The Confessionals - RELOADED | 353: Paranormal Laredo, Texas

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

In Episode 353: Paranormal Laredo, Texas, we are joined by Chris James, author of the book “Paranormal Laredo.” Chris is a retired border patrol agent and paramedic who upon retirement found himse...lf authoring many books on a variety of subjects. When he was approached by The Laredo Paranormal Research Society to write a book about paranormal happenings and history in Laredo, he was hooked! He started gathering reports of hauntings, cryptids, UFOs, and more, and he shares these stories with us on the show.Become a member for ad-free listening, extra shows, and exclusive access to our social media app: theconfessionalspodcast.com/joinThe Confessionals Social Network App:Apple Store: https://apple.co/3UxhPrhGoogle Play: https://bit.ly/43mk8kZMy New YouTube ChannelMerkel IRL: @merkelIRLMy First Sermon: Unseen BattlesSasquatch and The Missing Man: merkelfilms.comMerkel Media Apparel: merkmerch.comSPONSORSSIMPLISAFE TODAY: simplisafe.com/confessionalsUNCOMMON GOODS: uncommongoods.com/tonyGHOSTBED: GhostBed.com/tonyCONNECT WITH USWebsite: www.theconfessionalspodcast.comEmail: contact@theconfessionalspodcast.comMAILING 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

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Starting point is 00:00:01 Merkel Media I guess it's time To go back in time Are you telling me You built a time machine Out of a Dolion Time is but a stubborn
Starting point is 00:00:15 Illusion I have a lot of memories Of the past People are time traveling within themselves Time travel Is possible This was all circulating
Starting point is 00:00:32 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,
Starting point is 00:00:51 dude, he slithered over to me. And this giant comes out of the cave and they're all frozen. And he starts running and firing at this giant. With a giant move, he's got a spear in one hand, and he's running really fast. And spears, Dan,
Starting point is 00:01:12 holds him up. like this. Somebody else. Shoot them in the face. Shoot them in the face. They basically decapitated. Pulling at my leg. And I look over and there are two.
Starting point is 00:01:38 And they're literally, I'm getting pulled off the best push. And I touch air. Couldn't breathe. And I couldn't move. Because I know I'm seeing a monster. Okay. I reload it. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:02:11 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 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, you can reach me that way as well.
Starting point is 00:02:25 Either it works for me, just get a hold of me. And if you want to hear more shows every week on Thursdays, we release a bonus show to members only on the website. So if that interests you, go to the Confessionalspodcast.com, hit the join button and become a member today. And just last Thursday, we released a part
Starting point is 00:02:41 two of the Secret Military Enochian Technology, where Charlie made his return back to the show to tell us what happened to him after that episode was released. People have been loving that episode on the website. So if you miss last week's show, you have no idea what I'm talking about while the show's waiting there for you right there on the Confessionalspodcast.com for the members only section. And if you want more video in your life, the YouTube channel for the Confessionals is up and running and thriving. Go and subscribe to the
Starting point is 00:03:08 Confessionals on YouTube. That's where we're going to be releasing the Legion of Legends show that I'm going to be producing here shortly and many more shows to come with Legion of Legends. If you don't want to miss an episode of that show, go to the Confessionals on YouTube, hit subscribe because that's where Legion of Legends is going to be. And before we get to today's show, I want to give a special shout out to somebody who is a very faithful listener to the Confessionals, and that is Curtis Wyatt. And why am I giving Curtis Wyatt a shoutout? And that's because he recently just celebrated two years sobriety, and I think that's something to be celebrated. So my friend, Curtis, thank you very much for listening to the show. And congratulations on celebrating.
Starting point is 00:03:49 that two-year sobriety, I know it is hard when you have an addiction to kick it. And for doing it two years, that seems like a lifetime, I'm sure. But you have a whole lifetime ahead of you of sobriety where the journey is just beginning, my friend. So congratulations and keep up the awesome life transformation. Now, today we have Chris coming on the show. And Chris wrote a book called paranormal Laredo. And he comes on the show to talk about all these paranormal things that happen in Laredo, Texas. We just scratched the surface with Chris today. There is a ton of stuff happening in Laredo. And Chris comes on the show to talk about it, including his own, very own, Rake Encounter. So let's get to Chris right now. All right, today we have a great guest coming on.
Starting point is 00:04:56 We have, Sir, Chris James. How are you? Pretty good, sir. I'm glad you're here. And before we go any further, I'm all new with this, everybody. I got to hit record. Recording in progress. There we go. Now we're recording on Zoom the video. So, Chris, you are a podcaster. You're an author. Your 26 and a half years retired border patrol agent. And I'm sure I'm missing something as you said you were a paramedic at one time. Let's start out with this. What have you not done with your life? I've never. I've never. worked in a restaurant. Okay.
Starting point is 00:05:42 Well, I worked for a trucking company. I was a firefighter. I was a paramedic with the Border Patrol. Grove a bulldozer when I was 16 until they found out how old it was. Also ran a crane until they found out how old it was. Just you name it. I've tried my hand at it. The Border Patrol was the funnest job ever.
Starting point is 00:06:09 had, at least for the first 20 years, the last six it kind of went downhill a bit. When you start getting old and beat up, you can't perform as good as you want to, but I stuck it out anyway because as the paramedic, you know, it's like, well, I don't have to chase anybody. They're, they're laying on the ground. I just walk up to it. It's a weird situation, but it worked. No, it sounds like, I mean, listen, you have worn many hats in your life, and your most recent hat is the podcasting and the writing books, which you've written a lot of different stuff. I started out writing horror, and I discovered real fast that the people that read horror, some of them are not very nice when it comes to reviews and emails and things like that. They expect everybody to be a Dean Coontz or some, you're really the best in the world. If you're not the best, they're going to tell you.
Starting point is 00:07:16 So one day I got to thinking, well, why don't I write some humor? And I discovered real fast that humor is about twice as hard to write as horror. Because just because I think it's funny doesn't mean anybody else is going to think it's funny. So it's constantly having to say things to my wife to see if she would laugh. And if she just stared at me, I knew, well, I guess I'm going to have to change that in the book. And after I had written several humor stories, a friend of mine who ran the local paranormal research group, the Laredo Paranormal Research Society, they were looking for somebody to write a book about their endeavors, their history. And I told them, hey, I'll give it a shot.
Starting point is 00:07:58 Let's see what happens. And so for the next year, I'm hanging around with the LPRS going on ghost hunts, UFO sightings, reading all of their case notes, listening to EVPs over and over, trying to make sure that what I'm hearing is actually a recording of something and not something somebody's slipping over on me. I didn't want to say a lot of good things about these people and then find out later I'd been had. After a year of this, I discovered they're the real thing.
Starting point is 00:08:32 So I wrote the Laredo Paranormal Research Society. history. And when I finished, I swore I was never going to write another nonfiction book because it's work. It's 10 times the work of fiction because to begin with it has to be true. That's what nonfiction is. Then it has to make sense. In a fictional story, if you want a guy's revolver to fire 27 bullets, well, it fires 27 bullets. It doesn't work that way in reality. So nonfiction, it has to add up. We were doing a ghost hunt investigation out at our local fort, military fort, called Fort McIntosh. It's now the Laredo College.
Starting point is 00:09:23 And it was open to all the students and all the staff. And we're wandering around doing the ghost hunts, looking at different things. And the president of the college said, has anybody ever? written anything about the fort. And of course, I returned and looked at me and I'm like, oh, there's a page about it in the LPRS book. So as soon as I got home, even though I said I wasn't going to do it, I started writing Fort McIntosh and the paranormal. That's when I first found out a lot about the little girl, which will come up a lot in the future. Once I finished Fort McIntosh and the paranormal, I had a whole lot of stories that people had taught.
Starting point is 00:10:04 hold me that didn't have anything to do with the fort. Lots of ghost sightings and UFO sightings. It's like, well, I've almost got a book written here. I might as well go ahead and hammer it out. And that's when I came up with paranormal Laredo. It was all the things given to me by people while I was writing the second book. And it was an eye-opener. I had no idea that Laredo was such a interesting town. And the way I approach people is it kind of worries my wife, I think.
Starting point is 00:10:41 If I'm standing in line at a restaurant at a grocery store, I'll just turn to anybody standing around me and I'll say, have you ever seen a ghost? Are you serious? That's how you get? Wow. And a lot of people will give me really weird looks. Then I'll hand to my business card and I'll say, look, I am a
Starting point is 00:10:56 writer and I'm looking for stories. And I've gotten a lot of really good stories that way. And sometimes it's not the person I'm talking to. I was at a Luby's cafeteria and I asked the server. She said, no, never seen a ghost. And the guy standing in a line behind me says, hey, I live in a haunted house. And about a week later, I'm sitting in his living room.
Starting point is 00:11:19 And he's telling me everything there is about the weird things going on in his home. Like I said, I had no idea Laredo was such an interesting town until I started on that third book, Paranormal Laredo. And when I first got to Laredo, 1988, the first thing I hear about is there's a ghost of a little girl that hangs out in the shopping mall, Mall del Norte. And I kept hearing this story from different people. And of course, I'd ask them, did you ever see it? No, but I know somebody that saw it.
Starting point is 00:11:59 Well, that's kind of good, but that's not quite what I'm looking. for it. I just listened, but I didn't write any of it down because at the time I wasn't writing. Well, when I started writing paranormal Laredo, I thought, what's the worst thing can possibly happen? I went to the mall. I went to the front office. I walked in and I asked the gal standing behind the desk if she knew anything at all about the ghost of the little girl. She called security. but for a good reason the security guards came and they talked to me
Starting point is 00:12:34 for the next two days telling me all the stories about the little girl that has been seen hanging around in the store in the mall. Wow. She's about eight to ten years old has long brown curly hair.
Starting point is 00:12:50 She's always got on a white dress that comes down to her knees. Her shoes have buttons on them which they stopped doing that in 1917. Sometimes she has a balloon. Sometimes she has a doll. And sometimes she doesn't have anything.
Starting point is 00:13:07 She just sits on a bench in front of the Sears store. And the cleaning staff who see her the most have gotten to a point they ignore her. They'll see her and it's like, oh, don't, don't look. There's that little girl again. Because if they approach her, if they acknowledge her, she just disappears. Wow. And it's one thing to see a little girl. but to watch a little girl vanish, I guess it's a little more unnerving.
Starting point is 00:13:35 And like I said, for two days, I sat in the office at the mall listening to people telling me their stories about either seeing the little girl or seeing something that she had been involved in. They walked through the place at night when it's pitch black outside and it's dark and they'll hear somebody crying. and it's like it's coming from inside a store that's all locked up. Now they've got a choice. Do they call, get the keyholder to come unlock the building so they can go in there and search knowing there's nobody in there? Or do they ignore it? But it's gotten to a point where it is so common.
Starting point is 00:14:14 It's just everybody is encountering it. They pretty much ignore it now just because they know there's nobody in there. But yeah, this little girl, nobody knows who she is. and what's really bizarre when I was writing the book about Fort McIntosh in the paranormal the police officers that work at the college
Starting point is 00:14:36 were telling me about encounters with a little girl long brown curly hair white dress shoes with buttons on them and she's been seen all over the college at night in places where little girls should be
Starting point is 00:14:52 like inside the motor pool walking into the chapel, which is now, trying to think with the chapel. The chapel is now like a museum, I believe. They keep seeing her all over the place. And my big question is, is this the same little girl that is being seen in the mall? Because the description is the same.
Starting point is 00:15:17 So as I'm going through life, I'm talking to different people, the girl at the mall that does the, the one that started me talking to the security guys told me that I should talk to the folks out at the arena, the Sames Arena or sports place, because they've seen the little girl out there too. It's about 20 miles from the college to the arena. Security guard sitting in his booth, looking at the cameras, he sees a little girl wandering around in the parking lot. And his description, long brown curly hair, a white dress. He didn't see her shoes because he wasn't that good of a camera.
Starting point is 00:16:00 He sends the cleaning staff out to get this little girl because the arena is in the middle of nowhere. There aren't a lot of houses around it. The cleaning staff run into the parking lot. They're running around looking for this girl and they call on the walkie-talkie, like, we don't see her. Where is she? And the security guard said she's standing right next to you. and the cleaning staff turned and all ran, ran inside, locked the door, scared the heck out of him.
Starting point is 00:16:30 This same little girl has been seen in a school walking up down the hallway. You know, teacher sees a kid running around the hallway. They're supposed to be in class. So the teacher goes to see who this kid is, what they're doing, and kid vanishes. Been seen a few other places, too. And it gets me to wondering, is it really a ghost or is it something pretending to be a ghost? Like, you know the story of the exorcist? Yeah, sure.
Starting point is 00:17:05 The true story. This kid was trying to contact his aunt who had died and something comes through the Ouija board saying, yes, I'm your aunt and talks to him. And he talks to it. The next thing you know, he's. possessed. He thought it was his aunt he was communicating with turned out to not be his aunt. What if this little girl, is it really a little girl, it's something else? These are the sort of things that pop into my head when I'm talking to these people because
Starting point is 00:17:39 why would a girl, eight, ten years old, what would trap her spirit on this plane of existence? It doesn't make sense. they talk about the unfinished business. They talk about people who die in violent crimes or accidents. But for an 8, 10-year-old, I don't see them having the same anchor, keeping them here. So it makes me wonder, what is it that all these people are seeing? The prevalence is just shocking. If you look at the cover of the book that picture,
Starting point is 00:18:20 that my sister-in-law drew for me. That is one of the stories in the book also. When this woman that works with my, this woman that my wife knows, I should say, used to live near the college. And late at night, she would hear somebody knocking on the window. She'd look out the window, and this little girl and this little boy
Starting point is 00:18:45 would be standing right outside the window telling her to come out and play. And this woman's like, no, my dad said I can't do it. She's about eight, ten years old at the time. The girl would go away and then she'd come back a couple of the nights later, knock on the window, invite her to come out and play. Well, finally, this woman told her dad what was going on. And her dad said, that's crazy.
Starting point is 00:19:10 That window's five feet off the ground. How can this little girl be standing up in the window? The house is no longer there. They tore it down and built a word. warehouse there. But once again, the description, blonde curly hair, I mean, brown curly hair, eight, ten years old, white dress down to her knees, same description, but all over town. And it's gotten me to wondering what the world's going on around me. Yeah. I mean, it makes you wonder, did back in the day, a long time ago, did the,
Starting point is 00:19:47 did the town of Laredo do some kind of seance or what, you know? couldn't find any record of it. I read the entire Laredo Morning Times archives looking for any story, anything about anything close to that situation. I can never find anything. That's, yeah, I, out of everything you just said, I find it most incredible that you read the entire archive. I searched the archives, I should say. Okay. All right. Because, man. You put in, you put in, you highlight certain words, goes, spirit. You know, that's interesting. I should look into learning how to do something like that.
Starting point is 00:20:27 That would be kind of fun. I spent so much time at the library that I started referring to it as my office. And I would get upset when I would walk in and somebody else would be sitting in my desk. That's my spot. I etched my name on the seat. They only had one computer. And if somebody else was on it, I'd have to either wait or go away and come back the next day. But, yeah, I started referring to it as my arm.
Starting point is 00:20:51 office, my computer. Well, I mean, you put enough work in there. I'm sure you can. The girl in the white dress has also been seen in the library. Once again, a new guy. It just gotten hired on. So he's doing his best not to mess up. And he's working in the library as an assistant, I guess assistant librarian.
Starting point is 00:21:19 And it's the end of the day. And so what they do is they walk to the building to make sure that everybody is exiting. And he's following a woman with three kids to make sure that they get out the door. And she turns and walks into the bathroom. Three kids walk into the bathroom with her. So this guy is standing there waiting for her to come out so you can make sure she leaves the building. The woman walks out of the bathroom with two kids. And she left the building.
Starting point is 00:21:46 He's like, where did the little girl in the white dress go? So he calls over one of the female security guards and asks her to go check the bathroom. She goes in, she looks, she comes back out. He's like, nobody in there. And then she kind of laughs and says, it must have been the ghost. So welcome to the Laredo Library. Weird story, but that's what happens when you ask people if they've ever seen a ghost. They'll tell you if they have.
Starting point is 00:22:20 Yeah. And some of them will surprise you. Yeah, I've learned that as well. I mean, just being a podcaster, people find out what you do with the podcast and all of a sudden, people that you know for a long time will come out of the woodwork and say, hey, I saw a UFO and this, that and the other. I had a guy, I live about five minutes from a power plant, nuclear power plant. And I had a guy that I worked with, he came to me. It's like, man, I'm telling you. Actually, two guys separately came to me to tell me that they saw UFOs flying around the power plant years ago. It's like unsolicited stories that people just come and tell you when they know what you're doing, you know? Well, I've had people send me texts. I just saw a UFO flying over Father McNabo Park. It was a giant triangle that was following the river soundless. And I ask them, give me some more details, you know, with date, time, this, and the other thing. All of a sudden, they didn't want to talk to me. I don't know what happened.
Starting point is 00:23:24 Somebody got to them. Men in black situation, I don't know. But they were very talkative. And then all of a sudden they were very quiet. I don't know what happened. Do you think it may be the idea of knowing that you could publish the story kind of scared them? I have a lot of police officers who tell me their sightings, they're weird happening. and they know that, you know, I'll ask them, what name do you want me to publish this under?
Starting point is 00:23:58 And they'll tell me, you know, call me this, call me that, make up a name. A few of them have actually said, go ahead, use my name. I don't care. They're close to retirement when they do that. Sure. But a lot of, so I have a pretty good reputation with most people that they know, you know, tell me what you saw, when you saw it. tell me what name to use. It has to be a story that I'm going to believe.
Starting point is 00:24:25 It has to be a story that they believe. You know, they actually saw it. They've heard of it. But they don't have to use their name. And so it was a struggle when I was writing paranormal Laredo trying to assign names to people that I hadn't already used. I think I may have used the same name for six, seven different, characters. It's simply because I'm not that creative when it comes to
Starting point is 00:24:53 coming up with good names. We're in the same boat because sometimes when I need the alias and stuff, I want to use the same name for everybody. It's like, oh, you need an alias? Well, you're Ryan. And oh, you need an alias? Well, you're Sarah. Well, I just use five Ryan's in about five weeks.
Starting point is 00:25:10 You know, so I'm very unimaginative when it comes to names as well. the little girl of Laredo is popping up everywhere. But the Laredo in general, it's not just this little girl all over Laredo. And, you know, that's that. Laredo has a lot of weird things from all different angles. Tell us about some of this other stuff. I know you mentioned about the Jeepers, creepers looking thing. It all started.
Starting point is 00:25:48 A woman was telling me her boyfriend's story. Now, he had a few beers, but he wasn't stumbling, falling down drunk. He'd had like two or three beers. So he's driving home from where he'd been, and he turned north onto McPherson at the cemetery. McPherson dead ends at the cemetery. It's a junction. And he's traveling north on McPherson and feels the truck he's driving like something landed,
Starting point is 00:26:23 something hit it. The truck bounced really hard. And he looked in the side view mirror thinking, oh, my God, I hit a dog or it hit something. And then he looks back over his shoulder. And he said this huge bat-looking creature was in the bed of his truck. He said its elbows are resting on each. Fender. This was a full-size pickup. He looked back, and the first thing that ran through his mind was, I've got the jeepers, creepers creature in the bed of my truck. And it scared him so bad, he stepped on the brakes. This thing slid forward and slams into the rear window, which is right behind his head. Bad idea. Now he's got this thing. It's like six inches from his neck. He panicked. hit the gas really hard.
Starting point is 00:27:16 So the creature slid backwards across the bed of his truck, hit the tailgate, flipped over, and he continued about 100 miles an hour for the next 20 blocks, hoping that he wouldn't encounter a police officer because he's got beer on his breath. And how is he going to explain that he just had this jeepers, creepers in the bed of his truck? When I heard this whole story, I thought, well, okay, maybe he had over the
Starting point is 00:27:44 bad imagination. Maybe he had more than two or three beers, but I'm not going to say that to him. Well, then I am talking to a woman, and I just asked her, hey, have you ever seen anything weird, ghost, UFO, crypted? And she said she was sitting
Starting point is 00:28:01 on the tailgate of her truck on the south side of town, which is quite a ways from McPherson. And her and her friend, they're sitting there talking back and forth, and they saw something big, fly over their heads. Now it was dark, but it wasn't pitch dark. They both looked up and she said she saw the character from Jeepers creepers fly over her head. She was so freaked out that her friend had to grab her,
Starting point is 00:28:31 drag her the front door of her house, like just push her through the door, then jump in her truck and take off. I thought, man, that's pretty weird that two people would both describe the same creature. They said it looked like the creature from the movie. It had great big bat type wings. It was shiny. And it had a really nasty looking face. It's like, well, two people seeing something that gives it a little more credibility.
Starting point is 00:29:00 So I'm asking around is I go from place to place. Have you ever seen a ghost? Have you ever seen a UFO? Have you ever seen a cryptid? Another person says that they saw a giant bat flying over the Laredo college south campus, which is even farther south from where the girl had been. And he said when he looked up and he saw this thing, the first thing popped into his head was that's the thing from Jeepers creepers. Then I started hearing farther south from a town called
Starting point is 00:29:31 Elsiniso, which is a little town way south. It's a 10 miles south of Laredo. they would see this thing standing on the side of the road at night driving in and out of town. Four different people reported seeing it. And it kind of makes me wonder what the world is flying around up in the skies of Laredo. We've got eight reports now of this thing. And everybody comes up with the same description.
Starting point is 00:30:05 They'll say, did you see the movie Jeepers, creepers? That's what I saw. And it's like, what could possibly look like that that would be alive and flying around town? It's got me wondering. I spend a lot of time now staring up at the sky. Yeah, I would be too, just out of fear. My Lord, it sounds terrifying. Just weird.
Starting point is 00:30:34 And as far as I know, none of these people knew each other. Because it's one of these situations. I'm on the north side of town. I hand them my business card. I ask them if they've seen anything. I hear the story. I'm on the south side of town. I hand somebody a business card.
Starting point is 00:30:49 They tell me the same story. How could these people possibly, hey, if this guy asks, you know, it doesn't add up. Yeah, there's this guy, Chris James. He goes around asking for weird stories. That's all collaborate. Yeah, it doesn't make sense, does it? No, not at all. So, I mean, would you classify that as like a cryptid or would you like a flying demon or what, you know?
Starting point is 00:31:17 I'm going with cryptid simply because most people said it was very bat like, like a giant bat. We did have the big bird, the one that was seen in the valley years ago, the Thunderbird. We had a few sightings of that in Laredo, but that was a long time ago. and the people were adamant that it was a giant bird, whereas this thing, they're all saying it's a giant bat-looking creature. So I'm going with cryptid until maybe we get a better look at it. And somebody says, we got demons in the sky or something else. It's like the moth man who wasn't a giant moth.
Starting point is 00:31:59 It was a giant bird. But the editor of the newspaper thought it sounded cooler to call it Mothman. and that's why I got its name. Well, it's made a lot of money with that name, so let's not knock it, right? I've been to Point Pleasant. I've got my picture taken standing next to the statue. Yeah, a lot of people have. Believe it or not, I have not made it to Point Pleasant yet,
Starting point is 00:32:22 but I will be driving through West Virginia on my way to Kentucky, and so I'm thinking I might need to make a pit stop in that. You need to go to the museum and get a T-shirt or two. Yeah, you got to do stuff. I mean, it's a road trip. And, you know, I mean, they have the big festival and everything. And, you know, in 2020, I was going to be a vendor there. And then everything got canceled.
Starting point is 00:32:47 And, you know, now I'm just like, eh, rather not be a vendor. I'd rather just go and have fun, you know? Yes. When I was in Edinburgh, I went there to sell books at the UFO conference. I missed the conference. normally when somebody's on stage talking everybody goes and sits down and then they get up and they come back to the vendors tables and then they go back and sit them didn't happen this time i was flocked the whole time and i missed everybody's uh stories yeah i caught i caught the
Starting point is 00:33:20 last half hour of nick pope on stage that was it yeah yeah that's the thing i mean i don't know i i just feel like um for me i i'm not really into the whole vendor thing. If I'm going to go to these things, I'd rather just kind of go and chill out, have fun, hang out. But I think it seems like maybe the best time to go to Point Pleasant is when nobody else is there. You can get in the museum. You don't have to wait for people to get out of your way.
Starting point is 00:33:51 We were there. We had the whole place to ourselves. That's nice. So that's the Jeepers. I always messed that up. Jeepers, creepers, creature. Say that 10 times fast. But Texas is a state that I've been hearing more and more people talk about.
Starting point is 00:34:20 Down south, but Texas as well, about the rake. And that's something that's been popping up on your radar as well, on a personal level as well as other people seeing these things, right? Yes. My wife and I had gone to San Antonio for whatever reason. We used to go there a lot. I haven't been there in about a year and a half now. But we used to go to San Antonio all the time.
Starting point is 00:34:47 And we're coming back. It was getting close to midnight. My wife was asleep. And as you come into town, there's a sharp curve right after a railroad bridge. And you have to watch because people have a tendency, oh, I've got to get off at this exit. And they'll just zip right in front of you. So I always slow down like 55 miles. miles an hour to negotiate under the bridge. As I'm coming up on the railroad bridge, I see a guy on his
Starting point is 00:35:15 hands and knees and he's scuttling up this cement barricade. Now, the barricade is about a 45 degree angle. Not the kind of thing you'd walk up normally, but he is scuttling up it, and I'm watching him as I'm coming under the bridge and I'm slowing down because I can't really wrap my head around what I'm looking at. He looked like a concentration camp victim, that best description. He was real skinny to a point where you could see the bones. You could see the knobs where the joints were. And he's going up this cement incline on his hands and knees.
Starting point is 00:35:57 But in my mind, I'm thinking the guy is moving more like a spider than a human. and he was literally scuttling up this cement wall, 45 degree angle. So as I go by, I am really going slow and I'm looking at this guy thinking I should stop and see, is the guy okay, is there something wrong with him? But then I'm thinking I've got my wife in the truck with me.
Starting point is 00:36:21 If I stop, you know, I'm responsible for what happens to her, what happens to me, what happens to this guy, and I'm not on duty. So I don't really have a, justifiable reason to stop.
Starting point is 00:36:33 So I kept going to the house. Told my wife what I'd seen. And she thought, oh, it's probably just some whino, some really, really bad-shaped wino. Didn't think much of it after that. A podcast that I listened to all the time,
Starting point is 00:36:50 expanded perspectives, a couple of guys out of Weatherford, Texas, they were talking about the rake. I thought, I wonder what the rake looks like. So I look it up on the computer. and the images that I saw, that's what I saw under the railroad bridge scuttling up this wall. I thought, did I actually just see the rake?
Starting point is 00:37:14 And the more I thought about it, you know, you got the image burned into your mind. That's what I saw. The image on the computer was the image that I had seen under the railroad bridge. So I thought, well, that was just plain weird. I'm writing the book Paranormal Laredo asking people for stories. And the guy says, well, me and my buddy were coming back from Encinol, which is partway to San Antonio. We're driving south on 35 and we saw a super skinny guy with pure white skin, jump the K-rail, run across I-35 and disappear into the bushes. and when they told me where they were,
Starting point is 00:38:01 they were about 100 yards north of the railroad bridge where I'd seen that done. And I quick, pulled up a photograph of the rake from the internet. I showed it to them. And they said, that's what we saw. Both of them.
Starting point is 00:38:18 Quite a surprise. Yeah. Then talking to people, like I said, hand them a business card. Ever seen a ghost? Ever seen the UFO? Ever seen a rip?
Starting point is 00:38:28 guy said that he was working in an oil field situation. He was one of the workers. They'd set up some pumps along a road. And they wanted to document the serial numbers on the pumps. Nice, quick, fast, easy way to do it. Click a picture of it with your cell phone. So he took a picture of the pumps. You can see the cell phone.
Starting point is 00:38:49 You can see where it's parked. That way, if anybody messes with it, you know what's going on. He gets home. He looks at the picture of the pump and standing on the other side of the pump was this skinny white creature, big black eyes staring at him and it was kind of hunched down in the middle of the road. Once again, I pull up a picture of the rake on my cell phone and we compared the two and that's
Starting point is 00:39:15 what we did. That's what he'd seen. This was about 20 miles out of town, the middle of the nowhere on a ranch at an oil rig. Several people have reported seeing something weird running around in that general vicinity, though, of the railroad bridge. And it's one of those things. Every time I drive past the bridge now, and you can ask my wife, I slow wait down. And I look up the side of the road trying to see if there's anything up there this time. It's the kind of thing.
Starting point is 00:39:50 It's like seeing a flying saucer, though. It's like you see one and you're going to spend the rest of your life looking for the second one. it may never happen. Yeah. But yeah, we've got that weird skinny white creature and it's been seen maybe four or five different people have reported it now. Well, you know, what I'm finding interesting about what you said you saw, where you saw and where these other people are seeing it is that it's by these roads.
Starting point is 00:40:19 It's a lot of these drive-bys. And I remember I've had quite a few, not quite a few, a few people on the show that have had rake encounters. And the very first one was a guy named guy out of Texas. And he, I think he was riding with him and his friend. And I'm not sure if there's anybody else in the car. But they saw two of these things. What I found interesting with what you said was it was walking up a very steep slope
Starting point is 00:40:49 on all four. And his friend sketched what they saw. and they started looking around the internet for what they saw, and it was the rake. And it's just his encounter was a drive-by. Yours was several other people you've talked to with these drive-by encounters. It seems like these things aren't very afraid of cars or being seen. It's not like they're trying to be discreet.
Starting point is 00:41:17 Where did the guy have his encounter? Do you remember? The guy, guy had his encounter. You know, so I had him come and share his story live when I was doing that Houston show. He came from Houston, or not from Houston, from Dallas. So if I remember correctly, it was the Dallas area. So it wasn't near Laredo. But because I know Texas isn't like Rhode Island where every town's a next door neighbor.
Starting point is 00:41:53 Houston is the size of Rhode Island. Yeah. So the King Ranch. I couldn't even tell you how big the King Ranch is. It fills an entire county. Unbelievable. That's crazy. I had no idea how big Texas was like comparatively until I drove from Dallas, Texas to Houston and it took like four hours. And I'm looking at the map. I'm like, but it's just next to each other right here. You know? And it takes me four hours to drive. from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. And so that's just, it just gives me perspective as to how huge that state is. Just be glad you weren't going from El Paso to Orange, Texas. It's about 980 miles. No, thanks.
Starting point is 00:42:42 Not interested. It's, you know, we've got a big state. I can't even think how big Alaska is. That place is just ridiculously huge. Yeah. Lots of. We, we, such a big state. we get a little of everything.
Starting point is 00:42:59 Big foot sightings, big bird sightings, giant birds, ghosts. It's a happening state. No, it sure is. I mean, I've heard so many things out of Texas, and it's just, it has to be partly because of the size. Geographically speaking, there's more opportunity for weird things to happen.
Starting point is 00:43:22 But what about Sasquatch with Laredes? Is there any kind of reports of Sasquatch around there? I kept saying people would ask me when I was writing different books or I was selling books and they'd say, Hey, has anybody ever seen Bigfoot, especially little kids. And I'd always tell them now we don't have Bigfoot in this area because it's too hot. And then I started hearing reports about Bigfoot in our area. Alice, Texas, which is, is it 90 miles?
Starting point is 00:43:54 No. I think 60 miles to our east, a little bitty town. And just north of Alice is Lake Alice, which is also called Finley Lake. Go figure. A little bitty lake, it's got two names. So the police in the Alice area, the sheriff's department and the police department, keep getting reports that people are seeing Bigfoot roaming around. Lake Alice.
Starting point is 00:44:27 They say they see it, they hear it, they've seen footprints, they swear it's out there. So the police have actually taken the reports. I was surprised because I drove over to Lake Alice, I drove over to Alice, Texas, and I asked at the police station about it. And there was, yeah, let me get you to talk to someone and so they've got all the reports.
Starting point is 00:44:53 and it's a pretty prevalent thing. It's not a big lake. And the weird thing is it's surrounded by farmland. So for a big creature to sneak in and out of the lake, it would be pretty difficult unless it's only doing it at night when there's no moon. Well, while I'm investigating this, I hear from a friend of mine, a guy named Joe, who is a paranormal investigator also,
Starting point is 00:45:22 he was driving from Corpus Christi to Laredo. He lives in Laredo, but he was from Corpus. He was going home to visit his family and then driving back for work. He's traveling at about 4 o'clock in the morning, and he's on 59, coming from Freer, which you've got Laredo, Frere, Alice. He's coming from Freer halfway to Laredo, and he sees a couple of deer standing on the side of the road. But when you see deer standing on the road side of the fence,
Starting point is 00:45:57 you slow down because these things aren't the smartest creatures in the planet. They've been known to run right out in front of your car. So he's slowing down just to make sure these two deer don't run in front of him. And he looks and he sees this creature standing on the other side of the fence from these two deer. And the first thought through his mind is that's Bigfoot. he kept going down the road a little ways, slammed on his brakes, because it's like,
Starting point is 00:46:27 oh my God, I just saw Bigfoot. He turns around because he wants to get another look. As he's coming up on the spot where these two deer had been standing, he said he was suddenly overcome with his horrible feeling of terror. He said it was one of these things. His hands are shaking on the steering wheel. And he's afraid that this thing is going to come out of the woods,
Starting point is 00:46:51 out of the trees and attacking. The feeling of terror continued until he was about a half mile down the road from where he'd seen this thing. And then it was gone and he felt okay again. Then he realized he's heading the wrong direction. He's got to turn around. He's going to drive back past this thing again. Joe, I don't think you had anything in the vehicle, maybe a tire iron.
Starting point is 00:47:19 And he was thinking this thing is huge. It's like eight feet tall. compared to the fence, the fence was four and a half feet tall to the top wire. So this thing was a good another three and a half feet above that. So he's figuring it's about eight feet tall. And he said it was all he could do to turn around and drive back past this spot. Once again, knuckles white on the steering wheel, shaking, sweating, not wanting to see what he had wanted to see just a minute ago.
Starting point is 00:47:52 And he just kept on going all the way to Laredo, just happy to still be alive. Now, I thought that's pretty unusual, but you lump that in with what's going on at Lake Alice. And it's like, maybe there is something going around around here. Have you ever heard the expression a woo? Oh, yeah, absolutely. In fact, I think people would call me woo at times the way I talk. So call me whatever you want to call me.
Starting point is 00:48:21 woo, woo, I don't care, whatever. I have been christened with that name by a lot of the Bigfoot community. Okay. Because I entertain the concept that possibly Bigfoot is not a flesh and blood creature. Maybe it is transdimensional. I think only in this community of the paranormal, not just Bigfoot, but in the paranormal, if you're not willing to entertain thought on so many different levels, then I think you're going about it wrong.
Starting point is 00:48:55 This is paranormal. These are things that aren't are normal, but you want to define it and think about it in your normal frame of mind for your own feel goods. I'm sorry, it doesn't work that way. I've had people talking to me about Bigfoot because they know I'm interested. I go to the conventions. And as soon as they find out that I'm one of those people, I don't want to talk to me anymore.
Starting point is 00:49:23 Well, I'll talk to you. It's like, I don't care. If I spent the rest of my life worried about what other people thought about what I thought, I wouldn't be able to get anything done. I was at a Bigfoot conference one time, and this guy comes up and he's talking about, we don't want these fringe people hanging around and with their weird ideas about UFOs.
Starting point is 00:49:47 And as he's talking, all of a sudden, his eyes roll up, and he's looking at my baseball cap. And it said UFO magazine on him. And I'm a good six inches taller than this guy and probably a good 80 pounds heavier than him. You know, I work out. And all of a sudden, he got this scared look. He said, it's like, dude, I don't care what you think of me.
Starting point is 00:50:12 But he didn't want to talk anymore. But yeah, we've had recently, which is also in the book, Paranormal Laredo, a police officer was contacted by a man on the south side of town who said, to begin with, he thought he saw a bear walking across Magan, now Peter Mangana Road, which is right next to the Walmart superstore. Big, brand new Walmart. No sales, no checker outers. It's all. You've got to check yourself out. Anyway, he said he saw a bear crossing the road right behind the super storm.
Starting point is 00:50:54 And as he's talking, he's talking to this police officer that I know. And the guy's story, he's getting slower as he talks and he's getting slower. And he says, you know, that thing was walking on two legs. Then he actually looked at the police officer and said, I think it was Bigfoot. there's a huge field behind this Walmart store. I mean, it's just nothing out there. If you look at it on Google Earth or you look it on a map, you think, oh, that's wide open.
Starting point is 00:51:25 But you get back in there and you can't see the building. You can't see any of the roads from back in the brush is just super thick. Moments later, a second motorist, the same location, talking to another police officer, is giving the exact same description. And he said, I saw Bigfoot walking across the road right back there. And this is two guys telling the story. They're actually willing to tell the police what they'd seen. And when the police officer was telling me, he was like, I don't know what the guy saw.
Starting point is 00:52:02 We went back. We looked. We didn't see any footprints. The thing just walked off the planet. Vanished. That's woo. That's woo. I'll tell you, man. Chris, the very first time I ever went to a Bigfoot conference, I was, I was christened with the, you know, the we don't do the woo-woo thing around here. And I honestly, back then, I didn't either. I was like, because I didn't really, I was just new into looking into the topic. And as far as my limited perspective,
Starting point is 00:52:42 from these things. I hadn't talked to people about their encounters or anything like that. I was like, this must be just a hairy creature that we can't keep up within the woods. And so, like, this guy, and I'm not going to drop his name. I know a lot of people know who he is. And I don't want to, I don't want to start beef. But I'll tell you what he said. He starts talking about, you know, Bigfoot and their capabilities, physical capabilities. And then somebody asked the question about, it was some kind of wooey question. And he went on and on and on about how the woo has no place in serious Bigfoot research. And he was just, you know, basically crapping on anybody who thought that Bigfoot could be anything other than just a primate that we can't find. And I'm just like, dude, you sound extremely close-minded. Tell me why I should listen to you again. What's that? What's that book say? Elkins Creek by James Aiken. He was a sheriff's deputy in Georgia, I believe, and he followed a bigfoot set of tracks out into a clearing and
Starting point is 00:53:55 they disappear. And when he was telling a particular group of Bigfoot investigators this, they were really interested until he said, and the tracks just disappeared, and suddenly they didn't want to talk to him anymore. Of course. Of course. And like, I'm the kind of guy. I'm just like, I don't know what Bigfoot is. And I'm fine being wrong. Because quite frankly, I don't care at the end of the day what Bigfoot ends up being. I just, I'm interested to find out what it is, you know?
Starting point is 00:54:26 It's the people who get so much skin in the game of one side with like, let me tell you what it is. You don't freaking know what it is. You know why? I know you don't know what it is because you haven't been able to prove it exists yet. So don't tell me you know what it is. if you can't prove to the world that Bigfoot even exists. Jeez. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:54:44 They, remember all the people talking about the end of the world? December 21st, 2012. Yeah, 2012, yeah. You don't hear a whole lot of those folks anymore.
Starting point is 00:54:55 I, I hope they sold a lot of books because they're not selling any today. If you're going to tie all of your horses to one tree, you just better hope that tree is still there when you're, back. And these, you know, people will swear up and down, it's not this, it's not that. We don't know what it is, but we know what it's not. It's like, if you don't know what it is, you can't know what it isn't. But what can you do? Yeah. And the people that, I swear, it's like, number one thing for a reason. And they're like, well, we got to keep, we got to get,
Starting point is 00:55:34 we got to either keep or get the respect to the scientific community. It's like, they don't You respect you to begin with, okay? First of all, you don't have a PhD in anything. They're not going to respect anything you have to say because you hike around in the forest on the weekends. All right. And second of all, second of all, I'm not interested in getting science, the science community's approval on what I do because in today's world, look around you. Like the UFO stuff, right? That stuff years ago, people would be like, well, we got to be.
Starting point is 00:56:09 careful about how we approach the UFO top because, you know, we don't want to talk about, you know, little green men because then we got, we'll lose the respect to the scientific community. And now what do we have? The government coming out saying, we have craft that weren't made here on earth. Where's the scientific community now? You know, it's like, I'm not interested in getting anybody's respect. We're just here to talk about what people have seen and logically look at things. We're like, oh, so you're saying you actually saw it disappear. Yeah. Okay, let's write that down. You know, like, it's, it's just so silly. I get a little, you know, warm-blooded when I start talking about this stuff.
Starting point is 00:56:44 It irritates me. It just irritates me. Now that the government is coming clean, what do you suppose the men in black are going to do for a living? Well, you know, I think, I'm thinking they'll find something. You know what? I think they'll start doing. They'll start coming after the people who've seen rakes. So you better watch out.
Starting point is 00:57:02 Okay. I've asked my wife that a couple of times. It's like what really blows my mind. those. Here we've got this Pentagon report. Well, it looked like, what was it, two pages long? And they didn't really say anything. No, I could have called that. I was expecting less. But the weird thing is, there's not a whole lot of people out there going like, oh, my God, it's real. Yeah. I haven't heard anybody that I know of that's like, holy cow, it's true. There really are flying saucers. the people that knew they were flying saucers still know it,
Starting point is 00:57:42 and the people that don't believe it still don't believe it. Yes. Yep. That's rude. I'll tell you, like, what you just said reminds me of the mental state that a guy I used to work with has. He, so he says, I'm a Christian, right? And I'm like, okay. And so he's like, I don't believe in Bigfoot.
Starting point is 00:58:04 And I don't believe in, you know, ghosts and, And I said, well, what about UFOs? Everybody's seen UFOs. I mean, it's literally in the definition, unidentified flying object. We don't know what it is. We're not saying it's aliens. We're just saying we don't know what it is. He's like, nope, don't believe it.
Starting point is 00:58:20 And I said, all right, well, you're a Christian. You believe in demonic things, then I'm assuming. And he's like, nope, don't believe in demons. I'm like, what? Like, I was like, what about the one where Jesus cast out demons? Nope, don't believe it. I'm like, okay, bro, I don't know what to do for you. I don't know what to do for you at this point.
Starting point is 00:58:42 You know, like, whatever. Oh, man. Well, listen, I could, uh, we could go back and forth on this kind of stuff all night long. But I want to make sure I get you talking about the imaginary friends first before we wrap this up. That, that completely blew my mind when I first heard about it from Blanca, who is the grandmother of a little girl. And it's one of these deals where I don't know if it's considered normal in other parts of the country, but along the border for kids to live with their grandparents
Starting point is 00:59:20 is considered normal. You live with grandparents, you live with the parents. Live with the grandparents. It's a normal function. My wife lived with her grandmother for years just because, hey, she needs somebody to be around the house with her, that kind of thing. So this woman is taking care of this little girl. And the little girl, of course, he's got this imaginary playfriend named Yaya. And every time the grandmother is doing something, every time Blanc is doing something,
Starting point is 00:59:51 oh, you got to give Yaya a sandwich. You got to help Yaya take a bath. The whole imaginary friend thing. And the grandmother was being a good grandmother and not, not freaking out or anything. Well, it turns out that Yaya's face was hidden. You couldn't see her face. And the grandmother's like, well, why is that?
Starting point is 01:00:19 And this little girl who shouldn't know this sort of thing says that when she was a little girl, when she was alive, her dad threw a radio into the bathtub and killed her. Now, how many little girls going to come up with that as a baby? backstory for their imaginary friend. Well, the grandmother's like, okay, never mind. I don't want to see this little girl now. Well, the girl's aunt, they had a
Starting point is 01:00:50 security camera outside their house and she saw a little girl standing outside the house, like waiting to come in. She thought it was the granddaughter. It would have been her niece. So she runs in the front door.
Starting point is 01:01:06 opens, looks out, there's nobody there. She closes the door, goes back into the house, looks on the security camera, here's this little girl standing outside the door again. She runs in the front, opens the door, looks outside, no little girl. So she calls the grandmother wanting to know where is the daughter?
Starting point is 01:01:23 Where's the little girl, the live one? And she says, oh, she's here with me. She's like, well, then who's this standing outside my house? And the little girl says, oh, that's yaya. wait a minute, your imaginary friends are not supposed to be visible to other people. This kept going on. Other members of the family, like the uncle was getting upset because he didn't like having yaya in the house with him.
Starting point is 01:01:57 And it just kept getting worse and worse. well, the shop I go to to get my coffee a lot, the organic man coffee trick, best coffee in the world. They don't sponsor me, but I get a lot of coffee there. I've been there talking to them and I mentioned about this imaginary friend and the girl behind the counter says, my niece used to have an imaginary friend who would hover up in the corner of the room and look down at her.
Starting point is 01:02:30 It's like, imaginary friends are supposed to be down there on the floor with you to play with. They're not supposed to be hanging around up by the ceiling, making ugly faces, keeping you awake at night when you're supposed to be asleep. But it's gotten to a point where you wonder what these imaginary friends are they in their minds? And if so, how come other people are seeing these things on camera? people are hearing them moving around the house at night. The gal at the coffee shop was saying that she'd hear somebody knocking on the window at night, a two-story house, and somebody's outside the bedroom window knocking. Of course, she'd run and look out there and there's nobody there.
Starting point is 01:03:15 And the imaginary friend apparently disappears as the person gets older. They stopped showing up. But Yahya has been showing up until recently. the little girl, I believe, became a teenager before Yaya stopped hanging around. It's been a very weird story. I don't have all the details straight in my mind because I wrote that book, what, two years ago. And it was so many weird things about this imaginary friend.
Starting point is 01:03:56 But Yaya, like I said, other people. saw her, other people heard her. And the whole time it's supposed to be this imaginary friend that this little girl had just come up with off the top of her head. Yeah. I know in the email you mentioned how like it took dozens of emails between them to get back to you and stuff and all the whole story. But yeah, yeah, yeah, sounds Dutch, first of all, yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 01:04:25 I'm just saying. My wife told me that I'm starting to do a lot of the bad. dad jokes and that was probably one of them. But no, I've always wondered about the whole, you know, imaginary friend thing where it's like, you know, not all these may not be imaginary friends. I mean, for instance, who gave it the imaginary friend label? Usually the parents do at a comfort, you know, like my kid's seeing things, oh, it's an imaginary friend. What if it's not? You know, What if it's not? It doesn't sound like Yaya was because you shouldn't be seeing other people's imaginary friends.
Starting point is 01:05:03 It would show up on the security camera, but when she'd look outside the door, it wasn't there, which is very similar to the girl that was at the LEA. They could see her on the camera, but they couldn't see her in the parking lot. And I've heard it both ways also. I've heard where people will see somebody. They'll go to take a picture and they don't show. up on the camera. And then I've heard where they've taken a picture, they see somebody on their camera that wasn't there in the first place. So it makes you wonder what the world's going on. Well, one, I don't know. I don't think you're claiming to know. And that's what I think is important
Starting point is 01:05:46 with these kind of shows that I have, you have, is that, you know, it just, it brings people to this point on the table where it's like, okay, you know, the world is a little weird. and we don't have the answers to everything, and it's okay to talk about it. And, you know, that's what we're doing here. If these things were explained, it wouldn't be entertaining. It wouldn't be exciting.
Starting point is 01:06:11 It wouldn't be interesting. The day they catch a big foot, bring him into town, and they say, look, here it is, here's a big foot. It's not going to be interesting anymore. Are you familiar with Oak Island treasure, Money Pit. Am I familiar with it?
Starting point is 01:06:30 Listen, I, first of all, I'm fascinated with hunting treasure. Oak Island, my lord. If they offered me a stake on that island, I'd take it. I tell my wife all the time, though, no matter what they find, if they do find the Ark of the Covenant, the bottom of that hole, it's not going to be exciting enough. whatever they dig up in the bottom of that, it's got to be earth-shattering. And then it's going to be like, oh, shoot, the story's over.
Starting point is 01:07:02 There's no more mystery. Yeah. We found what's at the bottom of the hole. Well, that's going to ruin that show. I know. Well, that's how I feel about the whole UFO disclosure. I was like, man, I hope they don't have anything good in there because it might ruin my show. Like, all of a sudden, the mystery's gone, you know?
Starting point is 01:07:19 But I had faith in my government that they would not tell me anything. So they held true to forms. I kept telling people at the Edinburgh UFO conference, people kept saying, do you think they're going to tell us anything new? No, no. They're going to rehash a whole bunch of stuff we've already heard. They're not going to really tell us anything. It's going to be a whole lot of double speak.
Starting point is 01:07:42 And you're going to walk away going like, what the heck that guy just say? And that's what they did. Exactly. Exactly. I can't tell you how many people were, you know, are you looking for the disclosure? Are you excited? I'm like, listen, listen, if it's worth anything, I'll hear about it from you first. So that's the way I first goes like, you know, they're not going to, no, not at all. I like what George Knapp said. He went to Russia to talk to the KGB agents, hoping that he would get some information from them about sightings of UFOs in the United States.
Starting point is 01:08:19 Well, that's a good angle to take. That's a great angle to take. I used to have a book a long time ago. I think it was by Glenn Campbell, but not the singer, the UFO guy. And in it was a picture of Area 51. And I'm talking years ago. And I found out later that it was actually against the law to have that photograph, even though it was in a book that I had bought. But he had got the photo from a Russian intelligence agent somehow.
Starting point is 01:08:51 And it's like, I don't know. if that's exactly legal or not I don't have the book anymore I loaned it to somebody and they kept it but yeah it was it was just hilarious he had to buy a picture of a top secret US base from a guy in Russia unbelievable unbelievable I got a show coming up in probably a few weeks to a month or so I imagine this guy's coming up soon he worked on area two I believe oh S2? Yeah, yeah. And, well, yeah, S2, yeah.
Starting point is 01:09:28 And he had some interesting stories. He had some interesting stories. And I've been patiently waiting to put that show out. So the audience can look forward to that for sure. I've actually met one guy that said he worked at Area 51. He was in the military. And I asked him, he wouldn't say a word. They just said he was assigned there.
Starting point is 01:09:48 He was in security. and that was it. And it was like, nope, not going to stop. He, he still had the stripes and he didn't want to lose them. Yeah,
Starting point is 01:09:59 it's understandable. Most, most people, you know, of sane mind would say, yeah, not on my watch. You're not going to get me to talk about it,
Starting point is 01:10:08 you know? We're looking for the crazy ones that have nothing to lose to talk. But, Chris, man, you have had a lot of stories to share with us and your book,
Starting point is 01:10:20 here, it has tons more in it. Yes. And for the audience listening right now, this is a over 200-page book, fill the stories. The book's called paranormal Laredo. Where can people get your book at? If you're in Laredo, which the few people are, you can get it at the organic man coffee trite because they sell books there or at the Phoenix bookstore on Victoria Street. If you don't live in Laredo and you're not coming this direction, you can get at Amazon
Starting point is 01:10:49 dot com. Just look for Paranormal Laredo. It should be the only one that pops up. That and you can get the other two, the Laredo Paranormal Research Society and Fort McIntosh and the paranormal. And none of the stories, like if I talk about it in one story,
Starting point is 01:11:07 I just don't really talk about it a lot in the others so that you're not reading the same thing over again. Yeah. I hate it when people do that. You buy a brand new book in the first half of it. stuff you've already read.
Starting point is 01:11:21 Yep. That's annoying. That's requirements by a publisher to have a certain amount of pages. But yeah, that's great, man. And hopefully people go check it out. And also, the name of your podcast is what? Because people are going to be interested in the beginning. I don't think you said the name of the podcast.
Starting point is 01:11:39 I don't think. It's strange things with Chris James. And you have to type out the whole thing because there's 35 other people that have podcasts that start with strange thing. Joshua P. Warren has won strange things with Joshua P. Warren. But I had the name first. I had it before the TV show. It sounds like it's it sounds like you have a little franchise going there. Strange things franchise. If only I was making some money. I don't care what people call themselves, but it's getting a little complicated. Yeah. And it's it's the whole thing, strange things with Chris James. You
Starting point is 01:12:19 can find me on iHeart radio, Stitcher, all the big names, iTunes. If it's a podcasting platform, they should have them. Awesome, man. Yeah, I know when I went through, when I first started this show, I came up with the name of the Confessionals in my truck. And the first thing I did was I went to Apple Podcasts and searched for the Confessionals to see if there was a podcast out there called that already and there wasn't. And then I think like the year I started like maybe six months into me starting this show, somebody else started a show called The Confessional. And it has nothing to do with paranormal or anything like that. But I was like, come on your own block. You know, this is my block here. It's, uh, there's, uh, some people, I guess they just can't come up with an original idea.
Starting point is 01:13:16 It's kind of like the thing with Bigfoot. You had Finding Bigfoot. Then you had Mountain Monsters. You had Alaskan monsters. You had underground monsters and beat it to death. Yeah. We had Ghost hunters. Then you had ghost something else, a paranormal this, paranormal that.
Starting point is 01:13:36 It's like, holy cow, the travel channel should change their name. Yeah. Well, you know what? I'll tell you one thing. They're only doing things. that are profitable. So whatever they're doing, you can bet if there's two, three seasons, it's because it's profitable. Because if it's not profitable after the first season, it's gone, you know? So anyways, Chris, I could talk to you for hours here. But friend,
Starting point is 01:14:03 thank you for joining me on the show. And everybody should definitely check out your podcast and book. Thanks for being here, man. Thanks for having me on the show. I've been listening to you for years. and all of a sudden one day I thought, maybe you'd like to be on with me, or me be on with you. And so I sent you a note and it worked. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's as easy as that, Chris.
Starting point is 01:14:27 I mean, you're a testimony right there. So many times people will say, you know, I wasn't sure if I should email. I'm like, I say that every show, the confessionals. I know it's the longest email in the world. I probably could have thought of something shorter, but the confessionals at the professionalspodcast.com. This is not a, you know, that's not seven stories below my pay grade. I get the emails.
Starting point is 01:14:51 So just shoot me an email, everybody. Chris did it and he got on the show. So all right, man. Thanks a lot. Appreciate you having me. Well, that's the show, everybody. I really hope you enjoyed it. And if you did enjoy it, please share the show with your friends.
Starting point is 01:15:09 I don't care where or how you share the show. Just share it because that's the best thing you can do to help this show grow. You all got cell phones. Take the link of this show and text it to everybody in your phone. Just spam the heck out of them. I'm sure they're going to thank you for it later. And also, please go ahead and subscribe to my show. My other show, Hammer Lane Legends.
Starting point is 01:15:30 I do it with my dad. It's a podcast where we talk to people from the transportation industry and all the bananas things. Driver's C from the road. So if that interests you, go ahead and subscribe to Hammer Lane Legends today on any podcast playing platform and on YouTube. So while you're over there, subscribing to the Confessionals YouTube channel,
Starting point is 01:15:47 go and subscribe to Hammer Lane Legends YouTube channel. Thank you very much. And until next week, friends, stay safe, take care, and remember, the truth will set you free, but first it'll piss you off. Bye. You take a peek to the hood,
Starting point is 01:17:19 your all signs, code of minds, wherever it's gentrified. You take a peek to the hood from your house on the inside, your home I have heard the feature so with more. How many much chance he gives? I configure the frame
Starting point is 01:18:26 or to disintegrate a subject you are aimed for the brain versus mask adoption. Got us breathing in toxins. They concoctin why they got it all by still The sweet is sour The call's obnoxious You're a coward ignoring the nonsense A gunner or maintaining flowers
Starting point is 01:18:39 One fake body said they want to swap To your mainframe wipe you clean That's a cloud to the reset I'm gonna say my peace till they chain my feedback They get you drinking from It takes less vex

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