Stephen Baldwin and I don't know, the other guy, you know what I'm talking about. Just I cannot, that's, I can't watch that movie. I just can't, it's almost too, just too weird, man. It's just Fred, the Flintstones, I used to love the Flintstones.

Not so much that, you know, I, I, I grew away from, obviously we grow up and we get away from cartoons. But Fred Flintstone was a creepy thing, man. That was just, I don't mean to keep coming back to it, but it was. It was, and it'd see him go into Mickey Mouse and, you know, I mean, and I can remember yelling out. and my mother coming to my room. What's wrong? I saw a monster, you know, or whatever. And she's like, you just had a bad dream, you know, and I'm like, you just had a bad dream.

Now, go back to sleep. And I'm like, as a kid, but I haven't slept to wink. I'm not, I'm not sleeping, you know. And that kind of thing is something that I learned later on. Like I said, that became a kind of a trigger for me to shut my mouth. You didn't see that. you know, it became like the Obi-Wan Kenobi thing, you know, you didn't see that. I didn't see that.

You know, I knew I did, but I'm just going to say I didn't. And you move on, you know, like I said, I used to stuff a lot of it. And, you know, it ultimately ended up biting me in the tail down the road, but from stuffing it. But, you know, it is what it is. So let me ask you, you saw this thing come through the window. It was the size of an adult. and it starts transforming into these kid-friendly images that you recognized. And I believe you said when it actually came in through the window,

it resembled the soldier that was visiting you before, right? Right, right. There's two ways to look at that. And I'm sure you probably explored this, but I'm just going to say it for the show's sake. One, somebody could say it's, an entity separate from what you were seeing that was trying to imitate what you were seeing to maybe get you to feel comfortable because of the fact that then it starts transforming into

images that you knew it knew it was you were familiar with and try to make you comfortable with it for whatever reason. And then there's the other line of thought that somebody could say could it have been the same entity but revealing a different side of itself to you. What's, What would you say to that? Oh, I think it was two different entities, and I'll tell you why. Looking back on it, in retrospect, again, you know, this is 44 years, 44 years a long time. But the energy I got off the soldier guy was not scary. I sensed nothing scary about it.

It was like, oh, hey, there he is. Hey, you know, and he would, like I said, he would tap me on the leg and say, you're okay you know that kind of thing and i never we didn't talk you know i whatever i'd you know i can't remember if he would come around when i was sick or you know that kind of thing because you know when i was sick as a little boy i'd get a year aches and things like that and i would offset my sleep patterns and all sorts of stuff so i don't really know all of the details about you know what it was that you know i wish i did but i the energy i got off of that soldier and i saw him like I said two, three, four times. And the energy I got off that thing were two totally different.

As soon as I saw those fingers, I mean, and I've seen something similar in movies since. I can't remember what movie it was. It was one of those off, you know, Hellraiser movies or something. You know, one of those really creepy movies. I've seen something that similar, but it was a little bit, the arms were a little bit more elongated and it wasn't wearing clothes, what I saw in the movie. but this thing was it was wearing what resembled clothes like I said it goes they would fade with when it went from being what I saw the scary thing to the clown you know it's wearing a clown suit you know and then it would go to the the Fred Flintstone orange soup black polka dot thing or black you know leopard print or whatever it was he had to the Mickey Mouse but it would like this would all happen it wasn't like real quick you know I'm talking about changing from you know and maybe I mean obviously I can't I have no sense of time, but it was like slow enough to where I could see it evolving, but the eyes would stay the same. The eyes, the eyes never lost focus on me. I'm looking at it and it's looking at me. No blinking, no, I mean, I know I was blinking, but it wasn't. There was no eyelids. There was,

you know, none of that. And to see it go from the clown to the Fred Flintstone to the Mickey Mouse, I mean, I haven't seen anything similar to what I saw until recently. in the digital age with like when your satellite dish would you know loose signal and the screen would pixelate on some you know some flat screen televisions that that was this but it was more like if you can understand what i mean by that like you know like the old movie projector frame by frame you know that sound that's what i was envisioning as it was you know it was like like a picture book like you remember when you could get these picture books and you or cartoon books and you flip through them animated and at the bottom of the of the pages the little character would run you know chase a ball

jump a fence or whatever right and but you know the the page is flipping that's what it was doing it was flipping you know i say pixelating but it was like moving so fast like it was a you know a high speed like i said like a book like a movie you know and and i didn't hear it but i could see it you know changing i don't i mean i don't know how to how to describe it better. No, I mean, that actually really, that really clears up the imagery in my head as far as what you were seeing. Now, you said when it came in through the window, you saw the one hand and then the other

and then it pulls itself up. And you said the fingers were abnormally long. Now, when you say abnormally long, I think of, when I try picturing the whole body, I'm thinking of something that is just awkwardly long with its limbs and very thin. Is that what you saw? Was it something very thin? Very thin. And like I said, when it reached over, I could see its fingers and I could see a good length of its wrist.

And then what looked like a, you know, a cuff or, you know, like a uniform jacket sleeve or whatever you want to call it. But yeah, very, like I said, it was, you asked how tall it was. And, you know, if it was humanoid shape, yeah, two legs, two arms. but elongated not like I said the movie that I that I saw something similar to had really long like you know like it was a quadruped you know in the movie that I watched this creature but the way it looked as far as the sleek skin and no no facial features and stretched I mean you could see like when the hands come over you could see the tendons between the fingers as it's you know but the fingers were I mean no finger. nails that I could see because it was dark. But the color, you know, it looked pale, grayish, whiteish color. Okay. Maybe a yellowish color type of, you know, the skin as, you know, and a darker uniform.

But, uh, but no, no hat. That was another thing that the soldier that I saw, he always wore his hat. This thing didn't have a hat. All I saw was a, like I said, look like a hockey mask. Like if silver surfer wore a hockey mask and just had black eyes. That's kind of what the face looked. like it was real, you know, I mean, you might say a gray, but I'm not saying it was a gray. It wasn't, you know what I mean? It might look similar to a gray, but it looked like a helmet. I mean,

it looked like a mask or, you know, it looked non-organic. The face looks slick, you know. So it looked like something that was added to its face, not part of its face. Right. Exactly. Exactly. No, no. You're talking about, no, it's, it's, it. It's, it's, it. It's, it. did it looked like i mean it had a chin it had the stretching here you know it had i mean it looked like a mask but i don't i can't tell whether it looked non-organic but i can't say whether or not it was because you could see it but maybe it's just the color i don't know i mean the color of its skin and the color of its face were the same color but it could have been the reflection in my room it could have been you know all i remember i don't know what i had if i had a night light

or anything, I can't say exactly what color it was, but I remember the color that I remember seeing when I had the experience was that, like I said, that white, whiteish, yellowish color, but it looks slick. There was no features per se, like no nose, no ears. It was just, and no mouth, saw no mouth until it became these other creatures. But the mouth, I can't even tell you what the mouth looked like because the eyes were so, the eyes were, oh, man, they just, I can't explain what it makes me feel like. It's almost like if you swallow a spoonful of gasoline or something, you know, that, just that, ugh, that, just that sick, I have a sick feeling from the eyes, man. The eyes were creepy.

I can understand that. Yeah. Yeah, because when you're describing this, and I'm glad you're talking about the color because the, in my mind, the first thing I think of is a completely black figure. year, but that's not what you saw. You didn't see something that was completely black, which is very interesting. And so I guess my last question that I have in my mind right now, and I still don't have the greatest picture in my mind as to what the face looked like, but that's because you're having a hard time describing what you saw in itself. But the fact that it doesn't have a mouth, doesn't have a nose, doesn't have eyes or ears.

That helps a lot, actually. So my last thought on this that I'm thinking of, and after you answer this, you can walk us into your next experience, if you'd like, is, I believe you yelled, your mom comes in, what's wrong? Did you see what happened? Did it climb out the window? Did it disappear? You know what happened?

Yeah, when it shot out the window, like, did you ever see the movie? Oh, what's it called? Where the woman's little boy dies on a plane and they try to convince her that her son never existed. Yeah, I've seen it. I forget that in the movie. The Unremembered or the Un-something. But this agent or whatever came to visit her and then he high-tails it like Hulk. You know how Hulk in the movie just jumps?

And that's exactly what it did. It's shot right out the window. Right out the window. And that's when I yelled for my mother. And I said, monster. And she said, you just had a bad dream. Go back to sleep. And I knew I was wide awake and it didn't.

But yeah, it just gone. So it left before you yelled for your mom. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Wow. When I said, I see you, it was gone. Wow. So it didn't leave because your mom was coming.

It left because it was finished. I don't know. all I know is I was glad to see it go, but I wanted my mother, you know. And, you know, I used to have fever dreams and all sorts of stuff when I was a kid, you know, that used to, I used to my brother, I shared a bedroom with my older brother. My older brother was a big, classic rock and roll guy, man. And I used to have very surreal, crazy dreams when I was sick. And I used to dream, you know, you hear the music of the radio and you dream to the music. and I used to have really deep, dark, crazy, scary dreams to Led Zeppelin music.

I'd hear, oh, what's that one song? Black Dog, Hey, hey, Mama, say the way you move. You know, and it has that, uh, uh, uh, uh, I can remember having a nightmare to that part. And I mean, it's just. That'll ruin good music. Yeah, I know. Well, I love Zeppelin today. I still do.

but I can remember, I don't know, you know, I've done a lot of studies about the pineal gland and how it calcifies, and, you know, that's your third eye, and that's the thing that, and, you know, when you're a kid, you see more things because you, I think you're, you're, you're less exposed to naysaying and, you know, that kind of thing. And I also think that as you get older, and as you're, you know, your pineal gland, I think that's how you say it, pineal gland. As it calcifies, you lose contact. You know, I used to be able to see oras and all sorts of stuff. Up until I was, you know, 19 or 20 years old. And then, you know, I've had a lot of other things that might have contributed to be losing that ability, you know. But, you know, because like I said, I had a colorful, you know, years in my 20s. The 90s were, wow.

But I have a, I go into this because I know that what I saw was not a dream. I know that it wasn't a hallucination. I know it wasn't a fever dream because I can remember having those and knowing clearly that I'm dreaming. You know, when you wake up, oh, sweating and feverish and all that was a, you know, I know I know I'm having a dream. I didn't have any of that. I wasn't, you know, I wasn't, you know, I wasn't, I didn't have any of that going. As far as I can remember, I didn't have anything going on like that. You know, who knows, I might have been completely out of my tree delirious.

You know, I don't know, but I know that it's a memory that I'll never forget. And it's been with me since then. And I've talked to my folks about it since. You know, but my parents are, like I said, my mother's kind of a realist. She doesn't, you know, I've said this before. She grew up during the Depression when, you know, monsters were hunger and Hitler. You follow? You know, you didn't have to worry about Bigfoot.

You know, we had to eat and we have to worry about, you know, socialism or, you know, the Nazi party or whatever. So, you know, my parents were always real, you know, how you were. are. Do you have kids, Tony? We have one on the way. We just announced it this week. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, you will see that as your kids get older, you tell them a lot of stuff, okay? And a lot of times you say, you know, okay, yeah, yeah, whatever, you know, because they're, they just babble, you know, kids sometimes just babble. Uh-huh. Yeah, okay. And, you know, my parents were kind of, we were farmers, you know, we had a lot of work to do. So there wasn't a lot of time for, tell me about your feelings. It wasn't a lot of that, you know. It was dry up. Come on.

we got to go. We got cows to milk, you know, that kind of thing. So, you know, a lot of that stuff I had to figure out, like I said, when I had, you know, later on, you know, when I was 11 and 12 years old and had the, you know, what, the big foot encounter. I had to learn to shut my mouth about stuff. Just, and it wasn't because there was a cover up. It was because we don't have time for this, Jason. You know, we got mouths to feed. We got wood to cut. We got, you know, we got stuff to do. So, you. You know, you. You know, a lot of that stuff I had to, you know, I stuff it and didn't talk about it, you know, because, you know, I didn't want to get my butt kicked because I used to get, you know, I'd get whooped. If I didn't do what I was told, I'd get whipped. But, and I'll tell you about that later on. I'm not getting whooped. But I'll tell you a situation that come up about going to the woods that. I mean, I seriously, I mean, I got shook right up. My dad, because I did not want to go to the woods. But we can talk about that later on. of it. Yeah, absolutely. In fact, we can start walking into that. I just, yeah, let's just walk right into that, you know, with the, the encounter that happened when you were, I believe you said, 11 or 12 years old. Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, we sold the farm and we bought my mother's parents' place. And it was a farm as well, but it was a, it was more of a hobby farm. We didn't have cows to milk or anything like that. We always had heifers and we had a horse or two. And we had a horse or two. and we'd have chickens and geese,

and I raised rabbits and guinea pigs and, you know, that kind of thing. And my brother is a farmer. He's not anymore because his knees can't take it anymore, but for many, many years, my brother was a herdsman. He worked mostly other dairy farms, but he's always loved farming. He's always loved farm animals. So we always had a dozen cows. We had a real small barn, and we had two pastures.

and we had a tree line that used to separate the pastures. There was a fence line there, but we had a line of trees, and they separated the pastures. And the fence line around most of the pasture was just a single strand of electric fence. We didn't have barbed wire. The cows didn't rush it. They rarely got out. It was that kind of thing.

And the summer before I had my encounter, we had some things happening around the farm. We had first. first thing that started happening was something was harassing our cattle at night. And we'd hear them running around and what we call bellering or, you know, bleeding. Burr, bur! And we'd get down there with the flashlights and there'd be nothing there. And we just assumed it was wild dogs, coyotes. You know, we lived right on the edge.

Our farm, we had 90 acres, but 90% of it was wooded area. It was all woods. and it went forever. There's a swamp. And, I mean, it went three or four miles deep. So our pastures would butt up against this wooded area. And we started having, first I was having my guinea pigs and rabbits were coming up missing. I had rabbit hutches that had doors on top.

They had the little latches, you know, where you lift up the thing, slide it over and drop it into the little notch, you know, and it locks it. Well, those little rods had been busted. it off the rabbit hutch. So I just made little wooden dowels out of a stick to shove in there because the doors were on top of the hutch. So if the rabbit just bumped it with his head,

he could open it up if I didn't keep it locked. Well, something was taking the stick out of the lock and taking my rabbits and my guinea pigs. And at first, my parents thought it was the neighbors messing with me, neighbor kids, playing tricks on me.

And but we were finding the animals around the farm. We were finding them dead. I found one on top of the barn roof just because it smelled so bad. I'm trying to figure out what the rotten smell was. And the way this barn was built, it was a, it was like a lean-to type barn. There's a pig barn. But it had at the lower end of the barn, it was probably four or five feet high. And then it would go up to a height of 10, 11 feet, something like that.

And I found the guinea pig on this roof. Like somebody would have been eating it. The legs had been all chewed off. And it was laid up on top of the barn. We found them in trees. And I was getting upset because I thought that somebody, one of the kids in the neighbors was, one of the neighbors in the neighborhood was killing my animals.

Because my parents had said, it's probably just the older kids picking on you. Because I was the youngest one at this point on the road. And then I had a goose come up missing. And we found him in a tree, six, seven feet off the air, off the ground with a neck torn off and legs torn off, breast part chewed up, you know,

blooding, you know, and no feathers or blood under the spot where we found it. It'd been placed there. That was weird. You know, my parents tried to say maybe it was an owl, you know, but I can't see an owl taking down a big old white goose. They're pretty brutal bird. You know, they're mean. You know, I don't know if you've ever dealt with geese,

but they're mean. And swans are worse, but geese are pretty mean. But so we had that happen. And like I said, we still had the harassment of the cows, and we had a calf. Calf wasn't very old, eight, nine weeks old, maybe. Calf come up missing. And when we went looking for it, we went, I don't know how many feet or yards into the woods, a couple hundred yards into the woods, probably. We found the calf.

And the head had been twisted right off the body. legs have been broken. I can't remember if one or two legs had been broken. I think they were both broke, but I remember seeing one of them anyways. And that neck area where the head had been pulled off, you know, the spinal cord was still there. All that, you know, there's a lot of muscle. Even for a young calf, there's a lot of muscle in a cow in that neck. And this thing had just had been, the head had been twisted off. And there's no canine bite marks or anything like that. You know, there was no, nothing. But usually what I've learned, and my head had been, usually what I've learned and my head had been, and I'm sure people that know, you know, when wild dogs or coyotes or wolves or whatever are going after livestock, they usually have bite marks on the back legs and the haunches. That's how they break them down, you know. They go after the back legs and there was none of that on this. But the most visual memory I have of that, that incident was the neck. I mean, it was just, you can see the tendons. And, you know, I mean, it's just gross, man.

But we couldn't justify it. couldn't figure it out what, you know, or explain it. So we just went with dogs, you know, must have been the dogs. And so, you know, again, this is stretched out over a summer, you know. And then one day, something again was going after the cows and the cows got out. They finally busted through the fence and a few of them wandered off. There's four or five of them. I don't remember how many.

I'm sure it's four or five. So my brother and two of his buddies. and myself and two of my friends, we grab a couple of halters and some lead ropes, and we used baling twine, you know, off a hay bales. We'd take a big wad of those, and we'd go down, and we went down the woods looking for the cows. Well, as we found them, we'd put a rope or the halter around the cow that we found, and two of us would run it up to the back up to the barn, because the woods went down into a hill, so we'd have to run them back up to the barn.

And we found all the cows but one. and my brother and his friend decide they're going to go to a different area to look. Maybe they went this way. So they went off. And while they were off looking in that area, we actually found the cow over in another area. So to the guys that were waiting, walked him up. And it was me and either one of my friends or one of his friends were waiting. And for my brother and his other friend to come back.

And also let me hear this racket, hear him running. through the woods and we could see him running through the woods and my nickname growing up was charlie my brother said that when i was little i looked like charlie brown because i had real light blonde hair and i kind of looked bald you know so he's called me charlie since i was little and my brother says in a voice you know loud and direct charlie run so i hop up we all hop up and we hauled tail up to the barn. We all get there and we're, you know, winded from running and, and they start asking, no, they ask my brother, they called him Weaver. Weaver, what's, what are you running from? And he said that we saw, this is how he explained it. We saw big monkey people. And one of them

chased us. And immediately, you know, here comes to laughter. Ah, ha, Jack thinks he's all big foot, you know, that kind of thing. And, but my brother wasn't laughing. And I'll never forget to look on his face. It was kind of like he just pooped his pants and didn't want anybody else to know it. He had that kind of look on his face, you know, and he doesn't talk about it to this day. All I have to do is say monkey people and he don't want to talk about it. And I've talked to his kids about it. He's got two boys. They're old and older and grown and have kids of their own now. And so, but we're going to fast forward to the next summer. So that was 1981 we're into now.

81 and it's blackberry picking season. I don't know if you call them in Pennsylvania. We call them or in Pennsylvania, I don't know what you call them, but in northern New York we call them black caps. Okay. You call them black caps in Pennsylvania? I've never heard of black caps before.

Well, we call them black caps because they look like little caps, you know. Sure. And we used to, we had a big, big, huge thicket of them down in the woods off of this meadow. We used to harvest wood at one end of the meadow, and we had the berry patch at the other end. And there's a big, huge berry thicket of them.

And there's also a raspberry thicket over there. And it was berry picking time. And my cousin was with me. And my cousin, he's actually my step cousin. His mother married my mother's brother, if you can figure that out. And we became friends. His parents moved to the road because it's mostly family at this point that lived on on the road that I grew up on. And he and I decided to go berry picking. And he was a couple years younger than me. So he's probably eight or nine at the time. And, so we get down to the patch and we normally we'd come down the tractor road and catch the trail to the berry patch well but we were at his house so we took the back we went the back way and this is this is uh poignant because i think that's why we had what happened happened because we didn't come the main drag uh looking back on it you know and retrospectively i think that that's why it happened It just happened to be the perfect way to, we just walked into this meadow through the woods. We had a, there's a couple of power poles that we ran. Our well was down there.

So we ran in order to run the breaker to run the pump. We had poles and we had a single line of electrical wire running on these poles. So there's a little, you know, a causeway or a little throughway there, you know, a trail. So we'd cut down through the to the meadow that way. And the way this berry patch was growing, as you know, you know, berry thickets will jet out and then they grow back in and then they come back, you know, they cove in and, you know, that kind of thing. And I was picking on one part of the patch that was jetted out and then it caved in like this.

And then my cousin was picking over here. And we're having a berry picking contest where who could fill their, we had the butter bowls, you know, the parquet butter bowls, you know. So who could fill their butter bowl, the fat. And I always make this point because if you've ever gone blackberry picking as a kid, you know, that when you're picking berries, usually one hits the bowl and two hit the mouth, you know, so we're having fun eating and picking. And, you know, we're hanging out. And, you know, it's a beautiful day and summer. And, and my cousin goes into kind of a meltdown. And he was, like I said, he was kind of a weird kid then. He wore, you know, real thick glasses. And he was kind of a, you know, kind of a goofy looking kid. And he starts going into this. meltdown like, I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home. And he was, you know, whimpering like that. And finally, after doing that, I'm like, what's wrong? You know, that kind of thing. Asking what's going on. And finally, he drops his bowl and he jets out of

there and he runs behind me. He was picking to my left. And he runs behind me and catches the trail to the tractor road and up the road he goes. And I'm like, ha, more berries for me, you know. So I get the picking. You know, I'm going to get. I'm going to win this contest. What a baby, you know, and I'm just picking and picking along and eating and working my way. And I hear a whistle to my right, which is the area that Jerry had run. And it went real loud, but it was, you know, about like that. And I turn and I'm looking and there's nobody there.

But I'm like, knock it off, Jerry, quit trying to scare me or whatever. I know it's you, you know, whatever I might have said, something like that. and I go back to picking the berries. And I'm working around this cove. And, you know, when you're picking berries, you ever blackberry picked? When I was a kid, yeah. Okay. You know, when you're picking them, you don't even have to look to know they're ripe.

You know, when you, all you have to do is tug on them. And if they're ripe, they fall into your hand. Oh, right off. When you're picking, you're usually looking for the next cluster to go after. Well, that's what I was doing. And I hear this whistle again. And as I'm turning, I'm reaching. into the thicket.

And as I'm trying to look at this whistle again, I hear, I heard the whistle and I reached my hand into this bush and I touch hair. Okay. And I always, when I tell this story, I always say I've touched everything in a very thicket. I've touched snakes, sunning, and I've touched bird nests. I've touched birds. You know, I've touched some wild stuff, but I've never touched hair before.

So as soon as I touched it, I immediately pull my hand back and I look and I see this figure and I step back. I'm probably 8 to 10 feet back from this bush and I'm looking at this bush and I can see its thigh and its calf where its thigh and its calf come together. It was squatting with its arms between its legs. I could see its massive tricep see its shoulder see the back of its head and every time I'm trying

to see what it is I'm looking at and I can't fathom what it is I'm seeing and I can't see its face and every time I adjust it would adjust like it kept putting its head into the thicket and I look down Tony and I see its little toe

see his three toes on his right foot It's three outside toes on his right foot. And I realized that they look like people toes, you know. And when I saw these toes and realized what I was looking at, my body immediately shut down. And I felt all the wind leave my body. And I couldn't breathe. I wet my pants. And I couldn't move because I know I'm seeing a monster.

and it's black, dark black, cold gray colored, you know. And it wasn't bulky, but it was cut, man. And I finally, my fight or flight mechanism kicked in. And I dropped my bowl and I ran like my cousin and ran back up the hill. And told my parents, I saw a monster, saw a monster. and I don't know what Jerry told his parents, you know, because I went straight to my house. He lived two doors down from me. And my mother is like, you probably saw a dog, it was probably a deer, you know.

And no, no, mom, no, no. And I knew what I saw, you know. I'm 11 years old and I'm smart kid. I'm artistic. I can draw, I can draw animals, I can draw, I know what it's like to draw perspective. I know what it's like to foreshorten and, you know, because I used to copy out of comic books. I knew a lot about anatomy, you know, by drawing pictures out of comic books. And I saw a massive thing.

And after that happened, I started to have nightmares every night. And the nightmare would always start out the same way. I'm trying to get to my grandmother's house who lived right next door. and there's a little cluster of trees and a little hill between our house and my grandmother's house. And there's a big foot in those woods. And it would come out of those woods. And Tony, it wasn't the big foot that I saw in my thicket. Okay. It wasn't. That big foot didn't want anything to do with me. But this big foot in my dreams wants to eat me, you know. It's got massive teeth and, you know, they're bloody. And this is what I see when I have my dreams, you know. So I would have

them regularly and all through high school shut shut up about it i no longer went squirrel hunting i no longer tracked rabbits i no longer did none of that you know so i get through my father died a year later after this my father died uh in june of 82 i it was the last day of school as a matter of fact that my dad died and um i had to grow up so i had to stuff a lot of it I couldn't talk about it anymore. When I did talk about it, usually the people that I would talk to about make fun of you. And I had a family. There was a family that used to ride a school bus.

There's a big family, a lot of kids, four or five kids. And one of the kids was a year behind me in school. She was a year younger than me. And they used to talk about critter. That's what they called them. They had one living behind their house. And they used to feed it. And they called it critter.

And it's a big foot. And you may think we're nuts, but it lives behind our house. And I could talk to them about it. And today I can still talk to her about it. We're friends. We don't talk much, but we talk on Facebook. And she's aware that I've come clean with what it happened. But the nightmares haunted me.

I went on to college. I graduated from high school in 87. started college in 87 and you know you start drinking and partying in college and and you know that became kind of my coping a cope with it it wasn't just the way I coped with that but it's the way I coped with anything that affected me emotionally death breakups you know I had her dated a girl in college and her last semester in college she was older than me. And her last semester in college, she wanted to be single. So it wasn't breaking up because I don't care about you anymore.

It wasn't breaking up because we can't be friends. It was, I want to be free my senior year last semester in college to do whatever. And, you know, I totally respect that today. But then I was livid, you know, I couldn't handle it. So I got ugly. And I made sure that that girl was glad that we weren't together anymore. You know what I mean? And, you know, this is a way that I had.

handled things. And, you know, as I had said to you before, I'm not going to sit here and blame my experiences for every bad thing that ever happened in my life because it's not, it's not true. But my way of dealing with things on an emotional level, I learned a, that's, that's how I learned to stuff stuff, you know. And if I didn't feel it and I didn't remember it, maybe it didn't happen, you know, that kind of thing. And, but you know, with this once you see something you can't unsee it you know you can't I can't you know I I see so many people on Facebook these big foot groups to say oh I just want to find one oh I can't wait to see one and I and I just shake my head I don't say anything I just know that in

retrospect what I saw that experience I know was a gift I know that now you know but um it's It messed me up, man. It messed me up. And, you know, I've told people the same encounter, as I've told you, I've told the same story. And they say, you were traumatized by that. What, you know, just and I'm like, you don't get it, man. You know, I heard, like I said earlier, I heard someone say, when they saw their Bigfoot, they said that they watched a creature leap off the page.

of fairy tale books and myths and land in their right in their front yard basically that's kind of what happened to me like I said earlier you know I realized that king Kong is real you know and uh wow you know you talk about messing up a kid I mean it did it was too much for an 11 year old's psyche to grasp completely you know I would love to go back now and and you know if I could have the same opportunity at 47 who knows you know but uh But, you know, like I said, I didn't used to feel this way. I used to think that what happened to me was a damn curse that, you know, it was the root of my demise, you know, so to speak, my downfall. I won't say demise because I'm still here, but it was the root of my downfall. But, you know, like I said, it's not it per se, but how I had to deal with it became a, you know, that's the factor. It became a easy way to, like a old comfy sweater. It's easy just to stuff it and, you know, I just put it on like an old comfy sweater. And people would say, you know, I adjust my whole life when people would say, hey, Jason, I love to fish.

I fish. If I know I can see all around me, I'll go fishing, you know. And somebody would say, hey, Jason, we're going fishing after work. You want to go? And I'll be like, sure, where are you going? And they'd say, oh, you know, if they said, oh, we're going to dock fish over here or my buddy's got a boat, we're going to go over here. you know, great. But if they said, oh, we're going to walk up the stream and fish, fish it back down in the Cherokee National Forest, nope. I'd say, oh, man, you know, I just remember my wife and I got to do something. I can't, I always, but that's how my life was when I was telling you I would compartmentalize stuff. I would, I lived my life in constant, how can I navigate around telling somebody that I saw a monster? You know, how do I navigate around that? Because, you know, especially when it comes up to something, You know, like, hey, we're having a family reunion at so-and-so park and we're going to, oh, great, man.

That sounds like a lot of fun. I think I'll stay home, you know, because there's no way. Now I do now. I go in the woods now. We hike and I go camping and I solo camp now, you know, but, but it took a long time to get there, my friend, you know. 2000 from, you know, 1981 to 2009 is a lot of years. and you know but now I have you know I have family members that want to talk to me about it which seems good and I have other family members where that I was real real leery of telling them but I had to say

I don't know if you saw this Tony but last year I did a thing I went to the Ohio Bigfoot conference last year and I and I wanted to go you know how it is at the conference everybody's got their own little deal you know they got their selling their books over here or their art or whatever I didn't want to do that. So what I did is I did a decal drive. I don't know if you saw the Bigfoot Yeti yin-yang decals at the Ohio Bigfoot Conference. Yeah, I think I remember that last year. Well, I designed that decal and I made 60 of them and I said, and I sold them on Facebook.

And I did a help a hippie get to the Ohio Bigfoot Conference drive is what I did by a decal. Well, I've sold a ton of those, okay? but I've got one on my window. I'm still selling them. In fact, I have to take up some up to the Expedition Bigfoot Museum tomorrow. I'm going up there tomorrow to drop off a pile because they sell them in the gift shop up there. But, you know, just that decal getting me to the Ohio Bigfoot conference, I was going to tell you about the synchronicity and how my life has fallen into place for this thing.

years ago, as I said, in order to deal with this Bigfoot thing, I didn't know anybody else other than the family on the school bus. It had any idea or had any inclination or any belief in what I was trying to talk about. So I reached out, believe it or not, I didn't know that Bob Gimlin and Robert W. Morgan were two totally different people, okay? I had seen a show or watched a movie with Robert W. Morgan. And in it, I think the Patterson Gimlin film was featured. And I got Robert Morgan and Robert Gimlin mixed up. Well, I wrote a letter to Robert W. Morgan when I was like 14 or 15 years old. I found an address in the movie of the production company that made the movie.

And I wrote this letter. Well, you know, time flies. Here we go. Blah, blah, blah. I go to the Ohio Bigfoot Conference last year. And I don't know, if you remember Saturday, remember we got last year, it got heavy rains. Okay, it was wicked rain, cold rain, win. Well, Robert W. Morgan was there, and I didn't know it, but he was outside to do book signings.

He were under a little canopy out there. And I was walking by and I saw his audio tapes and his books. And I said, Robert W. Morgan's here? and the lady was sitting at the desk is like, yeah, he's up there in the lobby talking to somebody else up there. So I ran right up and I told him, hey, I'm like, do you remember? I sent a letter to you years ago, blah, blah, blah, but of all people to run into in the lobby, I ran into Robert W. Morgan, the same guy that I had reached out to when I was a kid. I just thought, that is so, you know, here's the full circle coming back around again, you know. That's really cool.

And then to meet, you know, Bob Gimlin, I've got become good friends with Bob. he came to Georgia last year and camped with us in October, this past October. He doesn't do much camping anymore. He ended up staying, I think, in a cabin nearby, but he didn't sleep on the ground with the rest of us. But he did hang out with us all the weekend and all night, you know, around the fire. And it's just interesting when I, as I mentioned to you prior to starting the interview, how my life has fallen into place as a result of getting right and saying, hey, look, I may look like a dude with three eyes, but I have seen Bigfoot.

I've seen them. They're real, you know. They are not a figment, you know, and they're alive and well and thriving. People say, well, how does Bigfoot get from one side of the country to the other thinking it's one creature? You know, that bothers me tremendously, okay? And another thing that bothers me is when somebody watches the Patterson Gimblin film and refer to the Bigfoot as a E, that kind of bothers me, too, a little bit. But, you know, they, like I said earlier, you can't unsee these things. But I learned that I can't walk around with my head in the sand anymore.

I got to talk about it. And, you know, you can accept this of me. You like everything else about me. I'm just saying, you know, I'm talking to like if I'm talking to a friend, hey, you like everything else about me. But I'm going to go ahead and tell you something. You might not like me after this or you might like me more. But here's what happened.

And, you know, my girlfriend might tell you. you that I tell everybody that wants, if somebody mentions Bigfoot, I'm going to talk about it. Of course. I don't talk to everybody, but, you know, if somebody talks about it, you know, I get questions. I have a decal on my, I have a couple of Bigfoot decals on the back of my car. And every once in a while, it's bound to draw up conversation, hey, what's this? What do you got this on your car for? And I tell them, you know, but it's done me a lot of good.

It's been very therapeutic as far as speaking about it to people. And just getting it out there to let, just for me, you know, it's, I equate everything in recovery. You know, like I told you in my 20s, I was a, you know, I was a, I'm a recovery. I'm in recovery. So I was a quite the indulger in the 20s. Anything I tried twice and liked pretty much, I was, I was into. And so, you know, my 20s were, were, let's just say, they're colorful. In my 40s, I, I still say that, but I take everything.

learned about recovery and I apply it to the big foot world too is I realize that like I said before secrets keep you sick if I if I don't talk about it I can't get it off my chest and what I have found is that the best thing you can do is talk about it get it out of your head get the crap out of your head so you can make room for more crap you know what I mean I have to and that's kind of how I look at I have a select few friends that they are my recovery group and I know that I when I go can't with them or if we, you know, we chat, you know, via comments on a post on one of the groups or whatever, I know that I can be myself and I don't have to worry about, you know, putting up a front or pretending enough somebody I'm not. I don't have to worry about that anymore.

Yeah. That's a big, that's a tremendous, that's a tremendous weight off your shoulders. You know, being in recovery, I've been able to apply that to my recovery principles to a lot of different things in my life. But what I realized, as I said earlier, my encounter was a gift. And if I can talk about it and share it with somebody and inject the light and try to help somebody, even if it's a, hey, man, some empathy, hey, I relate to what you said. I went through the same thing. That's the reason why I do these interviews and, you know, share this stuff.

It isn't because I want to talk about my story again because I know it. You know, I've I've told a lot more people here in the last eight or nine years that I did my whole life. But I've talked about it a lot. But the main thing is, is I want to get it out there because I don't want anybody to do what I did, stuff in and suffering, you know, because it's not a, to live a secret life. You can't be true to yourself, man. Right. And, you know, we talked about it. You know, I'm on a, I'm on a spiritual journey as well.

And, you know, that's what I try to hold on to is I try to trust God, clean house, and help others every day. And both in the recovery world and in the Bigfoot world is I have to trust that not everything that comes out of somebody's mouth is a truth. You know, not everything you read on the Internet is true, you know, and I have to clean house, meaning I can't take in those negative thoughts. You know, I can't get caught up in the hype. I can't get caught up in the science versus woo, the, you know, that. I can't get caught up with that. And I got to help others. You know, there's a lot of people that I have met.

And I'm sure doing, I don't know how many interviews you've done so far, but the people that you've talked to regarding Bigfoot or Sasquatch, I'm sure you've talked to a lot of them that have been affected adversely as a result of it. Right. And, you know, I've been able to help others that have been in my same shoes because, you know, You know, we're all crazy, Tony. We're just, we're lucky. We're not all crazy on the same day, brother.

You know, it's that kind of thing. Yeah. So I have to, you know, I, it's a fellowship of sorts where I have to, you know, I feel, oh, what's the word I'm looking for? I'm not an obsessive about it, but if I know somebody's struggling with it with this, because it will leave, it does leave a scar on you when you, I mean, like I said, unseeing is, that's easy. close your eyes, but it's still there when you close your eyes, you know, and it's inside of you. And it's something you can't shake, you know, you can't. It's always with you. So if I can help somebody deal, hey, I'm all about it.

Right. Because it helps me. I keep what I have by giving it away, you know what I mean? I hear you. So let me ask you back to your encounter. There's two things that I am curious about. The first thing, I guess I'll ask is, did you ever go back to your brother and tell him that you saw it too? And what did he say?

Yeah. I went back up there. Oh, I'm trying to think of what year it was. 2003, 2003. It was after 9-11. I know that. I went up there and I had talked about a little bit about what my brother had happened. with the, we saw monkey people to my wife.

She's my ex now, but, and my ex mentioned it to my, to my brother. So I hear you saw Bigfoot. And my brother kind of looked at her and looked at me. He said, I guess Charlie told you about that. I said, yeah. And he was very upset with me. And I actually, in this interview, I used his name. And I don't usually use his name.

I usually use something else, a different name, you know, but I don't know. It doesn't matter now. But my brother, he don't talk about it. My brother is, he's not a talker, man. He's got his own demons. He spends a lot of time with him, you know. So he don't, and there's a reason for that, too. I don't know what it is exactly.

But I've talked with his kids about it. I went up there in 2012, and he was living with his girlfriend at the time. My brother was, and he had rented his house to his, son and, well, they're still together, but his son and his girlfriend, and she was pregnant at the time. And sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee with him. And I said, hey, did your dad ever mention monkey people? And my nephew says, yeah, he used to tell us about it when we were kids. I said, what did he tell you? And he said, well, just there's certain parts of the woods he didn't want us going into because he said he couldn't guarantee whether or not we could stay. safe or not is about all he would say things over there dangerous i don't want you in there that kind of

thing and so then he starts to talk about it a little bit more my nephew and he tells me that he won deer season he had a deer out in the tree draining it and um something lifted it off the hook and carried it off didn't drag it off they carried it off and then he had a 50 brand new 50 pound bag of dog food that he just picked up at the co-off gone taking right off he set it out there one He went out the next day to feed the dogs. The bag is gone. And he thought his neighbors were stealing from him. And I said, anything else?

He said he had several dogs at the time. The dogs would stay on the edge of the yard. Because my brother's house is right probably 200 yards from where I had my encounter. It's not far at all. But his yard butts up against the woods. And he said the dogs, they go in the woods during the daytime. But at night, all they do is they pace the edge of the yard and they just bark and bark and bark. And then so, you know, we went down to the woods.

I went down to the spot where I had my encounter for the first time in 2012 since it happened. And the wooded area has taken over the meadow. Woods not harvested out of there anymore. So the meadow's a lot smaller than it used to be. I'll even, I have a shot of the area via Google Maps, a screenshot of it. Well, I'll show you exactly where my brother's house is and where the encounter is. but you can still see the meadow. It's just a little dinky thing now.

But there's still the tractor there. And there's a spring. Like I said, we had our well house down there. Well, they don't get their water from there now. I think they have city pipes or county pipes or whatever now. So they don't get their water from the well anymore. But we found what looked like a kid's barefoot footprint in the mud surrounding the spring. And I asked my nephew, have any kids down here?

He said, there's not been. kids down here since you were a kid probably you know that kind of thing meaning no kids don't go down there but we found a print full you know toes everything and i have a picture of it somewhere i took a picture of it but my sons were with me too i had both my oldest boy and my youngest boy at the time my oldest boy was 16 or 17 at the time and my youngest was five or six but um that was interesting to have them with me you know but uh but back to your question i know i got off the off the track a little bit. My brother doesn't talk about it. No. I got you. And I don't, he let me know pretty much 10 years ago or however long it was. Don't talk about it around him anymore, you know, that kind of thing.

But at least I had some validation from his sons, you know, that he knows, you know, he mentioned it since, you know, it happened way back when, you know, but. And the woods are still there. Another thing that happened is a few months after my nephew and I had had that discussion about the deer and the dog food. He sends me this picture where my brother had a sidewalk built, and then he had these little cedar trees lining the sidewalk on each side. And something had dragged another tree out of the woods, tied it to one cedar tree, tied the root ball to the other cedar tree across the sidewalk, like a gate almost, you know, or a fence. And my nephew took a picture of it and said, hey, do they do stuff like this? And I'm like,

like, well, they've been known to. You know, they do stuff with trees all the time. He's like, what are they trying to say? And I said, I don't know what have you been doing. And he's like, what do you mean? I said, you know, they live in the country. They like to sit off the back porch and shoot guns and that kind of thing. I said, you've been doing any shooting?

And he said that he had gotten some new turkey loads or something. And he had been trying some turkey loads a day or so before. I said, well, that's probably the problem. I said, don't shoot down in the woods anymore, you know. So that was the advice I gave him. and I don't know, you know, but they ended up, his girlfriend, that she had to move. She told him, we got to get out of here. She feels like something's always looking at her in the window.

And, you know, she was pregnant and she was having a little difficulty with her pregnancy. So they didn't want to, you know, stress her much, you know, regarding, you know, stress her anymore. So they moved. But they were kind of freaked out. Now, that was, like I said, that was 2012. So that's the most recent activity that's going on as far as I know on that property. but there, I think there's, if you could see this area. And like I said, I'll send you the screenshot of the area, the wooded area, dude.

It's a, it's like a big foot paradise, man. It's all you could ever want down there, you know, plenty of cover. No traffic at all other than like deer season. You know, there's some hunters. The people, somebody bought the property years ago and they turned it into a, basically a hunting camp is what that property is. It's posted. You can't go down there.

My brother still goes down there every once in a while and checks on things that he has around and about in different areas. But he don't get on the property much because it's posted. But it's, like I said, there's still, if you saw this area, you'd be like, it makes complete sense because it's, I mean, it's covered in nothing but woods and water and animals. And I mean, it's, it's, it's mecca, buddy. I mean, there's a lot, there's a lot of areas in this country that are quote unquote, what you said, Bigfoot Paradise. I mean, a lot of people don't quite gather how vast this country is. For instance, when I'm talking to somebody that's, say, in, I don't know, Oregon or Washington State on the other side of the country, when I say Pennsylvania, a lot of people know about

Pittsburgh, a lot of people know about Philadelphia, and they don't realize that there's a four to four and a half hour drive between the two cities. Two of them. Yeah. It's all. It's all woods. It's all mountains. And there's nothing there. And so, I mean, I just think that there's a lot of people that just don't quite grasp how vast this country is and how much habitat there really is. Now, with your experience, you did a great job describing what you encountered. The one thing I want to ask you is when you heard the whistling, do you think it was another one trying to distract you so the one that you eventually did touch

could get away and that just didn't materialize for some reason for them? Yeah, and I've really speculated a lot on this and again it's complete speculation. I always stress that but it felt like exactly that this one was trying to get my attention

so this other one because we snuck up on it and we basically corralled it it couldn't go anywhere and as you know Barry thickets are full of briars and you know and they grow thick together. You can't just run through them, you know. But I think so.

Now, I was interviewed, like I said, we talked about it. When I talked with Will and his co-host at the time on that show, they had the idea that maybe it was trying to call others in. Like maybe, you know, they kind of gave me the idea, or they kind of speculated that maybe it was, I don't want to say it, but hunting me, you know, maybe. But I didn't get that. I didn't get that job.

First of all, this thing was not aggressive at all. It snorted a couple of times, you know, like, you know, that kind of thing. But it didn't, it wasn't aggressive. I would love to have the opportunity to do it again. But just thinking about it really spooks me. You know, it's a very emotional thing for me. Sure. Because I can just sit here and describe it.

And it puts me right back to, you know, 11 years old. But, yeah, I think. That's what I think. I think that it was trying to distract me so this other one could get out of there somehow. And I just happened to be in the perfect place, the perfect time. And, you know, it is what it is. I mean, what can I say? I think there's a whole clan down there, to be honest with you.

And I think that, you know, this one that I ran into, I don't think it was an adult. I think it was big, but it wasn't bulky. You know, there wasn't a lot of girth there, you know. But I've had people ask me, did I smell anything? I don't remember smelling anything. And I would remember that, I think. Asked me what it felt like, what the hair felt like. That's a long time ago, but it felt like horse hair to me.

It felt like a horse mane is exactly what it felt like. It was soft, you know, it was soft to the touch, which makes me think that maybe it was a younger. Because I would think they, just the videos, you know, there's a lot of videos out there, a lot of footage. And, you know, you have to be able to discern what's real and what isn't. But the ones that I see, like the Freeman footage, the way that creatures' hair appears in the Freeman footage is similar to what I saw in color. But as far as texture, it didn't look as, I don't know, rough, I guess. You know, sometimes you see them, they look a little gnarly, you know. This hair didn't feel gnarly.

It felt clean. You know, it felt like a horse mane. But it was, you know, I mean, you tell people that, yeah, right. You know, I mean, a lot of people say they've seen them. I haven't heard many people say that they've touched them. I've heard a few say they've been touched, but not touch them back, you know, that kind of thing. I read an encounter story on Bobby Short's website. I don't know if you know that one.

Bigfoot Encounters.com, I think is what it's called. and it was a Texas story about a trucker who saw a juvenile in the middle of the road. And he slowed down and he bright lighted and honked his horn. And the little one wouldn't move out of the road. And then an adult came out and tried to get the little one out of the road. And the little one was doing like kids do like, I don't want to. You can't catch me. That kind of thing.

And while he was watching this, he looked to his window on his left side. And there's a female standing there looking right at him. And she reached in and touched his beard. He had a big beard. He said the way he described it, he kind of looked like Jerry Garcia. Yeah, but a little bit more rounder, you know. By the way, my brother has the same type of beard you got, by the way. Is that right?

Fereder, too. So is my son. My son's got a big beard too. Love the beard. But he said that this thing grabbed him out of his face and kind of pulled his face to him and gave him a look in his eyes like, thank you for not running over my child. That kind of, you know, he kind of gave that kind of a communication, so to speak. He said, and when she pulled her hand back, before she got her hand out of the window, he reached up and touched her palm.

He said, and it felt like a baseball glove or it felt like leather, you know, felt like a baseball glove. But if you find that story, you know, I love hearing stories like that. You know, I don't think, I don't think they're an animal, number one. I think there's a whole, something else there. I don't think they're a dumb monkey. I think there's a soul there. And I think there's empathy there. And I think just like humans, there's good ones and there's bad ones.

And I think that, you know, according to what part of town you go or what part of the country you go, some are more aggressive. Some don't want anything to do with us. I think that's why they walk away as fast as they do. I think the ones that aren't intimidated or don't necessarily don't want anything to do with us are the ones I don't want to be around anyways, you know, I think about the grassmen or not the grassmen. The Janosquah, I think that's how you say it, Janoskwa? Genoskwa, yeah. They sound aggressive, man. And, you know, I have friends that are natives.

I have, I was adopted into the Mohawk Nation a few years ago. I have a Mohawk brother who lives on a reservation in northern New York. And that word is an Iroquois word, Genoskwa. I think it means stone giant, I think, is what it transfers to or translates to. Okay. But they're aggressive. I heard they've been seen with spears and clubs and, you know, those are weapons. I don't want to run into those, you know.

I don't want to really run into any of them, be honest with you, but it doesn't keep me from looking. You understand? And, you know, coming into Georgia, I've lived in Georgia for four years now. There's an area south of Atlanta that we camp at that is a hotbed, brother. I mean, they're all over that place. And I go camping. Holy cow, I go camping. You know, that's a big thing.

thing for me. Camping with a group was how I started out, but now I've gone solo camping with my dog. I always feel safer with my dog. I figure, you know, my tent's not much, you know, safety in my tent, but at least I got my dog, you know, I gave up the, I'm working on giving up the false sense of security. I think I might start camping in a hammock maybe, because I'm tired of sitting up tents, but there's no safety in tents, you know, you're a bag lunch if you want to be. or in certain situations, not that you want to be. Easier to carry off. Yeah, exactly.

But like I said, I've learned a lot about these things. And the more I learn, the less I know, I'm sure you know exactly what I'm talking about. Just when you think, aha. So that makes sense why that might be the way it is. And then something else pops up and goes, well, but there's this over here. Right. And, you know, there are all these factors like we talked. talked about when you go down that rabbit hole, man. It's not just a single tunnel, man. It branches.

Yeah. And there's some of these branches are kind of spooky, kind of creepy, you know. Yeah. When I was when I first started my group Pennsylvania Sasquatch Research, that's when I really entered into the whole cryptid, paranormal, the whole community. I was never involved in it online or anything, but I started that group. And when I look back at some of the things I posted when I first started, I was very ignorant. And I thought that this was something that could be solved relatively quickly. And I just, I was like, if I get, if I just get the proper people around me, we'll knock this out of the park by the end of the year. You know what I mean? And so, uh, I look back at those things And I was like, wow, I really was ignorant because as times going on, it's gotten so much deeper for me.

And now I really, like, I used to be staunchly, flesh and blood, that's it, you know, period of the story. You know, I couldn't fathom anything else. But as I started looking into other things outside of Bigfoot and I started seeing patterns that relay back to Bigfoot. And I started thinking, okay, well, I'm not saying I'm not flesh and blood, but. that makes me say, hmm. And as times going on, it's just my, my knowledge and other topics has increased to the point now where I think there's a lot of things going on with Bigfoot. And I think that there's a lot of things that correlate with the topic. And everybody's got their own views. Everybody's got their own opinions, and I think everybody's clear that I'm open to hearing other people's

a point of view. Like, that's just who I am. And I'm very open to hearing what people think. But for me, I think there's a lot of things going on here that we don't have answers to. And I think that it would behoove us to keep an open mind about the topic. Absolutely. Yeah, you know, when I first, how I ended up, embracing this thing initially was, you know, I was still in my marriage with my ex-wife and we were in intense couples therapy where, when I mean intense, meaning she would go one day of the week. I would go in one day of the week and then we would both go one day of the week every week. You know, it was that kind of deal. And on one of these individual sessions I had with the therapist, I was coming off the residual, whatever you want to call it, from a, nightmare I had had a day or two before because they stick with me.

You know, when I had those nightmares, I wake up and they're still there that, you know, I still feel them. And so I say to the therapist, I said, hey, look, you know, I got to talk to you about something. It has absolutely nothing to do with my marriage, you know, so I spilled the beans of what I was dealing with. And he told me to see if I could find. He said, you'd probably benefit from finding maybe somebody that might have had a similar situation encounter and talking about it. So for the first time at 40 years old, first time ever, I Google Bigfoot, okay, and that's how I got into this thing. But I was telling you earlier about applying recovery principles to the Bigfoot world. And, you know, when I first got into this

field, a field, like I'm some kind of researcher, when I first got into this field, when I first got into this topic, there's this subject. I was the same way. I was very, man, I want to solve this thing, you know. And it reminded me of a time when I first gotten into recovery. And I had probably, I don't know, six, seven months into recovery. And I was a very, um, spirited recovering guy. Okay. I mean, I was all energetic and always, you know, talking to talk, but not necessarily walking the walk, okay. And I had a guy that had some, some clean time, as we call it, under his belt, several years. And he looked at me and he says, you know what, Jason, you'll go far in this program. You want to know why? And I said, yeah, why? Because I thought, you know,

here's my ego's getting stroked. Exactly. Oh, I'll go far in this program. How come? He says, you'll go far in this program. You know why? I'm like, why? He says, because you have so far to go, is what he told me. And that's how I, same thing with the Bigfoot thing, just like with you, you realize that, you know, same thing. You'll go far in this because you have so far to go. and it really is. I mean, you know, it's a play on words, but you understand what I'm saying with that is because, you know, when you start, you know,

you get focused, when I first got focused on figuring out what it was that I saw and all that kind of stuff, I fell into a bad group. I fell into a group of guys that were pro-kill and we're wanting to find out locations where they might possibly be able to bag one. And, hey, you know, do you feel like giving up? Oh, wait, I'm in the wrong type of group.

I'm just trying to figure out how to stop the nightmares. You know, I don't want to go hunting one of these things, you know. So I had to back off a little bit, and I dropped off the W, W, WWW for a while and tried to figure out if I could find somebody locally. And I did. And, you know, that led to other things. And, but, but it's funny how, how we first get into this thing. We talked about it before, you know, you say, everything makes sense. Oh, my gosh.

They are. They exist. And, oh, my gosh. And there's this. There is DNA evidence and oh, they poop. Well, we can find poop too, you know. Right. Man, this is a breeze.

It's taken how many hundreds of years and figure this? Man, you know what? If I had enough money and the right few guys and enough time, I saw this thing in a year. No, I'll get the Nobel Prize. You know, that kind of thing. Or not the Nobel Prize or any, you know what I'm saying. I'll get some kind of recognition. Sure.

But no, no, it's got a lot of, there's a lot of, there's a lot of, factors. And there's a lot of factories working against you. And you know what I mean by factories. I'm talking about disinformation and, you know, that kind of thing. But wow. Yeah, man. That's, that's, that's, yeah, that's exactly my thoughts on it, man. So, well, Jason, listen, before we get out of here, do you have any parting words as to, you know, people who might be looking into this topic? I have a lot of people that listen to this show that aren't necessarily bigfoot people, but they hear about the bigfoot stories, just like they hear about paranormal stories in my show. People who are getting intrigued by the topic, by listening to people like you

on my show, what would you say to them? The newbies. Well, you know, there's a lot of stuff. It's kind of like, uh-oh, you still there? I lost you on video, but I still hear you. Hold on. There you go. All right. There you are. There's a book that came out a while back. And I actually save the quote because I'm not too bright on remembering words. But there's a book that came out a few years ago that Autumn Williams wrote called Enoch. You remember the story of Mike and his friend Enoch? You've been friends with him in Florida for years, you know, the Bigfoot. I'm best friends with the Bigfoot.

But, you know, some give that book credibility. Some don't. I'm a big fan of that book, especially in the back of it. there's a whole Bigfoot one-on-one. Really, there's a lot of information in the back of that book if you really want to do that. But there's a quote from it, Tony, and I have it right up here. I'm going to read to you what it is. And then I'll tell you what I have to say.

It says, it is our lack of understanding of what is possible that has caused us to spend so many years chasing our tails. Now, I say that because, you know, I have friends in the science corner, and I have friends in the Wu corner, and I respect and love them both. equally, you know, but, you know, in this year, I don't know if you've heard this thing about about a united Bigfoot community, you know, this has been the, been the motto or the mantra for the Ohio Bigfoot conference. I got my t-shirt and sticker the other day, and I love that idea. I think if the science guys could drop their guard a little bit and say, you know what, I'm going give this a listen. I mean, you know, not everything I believe, how do I want to say this? Not everything

that scientists have told me, number one is the truth. Number one, okay, and I can't believe it all, you know, but what I'm trying to say is if we could all get on the same page and put all of our resources together, we would no longer be walking in circles, you know, we'd all be walking in the same area and have a little respect for each other, you know, I see so much, like I said, I see so much bashing of people that say they have Bigfoot teachers that come and visit them and you know, whatever. You know what? That's your reality, man. As long as it works for you and it doesn't make you a bad person, you know, hey,

I'm all about it. I can't say that it's not true because I don't know. I don't live in that situation. I don't live in their shoes. But what I know is that, you know, by attacking each other, science versus Wu or Wu versus science or whatever we're all you're negating everything you're negating research you're negating no there's so so much look at how much stuff we learn from Native American legends which you know years ago were fairy tales and myths you know they were stories that that you know been passed on from generation to generation well now we're finding out that there's a lot of truth in these stories you know there's a lot of truth in the

woo. There's a lot of, and there's a lot of woo in the world. And I don't believe in, it's, I use the word paranormal, but it's, I don't believe in that world, that word, really, especially when it comes to our world, because it's our world, man. I think it's all normal. It's just, it's a, it's just a, um, it's just a matter of perspective. Yes. Does that make sense? So be nice to each other, man. And, you know, if you believe in science, I'm not, longer going to be, or if you believe in the woo-woo, I can no longer be your Bigfoot friend. I have a problem with that, you know, because Bigfoot is a small part of my world. I mean, it makes up, it has a huge impact, but it's a very small notion of my world.

I don't want to, you know, I want to be your friend, whether you think I'm nuts or not, I still want to be your friend, you know. But, so, you know, if I'm not on the science side of things, you know, don't hate me for it. Don't, you know, because you miss out on the miracle that way. You know what I mean? There could be a miracle there. You could be, you know, you never know, and to automatically discount or discredit somebody because they happen to see something different than what you normally see, you know, I think that that's wrong. So that's what I have to say about that, Tony.

Be united. If we're going to be a united, Bigfoot community, then be united. Love thy neighbor. Be, love that. Learn. Shut your mouth and open your ears. You know, that's why God gave you two of them in one mouth. You've got to do more listening and talking and, you know, bashing people.

that's not the way to do things, you know. Anyway, that's it. So your parting words is a message of openness and positivity. And I love it. Openness and positivity. Yeah, I like that. I love that, man. That fits me. Yeah.

All right, man. Well, Jason, I really appreciate you coming on tonight and sharing your encounters with us. And I know people are going to love hearing you talk. So thank you very much. Well, I appreciate it, man. It was fun. I enjoyed it. Absolutely.

Take care, man. All right. You too. Bye. Bye. Bye. Well, that's the show, everybody. I really hope you enjoyed it.

always. And as a reminder, I just want to remind you once again, next week, we're going to be having L.A. Marzuli on talking about Nephilim, his own personal UFO experiences, and other things like that. I hope you guys tune in next week for that show. It's going to be awesome. If you have a story or an encounter you'd like to share with me, please get a hold of me. My email is The Confessionalspodcast at gmail.com, or you can go to the website, the confessionalspodcast.com. Hit the connection section. and you can reach me that way as well. Either way works for me. And if you get a chance, go to iTunes, hit subscribe, and leave a review.

And I just want to let you guys know that Jason really came through for us today. I had another show planned and it got canceled. And instead of me rearranging the rest of my schedule for future shows, he came on last minute, recorded with me, so we could have an awesome show today. And a way to thank Jason, I want to play one of his original songs that he recorded right here on the Confessionals. Jason, thank you so much, and I hope you enjoy hearing your song on The Confessionals. Until next week, take care, friends. The sun came up on me, killed a battle with sweat and blood, this being my heart, broke through,

I joined up in, because I wanted to fight and my friends did too. They both died at Shalom. Me, I'll die here all his own man can see my mama's big. Yesterday I saw Genevue. His white horse, looking down and he tipped his head and said, Give him head. I gave him my best rebel yell. Today I'm down in this muddy rut.

Oh, canteen to quench my third. It kills me first. It hurts too much to take a breath. I close my eyes. The voice is sweet. The sun went down on me today. I had the grave. I'm the basement stay home.

From the nation. By the train station, there's a bullpenet sign. Says try to be patient. Don't forget to choose sides. We got the loudest explosions you've ever heard. If I didn't, this just are the carnival. Japanese. Us from the kitchen that serves dinner the most.

First by the dark of the moon. I met this one guy years ago, and I can't even think of what his name is, but he wrote one song that John Michael Montgomery had recorded, and he made enough money off that one song to pay his mortgage on his house. Oh, man. To pay the rent on his office that he had for a year to buy a computer or a digital recorder and something else, because this was before, you know, way before internet and anything like that.

You know, there was computers, but it wasn't what it is today. And he, at that point, when he sold his first song, he quit his job and said, I'm a songwriter now. That's what I would like to do, you know, but I'm not motivated enough to sit down and write. You really got to sit down and write. I used to be, and I lost a couple of notebooks full of, I don't know how many songs. And I kind of got frustrated and, I don't know, I disappointed in myself and I feel like, God, I don't want to do that again. You know what I mean?

Yeah. But I got to get, I'm compelled to. So, you know, I got to do something. Yeah, man. Like, just, man, I tell you, like, all right, so I do this show, right? And I get in, I'm in communication with a lot of people. And one of the things that I commonly hear is people say that, you know, they really enjoy the show and they have this passion to do something. And they just never got around to doing it. And they admire that I'm doing what I'm doing. Yeah, man. And I tell people, it's not too late. Like, it doesn't, like, like, like, like, I. Just a couple weeks ago, I was talking to a guy, I forget where I was, but he was like in his late 60s and he was telling me some things that he wanted to do. He just never got around to it. And I said, it's no, you're not in the grave, man. You're not in the grave. Exactly. Exactly. No better time than the present. And you're not past your prime. You're never past your prime.

No, that's right. Look at, I mean, I'm a big, I'm a huge Johnny Cash fan. I don't know if you know that. I'm a huge Johnny Cash fan. I could tell. Yeah. I mean, I'm like, I always say this. I'm like, you know, Jesus is here. Johnny Cash is right about there. But I also always say that, you know, it's not a coincidence that he and Jesus have the same initials.

Yeah. I mean, I'm kidding with that. You know what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, I think about Johnny Cash. I mean, he was, I mean, he wasn't real old, but he recorded clear up until, you know, two days before he died, man. Is that right? And see, that's kind of like this thing I've been doing with this, these.

little live Facebook song videos. It's not that I'm trying to go, hey, look at me. I'm trying to unburied talents. I've buried a lot of talents over my years. I've got kind of a colorful past. So, you know, a lot of stuff went to the back burner because life on life's terms kind of took over, you know? Absolutely.

And so I told myself, I made a commitment to myself several months ago that I'm going to try to learn at least two or three new cover songs a week or write. one new song a week. Well, I'm learning a snot out of a lot of covers, you know, but I'm not writing much. So, so, so, so, but I got to, you know, I got to do something. I got to, you're doing it right. You're doing it right. Exactly. I, I, I tell people all the time, like, I, when I talk to people, because blogging is a real popular thing. I'm not a blogger. I'm not a writer. Uh, my wife, she writes, you know, for a living. And, you know, I'm not even a big reader. Like, I, I, I love, I love a books offer, it's just I don't have the, I don't have the mind to complete a book. I love starting

books, but I don't finish them. I feel yeah. But I tell people that are into the whole literature thing and they're like, I want to start a blog. I tell them, the best way to start a blog is to put it on Facebook. Don't worry about making a website that you post these different blogs because then people have to click the link and go to your website and people are lazy nowadays. We live in a now society. Everything is immediate. If you don't have it right there in front of them, they're not going to look at it. So, you're right.

Facebook is the best platform for that where people with blogs can just write a blog, copy it, paste it in their status feed, post it on their Facebook page, and right there, boom. Done. You have all your friends that you would say, hey, can you check out this link to my blog? Now you don't have to say that. You just put it right there in front of them. And it's the same thing you're doing with the music. You don't got to make a website or go to.

to any other third party website to post your music, put it right on Facebook for the people who actually know you to hear and listen to because when, because if, if you, if you know, if you're trying to pursue a music career or whatever, but like, like, I was just saying, like, if people are good enough, if you're good enough at whatever you do and the people that you love and that know you like it, they'll share it. You know what I mean? They're more prone to share it than somebody who doesn't know you. And so Facebook is such a great tool. And I think it's, It's so underutilized. Like my Facebook page, I've turned into the confessionals pretty much.

I mean, people who I know in real life and stuff that aren't into what I do, like, too bad, you know, because I mean. This is me. Yeah. It's this is me. And before I started doing all this stuff, I, um, I had maybe about 600 friends on Facebook. Well, now that I'm doing all this stuff, I have like almost 1,400 friends. over half my friends on Facebook are into the cryptid stuff, the paranormal stuff, and they're the ones that want to hear this stuff.

So, you know, I'm basically tailoring my Facebook experience for those people because they're the ones that, you know, want to hear what I have to say anyways. That's right. You know, yeah. And, you know, if you've got 1,400 friends and they share it or they have 10 friends that share it, and they have 10, I mean, and that's these things, especially these things that go viral. I just watched this. I hadn't even heard about it yet before, but I don't know if you saw this video that's going around yesterday about this waitress at this restaurant in Chicago, I think it is,

called Ed Debevix or something. It's kind of like a Dick's Last Resort where, you know, all the wait staff insult you and, you know, you go in there. It's one of those, you know, you be prepared to be insulted if you're going to Dix, you know, that's that kind of thing. Well, that's that kind of restaurant. And this girl, she's an actress, but she's worked as a waitress at this place for 11 years. Well, she went viral and now she's getting, you know, roles. They're talking about

developing a cartoon solely based around her waitress, you know. Really? It's pretty, pretty amazing. Yeah, you just never know. You never know who's listening. Yeah. And, you know, this is what, I had a friend in sales tell me a long time ago that everybody you need to know is just, or everybody, how do you, how do you say this? Anybody you need to know is just two phone calls away from somebody you already know. You just got to figure out what the network is, you know, and it's so true. And life, I mean, life is funny, man. I mean, it is especially, you know, I'll talk about this during the interview, but, you know, I struggled a lot of years, Tony, with, with being, just being a, not being a person, but being an adult, you know, I struggled with, uh, drug abuse as,

when I was in my 20s. You know, I did a lot of bad things in my 20s that I paid for in my 30s. And now that I'm in my 40s, I've learned that I don't want to do stuff in my 40s and I'm going to have to pay for in my 50s or my 60s. You follow.