The Confessionals - RELOADED | 170: Bigfoot In Rural Pennsylvania

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

On Episode 170, guest Jeff joins The Confessionals Podcast to share his bigfoot encounter that happened in my home state of Pennsylvania! The experience pushed Jeff into a new reality that he never sought out or wanted. Jeff eventually told some of his family about his bigfoot encounter, but his son never completely believed him - until one day when, not far from the Philadelphia area, his son had a sighting of his own!Hurricane Helene Relief Efforts List: https://www.theconfessionalspodcast.com/helene-reliefSasquatch and The Missing Man: merkelfilms.comMerkel Media Apparel: merkmerch.comThe Confessionals Members App:Apple Store: https://apple.co/3UxhPrhGoogle Play: https://bit.ly/43mk8kZBecome a member for AD FREE listening and EXTRA shows: theconfessionalspodcast.com/joinAFFILIATESGo Silent with SLNT Faraday Bags: https://alnk.to/clXuRY5EMP Shield: empshield.com Coupon Code: "tony" for $50 off every item you purchase!SPONSORSSIMPLISAFE TODAY: simplisafe.com/confessionalsUNCOMMON GOODS: uncommongoods.com/tonyCONNECT WITH USWebsite: www.theconfessionalspodcast.comEmail: [e-mail] to the Newsletter: https://www.theconfessionalspodcast.com/the-newsletterMAILING ADDRESS:Merkel Media257 N. Calderwood St., #301Alcoa, TN 37701SOCIAL MEDIASubscribe to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/2TlREaIReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/theconfessionals/Discord: https://discord.gg/KDn4D2uw7hShow Instagram: theconfessionalspodcastTony's Instagram: tonymerkelofficialFacebook: www.facebook.com/TheConfessionalsPodcasTwitter: @TConfessionalsTony's Twitter: @tony_merkelProduced by: @jack_theproducer

Merkel Media 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 This was all circulating around the base that a giant had to kill

but no one was supposed to talk about it. Boney fingers reach up underneath the door, curl up to grab it, and then disappear. When he came over to me, dude, he slithered over to me. Giant comes out of the cave

and they're all frozen. And he starts running and firing at this giant. With a giant move, he's got a spear in one hand and he's running really fast. And spears, Dan, and holds him up like, this.

Somebody else. Shoot them in the face. Shoot them in the face. They basically decapitate them. Something cool. I look over and there are two. Push and because I know I'm seeing a monster. Okay.

I reload it. Yep. Welcome to the show. Everybody, you're listening to The Confessionals. I am your host, Tony Merkel. Thank you for being here. If you've had an encounter or story you'd like to share with me on the show, go ahead and shoot me an email.

Or go to the website, the confessionalspodcast.com. hit the contact section and you can reach me that way as well. Either it works for me, just get a hold of me. And if you want some extra shows every week on Thursdays, we release member only episodes on the website. So if you want some extra shows every week, go to the confessionalspodcast.com and become a member today. Now, we got a great show coming up here for you.

We have Jeff coming on, and Jeff had a Bigfoot experience right outside the Philadelphia area, not very far from where I live. And it kind of rocked his world where he had to face a new reality that he never thought he'd have to face. And then years down the road, his son who didn't really believe him a whole lot, didn't really believe in Bigfoot, had his own experience in this area as well. And so it's a great show coming up here for you guys. But before we get into it, I want to let you guys know that I should have told you last week on the website, the confessionalspodcast.com,

on the homepage, you'll see a video interview featuring me through Cryptovania TV. They brought me out. It was a fun time with these guys hanging out with them. We went out squatching after the interview, but the interview itself is about an hour and a half long, and they asked me some great questions that nobody's really ever asked me before. So if you guys want to listen to that and watch that, go to the confessionalspodcast.com right after this show. So without any further delay, let's go. Okay, today we got Jeff on the show.

Jeff, how you doing, man? I'm doing great. How are you? Doing good, man. So you emailed us a little while back, and you had a Bigfoot experience here in Pennsylvania. Actually, you have a few that you'd like to talk about. And I'm always up to hearing people's stories about Bigfoot in Pennsylvania since I'm in Pennsylvania as well. And actually, you're not too far from me.

So, but we'll keep my exact location between you and I. So we won't tell the whole world. But if you could, just kind of walk us into your first experience. I know it happened a while ago and stuff, but it's very interesting. Well, it was a while ago, but I, you know, I remember it like it was. This was back in 2002. happened in Lycombe County, Pennsylvania, on the west branch of the Susquehanna River. I was going on a little, like, over a couple, you know, like a weekend camping trip with a friend.

And while there, he was going to teach me how to flint nap, make arrowheads, you know, to mark. And while there, we would walk the fields at the bottom of the mountain. they were freshly plowed fields and we looked through those fields for arrowheads. I collect Indian artifacts. So that was the whole reason to go there. I was about to deploy with my National Guard unit and he thought I needed some time off before we went to just have some fun and stop worrying about being deployed and getting all your finances and order and all that things that go along with that.

So, you know, that's what the whole plan of going there. I wasn't not a, a Bigfoot believer at the time, or, you know, one of the researcher people or anything like that. It had nothing to do with Bigfoot. I'm a hunter, and I liked being outdoors a lot. And, you know, I've never, ever even thought about it before this happened. Anyway, the first day was very relaxed, and I had a lesson in it. And then it was great up until the moment when I put an inch-long sliver of obsidian into the palm of my hand and cut myself pretty severely. So that was the end of the lesson for the dead stitches, but he put a butterfly on it.

And we decided that we'd walk these fields and look for some artifacts. It was early summer, late spring, somewhere where the corn was maybe knee-high in one field. maybe, you know, two, three inches in the other field that we were looking at. So, you know, we walked the fields, and I found a couple broken arrowheads, nothing special, and I was getting really bored. So I had looked at the top of graphical map, and I seen that there was a creek coming into the river just down from this campsite a little bit, and I thought, you know, let's walk up that creek. I'm really good at finding them along creek beds.

I found hundreds of arrowheads that way. So he agreed to go up. He never did that before. And he was just starting to collect arrowheads at the time, but he was really good at making him. It was really good. You know, he gets $200 a lesson to teach people how to do this. It was interesting, and he was interested in the real artifacts,

so we kind of hit it off. Up this valley we go in search of these artifacts. not exactly sure how far we were up the valley. From looking at the top of graphical map, I think he got tired. Maybe, maybe it's been a mile up the creek. He got tired. It was really hot that day.

It was probably like 90 degrees. And I had my canteen of water with, and he probably didn't have anything. I'm not sure if he did or not, but I know he was getting dehydrated. He had enough. We weren't finding anything. I mean, not a ship, not a flake, nothing.

And usually you can, you know, you can find artifacts along any creek in Pennsylvania because the Indians, you know, used every good source of water. You know, that was where they camp close to them in their hunting camps and their villages were down at the bottom. So we weren't finding anything, and he got tired of that. And he said, I want to go back to the camp. camp and make something to eat and blah, blah, blah. So I said, all right, I'm pretty determined to find something.

I said, I want to get to the head of this creek because I know within 50 meters of every creek, you know, where the spring is, where it first comes out of the ground, there's always an artifact camp there. There's always an Indian camp there, or you can always find artifacts at almost every spring in Pennsylvania. So I was determined to find the head, and I wasn't sure where it was because, you know, on a top of map, it's not always accurate where the blue line starts and stops. A lot of times what it shows you on the map, the spring is actually, the head is actually a little further than what the blue line is.

So I'm going up the valley, and it just started getting so thick. He turned back and I was alone, and it just started getting thicker and thicker with rhododendron. It eventually became like a prison where I was stepping over, through, under, over, trying to get through this stuff, trying to stay on the creek bed became impossible. And I got to, you know, and I was hearing things at the time. You know, I just thought, you know, wrote it off as deer. I hear deer kicking up every now and then. This is a good thicket. I might see a bear in here, you know, anything.

But, you know, those things didn't really bother me because I hunt deer. and I've seen them, you know, up close, you know, there was never, I've never really any concern, you know, they usually don't want you, they run away. And, you know, there's no really reason to be afraid in the woods normally. So I'm driving on, like I always do, you know, looking at every sandbar, trying to find an arrowhead, couldn't find anything. And eventually I started, you know, like I said, it was getting so thick. I was just becoming a struggle. And the last sandbar I checked, brushed aluminum can on it.

I don't know if there's a beer can or soda can. I don't really remember anymore, but I thought, oh, geez, this creek must go all the way up to the highway and go underneath it to have picked up that beer can because this was a pretty pristine area. It's pretty remote. So I'm thinking, and I can hear a highway way off in the distance.

It sounded like it was maybe two miles away, but you can hear tractor trailers pretty far when you're in the mountains. I thought, you know, I'm not prepared to go that far. I only have maybe half a canteen of water left and maybe one little snack in my little daypack. So I'm going to get out of this mess that I'm in, that I'm climbing through and struggling to get through this road at Denry. It's just a tangled mess. It was horrible. So I remember seeing on the topographical map that there was a logging road to my left up out of the,

up out of the creek area, you know, up where it levels off a little. And that's what I was going to do. I was going to make my left turn out of there, just go uphill until I got out of the thicket, and up to that logging road. And I was going to go back down the mountain and go home. Creek area, and I found the logging path. And right there, there was a little area where you could see when they blasted in the logging path many years ago that they pushed a little pile of dirt up.

And I have found arrowheads in those piles before because usually when they're making those roads, they usually go over a nice flat and they camped on those nice flat areas. And subsequently they push the arrowheads away with the dirt and they're in these piles. So I thought, okay, I'm going to check this pile out before I go back. And I took off my pack and I'm digging through this pile. and, you know, it was only, you know, maybe two feet high piled up, and I just dug through that quickly. And there was nothing in it, no chips, no nothing. There was two little northern ringneck snakes in it, and that was it.

So I tried catching them, they got away, and that pissed me off. And I thought, you know, I've had enough. I'm not feeling all the greatest. You know, I was just, I don't know, I was just feeling uneasy, and maybe it was dehydration. I don't know what it was, but I just didn't. didn't want to be there anymore, and I thought, you know what, I'm ready to get out of this hill. So I put my pack on, and I turned around, and I took about two steps down the road. I was looking on the road, because, like I said, sometimes you see them on the surface.

The ground's been eroded away, or it's been, you know, pushed with a blade or whatever. And I'm looking, I took about two steps onto the road, and I hear a noise in front of me, and I look up and there this damn thing is. It's about maybe no more than six. yards away and it instantly turned to its right and started running. Well, I didn't get a real good look at it, you know, the whole body, you know, from like the waist up because it was into that, it was probably Laurel there. It was probably Mount Laurel. It was into the Laurel really quick. I mean, this thing was so fast you would not believe it. It was like a flash, but I did see it for

about eight seconds running. And I could see the legs under the laurel because the deer had everything browsed off to about maybe five feet high, as high as they could reach. And as high as they could reach down was clear, except for the stems and stuff. But above that was pretty thick with leaves and things because stuff had leafed out by then early summer. It was pretty great. At first I thought it was a bear.

one. And as it, I, you know, I stood there, I froze, and as it was running, I, you know, I could focus on the legs, and I could see these two enormously muscular, huge, livered legs. And they were stepping up. And like I said, and I don't even know how to explain it. It froze. And I swear, a thousand thoughts went through my head and that's, and I, I don't know if I was going into shock from what I was seeing, but I felt like I was going to throw up, really nauseous and scared. When this thing started, when this thing got through the mountain laurel and got into the tangled road to Denver, where I just came from, it, you could hear the crashing and the snapping of the branches. It literally sounded like a bulldozer.

Busting. I mean, it was so so loud. I think that's what frightened me the most. Was the sound of these things snapping and crashing. I just came up out of there. I know what that stuff's like. It's very flexible and hard to break. It's very fibrous

rhododendron. Or rhodotendron down by the Creeks of Mount Laurel was up on the hill. So I hear this snapping and crashing. And that's when, you know, the fear really set in. I was just about ready

to dendron like nothing in seconds like a freight train out of control you know it sounded like a train wreck and it got down into that creek bed and immediately went up the other side of the mountain it got

steep right there on the other side I can remember that on the topographical map that it was you know I could that's how I found where I was on the top of graphical map by the terrain features And, you know, that was part of my job in the Army, Matt breeding and all that stuff. And I'm pretty good at it.

So I found, you know, he went up that, I couldn't believe it, and was going. And I'm still standing there frozen in my tracks. And I'm starting to, the panic is really, and the dread is starting to overwhelm me. And I just thought, you know, the only way out of here is in the direction where that thing was just standing. I really don't want to run that direction, but I know any of the direction I go is going to get me lost and get me further away than where I need to be.

I'm getting all... Hair standing up on my arms thinking about this damn thing. So, you know, I just had running as fast as I could. And, you know, I didn't want to see this thing. I wanted it to be a bear in the worst way, but I knew that it wasn't. And I knew it wasn't a man in a suit because a man in a suit can't run

35 miles an hour through the woods busting through trees and like it was nothing. And I've seen bears run through the woods many times. You know, they run. They can run really fast and they barely make a sound. They could have weaved in and out

of that stuff like it was nothing to them. This thing didn't care. And I'm standing there and I'm thinking, if this thing wants me, I'm dead. There's no way I could ever outrun whatever the hell that is. you know at that time I wasn't like a you know I didn't really follow the big foot story so I wasn't all educated on the subject I remember my dad took me to see the Patterson film back in the 60s when I was a little kid

and I think it aired with chariots of the gods like a before the movie the feature it was like little shorts or whatever and my dad was a game warden all my life and we hunted since I was little I was old, you know, I've been hunting since I was old enough to carry a gun and I don't remember dad ever even talking about Bigfoot after that I don't remember ever asking them about it either but you know like I said I wasn't

one of these people that run around the woods clacking sticks together and making whooping noises and all that I was just a regular guy out looking for arrowheads and I've seen this thing. And I, you know, and it just scared me. I always thought I was a really brave guy. You know, I was an infantry soldier. I've been in the military since 1986.

I finally got my discharge in 2006. But nothing during my military career. And believe me, I've done some, you know, pretty dangerous stuff. And been in some hot, hot areas, you know, I got. the hostile fire pay under my belt. I was never that scared overseas or anything. But this, I was not ready for. I was not prepared to deal with what I saw

because I didn't believe it. And still today, I don't want to believe it because it ruined hunting for me completely. I really like hunting, but this thing is in the back of my mind every time I go out in the woods at night. And a lot of people, you know, ridicule me for believing in this thing.

The few people that I've managed to tell, you know, the tinfoil hat, it's like, look, it's all fun in games until you actually see something. I said, I didn't believe it either, but I'm telling you what I saw. And I said, you know, I'm at the point where I really don't care if people believe me or not. I'm not there to convince anybody anything about anything.

You know, I don't care. I just know what I saw personally, and I know how it affected me. I had bad dreams about it. It seemed like on the anniversary, close to the anniversary, that time of year, late spring, early summer, I'll have a bad dream about one of these giant things, whatever the hell they are. Jeff, I know that you said you were having these bad dreams, but let's rewind a little bit. What happened once you ran to safety? Did you tell anyone? I didn't say anything.

When I finally ran down the mountain, I was running so damn fast. I didn't even know I could run that fast. I was, I think, 42 at the time. And I wasn't in the greatest of shape, but I wasn't able to pass my physical fitness tests in the military. And I was on a detail guarding the nuclear power plant in Limerick at the time. You know, I'm carrying a full combat load at work and a fully automatic machine gun. You know, they don't just give 210 rounds of live ammo and a machine gun to just anybody. And they're certainly not going to let me do it if I tell anybody about what I just saw.

You know, Mountain gained my composure, because I knew if I kept running as fast as I would, I was going to fall and I'd probably break something and maybe not be able to get out of there on my own power. You know, so I'm thinking, you got to slow down, you got to slow down. You're going to fall these rocks. I'm jumping over logs. I'm going like a damn deer through the, managed to gain my composure and slow down a little bit. And then eventually I just slowed it down to a nice little jog where I was able to start

thinking clearly again and regain my composure and get out of this panic mode that I was in. But I did run all the way down to the river. I didn't stop for a second. I didn't look back one time. I, you know, like I said, it literally scared the, you know, the crap out of me. And I got down to the river and my buddy asked me have I found anything. I just looked at him like, I didn't want to talk about it. And it's going, no, I said, no, I didn't find nothing.

Nothing up that valley. The Indians didn't use that for some reason. and if these things have been around as long as the legends say they have, I can see why the Indians didn't use that valley because from these researchers, I told him my story, and he instantly came back

with a previous sighting from five years earlier, almost identical to mine at the exact same spot. And that just blew me away. I was like, oh my God, because I never made a formal, report on it to one of these websites or wherever. You know, I kept this to myself because I had a job where I had to carry a firearm, and I didn't want to jeopardize that.

My military career, you know, I wanted to get promotions. You start talking like that in public. My God, you'll never get promoted. They'll take your damn weapon away from you. And they'll put you in a rubber room. I pretty much kept it to myself for a long time, but I'm retired now. I'm 57 years old. You know, I told my kids about this thing, and they said, you should tell your story, Dad, before.

You know, people need to hear this. And I'm thinking, it took me a long time before I was considering it. And then when I, you know, I seen a newspaper article, online article from somewhere out in western Pennsylvania about a big foot siding out there. and people were leaving the usual comments, you know, the, you know, your crazy type of comments and all that stuff and mocking the subject. And I made the mistake of leaving a comment. I said, yeah, it's all fun in games until you have 160 yards in front of you. Well, that started a rash of contacts. I probably should have never said anything in social media because a bunch of people were, you know, trying to get in touch with me.

and it just, you know, they're in further away from telling my story. Because, you know, like I said, it's not my subject. It's not something I want to believe in. I certainly never want to see another one. Not like that. It didn't make any aggressive moves towards me. It didn't growl.

I didn't smell anything. Typical things that you read and hear on some of these nonsense videos and stuff. I didn't hear no wood knocks or whatever they call them. None of that. But I've seen this thing, and I know it was real. I know there's no way a man could move through the woods like that in a gorilla suit on a 90-degree day, or any day for that matter. So, you know, I kept it pretty much to myself. And when I seen your link on this researcher's site, I thought, well, maybe I should tell you.

somebody about it. And, you know, maybe it'll help some of these guys that are interested in the subject. They asked me if I wanted to go back to that valley and show them where it was. I said, I'd never want to go back to that place again. This is no joke. This ain't funny. It ain't fun. Scared to living shit out of me.

You know, it would take an army. I'd have to take my whole platoon with me up that valley before I'd want to actually go up there again. And I would never go unarmed. I never go into the woods without a firearm. but, you know, I carry a pistol when I go in the woods. I'm licensed to carry a firearm. But, you know, now that I think about it, this thing was big, my handgun would not stop that if it was charging me.

It wouldn't stop a bear. You know, it might, they barely stop crackheads. You know, police shoot these guys that are all hopped up one mess. They put five, six rounds in them and they're still coming at them. Yeah. So I'm thinking, you know, there's no way. I'm going to stop, you know, it's kind of pointless, but it makes me feel better. I feel a little safer. And, you know, this, this, probably as long as I am tall, I'm down, I'm a little guy. I'm only five,

five, six, five, five, something like that. And these legs were every bit as tall as me, because I was, you know, picturing the browsed off trees and how high that was, that was about, you know, up to my nose at least. and I can't tell how big the rest of it was. When I seen the rest of it, it happened so fast. And, you know, I don't even know if I really saw the face at all. I saw the side of the head. And if I did see the face, I totally, you know, blanked it out of my memory because I probably didn't want to remember it if I did see.

But I remember the head kind of reminded me of a, you ever see a coconut still growing on the tree? Yeah. Where they're still inside that outer, the whole thing, the big thing in the tree like that. The top of the head was kind of like that, you know, kind of like a coconut. That's how I can describe it. And the hair was relatively short on the head. It's probably four inches long. It wasn't real, real long.

And it wasn't real matted looking to me. It was, you know, could have been very dark brown, almost black. I would guess this thing had to weigh at least. I'm judging from bear and stuff, experience with hunting bear and gutting bear. What a big bear looks like, you know, I know what a 600-pound bear looks like. This thing was probably double that.

It was probably 1,200 pounds, 1,100 pounds maybe, and 3, 8 feet tall. I can't be sure, because it's kind of hard to judge heights, because I didn't stop to look at any branches where I, you know, I didn't do any comparisons or any of that stuff. I was getting the hell out of there as fast as I could. So I'm going to, it would have to be, it had to be probably close to eight feet or more, at least.

Maybe, maybe more, maybe 10 foot. I don't know. Like I said, it just moves so fast. It just, this thing picked up speed and in such a short amount of time. And, yeah, that's pretty much my story on that. Well, I appreciate you coming on the show to share. your story and you gave such great detail on what you saw, man. It definitely sounds like it's something that really affected you and impacted you on a deep level. How long ago was this for you

that you experienced this? This was in 2002. I remember the year because it was right before I was going to deploy overseas. And my buddy thought it would be a good idea. My buddy thought it'd be a good idea since I wasn't going to see them for a year. And we were pretty tight, you hanging out and going looking for arrowheads. And I thought, he goes, bright idea, let's go on a camping trip, so he relaxed before. You know, because things were happening at the power plant. We were getting some genuine threats there. And I just wanted to get off that detail because I wanted to deploy with my buddies.

You know, I was on state active duty guard in the power plant. That was Operation Noble Eagle. And then I found out that my home station in Coots Town, Pennsylvania, was about to deploy. I asked to be relieved of that detail, and I took a little break, and I was going to have a good time before I was gone for a year. It was fun.

It definitely sounds like it's something that really affected you. And, you know, it's interesting. You mentioned Custown, Pennsylvania, because that's actually where I grew up. Really? Yeah, yeah, I grew up in Cutsown, Pennsylvania. And then I moved to Hamburg in 2009. So my father was a game warden in the Hamburg area.

Really? Yeah. See, I have a good friend in the Charlottesville area who had a Bigfoot encounter in Game Land 110. Oh, my. No. He actually saw it on Christmas Eve 2015. I think it was, yeah, it was 2015, and that kind of launched him into the whole Bigfoot

topic. He was up there hiking one. one night and, you know, Christmas Eve and he saw this, uh, this white bigfoot shoot across the landscape and it, and it just shot him down this whole research rabbit hole. And, you know, as many people do, where they either dive into the topic full on or they kind of resist it, kind of like you did, where you didn't want to talk about it. You just kind of let it go. Uh, it seems like these creatures, when people see them, have, uh, extreme effects on people. Either it's an extreme effect of We're extremely going to jump into research and dive into this, you know, head on or we're extremely

going to ignore it and pretend it never happened. That's what I did for a long time. I tried to forget about it and pretend it never happened because in that again while I'm out hunting was ruining hunting for me. You know, I didn't want to, I used to have no problem walking up into the mountains at one o'clock in the morning for miles by myself in the dark, you know, to get to my remote spot before it got light. Now, forget it. I usually wait until it's just about getting light and try to creep in. And I'm out of the woods before it gets dark because this is in the back of my head all the time.

I don't want to see this thing again. Yeah, it's understandable. So your son had an experience and this experience that he had, I'm assuming it's more recently and it actually is a lot closer to where you live now and actually where I live. So if you could, just share with us what your son experienced. Well, I'll try to give some backup on the story a little bit to, you know, see, kind of piece this together. Um, you know, I live in a fairly remote area. We don't have any traffic lights or street lights or gas stations or anything in the township. It's, it's, uh, you know, it's, uh, It's wooded, mountainous. People that live near rural mountains call them hills,

but people in Berks County call them mountains. Hilly and wooded and lots of water, and it's a protected area against development. Most of my neighbors have at least 10 acres. Some of them have 500 acres of forest, undisturbed. It's gorgeous here. It's beautiful. The water's protected federally.

against, you know, people. Like Nestle, they tried to come in and buy land here to pump all the water out. We got rid of them. So it's a real pristine area. It's beautiful. I don't think it's been disturbed much since the 1700s when they came through here and did a lot of charcoal burning for the forges, the iron forges. In the 1700s had we had some iron forges down in the Loboxville area back then.

So there's some charcoal hearths and stuff like that. But other than that, the folks are pretty much undisturbed. Some people log every so many years, but it's still undeveloped. And, you know, a fairly nice home and, you know, some beautiful scenery, and I like to spend a lot of time outdoors. I have a big covered patio in the back, and I sit out there at night, and I make a fire in the yard. I have a big fire pit.

You know, the typical redneck fire pit, bring us rocks out in the middle of the yard. And, you know, I like to sit on the patio and have a couple of yinglings and the Katie dids and the tree frogs and whatnot and the owls and the coyotes and all the good stuff of, you know, the country life. And I guess this was about the last week, one of the last weeks in August when I was out there and I heard this sound echoing up the valley. this, it was a whooping noise. It was like, whoop, whoop, whoop. I'm thinking, is that a coyote? That doesn't sound like a coyote. Now, all of a sudden, on the other mountain, I hear this,

whoop, whoop, whoop, it sounded like five or six of them whooping, the same sound, but, like, answering back. And I'm thinking, I'm thinking, my first thought was, these nuts that go out whooping in the woods at night, you know? The reason that are people that like to chase these things, And I'm thinking, oh, my God, I got bigfoot wackos right down the street from me, right? You know, I shouldn't call them wackos, but, you know, they're really, really into it. And I'm not.

I'm just, I'm just not going to go out there and smack sticks together and whoop in the woods. So I heard this. And it was loud. It was really loud. I mean, this must have been maybe a mile down the valley that I heard this coming from. And, you know, when I first heard it, I thought coyotes. But then when I listen to the replies, I'm thinking, no, I hunt coyote. That's not coyote.

You know, I've never heard that before. And then I, you know, it intrigued me. So I contacted a researcher about it. And I said, do they make noises? And he sent me a link to something on YouTube. And what I listened to sounded like coyotes to me. And I'm thinking, well, that's not what I heard. And so I never really said anything about it.

And, you know, I thought, well, it kind of sounded like something you'd hear on some jungle documentary, you know, in the Amazon rainforest or something. It was like a primate sound. Like, I don't know, like orangutans or monkeys or something. It was weird. And I knew it wasn't coyotes. And, you know, at that time, I was like, oh, I was probably nuts, you know, these people that are really into it. That's what I thought, you know. It's like these big for researchers out here hollering in the woods.

That's probably what I heard or some kids partying or something like that. And I kind of like blew it off and didn't think anything about it. So a couple days go by, I think there's maybe two days go by. And, you know, on my ATV path, behind my house, I have a lot of woods and I have logging roads that I take my side by side on. and then we use it to hunt and pull firewood out of and whatnot. And there's the one spot in the road right before I turned back onto my property, right behind my one shed, where when I turn my wheels, it tills the ground up, and like a rototiller, if you ever been on an ATV or side by side, you know, when you turn the wheels and them things,

they really tear up the sod. You don't want to drive them on your lawn because it'll destroy it. So anyhow, the ground was real loose there. and the rest of the ground all around it was pretty packed pretty hard and and you know rocks on the surface and you know you don't usually see any footprints or anything there like that so i was walking by because i have a little bench there in the woods at the top of the mountain where i usually have my morning coffee before i start my day i kind of like yum retired now and i like to ease into the morning i don't like to jump right up and start working and doing whatever and so anyhow i'm going out to have my coffee and I look down and I see this big imprint in the ground. And I'm thinking, well, what the hell is that? And I walked over to it and I looked down at it and I'm looking at it and I'm thinking, geez, it really looks like a human footprint, but it's awfully big. And I put my foot next to it and I size of my foot. And I'm looking at it and it looks like I can see a heel and I can see toes.

I'm like, no, this can't be. And I'm thinking right away somebody's trying to prank me or something like that, but I really haven't been talking about Bigfoot to anybody in the area or on the researchers. And so I went in and I got my son and I brought him out. I said, I want you to look at this. I'm not going to say anything. I want you to look at it and I want to know what you think when you see it. And he looked at it and his jaw dropped open.

I said, does that look like a boot track to you? No. I said, what's it look like to you? He said, a barefoot human. But okay, I said, you see toes, right? Yes. You see a heel mark in the back? Okay, I'm going to go get my camera and I'm going to get a tape measure and I'm going to try and get a documentation. If I didn't have any plastered to do one of them casts that those guys do. But I don't think it would have turned out that great anyhow because it wasn't a real clear track, but you could see what it was. So I measured it. It was about 16 inches long. It was about almost eight inches wide. And I did find another track about four feet away. I measured it. I could only see the back half of it, the other side, the other foot. So the track I took a picture of was the, and the half of the track was the left foot. But I only got from like the heel up to about the middle of the foot because the toe part was on solid ground again where it wasn't the

softened, you know, tilled up by the tires. It was on rock was in there, and you could see the heel. The full tried to reproduce it with my muck boots. I put my muck boots on, and I tried to make a track next to it, and he was like, no, that's

not, it's a lot smaller than that. And you can see the tread very clearly from my boots, and then I, you know, I noticed in the heel of the track, there was a nut there that was pressed into the ground a little bit. And you could actually see where the heel of the foot kind of wrapped around the nut,

you know, and just made imprints on either side of it. I don't know how to try it. It was like a pad. You could see it. I'd put my foot on it, and I crushed the nut with the heel of my boot. So, and it left the track in the track. So I'm thinking, you know, this might actually be something. You know, I might, you know, my kid says it looks like a human footprint.

And I don't know anybody with 16 inch feet. And so I didn't think anything about it. Jeff, I know that you said that your son doesn't really believe in these things, but at what point did he become swayed to these things actual existence? Right. My older son, he's a non-believer. And, you know, when I told him the story, you know, he just listened to it and probably laughed and never thought anything about it again. Well, he works nights at the local grocery store.

And it takes him about a half an hour to get home. It's done at midnight. And he was coming home two nights after I found the track. He's coming home. And he gets up onto the top of the mountain here. and he starts coming down through the woods, and he sees something in the middle of the road. Now, he told me, he goes,

you know how in the headlights, you can see the road real clearly to a point, and then out ahead of your headlights where they're shining, you can still see a little bit. That's where this thing was at first, and I didn't even, I wasn't sure if I was even seen anything at first. He said, I can't, you know,

you couldn't tell at first what it was, But then when his headlights got right on top of it and lit the whole thing up, it turned and bolded. And he said it was like a flash how fast it was. And where we live, people aren't going to be standing out in the middle of the road, 1230. It's remote and there's nothing around and there's no streetlights. And it's time for people to be jogging. And I said, well, what was it? Was it a deer?

And he didn't want to even talk about it at first because he was rattled. And I said, he goes, he was dark. He's being really vague. I said, well, was it big? He goes, yeah, it was big. I said, well, how big? Big than you? And I said, well, that doesn't tell me much, you know.

I was, you know, I was like pulling teeth from a chick and trying to get answers out of this kid. And I kept drilling him, you know, I said, well, was it, you know, what color was it? It was dark. And he was kind of getting irritated with me because I was asking him these questions. And I said, well, was it on two legs or four legs? It was on two legs. And I said, oh, now we're getting to somewhere. It was on two legs? Oh, yeah. And I said, was it covered with Harry goes, I don't know. It was dark. And when it ran, I slammed on my brakes.

because you've got something on two legs. And a lot of deer across the road, a lot of deer. I mean, we sometimes, I've seen 80 deer in that one field at one time already. Remember that one year when we had that blizzard on Halloween storm? I've seen 80 deer in that field. So that gives you an idea how much of a population of deer there are in this area. It's ridiculous. Every night I have at least, you know, a dozen deer in my front year.

yard. People spotlight them and shine them in my windows, and it drives you crazy because there's so many deer here. I wasn't seeing deer for weeks when that stuff was going on. Nothing. It was weird. You know, I even threw apples out for them. Not one apple would disappear. That's unheard of here. You know, I have an apple tree. The deer usually come and take them. Nothing. They didn't touch them. Not a single deer in the area. And I just couldn't figure it out. why. And then when he said he saw this thing, I'm thinking, that's a major crossing right there. It was standing right where the deer crossed the road.

It was standing on the damn road, probably waiting for a deer. So he slammed on his brakes, scared him pretty bad. He was shook up when he came home. He didn't really even want to talk about it. And he wasn't a believer up until that point. But he's pretty convinced now. Yeah, I was going to ask you if he's actually a believer now or not, so I guess he is. Well, I think he's on the same page I am.

I'm much happier, not knowing. Yeah, but you don't have much of a choice now, huh? No. No. You know, like I said, I do my best to put it out of my head while I'm out hunting. I know from my first experience that if a thing wanted to kill me, it surely could have, and it didn't. It wanted nothing to do with me. It didn't want me to see it.

It didn't want me to, you know, I don't know if these things have been shot at by hunters or whatever, but it had a genuine need to get out of there as bad as I needed to get out of there. Couldn't run fast enough away from each other. Now, are you a little surprised that they are on this side of the state the way they seem to be? For the longest time, I didn't think that they were on this side of the state. and then when I looked into it more and more, I started finding more and more people claiming that they've seen it out here to the point now where you're just like, yeah, they're out here because not everybody's freaking lying.

Yeah, I figure, you know, a lot of them, YouTube videos and stuff are hoaxes and stuff like that. I assume that right from the start. And, you know, I've been, you know, I know how to interrogate people and tell of their lying. And, you know, some people have tells, and you can judge people's body language. language, whether you think they're telling the truth or not. Some people, I believe 100%. Some people,

not so much. Yeah, it's an unusual subject. I've been thinking about it more and more lately. And my personal thought is, if these things are anything for that matter, if they're a physical being where they have to eat, if it's not some kind of supernatural thing that we don't understand, whatever it is, it's real. And if they have to eat, to keep on the move, very nomadic, they're not going to live in one place. They can't afford to be found out, hunted, or noticed. If they want to remain completely, you know, hidden from humans,

they've got to be on the move all the time. They can't stay in one place too long. And, you know, because use up all the games. game in that area. They're going to scare all the deer out of the area. You know, just their presence. You know, the thing I noticed, normally the deer are very tame in the early season, in the summer. They're not really afraid to you. They'll come right up in my yard while I'm grilling deer on the grill. They do it all the time. I have pictures. Tons of pictures. I have a picture of five bucks standing 20 feet away from me under my apple tree while I'm grilling.

deer steaks. This year, if a deer saw you, it bolted instantly, even in the early season. That's natural during hunting season, but usually during the summer they're not that skittish. And I noticed they were very afraid this year. For some reason, I don't understand it. But if, like I said, if they feed on deer, they're going to have to keep on the move and get into fresh areas all the time because, you know, you deplete the game. and if they're smart, like people say they are,

they're not going to want to deplete the game. They're going to want to go to a fresh area, take a deer here, take a two deer here, keep moving, and remain unseen as much as possible. Now, you know, I said something to my neighbor one time. That was a big mistake. And I said, about what happened.

I said, I think I saw something one time. In fact, I know I saw something. But, you know, he gave me a little bit of, me the tin hat thing and he gave me the question. Well, how come no one's ever found a dead one? I said, I can't answer that question, but how often do you see a dead bear? Yeah. No. Well, we have thousands of bear in Pennsylvania. How many people see bear? I mean, compared to the number of people and compared to the number of bear, most never get to see them. You know, and even hunters. I don't know how many years I spent $20 on a bear. I mean, how many years I spent $20 on a bear,

license and didn't see anything but deer, many, many years. And yet they're there. They're everywhere. I said to them the same thing. I said, look at Monster Buck. We have these enormous deer in this area, huge, huge racks. You very rarely ever see them. But they're there. And they hide in people's backyards and little shiny patches of woods, places that you would never even think that that that deer would be. Now, I would think these things don't need thousands of acres to live. They can slip in and out of the little areas without being noticed in the dead of night. Apparently, they're very good at, you know, traveling in the night. They don't have to move in the daytime. I can't explain it, but if they're as smart as people think they are, it would be no problem for them.

Yeah, and that's kind of how I feel too and stuff. I mean, I think that these things are, they have to be smart in order to remain so elusive. I mean, it's one of the things where, okay, we have bear in Pennsylvania, but a black bear is nowhere near the size of what these creatures are. And they, to me, they'd have to be at least intelligent on a certain level just to remain elusive, you know? Exactly. Smarter than the average bear. You can say that again. You can say that again. But Jeff, man, I appreciate you coming on and sharing your stories, man. I really do. And the fact that you're so close to where I live and stuff is a little extra fascinating for me.

Well, I never thought I'd see or hear anything here, but either like I got a bunch of people out here that are those people that bang sticks together and whoop in the woods and somebody's making fake footprints. But I doubt it. This isn't the kind of place that you would want to run. around at night. People get shot out here for that. You know, it's, it's a rural area. Everybody has a gun in their house. Yeah. I don't think they'd be prowling around in my backyard. You know, it's like I said, no one lives real close to me. Yeah, it definitely is. And I totally agree with you. Before we get out of here, though, you know, you saw this thing up close. Your son saw it.

What's your thoughts on it, though, as far as, you know, what these things are? I mean, are they natural just creatures that we haven't been able to pin down yet? I don't think they are, to be honest. Just the feeling I get. Now, that may be nothing, you know, my opinion, a gut feeling. I just have a feeling, whatever these things are, it's far beyond our comprehension. The truth, whatever the truth is, you know, it's more bizarre than we could ever anticipate. You know, I tend to agree with you.

I really do. I just don't, you know, feel. that anything that could remain this hidden, you know, I'm sure our government knows a whole lot more about it than we do. Oh, for sure. I mean, the government knows a lot more than they lead on about a lot of different topics. And I'm sure this is one of those topics that they kind of keep clamped down a little bit. But yeah, I definitely think that these things are more than just a physical, you know, monster running around the woods. I used, when I first started looking into the topic, I've never seen any creatures, you know, out of the ordinary in the woods.

But when I first started looking into it, I was under the assumption and I just believed that these were just a giant, you know, gorilla running around the woods we haven't discovered yet. And the more I looked into it and the more stories I heard from different people, the more I had to start making sense of certain things that just didn't relate logically to me. And then I started, you know, looking into things more and more. And I started coming across different stories of people talking about these creatures doing things right in front of them that didn't seem natural. And you start hearing all these different stories. And you start thinking, okay, so can all these people be lying?

Yeah, I guess theoretically sure, they all could be lying. But, I mean, what are the odds that you have this many people coming forward to share these stories of the, these creatures doing bizarre things, like paranormal type things, right in front of them. And these people are willing to put their stories out there on the line, their reputation. And it's just at some point you start thinking, okay, well, maybe there's something a little more here than what meets the eye. Yeah, I agree. I agree. You know, a lot of these people that come forward, you know, they're not looking for fame and fortune.

they don't really care if anyone believes them or not. You know, like, you know, people can tell, you know, hear my story and say I'm full of baloney. And, you know, I don't really care. I don't care what you believe or not. If that makes you feel good, not knowing or not believing in anything, that's fine. And I'll respect that. But, you know, I'm at the point in my life now where I really, I have nothing to gain. I have nothing to lose.

I hear that, sir. Well, thank you very much for coming on the show and sharing your experiences. All right. It was great talking with you. Well, that's the show, everybody. I really hope you enjoyed it. And if you did enjoy, please share the show with your friends. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok.

I don't care how you share the show. But if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your friends because that is the best thing you can do to help support the show on a weekly basis. And until next week, friends, stay safe, take care. And remember, the truth will set your free. but first he'll piss you off. Bye.